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A SYSTEM OF ETHICS 
 
.... And hence virtue would be, as it were, the health and beauty 
 and harmony of the soul ; vice, however, disease and ugliness and 
 weakness. Plato. 
 
 .... Accordingly, the highest good of man consists in the exercise 
 of the virtues and excellences of the soul, especially of the highest 
 and most perfect. Aristotle. 
 
 Virtue is nothing but action in accordance with one's own nature ; 
 and there is nothing which excels it in dignity and worth. 
 
 Spinoza. 
 
 And therefore virtue is the good and vice the evil for every one. 
 
 Shaftesbury. 
 
SYSTEM OF ETHICS 
 
 BY 
 
 FRIEDRICH PAULSEN 
 
 PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN 
 
 IE often ano tftranslateti 
 
 1VITH THE AUTHOR'S SANCTION, FROM THE FOURTK 
 REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANK THILLY 
 
 FKOFE8SOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF MISSOURI 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON 
 
-93 
 
 Copyright, 1899, by 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 G 
 
 bvM 
 
j 
 
 OP 
 ri 
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 
 
 Of all the treatises on ethics that have appeared in recent 
 years, none is, in my opinion, so admirably fitted for intro- 
 ducing the beginner to this study as the remarkable work of 
 Professor Paulsen which I here present to the English-speak- 
 ing public in their native tongue. As the author expressly 
 declares, the book was not written for philosophical experts, 
 but for all those who are interested in the problems of prac- 
 tical philosophy, and who are in need of some one to guide 
 them in solving the same. It discusses the fundamental 
 questions of ethics in a manner that cannot fail to attract the 
 student and encourage him to reflect upon moral matters, 
 which is, after all, the greatest service that any book can 
 hope to render him. Many of our ethical treatises have a 
 tendency to repel the average intelligent reader and to deaden 
 instead of quickening his thought ; they make him feel that 
 the subjects under discussion have absolutely no connection 
 with life, at least, not with his life ; they often speak to him of 
 things about which he knows nothing and cares less, in lan- 
 guage which he cannot understand. This is a misfortune, for 
 if any science has a message to deliver to the people of our 
 country and age, it is certainly the science of conduct 
 
 Professor Paulsen divides his work into four books. The 
 first traces the historical development of the conceptions of 
 life and moral philosophy from the times of the Greeks down 
 to the present, and is one of the ablest and most fascinating 
 surveys of the subject ever written. The second examines 
 
VI TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 
 
 the fundamental questions of ethics and answers them in 
 a manner indicating the author's clearness of vision and 
 soundness of judgment. The third, which is full of prac- 
 tical wisdom, applies these principles to our daily conduct 
 and defines the different virtues and duties. The fourth 
 book is sociological and political in its nature, and deals 
 with the "Forms of Social Life." The healthy common- 
 sense pervading the entire work and its freedom from exag- 
 gerations cannot but win the admiration of the reader. 
 
 Owing to a desire on the part of the publishers not to in- 
 crease the dimensions of this volume beyond a reasonable 
 limit, I have translated only the first three of the books, 
 leaving out, for the present, the " Umriss einer Staats- und 
 Gesellschaf tslehre. " I have also omitted the seventh and 
 eighth sections of the sixth chapter in Book III., which dis- 
 cuss the duel, in order still further to diminish the size of 
 the translation, and because, in my belief, the subject does 
 not have the same interest for us Americans as for the 
 Germans. 
 
 My translation is from the fourth German edition which 
 has been revised and increased. I have added notes and 
 bibliographical references whenever they seemed desirable; 
 they will be found in square brackets. 
 
 In conclusion, I cannot refrain from expressing to Pro- 
 fessor Paulsen my sincere thanks for the encouragement and 
 help he has given me during the progress of this work. 
 
 FRANK THILLY. 
 Columbia, Mo., March, 189y, 
 
AUTHOR'S PREFACE 
 TO THE AMERICAN EDITION 
 
 In responding to the request of my friend Frank Thilly to 
 speed this book on its journey, I feel impelled, first of all, 
 to express to him my hearty thanks for his kindness in 
 presenting my Ethics to his fellow-countrymen in their 
 native tongue, a service which he has already performed for 
 my Introduction to Philosophy. 
 
 From my earliest youth I have had the feeling that a 
 people closely akin to us dwelt beyond the ocean. This 
 feeling was, perhaps, first aroused by the fact that not a few 
 of the companions of my youth had found a new home on 
 the other side ; in my native land, Schleswig-Holstein, from 
 which the Anglo-Saxons once sailed westward over the sea, 
 the migration to the West still continues. Since then the 
 years have woven many new bonds of union. And so it is 
 now a special source of pleasure to me, also, as an author, to 
 come into closer contact with the great nation which has 
 shown such remarkable energy in establishing itself in the 
 new world. 
 
 It is my earnest wish that this book may also contribute 
 a little to strengthen the ties of spiritual fellowship unit- 
 ing the two kindred peoples. We Germans well know, and 
 gratefully confess, that no nation of the earth more deeply 
 appreciates and more thoroughly understands the products of 
 German thought than the United States of North America. 
 
 FRIEDRICH PAULSEN. 
 
 Berlin-Steglitz, September 27, 1898. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST GERMAN EDITION 
 
 Ich glaube nicht dass ich viel eignes neues lehre, 
 
 Noch durch meiu ScherfLein Witz den Schatz der Weisheit mehre, 
 
 Doch denk' ich von der Muh > mir zweierlei Gewinn ; 
 
 Einmal, dass ich nun selbst an Einsicht weiter bin ; 
 
 Sodann, dass doch dadurch an manchen Mann wird kommen 
 
 Manches, wovon er sonst gar hatte nichts vernommen. 
 
 Und auch der dritte Grund scheint wert nicht des Gelachters : 
 
 Dass, wer dies Blichlein liest, derweil doch liest kein schlechters, 
 
 — RUCKERT. 
 
FROM THE PREFACE TO THE SECOND 
 GERMAN EDITION 
 
 The second edition of this work, which has been so kindly 
 received by a large circle of readers, embraces, in the main, 
 the same contents as the first ; I have, however, so far as I 
 was able, made improvements here and there. The second 
 book, especially, has been worked over ; I hope that the fun- 
 damental concepts have gained somewhat in definiteness, and 
 that the entire treatment has been somewhat rounded out. 
 Perhaps this will make it a little easier for some of the 
 critics to understand the conception of life and its values 
 on which my system is based. 
 
 This new edition, however, is still open to the objection, 
 which has been repeatedly urged against me, that the treat- 
 ment of the fundamental questions is much less searching 
 and thorough, while the questions of the day receive more 
 attention than they deserve in a philosophical treatise. I 
 have not been able to make up my mind to enter upon a more 
 detailed discussion of the principles, because I do not believe 
 that great prolixity in these matters will do any one much 
 good. The philosophers, of course, have long ago worked out 
 their own principles ; to the readers, however, who do not lay 
 claim to this title, the significance and fitness of the funda- 
 mental notions will be proved more easily by the ability of the 
 latter to explain particular cases and to solve concrete prob- 
 lems. I have been equally unwilling to ignore the questions 
 which are moving our age ; the books that have nothing to 
 say to their times, and therefore fill their pages with un- 
 
x FROM THE PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 timely logical quibbles, or with endless historical-critical 
 discussions, are plentiful enough as it is, and there has, thus 
 far, never been a lack of tiresome books in Germany. There 
 are books that are timeless because they are written for all 
 times; but there are also timeless books which are written 
 for no time. This book does not belong to the first class, 
 nor would it like to belong to the second. 
 
 And now that I have begun to make confessions, let me 
 confess further that this book was not written for philoso- 
 phers at all ; God forbid that I should presume to think 
 for people who are already overburdened with thoughts. I 
 had in mind readers who have, in some way or other, been 
 stimulated to meditate upon the problems of life, and are 
 looking for some one to guide them, or, if that sounds too 
 presumptuous, for some one to discuss these questions with 
 them. Should any such take up this book and not lay it aside 
 disappointed, the author's ambition will have been thoroughly 
 realized. Besides, I do not believe that a new system of moral 
 philosophy is either necessary or possible ; the great construc- 
 tive principles have already been so thoroughly developed by 
 Greek philosophy that they are, in the main, satisfactory even 
 to-day. To bring the old truth into living touch with the ques- 
 tions which preoccupy our age, is, in my opinion, the most 
 important function of a modern ethics. Nor do I believe 
 that I am mistaken in the assumption that this view is some- 
 what widespread in our times. Perhaps there has never been 
 so little disagreement concerning the problem and principles 
 of moral philosophy since the days of Christian Wolff as 
 exists at present. 
 
 Let me here briefly outline the conception towards which 
 the thought of the age seems to be tending; I call it the 
 teleologicjil view. It is limited and defined by a double anti- 
 thesis. On the one side, by hedonistic utilitarianism, which 
 teaches that pleasure is the thing of absolute worth, to which 
 virtue and morality are related as means. In opposition to 
 
FROM THE PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xi 
 
 this, teleological ethics contends that not the feeling of 
 pleasure, but the objective content of life itself, which is 
 experienced with pleasure, is the thing of worth. Pleasure 
 is the form in which the subject becomes immediately aware 
 of the object and its value, Intuitionalistic formalism is the 
 other antithesis. This regards the observance of a system 
 of a priori rules, of the moral laws, as the thing of absolute 
 worth. In opposition to this, teleological ethics contends 
 that the thing of absolute worth is not the observance of 
 the moral laws, but the substance which is embraced in 
 these formulas, the human historical life which fills the 
 outline with an infinite wealth of manifold concrete forms ; 
 that the moral laws exist for the sake of life, not life for 
 the sake of the moral laws. 
 
 This is the form which Aristotle, the founder of ethics as 
 a systematic science, originally gave to it. This conception 
 controlled the entire Greek thought, and modern ethics too 
 adhered to it, until it was overthrown by Kant's great reaction 
 in favor of a formalistic intuitionalism. Teleological ethics, 
 however, at once found an eloquent and warm defender against 
 formal moralism in Schiller, and in a certain sense Specula- 
 tive Philosophy also returned to the old view. At present 
 this science is again turning into the old channels under the 
 influence of the modern biological conceptions. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Paob 
 Nature and Function of Ethics 1 
 
 1. Definition (1) — 2. Position in the System of Sciences (1) — 8. 
 Function (4) — 4. Method (6) — 5. Moral Law and Natural 
 Law (13) — 6. Concept of Perfection (17) — 7. In what Sense 
 Universal Validity may be Predicated of Morality (19) — 8. 
 Practical Value of Ethics (25). 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 OUTLINE OF A HISTORY OF THE CONCEPTIONS OF LIFE AND 
 MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The Conception op Life and Moral Philosophy among 
 the Greeks S3 
 
 1. The Greek People's Conception of the Value of Life (35) — 
 2. Socrates (3 9)— 3. Plato (41) — 4. Aristotle (48)-— 5. Stoics 
 (53) — 6. Epicureans (56) — 7. Common Characteristics of Greek 
 Ethics (58). 
 
 CHAPTER n 
 
 The Christian Conception of Life 65 
 
 1. Christianity is Supernaturalistic (65) — 2. Its Contempt for Learn- 
 ing (67) — 3. for the Natural Virtues (68) — 4. for Courage (69) 
 — 5. for Justice (71) — 6. Its Relation to the State (72) — 7. to 
 Enjoyment and Art (74) — 8. to Wealth (77) — 9. to Honor (78) 
 — 10. Mercy, the Christian Virtue (81) — 11. Christianity aad 
 
xiv TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 Family-Life (84) — 12. The Eternal Life (87)— 13. The Liberal- 
 istic Conception of Christianity (89). 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 The Conversion of the Old World to Christianity ... 98 
 
 I. The Old World's Opinion of Christianity (98) — 2. Cause of the 
 Change : Decline of Ancient Morality in the Roman Empire (100) 
 
 — 3. The Moral Self-consciousness of the Imperial Period : Epic- 
 tetus, Marcus Aurelius, Neo-Platonism (106) — 4. Craving for 
 a Religion of Redemption (110) — 5. Superiority of Christianity 
 (112) — 6. Analogous Development in the Hindoo World (113). 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 The Middle Ages and their Conception of Life . . . .116 
 
 1. The Conversion of the Germanic Nations (116) — 2. Mood and 
 Mode of Life (118) — 3. The Clergy (119) — 4. Historical 
 Necessity on Part of the Church to Assimilate the World (121). 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 The Modern Conception of Life .... 126 
 
 1. Characteristics of the Modern Era (126) — 2. Renaissance (127) 
 
 — 3. Reformation (129) — 4. The Love of Knowledge (135) — 
 5. Francis Bacon and his Dream of the Future (137) — 6. R. Des- 
 cartes and his Programme of Civilization (140) — 7. The Modern 
 Science of the State: Thomas Hobbes (143) — 8. Leibniz (144) — 
 9. The Self-satisfaction of the Modern Era (145) — 10. The 
 Nineteenth Century : Pessimism, Nietzscheanism (147) — 11. 
 Relation to Christianity (155). 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 Mediaeval and Modern Moral Philosophy 169 
 
 1. Theological Moral Philosophy (169)— 2. Catholic Moral Theology 
 (172) — 3. Modern Moral Philosophy; Thomas Hobbes (179) — 
 4. Spinoza (181) — 5. Shaftesbury (185) — 6. Hume, Bentham, 
 Mill, Spencer (189) — 7. Leibniz, Wolff (193) — 8. Kant (194) 
 
 — 9. Goethe, Schiller (201) — 10. Speculative Philosophy (203) 
 
 — 11. Schleiermacher (205) — 12. Herbart (208) — 13. Scho- 
 penhauer (209). 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS XT 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS AND QUESTIONS OF PRINCIPLE 
 
 Paob 
 Metaphysical and Psychological Introduction 219 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 Good and Bad: Teleological and Formalistic Conceptions . 222 
 
 1. Possible Conceptions (222) — 2. The Teleological Conception (224) 
 
 — 3. Subjective-formal and Objective-material Judgment (226) — 
 4. The End Justifies the Means (233) — 5. The Importance of 
 the Particular Act (240) — 6. Provisional Repudiation of Egoism 
 (243) — 7. Summary (248). 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The Highest Good : Hedonistic and Energistic Conceptions . 251 
 
 1. Critique of Hedonism : Pleasure not the End of Action (251) — 2. 
 A Modified Form of the Hedonistic Theory (258) — 3. Signifi- 
 cance of Pleasure from the Biological Standpoint (264) — 4. 
 Pleasure not the Criterion of Judgments of Value (268) — 5. 
 Positive Definition of the Highest Good (270) — 6. Histor- 
 ical Confirmation (273) — 7. Further Remarks (275) — 8. 
 An Objection (283). 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 Pessimism 28? 
 
 1. Pessimism as a Mood and a Theory (287) — 2. Hedonistic Argu- 
 ment (289) — 3. Moralistic Argument (297) — 4. The Historical- 
 Philosophical Argument in the Hedonistic Sense (308) — 5. in 
 the Moralistic Sense (314) — 6. Summary (318). 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 The Evil, the Bad, and Theodicy 821 
 
 1. Theodicy (321)— 2. Physical Evil (322) — 3. Moral Evil (325) 
 
 — 4. Consequences (332) — 5. Death (335). 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 Duty and Conscience 340 
 
 I. Origin of the Feeling of Duty (340) — 2. Relation between Duty 
 and Inclination (346) — 3. Critique of the Kantian View (350) 
 
XVI TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Pa©« 
 
 — 4. Further Errors of the A-prioristic-intuitionalistic Moral Phil- 
 osophy (355) — 5. Conscience (363) — 6. Individualization of 
 Conscience (368) — 7. Moral Nihilism (373) — 8. The Popular 
 Usage of Language (377). 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 Egoism and Altruism 379 
 
 1. No Absolute Opposition (379) — 2. The Effects of so-called Egoistic 
 and Altruistic Acts (383) — 3. and their Motives Overlap (386) 
 
 — 4. Our Judgment of Egoistic and Altruistic Acts (391) — 5. 
 Relation to the Evolutionistic Theory (394). 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 Virtue and Happiness 400 
 
 1. Effect of Conduct on Welfare (400) — 2. Effect of Welfare on 
 Character (407). 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Relation of Morality to Religion ... 415 
 
 1. Hiatorical Connection, its Causes and Effects (415) — 2. Neces- 
 sary Inner Connection (421) — 3. Relation between Religion and 
 Science (425) —4. Cause of Unbelief (433) — 5. The Belief in 
 Immortality (439) — 6. Objections (446). 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 The Freedom of the Will 452 
 
 1. Historical Orientation (452) — 2. Presentation of the Facts (457) — 
 3. Responsibility (460) — 4. The True Meaning of Human Free- 
 dom (467). 
 
 BOOK III 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 Virtues and Vices in General , . 475 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The Education of the Will and the Discipline of the 
 Feelings, or Self-Control 483 
 
 1. Self-control (483) — 2. Temperance ; Asceticism (485) — 3. Mod- 
 esty (491) — 4. Courage (495) — 5. Independence, Perseverance, 
 Patience (498) — 6. Equanimity (500) — 7. Wisdom (503). 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS xrii 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Pag* 
 Bodily Life 505 
 
 1. Its Purpose (505) — 2. Nourishment ; Drunkenness (506) — 
 
 3. Domicile, Clothing (515)— 4. Play and Work (519). 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 Economic Life 529 
 
 1. Teleological Necessity of the Calling (529) — 2. Duty to the Com- 
 munity (533) — 3. Avarice and Prodigality (536) — 4. Poverty 
 and Wealth (540). 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 Spiritual Life and Culture 54S 
 
 1. Nature and Import of Knowledge (543) — 2. Culture, Super-cul- 
 ture, Half-culture (547) — 3. Nature and Import of Art (556) — 
 
 4. Present Position of Art (559). 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 Honor and the Love of Honor 569 
 
 1. Nature of Honor (569) — 2. Its Significance for Moral Develop- 
 ment (571) — 3. The Love of Honor as Pride (573) — 4. The 
 Love of Honor as Humility (576) — 5. Self-confidence and Self- 
 knowledge (578)— -6. Modesty (581). 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 Suicide 584 
 
 1. The Facts (584) — 2. How we Judge the Facts (586) — 3. The 
 Causes (590). 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 Compassion and Benevolence 592 
 
 1. Compassion (592) — 2. Benevolence (599). 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 Justice 599 
 
 1. Nature and Natural Foundation of Justice (599) — 2. Its Signi- 
 ficance (602)— 3. Need of a Positive Legal Order (603) — 
 4. Punishment and the Right of Punishment (606) — 5. Duty to 
 
xriu TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Pag* 
 
 Defend the Rights of Others and of Self (613) — 6. Magnanimity 
 and Forgiveness (616) — 7. The Principle of Rights (624) — 8. 
 Incongruity between Law and Morality; Necessary Wrongs (627) 
 
 — 9. The Law Falls short of the Demands of Morality (633). 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 Love of Neighbor 688 
 
 1. Definition and Limitations of the Duty (638) — 2. Almsgiving (641) 
 
 — 3. Selfishness (648) — 4. Significance of Love of Neighbor 
 (652) — 5. Gratitude (655) — 6. Love of Home, of Country, of 
 Humanity (656). 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 Veracity 664 
 
 1. Negative Aspect: the Lie (664)— 2. Why Condemned (666) — 
 3. Calumny, Flattery, Hypocrisy, Perjury (669) — 4. Lie of 
 Necessity (672) — 5. Why this Rigorism? (681) — 6. Positive 
 Aspect: Veracity in Relation to the Individual (685) — 7. The 
 Public Communication of the Truth (688) — 8. Why the New 
 Truths are Persecuted (690) — 9. In how far this is Necessary 
 (695) — 10. Is the Destruction of Error under all Circumstances 
 a Duty ? (698). 
 
 rNDEX . * , 8 ,.'..'• 711 
 
INTRODUCTION — NATURE AND FUNCTION 
 OF ETHICS 
 
 1. Ethics is, according to the Greek signification of the 
 term, a science of customs or morals (Sitten). 
 
 There are two forms of a scientific treatment of morals : the 
 historical-anthropological and the practical. The first we 
 find, for example, in Herodotus and in Herbert Spencer's 
 Descriptive Sociology. It investigates and describes the cus- 
 toms of different peoples and times ; we might call it etho- 
 graphy. The second inquires into the worth of human customs 
 and modes of behavior ; its object is to guide us in the proper 
 conduct of life. The Greeks applied the term ethics to inves- 
 tigations of the latter kind. It was Aristotle who gave to 
 this science its name and systematic form. — The following 
 introductory remarks will endeavor to define provisionally the 
 nature of such a science. 
 
 2. All scientific discussions may be divided into two classes : 
 theoretical and practical, theories and technologies, sciences 
 proper and arts. The former aim at knowledge, the latter 
 seek to control things by human action, they tell us how to 
 make the world subservient to our purposes. 
 
 According to the above definition, ethics belongs to the 
 practical sciences ; its function is to show how human life as 
 such must be fashioned to realize its purpose or end. Conse- 
 quently, it stands at the head of the practical sciences, em- 
 bracing them all in a certain measure, for all arts ultimately 
 serve a common purpose : the perfection of human life. This 
 is as true of the art of shipbuilding and commerce as of the 
 art of education and government. Hence, the corresponding 
 
2 INTRODUCTION 
 
 arts are subordinated to ethics, the theory of the art of life, 
 or included as its parts. 
 
 All practical sciences are based on theories. They are 
 merely the application of theoretical truths to the solution 
 of practical problems. The theoretical science to which ethics 
 bears this relation is the science of man, anthropology and 
 psychology. Presupposing a knowledge of human nature and 
 the conditions of human life, ethics undertakes to answer the 
 question : What forms of social life and what modes of indi- 
 vidual conduct are favorable or unfavorable to the perfection 
 of human nature ? A comparison with another practical 
 science will make the relation clear. The function of medi- 
 cine is to teach men the physician's art ; and the object of this 
 art is to aid the body in reaching its perfect development, to 
 bring about favorable conditions, to ward off dangers, to 
 remove disturbances ; dietetics and therapeutics together per- 
 form this function. Physical anthropology forms the theoret- 
 ical basis of medicine. We may, therefore, say : Ethics bears 
 the same relation to general anthropology as medicine to 
 physical anthropology. Based on the knowledge of corporeal 
 nature, medicine instructs us to solve the problems of cor- 
 poreal life, to the end that the body may perform all its func- 
 tions in a healthy manner during its natural existence ; while 
 ethics, basing itself on the knowledge of human nature in 
 general, especially of its spiritual and social side, aims to 
 solve all the problems of life so that it may reach' its fullest, 
 most beautiful, and most perfect development. We might, 
 therefore, call ethics universal dietetics, to which medicine 
 and all the other technologies, like pedagogy, politics, etc., 
 are related as special parts, or as auxiliary sciences. With 
 this view the founder of systematic moral philosophy, Aris- 
 totle, wholly agrees. 
 
 A remark will not be out of place here. It is easy to see 
 that the arts are not really new, independent sciences. Science 
 deals with the nature of things. The fact that objects may 
 
NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 3 
 
 be modified by our action does not constitute a special phage 
 of their nature. Science might, therefore, confine itself to 
 calling attention to this in occasional interspersed remarks ; 
 physics might, for example, in discussing the subject of steam, 
 add the following note : Such and such particular properties 
 of gases enable us to utilize them as motors. The technolo- 
 gies would thus be inserted into the theories as corollaries. 
 
 If human beings were essentially theoretical beings, they 
 might, perhaps, be satisfied with such a procedure. But such 
 is not the case ; they are, rather, pre-eminently practical or 
 volitional beings. The practical problems are earlier and more 
 important than the theoretical problems. The sciences, we 
 may say, without going far amiss, have been invented to solve 
 problems ; knowledge is, at least in its first beginnings, a 
 means to practical ends. Thus> anatomy and physiology are 
 means to the art of healing ; geometry, as the name indicates, 
 a means to the surveyor's art. Similarly, philosophy, or 
 the universal theoretical science, owes its origin to the ques- 
 tion concerning the meaning and object of life. Yes, we may 
 go still farther and say : The ultimate motive impelling men 
 to meditate upon the nature of the universe will always be the 
 desire to reach some conclusion concerning the meaning, the 
 source, and the goal of their own lives. The origin and end 
 of all philosophy is consequently to be sought in ethics. 
 
 The priority of the practical sciences is shown in a remark- 
 able way by the form which scientific instruction has assumed 
 on its highest stage. Our university sciences are absolutely 
 governed by practical ends. The medical sciences do not 
 really form a systematic science ; they are united by a prac- 
 tical aim : the medical faculty is a technical training school 
 for physicians. It draws all such theoretical sciences into the 
 sphere of its instruction as it regards essential and useful to 
 the technical training of its students. In this way, physiology 
 and anatomy, which, in a classification based on purely theo- 
 retical principles, would, of course, be grouped under the 
 
4 INTRODUCTION 
 
 natural sciences, under the title biology, came into the faculty 
 of medicine. The same is true of jurisprudence and theology. 
 Neither of these is a special, independent science ; the fac- 
 ulties of law and theology are technical training schools, the 
 former for judges and officials, the latter for preachers and 
 spiritual advisers ; and whatever knowledge is required by the 
 members of these professions, they draw upon and make sub- 
 servient to their goal. A purely theoretical classification of 
 the sciences would place all these subjects either under the 
 head of history or philosophy. The question as to what was 
 or is the law in any particular country belongs to history, as 
 well as the question concerning the essence or the historical 
 development of a particular religion. The question, however, 
 concerning the nature of law in general and its significance for 
 human conduct belongs to practical philosophy ; the question 
 concerning the nature of God and the constitution of the uni- 
 verse, to metaphysics. — We have here an illustration of the 
 truth that knowledge exists for the sake of life, not life for 
 the sake of knowledge. 
 
 3. Let me add a few further statements concerning the 
 function and method of ethics. 
 
 It has a double function to perform : to determine the end 
 of life, or the highest good, and to point out the way, or the 
 means, of realizing it. 
 
 It is the business of the doctrine of goods {Guterlehre) to 
 establish the goal, or the highest good. It will, to forestall 
 the contents of a subsequent chapter, regard as the highest 
 good, stating it in a general formula, a 'perfect life, that is, a 
 life leading to the complete development of the bodily and 
 mental powers and to their full exercise in all the spheres of 
 human existence, in close communion with other closely 
 related persons, and fully participating in the historical and 
 spiritual life of society at large. The term welfare ( Wohl- 
 fahrt) may also be employed to designate this goal, — which 
 would suggest the subjective element involved in it, or the 
 
NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 5 
 
 fact that such a life yields satisfaction ( Wohlgefuhl). Here, 
 however, we must guard against the misconception that this 
 feeling of satisfaction or pleasure is what gives life its real 
 worth. The feeling is not the good, bat the form in which 
 the good is known and enjoyed by the subject. 
 
 The other function of ethics is to show by what inner quali- 
 ties and modes of conduct the highest good, or the perfect 
 life, is attained and realized. This problem is solved in the 
 doctrine of virtues and the doctrine of duties (Tugend- und 
 Pflichtenlehre). The doctrine of duties describes in general 
 formulae how we must conduct ourselves in order successfully 
 to solve the problems of life, that is, attain to perfection. 
 The doctrine of virtues sets forth how we must fashion the 
 character, or the will, in order to realize that goal : it makes 
 clear to us that prudence, courage, justice, veracity, are quali- 
 ties which enable us correctly to solve the problems of life, 
 while their opposites, thoughtlessness, cowardice, and pleasure- 
 seeking, inconsiderate selfishness and base mendacity, hinder 
 the realization of the perfect life. 
 
 Here, however, we must at once call attention to an im- 
 portant fact. The means employed to realize the perfect life 
 are not merely external, technical means, having no inde- 
 pendent value, but they are at the same time parts of its con- 
 tent. Just as the means of dietetics, work and exercise, rest 
 and sleep, as functions of life, at the same time form constit- 
 uents of bodily life, so the virtues and their exercise form 
 the contents of the perfect life. Or, to use a different illus- 
 tration : Each part in a good poem is a means of expressing 
 and unfolding the whole, otherwise it would be a superfluous 
 episode ; and, conversely, every means also necessarily forms 
 a part of the poem itself and as such possesses its own poetic 
 value. So, too, everything in moral life is both a means and 
 a part of the end, something that exists for its own sake and 
 for the sake of the whole. The virtues have absolute worth 
 as phases of the perfect man, but they are at the same time 
 
6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 valuable as means, in so far as the perfect life is realized 
 through them. In both cases, however, a difference may be 
 noted. Not all the parts of a work of art have the same 
 value when compared with the purpose underlying it, nor are 
 the different virtues equally important as means of realizing 
 the perfect life. Similarly, the different duties may be graded 
 according to their importance. 
 
 4. Let us now inquire into the method of ethics. What is 
 the source of its knowledge ? How does it prove the truth of 
 its propositions ? 
 
 It is customary to distinguish between empirical and ra- 
 tional knowledge. The latter, of which mathematics is the 
 prototype, deduces propositions from definitions and axioms, 
 and demonstrates them logically ; that is, it shows that they 
 follow as necessary consequences from the principles. Em- 
 pirical sciences, on the other hand, like physics and chemistry, 
 observe facts and reduce them to general formulae, which 
 aim to express the uniformity in the behavior of things ; 
 such formulas we call causal laws. The proof of the truth of 
 these propositions does not consist in showing their logical 
 connection with certain presupposed definitions, but in point- 
 ing out that they adequately express an observed causal 
 connection. 
 
 It seems to me to be an indisputable fact that ethics resem- 
 bles the natural sciences, rather than mathematics, in its 
 method. It does not deduce and demonstrate propositions 
 from concepts, but discovers the relations which exist be- 
 tween facts, and which may be established by experience. 
 Such and such a mode of conduct has such and such an 
 effect ; that is the general form of its argument. Or, to state 
 it in the converted form in which the causal connections are 
 expressed in all practical or technical sciences : In order to 
 produce or prevent such and such results, such and such 
 means are necessary. Quod in contemplatione instar causae^ 
 id in operatione instar regulae, says Bacon ; the causal law 
 
NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 7 
 
 becomes a practical rule. But the correctness of the rule is 
 proved by the causal connection ; and causal connections are 
 ascertained by experience alone. Experience proves that 
 cleanliness, exercise, fresh air, are means of preserving 
 health. So, too, experience proves that prudent and rational 
 conduct, a regular vocation, a well-ordered family life, are 
 conducive to life ; and that indolence, shiftlessness, dis- 
 honesty, and malice have the tendency to make life miser- 
 able and to destroy it. 
 
 The rationalistic view denies to ethics its empirical char- 
 acter. It claims that propositions of morals are neither cap- 
 able nor in need of empirical proof. It regards them as the 
 expressions of an innate faculty, conscience, or practical 
 reason, which judges and legislates a priori. It asserts that 
 everybody knows what is right or wrong without any expe- 
 rience. Experience decides what is advantageous or disad- 
 vantageous in its effects, but everybody knows before all 
 experience what is good or bad, and no experience of what 
 human beings really do or what may be the actual effects of 
 their action can place in doubt or correct this immediate 
 knowledge of what they ought to do. 
 
 Our answer is : It is indeed true that mankind did not 
 await the coming of moral philosophy in order to distinguish 
 between good and bad. Morality is older than moral philos- 
 ophy, and there could be no moral philosophy without morality 
 as its presupposition. It arises as the reflection on an exist- 
 ing positive morality, which governs life and judgment, and 
 which is not destroyed or made superfluous by its appearance. 
 It is also true that something like an inner voice speaks to 
 the individual : You ought to do this, you must not do that ! 
 and that too without any reasons, in the form of an uncon- 
 ditional imperative. This inner voice we call conscience. 
 We shall recur to the anthropological explanation and teleo- 
 logical interpretation of these things later on. Here, how- 
 ever, I should like to show that it does not follow from this 
 
8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 that moral philosophy must be an a-prioristic or rational 
 science. Let the science of dietetics again serve as an illus- 
 tration to explain our meaning. 
 
 What was said of the moral conduct of life may also be 
 applied to bodily life. Just as men did not await the coming 
 of moral philosophy before distinguishing between good and 
 bad, they did not wait for the appearance of the science of 
 dietetics in order to distinguish between the wholesome and 
 the unwholesome. Long before medicine or any science 
 existed, hungry men ate, the thirsty quenched their thirst, 
 and the shivering covered themselves with skins. The ques- 
 tion : Why do they do this, why is bread good for the hungry, 
 and water for the thirsty ? would have seemed as strange to 
 them as the question : Why is stealing wrong ? seems to our 
 schoolboys. It is self-evident ; no other reason can be given 
 for it. Here, as everywhere else, scientific investigation 
 begins by regarding everything that has previously been 
 accepted as self-evident, as a problem. After men had lived 
 for untold ages according to the absolute imperatives of a 
 naturalistic dietetics and an equally naturalistic therapeutics, 
 which continue even to this day in the prescriptions or abso- 
 lute imperatives of popular dietetics and medicine, what we 
 call scientific medicine arose. Slowly and gradually, by 
 means of observation and experiment, we have come to un- 
 derstand the organization of the body and its relation to the 
 external conditions of life, and have thus been gradually en- 
 abled to prove the appropriateness of methods and cures 
 which have long been practised, and to eliminate useless or 
 harmful ones, and to employ new ones in their stead. 
 
 Moral philosophy occupies a similar position. It, too, is 
 confronted with a naturalistic, unscientific, traditional moral- 
 ity. Just as bodily life was originally governed by instincts 
 and blind habits, without physiology, so the entire human 
 life, especially social life, was originally governed without 
 science, by a kind of moral instincts, These moral instincts 
 
NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 9 
 
 of peoples are called customs (Sitten). I employ this term 
 to designate all those obligatory habits and forms of life, all 
 those customs and laws, which uniformly govern the life of 
 every member of a community. Like the dietetic rules, these 
 customs appear in the consciousness of the individual in the 
 form of absolute commands, which assign no reason for their 
 validity. Thou shalt not kill, rob, or defraud a member of thy 
 tribe,- — so conscience speaks, without grounds and conditions ; 
 to do so is bad : that is a self-evident truth, just like the truth 
 that fire burns, and bread satisfies hunger. 
 
 Is this truth really incapable of proof, can moral philosophy 
 do nothing but collect and arrange these absolute commands 
 and prohibitions ? To say so is to deprive it of its character 
 as a science, for science does not consist in taking inventories, 
 but in the discovery and proof of truths. But such is not the 
 case. The truths of popular morality themselves suggest a 
 different answer ; they also appear in another form, namely 
 in the form of proverbs : Pride goeth before a fall ; Lies 
 are short-lived ; Honesty is the best policy ; A house divided 
 against itself cannot stand. Here the imperative appears in 
 the form of an assertion, one in which the reason is implied : 
 Do not lie, for lies are short-lived ; Do not cheat, for ill-gotten 
 gains do not prosper. And this suggests to us the real func- 
 tion of a philosophy of morals. It must unfold in detail the 
 reasons, which are simply implied in popular morality, for 
 the different value of the different modes of conduct. Like 
 the science of dietetics, it must show that certain modes of 
 conduct which have been followed instinctively for a long time, 
 are suited to the nature and conditions of human life, and are 
 therefore beneficial, while others are injurious and pernicious. 
 It will show, for example, that it lies in the very nature of 
 falsehood to injure the deceiver, the person deceived, and the 
 entire community which is united by the ties of language, by 
 destroying confidence and thereby undermining the founda- 
 tion of social life, without which real human life is not pos« 
 
10 INTRODUCTION 
 
 sible. It will show that stealing disturbs the economic life 
 of the injured party, and almost necessarily utterly destroys 
 that of the thief, and, finally, that it endangers the life of the 
 entire community by making property insecure, which is the 
 inevitable effect of theft, and thereby undermines the founda- 
 tions of civilization and all human life. In this way, moral 
 philosophy changes instinctive custom into conscious purpos- 
 iveness. 
 
 But it may possibly do more than this. Just as medical 
 dietetics does not merely explain, but rectifies the rules of 
 natural dietetics, so moral philosophy does not merely justify 
 the injunctions of natural morality, but also supplements and 
 corrects them. Thus it may, for example, in giving the rea- 
 sons for a rule, at the same time define the limits within 
 which it holds. In explaining the perniciousness of false- 
 hood, it at the same time helps us to decide when wilful 
 deception may be allowable and necessary. It solves the 
 problem of the so-called lie of necessity, which so strangely 
 confuses common-sense (as well as many moralists). By 
 showing why it is good to forgive injuries, it at the same 
 time determines under what conditions alone forgiveness is 
 possible, and under what conditions retaliation is necessary. 
 Naturalistic morality with its absolute imperatives leaves 
 us entirely in the lurch in complicated cases ; it leaves it to 
 the individual's own instinct or to his tact, as it is usu- 
 ally called, to settle the point. Moral philosophy cannot 
 make tact superfluous ; particular decisions, based upon con- 
 crete circumstances, must always be left to tact ; but it may 
 lay down rules for the guidance of tact which will accomplish 
 more than these absolute imperatives. 
 
 Such is the method of ethics in the doctrine of virtues and 
 duties. It explains its propositions teleologically and caus- 
 ally : in order to reach such and such a goal, such and such 
 behavior is necessary. But what about the knowledge of the 
 goal itself? From what source does ethics derive the know!- 
 
NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 11 
 
 edge of the perfect life ; how does it prove that its definition 
 of the highest good is correct ? 
 
 Here the case is somewhat different. We may say : The 
 nature of the highest good is in reality not determined by the 
 intellect, but by the will. The individual has an idea of 
 the conduct of his individual life, a life-ideal, the realization of 
 which he feels to be his true function as well as the highest 
 goal of his desires. It is really not the intellect from which 
 this ideal springs, although it appears in the form of an idea ; 
 its excellence cannot be proved to the reason ; it is nothing 
 but the reflection of the innermost essence and the will of the 
 individual himself in ideation. If other individuals have 
 different ideals, I cannot prove to them the inadequacy of 
 their ideals either by logical demonstrations or by empirical 
 causal investigations. I may, perhaps, make them feel the 
 value of my ideal by the mere revelation and description of it ; 
 indeed, I may convince them that mine has greater value than 
 theirs, and thus win them over to mine. Nevertheless, it is 
 not the understanding, but the will which impels them to de- 
 cide in its favor. The intellect as such knows absolutely noth- 
 ing of values, it distinguishes between the true and the false. 
 the real and unreal, but not between the good and the bad. 
 
 Earlier ethics frequently discussed the question whether rea- 
 son or feeling was the source of moral knowledge. We shall 
 say that both are involved. The question : What is a good 
 life, will in the last analysis be decided by immediate, incontro- 
 vertible feeling, in which the innermost essence of the being 
 manifests itself. It is as impossible to force a man by logical 
 proofs to love and admire an ideal of life as it is to make his 
 tongue feel the sweetness or bitterness of a particular fruit. 
 We can arouse such feelings only by showing that an object 
 possesses the qualities which originally produced them in 
 him, owing to his nature. And to a certain extent, a person's 
 taste for the goods of life may be changed by habit, as his 
 taste for certain foods may be changed. In that case^ 
 
12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 however, the change depends on the internal modification 
 of the nature of the being. But we may, when once the 
 conception of the highest good is established, make clear to 
 the intellect that such or such means are beneficial or 
 injurious to its realization. 
 
 It will not, therefore, be possible to give a scientific defini- 
 tion of the highest good, which shall be valid for all, — one, 
 that is, which we can force every individual by logical proofs to 
 accept ; or, at least, it will be possible only in so far as the 
 will itself is fundamentally the same in all individuals. And 
 we may, considering the far-reaching similarity of the powers 
 and the conditions of life, assume that this is, in a certain de- 
 gree, actually the case. Just as all the members of an animal 
 species, on the whole, desire to perform the same functions, 
 so we shall find a certain similarity of ends or aims in the 
 human species. It would be the business of a kind of natural- 
 historical investigation to discover such a uniform goal. It 
 would have to be shown, in the most general formulae, what 
 men actually desire as the highest good, or the perfect life. 
 The purpose of the moralist would here be identical with that 
 of the biologist : he would be obliged not to prescribe the 
 goal of life, but to discover it. Should he, however, succeed 
 in discovering a universal end of life, he could not, of course, 
 refuse to designate individuals absolutely deviating from the 
 goal, or having differently -fashioned wills (if there should be 
 such), as abnormal forms. As is well known, there are per- 
 verse sexual impulses. Although it is impossible to prove 
 to those who are so afflicted that their impulses are perverse 
 — they say : Impulses are facts ; your impulse, tending as it 
 does, is no more and no less a mere fact than ours — the 
 physiologist is convinced that it is abnormal, and the person 
 so afflicted can be clearly made to see that he is an exception, 
 and that life would not be possible if the perversity were the 
 rule. The same reasoning applies to an abnormal will. A 
 man, for example, who is sensitive only to sensual impressions, 
 
NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 13 
 
 say, to those of the palate, and has absolutely no appreciation of 
 the other pleasures, the pleasures which spring from perception 
 and knowledge, the exercise of powers, or is totally indifferent 
 to the weal and woe of his human surroundings or uniformly 
 enjoys their sufferings : such a being we should regard as an 
 abnormal form, and we should not hesitate to call him per- 
 verse, even though we could not convince him of the correct- 
 ness of our condemnatory judgment. And it is quite possible 
 that he would not even grant that his nature was abnormal, 
 that is, a deviation from the average, nay, he might assert 
 that could we but look beneath the outward appearances we 
 should find that all others thought and felt as he did. 
 
 5. Let me here add a remark concerning the relation of 
 moral laws to natural laws. Natural laws are formulas which 
 express the constant uniformity of natural occurrences. In 
 the narrower sense of the term, the concept is interpreted to 
 mean an absolute uniformity, one admitting of no exceptions. 
 Thus, physics assumes that the law of gravitation is an exact 
 mathematical expression of the uniform reciprocal action of 
 all masses in the universe. In this sense, the law of causality 
 itself is conceived as a strictly universal natural law. In a 
 wider sense, however, we also designate as natural laws such 
 uniform occurrences in nature as are not absolutely, but rela- 
 tively constant. The laws of biology for the most part belong to 
 this class ; for example, the laws which express the uniformity 
 of structure and function of an animal or plant species. In 
 this sense, we may evidently call the propositions of medical 
 dietetics natural laws : As a rule such and such a method of 
 procedure reacts upon the body in such and such a way ; Cold 
 water ablutions harden the skin and the entire organism 
 against changes in temperature ; The exercise of the mus- 
 cular and nervous systems leads to an increase in strength 
 and skill, while organs which are not used decay ; Opium and 
 alcohol have such and such direct and such and such indi- 
 rect effects upon the organism. All these are uniformities 
 
14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 which cannot be determined with mathematical exactness, 
 and which, owing to the complexity of vital processes, do 
 not appear with the same constant regularity as those de- 
 scribed by physics, but nevertheless they express universal 
 and regular tendencies. 
 
 In the same sense, we may call the propositions of ethics 
 natural laws : they, too, express the constant connections 
 existing between modes of conduct and their effects upon 
 life. Falsehood has the tendency to produce distrust ; dis- 
 trust has the tendency to disturb and destroy human social 
 life : these are generalizations of the same kind as the asser- 
 tion that alcohol tends to impair consciousness. The proposi- 
 tion : Idleness weakens the powers of the understanding and 
 the will, is nothing but a universal biological law, translated 
 into psychological language. 
 
 The objection is urged : The propositions of ethics or the 
 moral laws declare what ought to be, and not what is, as do 
 the natural laws. Thou shalt not lie, is a law of morality, 
 one that is universally valid in spite of all the deviations of 
 reality. The moral laws, it is held, are closely related to 
 the laws on the statute books, not to the laws of nature. ■— 
 They are certainly related to these ; nay, perhaps we may 
 say that the statutes merely represent a section of the moral 
 law. But that does not hinder them from being related to 
 natural laws. The statutory laws undoubtedly express what 
 ought to be, and there are exceptions to them in actual 
 practice. Still these are but exceptions ; as a rule, the law 
 is an expression of the actual behavior of the citizens ; we 
 should surely not reckon among the laws of the state a law 
 that is universally violated. It is a real law, not because it 
 is printed on a piece of paper, but because it is an expression 
 of the uniformity of action, even though this uniformity be 
 not absolute. Moreover, although the law of the state has 
 its origin in the will of man, it is, in the last analysis, based 
 upon the nature of things, upon the causal connections exist- 
 
NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 1& 
 
 ing between modes of conduct and their effects upon life. 
 Thou shalt not commit forgery, shalt not steal, shalt not com- 
 mit arson, or, as the law declares : Whoever forges, steals, 
 or commits arson, shall receive such and such punishment : 
 this law owes its origin to the fact that such acts have injur- 
 ious effects upon society. Stealing has the tendency to 
 undermine property rights, forgery has the tendency to 
 undermine credit, and consequently to interfere with the pro- 
 duction and distribution of commodities. This natural law 
 is the ultimate ground of the statutory law ; the statutory law 
 is a rule of conduct for the members of a community whose 
 aim is the security of the conditions of social life. 
 
 The same remarks apply to the moral law. A moral law 
 declares not only what ought to be, but what is. The historian 
 of civilization will undoubtedly declare : It is an expression of 
 the relatively uniform behavior of the members of the group 
 who acknowledge its validity, and it is, at all events, a principle 
 according to which acts are universally judged. If falsehood 
 were as common among a people as truth-telling, if falsehood 
 were not judged differently from veracity, there would be no 
 moral law on the subject. And should a moralist come to 
 such a community and say : But it is an absolute law that you 
 should not lie, he would be told : We don't understand you, 
 and will not be bothered by your whims ! There is, of course, 
 no such a people, not because falsehood ought not to be, but 
 because it cannot be a universal mode of conduct. Falsehood 
 can occur only as an exception : that is a law of nature, not a 
 logical, but a psychological law. Lying presupposes faith in 
 human speech, and such trust can exist only where truth- 
 telling is the rule. And when this uniform relation between 
 truth and confidence, falsehood and distrust, becomes fixed 
 in conduct and finally also in consciousness, the moral law is 
 formulated : Thou shalt not lie. The causal law forms the 
 basis of the practical rule, in morals as well as in jurispru- 
 dence and medicine. If there were no uniform connections 
 
16 INTRODUCTION 
 
 between causes and effects, between acts and individual and 
 social life, there would be no moral laws. The moral law is 
 not the product of caprice, not the arbitrary command of a 
 transcendent despot or of an uncontrollable " inner voice," 
 but the expression of an immanent law of human life. Human 
 life, that is, a life with a human mental-historical content, is 
 possible only where all individuals act with relative uniformity, 
 in accordance with the laws of morality, hence where the moral 
 law has the validity of a biological law. Deviations from the 
 moral law have the tendency to produce disturbances in indi- 
 vidual and social life ; absolute violation of the moral law 
 would lead, first, to the destruction of human historical life, 
 and finally also to the destruction of its animal existence. 
 
 Perhaps a comparison with the laws of grammar will eluci- 
 date the formal character of the moral laws. It is popularly 
 supposed that the laws of grammar declare what ought to be : 
 grammar prescribes the way in which we ought to speak. 
 The history of language regards grammar in a different light : 
 grammar does not prescribe the ways in which we ought to 
 speak, but describes the ways in which we do speak. The 
 grammarian of Gothic or Middle High German collects and 
 describes the forms which were actually used in the past ; the 
 paleontologist collects and describes extinct forms of life; 
 and the grammarian of the living language does the same. 
 But a peculiar fact is observed here. There is a difference 
 in the language of different persons, of different writers. 
 True, we find great uniformity, at least in the general plan 
 of the language, in the declensions and conjugations, but 
 even here we find exceptions, especially in the spoken word. 
 This compels the grammarian, whose real aim is to describe 
 the language, to choose between different forms, in order to 
 reach universal propositions. He will be guided in his choice, 
 either by the frequency of their occurrence or by his estimate 
 of the linguistic powers of the writers. Certain forms are 
 declared to be the normal ones, and grammar, therefore, 
 
NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 17 
 
 becomes a normative science after all : it decides what is 
 correct and what is incorrect. This procedure, however, it 
 must be confessed, is ultimately governed by teleological 
 necessity : the purpose of the language is to communicate 
 thoughts; deviations make this impossible, and they are 
 therefore eliminated as disturbing elements. 
 
 In the same way, popular thought regards it as the func- 
 tion of moral philosophy to prescribe laws. But anthropology 
 and history have a different conception of the problem. The 
 primary aim is not to prescribe what men ought to do, and 
 according to what principles they ought to judge, but to 
 describe and understand the ways in which they really act 
 and live. And to understand them means to understand the 
 teleological necessity of their customs, laws, and institutions. 
 Hence, here as before, a descriptive and explanatory science 
 becomes a normative science : its propositions become prin- 
 ciples of judgment and rules of conduct, in so far as they 
 represent the conditions of human welfare. 1 
 
 6. Let me now make a few more statements concerning 
 the function of ethics to define the highest good. In sec- 
 tion 3 we used the term perfection. A perfect human life, 
 that is, a life in which all the bodily and mental powers of 
 man are fully developed and exercised, is the highest good 
 for the individual. We shall have to discuss the material 
 phase of this definition in detail later on. Here I shall 
 simply enter upon a brief consideration of its formal side. 
 It has been said that this is a purely formal, empty definition, 
 which may be filled with any concrete content whatsoever. 
 As compared with this conception, the definiteness of other 
 views, for instance, that pleasure is the absolute good, has 
 
 1 Schleiermacher, whose entire ethics rests upon a parallelism between ethics 
 and physics, the moral law and the natural law, discusses the difference between 
 natural law and moral law in an academic treatise of the year 1825. (Complete 
 Works, 3d Division, vol. II., p. 397.) Compare also F. J. Neumann, Natural Law 
 and Economic Law (in tho Zeitschrift fir die gesamt. Staatsw., 1892, number 3) t 
 and Eucken, Fundamental Concepts of the Present, 2d ed., 1893, pp. I73ff. 
 
 a 
 
18 INTRODUCTION 
 
 been extolled. When we speak of pleasure, it has been 
 claimed, we know what we are talking about. I shall have 
 to defer the discussion of hedonism to a later time. Here, 
 however, I should like to show that it is utterly impossible to 
 give anything but a formal explanation of the highest good. 
 Medical dietetics does not give us a concrete exposition of 
 the perfect bodily life, but only a general outline, which may 
 be filled in in many different ways. Similarly, ethics can give 
 only a schematic outline of a mode of life, the observance 
 of which does not necessarily make a life valuable, although 
 it is the presupposition of the healthy development of life. 
 The value of such a life depends upon the number of con- 
 crete elements which it contains, and no system of ethics, 
 not even the hedonistic, can undertake to describe them. 
 
 The following illustration will make our meaning clear. 
 We cannot speak of one perfect life. A people or a race con- 
 sisting of totally similar copies of a perfect original pattern 
 would strike us as an infinitely poor and empty affair. Nay, 
 the very thought of such a thing is horrible. Imagine a mul- 
 titude of human beings wholly alike as to their inner nature 
 and life, differing from each other only in the numbers at- 
 tached to them. Perfection consists, not in the similarity, but 
 in the variety of forms. In order to give a concrete representa- 
 tion of the perfect life, we should have to take our ideal of 
 humanity, and show what different forms of human life are 
 possible or necessary to realize the idea ; that is, we should 
 have to describe a multitude of nations, tribes, families, in- 
 dividuals, and the modes of life necessarily resulting from 
 their natural endowments. This would be the function of an 
 artistic or creative philosophy of history ; manifestly an im- 
 possible task. Indeed, it is not even possible to deduce the 
 past life of humanity, which history reveals to us, with its 
 multitudes of peoples and its historical development, from 
 an idea of humanity ; much less to outline the future historv 
 and its new forms. 
 
NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 19 
 
 No one expects cesthetics to represent beauty in the con- 
 crete, that is, to deduce all the real and possible beautiful 
 pictures, statues, poems, and musical compositions from an 
 idea of the beautiful. The production of concrete beauty 
 is the business of the genius. ^Esthetics reflects upon the 
 products of genius, it aims to express in general formulae 
 the conditions upon which the products depend, or at least 
 without which they cannot arise. It cannot, that is to say, 
 propose concrete problems to the future artist, but it can 
 assist him in gaining an insight into his art and avoiding 
 mistakes. The same may be said of ethics ; it does not 
 describe every possible form of good life — this the moral 
 genius evolves out of the fulness of his nature — but under- 
 takes to describe and to justify the rules of conduct without 
 which a good and beautiful life cannot be realized. And 
 ethics, too, may indulge in the hope that it can, in a measure, 
 guide the student in discovering his peculiar life's task, and 
 guard him against error in his attempts to solve it. 
 
 7. It further follows from the above that there can be no 
 universal morality in the concrete. The different expressions 
 of the universal type of man demand each its own particular 
 morality. The Englishman differs from the Chinaman and 
 negro, and desires and ought to differ from them. Conse- 
 quently, each one among them has a different morality. It is 
 an undoubted fact that every nation has its own particular ideal 
 of life and its own morality. The only question is whether 
 " what is " " ought to be." It is absolutely essential, so it 
 is claimed, that the propositions of morality be valid for all 
 mankind or, in the words of Kant, " for all rational crea- 
 tures." If we admit that there is a different code of morals 
 for Englishmen and negroes, then shall we not have to con- 
 clude that there is a different code for men and women, for 
 artists and merchants, and, finally, also, one for each par- 
 ticular man ? 
 
 Indeed, the conclusion is a logical one. But I do not see 
 
20 INTRODUCTION 
 
 how we can avoid it if once we grant and insist upon the 
 assertion that differences in life are not only not an evil, but 
 essential conditions of the perfection of mankind. If we jus- 
 tify the different forms of human life, we shall also have to 
 justify the different rules of conduct. Just as the dietetics 
 of the Englishman naturally differs from that of the negro, 
 his morality, which, according to our conception, is merely a 
 universal dietetics, must differ from his. We shall, there- 
 fore, be compelled to say that a mode of conduct which is 
 suitable and essential to the former need not be so to the 
 latter. And we find not only that the Englishman actually 
 treats the negro differently from one of his own countrymen, 
 but that his relations to the negro are governed by an en- 
 tirely different code of morality ; all of which does not mean, 
 of course, that I am willing to justify the atrocities which 
 have been and are still being committed every day against 
 the savages in the name of civilization, by Europeans — alas, 
 now also by the Germans. 
 
 Only in a limited sense can we speak of a universal moral- 
 ity. In so far, namely, as there are certain fundamental sim- 
 ilarities in the nature and life-conditions of all human beings, 
 in so far will there be certain universally valid fundamental 
 conditions of healthy life. Thus medical dietetics may present 
 certain fundamental rules as universal truths : A certain 
 amount of food, consisting, say, of such and such substances, 
 albumen, fats, carbo-hydrates, water, etc., furthermore, a cer- 
 tain amount of work and rest is necessary to the preservation 
 of bodily life. In the same sense, morality can advance uni- 
 versal propositions : The preservation of human life demands 
 that some attention be given to the care of offspring and the 
 rearing of the young ; and in order that this end may be reached 
 the sexes must live together in some permanent form. Or : 
 A tribe cannot exist without some regulations tending to 
 hinder hostilities among its members ; the infraction of such 
 rules tends to breed ruin ; hence, murder, adultery, theft, 
 
NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 21 
 
 and perjury are bad ; justice, benevolence, and veracity, the 
 inner dispositions of the will which prevent such acts, are 
 good. 
 
 But in order that such universal rules may be directly 
 applied, life must be adapted to the particular nature and 
 the particular conditions surrounding it. The dietetic rule 
 of nourishment mentioned above does not mean the same 
 for the Esquimau as for the negro. Similarly, the rules of 
 a universal human morality must be adapted to the special 
 historical forms and conditions of life before they can be 
 directly employed in determining and judging conduct. The 
 commandment : Treat your neighbor justly and kindly, 
 observe the rules of family and social life, does not mean 
 the same for an African negro as for a European Christian. 
 That monogamy is the best form of family life for a civil- 
 ized nation does not prove that it is the best form for the 
 entirely different conditions governing the negro tribe. We 
 may say with perfect justice that monogamy is the higher 
 form of family life. But that simply means that it is suitable 
 to the higher stages of development and not that it is wrong 
 for the lower stages to have a different form. Perhaps polyg- 
 amy is a necessary stage in the development of the family, 
 just as blood-revenge is a necessary stage in the development 
 of law, and slavery in the development of society. 
 
 This implies also that different times have different moral 
 codes. That it is so is an indisputable fact, but it is hard to 
 convince common-sense that it must be so, that it is not 
 necessarily a sign of imperfection and perversion for an 
 earlier age to have other customs, different acts and judg- 
 ments, than the present. We are inclined to think that what- 
 ever differs from our customs is all wrong. We blame the 
 Middle Ages for burning heretics and witches, torturing sus- 
 pects and killing criminals by the thousands. We are right 
 in calling their methods brutal and barbarous. This, how- 
 ever, does not prove that a brutal age did wrong in employ- 
 
22 INTRODUCTION 
 
 ing them. Perhaps it did ; perhaps, at least, these methods 
 were frequently abused, but perhaps, on the other hand — 
 proof, of course, is impossible from the very nature of the 
 case — this method of procedure was suitable and necessary 
 in that age. Perhaps the disciplining of human souls by 
 the church was so necessary a precondition of civilization, 
 that the Middle Ages stand justified before the tribunal of 
 history, for suppressing, with all the means at their command, 
 every attempt of the individual to emancipate himself from 
 this discipline (which was the usual object of heresy). Per- 
 haps the entire administration of justice of those days, with 
 its brutal methods, was at least a temporarily necessary pre- 
 condition of the complicated social life of the mediaeval 
 towns. It is consoling that our courts and police are more 
 efficient, and attain the same or better results by means of 
 more humane methods, but this does not prove that the Mid- 
 dle Ages could have preserved the peace in the same way. 
 The Middle Ages might make the following answer to our 
 charges : You owe it to us that you are now able to get along 
 with such mild punishments ; it has taken us centuries of 
 hard work to eradicate the elements which absolutely refused 
 to adapt themselves to social order. To be sure, this was no 
 agreeable task; but now that it is accomplished, it is not 
 fair of you to censure us for having undertaken it. Besides, 
 who knows how long your methods will prove successful ? 
 
 And now we shall have to go still further and say : Even 
 different groups of the same nation, and, finally, also, 
 different individuals are subject to a special moral code. 
 Different dispositions and life-conditions demand not only 
 a different bodily, but also a different spiritual and moral 
 diet. What is beneficial and necessary to one may be un- 
 suitable and injurious to another. We are never in doubt 
 about this fact when it comes to actual practice. We disap- 
 prove and censure one man for something that we consider 
 permissible or lovable in another. Indeed, we may say that 
 
NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 23 
 
 it is not possible for different individuals to act exactly in 
 the same way. If it is true that the entire nature of the 
 agent manifests itself in every act — and we may say that it 
 is characteristic of real human action to express not merely 
 a particular phase of man's nature, but the whole will, the 
 entire man — then every impulse and every act, every word 
 and every judgment, bears the stamp of this particular indi- 
 vidual. Conduct is only outwardly alike ; on the inner and 
 the essential side the individuality asserts itself, and that 
 is not a defect, but a mark of perfection. Only where true 
 morality begins to disappear, where it approaches the domain 
 of law, does the demand still hold that a man act, outwardly 
 at least, according to rule. As Schiller's epigram puts it: 
 
 Gern erlassen wir dir die moralische Delikatesse, 
 Wenn du die zehen Gebote notdiirftig erfiillst. 
 
 We must remember, however, that there is a reason why the 
 moral preacher should emphasize the universality of the moral 
 laws rather than the individuality of morality. Nature and 
 inclination will take care that the individual receives his 
 rights; whereas submission to a general rule is not to his 
 taste. Indeed, the individual is very apt to demand that an 
 exception be made in his case, on the ground of his special 
 nature and circumstances, his temperament and his social 
 position, and to excuse his conduct before others and before 
 his own conscience, without, however, being justified from the 
 standpoint of higher morality. Kant's rigorism is entirely in 
 place against the inclinations of the natural man. The main 
 thing is that the sensuous will be subordinated to universal 
 law. This is the beginning, the foundation, of all finer, more 
 individualized morality. The latter is, in the words of the 
 Gospel, not the " destruction " of the law, but the " fulfilment "• 
 (jrXrjptoais) of the law. Nor, as has already been said, can 
 morality tell the individual in what the fulfilment consists. 
 All it can do is to lay down general rules, leaving it to the 
 
24 INTRODUCTION 
 
 conscience and to the wisdom of the individual to adapt these 
 to special conditions. When, however, he needs guidance in 
 these matters, he will seek the help of a personal counsellor, a 
 spiritual adviser, who is, perhaps, as necessary as is a medical 
 adviser for the body. For, surely, the relations of moral life 
 are no less complicated, its problems no less difficult, its needs 
 no less serious, its disturbances no less menacing, than those 
 of bodily life. Here as well as in the latter case we have a 
 confusing mixture of inclination and aversion, fear and hope. 
 All this seemed self-evident to an earlier age ; nothing 
 seemed more necessary than to place the individual under the 
 official care of a wise and experienced moral and spiritual 
 adviser, leaving it to custom and individual instinct to care 
 for the body. Is the present increase of physicians and the 
 corresponding relative decrease of spiritual advisers a sign 
 that we are more solicitous of the body than of the soul ? Or 
 are we in hopes of influencing the soul by means of the body ? 
 Or is it because the task of caring for the soul is becoming 
 more difficult in consequence of the growing differentiation of 
 thought and feeling, and because our faith in its accomplish- 
 ment is waning ? 
 
 The fact remains, on the other hand, that the rules of 
 moral philosophy are not absolutely valid for all. We may, 
 as was said, conceive of a universal human morality, or even 
 of a morality for all rational creatures, but no one is able to 
 realize it. The moral philosopher is a child of his people in 
 thought and feelings, and is influenced by their morality; 
 positively, for he has been moulded by their judgments and 
 ideals from the days of his childhood ; negatively, for his no- 
 tions of what ought not to be and his ideas of what ought to be 
 are conditioned by his times. The abstract rationalism of the 
 eighteenth century did not appreciate this truth, which Kant, 
 too, failed to observe. The historical century, as the nine- 
 teenth century might be called in contradistinction from the 
 eighteenth, the sosculum philosophicum, no longer finds it 
 
NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 25 
 
 possible to believe in the "universal man." Every moral 
 philosophy is, therefore, valid only for the sphere of civiliza- 
 tion from which it springs, whether it is conscious of the fact 
 or not. It can have no other aim than to draw the general 
 outlines of a mode of life which must be followed by the 
 members of the particular sphere, in order to make possible 
 a healthy, virtuous, and happy existence. 
 
 8. In conclusion, let me say a word concerning the practi- 
 cal value of ethics. Can ethics be a practical science, not only 
 in the sense that it deals with practice, but that it influences 
 practice ? This was its original purpose. It is the function 
 of ethics, says Aristotle, to act, not only to theorize. Scho- 
 penhauer begins his ethics (in the fourth book of his main 
 work) with the attempt to disprove this view. All philosophy, 
 he says, is theoretical ; upon mature reflection, it ought 
 finally to abandon the old demand that it become practical, 
 guide action, and transform character, for here it is not dead 
 concepts that decide, but the innermost essence of the human 
 being, the demon that guides him. It is as impossible to teach 
 virtue as it is to teach genius. It would be as foolish to ex- 
 pect our moral systems to produce virtuous characters and 
 saints as to expect the science of aesthetics to bring forth 
 poets, sculptors, and musicians. 
 
 I do not believe that ethics need be so faint-hearted. Its 
 first object, it is true, is to understand human strivings and 
 modes of conduct, conditions and institutions, as well as their 
 effects upon individual and social life. But if knowledge is 
 capable of influencing conduct — which Schopenhauer him- 
 self would not deny — it is hard to understand why the 
 knowledge of ethics alone should be fruitless in this respect. 
 If a physician can by pointing out the causal relation existing 
 between cleanliness and health, between the excessive use 
 of alcohol or nicotine and the derangement of the nervous 
 system, induce a mother to use water more freely, or a young 
 man to be moderate, why should not a moralist have a right 
 
26 INTRODUCTION 
 
 to hope that the discovery of similar causal connections exist- 
 ing between conduct and the form of life will influence con- 
 duct ? If he can make clear that dissipation, indolence, anger, 
 envy, falsehood, inconsiderateness, produce certain disturb- 
 ances in life, while prudence, politeness, modesty, upright- 
 ness, amiability, tend to produce good effects on the life of the 
 individual and that of his surroundings, why should not such 
 knowledge also influence the will ? Or shall we assume that 
 everybody is perfectly well aware that the former modes of 
 conduct are good and the latter bad, and that we need not 
 wait for ethics to tell us these things ? And does experience 
 really show that knowledge is unable to turn the will in the 
 direction of the good ; is Schopenhauer right in saying, velle 
 non discitur f — If so, I believe it is not the right kind of 
 knowledge. A real insight, which, of course, does not consist 
 merely in memorizing and rattling off a lot of formulas and 
 maxims, is bound to be as fruitful here as everywhere else. 
 To be sure, we cannot expect such an insight to determine the 
 will absolutely. Natural capacities, education, habit, example, 
 praise and censure, the admiration and contempt of our sur- 
 roundings, and other things, play their part. But knowledge, 
 too, is a factor and a very important factor with the wise — 
 by whom we do not necessarily mean the learned. But as 
 for Schopenhauer's dogma that the will is something abso- 
 lutely fixed in every life, I am inclined to regard it as one of 
 the articles of superstition of which there is no dearth in 
 Schopenhauer's teaching. There is no such rigid, constant 
 will, not even in the narrower sense in which Schopenhauer 
 uses the term : that the relation between egoism and altru- 
 ism is unalterably determined at birth in the case of every 
 individual. 
 
 Moral instruction, however, can have no practical effect 
 unless there be some agreement concerning the nature of the 
 final goal — not a mere verbal agreement, to be sure, but one 
 based upon actual feeling. It would be futile for a physician 
 
NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 27 
 
 to advise a man who does not care for health and bodily 
 welfare to do certain things and to abstain from others. 
 Similarly, it would be useless for a moral philosopher to 
 recommend moderation and prudence to one whose notion 
 of a " good life " is a few years of excitement and dissipa- 
 tion, and then a bullet through the brain. Or perhaps it would 
 not be all in vain. Who knows but what he might finally 
 succeed in convincing such a person that he was mistaken 
 about himself and his will, and his conception of the 
 highest good ; who knows but what more careful reflection 
 might show him that such a life cannot be good and the final 
 goal of his own will ? We can hardly deny that conversions 
 have actually taken place. Shall we say that moral preach- 
 ing alone can produce these results, and that moral philosophy 
 cannot ? Well, I do not know whether it is possible to draw 
 a sharp line of separation between them. The preacher can 
 scarcely hope to influence any one without appealing to his 
 insight. And why should not the impartial presentation of 
 the relations existing between conduct and welfare prove to 
 be an effective sermon, even though — or rather let us say, 
 just because — it does not assume the form of moralizing 
 exhortation ? 
 
 But should any one still hold the view that moral philoso- 
 phy is not only fruitless, but dangerous and harmful, on the 
 ground that the forces regulating life, custom and conscience, 
 are weakened by speculations concerning their origin, import, 
 and validity, we should reply : In the first place, such reflec- 
 tions are not produced by philosophy, but, conversely, philoso- 
 phy is produced by these inevitable reflections. Reflection on 
 human conduct and judgment is inevitable. Whenever there 
 is any controversy concerning a concrete case, concerning the 
 Tightness or wrongness of an act, a judgment, or an institu- 
 tion, we are compelled to go back to principles which will 
 decide the case. Moral philosophy is nothing but a radical 
 attempt to discover ultimate principles by which to determine 
 
28 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the value of things, in so far as these depend upon the human 
 will. Secondly, it is especially necessary that our age reach 
 some conclusion concerning these principles. The present is 
 characterized by a strong desire to reject a priori all the old 
 accepted truths. There are many symptoms of this desire : 
 think of the avidity with which Friederich Nietzsche's ora- 
 cular utterances concerning the necessary transformation of 
 all values {Die Umwertung alter Werte) are received by the 
 young, as well as of the violent condemnation by the social 
 democracy of all existing political and social institutions. A 
 passionate mania for the new and unheard-of, in thought, in 
 morals, and in modes of life, has taken hold of our times. It 
 is utterly useless to appeal to authority and tradition ; this 
 mania is nothing but an outbreak of free individual thought, 
 which has been repressed so long, and made distrustful by 
 coercion ; it is the reaction against the school, which forced 
 men not to think, but to memorize, against the church, which 
 asked them not to think, but to believe. These are the symp- 
 toms of the Aufklarung, the Aufklarung which was long since 
 reported dead ; it has come back to life and has taken hold 
 of the masses, of the young men especially, of course ; they 
 want to do their own thinking and mould their lives, and not 
 to be governed blindly by the traditional thoughts and ac- 
 tions of others. And to this they have a perfect right ; it is 
 the fundamental right and highest duty of man to think his 
 own thoughts and to act his own acts : independent self- 
 determination is the royal prerogative of the mind. Nothing 
 will avail here but free, unbiassed thought. It will be the 
 business of ethics to invite the doubter and the inquirer to 
 assist in the common effort to discover fixed principles which 
 shall help the judgment to understand the aims and problems 
 of life. It will not tell him : This shalt thou do, but will inves- 
 tigate with him the question : What art thou striving after, 
 what are thy true ideals, not merely thy temporary moods 
 and whims ? Perhaps he will then find that .much of what 
 
NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 29 
 
 he was about to cast aside, as a mere command of caprice, 
 is rooted in the very nature of things, and consequently also 
 in his own will. 1 
 
 1 [On the Problem and Methods of Ethics, the Relation of Ethics to other 
 Sciences, and other introductory matter, see Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 
 chap. I.-IL, pp. 1-24; Stephen, The Science of Ethics, chap. I., pp. 1-40; Schur- 
 man, The Ethical Import of Darwinism, chap. I., pp. 1-37 ; Muirhead, Elements 
 of Ethics, chaps. I.-IIL, pp. 1-39 ; Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics, chaps. I.-IL, pp. 
 1-31, Appendix B, pp. 324-328; Hyslop, The Elements of Ethics, chap. L, pp. 
 1-17 ; Seth, A Study of Ethical Principles, chaps. I.-IIL, pp. 1-35 ; Ho ff ding, 
 Ethik, I.-IV., pp. 1-54; Wundt, EthiJc, Introduction, pp. 1-17 (English transla- 
 tion, pp. 1-20) ; Dorner, Das menschliche Handeln, Introduction, pp. 1-23 ; Sim- 
 mel, Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft, vol. I., Preface ; Miinsterberg, Ursprung 
 der Sittlichkeit, Introduction, pp. 1-10; Runze, Ethik, vol. I., pp. 1-16, which con- 
 tains many excellent bibliographical references ; Marion, Legons de morale, chap. I 
 
BOOK I 
 
 OUTLINES OF A HISTORY OF THE CONCEPTIONS 
 OF LIFE AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
Jta quadam non verborum sed rerum eloquentia contrariorium 
 oppositione seculi pulchritudo comporiitur. 
 
 Augustinus. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE CONCEPTION OF LIFE AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY AMONG 
 
 THE GREEKS 
 
 I shall precede my exposition of ethics with an historical 
 survey of the development of the conception of life (Lebens- 
 anschauung) and moral philosophy. I shall confine my 
 attention to the historical phenomena which are still directly 
 influencing the life of the Western nations. No one will 
 reach a clear and distinct knowledge of the mixed and 
 often confused conceptions and aspirations of our age who 
 does not pursue the great tributaries which form the stream 
 of our moral civilization to their sources. 
 
 The previous history of our moralitv and theory of life 
 divides itself into three great periods. The first embraces the 
 development of the ancient world to its conversion ; the sec- 
 ond, the Christian development with its two halves, the Chris- 
 tianity of the old world and mediaeval Christianity ; the third, 
 the development of modern times, which has not yet come to 
 an end. 
 
 The ancient world's view of life is naive-naturalistic : the 
 perfection of human nature in civilization is the absolute 
 goal. The Christian conception is supranaturalistic ; turning 
 away from civilization, it demands the death of the natural 
 man and his impulses, in order that a new, spiritual man 
 may arise. The modern theory of life is not so consistent: 
 and self-contained ; it is influenced by both of these opposing 
 tendencies. The naturalistic tendency predominates ; the dawn 
 of the modern period is marked by the revival of the ancient 
 
 $ 
 
34 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 pagan conception of life (the so-called Renaissance). Still, 
 the modern view of life contains many essential elements of 
 the Christian conception of life ; and the supranaturalistic 
 tendency forms an undercurrent in it, or runs parallel with it. 
 
 Three groups of moral-philosophical systems, differing in 
 form and contents, correspond to the different conceptions of 
 life. 
 
 Greek ethics proceeds from the fact of striving and acting. 
 It asks : What is the final goal, and how can it be reached ? 
 The goal is the highest good ; and hence the problem is : to 
 determine the nature of the highest good, and to indicate the 
 way to its attainment. Inasmuch as the highest good consist* 
 in a form of human life, or presupposes it as the means of its 
 realization, Greek ethics essentially assumes the form of a 
 doctrine of virtues : it describes the perfect man in his differ- 
 ent phases. 
 
 Christian ethics makes the fact of moral judgment its starting- 
 point. Human strivings and acts are objects of judgment; 
 the predicates good and bad are applied to them. And they 
 are thus judged not only by man, but, according to the Chris- 
 tian conception, above all by God, the highest law-giver and 
 judge. Christian ethics, therefore, inquires : What, according 
 to God's commandment, is duty, and what is sin ? It is a doc- 
 trine of duty and as such does not instruct us how to pro- 
 mote individual and social welfare, but sets up a moral 
 law, the application of which necessitates interpretation and 
 casuistry. 
 
 What was said of the modern conception of life is true of 
 modern ethics : it is influenced by the two preceding stages 
 of development, and does not therefore exhibit a thorough- 
 going uniformity. It is as a whole — a few theological sys- 
 tems apart — more closely connected with Greek ethics. 
 Still, the Christian influence is every where recognizable . We 
 notice it in the form of the science : modern ethics is largely 
 a doctrine of duties. We notice it also in the matter ; thus, 
 
THE GREEK CONCEPTION 35 
 
 for example, duties towards others usually occupy the most 
 important place among the duties, while in Greek ethics em- 
 phasis is laid upon the virtues and duties which tend to the 
 perfection of individual life. And when the highest good is 
 discussed, the good of the individual is not first thought of, 
 as was the case in Greek ethics, but the good of the commun- 
 ity. The idea of the kingdom of God, which Christianity has 
 made the keystone of its theory of the universe and life, even 
 permeates the thoughts of those who know nothing of it or do 
 not want to have anything to do with it. Even the men of 
 1789 cannot deny their relation to Christianity. They destroy 
 the church, but the notion of a kingdom of God on earth — 
 altered though it be — influences them also ; for where else 
 do these ideas of the freedom, equality, and fraternity of all 
 men and all nations come from ? 
 
 1. The moral philosophical reflections of the Greeks * start 
 from the question : What is the ultimate end of all striving 
 (to riXos), or what is the highest good ? It necessarily 
 
 1 There is no dearth of elaborate treatments of the subject. Besides Zeller's 
 History of Greek Philosophy, we may mention : the thorough work of K. Kostlin, 
 Die Ethik des klassischen Altertums, Part I., 1887 (to Plato) ; Lathardt, Die 
 antike Ethik, 1887 ; Th. Ziegler, Die Ethik der Griechen und Rdmer, 1881. An 
 excellent work on the ethical conceptions of the Greek people is L. Schmidt's 
 Die Ethik der alten Griechen, 2 vols., 1882. A good survey of the history of 
 ethics in general is given by H. Sidgwick, Outline of a History of Ethics , 1886; 
 a detailed account of the most important movements, by P. Janet, Histoire de la 
 philosophie morale et politique, 2 vols., 1885. [See also Wundt, Ethik, Part II., The 
 Development of the Moral Conceptions of the Universe, pp. 270^*33 ; English 
 translation, vol. II. ; J. Seth, A Study of Ethical Principles, Part I., The Moral 
 Ideal, pp. 77-249 ; Watson, Hedonistic Theories from Aristippus to Spencer ; 
 Hyslop, Elements of Ethics, chap. II., The Origin and Development of Ethical 
 Problems, pp. 18-89 ; Calderwood, Handbook of Moral Philosophy, pp. 318-369 ; 
 Eucken, Die Lebensanschauungen der grossen Denker. The first two chapters of 
 Jodl's Geschichte der Ethik in der neuern Philosophie, vol. I., pp. 1-85, give a sur- 
 vey of the history of ethics down to the beginning of modern times. Martineau's 
 Types of Ethical Theory, 2 vols., discusses some of the most important systems. 
 See also the histories of Greek and General Philosophy which are mentioned in 
 Thilly's translation of Weber's History of Philosophy , pp. 8-16. Eor bibliographies 
 on particular thinkers, see the standard histories of philosophy, especially Uber« 
 weg, Erdmann, Windelband, Weber, all of which have been translated. — Tr.] 
 
36 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 suggests itself to the agent when he reflects upon his con- 
 duct. Aristotle, the founder of ethics as a systematic science, 
 gives us the following lucid exposition of the subject, at the 
 beginning of his Nicomachean Mhics. 1 Every art, and every 
 scientific inquiry, and similarly every action and purpose, aims 
 at some good. As there are various actions, arts, and 
 sciences, it follows that the ends and goods are also various. 
 Thus health is the end of medicine, a vessel of shipbuilding, 
 victory of strategy, and wealth of domestic economy. But 
 certain arts are subordinated to other arts ; the art of making 
 bridles works for horsemanship, the latter for strategy, and 
 so others for others. But inasmuch as the end of the lead- 
 ing art embraces the ends of the subordinate arts, and since 
 the latter are desired for the sake of the former, there must, 
 if our desires are not to be idle and futile, be an ultimate 
 goal or good which is not in turn a means, but is desired for 
 its own sake, all other things being desired for the sake of 
 it. What is this highest of all practical goods (tl to 7rdvTcov 
 aKporarov twv irpaKTwv ayaOcov) ? 
 
 As to its name, he continues, there is a general agreement. 
 The masses and the cultured classes agree in calling it hap- 
 piness ; it is happiness (evhaifiovla) or welfare (to ev £w ^ 
 ev irpcLTTetv). But in what does happiness consist? Here 
 the views begin to diverge. The masses define it as pleas- 
 ure, or wealth, or honor, or something similar; different 
 people give different definitions of it, and often the same 
 person gives different definitions of it at different times ; for 
 when a person has been ill, health, when he is poor, wealth 
 is the highest good. Cultivated people, however, the phil- 
 osophers (ol xapievTes) y define it as virtue and also as 
 philosophy. 
 
 We are perhaps justified in saying that Aristotle exag- 
 gerates the differences of opinion with respect to the highest 
 good ; in the last analysis the Greek people and their moral 
 
 1 See Welldon's translation of Aristotle's Ethics. 
 
THE GREEK CONCEPTION 37 
 
 philosophers had essentially the same conception of the 
 nature of happiness. 
 
 We are in the habit of translating the word evhau^ovia by 
 the term happiness ( G-luckseligkeit). We thereby make it a 
 matter of feeling. The Greek word does not connote a 
 subjective state of feeling, but rather an objective form of 
 life : evBaL/jLQ)v (with which dyaOoSal/jbcov, /caKoSaLficov, are con- 
 trasted) is the man who is blessed with a good halficov and 
 therefore with a good lot in life, for Salfxcov signifies the god- 
 head who apportions to men their fates. Now, what is the 
 Greek conception of a happy lot or fate ? 
 
 I cannot describe it more briefly and more forcibly than by 
 calling to mind the well known anecdote of the meeting of 
 Solon and Croesus which is narrated by Herodotus. 1 It admir- 
 ably contrasts the Hellenic conception of what is a good life 
 with that of the barbarians. After showing Solon through 
 his treasury, the king addresses him as follows : " stranger 
 from Athens, we have heard much of your wisdom and 
 travels, we have been told that you have visited many coun- 
 tries, in the pursuit of philosophy, for the sake of study (Oecopirjs 
 ev€/ca). Now, I should like to know whether you have ever seen 
 a man whom you regarded as the happiest of all (oXfiLdoTaTos)" 
 But he asked him, expecting that Solon would call him, the 
 king, the happiest of all men. Solon, however, did not wish 
 to flatter him, but spoke the truth : " King, the Athenian 
 Tellos." The king was surprised, and asked : " Why do 
 you esteem Tellos happier than all others?" Solon an- 
 swered : " Tellos lived at a time when the city was prosper- 
 ing ; he had beautiful and good children, and, above all, lived 
 to see his grandchildren, and all of them were preserved to 
 him ; he was, for our conditions, in good circumstances, and 
 finally, he suffered a glorious death ; at Eleusis, in a battle 
 between the Athenians and their neighbors, he succeeded in 
 repelling the enemy after a gallant fight, and met a most 
 
 1 I., 30. 
 
38 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 beautiful death. And the Athenians buried him where he fell, 
 at public expense, and greatly honored him." But when 
 the king received an equally unsatisfactory answer to the 
 question whom Solon would regard as the happiest man 
 after Tellos — Solon, as we know, mentions two unknown 
 Argive youths, who died suddenly, after having done their 
 mother an honorable service — Croesus could no longer re- 
 strain himself : " And is our happiness (evhaufiovla) absolutely 
 nothing in your eyes, that you place it after that of those pri- 
 vate persons ? " Solon gave an evasive answer : " Envious are 
 the gods and impatient, and many things are experienced in 
 the long time which we do not desire ; and many sufferings. 
 A human life may last seventy years, which makes, not 
 counting the intercalary months, 25,200 days, but if we count 
 these, 26,250 days. Of all these days no two are alike, there- 
 fore I cannot call you happy until I know that your end has 
 been a happy one." 
 
 I call it an evasive answer ; the well known pragmatic 
 use which Herodotus makes of the anecdote necessitates such 
 a reply. 
 
 The true answer to the question of the king would have 
 been as follows : King, what we Hellenes and what you 
 here, whom we call barbarians, call happiness is not the 
 same. You regard as a happy lot to have much and to 
 enjoy much, while for us it means to live nobly, to act nobly, 
 and to die nobly. When a man has our good wishes, we say 
 to him : Act nobly (ev irpdrreiv) ; while you would have to 
 say : May good things happen to you (ev •waayeiv). Hence 
 I have called Tellos a happy man. -He did not enjoy the 
 luxury of a royal household, but he possessed what a citizen 
 in a Hellenic town needs. He was a capable man, and 
 governed his affairs wisely ; he had beautiful and good 
 children, his city honored him, and his name was not un- 
 known to its enemies. That is our idea of a happy man. 
 
 This is what the story of Croesus and Solon, which cir- 
 
THE GREEK CONCEPTION 39 
 
 culated among the Hellenes, seems to me to signify ; it 
 expresses the popular Greek conception of the difference 
 between the Hellenic and barbarian view of life. According 
 to the latter, the value of life consists in the possession of 
 wealth and enjoyment; according to the former, virtuous 
 activity or active virtue alone makes life worth living. For- 
 tune may crown it with a beautiful death. — The same idea of 
 the difference between the Hellenic and barbaric conception 
 of life is brought out in the legendary epitaph, transmitted 
 in various forms, which the Greeks dedicated to the legendary 
 King Sardanapalus : Let us eat and drink, for te-morrow we 
 shall die. 
 
 2. Greek moral philosophy consists essentially in the 
 analysis and conceptual formulation of the popular Greek 
 ideal of a perfect life. I shall attempt to show this by em- 
 phasizing the chief phases of its history. 
 
 The real scientific treatment of moral philosophy dates 
 from Socrates. 1 Greek philosophy began with speculations 
 upon the external world, upon the form, origin, and primal 
 elements of the universe. Socrates refuses to consider these 
 things, he makes the affairs of human life the objects of his 
 reflections ; these he regards as more important and more 
 capable of investigation. The change represented by Socratic 
 thought connects itself with the general changes in the life of 
 the Greek people. Greek life, which was centred at Athens 
 in the fifth century, tended away from the old simplicity and 
 constraint towards- a fuller and freer development. All the 
 arts of civilization flourished on the soil of the new metropol- 
 itan life. Rational arts, based upon theories, gradually took 
 the place of the traditional handicraft ; geometry and astron- 
 omy, music and architecture, gymnastics and medicine, strategy 
 and rhetoric, became objects of scientific reflection and sys- 
 
 1 [For Socrates, see : Xenophon's Memorabilia, translation in Bonn's Library ; 
 Plato's Protagoras, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, etc. ; Aristotle's Metaphys- 
 ics, I., 6. See also for Socrates and the following systems the references 
 mentioned, p. 3o. — Tu.] 
 
40 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 tematic treatment. Excellence or efficiency (aperrj) in these 
 arts now became a matter not merely of natural skill and 
 practice, but of theoretical knowledge : whoever desires to ac- 
 quire the former must possess the latter. — Is not this true of 
 all excellence, is it not true also of the excellence of the citi- 
 zen and statesman, nay, of the excellence of man in general ? 
 According to the traditional view, civic and human excel- 
 lence is innate: whoever comes into the world as a good 
 man and as the descendant of good men, and is reared among 
 the good, possesses it as a gift of the gods (evhai^cav). The 
 enlightened ones of the new period gradually convinced them- 
 selves that all excellence, moral and political no less than 
 technical, is the result of instruction and education: virtue 
 can be taught, that is the new conception which the Sophists 
 first advanced in systematic form. " If you associate with 
 me," Protagoras promises the young man in the Platonic 
 dialogue bearing his name, " on the very day you will return 
 home a better man than you came." And upon being asked 
 by Socrates in what he would become better, he adds : " If 
 he comes to me, he will learn that which he comes to learn. 
 And this is prudence in affairs private as well as public ; he 
 will learn to order his own house in the best manner, and 
 he will be able to speak and act for the best in the affairs 
 of the state." 
 
 By many of his contemporaries Socrates was looked upon 
 as one of the Sophists. Not altogether unjustly ; he differed 
 from the latter : he did not regard himself as a possessor of 
 wisdom, and did not acquire money through public lectures ; 
 but in his views he had much in common with them. Above 
 all, he believed with them that excellence or virtue depends 
 upon insight and may be taught. This proposition is em- 
 phasized in all the accounts, in Xenophon, Plato, and Aris- 
 totle, as characteristic of his point of view : Socrates, so Aris- 
 totle declares, considered the virtues to be forms of reason. 1 
 i Nic. Eth., VI., 13. 
 
THE GREEK CONCEPTION 41 
 
 The game is true of human excellence as such : without 
 knowledge no virtue ; and conversely : right conduct neces- 
 sarily depends upon the proper insight, no one knowingly 
 and willingly does wrong (ouSa? i/coop apbaprdvei). If a man 
 knows the right goal and the right path, he will necessarily 
 follow it ; his going astray and also his moral trangression are 
 always the result of error, as the Greek word dfMaprdvecv 
 indicates. This is especially true of civic virtue ; hence 
 Socrates condemns the Athenian state. The democratic 
 constitution rested upon the tacit assumption that political 
 excellence was the inheritance, so to speak, of every citizen. 
 Socrates is constantly attacking this view in arguments like 
 the following : Do you not, when you wish to steer a ship, 
 look around for a man who has learned and understands 
 the art of navigation ? And when a man is sick you send 
 for some one who understands the art of medicine ? But 
 when it comes to governing the city or the state, you choose 
 any one for whom the lot may decide. 
 
 Hence knowledge, scientific knowledge of that which is 
 really good, and of the means of acquiring it, is the great 
 condition of all excellence and virtue. That is the view 
 upon which Socrates bases himself and which places him at 
 the head of the Greek moral philosophers. It is the funda- 
 mental conception common to his successors. The sage 
 alone, the man who has scientific knowledge — in this Plato 
 and Aristotle, the Stoics and Epicureans, agree — is virtuous 
 and happy in the full sense of the term. The wise man 
 alone is capable of governing the state ; if we are to have a 
 perfect state, kings must either become wise men, or wise 
 men kings, to quote the well-known saying. 
 
 3. Socrates saw the necessity of a science of right con- 
 duct and right government, but he did not solve the 
 problem which he proposed ; he left it to his pupils to create 
 the sciences of ethics and politics. Plato 1 first undertook 
 
 1 [See the Dialogues of Plato, Jowett's translation, especially, Theaetetus, 
 Phaedo, Philebus, Gorgias, Republic. — Tb.1 
 
42 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 the task. Its accomplishment seemed all the more urgent, 
 the weaker the old foundations of morality were becoming. 
 With the entrance of the Greek people upon the period of 
 enlightenment, the old civic respectability and morality 
 rapidly declined. The younger Sophists — as Plato portrays 
 them in the persons of Callicles and Thrasymachus (in the 
 G-orgias and the Republic) — formulated the facts into a 
 theory: there is no objective difference between good and 
 bad, it does not inhere in the nature of the things, but is a 
 mere matter of convention and caprice. The sanction of cus- 
 tom and law rests upon fear and superstition, which restrain 
 the stronger from making use of their natural superiority ; or 
 they are another means, in the hands of the mighty themselves, 
 to strengthen their power. The enlightened one knows it and 
 acts accordingly ; he obeys law and custom when they are 
 conducive to his interests, he breaks them when they thwart 
 his plans, and when he can do so with impunity. 1 
 
 Plato undertakes to overcome this enlightenment, not 
 from without, but from within, by a deeper philosophy. 
 This is, indeed, the only remedy: half-enlightenment, pseudo- 
 enlightenment, can be destroyed only by complete enlighten- 
 ment. To fetter thought, to oppose it with authorities, 
 is utterly useless, nay, simply makes matters worse. Plato 
 therefore explicitly places himself upon the standpoint of 
 reason, which the Sophists, too, claim to occupy. With 
 Socrates he recognizes the necessity of basing human and 
 civic virtue upon knowledge. Virtue without knowledge, 
 virtue resting solely upon education, habit, authority, correct 
 opinion, is a blind groping ; it may accidentally find the 
 right path, but there is no certainty of its doing so. Only 
 the scientific knowledge of the good can make man's willing 
 correct, certain, and steady. 
 
 1 Laas has given us a good description of this sceptical-nihilistic sophistical 
 philosophy, which had a great deal to do with producing and influencing the 
 Platonic ethics, as its antithesis, in the introduction to the second volume of his 
 Idealismus und Positivismus. 
 
THE GREEK CONCEPTION 43 
 
 But is there such a thing as objective goodness and right ? 
 This was denied by Callicles and his companions : that is 
 good which happens to please, and that is right which we 
 have the power of enforcing. The aim of Plato's entire 
 philosophy, is to prove, in opposition to this, the proposition : 
 The good and right is something absolutely independent 
 of opinions, something determined by the nature of the things 
 themselves. What is the good and right as such ? 
 
 The Platonic philosophy gives an answer to this question 
 that far transcends the horizon of the healthy common-sense 
 which we find in Socrates. The good is nothing but the 
 world, or reality itself. But, Plato immediately adds : reality 
 as it is in itself that is, in idea. That which common-sense 
 regards as the real reality, the sum total of these sensuous, 
 particular things, is not the good ; the world of sense is full 
 of imperfections. But it is not the true reality, it has no 
 being in the real sense of the term ; its being is mixed with 
 non-being; it is in a state of constant growth and decay. 
 The true reality, on the other hand, of which being can 
 really be predicated, is an absolutely existing, absolutely 
 unitary, ideal, spiritual, being, and this is nothing but the 
 good itself, or God. — God is both the absolutely good and 
 the absolutely real, says scholastic philosophy, following in 
 the footsteps of Plato. 
 
 Now the question arises, What is good and right for a 
 particular being? This will naturally depend upon his re- 
 lation to the All-Good and All-Real ; or, stated in different 
 language, the value of a particular element of reality can 
 be determined only by its significance within the whole of 
 reality. The world is not, like a bad poem, full of super- 
 fluous episodes, but the unitary realization of an idea, the 
 idea of the good, which unfolds itself in a variety of qualities 
 or ideas, and so forms a cosmos of ideas, an intelligent 
 organism in which every element of reality, like every scene 
 in a good drama, occupies the position of a necessary 
 
44 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 member. So, too, the idea of man must be denned by his 
 place in the cosmos, if we are to reach a knowledge of what 
 man is in reality, or in idea. If the philosopher, the dia- 
 lectician, who has the gift of seeing things in their logical 
 relations, succeeds in reaching this definition, he may say 
 that he has objectively denned the essence of goodness and 
 right. 
 
 Thus Plato brings ethics into the most intimate con- 
 nection with metaphysics ; he makes it a part of the one 
 unitary science of the real, or the good. 
 
 What now is found to be the idea of man in the idea of 
 the universal reality ? In the Timceus, of which parts of the 
 Phcedrus form the prelude, Plato has made the most elabo- 
 rate attempt to explain man's place in the cosmos. The 
 human soul is derived from the world-soul ; it is, like the 
 latter, a mixture of two elements ; on the one hand, it 
 participates in the real reality, in the world of ideas, the 
 world of existent thoughts, or the life of God ; on the other, 
 in the world of origin and decay, in the corporeal world. 
 With the reason (z^oO?), it belongs to the world of ideas, with 
 the animal impulses {hnQvy^iai) arising from its union with 
 the body, it belongs to the corporeal world. These two dis- 
 similar parts or phases of the soul are connected by an 
 intermediate form : Plato calls it 6vfju6<; or to OvfioetSis ; it 
 embraces the higher, nobler impulses, the affections of the 
 heart, moral indignation, courage, the aspiring love of honor, 
 moral awe ; perhaps the Platonic term may be best trans- 
 lated by our word will. The organization of the inner man 
 is made visible in the organization of the outer man; the 
 head is the seat of reason, the citadel of the ruler; in the 
 breast dwells the heart, the seat of the affections, as common- 
 sense looks at it ; it is, so to speak, the watch-house in which 
 courage and anger dwell, ready to break forth at the beck 
 of the ruler ; under the diaphragm, at last, are situated the 
 organs of animal desire, the organs of nutrition and repro- 
 
THE GREEK CONCEPTION 45 
 
 duction. — The function of man is to represent a cosmos on 
 the small scale after the pattern of the larger cosmos : as the 
 macrocosm is fashioned into beauty and order by the ideal 
 element, so the microcosm must be fashioned into proportion 
 and harmony, order and beauty, by reason, the ideal element 
 peculiar to it. 
 
 The anthropological-ethical application of this metaphysical 
 principle of the science of the good is made in the dialogue 
 on the State. It begins with a discussion of the notion 
 of the " just man." How shall we define a just man, a man 
 who realizes the idea, the natural or divine vocation of man ? 
 He is one in whom the three elements, defined above, harmo- 
 niously co-operate to perform their special functions. We 
 thus arrive at the scheme of the so-called cardinal virtues : 
 wisdom (<7O0/,a), courage (avSpeia), and self-control or healthy- 
 mindedness (acocfrpocrvvr)), which three combined give us justice 
 (Slkcuoctvvti). A man is wise, in whom reason realizes its 
 purpose, the knowledge of the true reality, and as the ruling 
 principle regulates his entire life ; he is courageous when 
 the will does its work, assisting the reason in governing 
 and bridling the irrational element; he is healthy-minded 
 when the animal impulses peacefully perform their functions, 
 without disquieting and disturbing the spirit. Such a well- 
 regulated soul deserves to be called a just soul ; it typifies 
 human nature, or the idea of man. In it the exercise of 
 reason forms the real, essential content of life ; reason as 
 such consists in knowledge ; perfect knowledge, however, is 
 philosophy, that is, the dialectical re-creation of the absolute 
 ideal reality in concepts. The other elements and their func- 
 tions are subordinate to it. And hence we may say : Philo- 
 sophy is the true function, the highest content and purpose, 
 of human life. 
 
 This would answer the question concerning objective good- 
 ness : such a life is good in itself, good for man, not accord- 
 ing to accidental opinion and convention, but in the nature 
 
46 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 of things, in which philosophy forms the central purpose to 
 which all the other functions and actions are subordinated as 
 means. 
 
 That such a " just " life is at the same time a happy and 
 desirable life hardly seems to need proof. Just as the sound- 
 ness of the body is subjectively experienced as good health, 
 disease as poor health, so " justice," which is nothing but the 
 health of the soul, or the state expressing its true nature, 
 necessarily procures the greatest satisfaction. And so the 
 opposite of justice (aSucla) will necessarily be the greatest 
 subjective evil for a man, not because of some accidental 
 effects, like punishment and disgrace, but on account of 
 the ugliness which characterizes an " unjust " life (wahn- 
 schaffen, misshapen, we might call it, employing a term 
 peculiar to the Northern languages). With incomparable 
 skill Plato portrays the life of such a " misshapen " soul and 
 its inner discord in his picture of the tyrant, who satisfies all 
 his desires and enjoys the privilege — which those illumi- 
 nators envy him — of perpetrating all kinds of wrongs and 
 violent deeds with impunity. 
 
 Let me also briefly mention that the same fundamental 
 traits reappear in the constitution of the just state, man on 
 the large scale. A state is just in which the wise rule, the 
 strong and courageous (a military nobility) disinterestedly 
 and submissively serve the government, and finally, the 
 producing classes peacefully and modestly perform their 
 tasks. 
 
 We see, Plato does not differ very radically in his views 
 from the popular Greek conception of justice and happiness. 
 It is true, he emphasizes the element of knowledge in his 
 scheme, and the kind of knowledge which he has in mind, 
 the speculative knowledge of the real reality, is, of course, 
 something wholly foreign to the popular idea. 
 
 We must not, however, lose sight of another fact. Our 
 exposition of Plato's ethics has not sufficiently emphasized a 
 
THE GREEK CONCEPTION 47 
 
 phase of his conception of life which stands out quite promi- 
 nently in many dialogues, alienation from the world ( Welt- 
 fliichtigkeit) , a doctrine which differs so remarkably from the 
 old Greek mode of thought, and approximates the Christian 
 view. Plato does not always adhere to the conception, out- 
 lined above, of the nature of man as a spiritual-sensuous 
 being, but often manifests a strong tendency completely to 
 spiritualize the nature of man : reason constitutes his real 
 essence ; the animal nature, sensuality and desire, is an acci- 
 dental appendage, which drags down the spirit, and of which 
 the wise man strives to divest himself. God is pure thought, 
 free from desire ; to be like him is the highest goal of human 
 striving. The notions of pre-existence, transmigration of 
 souls, and immortality are connected with this idea; this 
 mundane life is conceived as a prison-house from which the 
 spirit seeks to escape. 
 
 It is evidently, first of all, his opposition to the doctrine of 
 pleasure which provokes these thoughts. Callicles and his 
 followers make the satisfaction of the desires the highest 
 good, while Plato sees in pleasure something, " a trace of 
 which," as we read in the Phosdrus, " a demon has added to 
 all bad things." Hence he looks upon life as a struggle of 
 reason with lust, a struggle in which the nobler impulses of 
 the heart are on the side of reason. This teaching supplies 
 the moral preacher with a wonderful weapon, which Plato 
 himself handles with great force and skill, and we ought to 
 make a more extended use of his writings ; they would appeal 
 more powerfully to our young men than the weak-kneed 
 Cicero ; the Republic is the very thing for young people whose 
 thoughts are preoccupied with and confused by Nietzsche's 
 Ubermensch. But perhaps it is also possible to connect this 
 mode of thought with Plato's personal experiences. His 
 relations with his contemporaries were not friendly. His 
 native city gave the philosopher no opportunity for public 
 activity, as he understood the term. That he did not always 
 
48 ORIGINS OF MOKAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 bear his isolation with equanimity may be inferred from his 
 harsh criticism of the persons who took a prominent part in 
 public life, the statesmen, Sophists, and rhetoricians. He re 
 garded them as the representatives of the most unworthy art, 
 the art, namely, of catering to the whims of the great animal, 
 called Demos, and thus acquiring advantages and fame ; 
 whoever interferes with their schemes, and refuses to become 
 a party to their crimes is doomed. And so the untimely 
 philosopher, " like one who, in the storm of dust and sleet 
 which the driving wind hurries along, retires under the 
 shelter of a wall," withdrew from public life and sought 
 refuge in the solitude of the Academy ; his life was enriched 
 and blessed by the contemplation of the true reality, and he 
 looked forward to his deliverance in peace and good-will, with 
 bright hopes. 1 
 
 Thus Plato, like every honest philosopher, utilized his own 
 personal experiences as the key with which to interpret 
 human life, nay, all things in general. Yet he was too much 
 of a Greek to reject this natural-sensuous world altogether. 
 He was a pessimist in his judgment of men, but he remained 
 an optimist in his judgment of man. In the passage of the 
 Republic quoted above, he adds that the solitary philosopher 
 will not do the greatest work unless he find a state suitable 
 to him ; for in a state which is suitable to him he will have 
 a larger growth, and be the savior of his country as well as 
 of himself. 
 
 4. Aristotle, 2 in Dante's words " the master of those who 
 know," " the eternal prince of all true thinkers " as Comte 
 calls him in the Catechisme positiviste, was the first to stake 
 off practical philosophy as a separate field of knowledge and 
 to discuss it, as a systematic whole, in its three parts, ethics, 
 politics, and economics. His works lack the wonderful charm 
 
 1 Republic, 496 D. 
 
 2 [Nicomachean Ethics, transl. by Welldon. For other translations and 
 bibliography, see my translation of Weber, History of Philosophy, p. 104 s 
 aote4. — Tk.] 
 
THE GREEK CONCEPTION 49 
 
 of the Platonic expositions, but we are compensated for this 
 loss by a wealth of great thoughts. I shall give an outline 
 of his ethics ; in the main it follows the lines marked out by 
 the Platonic system. 
 
 He begins with the question concerning the highest good, 
 which all agree to designate as happiness (ev&ao/jLovla), and 
 finds, by means of one of those Socratic inductions which are 
 so common in his writings, that it must consist in the exercise 
 of the specific excellence of the human soul : for, as with a 
 flute-player, a statuary, or any artisan, or in fact anybody 
 who has a definite function and action (epyov ti /ecu irpa^'), 
 his goodness or excellence (rdyaObv koX to ev) seems to lie 
 in his function, so it would seem to be with man, if indeed 
 he has a definite function. What, then, is this function or 
 action of man ? Aristotle compares man with organic beings 
 and finds that he shares with all beings the vegetative func- 
 tions, and with all animals sensation and desire, but that he 
 alone possesses reason (to \6yov e^oz/). The peculiar func- 
 tion of man, then, is an activity of soul in accordance with 
 reason, or not independently of reason (yjrvxv^ ivepyeia /caTa 
 Xoyov r) /*?; dvev \6yov). This being so, the good of man is an 
 activity of soul in accordance with virtue, or, if there are 
 more virtues than one, in accordance with the best and most 
 complete virtue. 1 
 
 Now, that the life which is objectively the best also pro- 
 cures the greatest subjective satisfaction necessarily follows 
 from Aristotle's great psychological generalization : all un- 
 impeded, successful exercise of the powers natural to a being 
 is accompanied with feelings of satisfaction. The limbs take 
 pleasure in the movements, the eye in sight, the flute-player 
 in the music, the orator in the speech, and so every being in 
 the exercise of its specific function : hence the most pleasura- 
 ble thing for man is the exercise of reason. 
 
 At the conclusion of the work he again takes up the sub- 
 
 1 Nic. Ethics, Book I., chap. 6. Welldon's translation. 
 
50 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 ject: 1 Since reason, whether it be divine itself or the most 
 divine part of our being, is the highest function of man, per- 
 fect happiness will consist in the exercise of that which is 
 peculiar to it, that is, theoretical activity. And this is a con- 
 clusion which would seem to agree with our previous argu- 
 ments as well as with the truth itself. For of all activities 
 contemplation is the most continuous and the most inde- 
 pendent of the necessaries of life ; the exercise of the other 
 faculties is dependent upon opportunity, but the wise man is 
 always and under all circumstances capable of speculation 
 himself. It alone is self-sufficient, it alone has its end in 
 itself ; all practical activities, even those of the statesman 
 and general, which are regarded as the highest and most 
 beautiful, have external ends ; contemplation alone is not ex- 
 ercised for the sake of an external end. It is also admitted 
 that there is no virtuous activity so pleasant as philosophic 
 reflection ; at all events it appears that philosophy possesses 
 pleasures of wonderful purity and certainty. " Hence such 
 a life may seem too good for a man. He will enjoy such a 
 life not in virtue of his humanity, but in virtue of some 
 divine element in him. If then the reason is divine in com- 
 parison with the rest of man's nature, the life which accords 
 with reason will be divine in comparison with human life in 
 general. Nor is it right to follow the advice of people who 
 say that the thoughts of men should not be too high for 
 humanity, or the thoughts of humanity too high for mortality ; 
 ? or a man, as far as in him lies, should seek immortality 
 {aOavari^eiv) and do all in his power to live in accordance 
 with the highest part of his nature." 
 
 Who does not feel in these words the emotion with which 
 the usually so placid thinker expresses his deepest life- 
 experiences ? 
 
 To be sure, the purely theoretical life is unattainable by 
 man ; God's life alone consists in pure thought. In man 
 
 1 B. X., chap. 7. 
 
THE GREEK CONCEPTION 51 
 
 reason is inseparably connected with the functions which lie 
 possesses in common with the animals and plants, with sen- 
 sation and desire, with nutrition and reproduction. From 
 this it follows that human life is confronted with a number 
 of problems, which may be characterized in general as the 
 organization of the lower functions by reason and in harmony 
 with the ends of reason. Thus arise the so-called ethical 
 virtues or excellences, which are distinguished from the in- 
 tellectual or theoretical virtues. 
 
 There will therefore be as many ethical virtues as there 
 are separate spheres of problems arising from the sensuous 
 side of human nature. Among them we may mention: our 
 attitude to the animal desires, our behavior with respect to 
 economic commodities, honor, anger, fear, social and economic 
 intercourse with men, etc. There is a virtue for every sphere. 
 Virtuous conduct in reference to the satisfaction of animal 
 desires is so-called healthy-mindedness (o-oxfipoo-vvr]) ; in ref- 
 erence to wealth, liberality {eXevOeptorr]^) ; in reference to 
 honor, high-mindedness and love of honor {fieyaXo^v^ia and 
 <f>L\oTifiLa) ; in reference to danger, courage (avBpeta), etc. 
 
 Virtue, as language, too, suggests, is always a mean be- 
 tween two extremes, between excess and deficiency. Courage, 
 for example, is the normal state in regard to the fearful, 
 being a mean between the state of the coward (SeiXo?), who 
 stupidly runs away from danger, and the state of the fool- 
 hardy man (Opacrv<i), who blindly rushes into it. Temper- 
 ance is the normal habit or state in regard to sensuous 
 pain, being a mean between the state of the licentious man 
 (a/coXao-Tos) , who is incapable of resisting sensuous feelings, 
 and the state which we might call unfeelingness (avaco-drjala), 
 which, however, hardly exists, wherefore language has no 
 real name for the opposite of licentiousness ; and the same 
 is true of the rest. 
 
 The normal state is the result of practice, as Aristotle ex- 
 pressly declares, taking issue with Socrates, who identified 
 
52 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 the ethical virtues with insight or prudence. Prudence 
 (<t>p6vr]cri,^ undoubtedly also plays a part in the ethical vir- 
 tues, for it shows which is the normal state for every one in 
 every case. And so we obtain the definition of ethical virtue 
 which Aristotle places at the head of his discussion of the 
 virtues : Virtue is a state of deliberate moral purpose con- 
 sisting in a mean that is relative to ourselves, the mean 
 being determined by reason, or as a prudent man would 
 determine it. 1 
 
 It is evident that this definition does not yet furnish us 
 with an objective standard. For what is the mean or normal, 
 or what is the standpoint from which reason or the prudent 
 man determines it ? Aristotle did not answer this question, 
 because, so it seems, he did not believe an answer could be 
 found. He repeatedly accentuates the difference between 
 this field of knowledge and the theoretical sciences, which 
 treat of things " which cannot be otherwise," while the prac- 
 tical sciences deal with things " which can be otherwise." 
 In the sixth book, where he discusses the question of prudence 
 (^poV^o-t?), as opposed to theoretical knowledge (a-o</>/a), he 
 even seems to incline to the view that the former never gives 
 us universal judgments, but only particular decisions ; which 
 would be equivalent to denying the possibility of a scientific 
 ethics. And indeed we must admit that Aristotle's doctrine 
 of the ethical virtues fails to meet the demands, which must 
 be made upon a scientific treatment of the subject ; he 
 makes no attempt whatever to explain the difference in 
 value between virtuous conduct and vicious conduct, as was 
 done later, say by Spinoza, who entertained the same general 
 view. He confines himself to a description of virtuous modes 
 of conduct, which draws mainly upon Greek popular usage, 
 and does not care for systematic completeness. Of real value 
 is the acute exposition of the meaning of the words which 
 the Greek people used to express moral distinctions. 
 
 1 1106 b. 36, B. II, chap. 6. 
 
THE GREEK CONCEPTION 53 
 
 In this way Plato and Aristotle meet the Socratic demand 
 for a science of the good. They take into account the place 
 of man in the cosmos, and then attempt to define his idea, 
 that is, his natural and divine purpose, and to show how he 
 may realize this purpose. The conception of the perfect man 
 which they advance, essentially resembles the popular Greek 
 ideal. There is only one marked difference : in the scheme 
 of the philosophers the purely theoretical exercise of the 
 intellect constitutes the chief element of human perfection ; 
 the philosophical ideal not only embodies the general features 
 of the Greek character, but also embraces the personal feat- 
 ures of the philosophers, which gives the concept greater 
 precision. 
 
 5. The post-Aristotelian moral philosophy can hardly be 
 said to have created any new conceptions ; on the whole it 
 follows in the traces of its great predecessors. But it is 
 lacking neither in great and fruitful thoughts nor in strong 
 and forcible moral preaching. I must confine my efforts to 
 a mere outline of the standpoints of the two chief schools, 
 which for a long time formed the chief subject of interest in 
 philosophy, the Stoics and Epicureans. 
 
 The Stoics, 1 like Plato and Aristotle, regard the realiza- 
 tion of his natural purpose as the highest good and highest 
 happiness of man. They formulate this idea into a principle : 
 life according to nature (o/jLoXoyov/juevcos rfj (frvaec £fjv). On 
 the basis of the unusually comprehensive and valuable extracts 
 from the ethical writings of the Stoics, which we find in Dio- 
 genes Laertius, 2 we may outline their ethical philosophy 
 about as follows. The underlying thought is the proposition : 
 The fundamental impulse of every living being aims at self- 
 preservation (rr)v TTpcornv opfjLTjv to %coov ta")(eiv iirl to Tnpelv 
 kavTo), to which is added the polemical statement : and not 
 
 1 [See Diogenes Laertius, Book VII.; Stobaeus, Eclogues, II.; Cicero, Definibua* 
 Bibliography in Weber-Thilly, p. 140, p. 146. — Tk.] 
 
 2 VII., 84-131. 
 
54 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 at pleasure. The law of its nature is, therefore, to avoid the 
 harmful and to strive for what is appropriate to it (ra oUela'). 
 Pleasure, however, arises as an accompaniment when a being 
 obtains what is appropriate to it {iTriykvvnpa, which calls to 
 mind Aristotle's liny iy vonevov reXos). Even plants act in 
 this way, although they are unconscious of the impulse, which 
 is also the case with our own vegetative functions. Ani- 
 mals, however, are conscious of the impulse, and hence it is 
 the law of their nature to follow their conscious impulses 
 (for them to Kara (fiver lv is equal to to koltcl ttjv opfirjv 
 ^ioiKelcrOai). But man is endowed with reason (6 \6yos), 
 besides impulse ; hence to live according to nature means for 
 him to live according to reason (icaTa \6yov), for reason is by 
 nature the regulator of desire (\6yos T(-yy'iTn<$ eiriyiveTai t% 
 0/3//%). It would be contrary to nature for man to follow 
 irrational desire. — But in so far as the nature of each 
 individual being is determined by the nature of the All, to live 
 according to reason means for man : to obey the universal 
 law, or, which is the same thing, Jupiter, the highest regula- 
 tor and ruler. — And this is eudamionia and welfare (jevpoia 
 tov /3tW), namely to do everything in harmony with our 
 demon, according to the will of the universal governor and 
 manager of all things. And the natural disposition of every 
 being is its virtue or perfection (TeXetWt?) ; and this we 
 ought to seek for its own sake, without being influenced by 
 the fear or hope of any external effects : for it is in it that 
 happiness consists. — If now we call a man who lives accord- 
 ing to reason a wise man, we may say : The wise man, and 
 the wise man alone, is virtuous and happy. 
 
 These thoughts may all be regarded as applications and, in 
 part, more definite expressions of Aristotelian principles. 
 Reference is often made to the rigorism of the Stoic ethics, 
 which holds that virtue alone is a good, but this is, in the 
 last analysis, exactly what Plato and Aristotle teach : that 
 happiness does not consist in pleasure, but in the exercise of 
 
THE GREEK CONCEPTION 55 
 
 virtue. Nor is there any radical difference in their concep- 
 tions of the value of the so-called external goods, wealth, 
 health, beauty, fame, etc. The Stoics will not concede that 
 these things are real goods : in themselves they are neither 
 useful nor harmful, good or bad, but either one or the other, 
 according to the use to which they are put, while that only 
 is good which can never be harmful, but only useful. Yet 
 they confess that they are not absolutely indifferent, that wealth 
 is preferable to poverty, health to sickness {jrpor^^va — 
 aTroTTporjy/jLeva). These, too, are at bottom merely systemat- 
 ized, technical statements of Aristotelian ideas. Aristotle 
 had used an admirable figure in defining the value of external 
 goods : they are for life what the xoprjyta i s f° r the tragedy, 
 hence they certainly belong to the perfect happiness of life, 
 just as the ^oprjyla is necessary to the perfect production 
 of the tragedy, without, however, forming a real part of 
 happiness. 
 
 It seems, however, that the desire gradually grew stronger 
 in the Stoics to make happiness (ev&ai,/uLovla) absolutely inde- 
 pendent of external goods. The freedom from passions 
 (iraOri) which are aroused in the soul by the acquisition and 
 loss, the possession and want, of external goods, the doctrine 
 that virtue suffices for happiness, old and legitimate concep- 
 tions of Greek ethics, are emphasized more and more as 
 moral philosophy becomes moral preaching. The practical 
 moralist's most thankful and fruitful task is to throw man 
 upon his own inner resources, and this task the Stoic philos- 
 ophy accomplished with laudable skill : nowhere shall we find 
 more forcible exhortations to make ourselves independent of 
 the things which are not in our power, and to depend 
 upon ourselves with inner freedom, than in Epictetus's little 
 Manual} 
 
 With this tendency to moral preaching is connected an- 
 other element in the Stoic philosophy : the value of theoreti- 
 
 > See Long's translation. 
 
56 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 cal activity is lessened, while the exercise of the ethical 
 virtues, the field of action, especially action dealing with 
 human relations, the family and the state, gradually becomes 
 more prominent. But the demand that we keep ourselves 
 free remains the chief and the highest demand. 
 
 6. Epicurus, 1 too, and his disciples are in search of the 
 highest good and find it in eudaemonia ; but their defini- 
 tion of it differs from that of the philosophers mentioned 
 above, nay, even from the popular Greek conception: for 
 them eudgemonia is a feeling of pleasure. This view leads 
 to a change in the position of virtue or excellence : virtue 
 becomes a means to the end of pleasure. 2 
 
 The difference between the two standpoints is perfectly 
 apparent. The Stoics agree with Aristotle and Plato in defin- 
 ing happiness as an objective condition of the soul : a life 
 that realizes the natural purpose of man, or perfectly realizes 
 his idea, is itself the highest good. To be sure, the subjective 
 satisfaction follows the objective constitution, as the shadow 
 follows the body, but the satisfaction is not itself the good. 
 The Epicureans, on the other hand, regard the feelings of 
 pleasure which life procures as the good itself, and the con- 
 stitution or character of which they are the effect, as the 
 means. 
 
 When we disregard this question of principle and examine 
 the counsels which Epicurus gives to his pupils concerning 
 their mode of life (for example in his letter to Menoikeus) 3 
 the difference largely disappears, yes, we might almost be 
 tempted to view it as a purely scholastic or technical differ- 
 ence. Epicurus by no means advises us to choose every 
 pleasure, nay, he expressly warns us against it. " When, 
 
 1 [Diogenes Laertius, X. ; Cicero, De Jinibus ; Lucretius, De rerum natura 
 (translated by Munro). Bibliography in Weber-Thilly, p. 194, note 1.] 
 
 2 Kostlin shows us in his excellent exposition of the Democritean ethics, 
 Geschichte der Ethik, I., 196, how, even in his ethics, Epicurus was forestalled 
 by the forceful thinker whom he followed in his physics, Democritus. 
 
 8 Diogenes Laertius, translation by Yonge in Bonn's library, X., 122-125. 
 
THE GREEK CONCEPTION 57 
 
 therefore, we say that pleasure is a chief good, we are not 
 speaking of the pleasures of the debauched man, or those who 
 lie in sensual enjoyment, as some think who are ignorant, and 
 who do not entertain our opinions, or else interpret them per- 
 versely ; but we mean the freedom of the body from pain, and 
 of the soul from confusion." By happiness, he says, he 
 means the health of the body and the freedom from disquiet- 
 ude of the soul (rrjv rov o-cd/jlcltos vyueiav teal rrjv t>}? ^u^t}? 
 arapa^iav reXos elvai rov fia/capicos tr\v). Hence the essence 
 of wisdom is, in his opinion, to avoid the causes of confusion. 
 Such are the loss and want of things which we are in the 
 habit of possessing and enjoying, as well as the fear of 
 losses. " To accustom oneself, therefore, to simple and inex- 
 pensive habits is a great ingredient in the perfecting of 
 health, and makes a man free from hesitation with respect to 
 the necessary uses of life. And when we, on certain occa- 
 sions, fall in with more sumptuous fare, it makes us in a 
 better disposition towards it, and renders us fearless with 
 respect to fortune. Hence we regard contentment (avrdpfceia) 
 as a great good. Above all, we must rid ourselves of vain 
 desires" Epicurus distinguishes between natural or neces- 
 sary and vain or empty desires (i-iridvpiai <j>vo-ifcai — icevai). 
 The former, he finds, are easily satisfied, — nature does not 
 make great demands, — while the latter, the desires of luxury 
 and vanity, are infinite and never to be satisfied. Philoso- 
 phy frees us from this trouble by teaching us what we should 
 avoid and what we should strive after. 
 
 Another source of trouble is the fear of death, and of what 
 comes after death. From this, too, philosophy frees us by 
 showing that death is nothing terrible, since, when we exist, 
 death is not present to us, and when death is present, then 
 we have no existence. And there is nothing terrible in living 
 to a man who rightly comprehends that there is nothing ter- 
 rible in ceasing to live. An enthusiastic disciple of Epicurus, 
 Lucretius, emphasizes this phase ; every book of his work on 
 
58 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 the Nature of Things 1 sings new praises to the man who 
 freed mankind from the imaginary terrors with which super- 
 stition had peopled heaven and earth. 
 
 " Hence it is not continued drinkings and revels, or the 
 enjoyment of female society, or feasts of fish and other such 
 things as a costly table supplies, that make life pleasant, 
 but sober contemplation which examines into the reasons for 
 all choice and avoidance, and which puts to flight the vain 
 opinions from which the greater part of the confusion arises 
 which troubles the soul. Now the beginning and the greatest 
 good of all these things is prudence ((fipovwo-ts), on which ac- 
 count prudence is something more valuable than even phil- 
 osophy, inasmuch as all the other virtues spring from it, 
 teaching us that it is not possible to live pleasantly unless 
 one also lives prudently, and honorably, and justly ; and that 
 one cannot live prudently, and honestly, and justly without 
 living pleasantly, for the virtues are connate with living 
 agreeably, and living agreeably is inseparable from the 
 virtues." And so Epicurus, too, reaches the popular Greek 
 conception that virtue and happiness are inseparable, as the 
 line in the poem expresses it : 
 
 'Qs dyados re kol cvbaifxcav dfia ylverai dvfjp. 
 
 7. Summarizing the main features of Greek ethics, we may 
 say : It agrees with the popular Greek view that the highest 
 good consists in the perfection of man as a natural being. 
 Special stress is laid upon the development of the intellectual 
 side. Even the popular conception recognizes the great im- 
 portance of the intellect for human perfection, a fact to which 
 the above mentioned work of L. Schmidt on the popular 
 morality of the Greeks repeatedly calls attention. 2 The 
 philosophers, the specific types of the Greek people, as the 
 prophets are of the Israelites, go still further, and make 
 reason the root and crown of all human excellence. For them 
 wisdom or philosophy is both the means and the content oj 
 
 * De rerum natura. 2 L, 156, 230ff. 
 
THE GREEK CONCEPTION 59 
 
 eudcemonia — the former, in so far as it acquaints us with 
 the highest good and regulates practical life to the end of 
 realizing it, the latter, in so far as philosophy, or the scien- 
 tific contemplation of the universe, is the highest, freest func- 
 tion of human nature, one that is desired solely for its own 
 sake. It is said that Anaxagoras, being once asked for what 
 end he had been born, answered : " For the contemplation 
 of the sun, and moon, and heaven, and the order governing 
 the entire universe." This is really the answer which the 
 entire Greek philosophy, and the Greek mind in general, 
 gives to the question. 
 
 At first sight, the conception strikes us as a rather strange 
 one. We are not in the habit of attaching so much impor- 
 tance to the intellectual function ; we neither expect that 
 prudence or insight will always result in right action, nor 
 are we ready to believe that the true mission of man consists 
 in the contemplation of things, or in philosophy. Perhaps 
 we shall understand both points better when we remember 
 how different was the position occupied by scientific knowl- 
 edge among the Greeks from that which it holds in modern 
 life. In our world not only the so-called learned professions, 
 but even scientific research itself, which has been organized 
 by the state in universities and academies, have become 
 branches of industry. As is the case with the manufacture 
 of shoes and watches, a man may, at present, make his liv- 
 ing, and a good living at that, under favorable conditions, by 
 turning out mathematical and philological, scientific and 
 philosophical investigations. This was not the case in Greece, 
 at least not when philosophy first arose. The philosophers 
 emphatically declare that scientific contemplation and pro- 
 fessionalism are absolutely incompatible : the Sophist who 
 attempts to combine them, thereby loses philosophy ; he is, as 
 Plato shows with bitter sarcasm in his Sophist, a dealer in 
 sham wisdom. Heraclitus and Parmenides, Plato and Aris- 
 totle, did not engage in the contemplation of reality for the 
 
60 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 sake of acquiring money or professorships, but solely for its 
 own sake : we work, says Aristotle, in order to have leisure, 
 but the most beautiful way of filling our leisure is philosophy. 
 — This difference in the outward position of scientific research 
 is intimately connected with its altered inner constitution ; 
 modern scientific research, is, as compared with Greek phil- 
 osophy, more like labor, often like petty and arduous labor. 
 The physical or historical investigator of our time employs 
 an enormous apparatus of learning and technical skill, col- 
 lections and instruments, in order to throw light upon some 
 obscure nook of reality which is of little interest in itself, and 
 does not even interest the investigator very much. The 
 result of his work may at some time, in some connection or 
 other, assist us somewhat in understanding reality ; often we 
 cannot see the connection, and it is absolutely immaterial to 
 many an investigator whether his work will contribute any- 
 thing to our knowledge of the whole or not. 
 
 The Greek philosophers, on the other hand, were happy in 
 the belief that it was possible, and that each one of them 
 would be able to unravel the ultimate mysteries of the uni- 
 verse by pure contemplation. Even Aristotle, the great 
 observer, declares that of all activities, scientific investigation 
 is in least need of external aids; so convinced is he that the 
 apparatus of research is a purely secondary affair. It is plain 
 that a theoretical function which aims to solve all the great 
 problems of the universe and of life with its world-encompass- 
 ing thoughts, has greater significance for the personal life 
 of a man than the investigation of Plautinic metres and the 
 discovery of new methyls and phenyls. When the occupation 
 with such things becomes a sport and is pursued as a sport, 
 it may, like all sports, chess-playing or stamp-collecting, 
 become a matter of immediate interest; but a man will 
 hardly be inclined to regard such work, even though he fol- 
 lows it permanently, as the real object of his existence. If, 
 however, we could hope to unravel the mysteries of the world 
 
THE GREEK CONCEPTION 61 
 
 and of life by studying philosophy, who would not be inter- 
 ested in it, who would regard it as too trivial? "Let no 
 one," so Epicurus begins the letter quoted above, " delay to 
 study philosophy while he is young, and when he is old let 
 him not become weary of the study ; for no man can ever 
 find the time unsuitable or too late to study the health of his 
 soul. And he who asserts either that it is not yet time to 
 philosophize, or that the hour is passed, is like a man who 
 should say that the time is not yet come to be happy, or that 
 it is too late." 
 
 The belief in the irresistible power of knowledge, which is 
 expressed in the Socratic statement that knowledge deter- 
 mines conduct, for it is inconceivable that any one should do 
 what he himself regards as wrong (a statement which reap- 
 pears in some form or other in all the philosophers), has 
 manifestly a great deal to do with the position which philos- 
 ophy occupied in the intellectual life of the Greeks. We are 
 perfectly aware that a man may know what to do and still 
 not do it. From our earliest childhood we have been told and 
 have known that we ought not to requite evil with evil but with 
 good, even in the case of our enemies — but who acts accord- 
 ingly ? But, Socrates would have asked us, what do you 
 mean by " knowing " ? Surely not the ability to repeat a lot 
 of words after a person ? For me only a living conviction is 
 knowledge. — " Knowledge," as we often understand it, was 
 something wholly foreign to the Greeks : they had no school 
 instruction in which the memory was crammed with the 
 " knowledge" of others, particularly no instruction in morals 
 and religion. But whenever moral maxims and judgments 
 were inculcated in their youth, as, for example, by the study 
 of Homer, they embodied ethical conceptions which were 
 thoroughly intelligible to the natural man. They did not 
 discriminate, as we do, between a moral creed conned by rote 
 and a morality of the heart. — When, however, his reflec- 
 tions carried a philosopher beyond the popular conceptions 
 
62 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 to new views ; when Socrates, for example, found that it 
 was not as disgraceful to suffer injustice as to do injustice, 
 these were not mere empty words for school children to 
 learn by heart, but represented the personal convictions of 
 the thinker, which could not fail to influence him in his 
 actions. 
 
 And when Epictetus tells his pupils that the wise man is 
 independent of fate, because everything that really concerns 
 him is in his power, while whatever is not in his power does 
 not concern him, his words are not merely intended to be 
 memorized and recited at confirmations or at final college 
 examinations, but they stand for real experiences, and are 
 therefore capable of arousing strong convictions. Hence I 
 am inclined to believe that there was for the Greeks, and 
 particularly for the Greek philosophers, more truth in the 
 proposition, No one is voluntarily bad, than it seems to us to 
 contain. Mere school and word knowledge, of course, is 
 powerless, but real knowledge, knowledge that represents real 
 personal convictions, cannot fail to influence life. 
 
 Scientific research, therefore, or philosophy, occupied a 
 position in the personal life of the Greek philosophers which 
 it does not necessarily hold at present, the position, namely, 
 of an end-in-itself. But another factor helped to make spec- 
 ulative life valuable. For the Greek, practical life was syn- 
 onymous with political life. He entertained a low opinion of 
 industrial activity, it was regarded as vulgar ; even the pro- 
 fession of the artist did not escape his contempt. 1 No one 
 
 1 This is clearly shown in a little treatise of Lucian's, The Dream, a work, by 
 the way, which is very characteristic of the Greek mode of thought. Science 
 and Art appear in a dream before the boy Lucian ; each tries to persuade 
 him to devote himself to her. In response to the speech of Plastic Art, who 
 holds that she has a claim upon him, because his ancestors were followers of 
 hers, Science answers : " You have heard from this person here what advan- 
 tages you could hope to obtain if you were to become a stone-mason. You would 
 eventually be nothing more than an obscure manual laborer, who depends 
 solely upon his hands for his success, receiving not much more pay than a 
 day -laborer, base and narrow in your mode of thought, having no influence in the 
 
THE GREEK CONCEPTION 63 
 
 ever dreamed of doing deeds of charity, to which Christian 
 orders devote themselves. Statesmanship, political and mili- 
 tary leadership, was the only profession left. Now, public 
 life in the smaller Grecian city-states had reached such 
 a stage, since the fifth century, that it is not hard to 
 understand why an honest man should have lost all desire 
 to have anything to do with it. The popular assemblies and 
 law-courts were the battle-grounds on which the party-leaders 
 and orators waged bitter war against each other ; they strug- 
 gled to get hold of " the latch of legislation," the decree of 
 the people, in order that they might kill their opponents, or 
 banish them and confiscate their property. The execution 
 of Socrates luridly shows the horrible state of insecurity 
 prevailing in the Greek cities ; it is as though a band of 
 half-grown boys had obtained possession of the sword of 
 the magistracy and were now playing havoc with it. In- 
 deed, this is exactly the impression of Greek political life 
 which we get from the history of Thucydides ; the cities and 
 the parties in every city spent their time in aimless and repul- 
 sive bickerings, they exhibited such baseness and malice, such 
 cruelty and vindictiveness towards the vanquished, as would 
 fill us with aversion, were it not for our deep sympathy with a 
 nation otherwise so gloriously endowed. We can easily 
 understand why men who scrupled against employing the 
 means with which battles were waged and victories won in 
 the popular assemblage, decided to have nothing whatever 
 to do with politics ; most of the later philosophers followed 
 the example of Plato, " who, in the storm of dust and sleet 
 
 state, equally incapable of making yourself useful to your friends and dangerous 
 to your enemies. — And suppose you should become a Phidias or a Polyclet, and 
 had created a great number of admirable works, every one who saw them would, 
 it is true, extol your art, but surely no one among all your admirers would, so 
 long as he was in his right mind, desire to be what you are. For, however great 
 you might become in your line, you would always be regarded as a miserable 
 handicraftsman, who is compelled to make his living by the work of his 
 hands." These remarks express Lucian's own view, which was evidently the 
 new of all cultured Greeks. 
 
64 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 which the driving wind hurries along, retiring under the 
 shelter of a wall," withdrew from public life. Reflections 
 upon the theme that the philosopher cannot be a politician 
 (rbv <ro<j>bv fir) TroXneveaOaL) are common among the later 
 philosophers. Hence there was but one thing left to them — 
 philosophy. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF LIFE* 
 
 1. The conversion of the ancient world to Christianity was 
 the greatest revolution which European humanity experienced. 
 It meant the complete overthrow of all their theories of life, 
 the " transformation of all values " {Die Umwertung alter 
 Werte), to use Nietzsche's expression. In order to draw the 
 lines as sharply as possible, I shall attempt, first of all, to con- 
 trast the Christian doctrine of self-denial in its harsh grandeur 
 with the Greek doctrine of self-preservation. The world 
 always tends to compromises and conciliations ; they are not 
 wanting in ancient Christianity, and in the Middle Ages they 
 are very common, still more so in the development of the 
 Christianity of modern times, as will be seen later on. Here 
 I should like to accentuate the fundamental difference between 
 the Greek and the Christian conception — sharply and one- 
 sidedly if you please — as Christianity itself conceived it at its 
 entrance into the ancient world. The Greek affirmation of the 
 world ( Weltbej ahung) and the Christian negation of the world 
 (Weltiiberwindung*), these are the two paths open to man. 2 
 
 1 [See, besides the works of Sidgwick, Wundt, Jodl, Janet, Eucken, mentioned 
 on p. 35 : Gass, Gesckichte der christlichen Ethih ; Bestmann, Geschichte der 
 christlichen Sitte ; Ziegler, Geschichte der christlichen Ethih ; Luthardt, Geschichte, 
 der christlichen Ethih ; Lecky, History of European Morals ; Ueberweg, History 
 of Philosophy, vol. II., §§ 4 and 5 ; Baur, Das Christenthum der drei ersten Jahr- 
 hunderte (Engl, transl. by Allan Menzies) ; Harnack, Dogmengeschichte ; Fisher, 
 The Beginnings of Christianity. Consnlt also the standard Lives of Christ and 
 church histories. For further bibliographical references, see the beginning of the 
 second volume of Ueberweg ; also Weber-Thilly, p. 9, note 2. — Tr.] 
 
 2 The exposition which follows has been criticised, on the ground that it rep- 
 resents Christianity as a weak, meek, world-weary, down-trodden, ascetic affair. 
 That is not the impression which I intended to create. Christianity was at firit 
 
 5 
 
66 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 The Greeks regarded the perfect development of the natural 
 powers of man as the great aim of life. Christianity, on the 
 other hand, clearly and consciously sets up the opposite as the 
 goal of life : the death of the natural, and the resurrection of 
 a new, supernatural man. " Except a man be born again," so 
 Christ teaches Nicodemus, "he cannot see the kingdom of 
 God " ; the repentance {jxztclvqkx) which Christ demands, with 
 John the Baptist, 1 is in truth a regeneration. The old and 
 the new man are opposed to each other as the flesh (adplj*) 
 and the spirit (7rvev/jLa). 2 Paul logically defines this antithe- 
 sis : there is a twofold life, the life after the flesh and the life 
 after the spirit; the former the life of the natural man, the 
 latter, the effect of grace ; the former intent upon perishable 
 things and leading to death, the latter turned toward eternity 
 and leading to eternal life : " for he that soweth to his flesh 
 shall of the flesh reap corruption ; but he that soweth to the 
 spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting." 3 The new life 
 is the death of the old ; through the spirit the deeds of the 
 body are mortified. 4 
 
 This character of the new religion is expressed in its sacred 
 acts. We enter into Christianity through baptism; it is 
 called by Paul a likeness (o/W&)/xa) 5 of the death of Jesus ; 
 
 certainly not a negative, but a very positive thing ; it was not characterized by 
 feelings of depression and dejection, but by a feeling of cheerful certainty, the 
 certainty of possessing a treasure beyond all other treasures. And from this 
 conviction sprang the proud feeling of freedom, with which the Christian opposed 
 the " world " and its regulations, society and its conventional values, the law and 
 its pedantic formalism. — But my main purpose here was to contrast it sharply 
 with the Greek conception of life and morality, and hence I first considered 
 Christianity from its negative side, the side which distinguishes it as something 
 entirely new in the world. Besides, Christianity now and then becomes conscious 
 of its original negative relation to the " world " and the kingdom which is of this 
 world, and so, in my opinion, regains some of its pristine essence and strength. 
 A Christianity entirely reconciled and at peace with the world is a weak and 
 powerless affair, and surely not the real and original Christianity. True Chris- 
 tianity may always be recognized by the fact that it seems strange and danger- 
 ous to the world. 
 
 1 Math., iv., 17. 
 
 2 John, iii., 6. * Rom., viii., 13. 
 • Gal., Ti., 8. * Rom., vi., 5. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 67 
 
 a very intelligible symbol, so long as Christianity was at war 
 with the world ; it was a serious reminder of the bloody bap- 
 tism which might follow the water baptism. The other sacra- 
 ment is no less suggestive of death ; by eating the body and 
 drinking the blood of Jesus, the believers celebrate the mem- 
 ory of his sacrificial death, themselves forming a community 
 consecrated to a bloody sacrifice. It is likewise worthy of 
 note that the new churches usually also served as burial- 
 places, that the bones of the martyrs were interred in the 
 altar itself. The natural man dreads contact with death ; it is 
 a pollution, according to the Greek as well as the Jewish con- 
 ception, even in the religious sense, while to the Christian, 
 death is a familiar thought; it is the entrance into life. 
 
 2. The entire Christian life is permeated with this concep- 
 tion. What the old or the natural man desires or values is 
 regarded by the new man as worthless or dangerous; and 
 conversely, the sufferings and privations which the former 
 seeks to escape, the latter regards as salutary and beneficial. 
 Let me point out the main differences between the two theories 
 of life. 
 
 The perfection and exercise of the intellectual capacities 
 seemed to the Greeks a highly important, to their philosophers 
 an absolutely necessary, function of human life. The attitude 
 of primitive Christianity towards reason and natural knowl- 
 edge is one of contempt and distrust. The poor in spirit are 
 blessed by Jesus; the people who follow him are poor and 
 uncultured ; what is hidden from the wise and prudent is 
 revealed to children. Nay, natural reason and wisdom are 
 really a stumbling-block to the kingdom of God, the preach- 
 ing of the cross is foolishness to it. " Where is the wise ? " 
 Paul asks the congregation at Corinth, 1 " where is the scribe ? 
 where is the disputer of this world ? hath not God made 
 foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the 
 wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased 
 
 1 1 Cor. I, 20. 
 
68 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that 
 believe." 
 
 The church did not strictly adhere to this view ; as a church 
 she could not adhere to it. When she began to dominate the 
 entire life of the peoples, she was compelled to press into her 
 service the most important instrument of temporal power, 
 knowledge. But primitive Christianity stood in no posi- 
 tive relation to worldly, scientific knowledge. " The form of 
 a servant, the spiritual form, disappeared in the third century 
 when brilliant teachers of the church and even rich bishops 
 appeared ; but in its poor form Christianity overcame the 
 world." 2 And we may note the after-effects of this original 
 relation in the entire history of the Christian church life : I 
 am thinking not merely of the Christian's distrust of scientific 
 investigation and the law of obedience, which the intellect, too, 
 was expected to observe — a law, it is true, which often sprang 
 from very worldly motives — but, above all, of that simplicity 
 of heart which always succeeded in minimizing, among all 
 true believers in Christ, those differences of culture and 
 knowledge, which hinder the free interchange of thought in 
 the personal intercourse of the worldly-minded. And deeply 
 religious natures have always shown an aversion to puffed-up 
 learning, to the spirit of criticism and negation, which springs 
 from arrogance and begets arrogance, to the mania for 
 systems, and to scientific pride. 
 
 Hence the virtues of the intellect, freedom and boldness of 
 thought and the power to doubt, the vital principle of scien- 
 tific research, are, in the eyes of primitive Christianity; 
 worthless and dangerous. Faith and obedience are becoming 
 to the Christian. 
 
 3. Like the virtues of the intellect, so are also the ethical 
 virtues of the Greeks, which are nothing but natural impulses 
 educated and disciplined by the reason, worthless and dan- 
 gerous, according to the conception of primitive Christianity ; 
 
 1 Hase, Kirchengeschichte, 1, 258. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 69 
 
 the more dangerous because they seem good : they are splen* 
 did vices. " Though it may seem laudable that the soul govern 
 the body, and reason the vicious impulses, yet the soul and 
 reason itself, cannot by any means, unless it serve God, as 
 God himself has prescribed it, govern them in the right way. 
 For what kind of a lord of the body and of the vices can a 
 mind be, which, being ignorant of the true God and not sub- 
 ject to his governance, is prostituted and corrupted by the 
 demons polluted with all the vices ? And the virtues them- 
 selves, if they bear no relation to God, are in truth vices 
 rather than virtues ; for although they are regarded by many 
 as truly moral when they are desired as ends in themselves 
 and not for the sake of something else, they are, nevertheless, 
 inflated and arrogant (inflatce ao superbce), and therefore 
 not to be viewed as virtues but as vices." This is St. 
 Augustine's opinion of all purely human virtues. 1 
 
 4. In the opinion of the natural man, courage is the chief 
 
 1 De Civitate Dei, xix., 25. — In his Confessions he moralizes upon his own past 
 life from this standpoint : everything natural and human in it was an alienation 
 from God and therefore reprehensible. With tiresome monotony he passes from 
 one period of his life to the other, and shows the emptiness and baseness of all 
 those acts of his which sprang from his natural impulses. That the nursling 
 cried for the breast, that the boy took pleasure in his sports and the youth in 
 rhetorical exercises, that he was ambitious for distinction and fame, that he was 
 devoted to friends and followed his natural sexual impulses, that he admired 
 distinguished teachers and dedicated his maiden works to a revered man, that as a 
 teacher he gathered young men about him and joyfully and zealously instructed 
 them in knowledge and in eloquence, that he passionately searched for the truth 
 and believed that he would find it in the philosophers : all this he now condemns 
 from his newly acquired Christian-ecclesiastical standpoint : it was nothing but 
 vanity, foolishness, and carnal corruption. One point alone, which the purely 
 numan judgment would perhaps regard as the blackest spot in the previous life 
 of the Saint, he passes over without a single word of blame; his resolution, 
 namely, to abandon a woman who had been his mistress for years, and who had 
 borne him a son, and, at the instigation of his mother, to marry a woman of his 
 own rank. This resolution — which his mistress prevented him from carrying 
 out — this intended act of faithlessness to a woman whom he loved, but could 
 not marry for social reasons, he passes over without a complaint, without a word 
 of self-reproach, only to condemn himself violently immediately after for his in- 
 ability to resist his longing for her even after the separation. So completely do 
 his feelings differ from the natural human feelings. 
 
TO ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 virtue ; it is, as Greek and Roman popular usage implies, 
 the virtue or excellence as such, and its absence is equivalent 
 to absolute unworthiness. Courage is based upon the impulse 
 of self-preservation ; it ensures the success of the ego and its 
 claims in the struggle with those opposing it. The Christian, 
 who obeys the law of God, " resists not evil," he does not 
 combat it, but endures it ; patience or patient waiting {viro/jiovrj) 
 is his courage. He does not wield the sword. The sword is 
 the instrument by which to obtain one's share of the world ; 
 the Christian has and desires no part in the world ; his 
 heritage is in the future world, it cannot be won or lost by 
 the sword. The old church is thoroughly imbued with the 
 thought that a Christian cannot wield the sword. Even 
 though the times soon accommodated themselves to the 
 necessities of life, we can hardly suppose that they did so 
 without some misgivings. Christian soldiers were, beyond 
 doubt, regarded as an anomaly in the congregation, during 
 the earlier centuries. Tertullian expresses the conviction of 
 the primitive Christian, though in a more emphatic and 
 categorical manner, when he says : " It is impossible to swear 
 fealty to God and to man, to serve under the banner of Christ 
 and under the standard of the devil, in the camp of light and 
 in the camp of darkness ; one soul cannot serve two masters, 
 God and the Emperor. When the Lord deprived Peter of the 
 sword, he disarmed all." * It surely seemed an absolute con- 
 tradiction for a clericus to wear the sword. Among all the 
 sects which renew the old Christian mode of life, the dread 
 of shedding blood at once reappears in its original strength. 
 The same feeling asserts itself against capital punishment. 
 
 How far removed the modern world is from the old Christian 
 conception is perhaps nowhere so clearly seen as here : the 
 fear of the sword and of bloodshed has wholly disappeared 
 — disappeared even from the church. The great military 
 heroes are the national saints of the modern nations, the 
 
 1 De idoJoJatria, chapter 19. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 71 
 
 anniversaries of victorious battles are celebrated as public 
 holidays, the streets and squares of our cities are named after 
 bloody battle-fields. In the schools our children learn the 
 history of wars, which comprises the chief part of the history 
 of mankind ; the victories of our nation over our neighbors are 
 regarded as its most important and grandest achievements. 
 In the churches prayers are offered every Sunday for the 
 royal arms on water and on land. The modern Christian 
 has no fault to find with all this — a sure sign that he differs 
 from the primitive Christian, who proved his courage solely 
 by his patient suffering and heroic martyrdom. 1 
 
 5. Related to the virtue of courage is the virtue of justice, 
 by which we mean that strong sense of justice which every- 
 where insists upon the right, the right of others as well as of 
 self. Not to do wrong is one side of justice ; its comple- 
 ment is not to permit wrong to be done, either to self or to 
 others. This is what the Greeks and Romans understood by 
 the duty of justice, and so Jhering has recently interpreted 
 it in his book, TJte Battle for the Right? The law-suit, or 
 the legal battle for the right, is the civil form of self-preser- 
 vation and self-assertion, of which the sword is the military 
 form. 
 
 Primitive Christianity does not recognize justice in this 
 sense as a virtue ; it is acquainted with only one side of it, 
 with the duty not to do wrong, not with the duty not to per- 
 mit wrong. It does not say : If a man injures you and tram- 
 ples upon your rights, you ought or are allowed to resist him 
 by lawful means ; but the law of Moses : An eye for an eye, a 
 tooth for a tooth, is expressly abrogated and replaced by a 
 new law : " But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil 
 (t&> TTovrjpq)'), but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right 
 cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue 
 thee at law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak 
 
 1 [See Herbert Spencer, Induction of Ethics, §§ 115, 118, 192. — T*-l 
 * Der Kampf urns Recht. 
 
72 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 also, and whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with 
 him twain." * And a few verses further back we read : 2 
 "Agree with thine adversary (tg5 avTihlfcw) quickly, while 
 thou art in the way with him." Hence not only anger and 
 hatred and private revenge, but law-suits are explicitly pro- 
 hibited. This is also St. Paul's notion of it : he strictly for- 
 bids the Corinthians to go to law before heathen judges, 
 before the unjust, who are not esteemed in the church : 
 " Is it so that there is not a wise man among you ? no, not 
 one that shall be able to judge between his brethren ? " And 
 then he proceeds : " Now therefore there is utterly a fault 
 among you, because ye go to law with one another. Why do 
 ye not rather take wrong ? Why do ye not rather suffer 
 yourselves to be defrauded ? " 3 Even though this law was not 
 always observed among the old Christians, it was undoubtedly 
 recognized as binding ; they felt the same dread of the law- 
 suit as a means of defending their individual rights as of 
 the sword. 4 
 
 In this respect, too, the difference between modern and 
 primitive Christianity is apparent enough. We regard it as 
 the most natural thing in the world to go to law for our 
 rights, or to turn over to the judge for punishment a man 
 who has damaged our body and life, our honor and property. 
 I am not saying that this is right or wrong ; all I mean to 
 imply is that in doing these things we are undoubtedly acting 
 contrary to the spirit of primitive Christianity. 
 
 6. This determined the attitude of the Christian towards 
 
 1 Matt., v., 38-41. 2 Verse 25. 8 1 Cor., vi., 7. 
 
 4 It must be confessed, however, that a passage in the Gospel {Matt., xviii., 
 15-17) inclines to a more positive treatment of this side of life : " Moreover, if 
 thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee 
 and him alone : if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he 
 will not hear thee, then take with thee ,one or two more, that in the mouth of 
 two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect 
 to hear them, tell it unto the church ; but if he neglect to hear the church, let 
 him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican/' However, not a single 
 word is said of the law-suit and the law. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 73 
 
 fche state. The Greek and Roman regarded participation in 
 the affairs of state as the highest and most important duty of 
 man. The primitive Christian, who did not value the fund- 
 amental political virtues, courage and the sense of justice, 
 looked upon the state as something alien to himself and the 
 inner principle of his life : in the state men wrangle over the 
 things of this world, employing the means of this world ; war 
 and courts of justice are its two fundamental functions. The 
 primitive Christian's attitude to this entire institution was one 
 of forbearance. He formed a part of it, as he formed a part 
 of the world in general, as a stranger and a pilgrim ; he had 
 even less interest in it than the member of another state. — 
 As a passive citizen, however, his conduct was exemplary : 
 he was obedient in all things which were not contrary to his 
 divine mission ; he willingly paid taxes ; he obeyed all laws 
 which prohibited wrong-doing, not only on account of the 
 punishment, but for conscience' sake, and in so far as the 
 magistracy realized justice, it was recognized as the order and 
 instrument of God. When, however, he was asked to act in vio- 
 lation of his conscience, then, of course, he could not obey ; he 
 would not sacrifice to the gods or to the Emperor, nor swear 
 in their name ; he thereby declared that there was something 
 higher for him than the state, namely the kingdom of God, of 
 which he considered himself a citizen, and he would allow no 
 command of earthly rulers to turn him aside from the duties 
 which this citizenship imposed upon him. But here, too, 
 he rendered obedience in so far as he accepted the punishment 
 which was inflicted upon him, without opposition and complaint. 
 — Hence the Christians were both submissive to authority and 
 yet inwardly free in their attitude to the state, something which 
 the ancient citizen neither could be nor cared to be. — Can a 
 Christian be an officer of the state ? In the earlier times there 
 was little occasion for discussing the question : it was not the 
 powerful and the noble after the flesh who first came to the 
 community of Christ, but the ignoble and the despised in the 
 
74 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 eyes of the world. It would undoubtedly have been regarded 
 as a strange contradiction to serve both the crucified one and 
 the lord of this world. In Tertullian the spirit of primitive 
 Christianity strongly protests against the gradual seculariza- 
 tion of the church. " By despising the power and the glory 
 of this world," he declares, 1 " the Lord rejected it and 
 condemned it, and reckoned it among the things which are 
 the pride of the devil. If they were his, he would not have 
 condemned them ; but that which is not of God can belong to 
 no one but the devil. And this, too, may remind you that all 
 the powers and dignitaries of this world are not only foreign 
 to God, but hostile to him, the fact namely, that they condemn 
 the servants of God to death, but forget the punishments 
 which are intended for criminals." Even as late as the year 
 305 the synod of Elvira decreed : Whoever holds the office 
 of duumvir must stand aloof from the church during his term 
 of office. 2 Not until the conversion of Constantine, when 
 Christianity became a state religion, did a complete change 
 take place : now the officers of the state became the repre- 
 sentatives and the defenders of " Christianity," and the clergy 
 in a sense became state officers. And at present many are 
 perhaps inclined to believe, reversing the words of Paul, 8 that 
 the preservation of Christianity is the especial business of the 
 wise and powerful, the cultured and high-born, and that it 
 would die out if the princes and lords of this world and their 
 servants did not take care of it. 
 
 7. The fourth cardinal virtue, after wisdom, courage, and 
 justice, is, according to the Greek conception, o-ocxfcpocrvvri, or 
 temperance. It is the state of the healthy-minded man, who 
 understands the art of moderate and beautiful enjoyment, and 
 can also do without things when necessary. Greek education 
 endeavored to cultivate this virtue : by means of the gym- 
 
 1 De idol., chap. 18. 
 
 2 Uhlhorn, Die christliche Liebesthatigkeit in der alten Kirche, p. 356. See alsa 
 Gass, Geschichte der christlichen Ethik (1881), i, 92 ff. 
 
 « 1 Cor., i. 26. 
 
THE CHKISTIAN CONCEPTION 75 
 
 nastic and musical arts, the two phases of education, it strove 
 to inculcate in the body and the soul of the young the power of 
 self-control and the faculty of enjoying themselves beautifully. 
 The gymnastic and musical contests formed the climax of 
 national pleasure ; to participate in them, as a competitor for 
 the wreath and as a spectator, was culture (rraiZevcris). 
 
 The attitude of primitive Christianity towards enjoyment 
 was an entirely different one, and hence could not recognize 
 this virtue, or only recognize its negative side, as in the case 
 of justice : the ability to resist the allurements of pleasure. 
 The Christian fled from earthly-sensuous pleasure in every 
 form; even though it might not be sinful in itself, it was 
 too apt to endanger the soul, by fettering it to that which 
 is earthly and perishable, and impeding the free flight of the 
 spirit to eternity. With fearful earnestness Jesus commands 
 us to pluck out and cast from us every member that offends 
 us : for it is better to enter into glory lame and disfigured 
 and without eyes, " than that thy whole body should be cast 
 into hell." " Love not the world, neither the things that are 
 in the world. If any man love the world the love of the Father 
 is noo in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the 
 flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of 
 the Father, but is of the world." So the Apostle John ad- 
 monishes the Christians in his first letter, debarring not 
 merely coarse sensuous pleasure, but also aesthetical pleasure 
 (the lust of the eyes) and everything that makes this life 
 glorious and grand (aXa^oveia tov fiiov) in the eyes of the 
 children of this world. So, too, the first letter of Peter 1 
 beseeches the brethren : as strangers and pilgrims to abstain 
 from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul. And Paul does 
 not weary of admonishing those who are of Christ to crucify 
 the flesh. Nowhere, however, are we exhorted to make the 
 body and the soul capable of enjoying the beautiful pleasures 
 of life, or to train the physical and spiritual powers for par* 
 
 1 ii., 11. 
 
76 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 ticipation in gymnastic exercises and games, or in the cheerful 
 play of poetry and art. The education of a Christian has an 
 entirely different object in view from the education of the 
 Greek : it must open our eyes to the vanity and transitoriness 
 of this life, and to its awful seriousness, inasmuch as the 
 eternal life depends upon how we live here. Musical and 
 gymnastic arts, however, are not suited to prepare us for 
 eternal life ; they are sown in the flesh and are raised in cor- 
 ruption. How can a Christian who aspires to the imperish- 
 able crown strive after the virtues by which wreaths are 
 won at heathen games ? Who can find pleasure in the fables 
 of the poets, when he can hear the words of the Lord and 
 the apostles ? How can he strive for " culture " who is 
 struggling for " holiness " ? All this is so self-evident that 
 it does not even have to be mentioned : in a true Christian 
 even the desire for such things is inconceivable. 
 
 Among the Christians it is not culture and eloquence that 
 are prized, but silence. Silence is the first duty recommended 
 by Ambrosius in his work on the duties of the clergy i 1 "It is 
 written : By thy words thou shalt be condemned. Hence why 
 wilt thou rush into the danger of perdition by speaking, when 
 thou mayst be safe by keeping silence ? I have seen many fall 
 into sin by speaking, but hardly a single one by keeping 
 silence. Hence he is wise who can be silent." And soon after 
 he says : 2 " There may be decent and amiable jests, but they 
 are not compatible with the rules of the church ; how can 
 we make use of that which does not appear in the Scriptures. 
 We must also avoid the fables of the poets, lest they weaken 
 the firmness of our resolutions. Woe unto you that laugh 
 now, for ye shall mourn and weep : so says the Lord ; and 
 shall we seek for matter to laugh at here that we may weep 
 hereafter ? I believe we must not only avoid wanton jests, 
 but all jests ; one thing alone is proper : a mouth full of 
 sweetness and grace." 
 
 1 De off. ministrorum, I., 2. 2 I., 28. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 77 
 
 8. This also determines the attitude of Christianity to 
 earthly goods. Since wealth is, first of all, a means to sen- 
 suous good living, and secondly, to beautiful enjoyment and 
 culture, he who does not value these things, cannot approve 
 of the means which make them possible. Riches have no 
 value for the Christian ; he has enough when he possesses 
 what suffices to satisfy his daily needs. But riches are not 
 only worthless, they are dangerous. There is, of course, 
 nothing sinful in possession as such, in itself it is abso- 
 lutely indifferent; but wealth is a serious menace to the 
 owner, in so far as it constantly tempts him to use it, and thus 
 enslaves the soul. Nothing recurs so frequently in the Gospels 
 as the warning against the dangers of riches. It seems 
 almost impossible to Jesus that a rich man should enter into 
 the kingdom of God ; it is easier for a camel to go through 
 the eye of a needle. Wealth makes us eager for this world 
 and careless of the hereafter, as the rich man learned when 
 he reaped a good harvest and soon began to meditate what 
 to do and where to bestow his fruits ; wealth sates us and 
 makes us indifferent to the wants of our neighbors, as 
 Dives learned before whose door poor Lazarus lay ; wealth 
 alienates God from us, for he allows no other God beside 
 himself: ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore, 
 Jesus commanded his disciples that they should take noth- 
 ing for their journey : no scrip, no bread, no money in their 
 purse, when he sent them out to preach ; and it surely was 
 not an accident that Judas, who carried the purse, most likely 
 because he was the ablest financier of the twelve, should have 
 turned traitor. Hence the urgent entreaty to the good young 
 man to give up his riches : " Go thy way, sell whatever thou 
 hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in 
 heaven." 
 
 Interpreters of the Gospel are in the habit of protesting 
 against the misconception that Christ actually commanded 
 the young man to give up his riches. Clement of Alexandria 
 
78 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 earlj r pointed out, in his discussion of the question, What Rich 
 Man will be Saved ? that the command to sell everything 
 and give to the poor, did not mean, as some hastily assume, 
 that he should abandon his possessions, but merely his false 
 opinions with respect to them, his love and greed for them. 
 This ingenious discovery has been made over and over again. 
 According to the same art of interpretation, we might reason : 
 When a mother tells her child who has taken hold of a sharp 
 knife, to lay the knife aside, this does not mean that he should 
 put it down, but only that he should not cut himself with it ; 
 that he may keep the knife. — Would the young man have 
 gone away grieved if Jesus himself had thus interpreted his 
 saying for him ? I believe he would at once have replied : 
 " This have I observed from my youth." 
 
 Here, again, I am not deciding whether the command of 
 Jesus ought to be obeyed, or whether it could possibly be 
 obeyed universally ; I am simply defending its true and un- 
 mistakable meaning against all sorts of interpretations which 
 attempt to bring the Gospel into harmony with the world. 
 We hear it said that the fulfilment of this law would destroy 
 oiir entire civilized life. It is very probable that it would. 
 But what does that prove ? Where is it written that it 
 should be preserved ? Tertullian answers the objection of 
 those who refused to obey the law against the pursuit 
 of handicrafts or trades relating to heathen worship, on the 
 ground that they must live, by asking the question: Must 
 you live ? What companionship have you with God, if you 
 desire to live according to your own laws ? You will suffer 
 want ? But the Lord calls those that suffer blessed. You 
 cannot support yourselves ? But the Lord says : Take no 
 thought for your life ; consider the lilies of the field. 
 
 9. Let us now compare the Greek with the Christian view 
 of honor. According to the Greek conception, the love of 
 honor is a virtue : the just man desires to be the first in his 
 sphere (7rp<oT€veiv), and to be esteemed as such. Noble pride, 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 79 
 
 high-mindedness (fieyaXo'^rv'^la), is the intensification of the 
 proper love of honor. The high-minded man regards himself 
 as worthy of high things, and is worthy of them : so Aristotle 
 defines him, completing the picture with many delicate 
 touches. 1 
 
 The virtue of the Christian is humility. Once, when a 
 quarrel arose among the disciples about the highest places in 
 the new kingdom, Jesus rebuked them : " Ye know that those 
 which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lord- 
 ship over them : and their great ones exercise authority upon 
 them. But so shall it not be among you : but whosoever will 
 be great among you, shall be your minister : and whosoever of 
 you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all." 2 That is the 
 order in the kingdom of heaven, the direct opposite of the 
 order in the earthly kingdoms. — And it is perfectly self-evi- 
 dent that the Christian neither seeks for nor obtains the glo- 
 ries of this world. Before the world he is nothing ; disgrace 
 and ridicule are his glory, as Jesus declares to his disciples. 
 And he calls them blessed for it : " Blessed are ye when men 
 shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of 
 evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding 
 glad : for great is your reward in heaven : for so persecuted 
 they the prophets which were before you." 8 And the Gospel of 
 St. Luke, which is still more emphatic in its opposition to the 
 world, adds : " Woe unto you when all men shall speak well 
 of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets." 4 
 
 This humility does not exclude, but rather has as its ob- 
 verse, a harsh pride, the pride which scorns and despises the 
 world and everything that is in it and is esteemed by it. 
 Humble before God and the weak and lowly, but proud 
 towards those who think well of themselves and bask in the 
 light of their glory : that too is a fundamental characteristic of 
 the Christian. Both John the Baptist and Christ exhibit thii 
 
 » Nie. Ethics, IV., 7 ff. « Matt., v., 11, 12. 
 
 • Mark, x., 35 ff. * y \^ 2 6. 
 
SO ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 honest, fearless, nay, defiant pride towards the great and the 
 respectable, the Sadducees and Pharisees, the high-priest and 
 the Roman governor. And we also occasionally find this 
 pride in later disciples of Jesus, who have turned their backs 
 upon the world and now frankly tell it that they neither 
 desire nor esteem its glory and its honor, its virtue and its 
 grandeur; for which the world, as is to be expected, pays 
 them back in hatred and disgrace. 
 
 So long as Christianity retained its original relation to the 
 world, to be disgraced in the eyes of the world was the mark 
 of a Christian ; whenever the church made her peace with 
 the world, and sects began to separate from her, in order to 
 live after the primitive Christian fashion, men again began to 
 regard it as a necessary test of true Christianity to suffer 
 disgrace in the name of Christ. A. H. Francke tells us in his 
 autobiography that when he was a diligent and respectable 
 studiosus theologice, intending to become a very elegant and 
 learned man, " the world was well pleased with him. I 
 loved the world, and the world loved me. I was entirely free 
 from persecution then." After his conversion, however, 
 he tells us, things changed ; then, for the first time, he dis- 
 covered what the world was, and in what it differed from the 
 children of God, for soon it began to despise and to hate 
 him. 
 
 It is, therefore, true that all Greek virtues are, in the light 
 of Christianity, splendid vices; they are all rooted in the 
 natural man's impulse of self-preservation, in the impulse of 
 knowledge, in the impulse of revenge, in the desire for culture, 
 in the love of honor; they represent the perfection of his 
 nature in perfect civilization. It is true that nothing less 
 than the death of the old and the birth of a new man is neces- 
 sary to transform a Greek into a Christian. Nothing that 
 was prized among the Greeks was prized by the Christians, 
 and conversely, nothing that was prized by the latter wap 
 prized by the former. It is true that the virtues of the Greek 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 81 
 
 are an impediment to regeneration : the publicans and sinners, 
 those who have failed with their natural strength and virtue, 
 and now look back upon a wrecked life, are far more apt to 
 suffer a great and radical change of heart than the just. 
 Through sin and suffering leads the path to conversion. 
 
 10. For the natural virtues of the Greeks, Christianity 
 substitutes a single new one : pity or mercy. To love your 
 neighbors, to take pity upon their misery, to feed the hungry, to 
 give drink to the thirsty, to visit the outcast, nay, not even to 
 resist the evil, to forgive and to do good unto those that hate 
 you and persecute you, — that is the ideal which Jesus places 
 before his disciples, and lives out himself. By this pity we 
 are not to understand weak-hearted dolefulness, nor by the 
 love of enemy, tender-hearted compliance. The obverse of 
 these virtues is a passionate anger against those who cause 
 such misery, or at least harden their hearts against it, against 
 the unjust and selfish lords who devour the substance of the 
 widows and orphans, against those well-fed and self-righteous 
 respectable persons, who see the wretchedness of the people 
 and complaisantly say : It is their own fault ; why are they 
 not virtuous like us, for then they would prosper as we do. 
 Compassionate love is the great virtue which Jesus preaches, 
 and self-righteous hardness of heart the great vice upon which 
 he pronounces harsh judgments. For all he has a word of 
 pity and love, the lost sons and daughters of his people he 
 takes to his heart, the woman who has sinned much he raises 
 up, the thief on the cross who confesses his sins he promises 
 to meet in paradise : only for the virtuous and self-righteous 
 Pharisee who is not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, 
 adulterers, or even as this publican, he has harsh words ; only 
 for the servant who cannot forgive his fellow-servant he has 
 no forgiveness. 
 
 Now, the Greeks are as unfamiliar with the vice of self- 
 righteousness as with the virtue of pity. 
 
 As the normal condition of the feeling of self-esteem the 
 
82 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Greek regards the consciousness of individual power and ex* 
 cellence ; it is the necessary accompaniment of the thing 
 itself. His morality warns him against arrogance ({//3/3t<?), 
 which makes a man despised before gods and men, but it warns 
 him no less against the opposite, lowliness of mind {raTreivo- 
 fypovelv). The Greek is proud of his virtues, he has acquired 
 them himself, they are the fruits of hard labor. " In one re- 
 spect," says Seneca, 1 " the wise man excels God ; the latter 
 owes it to his nature that he fears nothing, the wise man owes 
 it to himself." "I die without remorse," said the dying 
 Julian, " as I have lived without sin." — On the other hand, 
 lowliness of mind (Taireivofypovelv) is the beginning of Chris- 
 tianity. Conversion begins with remorse and penitence, and 
 the feeling of powerlessness and sinfulness is one of the funda- 
 mental moods of the Christian ; he prays every day with the 
 publican : God have mercy upon me a sinner. A remarkable 
 statement by the Princess A. von Galitzin expresses this 
 mood in a somewhat morbid form, and at the same time be- 
 trays the curious logic peculiar to Christian humility : " An 
 important element of Hamann's spirit and teachings has clung 
 to me, the conviction, namely, that the desire for a good con- 
 science would be a very dangerous leaven in me, and that one 
 of the chief features of faith must be that I suffer the thought 
 of my nothingness and completely trust in God's mercy. I 
 plainly saw that the feeling of complacency aroused by my dis- 
 satisfaction with my own imperfection and weakness, would be 
 the most concealed and dangerous hiding-place of my pride." 2 
 Just as self-righteousness is not one of the vices of the 
 Greek, pity is not one of his virtues. In the list in which 
 Aristotle enumerates 3 the qualities esteemed as virtues by 
 the Greeks, mercy finds no place. In its stead we discover a 
 kind of heathen counterpart to it : liberality (eXevOepior-qs), 
 
 1 Epist., 53. 
 
 2 Correspondence and Diary of Vie Princes* Galitzin, new series, 1876, p. 359. 
 8 Book IV., Nieomachean Ethics. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 83 
 
 and the intensified form of the latter, magnificence (fieyaXo- 
 irpeTreia), He is liberal, according to Aristotle's version, who 
 gives from a noble motive and in a right spirit, who gives the 
 right amount, and to the right persons at the right time, and 
 satisfies all the other conditions of right giving ; 1 he is mag- 
 nificent who spends large sums of money with good taste, 
 for example, upon votive offerings to the Gods, or " upon the 
 favorite objects of patriotic rivalry, as when people consider 
 it their duty to supply a chorus or fit out a trireme or even to 
 give a public dinner in handsome style." 2 But here the im- 
 portant person is not the recipient of the gift, but the giver, 
 the object is not to alleviate suffering, but to glorify the name 
 of the benefactor. Not a single word, throughout Aristotle's 
 long discussion, is said of the neediness of the recipient; 
 compassion plays no part as a motive. The climax of mag- 
 nificence and munificence was reached in Rome ; from the 
 booty stolen from all the nations of the earth the Roman 
 lords gave to the populace of the metropolis money and bread, 
 theatres and baths. It is obvious that this virtue has noth- 
 ing in common with Christian pity. The fundamental char- 
 acteristic of Christian charity is self-denial, while liberality 
 is a form of self-enjoyment. Pity contemplates the want of 
 others, and makes sacrifices to help them, liberality has for 
 its object the glorification of the giver. Pity is practised in 
 secret; publicity is peculiar to liberality. Pity is bestowed 
 upon the stranger, who is nothing to you in the order of 
 nature ; liberality, on the other hand, upon relatives, clients, 
 and fellow-citizens. 
 
 Christian charity does not spring from the natural impulse 
 to enjoy one's own superiority by giving help, nor is it rooted 
 in the natural impulses of sympathy which grow out of gen- 
 eric life and unite man with his neighbor. The story of 
 the good Samaritan shows this phase. It is the answer 
 to the question: And who is my neighbor, whom I shall 
 1 Book IV., chap. 2 ft. * Chapter! 4 and 5. 
 
84 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 love? The natural man answers: My family, my children, 
 my parents, my wife, my relatives, the members of my house- 
 hold, my neighbors, fellow-countrymen, and co-religionists. 
 That must have been the opinion of the scribe also. Jesus 
 enlightens him : Not these, but the very first man whom you 
 happen to meet, and who is in want. For this is evidently 
 the meaning of the somewhat perverted ending of our account. 
 The commentary to it may be found in the verses which 
 substitute the commandment of brotherly love for the com- 
 mandment of Moses, in the Gospel of Matthew. 1 Moses has 
 commanded you to love your neighbors and hate your enemies. 
 But what would there be so remarkable in that ? Do not even 
 the publicans the same ? And if ye salute your brethren only, 
 what do ye more than others ? Do not even the heathen the 
 same ? Be ye therefore perfect as your Father which is in 
 heaven is perfect. He makes no distinctions in his benefi- 
 cence, hence you should not do it either, unless it be, perhaps, 
 to give strangers preference over your friends : " When thou 
 makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy 
 brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbors ; lest 
 also they bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. 
 But when thou makest a feast call the poor, the maimed, the 
 lame, the blind, and thou shalt be blessed." 2 The highest, 
 however, is to do good even to your enemies ; to suffer evil 
 for the sake of the good, and not to bear malice : that is per- 
 fection. Savonarola once summed up Christianity in the 
 sentence : " My son, to be good means to do good and to 
 suffer evil, and not to weary of it to the end." 
 
 11. We may now consider the attitude of Christianity to 
 family life. The family is the beginning of all natural charity 
 or love of neighbor. Christianity, which never aims at the 
 development of natural impulses, cannot, as might at first be 
 supposed from the estimate it places on love, regard the 
 family as a thing of absolute worth. For it the community 
 
 1 v., 43. 2 Luke, xiv., 12. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 85 
 
 of the flesh is far inferior to the community of the spirit. 
 Jesus left his family and gathered around him a new family, 
 one not united by the ties of blood, but by spiritual ties ; which 
 caused at least a temporary estrangement from his blood- 
 relatives. He demands that those who follow him likewise 
 sever their natural ties, wherever occasion may demand : " If 
 any man come to me and hate not his father, and mother, and 
 wife and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea and his own 
 life also, he cannot be my disciple." * He knows that his 
 preaching will break natural bonds : " For from henceforth 
 there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, 
 and two against three. The father shall be divided against 
 the son, and the son against the father ; the mother against 
 the daughter and the daughter against the mother; the 
 mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and the daughter- 
 in-law against her mother-in-law." 2 Natural ties lose their 
 importance for those who no longer live in the flesh. 
 
 The ability to sever them altogether has always been 
 regarded by the followers of Christ as a criterion of perfec- 
 tion. The saints are often openly praised because the ties 
 of blood have no power over them. In Hartpole Lecky's 
 History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne* 
 we find a number of passages from the literature of the 
 saints, which show, by way of example, the meritoriousness 
 of absolute indifference to blood-relationship. Let me quote 
 one of the examples. In Cassian's work, Be coenobiorum 
 institutis* we read the following story. A man named 
 Mutius, accompanied by his only child, a little boy eight 
 years old, abandoned his possessions and demanded admis- 
 sion into a monastery. The monks received him, but they 
 proceeded to discipline his heart. " He had already forgotten 
 that he was rich ; he must next be taught to forget that he was 
 a father." His little child was separated from him, clothed in 
 
 1 Luke, xiv., 26 ; somewhat weakened in Matt , x., 34. 
 
 8 Luke, xii., 52 ff. » Vol. II. « IV., *7. 
 
86 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 dirty rags, subjected to every form of gross and wanton hard* 
 ship, spurned, and ill treated. Day after day the father was 
 compelled to look upon his boy wasting away with sorrow, 
 his once happy countenance forever stained with tears, dis- 
 torted by sobs of anguish. But " such was his love for Christ, 
 and for the virtue of obedience, that the father's heart was 
 rigid and unmoved. He thought little of the tears of his 
 child. He was anxious only for his own humility and per- 
 fection in virtue." At last the abbot told him to take his 
 child and throw it into the river. He proceeded without a 
 murmur or apparent pang, to obey, and it was only at the 
 last moment that the monks interposed, and on the very 
 brink of the river saved the child. 
 
 The story may have been invented in imitation of the 
 sacrifice of Isaac; but the admiration which the narrator 
 expresses is not an invention. This conduct is, doubtless, 
 not in accord with the views of Jesus. We must confess, 
 however, that it may be deduced as an extreme consequence 
 from certain passages in the Gospels. To the question of 
 Peter : " Behold we have forsaken all and followed thee ; 
 what shall we have therefore ? " Jesus answers not rebuk- 
 ingly, but with the promise that they shall be nearest to 
 him in his glory ; " and every one that has forsaken houses, 
 or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or 
 children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive a hun- 
 dredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life." 1 
 
 Such a mode of thought is, of course, not conducive to the 
 formation of family ties. Jesus himself remained unmarried, 
 and suggests that others, too, may dispense with marriage for 
 the kingdom of heaven's sake. 2 
 
 Although the Apostle Paul thinks highly enough of the 
 institution of true marriage to refer to it in illustration of 
 Christ's relation to the church, he nevertheless shows a de- 
 cided preference for unmarried life. The church at Corinth 
 
 1 Matt., xix., 27 fl. * Matt., xix., 12. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 87 
 
 had asked him some questions concerning marriage. In his 
 answer 1 he lays special emphasis upon the following sentence 
 by placing it at the beginning : " It is good for a man (jcaXov) 
 not to touch a woman." Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, 
 let every man have his own wife and let every woman have 
 her own husband. " I say therefore to the unmarried and 
 the widows : It is good for them, if they abide even as I." 
 " He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to 
 the Lord, how he may please the Lord ; but he that is mar- 
 ried careth for the things that are of the world, how he may 
 please his wife." This, of course, is not a commandment; 
 and those who " cannot contain, let them marry." Similarly, 
 in the Apocalypse 2 virginity is regarded as a merit, which 
 will also be recognized in the new kingdom. Therefore, 
 marriage is permitted on account of the weakness of the 
 flesh, but it is nowhere looked upon as a phase of life essential 
 to the perfection of human nature. And this thought runs 
 through the entire Patristic literature : virginity, the freedom 
 from the bondage of sensuality, constitutes a fundamental 
 part of perfection. 
 
 12. The starting-point of this radical change is the certainty 
 that our earthly life is not the true life. The ancient Greeks 
 knew of no other life than this, everything good and beautiful 
 and great known to them was contained in it ; the life of the 
 dead, which formed the subject of doubtful fables, had for 
 them a shadowy existence. And this earthly life is good and 
 worth living for him who knows how to live it well : it offers 
 everything that a healthy mind can desire. — The ancient 
 Christians are absolutely convinced that this temporal life is 
 perishable and vain and worthless. Upon our earth the real life 
 and the real goods are not to be found ; only the world to come 
 (o alwv ixeWoiv) will bring them to light. To this future world, 
 which the apostolic times believed was about to be established 
 by the return of the Lord, belonged the Christians; in the 
 
 1 I Cor* Yii. * xir., 4. 
 
88 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 earthly world they are strangers and pilgrims. A traveller 
 does not take any active interest in the affairs of a foreign 
 country, but bears them as best he can. So the Christians 
 behave with respect to this world. They are in the world in 
 the flesh only, and their spirit is not at home in it ; they live 
 in the world, but their hearts are in heaven ; they do the 
 work which living in the world imposes upon them, but they 
 have no interest in it. Pleasure and desire are the bonds 
 with which the world strives to fetter their hearts ; therefore 
 the Christians constantly crucify the flesh with its lusts and 
 desires ; the natural man loves pleasure, and flies from pain 
 as from something evil ; the Christian, on the other hand, 
 looks upon pain as wholesome and upon pleasure as dangerous 
 — pleasure is the bait with which the devil ensnares the soul 
 in order to chain it to the world. To be dead to the pleasures 
 and the pains of the earth is the mark of perfection. 
 
 But it would be a complete misrepresentation of the Chris- 
 tian mood to conclude that its chief characteristics are dis- 
 content and gloom. Nay, the fundamental feeling is rather 
 one of deep tranquil peace, in which are mingled notes of 
 sorrow for the vanity and nothingness of the world, notes 
 of " divine sadness," but which also contains cheerful strains 
 of heavenly joy and hope. World-sorrow and pessimism 
 vanish as soon as earthly things cease to excite and to alarm 
 the heart with fear and hope, pleasure and disappoint- 
 ment. Hence Christianity is not essentially negative, like 
 pessimism, but positive : the eternal life which is to come and 
 is close at hand overshadows the temporal life. The carnal 
 man's natural impulse of self-preservation gives way to the 
 supernatural impulse of self-preservation of the spiritual man, 
 in accordance with the words of Jesus : " Whosoever shall seek 
 to save his life shall lose it ; and whosoever shall lose his life 
 shall preserve it ; " 1 or " He that loveth his life shall lose it ; 
 and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life 
 
 1 Luke, xrii.. 33. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 89 
 
 eternal. " 1 But the transmundane eternal life influences our 
 earthly life : it creates a new will, which strives after holi- 
 ness and perfection, as the Father in heaven is perfect ; it 
 creates a new feeling of self-reliance : the feeling that we are 
 children of God ; it creates a new form of human intercourse : 
 the community united in brotherly love ; lastly, it creates 
 a new relation to the earth and its goods : the Christian is 
 the master of all things, capable of enjoying all innocent 
 pleasures, and yet firmly attached to none. Paul often aptly 
 describes this paradox in the life of the Christian : " As sor- 
 rowful, yet always rejoicing ; as poor, yet making many rich ; 
 as having nothing, and yet possessing all things." 2 
 
 13. Many will fail to recognize in the above exposition of 
 Christianity and its conception of life, the picture which they 
 may have formed of it. Many believe that Christianity and 
 Greek humanity are, if not absolutely identical, at least 
 closely akin to each other. It is not unusual, even in our day, 
 to find Jesus described as an amiable, cheerful, and mild 
 moral teacher, who made it the object of his life to remove all 
 hatred and enmity from the world, and to establish a king- 
 dom of peace and love. He was himself capable of enjoying 
 everything beautiful and good, and therefore did not begrudge 
 his disciples any pure pleasure which life offered. Hase so 
 portrays him in his Life of Christ : Jesus naively enjoyed the 
 goods of this world, although he did not burden himself with 
 their possession, on account of his higher mission. Like a 
 bridegroom he lived among his disciples ; he did not even 
 abstain from indulging in a social cup of wine : in short, " never 
 was a religious hero less opposed to the pleasures of life." 3 
 That he did not take a wife must have been due to accidental 
 causes : " let us assume, say, that his affianced died. Or, 
 this, too, may be conjectured: that he from whose religion 
 the ideal conception of marriage, foreign to antiquity, was 
 
 * John, xii., 25. * 2 Cor., vi., 10. * § 5S. 
 
§0 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 derived, found no one in his times whose heart was worthy 
 of such a union." 1 He speaks of the " true humanitarian 
 spirit " which Jesus showed with respect to ascetic rules, and 
 finds that the peculiar culture of Jesus consists "in his 
 religious perfection, the flower of all purely human striving.' , 2 
 Similarly, Keim, in his History of Jesus : 3 No religious re- 
 former ever took such loving interest in all the forms of 
 earthly life as he did, no one lived so " like a man of the 
 world ;" 4 in another place he even speaks of a " comfortable, 
 easy-going congeniality " (behagliche stillsitzende G-emuthlich- 
 keif) which the character of Jesus encouraged. 6 In the con- 
 flict with the Pharisees concerning the Sabbath he comes out 
 victorious, " because he modestly and overwhelmingly unfolds 
 the banner of humanity.' ' 6 
 
 It is undoubtedly true that the writings of the New Testa- 
 ment transmit features of the life of Jesus and sayings from 
 his teachings, which may be utilized for such a picture. 
 Whether they indicate different stages of development in 
 the life of Jesus itself, as Renan, for example, assumes, or 
 whether his teachings and the conception we have of him 
 have been distorted by tradition, say by Ebionitic inter- 
 
 1 §45. 
 
 2 §29. 
 
 8 3d ed., 1875. [Engl, translation by Ransom and Geldart, 1876.] 
 
 * P. 165. 6 P- 145. 
 
 6 P. 199. David Strauss does not go so far in his Life of Jesus [tr. by George 
 Eliot] in misrepresenting the essence of Christianity. But he, too, speaks of the 
 " humane love of Jesus," of " the cheerful soul at peace with God, and embracing 
 all men as brothers," and calls this " cheerful, vigorous element, this acting from 
 the pleasure and joyf ulness of a beautiful soul, the Hellenic element in Jesus." To 
 be sure, he also emphasizes the fact that there are essential " defects in the human- 
 ity " of Jesus : family, state, acquisition, art, and beautiful enjoyment do not fall 
 within its scope. But this one-sidedness, he says, is partly due to the Jewish 
 nationality, partly to the conditions of the times ; besides, it can easily be remedied 
 by different temporal, political, and educational conditions, and remedied in 
 the best way only after we have come to understand the work of Jesus as a 
 human achievement, hence as capable and in need of further development (Life 
 of Jesus, 4th ed., I. 262, II. 388). In his last work (The Old and the New Faith, 
 § 24, tr. by M. Blind), Strauss, influenced by Schopenhauer, seems to draw the 
 lines more sharply between Christianity and the world. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 91 
 
 pretations, as Hase believes, or by the opposite, which would 
 be more in line with the natural man's inclinations, — indeed, 
 during his lifetime his disciples could not free themselves 
 from the notion that he was to set up a worldly kingdom 
 invested with all the power and glory of such a kingdom, — 
 upon this point I do not venture to express an opinion. I 
 share Strauss's view that it is a hopeless undertaking to write 
 a true history of the life and development of Jesus, on the 
 basis of the sources at our command ; and there also seem 
 to me to be insurmountable difficulties in the way of a sys- 
 tematic exposition of the teachings contained in his sermons. 
 Disconnected sayings and parables are handed down to us, 
 which cannot be comprehended into a unified philosophical 
 system ; which, of course, does not diminish their value ; 
 on the contrary, the Gospels owe their wonderful power to 
 the fact that they do not form a theological or philosophical 
 system. Systems pass away, concepts are tools with which 
 an age apprehends and fashions things; and in a certain 
 sense every age must produce its own tools, in order that it 
 may manipulate them satisfactorily. The great poems, on 
 the other hand, are eternal, like their content, human life 
 itself. There is no condition in life, and no mood which will 
 not find in the Scriptures, in the Old and New Testaments, 
 a story or a saying to express it, from which to draw conso- 
 lation in adversity and inspiration in prosperity. Had these 
 books merely transmitted to us a philosophical system, they 
 would have grown old and perished long ago ; but they por- 
 tray human life as it is, with all its joys and sorrows, and 
 hence they are imperishable. 
 
 But of one thing there is no doubt m my mind, and that 
 is this : The Gospels, as they have come down to us, breathe 
 the spirit of world-denial ( Weltverleugnung) rather than that 
 of earthly joy. In what moods do men most frequently turn 
 to these writings ? In the exultation of victory and rejoicing, 
 or in the sorrow of defeat, in the throes of sickness and death ! 
 
92 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 No one will hesitate for an answer. Hearts bowed down by 
 suffering and oppressed with sin, world-weary and life-weary 
 hearts, — these have invariably sought and found consola- 
 tion and relief in the Gospels. The powerful and victorious, 
 the hopeful and prosperous, are more apt to find their feelings 
 expressed in Greek philosophy and in the Odes of Horace. 
 Nor is there any doubt in my mind that the soul of Jesus, too, 
 was attuned, not to happiness and victory, and life of life, but 
 to death and world-denial. And would it not have been a 
 most remarkable confusion if Christianity had taken as its 
 starting-point the Jesus of Hase ? Hase believes that if Jesus 
 had been a disciple of the Essenes, they would have cursed 
 him as an apostate : " How these gloomy pietists would have 
 shaken their pious heads and rolled their devout eyes at this 
 cheerful and energetic man." But how strange, then, that 
 this man looked upon the Baptist, that powerful figure, so 
 unique in his rugged greatness, as his forerunner, that he pro- 
 duced a Paul, who made such a sharp distinction between the 
 flesh and the spirit, that the apostolic church, leaning as it 
 did towards Ebionitism, the entire primitive church, with its 
 ethical supernaturalism, followed his banner. Was all that a 
 single grand mistake ? It seems strange to me that any one 
 should attempt to correct this living tradition by means of the 
 scanty fragments of the great living tradition, which have 
 been preserved in the Gospels. If the oldest communities, 
 which counted among their number the living witnesses of the 
 life, teachings, and death of Jesus, did not know what these 
 things meant, then it is not probable that we of the nineteenth 
 century shall discover it by historical investigations. 
 
 This inability to understand Christianity is evidently due 
 to the fact that it has not yet become " historic." If it, to- 
 gether with its effects, were a thing of the past, a purely 
 historical investigation would not long remain in doubt as 
 to its fundamental character. But such is not the case ; we 
 are still surrounded, on all sides, if not by primitive Chri* 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 98 
 
 tianity itself, at least by its embodied effects. Our very lan- 
 guage betrays the influence which Christianity has exercised 
 upon it for centuries : no one would be willing to dispense with 
 at least the name of a Christian. This explains the tendency 
 which every man has to interpret Christianity conformably 
 with his ideal of life. It also explains why we discover in 
 the writings of the New Testament the very views of life and 
 the world which we ourselves entertain, with, at most, a few 
 slight changes here and there. For the champion of a con- 
 servative state church the fundamental doctrine of Christianity 
 consists in subjecting oneself to those in power, in respecting 
 the institutions of the state and the church, the family and 
 property. Liberal Protestantism, on the other hand, sees in 
 Jesus the man who preached freedom, who broke the fetters 
 of Jewish orthodoxy, who despised the ascetic ordinances ; 
 hence he was evidently an advocate of the principle of free 
 research, one of the great heroes of civilization, who delivered 
 man from the yoke of superstition and turned him in the 
 direction of progress ; in our times he would have been a 
 liberal professor of theology, or, according to others, a social 
 reformer. 
 
 Est liber hie, in quo quserit sua dogmata quisque; 
 Invenit in illo dogmata quisque sua. 
 
 But, you will say, is it not true that Jesus had a low 
 opinion of ascetic practices ? Did he not, in contrast with 
 the Baptist, absolve his disciples of the duty of following 
 them ? Did he not thereby give such offence to the Pharisees 
 that they called him a glutton and a wine-bibber? — It is 
 true ; although he did not prohibit ascetic practices, but took 
 for granted that his disciples would fast, which they actually 
 did. But why does he not enforce such practices ? Perhaps, 
 because they are a hindrance to the enjoyment of life ? Not 
 at all ; but simply because they do not suffice ; he regards them 
 as a part of those works which the Pharisees of all ages have 
 
94 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 offered to God to take the place of true worship: alms and 
 prayers and tithes of mint and anise and cumin, instead of 
 righteous works of justice and love of neighbor; external 
 abstinence in lieu of the sacrifice of one's entire life. Jesus 
 did not fail to see how prone the human heart is, even the 
 sincere and well-meaning heart, to deceive God and itself 
 in this manner, and hence he took it upon himself to break 
 his disciples of the habit of prizing such things. He de- 
 manded more, he demanded the complete separation of the 
 heart from the world and entire devotion to God. The per- 
 fect man needs no further preparation; he who is imbued 
 with the new spirit no longer needs to practise those little 
 abstinences, he has no use for them ; which, of course, does 
 not mean that they cannot be of service and of benefit to 
 the novice. Paul describes the life of the perfect Christian : 
 " It remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though 
 they had none ; and those that weep as though they wept not ; 
 and they that rejoice as though they rejoiced not ; and they 
 that buy as though they possessed not ; and they that use this 
 world as not abusing it : for the fashion of this world passeth 
 away." 1 Whoever has so thoroughly emancipated himself 
 from the world does not stand in need of such preparation. 
 
 Now, that such a state is not adapted to promote what is 
 called civilization can hardly be doubted : he whose heart is 
 in heaven will not be very apt to make this earthly life rich 
 and beautiful and grand, nor will he on that account have 
 any censure to fear from Jesus. The Gospels nowhere say : 
 Accumulate wealth and save, care for your own and the 
 economic welfare of your family. But they do say : " Take 
 no thought of your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall 
 drink ; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on ; lay not 
 up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust 
 doth corrupt, and thieves break through and steal." We no- 
 where read : Have a care for the development of your natural 
 
 1 1 Cor., vii., 29 ft 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 95 
 
 capacities ; train the body by gymnastic exercises, make it 
 strong and beautiful ; train the intellect and the senses, so 
 that you may appreciate the creations of art and poetry, the 
 products of philosophy and science. But we do read : " If 
 one of thy members offend thee, pluck it out and cast it 
 from thee." We nowhere read : Try to obtain honors, help 
 your friends to achieve fame and position ; but we do read : 
 " Blessed are ye when men shall revile you ! " We nowhere 
 read : Go and take a wife, and rear able citizens for the state ; 
 but we do read : " There be eunuchs which have made them- 
 selves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake." We no- 
 where read : Go and serve the state with thy sword or with 
 thy counsel ; but we do read : " My kingdom is not of this 
 world." We nowhere read : Go and labor for the happiness 
 of the human race ; the word happiness or its equivalent 
 does not even occur in the writings of the New Testament. 
 But we do read : " The world passeth away and the lusts 
 thereof." 
 
 If Jesus really believed that his disciples ought to make 
 themselves useful to the world, not by preaching the transi- 
 toriness of everything earthly and the eternal kingdom, but 
 by taking part in the work which the world itself regards as 
 important and great, then, indeed, it must be confessed, 
 he left nothing undone to be misunderstood. If, on the other 
 hand, it was his purpose to exhort men, by his example and 
 his teachings, to overcome the world, then we have the right 
 to say : His preaching was as intelligible as it was effective. 
 Indeed, no one has hitherto succeeded in wholly obscuring 
 his meaning. Contemtus mundi and amor Christi are the 
 inscriptions upon the two curtains enshrouding the hidden 
 sanctuary in which dwells the community of Christ ; so Amos 
 Comenius describes it in his Labyrinth of the World and 
 Paradise of the Heart. Contemtus mundi alone is not Chris- 
 tianity ; without amor Christi it becomes Schopenhauerian 
 pessimism or Nietzschean tyrant-morality ; nor, on the other 
 
96 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 hand, can there be Christianity without an admixture of con 
 temtus mundi. 
 
 But the man who is unable to glean the meaning of Chris- 
 tianity either from the sermons of Jesus himself or from the 
 interpretations of the apostles, may learn something from 
 the way in which it was received by the world. Had Jesus 
 been such an amiable preacher of human world-wisdom, his 
 contemporaries would most likely not have considered it 
 necessary to nail him to a cross : the amiable, proper, and 
 charming people, who live and let live, who understand the 
 art of combining " religion " with " culture," who incline 
 toward " easy-going congeniality " and enjoy " the pleasures 
 of a social cup," have never been regarded as dangerous, 
 and nailed to crosses. If the Christianity of the early times 
 had been what the interpreters of later ages have now and 
 then made of it, the deadly enmity which it aroused in the 
 world would be absolutely inconceivable. The apostles did 
 not consider it so ; they evidently regarded the treatment they 
 received as perfectly in order. Jesus had prophesied it : " Ye 
 shall be hated of all men for my name's sake." " If ye were 
 of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye 
 are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, 
 therefore the world hateth you." " The time cometh that 
 whosoever killeth you will think that he doth God service." 
 Nothing was prophesied oftener and more distinctly by Jesus, 
 and none of his prophecies was ever more accurately fulfilled. 
 — Why this hatred ? Because the Christians despised what 
 the world conceived to be the highest good. There was no 
 better reason for hating any one; He that did not look 
 upon the Emperor and the Empire as the highest good, did 
 he not deserve to be hated? He that despised culture 
 and science, did he not deserve to be hated? He that de* 
 spised wealth and good living and social recognition, who 
 withdrew from society and amusements, did he not de- 
 serve to be hated ? Was he not really scorning others, if not 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 97 
 
 in words, at least by his mode of life ? He that is not for 
 me is against me. This is the maxim which has always 
 governed the feelings and actions of men. 1 
 
 i There is no better commentary on the Gospels than the life of Savonarola 
 as it is described in the admirable work of the Italian Villari [English transla- 
 tion by L. Villari]. The life of Jesus in the Gospels is like a series of saintly 
 pictures drawn upon a golden background, in which the chief figure stands out 
 in bold relief, but without its background ; the life of Savonarola, on the other 
 hand, resembles a great historical painting with a multicolored background. 
 The fundamental outlines are the same ; the particular features recur with as- 
 tonishing regularity : the preaching of the kingdom of God and the vanity of 
 the world and its pleasures, its power and glory, its civilization and art, at first 
 produces a strange excitement, especially in the hearts of the common people ; 
 they applaud the great preacher and miracle-worker. Then the lords of this 
 world, spiritual and secular, get together and deliberate how to check the 
 scandal which is destroying peace and progress ; they convince themselves that 
 it can only be done by removing the disturber. He is brought to trial amid the 
 applause of all the educated ones, and is finally executed as a false prophet, 
 swindler, and pretended miracle-worker, who cannot save himself, with the 
 curses of the fanatical populace ringing in his ears. — Here again, moreover, we 
 may find the word of Aristotle corroborated, that poetry is more " philosophical " 
 than history. That the Gospels are not historical accounts like those we have of 
 the life of Savonarola or Goethe, no one will doubt who is willing to follow a 
 critical investigation like the one offered by Strauss. They are historical poems 
 born of the faith that the life and death of Jesus are the absolutely important 
 facts of history. To this day they have shown a unique and incomparable power 
 in expressing and propagating this faith. If we had a " scientific " biography of 
 Jesus, one based upon the most thorough research and drawn from the most 
 reliable and copious sources, and written in the most admirable manner, like the 
 above mentioned life of Savonarola, for example, its influence would, as com- 
 pared with that of the Gospels, still be equal to zero. If efficacy ( Wirksamkeit) is 
 the standard of reality ( Wirklichkeit), as the German language seems to imply, 
 then the truth will remain that the Gospels are the greatest " reality " (das Wirk- 
 lichste ) ever made by human hands. — It seems to me this is occasionally forgot- 
 ten by the critics of the Gospels as well as by those who are afraid of criticism 
 — as though the Gospels could be destroyed by it. " For the letter killeth, but 
 the spirit giveth life." 
 
CHAPTER m 
 
 THE CONVERSION OF THE OLD WORLD TO CHRISTIANITY* 
 
 1. Among all the occurrences recorded by history none is 
 more astonishing than the conversion of the old world to 
 Christianity. Never was there a spiritual movement which 
 seemed so lacking in everything calculated to conquer the 
 world, as Christianity. When Jesus died, he left behind a 
 handful of followers, not a great fruit, it seemed, of such a 
 life-work. And these followers were poor, uneducated people, 
 without science, without wealth, without fame, without cour- 
 age, except in suffering, without a single passion except a 
 strange fanatical enthusiasm for a kingdom in a transmundane 
 world. This is the impression which Christianity made upon 
 those who witnessed its birth and early growth. Originating 
 among the most despised of all nations, the Jews, consisting 
 in the worship of a man who had been cast out by this people 
 as an idle dreamer and deceiver, and had died on the cross, it 
 seemed that, weighed down with the contempt and hatred of 
 the cultured, it would, like so many other superstitions of 
 the age, soon sink into an inglorious oblivion. 
 
 In a posthumous work of Th. Keim, Rome and Christian- 
 ity? may be found references from Graeco-Roman litera- 
 ture which describe the feelings "which Christianity aroused 
 among its contemporaries : they are contempt and hatred. 
 " The Christians," so says the philosopher Celsus (under 
 
 1 [Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. I., chap. III. ; Friedlander, Die 
 Sittengeschichte Rom's (translated into French) ; Keim, Rom und das Christen? 
 thum,; Baur (see p. 65), Part I. ; Fisher (see p. 65.) — Tk.] 
 
 * Published by H. Ziegler, 1881, 
 
CHRISTIANIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD 99 
 
 Marcus Aurelius), " purposely and expressly exclude all wise 
 and educated men from their meetings, and, like the quacks 
 having the poorest wares, turn their attention only to the un- 
 cultured rabble. Nay, they do not, as priests usually do, 
 appeal to the pure and sinless, but to the unfortunate and 
 sinful, to the criminals ; as though God did not accept the sin- 
 less, as though he were, like a weak man, influenced by the 
 laments of the wicked, and not by the justice of his judgment. 
 This, however, the Christians merely do because they cannot 
 gain adherents among honest and upright people." a This was 
 the opinion of the philosophers. The masses detested them 
 as atheists, of whom it was believed that they committed the 
 most hideous crimes in their secret gatherings. 2 The states- 
 men, who really did not begin to pay any attention to Chris- 
 tianity until the second century — the persecutions of the 
 first century were outbreaks of temporary moods — regarded 
 it as an obnoxious weed, which the interests of the state and 
 society demanded should be eradicated. Trajan gave his gov- 
 ernors orders to this effect : u The Christians shall not be 
 hounded, but if they are accused and convicted, they shall 
 suffer capital punishment. But if the offender denies Christi- 
 anity and proves it by doing homage to our gods, he shall be 
 pardoned for his past offence." 3 This was, in the main, the 
 attitude of the government during the second century ; we 
 shall have to agree with Keim that a more appropriate method 
 of suppressing Christianity could not have been chosen. By 
 keeping the mean between exemption from punishment and 
 persecution, the state, on the one hand, hindered the introduc- 
 tion of the new religion as the officially allowed or recognized 
 form of worship, and, on the other, deprived it of that attrac- 
 tiveness with which persecution always invests a cause : only 
 the senseless obstinacy which expressly refused, when asked, 
 to show any respect for the gods of the state and people, 
 was punished. For, an age which was in the habit of looking 
 
 1 402. 2 362 ff. * 520. 
 
100 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 upon worship partly as the duty of the subject, partly as the 
 satisfaction of harmless private desires, could not but regard 
 such refusal as " mere obstinacy," as Marcus Aurelius con- 
 temptuously calls the attitude of the Christians. 1 
 
 And yet the incredible happened. Christianity gradually 
 spread until it finally became the ruling religion in the great 
 federation of nations of the Roman Empire. How was it 
 possible for the old world to desert its religion ? How did it 
 come about that the Greeks and the Romans were converted 
 to a religion which despised everything that no Greek and no 
 Roman could despise without repudiating himself: science 
 and philosophy, poetry and art, fatherland and gods ? 
 
 2. Every attempt to understand this process will always 
 find itself driven to conclusions which have often been drawn. 
 The old world had outlived itself ; the principle of its life 
 was dying. The city-state was the form of ancient life, free 
 sovereign citizenship was the bearer of the ancient virtues. 
 The city-states had been ruined, internally and externally; 
 internally, by the splitting-up of the citizens into the two fac- 
 tions of the rich and the poor, which antagonized each other 
 in bloody conflicts ; externally, by their incorporation in 
 the Roman Empire. The entire world was ruled by the 
 Roman court. " Have I not," so Seneca lets the Emperor 
 say in his work On Mercy? with which he flatteringly greeted 
 the youthful Nero upon the latter's accession to the throne, 
 " have I not been chosen from all mortals to govern as the 
 representative of the gods upon earth ? Am I not judge 
 over the life and death of nations ? Do not the fate and 
 the position of every individual rest in my hands ? Does not 
 Fortune proclaim through my mouth what she is willing to 
 bestow upon every one ? Are not our decrees the cause of 
 jubilation among nations and cities ? Can any part of the 
 empire thrive without my will, without my favor ? These 
 many thousand swords which are kept in their scabbards by 
 
 1 Reflections, XI., 3. a fie dementia, I., 2. 
 
CHRISTIANIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD 101 
 
 my decrees of peace, are they not drawn at my beck and 
 command ? Is it not at my behest that nations are exter- 
 minated or transplanted, that freedom is given or taken 
 away, that kings are sentenced to slavery or crowned, that 
 cities are destroyed and built ? " And now when this supra- 
 human power, as often happened, became the sport of f reed- 
 men and courtesans, what an awful abyss of corruption 
 yawned before the Romans and poisoned all nations and 
 princes with its foul odors. 
 
 In such an empire there was no more room for the old 
 virtues. Among the ancient nations all virtues and excel- 
 lences were connected with the state, totally differing from 
 the modern virtues in this respect. The four cardinal virtues, 
 prudence, courage, justice, temperance, are essentially civic 
 virtues. The destruction of the old communities deprived 
 them of the soil upon which they flourished and were prac- 
 tised. In place of courage and justice, subserviency and the 
 arts of flattery, treachery and violence, became the means 
 of acquiring wealth, power, and dignity ; in the imperial 
 period the goodness of a few emperors could not prevent 
 these things, except to a very limited degree and within 
 narrow circles. With the ancient manliness (virtus) and 
 honorableness, the virtue of temperance passed away. Pomp 
 and luxury on the one side, and proletarian wretchedness 
 on the other, took the place of beautiful and moderate 
 enjoyment. 
 
 Friedlander has given us in his History of the Morals of 
 Home 1 an authentic account of the life of the imperial city 
 during the first two centuries. If I can trust my own im- 
 pressions, no one will lay the book aside without a feeling of 
 horror, although it was not written with the intention of 
 producing that effect : with so much wealth and power, so 
 much splendor and greatness, such a terribly empty and 
 desolate life ! The chief purpose of this vast empire seems to 
 
 1 Sittengeschichle Rom's. 
 
102 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 have been to feed and amuse the populace of the metropolis. 
 Rome was not an industrial city, she really had no commerce 
 and manufacture, but only an enormous import : from all parts 
 of the world commodities were brought thither for consump- 
 tion. The distribution of these commodities by shopkeepers 
 constituted one of the most desired sources of revenue of the 
 third estate. The public administration seems to have been 
 essentially an institution for the exploitation of the provinces 
 by the relatives of the families who belonged to good society, 
 the senatorial and equestrian classes. The population of the 
 city was divided into two halves : the ruling families, who 
 drained the provinces, and the masses, who in turn lived as 
 parasites upon these vampires. " All the people whom you see 
 in this city," writes Petronius, " are divided into two parties : 
 they are either angling for something or being angled ; " or, 
 using another figure : " You will behold a city that resembles 
 a field during a pestilence, which contains nothing but corpses, 
 and ravens which are devouring them." 1 The ravens were 
 the swarms of clients, beggars, legacy-hunters, singers, actors, 
 artists, astrologers, parasites of all kinds ; the corpses upon 
 which they fed were the owners of large estates, the large 
 capitalists, who squandered at Rome what their ancestors 
 had made by administering the provinces, or what they 
 had themselves in turn acquired through gifts, legacy -hunt- 
 ing, etc. Every noble house supported, besides its army of 
 slaves, an army of clients, whose sole function consisted 
 in proving by their mere presence the noble rank of the man 
 in whose atrium they appeared early in the morning, and 
 whom they accompanied on his walks. They were rewarded 
 for their services by receiving board or alimony and occasional 
 presents *, niggardly enough, of course, in the opinion of those 
 who received them. 
 
 In addition to this, the masses of the metropolitan popula 
 tion were directly fed by the state, even during the latter 
 
 i Friedlander, L, 371. 
 
CHRISTIANIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD 103 
 
 days of the Republic. According to Uhlhorn, 1 C. Gracchus 
 was the first to have a law enacted, which provided for the 
 sale of wheat to Roman citizens by the state at cost price ; 
 soon after it was distributed gratis. Caesar is said to have 
 found as many as 320,000 receivers of grain in the city, and 
 to have reduced the number to 150,000. Under Augustus 
 it again rose to about 200,000 (for about one and one half 
 millions of inhabitants). They also received gifts of oil, salt, 
 meat, and money ; on all extraordinary occasions, accessions to 
 the throne, anniversaries, testaments, there was always some- 
 thing left over for " the people ; " Uhlhorn estimates the 
 avei'age amount of annual contributions in money at about 
 six million marks. 
 
 The second great object of concern of the governing classes 
 was to amuse the masses. To this end theatres, games in 
 the circus and amphitheatre, baths, etc., were instituted. 
 In these matters, too, the beginning had already been made 
 under the Republic ; the competition for the good will of the 
 voters constantly increased the expenditures for the games 
 which the successful candidates had to arrange. During the 
 Empire, races, gladiatorial contests, and plays, especially the 
 first, took the place of public business. " It is to your 
 advantage, Caesar, that the people occupy themselves with 
 us," a pantomime once called out to Augustus. 2 The splendor 
 and grandeur as well as the number of the games constantly 
 increased under the succeeding emperors. Under Augustus 
 they occupied sixty-six days according to the festival-calen- 
 dar, under Tiberius the number increased to eighty-seven days, 
 not counting the frequent gladiatorial contests ; in the middle 
 of the fourth century it was one hundred and seventy-five 
 days. In addition there were extraordinary games : at the 
 dedication of the Flavian amphitheatre Titus gave a festival 
 lasting one hundred days ; in commemoration of the second 
 
 1 Geschichte der christlichen Liebesthatigkeit in der alten Kirche. pp. 10 ff. 
 
 2 Friedlauder, II., 257. 
 
104 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Dacian victory Trajan gave a festival lasting one hundred 
 and twenty-three days. All the greater performances be- 
 gan at daybreak and lasted till sunset. The number of 
 seats in the three theatres together was 49,590, in the 
 amphitheatre 87,000, in the circus, under Caesar, 150,000, 
 under Vespasian, 250,000, in the fourth century, 385,000. 
 The emperor frequently also provided the spectators with re- 
 freshments. " At a festival, which Domitian gave in the 
 year 88, the number of young, beautiful, and richly attired 
 imperial servants, who waited upon the people in the amphi- 
 theatre was, according to Statius's account, as great as the 
 number of spectators. Some brought costly viands in baskets 
 and white table-cloths, others old wines. Children and 
 women, the populace, the nobles, and the senate, everybody 
 feasted as at a table ; the Emperor himself condescended to 
 take part in the meal, and the poorest man felt happy in the 
 knowledge that he was his guest." 1 
 
 The festival was held in the amphitheatre ; the centre 
 around which the large company gathered was the arena, the 
 great slaughter-house in which criminals, slaves, and finally, 
 above all, prisoners of war from all nations, after first having 
 been trained for the purpose in the gladiatorial schools, killed 
 each other for the delectation of the guests of the emperor. 
 Under Augustus, a total of 10,000 men fought in the eight 
 combats which he arranged ; in the festival lasting four 
 mouths, which Trajan gave after the conquest of Dacia, as 
 many as 10,000 men. Thus the captives of war of all nations 
 had the honor of fighting once more before the lord of the 
 earth and of dying under his very eyes. With the blood of 
 all the nations was mingled in the arena the blood of all the 
 animal species of the earth. In the games of Pompey 
 were seen 17 elephants, 500 to 600 lions, and 410 other 
 African beasts. In the 26 games alone, instituted by 
 Augustus, about 3,500 African animals were hunted and 
 
 * Friedlander, II., 277. 
 
CHRISTIANIZATIOJST OF THE OLD WORLD 105 
 
 slaughtered ; at the dedication of the Flavian amphitheatre- 
 under Titus, about 9,000 tame and wild animals. New 
 and more refined settings were invented : nocturnal combats 
 were added, sea-fights alternated with land-battles, the 
 arena being flooded with water. And around this scene of 
 blood and horror were gathered the emperor and the senators, 
 the people and nobility, men and women, eating and drinking, 
 laughing and courting, shouting and roaring: a scene of 
 horror, a city of horror, the like of which has never been 
 witnessed upon this earth. The history of the morality of 
 Rome is the commentary to the Apocalypse. 
 
 The provinces followed the example of the capital, the 
 governors the example of the emperor. In all the cities we 
 find the same division of society into vampires and parasites. 
 By distributing offices and honors, the municipalities them- 
 selves sponged upon the wealth of the few ; in addition to this, 
 a countless train of clients fastened itself upon the rich house- 
 holds. In all the cities we find gladiatorial contests and 
 animal-hunts : " There was not a single city from Jerusalem 
 to Seville, from England to Northern Africa, in whose arena 
 numerous victims were not slaughtered year after year." 
 The Greek populace alone retained a trace of its former 
 refinement and culture, and only gradually and with difficulty 
 found pleasure in these games ; while the cultured classes in 
 Greece held themselves entirely aloof from them." 1 Nor is it 
 likely that they took greater pleasure in the theatrical perform- 
 ances with which the lords of the world were entertained, 
 the Atellanae and mimes, the pantomimes and ballets. " By 
 the side of the violent excitement furnished by the circus and 
 the arena, the stage could not retain its attraction for the 
 masses except by offering brutal enjoyments and tickling the 
 senses : and so, instead of counteracting the pernicious in- 
 fluence of these other spectacles, it contributed not the least 
 part in corrupting and brutalizing Rome." 2 What an awful 
 
 * Friedlander, II., 380 ff. * II., 391. 
 
106 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 state of debauchery resulted from all this is shown with 
 ohotographic exactness in a description which we have of the 
 life of a little Italian town, dating from the time of Nero : 
 The Feast of Trimalchio by Petronius. 1 The coarseness of 
 taste and feeling displayed by the host and the guests at the 
 table of the freedman of Cumas, who had grown rich by com- 
 mercial speculations, most likely surpasses anything that has 
 ever been witnessed in the circles of the parvenu and the 
 parasite. 
 
 3. It is not strange that a feeling of profound discontent 
 accompanied such a life. Pleasure, according to the well- 
 known Aristotelian dictum, follows efficient action ; a life of 
 idleness and amusement ends in pain and nausea. 
 
 Philosophy is a mirror of the feelings of an age. It is not 
 those addicted to the life we have described who philosophize 
 — I mean seriously philosophize, for, of course, there is a 
 " philosopher " among the parasites of every noble house- 
 hold — but those who endeavor to fly from it and yet cannot 
 emancipate themselves from their times. They feel the utter 
 nothingness and emptiness of their existence ; their philoso- 
 phy is a philosophy of redemption. The vanity of all things 
 which everybody is running after, and the possibility of being 
 delivered by philosophy, that is the fundamental theme of 
 the reflections of Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius : Seek 
 the seclusion of your own soul, do not desire what is not in 
 your power, let the world go its way, and you will be at 
 peace. " Seek not that the things which happen should happen 
 as you wish ; but wish the things which happen to be as they 
 are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life." " When a 
 raven has croaked inauspiciously, let not the appearance 
 hurry you away with it ; but straightway make a distinction 
 in your mind and say, None of these things is signified to 
 me but to my poor body, or to my small property, or to my 
 reputation, or to my children, or to my wife ; but to me all 
 
 1 [English translation by H. T. Peck, New York, 1898.] 
 
CHRISTIANIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD 107 
 
 significations are auspicious if I choose. For whatever of 
 these things results, it is in my power to derive benefit from 
 it." " Remember that in life you ought to behave as at a 
 banquet. Suppose that something is carried around and is 
 opposite to you. Stretch out your hand and take a portion 
 with decency. Suppose that it passes by you. Do not detain 
 it. Suppose that it is not yet come to you. Do not send 
 your desire forward to it, but wait till it is opposite to you. 
 Do so with respect to children, so with respect to a wife, so 
 with respect to magisterial offices, so with respect to wealth, 
 and you will be some time a worthy partner of the banquets 
 of the gods. But if you take none of the things which are 
 set before you, and even despise them, then you will be not 
 only a fellow banqueter with the gods, but also a partner with 
 them in power. For by acting thus Diogenes and Heracleitus 
 and those like them were deservedly divine, and were so 
 called." " Let death and exile and every other thing which 
 appears dreadful be daily before your eyes ; but most of all 
 death, and you will never think of anything mean nor will 
 you think of anything extravagantly." So says Epictetus. 1 
 To suffer and renounce : that is the final aim of wisdom. 
 
 Still more strongly does the feeling of melancholy though 
 calm resignation appear in the Reflections 2 of Marcus Aure- 
 lius. " Of human life the time is a point, and the substance 
 is in a flux, and the perception dull, and the composition of 
 the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a whirl, 
 and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of judg- 
 ment. And, to say all in a word, everything which belongs 
 to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a 
 dream and vapor, and life is a warfare, and a stranger's so- 
 journ, and after-fame is oblivion. What, then, is that which 
 is able to conduct a man ? One thing and only one, philoso- 
 phy. But this consists in keeping the daemon within a man 
 
 1 [See the Encheiridion or Manual, 8, 18, 15, 21, Eng. translation by Long.] 
 a [Eng. translation by Long.] 
 
108 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleas- 
 ures, doing nothing without a purpose, nor yet falsely and 
 with hypocrisy, not feeling the need of another man's doing 
 or not doing anything ; and besides, accepting all that hap- 
 pens, and all that is allotted, as coming from thence, where- 
 ever it is, from whence he himself came ; and, finally, waiting 
 for death with a cheerful mind, as being nothing else than 
 a dissolution of the elements of which every living being is 
 compounded." l " Constantly consider how all things as they 
 now are, in time past also were ; and consider that they 
 will be the same again. And place before thine eyes entire 
 dramas and stages of the same form, whatever thou hast 
 learned from thy experience or from older history ; for ex- 
 ample, the whole court of Hadrianus, and the whole court 
 of Antoninus, and the whole court of Philippus, Alexander, 
 Croesus ; for all those were such dramas as we now see, only 
 with different actors." 2 " The idle business of show, plays on 
 the stage, flocks of sheep, herds, exercises with spears, a 
 bone cast to little dogs, a bit of bread into fish-ponds, 
 laborings of ants and burden-carryings, runnings-about of 
 frightened little mice, puppets pulled by strings. ... It is 
 thy duty then in the midst of such things to show good 
 humor and not a proud air ; to understand, however, that every 
 man is worth just so much as the things are worth about 
 which he busies himself." 3 "What, then, is that about 
 which we ought to employ our serious pains ? This one 
 thing : thoughts just, and acts social, and words which never 
 lie, and a disposition which gladly accepts all that happens, 
 as necessary, as usual, as flowing from a principle and source 
 of the same kind." 4 " Cast away opinion, thou art saved. 
 What then hinders thee from casting it away ? " 5 " Con- 
 sider that everything is opinion, and opinion is in thy power. 
 Take away, then, when thou choosest, thy opinion, and, like 
 
 1 II., 17. 8 VII., 3. « XII., 86. 
 
 « X., 27. * IV., 33. 
 
CHRISTIANIZATTON OF THE OLD WORLD 109 
 
 a mariner who has doubled the promontory, thou wilt find 
 calm, everything stable, and a waveless bay." 1 
 
 " Seldom, indeed," says Lecky, 2 " has such active and un- 
 relaxing virtue been united with so little enthusiasm, and 
 been cheered by so little illusion of success." 
 
 We meet the same features in the philosophy of this period. 
 The movements which Zeller embraces under the title : Pre- 
 cursors of Neo-Platonism, in the last volume of his History of 
 Greek Philosophy, the Neo-Pythagoreans, the later Cynics, 
 the Essenes, the Judaeo-Greek philosophy of Philo, all of 
 them have their origin in the same mood of life and show the 
 same traits ; they preach submission and resignation, absten 
 tion from the world, supported by asceticism, a return to the 
 suprasensuous world, to which the soul really belongs. The 
 life in the body they regard as a life in a prison-house, 
 death as the emancipation of the just. This last offshoot of 
 the old trunk of philosophy, Neo-Platonism, has shown a re- 
 markable power in utilizing the results of all previous phil- 
 osophical investigations, and has constructed a system of the 
 universe based upon this mood. The goal of the philosophy 
 of Plotinus is a purely supranaturalistic ethics. By freeing 
 itself from the sensuous impulses and sensuous knowledge, 
 the soul is enabled wholly to give up its temporal-personal 
 self-consciousness, and to raise itself into communion with 
 the divine by means of ecstasy. Thus it returns to its origin 
 and fulfills its highest mission. It is said that Plotinus re- 
 fused to allow a painting to be made of himself, because he 
 was ashamed of his body. — Thus philosophy came to be 
 exactly what Socrates once called it: the study of death 
 (fjLekerr) Oavdrov). 
 
 It would, of course, be a mistake to suppose that this philo- 
 sophical movement reflected the general conception of the 
 times. In the section of his work which deals with the rela- 
 tion of philosophy to the age, Friedlander has brought to- 
 
 1 XII., 22. 2 History of European Morals, I, 253. 
 
110 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 gether a mass of evidence to show that philosophy was not 
 without its enemies and despisers. Educated and uneducated 
 people derided the philosophers as ridiculous fools, who with 
 their breadless art acquired neither advancement nor reputa- 
 tion, neither money nor favor ; they at the same time hated 
 them as men who by their words and their mode of life dis- 
 dained and censured their fellows and their aspirations. By 
 many the occupation with philosophy was regarded as at 
 least improper for the statesman ; at times it was even con- 
 sidered dangerous to the state ; during the first century the 
 philosophers were twice driven from Rome. The relation 
 of a philosophy to its age by no means consists in expressing 
 that which its age possesses, but rather in expressing what 
 it lacks; it shows what the most reflective and the most 
 sensitive among those living at the time desire and strive 
 after ; their ideal contains the features of the present, but only 
 as a negative picture. But in so far as all historical progress 
 has its origin in the feeling of want or discomfort, we may 
 also say : The philosophers are diviners of the future ; we can 
 learn from them not what is and what is esteemed, but what 
 is to come. In this sense we may regard the philosophy 
 of the Empire as a sign that a radical change is about to take 
 place in the inner life of the ancient peoples ; their deepest 
 longing is no longer for the development and perfection of 
 the natural life ; exhausted by the pleasures and sufferings of 
 this world, they are beginning to crave with secret yearnings 
 for deliverance. 
 
 4. By offering them deliverance and, besides, an eternal 
 life in transmundane, suprasensuous glory, Christianity satis- 
 fied the most secret and deepest yearnings of the age. That 
 which the philosophers brought particularly to the educated 
 and high-born, was promised by Christianity to the poor and 
 wretched, the weary and heavy-laden : deliverance from the 
 bondage of earthly fear and desire, in which the soul is held by 
 the world and outward show. The former promised deliver- 
 
CHRTSTIANIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD 111 
 
 ance as the fruit of knowledge, the latter as the effect of 
 grace ; and in so far the disposition of the philosopher is 
 radically different from that of the Christian, the old pride 
 of conscious virtue or self-righteousness still clings to the 
 former. But they almost entirely agree in their judgment of 
 life and man. 
 
 Christianity was not the only religion from the Orient 
 which gained adherents at this time. The Egyptian, Syrian, 
 and Persian gods and forms of worship also made devout 
 and grateful converts in the Roman Empire ; likewise Juda- 
 ism, the old and the new, as which Christianity was first 
 regarded. Friedlander 1 accounts for the reception of the 
 foreign cults by the thorough mixture of the nations ; poly- 
 theism, he finds, does not really exclude the gods of the newly 
 incorporated peoples, but leaves to them their special spheres 
 of action ; the Romans in foreign lands unhesitatingly ap- 
 pealed to the native gods. The mixture of nations was un- 
 doubtedly the cause of the mixture of religions; but why did 
 these Oriental cults, the worship of the Syrian Baal and 
 Astarte, the Egyptian Isis and Osiris, the Persian Mithras, 
 prove so attractive to the people of the Empire ? For, as 
 J. Burckhardt properly insists in his beautiful work on the 
 Age of Constantine the Great 2 : " The later Romans in their 
 truly universal superstition conformed to the local worship in 
 Gaul as well as everywhere else ; but no Gallic god was trans- 
 ferred to Italy or Greece ; " whereas the Oriental cults really 
 took root in Greece and Rome. The reason can surely be 
 found only in what Burckhardt finds it : owing to their inner 
 characteristics the Oriental religions met a need of the Roman 
 world which was no longer satisfied by the old native religion. 
 Now, these cults are peculiar, in that the doctrine of a life 
 after death is essential to them all. After doing severe 
 penance and mortifying himself, the believer is promised ex- 
 piation and purification, in virtue of which he will escape 
 1 III.. 4. 2 Section V. 
 
112 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 the punishments awaiting the impenitent offender in the 
 hereafter. Human sacrifices and self-mutilation are customary 
 in many of these cults. The thought of a life after death 
 was rather foreign to the classical age : this earthly life was 
 the true life, the life after death a shadow of the present life. 
 The only concern which men felt for the hereafter was to 
 preserve a good reputation among the living. 1 During the 
 empire a change gradually took place ; the hereafter assumed 
 greater and greater importance at the expense of this world. 
 And now the old gods would no longer suffice. Not only to 
 the men of the classic age, but to their gods also, the here- 
 after was an unfamiliar thought ; they were the gods of the 
 living, not of the dead ; they were the givers and preservers 
 of earthly gifts ; health and beauty, victory and wealth, they 
 bestowed upon their favorites, and were honored with cheerful 
 festivals in return. With the dead they had nothing to do. 
 The age showed its solicitude for the future life by seeking 
 new gods and forms of worship, and found them in the old 
 religions of the East. 
 
 5. The Christian religion gained the victory over her 
 rivals. What made her victorious ? We are surely justi- 
 fied in believing : her inner worth. Perhaps it was, first of 
 all, the sensuous-suprasensuous conviction of the immediate 
 return of the Lord to judge the earth and to establish the 
 kingdom of glory, which gave the members of the church 
 the strength to despise the world and imbued their preach- 
 ing of the kingdom with such overpowering force. More- 
 over, the esprit de corps was for this very reason much 
 stronger among the professors of- Christianity than among 
 the other religious communities; they looked upon them- 
 selves, not without a feeling of pride, as a community of 
 saints chosen from the world, as the members of the kingdom 
 of glory, whose sojourn here in the flesh was a mere accident. 
 This separation from the world was encouraged by the 
 
 1 Friedlander, HI., 5. 
 
CHRISTIANIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD 113 
 
 jealous exclusiveness of their worship, a heritage of Jewish 
 monotheism, which branded all adoration of other gods as 
 of idolatry. The power of a religion to gain adherents is in 
 inverse proportion to its tendency to mix with others. Then, 
 again, there was more of the self-sacrificing devotion of the 
 founder in the Christian communities than among the fol- 
 lowers of the other cults, although all of them demanded 
 sacrifices, and none was without its martyrs. But none of 
 them had such a host of martyrs as Christianity. It is a 
 wonderful fact, one that does honor to human nature, that 
 no sermon makes a deeper impression upon it than that 
 preached from a cross. Finally, the Christian belief also 
 satisfied the reason in a certain sense ; the rational mono- 
 theism of the new religion, which worshipped God as a 
 spirit, was more acceptable than the myths of the old popular 
 religions, which were no longer believed, or than many of 
 the absurd superstitions of the East. 
 
 6. Perhaps the conversion of the Greeks and Romans to 
 Christianity also admits of a further explanation. We may 
 regard the conversion of a people to a religion of redemption 
 as the final stage in the development of its entire spiritual 
 life. I venture merely to suggest this view, for a knowl- 
 edge of the laws of the evolution of a popular life, similar 
 to that which we have of the development of an individual 
 life, is of course utterly out of the question. Let us say, then, 
 that the religion of redemption is the product of a nation's 
 senility: it produces mythology and the tales of heroes in 
 its youth, philosophy and science in its manhood, a philo- 
 sophy of consolation and a religion of redemption in its old 
 age. We might compare the stages of development in the 
 world of ideas with parallel stages of development in the 
 practical world: youth yearns for action in the chase and 
 war ; manhood turns to work and acquisition, to commerce 
 and industry ; old age lays aside its tasks, and feeds on the 
 products of its former achievements ; it yearns for rest, and 
 
 S 
 
114 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 withdraws from the present, it lives in the memory of the 
 past and in the thought of the hereafter. The new religion, 
 therefore, offers itself as a substitute for poetry and science, 
 for work and conflict, hopefully transfiguring the evening 
 of life as with a soft twilight. 
 
 The same development of the great Eastern branch of the 
 Aryan stock also seems to favor such a view of the conver- 
 sion of the old nations to Christianity. The Hindoos, too, 
 had once started out, under the protection of kindred martial 
 gods, upon a career of conquest and victory, and had battled 
 for their habitations on the banks of the Indus and the 
 Ganges. They, too, had reached a high stage of mental and 
 economic evolution. And among them also, at last, the 
 desire for civilization changed into religiosity. Brahmanism, 
 and still more Buddhism, both of them products of immanent 
 development, are to the Orientals what Christianity was in 
 the Graeco-Roman world. The two conceptions of life show 
 such an astonishing similarity in their details, that the 
 belief in the derivation of Christianity from Indian sources 
 constantly forces itself upon us. The commands of the 
 Dhammapadam, a collection of wise Buddhistic sayings, 1 
 often exactly agree, in meaning and in language, with the 
 collection of sayings of the so-called Sermon on the Mount, 
 To exterminate the desires, to suffer wrong without anger 
 and revenge, to be pure in heart and peaceful in disposition : 
 these are the commands which are given to the believers in 
 the former case as well as in the latter. The forms of life, 
 
 1 For a German translation see W. Weber!s Hindoo Studies (Indische Studien), 
 I., 29-86. The able work of H. Oldenberg, Buddha, his Life, his Doctrine, his 
 Order (Buddha, sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine Gemeinde) [English translation, 
 London, 1882] (2 ed., 1890) gives the historical basis for the interpretation and 
 understanding of these sayings. In the third volume of Duncker's History oj 
 Antiquity we have an attempt to trace the development of the Hindoo popular 
 spirit, in which the contrast between a stage of civilization and a religious stage 
 of development is very marked. [See the excellent little work of Paul Carus, 
 The Gospel of Buddha and his Table of Reference, on pp. 231-241 ; also the 
 bibliography given by him on pages 241-242. — Tk.J 
 
CHRISTIANIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD 115 
 
 too, in which these demands are sought to be realized show 
 the most remarkable similarity ; here as well as there we 
 find monasteries and monks, with the three vows of poverty, 
 chastity, and humility or obedience. 
 
 There are, of course, also radical differences between Budd- 
 hism and Christianity, differences conditioned by the lives of 
 the two founders. In Buddha, the Enlightened One, there 
 is no passion, we might almost say, no personal will; a 
 gentle teacher, he travels from place to place, communicating 
 the truth discovered by him that life is suffering, and that 
 the way to salvation passes through the knowledge of the 
 essence of existence. The life of Jesus is a struggle with 
 the world and with evil, which confronts him in personal 
 form in Satan. Buddha's death is the quiet extinction of 
 a flame, the death of Jesus is the victorious death of a 
 hero. The words of Jesus are flames which arouse passions, 
 the preaching of Buddha is monotonous repetition ; we might 
 almost say, it has a hypnotizing effect. Schopenhauer's 
 claim that Christianity is in every respect inferior to Budd- 
 hism, can be explained only by his a priori aversion to 
 Christianity, or rather to the church and theology ; for other- 
 wise he could not have failed to see how much greater is the 
 value of Christianity, considered from the purely human and 
 poetical standpoint, than that of Buddhism. The more 
 highly developed the will-to-live is in the Occident, the 
 greater is at least the dramatic interest in its conversion. 
 But in so far as the above-mentioned differences are differ- 
 ent expressions of the original or acquired character of 
 the nations, we may say : Christianity and Buddhism are 
 homologous processes of development. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES AND THEIR CONCEPTION OF LIFE » 
 
 1. The Middle Ages seem, at first sight, to have been abso- 
 lutely ruled by the Christian conception of life. The church 
 represents the framework in which their entire spiritual life 
 was embraced. The church doctrine governed knowledge ; the 
 vita religiosa, the monastic life, which rests upon the principle 
 of world-estrangement and self-denial, was unreservedly ac- 
 cepted as the ideal of conduct. Indeed, poverty, chastity, 
 and obedience, the three monastic vows, meant nothing but 
 the extermination of the three strongest impulses of the 
 natural man : the impulses which aim at possession, family, 
 reputation and power. In reality, the entire clergy were 
 amenable to the rules of the vita religiosa; their mission 
 consisted in exemplifying to the people the Christian life ; 
 but the church never wholly succeeded in imposing monachism 
 upon the clergy living outside of the monasteries; celibacy 
 alone was gradually enforced. 
 
 Nevertheless, it would be an error to suppose that mediaeval 
 life was really the same in character as the life of the old 
 Christian communities in the Graeco-Roman world. If there 
 is any truth whatever in the view suggested above, concerning 
 the nature of the religion of redemption, this cannot have been 
 the case. The Middle Ages do not represent the senility of 
 the Germanic nations, but, if we may be allowed to continue 
 our comparison of a collective life with an individual life, 
 their school-days ; they went to school to antiquity, learning 
 
 1 fSee references in notes od pp. 35 and 65. — Tk.] 
 
THE MEDIAEVAL CONCEPTION 117 
 
 language and science, philosophy and religion, useful and 
 beautiful arts. Now, these youthful nations could no more 
 be converted, in the real sense of the term, than a schoolboy 
 can be converted. He alone can be converted who has lived, 
 and now discovers that life does not keep what it seemed to 
 promise. The old nations were converted, they made this 
 discovery at the end of a long and brilliant career of civili- 
 zation; after having failed to find happiness by satisfying 
 their desires, they now sought peace through deliverance 
 from desire. When the Germans became Christians, they 
 had hardly entered upon the path of civilization ; they could 
 not receive the baptism with the same feelings as the 
 ancients. 
 
 Of this the history of their Christianization does not leave us 
 in doubt. In the old world the conversion to Christianity was 
 absolutely spontaneous and from within. Christianity had 
 come to the ancients, not with the force of arms, like Islam 
 later on, nor with superior culture and science ; it possessed 
 none of these things, nay, the lack of them constituted one of 
 its essential traits. It triumphed not by the methods of pol- 
 itics, but contrary to the will of the political powers. To be 
 sure, after its establishment, after it became a power, this state 
 of affairs soon changed ; the politicians, who make everything 
 subserve their ends, also utilized Christianity, the state itself 
 became Christian, or Christianity was organized into a state, 
 and the last remains of paganism were finally eradicated by 
 the government. All this, of course, could not fail to in- 
 fluence the inner essence of Christianity; ever since the 
 existence of Christian emperors, which Tertullian had de- 
 clared to be a contradiction in terms, 1 the church could no 
 longer assume the harsh opposition to the " world " which 
 the primitive communities assumed; a kind of compromise 
 was made between Christianity and the world : it assimilated 
 so much of the world as was needed, not to overcome but to 
 
 1 Apol, c. 21. 
 
118 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 rule the world. In this way the church developed into a new 
 world-power during the latter days of antiquity, not, however, 
 without having first created a kind of refuge in the mon- 
 asteries for an unworldly or extra- worldly Christianity ; and 
 the high estimate which the church places upon the monastic 
 life shows that she is still conscious of the true relation of 
 Christianity to the world. 
 
 The conversion of the Germanic peoples was a process 
 entirely different from the original conversion of the old 
 nations to Christianity ; they were, we might say, not really 
 converted to Christianity, but to the church. Politics and 
 coercion always played a part in the reception of baptism, 
 and often cast the deciding vote. The Germanic tribes, from 
 whom the German people sprang, were all of them com- 
 pelled by the force of arms to join Christianity or rather the 
 political-ecclesiastical system of the Frankish Empire. The 
 history of the wars and administration of Charlemagne tells 
 bloody tales of the " conversion " of the Saxons. He that 
 refuses baptism, so it is decreed in the capitulare of Pader- 
 born (T85), or wantonly eats meat during Lent, or burns a 
 corpse after the custom of the heathens, shall die. Whoever 
 cannot recite the Lord's prayer or the creed, so a later 
 capitulare decrees, shall be punished with blows or by fast- 
 ing, whether it be a man or a woman. 
 
 2. Just as the conversion of the Germans was different 
 from that of the ancients, so their conceptions and mode of 
 life differed from those of primitive Christianity. The Middle 
 Ages were not tired of the world and sated with life, but full 
 of energy and the desire to achieve great deeds. Individuals 
 were not wanting in whom the true Christian mood asserted 
 itself ; in many a mediaeval church hymn the feeling of world- 
 weariness and the yearning for deliverance from this misery 
 and for the heavenly fatherland is pathetically expressed. 
 But that was not the prevailing mood. By the side of the 
 church poetry flourished the popular epic or heroic poem; 
 
THE MEDLEVAL CONCEPTION 119 
 
 coming nearer to the hearts of the people, it was transmitted 
 by word of mouth throughout the entire Middle Ages. It is 
 not at all Christian in character. The virtue most admired 
 is not resignation and patience, but ferocious courage ; the 
 warlike hero is the ideal of the Nibelungenlied no less than 
 of the Iliad. To love your enemies and to suffer wrong was 
 as foreign to the German warriors as to the heroes in Homer. 
 The true man was a strong and true friend to his friends, and 
 an awful enemy to his enemies. The old Saxon poem of the 
 life of Jesus (the Heliand) makes Christ a mighty lord and 
 the disciples his retainers ; the transformation shows how 
 impossible it was for the Saxons to imagine the real Jesus 
 and his followers. The lyric poetry is as little Christian in 
 character as the epic. It sings of the pleasures and sorrows 
 of love, the joys of spring and the love of the world. 
 
 Such poetry springs directly from the hearts of the people. 
 There is no doubt that it is a true mirror of their real life. 
 Measured by the command of the Gospels to despise the 
 world and its pleasures, the life of the Germanic nations 
 during the Middle Ages was not a Christian life. The great 
 business of the men was war ; martial games and the chase 
 occupied the leisure of the nobles. The pleasures of the table 
 and society were also prized, and the relations of the sexes 
 were made the subject of an art and a study, all of which is 
 elaborately set forth in Weinhold's Buck fiber die deutschen 
 Frauen im Mittelalter. 
 
 3. Nor did the actual life of the clergy, as has frequently 
 been pointed out, always wholly conform to its ascetic ideal. 
 The Pope, who, in remembrance of the command of Christ, 
 called himself the servant of the servants of God, was in 
 reality the lord of the world ; the bishops were princes and 
 rulers, many among them caring more for their lands and 
 people, for power and wealth, than for the salvation of souls. 
 The cloisters, in which the spirit of unworldliness ( Weltflucht, 
 worW-flight) and asceticism was supposed to thrive, were 
 
120 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 centres of civilization, and occasionally also the scenes of 
 luxurious and unholy enjoyment. The Benedictines and 
 Cistercians carried handicrafts and arts, horticulture and agri- 
 culture, wherever they went. Even the treasures of heathen 
 science and literature sought refuge in the monasteries, and 
 were preserved by them for posterity, a service for which they 
 have often been extolled. The praise is well deserved, but it 
 is strange, nevertheless, that the brotherhoods of Christian 
 asceticism should have sought and found praise not only for 
 transcribing the verses of Ovid and Horace, the writings of 
 Aristotle and Lucretius, but also for studying, explaining, 
 imitating, and so constantly keeping them alive. And no 
 less strange seem to us, looked at from this point of view, 
 those military orders the members of which, as the soMiers 
 of Christ, wore the sword and the cross, the coat of mail 
 and the cassock, and inflicted as well as bound up wounds 
 in his service. 
 
 The intellectual life of the Middle Ages, which was directly 
 dominated by the church, also differed from that of primitive 
 Christianity. A strong, youthful craving for knowledge was 
 unmistakable ; the age still distrusted its own powers, and 
 drew upon others for its science, but it took it wherever it 
 found it ; from the books of the heathens, Jews, and Saracens, 
 the scholars of the mediaeval universities derived their knowl- 
 edge of things. Scholastic theology itself is a first modest 
 attempt to rationalize the sacred teachings. The saying of 
 Anselm : " I believe in order that I may understand," is char- 
 acteristic of mediaeval theology; the latter does not aim to 
 create a new truth, — we have the -truth ; but it desires to ap- 
 propriate, and, as it were, to master by the natural reason the 
 truth which was originally accepted on faith. That was the 
 high goal of the intellectual strivings of the Middle Ages — a 
 goal, however, which was found to be more and more unattain- 
 able as the work progressed. We cannot say that this aim was 
 in harmony with the spirit of primitive Christianity ; Paul, at 
 
THE MEDLEVAL CONCEPTION 121 
 
 least, in whom the " foolish preaching of the cross" was first 
 confronted with Greek wisdom, does not dream of a com- 
 promise between the two, or of rendering the truth of salva- 
 tion intelligible to the natural reason ; Tertullian with his / 
 believe because it is absurd, evidently comes nearer to his way 
 of looking at things than Anselm. The desire to comprehend 
 the faith is, in a certain sense, the first beginning of the 
 desire to be emancipated from it, to rise above it. So Luther 
 felt about the matter ; he hated scholastic theology and 
 philosophy, because they mingled with the Christian faith 
 the heathen wisdom of Aristotle ; he desired to restore the 
 former in its purity. 
 
 Hence mediaeval Christianity was not the same as primitive 
 Christianity. Not only were the Germans Christianized, but 
 Christianity was also Germanized; it appropriated the nat- 
 ural desire for civilization of the youthful nations, and was 
 thoroughly imbued with their spirit. Moreover, it had, as has 
 already been pointed out, gradually assumed a more positive 
 relation to the world and its aims, even during antiquity, 
 and was thus prepared for the task of bringing to the new 
 nations the elements of the old civilization along with the 
 new faith. 
 
 4. What shall we say of this mixture of Christianity and 
 the world ? The sects which separated from the triumphant 
 church have always regarded it as a corruption of Chris- 
 tianity ; they were unable to recognize in a state church the 
 community of saints who had gathered around the word 
 of the cross in the primitive times. The peculiar essence 
 and strength of Christianity seemed to them to have been 
 lost when the church divided with the state the power over the 
 world, either ruling it, as the Catholic church always aimed 
 to do, or being ruled by it, as in the case of Protestantism. 
 
 From the standpoint of primitive Christianity it would be 
 hard to contradict this view. Christianity was originally a 
 battle with the world. A Christianity without battle, a 
 
122 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Christianity recognized by the world, approved and author* 
 ized by the state, is no longer the same thing; or if ail men 
 had become Christians, there would no longer be any world 
 or state ; the times would be fulfilled, history closed. — It is 
 also certain that a type of character has been produced by 
 the mixture of Christian forms and modes of speech with 
 worldly manners, which is one of the most repulsive deform- 
 ities ever suffered by the nature of man ; it is called Pfaffen- 
 turn : haughtiness and greed for power assuming the form 
 of Christian humility ; harshness and presumption, disguised 
 as love and care for the soul of the brother. The ancient 
 world was unfamiliar with this type, but it is as old as the 
 church, and is found, moreover, not only among the servants 
 of the church, but also among the servants of the state and 
 science, indeed among all who have spiritual or worldly 
 power. If we look upon the priests as the representatives of 
 the church, we can hardly regard the church as anything but a 
 great degeneration. 1 
 
 1 As an attempt to write a history of non-ecclesiastical Christianity, that is, the 
 true evangelical Christianity, a work by L. Keller, The Reformation and the Older 
 Reform-Parties (Die Reformation und die dlteren Reformparteien) , 1885, is of interest. 
 That the author has succeeded in proving an uninterrupted, historical connection 
 in the " evangelical communities " from the time when Christianity became a 
 state religion under Constantine, down to the Reformation and beyond it to our 
 times, the expert may well doubt. We must not, however, forget that not every- 
 thing that has happened is to be found in the fragmentary records which have 
 come down to us. — A passionate protest is raised against state Christianity from 
 the standpoint of primitive Christianity by the Dane, Soeren Kierkegaard, in his 
 later writings. In the intensely sarcastic articles published by him in the year 
 1855, in a number of journals, and entitled "Moment" (German translation in: 
 Soeren Kierkegaard, Attack upon Christianity, edited by A. Dorner and Chr. 
 Sehremph, 1896), he again and again contrasts the original preachers of Chris- 
 tianity, who gave up their lives for it, with the thousands of " witnesses of the 
 truth," employed by the royal Danish government, who by preaching the passion 
 of Christ win positions, decorations, silver table-services, gilded reclining chairs, 
 and other glories. The true Christian is even to this day recognized by the 
 Cross ; not by the gold or silver cross which is worn on a colored ribbon around 
 the neck or upon the bosom and marks its wearer as a knight or a commander, 
 but by the Cross which is imposed as a martyrdom and a disgrace by the self- 
 appointed and official representatives of the world upon those who despise tha 
 world for Christ's sake. Indeed, it is perhaps the strangest irony of history 
 that the cross, or, translating the Roman custom into modern language, the 
 
THE MEDIAEVAL CONCEPTION 123 
 
 The judgment of history, however, can and must be a dif- 
 ferent one. In order to become the powerful leaven which it 
 afterward became, in order to be not merely the euthanasia 
 of the old peoples, but a life-principle of the new society of 
 nations now appearing upon the theatre of the world, Chris- 
 tianity had to assume a positive relation to the world, it had 
 to be organized into the strong and permanent form of the 
 church, after the manner of a world-kingdom. It is, of course, 
 an indisputable fact that it was thereby changed, but it is no 
 less certain that this was the only condition under which it 
 could have hoped to influence the future historical life of the 
 modern nations. It is not probable that the old Christian 
 communities would have succeeded in converting and educat- 
 ing the warlike Germanic tribes. The latter bowed dowr 
 before the brilliant retinue of Christ in the church ; it it 
 more than doubtful whether they would have bowed down 
 before the followers by whom Jesus himself was surrounded 
 on earth. Now, unless we deny that very valuable elements 
 have been added to the life of these nations by the church, we 
 cannot deny that the transformation of Christianity into the 
 church was an historical necessity. But there is no danger 
 that an impartial observer will deny such a proposition, 
 unless, of course, he is prepared to reject not only the 
 church, but the Middle Ages themselves as one great mis- 
 take. A fanatical prophet of the Renaissance or a passionate 
 follower of the Reformation might perhaps have been ready 
 to do such a thing ; at present no one will refuse to admit that 
 the spiritual-moral life of the Middle Ages was full of peculiar 
 beauty. And this beauty universally depends upon the eccles- 
 iastical-Christian character of their thoughts and feelings. 1 
 call to mind the tender, high-minded sense of justice, which, 
 
 gibbet, should be worn as a mark of honor. — A book of Leo Tolstoi, My Religion, 
 (English translation, New York, 1899) expresses similar views with respect to 
 the relation of Christianity to the Greek Orthodox Church. The commentary 
 from the inner life of the poet is furnished by his wonderful Popular Storiet 
 (Roclam Library). 
 
124 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 grafted upon the military virtues of the Germanic nations, pro- 
 duced such a peculiar type of moral nobility in their knight- 
 hood ; and the merciful treatment of the poor and wretched, a 
 form of beneficence which, embodied in thousands of charit- 
 able institutions, has come down to us, and to this day 
 alleviates suffering and dries tears. I also call to mind 
 their spiritualized relations to women, and their aversion to 
 all sexual unchastity — although the latter frequently failed 
 to prevent what is hardly repulsive to the natural man, and 
 the former resulted in strange aberrations in the Minnedienst, 
 yet the tenderness and rigor of the Middle Ages contrast 
 favorably with the frivolousness and superficiality of the 
 ancient world. I call to mind the gradual growth of the 
 sentiment that slavery, the order of society according to 
 the natural right of the stronger, does not agree with the 
 commandment of love. Although the church did not abolish 
 slavery, but permitted it to exist, like other worldly institu- 
 tions, as an indifferent form by the side of the order in the 
 kingdom of heaven, nay, expressly recognized it and bought 
 and owned slaves herself, she was neither able nor willing 
 to hinder the spirit of the Gospel, wherever it triumphed, 
 from entirely transforming the relation between masters and 
 slaves, so that even the legal form ultimately became impos- 
 sible. 1 I finally call to mind the union of the nations in 
 the church, which somewhat softened the national antag- 
 onisms ; not sufficiently, it is true, to prevent wars, but yet 
 sufficiently to rob them of the character of wars of annihila- 
 tion, in which these antagonisms result according to the 
 natural order of events. We cannot fail to recognize in all 
 these things the influence of organized Christianity, which 
 had, by assimilating elements of civilization of all kinds, 
 become a world-power. And the glorious development of 
 
 1 See the instructive essay by P. Overbeck on the relation of the old church 
 to slavery in the Roman Empire in his Studies on the History of the Ancient 
 Church (Studien zur Geschichte der alien Kirche), 1875. 
 
THE MEDIEVAL CONCEPTION 125 
 
 mediaeval art, the promising beginnings of scientific study, 
 would they have been possible without the church? The 
 " evangelical communities," which clung to the old concep- 
 tion concerning the relation of Christianity to the world, have 
 always shown indifference or aversion to art and science. 
 Hence, whoever does not regard all civilization as a mistake, 
 or the participation of the Germanic nations in Christianity 
 and ancient civilization as an aberration inconsistent with 
 their own immanent development — a view which is possible, 
 but which, of course, can neither be proved nor refuted — 
 cannot regard the mixture of Christianity with civilization as 
 a mere corruption of the Gospel. 1 
 
 1 The above exposition agrees in its historical conception as well as in its criti- 
 cal estimate with the view held by Harnack in his History of the Dogma. A few 
 passages from the first volume of this work, which gives us a clear idea of the 
 growth of the theoretical side of ecclesiastical Christianity, may suffice to show 
 this. " By surrounding the Gospel with a protecting shell, Catholicism at the 
 same time obscured it. It preserved the Christian religion against acute Hel- 
 lenization (Gnosticism), but was at the same time forced to permit a con- 
 stantly increasing measure of secularization. In the interests of its worldly 
 mission, it did not, indeed, exactly destroy the awful earnestness of the religion, 
 but it made it possible for those who were less serious in their convictions to be 
 regarded as Christians and to regard themselves as such, by permitting a less 
 rigorous ideal of life. It allowed a church to arise which was no longer a com- 
 munity of faith, hope, and discipline, but a political community, in which the 
 Gospel simply constituted one of many important elements. It invested all 
 forms which this worldly community needed, with apostolic — that is, indirectly, 
 with divine — authority, in an increasing measure, and thereby corrupted 
 Christianity and obscured and rendered difficult the knowledge of what was 
 Christian. But in Catholicism the religion for the first time received a systematic 
 form. In Catholic Christianity the formula was found which reconciled faith 
 and science. This formula satisfied mankind for centuries, and the blessings 
 which it brought continued even after the formula itself had become a fetter." 
 (I., 275.) Catholicism, the product of the most intimate fusion of Christianity 
 with antiquity, "conquered the world and became the foundation for a new 
 phase of history in the Middle Ages. The union of the Christian religion with a 
 particular historical phase of knowledge and civilization of humanity, may be 
 deplored in the interests of the Christian religion, which was thereby made 
 worldly, and in the interests of civilization, which was thereby impeded. But 
 complaints here become presumptuous : for we are indebted for nothing less than 
 everything we possess and prize to the union which has been formed between 
 Christianity and antiquity, a union in which neither element has been able to 
 overcome the other. But upon the conflicts resulting from this relation our 
 inner and spiritual life depends to this day." (p. 284.) 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE MODERN CONCEPTION OF LIFB 
 
 1. The end of the fifteenth century marks a new epoch in 
 the life of the Western world ; the modern era becomes the 
 heir of the Middle Ages. The line of demarkation is clear 
 and distinct ; it is defined by two powerful spiritual move- 
 ments : by the Renaissance and the Reformation. New 
 forms of life and a new conception of the universe were subse- 
 quently developed. The state, the institution of the modern 
 times, gradually supplanted the church, the dominant insti- 
 tution of the Middle Ages : the influence of the latter declined, 
 the individual became self-dependent in his highest relations, 
 in his relation to God, and gradually shook off the guardian- 
 ship of the church in matters of faith and salvation. The state, 
 on the other hand, was constantly expanding. It deprived the 
 church of one function after the other : the school, the promo- 
 tion of science and art, the care of the poor and weak, legisla- 
 tion and the administration of justice, a field which had been 
 largely appropriated by the church. Thus the state became a 
 comprehensive institution for the advancement of civilization; it 
 was firmly planted in this world while the church had its deep- 
 est roots in the transmundane world. — There is a reciprocal 
 relation between the development of the world of institutions 
 and the world of thoughts. The old conception of the uni- 
 verse, based upon authorities and treating of heavenly things, 
 was gradually overthrown by the new philosophy, which had 
 its formal basis in the principle of rationalism, the principle of 
 free investigation, and its material basis in the new cosmology 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION 127 
 
 and natural science, which deal with the things of this 
 world. — The development of economic and social life formed 
 the starting-point of the entire transformation. The rapid 
 increase and expansion of international commerce beginning 
 in the thirteenth century gave rise to the first large cities ; 
 the new society became more and more intent upon con- 
 quering the earth and appropriating its wealth. The yearn- 
 ing for the hereafter was stifled in the mad race for the things 
 of this world. 
 
 Nevertheless, from the standpoint from which we have 
 just been considering the Middle Ages, we shall not regard 
 the change as a radical one. We find no such revolution as 
 followed the conversion of antiquity to Christianity. Per- 
 haps it would be safer to say that the flames which were 
 smouldering in the Middle Ages now burst forth ; the ten- 
 dency to civilization which already existed in mediaeval times, 
 but was somewhat impeded and obscured by the shell of the 
 supranaturalistic religion in which it was encased, now over- 
 came all resistance. The Renaissance and the Reformation 
 represent the breaking of the shell. 
 
 2. The Renaissance. 1 It means the rebirth of classical, 
 that is, pre-Christian, pagan, antiquity. Pagan antiquity 
 had perished with the conversion of the old nations to Chris- 
 tianity. Christianized antiquity, which evolved its new form 
 in the church, had undertaken the education of the new 
 nations, and had thus far guided their religious, scientific, 
 and moral life. The church had also given them the elements 
 of the old civilization, above all philosophy and literature; 
 
 1 [For the Renaissance and Reformation see the general and modern histories 
 of philosophy, the works mentioned p. 35, and the following: Carriere, Die 
 philosophische Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit ; Voight, Die Wiederbelebung 
 des classischen Alterthums ; Burckhardt, Die Cultur der Renaissance (Engl, 
 translation by Middleman) ; Geiger, Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und 
 Deutschland ; Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy ; Peschel, Geschichte des Zeit- 
 alters der Entdeclcungen. See particularly Kuno Fischer, History of Modern Phil- 
 osophy, vol. I.. 1, chapters V. and VI. For further bibliography, Ueberweg, vol 
 III., §§ 2-6 ; Weber, p. 10, note 1, p. 274, note 6. Tr.] 
 
128 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 and the young nations had derived instruction and pleasure 
 from them ; not without some misgivings, of course : they 
 knew (the church told them so) that it was heathen philoso- 
 phy and literature, and that it was really not proper for 
 a Christian to enjoy them. These doubts and fears were 
 wholly given up in the time of the Renaissance. The age 
 emancipated itself from the old morose school and task- 
 master, the discovery was made that antiquity had itself been 
 young before it became old and crabbed, and the youthful 
 heathen antiquity was found to be much more attractive 
 and grander than Christianized antiquity. All minds were 
 nlled with a passionate admiration for antiquity; the pro- 
 ducts of its literature, its art, its philosophy, were ardently 
 sought after, studied, imitated, and thoroughly assimilated. 
 The literary and artistic productions of the Middle Ages were 
 thrown aside with the contempt with which the schoolboy 
 casts aside his school exercises and texfc-books at the close 
 of his course ; everything mediaeval was now designated as 
 Gothic barbarism. The age was anxious to think and to feel, 
 ico make poetry and to create, to live and to enjoy, like the 
 models placed before it by classical antiquity. The putting 
 on of the new man received its symbolical expression in the 
 rejection of the old and in the adoption of new Latinized or 
 Hellenized names. — It must be confessed, however, that the 
 Renaissance reached its highest perfection only in Italy. From 
 J. Burckhardt's Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, we may 
 glean what the " rebirth," the birth of the new man, signified. 
 In Italy the evolution was a necessary one. On this side of 
 the Alps the movement was not spontaneous, nor did it take 
 such deep root in the hearts of the people ; here it was some- 
 what imitative in character. And here the conflict between 
 the old and the new culture — after the latter had just gained 
 a foothold in the universities — was cut short by the breaking 
 out of a new conflict, the conflict which Luther inaugurated 
 against the church in the name of the Gospel. This struggle 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION 129 
 
 so thoroughly absorbed the attention of the German people, and 
 soon after also of the other nations, that the Renaissance was 
 completely overshadowed. Only after the at least provisional 
 settlement of the conflict in the seventeenth century, after 
 a certain equilibrium had been restored between the Catholic 
 and Protestant powers, there arose in the middle of the eight- 
 eenth century, and now originating in Protestant Germany, 
 a kind of literary and artistic after-bloom of the Renaissance. 
 The trait common to the first and the second Renaissance was 
 a passionate craving for freedom on the part of the individual : 
 he was no longer willing to be bound by established opinions 
 and institutions, but desired the complete and free develop- 
 ment of his particular nature, the complete and free exercise 
 of all his impulses and powers ; in the struggle for freedom he 
 opposed nature to convention and tradition. But this was ex- 
 actly what the Greeks had aimed at : the freest development 
 of the individual ; and for that reason Hellenism became the 
 ideal of humanity. 
 
 3. The Reformation. In its origin it was quite different 
 from the preceding movement. The deeply religious, pas- 
 sionately truthful, thoroughly national soul of Luther re- 
 belled against the system of dead works and dead dogmas, 
 welded together by reason and authority, which, as he be- 
 lieved, had, in the form of ritualism and scholastic theology, 
 stifled the simple, living, vigorous, and happy faith of old 
 Christianity ; it rebelled as well against the worldly, aristo- 
 cratic life of pleasure and culture pursued by the high clergy, 
 who were permeated with the conceptions of the Renaissance ; 
 against the neo-paganism of Leo X. and Albrecht of Mayence, 
 which seemed to him a mockery upon Christianity. Luther 
 was by no means a man of modern culture and learning: 
 these would have been much more in keeping with the Medi- 
 cean Pope, at least with the incumbent, if not with the func- 
 tion of the office. Nor was he a lover of enjoyment and a 
 worshipper of civilization; these, too, were things for which Leo 
 
130 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 showed a more refined taste and a deeper appreciation than 
 he. Luther did not look upon the church doctrine as not ra- 
 tional enough nor upon the church-life as not worldly enough ; 
 nay, the reverse was the case : he absolutely repudiated reason 
 in matters of faith, and he had only a very moderate opinion 
 of the value of this earthly life and its civilization. He did 
 not absolutely condemn pleasure, and he demanded that men 
 labor to perform their earthly tasks ; but he would by no 
 means have been willing to espouse the emancipation of the 
 flesh and the complete devotion to the problems of civilization. 
 Though he emphasized the positive side, he did not do this 
 for the sake of civilization and happiness, but in opposition 
 to the official view of the church, which characterized the 
 monastic life as in itself meritorious and holy. Luther saw 
 in it a false self-sacrifice, which, even when sincerely made, 
 hindered the true sacrifice of the heart, and, when not sin- 
 cere, encouraged a base worship of the flesh under the guise 
 of self-denial. His attitude to the church was similar in this 
 respect to that of Jesus towards the self-righteousness and 
 worship of the Pharisees : he demanded not that we worship 
 God less, but that we worship Him more and more deeply, 
 and that we practise self-denial. 
 
 The difference between the Reformation and the Renais- 
 sance is also clearly seen in their historical relation. We can 
 say that the Reformation robbed the Renaissance of the victory 
 which the latter already saw within her grasp. The Reform- 
 ation, at first in Germany and then in the other countries, 
 forced the thoughts of men from worldly things, from 
 literary and artistic culture, to which the higher classes of 
 society had devoted themselves, back to religious affairs. 
 The Humanists, who at first hailed Luther with delight, 
 soon almost entirely deserted him again. They saw that 
 they had been mistaken in the Wittenberg monk, that 
 there was a different spirit in him than they had imagined. 
 
 But when we examine the two movements, not merely in 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION 131 
 
 the form which they assumed at the outset and in the minds 
 of their leaders, Luther and Erasmus, when we study their 
 historical relations, the matter assumes a different aspect. 
 We shall have to confess that they both helped to free the 
 modern spirit from its mediaeval covering, that the Eeforma- 
 tion, too, especially when we consider its more remote rather 
 than its immediate effects, furthered the development of the 
 subjective, individual spirit, and the intellectual civilization of 
 man. And that was surely not an accident. In a certain 
 sense, Luther undoubtedly agreed with Erasmus and the 
 Renaissance: the craving of the age for freedom and indi- 
 vidualism was alive in him also. Luther at the Diet of 
 Worms: — that is certainly a figure deserving to be placed 
 at the beginning of modern times, the free subject appealing 
 from the authorities to his own reason and his own conscience. 
 Herein lies the enormous difference between Luther and Augus- 
 tine, with whom he has so much in common in other respects : 
 he is wholly lacking in the humilitas towards the empirical 
 church, the humble and obedient submissiveness to the faith 
 of the church, which is so strongly marked in Augustine. 
 In Luther there is a spirit of defiant independence. " My 
 cause is God's cause " — with this he boldly and defiantly takes 
 his stand against all authorities, and he is never afraid to 
 draw the conclusion, and to proclaim it, with the greatest pos- 
 sible emphasis : Hence the cause of those who are against me 
 is the cause of the devil. 
 
 And this explains the significance of the Reformation for the 
 religious life : it makes the individual independent in his 
 highest relation, in his relation to God ; it does away with 
 the church as a necessary mediator, it does away with almost 
 the entire ecclesiastical apparatus, which the centuries had 
 constructed in order to secure the salvation of the individual 
 by works and formulas and sacred acts. 
 
 Another effect is to be noted. The church, having thug 
 lost its raison d'etre gradually disappeared, like an organ 
 
132 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 that had become unnecessary. New churches were, of 
 course, at first established, in the form of state churches ; but 
 they did not possess the importance of the old church. They 
 were not a great independent institution, but have always 
 formed a kind of appendage to the state. The sovereign 
 is the head of a state church, the clergy are officials, whose 
 number is limited to the demand ; the mediaeval clergy, on the 
 other hand, constituted a separate class within or rather out- 
 side of society: their function was not to transact official 
 business, but to glorify the name of God, for which reason 
 there could never be too many priests, churches, and altars. 
 This change manifests itself in all the forms of our life. A 
 mediaeval city received its character from its churches ; the 
 houses of the people were gathered around the houses of wor- 
 ship, as the centres of life ; the old Rhenish cities, and the 
 old Harz and Baltic cities, Cologne, Mayence, Hildesheim, 
 Halberstadt, Wismar, Rostock, to this day take their impress 
 from their church buildings. In modern cities like Berlin, 
 Hanover, Altona, Darmstadt, Mannheim, the state-building 
 predominates : the palace, the government-building, the court 
 of justice, the post-office, the railway station, the barracks, 
 the prison. Churches are not often seen, and what few there 
 are look embarrassed and cramped in the midst of the im- 
 mense houses which overtower them, or they stand upon great 
 vacant places which they cannot command. 
 
 But not only the architecture of our cities, our entire mode of 
 life has been secularized. Asceticism has passed away with 
 the monasteries ; through marriage the clergy have become 
 members of society. The sacramental acts, the thousand 
 sacred customs and ceremonies, with which the entire medi- 
 aeval life was interwoven, have, with the exception of a few 
 survivals which are also on the point of dying out, disap- 
 peared; the numerous holidays have been transformed into 
 working days, and the daily divine service has been sus- 
 pended. Only on one day of the week have we " church," 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION 133 
 
 as popular usage characteristically expresses it, and as the 
 church itself proves; on the other days it is closed up and 
 deserted. All this seems to signify that we are living on the 
 earth, and desire to live on the earth. Formerly everything 
 reminded us of the Beyond, now everything reminds us of the 
 Here. 
 
 It can hardly be doubted that the thoughts and feelings 
 of the age have also been secularized with the outward forms. 
 However artificial the religious life of many may have remained 
 in the Middle Ages, the countless references to the hereafter 
 and eternity could not fail to make an impression upon the 
 hearts of men. With the disappearance of the outward 
 ecclesiastical forms, the hearts of the majority were weaned 
 from the thoughts of eternity ; they confined themselves more 
 closely and exclusively to the earth. It surely was not Luther's 
 intention to exhort them to do this. He favored the aboli- 
 tion of ascetic institutions, but not in the interests of civiliz- 
 ation and good living ; on the contrary, the life of the canons 
 and monks seemed to him a form of indolence congenial to 
 the flesh, labor and marriage more suitable to the lusts. He 
 approved of the restriction of ecclesiastical exercises and acts, 
 not in order to gain time for more important worldly affairs ; 
 on the contrary, he looked upon them as a mere compromise 
 with heaven, to which, after all, our entire life ought to be 
 devoted. For Luther heaven remained the home, the earth a 
 vale of tears ; and these conceptions and feelings were for a 
 long time, if not the prevailing sentiments, at least peculiar 
 to particular individuals, in Protestantism. Nevertheless, if 
 we consider the total effects, we can say that the Reformation 
 helped to turn man's life earthward, towards civilization, and 
 away from the hereafter and salvation. However untrue 
 monasticism may often prove to its ideal, it nevertheless 
 contributes to keep alive in the Catholic world the feeling — 
 weak though it may often be — that the goal of life is not 
 an earthly one. It still retains something of the spirit of 
 
134 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 unworldliness characteristic of primitive Christianity. And 
 those church exercises and duties, the confessional and peni- 
 tential system, the prayers and fasts, have the same effect ; 
 superficially though they are usually performed, and great 
 though the danger may be of making the religious life ex- 
 ternal and shallow, nay of corrupting the morality, they still 
 direct the gaze to something beyond this life and its aims. 
 We are in the habit of saying that Luther carried Christianity 
 from the cloisters into the world, that he exalted fidelity to 
 the daily calling into a divine service. This was certainly his 
 aim, and we undoubtedly find something of this spirit even in 
 our times. On the other hand, it would not be doing justice 
 to the truth were we to deny that the great majority used 
 their freedom from the duties of external worship to neglect 
 every form of divine worship ; even Luther repeatedly com- 
 plains that the freedom of the Gospel is abused as a free- 
 dom of the flesh. Melanchthon praises Luther in his funeral 
 sermon for having delivered us from the paedagogia puer- 
 ilis of the old church. It is, however, not yet settled that 
 religion can dispense with such a paedagogia puerilis, which 
 admonishes us daily by means of petty practices. It is 
 also a peculiar fact that men are more ready to believe in 
 things and institutions which require something of them : 
 they measure their value according to the magnitude of the 
 investment. This surely has something to do with the strong 
 attachment of the masses to the Catholic church. The Protes- 
 tant church demands nothing, that is, nothing outwardly, but 
 faith alone ; the conclusion which suggests itself to common- 
 sense is : hence it has nothing to offer us, nothing at least 
 for which we care. 
 
 Just as little can we or will we deny that the Reformation 
 furthered the development of subjective thought, of the criti- 
 cal, rationalistic spirit. The downfall of the church shattered 
 the great authority which had controlled the thoughts of men, 
 not only outwardly, but inwardly, for a thousand vears. The 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION 135 
 
 new churches had no authority ; they attempted to retain it, 
 and even vindicated it against their opponents with the same 
 external means employed by the latter ; but they were with- 
 out inner authority. They owed their existence to revolution, 
 to the destruction of the strongest human authority that the 
 Occident had ever seen ; they could not hide their origin. 
 Against authority they appealed to the Scriptures as the 
 higher authority. But did not the old church first invest 
 these writings with authority by establishing the canon ? 
 And did she not have the right of interpretation on her 
 side, according to the practice of centuries ? The appeal to 
 a better interpretation of the Scriptures was therefore, ulti- 
 mately, an appeal to individual reason and conscience. The 
 new churches could not deny any one this appeal, upon 
 vhich their own title was based, and whenever they did so, 
 fcaeir refusal was an inner contradiction, and therefore without 
 inner force. At any rate, the emancipation of subjective 
 thought, not only in the Protestant, but also in the Catholic 
 countries — whether we regard it as a merit or a fault — 
 received a mighty impetus from the Reformation. 
 
 4. The three or four centuries that have passed since the 
 beginning of the modern era, are pitched in the same key as 
 these preludia. The desire for civilization, which lay hidden 
 beneath the Christian-ecclesiastical surface during the Mid- 
 dle Ages, is now openly and unreservedly recognized as the 
 only legitimate ideal. True, the modern epoch, too, has its 
 heavy-laden hearts, who, in their yearning for peace seek 
 refuge from the turmoil of the world and find rest in Christian- 
 ity. But they by no means meet with either the formal or 
 the actual acknowledgment that they have chosen the better 
 part. Everything that is really characteristic of the modern 
 period, everything with which a history of modern life, of the 
 modern state, modern society, modern civilization, modern 
 philosophy, modern art and literature, is accustomed to deal, 
 belongs to the other movement. Real Christianity is some- 
 
136 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 thing so foreign to the champions of the modern era that 
 they are unable to understand how any one can feel and live 
 in that way ; they regard it as extravagant idealism and 
 enthusiasm, as a symptom of disease, which has only a 
 pathological interest. Even the Catholic world, which has 
 preserved the ascetic life in the cloisters, is not very out- 
 spoken in confessing its principle. It is a noteworthy fact 
 that the Catholic historians do not answer the charge that the 
 Catholic countries have not kept abreast of the Protestant 
 nations in civilization by declaring that it is to the Catholics' 
 credit to have still some thought of eternity, — unlike the 
 Protestants, who, being merely intent on the mundane world, 
 naturally excel them in that world's civilization. Instead, the 
 reproach is really felt as a reproach, and the attempt is made 
 to show that it is not well-founded, that the church has really 
 done the most for civilization. 
 
 The estimate which it places upon scientific knowledge may 
 be used as a criterion of the spirit of an age. According to 
 the old Christian conception, the worth of a man is absolutely 
 independent of the knowledge and culture he possesses ; in 
 the eyes of God, faith and love, and not culture and philoso- 
 phy, have worth. The modern era unreservedly returns to the 
 Greek conception that the highest and most important func- 
 tion of man is the exercise of reason in scientific knowledge. 
 The sciences are the pride of the modern times. The Middle 
 Ages are despised as a barbarous and benighted period, be- 
 cause they have done nothing for science. But we also find 
 in the modern estimate of knowledge another peculiar trait, 
 which is lacking in the Greeks : for the Greeks, knowledge was 
 the highest good as such and desired for its own sake ; the 
 moderns prize it especially for its practical utility. For them 
 physics is a practical science, nay, the practical science ; for 
 the champions of modern civilization do not think very much 
 of that practical philosophy of which the Greek philosophers 
 expected so much. Morality, Buckle believes, has always 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION 137 
 
 been the same, it has always been very much approved and 
 very little followed ; the progress of the human race depends 
 upon the progress of the natural sciences. So a great many 
 of the leaders of modern culture believe with Buckle. When 
 our newspapers, which reflect the opinions of their readers, 
 by pre-established harmony, let us say, desire to praise the 
 nineteenth century, they at once begin to speak of railroads 
 and steamships, telegraphs and electrotechnics, armor-clads 
 and breechloaders. 
 
 5. It is worth observing how soon the modern age became 
 conscious — instinctively, one is tempted to believe — of its 
 peculiar character. Francis Bacon dates the beginning of 
 the modern era from the three great inventions of the mag- 
 netic needle, gunpowder, and printing. These achievements 
 characterize the spirit of the new epoch of the history of 
 humanity ; its motto is : Knowledge is power. Inventions 
 (opera) are now made the test of knowledge. The old 
 science gave its possessor skill in vanquishing opponents in 
 debate; the new science gives him the power to conquer 
 nature by art ( vhysici est non disputando adversarium, sed 
 naturam operando vincere). Bacon has attempted, in his two 
 main works, to lay the foundation and to outline the method 
 of this new science. In a little unfinished essay, which is 
 found among his works under the title Nova Atlantis, he has 
 drawn a picture of the perfect civilization of the future. The 
 undertaking has frequently been repeated since then; it is 
 worth while, however, to cast a glance at the first attempt 
 of this kind. The Nova Atlantis is an island in the far West. 
 The narrator, who had been driven out of the right course 
 and carried to its shores, tells us that the noblest institution 
 of the entire country is a natural-scientific society founded 
 by an ancient king and called Domus Salomonis, or the Col- 
 lege of the Six Days' Works. " The end of the foundation,'' 
 so the guide explains, " is the knowledge of causes, and the 
 secret notions of things ; and the enlargement of the bounds 
 
138 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible." 
 Among the great number of particular institutions which 
 serve this purpose are large and deep caves under the earth, 
 some of them three miles in depth ; they are used " for all 
 coagulations, indurations, refrigerations, and conservations 
 of bodies ; " as well as for producing natural and new arti- 
 ficial metals, from materials which lie there for many years ; 
 also for curing certain diseases ; and for prolongation of 
 life in some hermits that choose to live there, and indeed live 
 very long, and possess wonderful knowledge. There are also 
 high towers, the highest about half a mile in height, or in- 
 cluding the height of the hill about three miles, which are 
 used especially for meteorological observations ; lakes both 
 salt and fresh for the production of fish and water-fowl as 
 well as for experiments in the water; artificial wells and 
 fountains with all kinds of mineral waters, amongst them the 
 so-called Water of Paradise (aqua Paradisi), which is un- 
 usually efficacious for the preservation of health and the 
 prolongation of life. They have also great and spacious 
 houses, in which the meteorological occurrences, snow, hail, 
 rain, and thunder-storms are imitated, and all kinds of 
 animals are produced ; large and various orchards and gar- 
 dens, " wherein we do not so much respect beauty, as variety 
 of ground and soil, proper for divers trees and herbs," bear- 
 ing the richest fruit ; " we have also means to make divers 
 plants rise by mixtures of earth without seeds." " We have 
 also parks and enclosures of all sorts of beasts and birds, 
 which we use not only for view, or rareness, but likewise for 
 dissection and trials; that thereby 'we may take light what 
 may be brought upon the body of man. Wherein we find 
 many strange effects ; as continuing life in them, though 
 divers parts, which you account vital, be perished and taken 
 forth ; resuscitating of some that seem dead in appearance ; 
 and the like. We also try all poisons and other medicines 
 upon them, as well of chirurgy as physic. By art, likewise, 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION 139 
 
 we make them greater or taller than their kind is, and con- 
 trariwise dwarf them, and stay their growth ; we make them 
 more fruitful and bearing than their kind is ; and contrari- 
 wise barren and not generative. Also we make them differ 
 in color, shape, activity, many ways. We find means to 
 make commixtures and copulations of different kinds ; which 
 have produced many new kinds, and them not barren, as the 
 general opinion is. We make a number of kinds of serpents, 
 worms, flies, fishes, of putrefaction ; whereof some are ad- 
 vanced (in effect) to be perfect creatures like beasts or birds ; 
 and have sexes, and do propagate. Neither do we this by 
 chance, but we know beforehand of what matters and com- 
 mixture what kind of those creatures will arise." Of course 
 the most astonishing results are produced in their brew- 
 houses, bakehouses, and kitchens, etc. : " we strive to have 
 drinks of extreme thin parts, insomuch as some of them put 
 upon the back of your hand will, with a little stay, pass through 
 to the palm, and yet taste mild to the mouth." There are also 
 places where experiments are made with lights and colors ; 
 here lights of every strength and color are produced ; they 
 have also " glasses and means to see small objects afar off 
 and minute bodies perfectly and distinctly, such as heavenly 
 bodies, or the parts of small animals, or corpuscles in urine 
 and the blood." In other places experiments are made with 
 sounds, smells, and tastes in the same highly practical way. 
 There are also engine-houses, where wonderful cannons, fly- 
 ing-machines, ships and boats for going under water, 
 machines, as well as artificial men, beasts, birds, fishes, and 
 serpents are made ; " item some perpetual motions (nonnulli 
 motus perpetui)" * 
 
 We see, these are new pictures which the new age paints 
 upon the curtain of the future. The old Christianity raised 
 its eyes from the earth, which offered nothing and promised 
 
 1 [See Ellis, Spedding, and Heath's edition of Bacon's works, vol. V., pp. 359- 
 413. — Tr.] 
 
140 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 nothing, to heaven and its suprasensuous glory. The new 
 age is looking for heaven upon earth ; it hopes to attain to 
 the perfect civilization through science, and expects that this 
 will make life healthy, long, rich, beautiful, and happy. 
 
 Bacon once called himself the herald of the new era. In- 
 deed, it is a splendid army that follows him to the conquest 
 of heaven upon earth. Let us hear another and still another 
 leader of the host in regard to the goal and the methods of 
 the enterprise. 
 
 6. Descartes, who has a greater claim than any other to be 
 called the leader of modern philosophy, formulates the pro- 
 gramme of his philosophical reforms in the little treatise on 
 Method (1637). In the last part he tells that by his method 
 he reached new notions in metaphysics and morals which 
 pleased him greatly ; but that, owing to his hostility to writ- 
 ing books, he had not published them. " But as soon as I 
 had acquired some general notions respecting Physics, and, 
 beginning to make trial of them in various particular diffi- 
 culties, had observed how far they can carry us, and how 
 much they differ from the principles that have been employed 
 up to the present time, I believed that I could not keep them 
 concealed without sinning grievously against the law by 
 which we are bound to promote, as far as in us lies, the gen- 
 eral good of mankind. For by them I perceived it to be 
 possible to arrive at knowledge highly useful in life, and in 
 room of the Speculative Philosophy usually taught in the 
 Schools, to discover a Practical, by means of which, knowing 
 the force and action of fire, water, air, the stars, the heavens, 
 and all the other bodies that surround us, as distinctly as we 
 know the various crafts of our artisans, we might also apply 
 them in the same way to all the uses to which they are 
 adapted, and thus render ourselves the lords and possessors 
 of nature. And this is a result to be desired, not only in 
 order to the invention of an infinity of arts by which we 
 might be enabled to enjoy without any trouble the fruits of 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION 141 
 
 the earth, and all its comforts, but also and especially for 
 the preservation of health, which is without doubt, of all the 
 blessings of this life, the first and fundamental one ; for the 
 mind is so intimately dependent upon the condition and 
 relation of the organs of the body, that if any means can 
 ever be found to render men wiser and more ingenious than 
 hitherto, I believe that it is in Medicine they must be sought 
 for. It is true that the science of Medicine, as it now exists, 
 contains few things whose utility is very remarkable ; but 
 without any wish to depreciate it, I am confident that there 
 is no one, even among those whose profession it is, who does 
 not admit that all at present known in it is almost nothing 
 in comparison of what remains to be discovered ; and that 
 we could free ourselves from an infinity of maladies of body 
 as well as of mind, and perhaps also even from the debility 
 of age, if we had sufficiently ample knowledge of their causes 
 and of the remedies provided for us by Nature. But since I 
 designed to employ my whole life in the search after so neces- 
 sary a Science, and since I had fallen in with a path which seems 
 to me such, that if any one follow it he must inevitably reach 
 the end desired, unless he be hindered either by the shortness 
 of life or the want of experiments, I judged that there could 
 be no more effectual provision against these two impediments 
 than if I were faithfully to communicate to the public all the 
 little I might myself have found, and incite men of superior 
 genius to strive to proceed farther, by contributing, each accord- 
 ing to his inclination and ability, to the experiments which it 
 would be necessary to make, and also by informing the public 
 of all they might discover, so that, by the last beginning 
 where those before them had left off, and thus connecting the 
 lives and labors of many, we might collectively proceed much 
 farther than each by himself could do." And in the preface 
 to his system (Principia Philosophiae, 1644) he says, speak- 
 ing of the utility of the new philosophy as opposed to the 
 philosophy of the school, " that it is by it we are distinguished 
 
142 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 from savages and barbarians, and that the civilization and 
 cuUuj-s of a nation is regulated by the degree in which true 
 philosophy flourishes in it, and, accordingly that to contain true 
 philosophers is the highest privilege a state can enjoy." The 
 philosophy, however, which he means, he describes soon 
 after : " All philosophy is like a tree, of which Metaphysics 
 is the root, Physics the trunk, and all the other sciences 
 the branches that grow out of this trunk, which are re- 
 duced to three principal, namely, Medicine, Mechanics, and 
 Ethics." 1 
 
 We may say, I believe, that no age has ever had a clearer 
 idea of its goal and of the road leading to it: the goal is 
 heaven on earth, the road to it, natural science. Through 
 technology and medicine, the two great applications of natu- 
 ral science, the future will reach a state in which men will, 
 without work and in permanent health of body and soul, 
 enjoy the fruits of the earth ; perhaps, as the serious Des- 
 cartes no less than the somewhat charlatanistic Bacon antici- 
 pates, medicine may even bring about a prolongation of life 
 and an increase of all intellectual and moral powers. 
 
 The fearlessness, nay we may say, the bold recklessness, 
 with which the control and use of nature by science is planned 
 for man, stands in remarkable contrast to the awe with which 
 the Middle Ages contemplated nature. The Middle Ages, too, 
 sought to gain control over things, they too suspected that it 
 might be obtained through knowledge. But they had at the 
 same time a secret dread of this knowledge and activity ; they 
 regarded it as an unholy business, as a black art, as the 
 work of the devil, who as the prince and lord of this world 
 could indeed grant sway over it. All those who had the repu- 
 tation of possessing such effective knowledge, were looked 
 upon as magicians : Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Pope 
 Sylvester II. Soldan quotes a very characteristic narrative 
 from Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks in his History 
 
 1 [Translation from Veitch's 10th edition.} 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION 143 
 
 of the Trials of Witches. 1 " The archdeacon Leonartes of 
 Bourges suffered from a cataract, and no physician could cure 
 him. At last he betook himself to the Basilica of St. Martin, 
 where he spent two or three months in constant prayer and 
 fasting. On a fast day his eyesight was restored to him. He 
 hurried home, and sent for a Jewish physician, at whose 
 advice he placed cupping-glasses on his neck to complete the 
 cure. And then it happened that as the blood began to flow, 
 his blindness began to return. Full of shame Leonartes went 
 back to the church, prayed and fasted as before : but in vain. 
 Let everybody, so Gregory concludes, learn from this occur- 
 rence that when once he has been blessed with heavenly medi- 
 cines never again to have recourse to earthly arts." 
 
 This fear, from which, by the way, the Greeks and Romans 
 were not free, the modern times have wholly lost ; nothing is 
 proof against them ; man has a right to do what he can do. 
 The belief in transcendent powers, good and bad, by whose 
 help man is supposed to exercise a magic influence upon 
 the course of nature, has been constantly waning since the 
 beginning of the modern era ; man's confidence in his natural 
 powers has increased in the same proportion. 
 
 7. The modern science of nature is supplemented by the 
 modern science of the state and society. The latter, too, is a 
 practical science : it seeks first to construct the ideal of the 
 perfect state and the legal order, and then to realize it in 
 practice. Political Utopias are the counterpart of the physi- 
 cal-mechanical Utopias; they accompany each other, being 
 frequently connected with each other, through the entire age, 
 from the beginning of the sixteenth century down to the 
 socialistic Utopias of the nineteenth century. By the side of 
 Descartes, the leader of modern natural philosophy, stands 
 the Englishman Thomas Hobbes, the real leader in the field 
 of political philosophy. He claims this position for himself : 
 astronomy begins with Copernicus, physics with Galileo, 
 
 1 Geschichte d«r Hexenprocesse, L, 114. 
 
144 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 physiology with Harvey, while the science of the state is no 
 older than his own book Be cive. 1 He has the highest opin- 
 ion of the practical value of this science. In the dedicatory 
 epistle which accompanies his work on the state, we read : 
 " For everything in which the present excels the barbarism of 
 the past we are indebted to mathematical physics ; when 
 moral philosophy will have solved its problems with the same 
 certainty, it will be hard to see what human labor can farther 
 accomplish for the happiness of this life." For Hobbes the 
 state is the earthly providence ; endowed with unlimited 
 rights and powers, it bestows peace and welfare upon its sub- 
 jects : "outside of the state there is passion, war, fear, 
 poverty, ugliness, solitude, barbarism, ignorance, ferocious- 
 ness ; in the state, reason, peace, security, wealth, beauty, 
 society, elegance, science, benevolence." 2 
 
 So there is no doubt that, if to the perfect mechanics and 
 medicine we add the perfect politics, we shall realize heaven 
 on earth. 
 
 8. Finally, a man may be mentioned who paved the way 
 for these views in Germany : I mean Leibniz. There was 
 hardly a field of human thought and human action which 
 Leibniz left untouched with his plans for the promotion of the 
 happiness of the human race. With feverish haste he was 
 constantly devising new projects : for the establishment of an 
 improved German Empire, of a political system for Europe, of 
 a peaceful church union, for the codification of all scientific 
 and technical knowledge in encyclopedias, for the reform of 
 the system of education, for the organization of the book 
 trade, for the care of the poor by employing them in public 
 workshops, for the improvement of mining. But one project 
 especially occupied him during his entire life : the organiza- 
 tion of scientific research. Leibniz endeavored to establish 
 institutions in the North and in the East, after the pattern of 
 the London and Paris societies. As his final goal he perhaps 
 
 1 Preface tc De corpore, 1655. 2 Dt cive, X., 1. 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION 145 
 
 had in view an international federation of societies into a 
 great association, whose aim should be to preserve all the 
 knowledge of the human race, to regulate all research, and so 
 to extend the empire of reason on earth, as far as possible. 
 His endeavors in regard to the invention of a philosophical 
 calculus and a universally intelligible, international sign- 
 language, suggest such a project. The object of all science, 
 however, consists in its application ; not curiosity, but utility 
 determines the value of every science. In the memorial to 
 the Elector of Brandenburg in which he proposed the estab- 
 lishment of a Society of Sciences at Berlin (1700), we read : 
 " Such an electoral Society should not be governed by mere 
 curiosity or desire for knowledge, and occupy itself with fruit- 
 less experiments, or be content with the mere invention of 
 useful things without applying them, as has been the case in 
 London, Paris, and Florence : but the object should be utility 
 in both theory as well as in practice from the very start. The 
 aim would therefore be to combine theoriam cum praxi, and 
 not only to improve the arts and the sciences, but also the 
 country and the people, agriculture, manufacture, and com- 
 merce, and, in a word, the articles of food." 1 We are 
 reminded of what the scientific society in the Nova Atlantis 
 accomplished for the improvement of articles of food. 
 
 These are the views of the leaders of thought with respect 
 to the aim of their age : civilization ; above all, technical-scien- 
 tific civilization, based upon scientific knowledge and secured 
 by perfect political institutions — that is the programme of 
 the modern era. 
 
 9. We must confess, it has labored earnestly and success- 
 fully for the execution of its programme. As for the con- 
 quest of nature by science, even Bacon, who was not modest 
 in his claims, would hardly refuse to admit that astonishing 
 results have been achieved. It is true, the elixir of life and 
 the perpetuum mobile have not yet been found, and the flying 
 
 1 Leibniz, German Writings, published by Guhrauer, II., 267. 
 
146 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 machine and the art of making gold are still in the future ; 
 but many of our inventions would make a creditable showing 
 by the side of those in the Atlantis. And in the field of poli- 
 tics and law, some very serious beginnings have been mado, 
 to say the least. The entire seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
 turies were filled with the desire to bring about the rational 
 State by means of the science of the state, and thereby to 
 promote the welfare of all. The names of Frederick William 
 II. and Frederick II., Maria Theresa and Joseph II, prove 
 the sincerity and the earnestness of these efforts. And the 
 French Revolution really desired the same thing, though in a 
 different way : the state in which reason and law should rule 
 for the common good. 
 
 With unmixed feelings of satisfaction and pride the 
 Aufklarung contemplated its achievements, at the end of the 
 eighteenth century. A few years ago a document was taken 
 from the steeple-knob of St. Margaret's Church at Gotha, 
 which had been placed there in the year 1784 ; this paper 
 contains the testimonial which the modern era gave itself a 
 hundred years ago. " Our age," it declares, " occupies the 
 happiest period of the eighteenth century. Emperors, kings, 
 and princes humanely descend from their dreaded heights, 
 despise pomp and splendor, become the fathers, friends, and 
 confidants of their people. Religion rends its priestly garb 
 and appears in its divine essence. Enlightenment makes giant 
 strides. Thousands of our brothers and sisters, who formerly 
 lived in sanctified inactivity, are given back to the state. 
 Sectarian hatred and persecution for conscience' sake are 
 vanishing ; love of man and freedom of thought are gaining 
 the supremacy. The arts and sciences are flourishing, and 
 our gaze is penetrating deeply into the workshop of nature. 
 Handicraftsmen as well as artists are reaching perfection, 
 useful knowledge is growing among all classes. Here you 
 have a faithful description of our times. Do not haughtily 
 look down upon us if you are higher and see farther than we ; 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION 147 
 
 recognize rather from the picture which we have drawn how 
 bravely and energetically we labored to raise you to the posi- 
 tion which you now hold and to support you in it. Do the 
 same for your descendants and be happy." 1 
 
 10. When we compare the self-confidence of the dying 
 eighteenth century, as expressed in these lines, with the 
 opinion which the dying nineteenth century has of itself, we 
 note a strong contrast. Instead of the proud consciousness 
 of having reached a pinnacle, a feeling that we are on the 
 decline ; instead of joyful pride in the successes achieved and 
 joyful hope of new and greater things, a feeling of disap- 
 pointment and weariness, and a premonition of a coming 
 catastrophe ; in literature instead of the essential harmony of 
 thought and feeling, a chorus of confused, excited, and dis- 
 cordant voices, the like of which has never been heard 
 before ; in public life, instead of the unanimity of all 
 thoughtful and right-thinking men which we find in the 
 age of enlightenment, such discord and vindictiveness in 
 party strife, as has long ago discouraged all men of refine- 
 ment and serious thought from participating in it ; but one 
 fundamental note running through the awful confusion of 
 voices : pessimism ! Indignation and disappointment : these 
 seem to be the two strings to which the emotional life of the 
 present is attuned. Schopenhauer is its philosophical choir- 
 master, everywhere his voice is heard through the din. All 
 
 1 In Hettner, History of Literature in the Eighteenth Century, III., 2, 170. 
 With a similar statement a contemporaneous historian of modern philosophy, the 
 clear-sighted J. G. Buhle, begins the exposition of the philosophy of the eight- 
 eenth century : " We are now approaching the most recent period of the history 
 of philosophy, which is the most remarkable and the most brilliant period of 
 philosophy as well as of the sciences and the arts and of the civilization of 
 humanity in general. The seed which had been planted in the immediately preced- 
 ing centuries began to bloom into perfection in the eighteenth. Of no century 
 can it be said with so much truth as of the eighteenth that it utilized the achieve- 
 ments of its predecessors, to bring humanity to a greater physical, intellectual, and 
 moral perfection. It has reached a height, which, considering the limitations of 
 human nature and the course of our past experience, we should be surprised to 
 see the genius of future generations maintain." 
 
148 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 poets and litterateurs have studied him, and have learned 
 from him the great truth : the obverse represents the essence of 
 things, the fa§ade is mere sham and illusion. What Rousseau 
 hurled into the face of his times as an unheard-of paradox, 
 namely, that culture and civilization do not make men better 
 and happier, Schopenhauer teaches as a philosophical theorem i 
 Civilization increases our misery, civilization is one great faux 
 pas. 
 
 What is the meaning of these phenomena ? Is pessimism 
 a sign that the European family of nations is nearing its old 
 age ? Have the modern nations reached that point in their 
 history which the old world had reached at the beginning 
 of the Roman Empire ? Are the pessimistic poets and philo- 
 sophers the precursors and predicters of the end, of the dis- 
 appearance of civilization ? Is the yearning for deliverance 
 taking possession of our age, as it took possession of the 
 Hindoos and antiquity ? Does the phrase fin de siecle, with 
 which our neighbors are playing, signify not only the century 
 which is drawing to a close, but the end of this occidental 
 world-epoch in general, — finis saeculi? 
 
 Whoever leans to pessimism himself will affirm the ques- 
 tion ; every philosopher of history obtains the key for the 
 interpretation of things from subjective feelings. He, how- 
 ever, whose personal feelings prompt him to take the other 
 side, will deny it ; he will see in pessimism nothing but an 
 expression of morbid discontent on the part of particular 
 individuals, from which no age is ever free, but which 
 happens to strike a more responsive chord to-day, owing to 
 certain conditions of social-economic as well as political life. 
 A purely theoretical philosopher of history, one who does 
 not allow his personal inclinations and moods to warp his 
 judgment, will perhaps regard both of these interpretations 
 of the signs of the times as too extreme. Undoubtedly, he 
 might say, for example, many phenomena may be observed 
 in the life of the present which remind us of the Roman 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION 149 
 
 Empire, in the field of art and literature as well as in the field 
 of economic and political activity : the shallow, empty-headed 
 virtuosity in the arts, which labors to satisfy the parvenu's 
 craving for pomp, the romantic love of the " old German," 
 which bears such a curious resemblance to the Empire's 
 romantic mania for the old Roman ; the laborious and aim- 
 less learned research, which in reality cares absolutely noth- 
 ing for science itself, but which does care for the rewards 
 offered for scientific work ; the literature, which seems to 
 indicate extreme nervous weakness in the authors as well as 
 in the readers, — just look at the outside of our books, the 
 covers marked with inscriptions running in all directions and 
 showing all the colors of the rainbow, the titles hailing the 
 reader with exclamation points and question marks ; the 
 luxury and the proletarianism of the great cities ; the cen- 
 tralization of our entire life, by which the strength and indi- 
 viduality of culture is suppressed ; the constantly growing 
 necessity of basing the existing order, which cannot always 
 depend upon its inner purposiveness, upon political-military 
 powers ; and the like. 
 
 On the other hand, the same philosopher of history might 
 continue, there is no lack of vital energy or of important 
 problems to occupy the future life of the civilized nations of 
 Europe in the most worthy manner. Perhaps, he will say, 
 the whole phenomenon is to be interpreted as a passing stage 
 of depression, caused by the prevailing lack of universally 
 recognized hopes and ideals, to unite the hearts of all. 
 Nations like individuals are kept alive by hope and yearning, 
 not by their fulfilment ; when the ideals are realized, there 
 comes a time of restless seeking for a new goal. And it 
 might perhaps be shown that we are at present passing 
 through such a period. The German people particularly, who 
 seem to be most affected by the feelings mentioned, have had 
 their long yearnings satisfied by enormous achievements: 
 they at last have their emperor and empire, and parliaments 
 
150 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 in plenty ; and the year 1870 has at least freed our neighbors 
 from a hated regime, from Caesarisin and popery. Both nations 
 are now repeating the experience, which is so common, 
 that the hope was more beautiful than the realization. Thus 
 our philosopher of history might reason, and add his belief 
 that new problems, which are already beginning to announce 
 themselves, will awaken new feelings of power and love 
 of life : that they will bring more justice into our social 
 institutions, more seriousness and truth, more substance 
 and beauty, into the intellectual life even of the masses, and 
 not merely of the masses. Nay, perhaps, so he might pro- 
 ceed, we must regard the entire previous development of the 
 modern nations as having been merely the prelude to an abso- 
 lutely independent modern civilized life ; for evidently these 
 nations, if we consider the Middle Ages as their appren- 
 ticeship and school-days, have just left school, or rather 
 have not even yet left it altogether, for do not all of those who 
 are destined for the higher professions still go through the 
 school of antiquity ? Hence, if the period of senility is not to 
 come immediately after the period of boyhood in the modern 
 nations, we must expect that their emancipation, which is 
 presumably close at hand, will be followed by the period 
 of perfect maturity. — A proof, however, so our philosopher 
 would most likely add in conclusion, that will bind the 
 intellect, is impossible here in the very nature of things: 
 nations are still more in the dark concerning the future 
 of their course than individuals. A little piece of the 
 traversed road is faintly illuminated by history, and a dis- 
 mal ray perhaps falls upon the steps -immediately before us. 
 But soon the path loses itself in the illimitable darkness 
 with which eternity encompasses the present. 
 
 Let me here say a word concerning another phenomenon, 
 which has been exciting the German youth of the most recent 
 years, Nietzscheanism, the twin brother and antipode of Schopen- 
 hauerism. The ideas by which Friederich Nietzsche, who had 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION 151 
 
 been undergoing a constant change of heart, and had already 
 passed through many stages of thought, first attracted the 
 attention of wider circles, are contained in his latest collections 
 of aphorisms : Thus Spake Zarathustra ; On the Other Side of 
 G-ood and Bad ; and especially, The Genealogy of Morals ; to 
 which should be added also his last work : The Twilight of 
 Idols, or How to Philosophize with the Hammer} The preface 
 of this last little treatise bears the date of the day " on which the 
 first book of the transformation of all values (Die Umwertung 
 alter Werte) was finished," evidently to announce the fact 
 that this key-stone of his work marks the dawn of a new 
 world-era. He apparently believes that the birthday of this 
 book will rival in importance the birthday of Christianity, 
 which inaugurated the first transformation of all values in 
 the Occident ; that the transformation which once began 
 with Jesus will be cancelled again by Nietzsche, and that 
 a new evaluation will be made on the basis of a naturalistic 
 " Tmmoralism " with individualistic-aristocratic tendencies. 
 Nietzsche hates morality ; morality invariably seeks to thwart 
 the instincts ; on the plea of bringing about the triumph of 
 reason, it endeavors to make man sick and weak, in order 
 thus to tame him more easily, or, as we say, to improve 
 him. In Christianity, he says, this battle against the instincts 
 appears in its most exaggerated form ; its morality is the 
 morality of the slave, which sprang from the inveterate 
 hatred of the oppressed Jewish nation against the victorious 
 Romans, the morality of the weak, dependent, wicked, hence 
 deceitful, revengeful, and malicious race, rising against the 
 morality of the lords (Herrenmoral) , the morality of the 
 strong, fearless, brave, upright, high-minded, noble race. 
 By producing Christianity and spreading it among the 
 nations, Judaism took the most complete revenge imaginable 
 
 1 [Also sprach Zarathustra ; Jenseits von Gut und Btise ; Zur Genealogie der Moral ; 
 Gotzendammerung, oder wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert. Translation* 
 edited by A. Tille. — Tr.] 
 
152 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 upon the Romans : it poisoned them morally, so to speak, 
 compelled them in turn to regard the strong, healthy, brave, 
 and proud as the bad ; the weak, humble, crushed, and sub- 
 missive as the good, with whom God was well pleased. The 
 final deliverance of the Western mind from this infection, — 
 that would be Nietzsche's mission. 
 
 It is not my intention to criticise these thoughts ; aphor- 
 isms cannot, in the nature of the case, be examined as to 
 their objective validity; they do not aim to give an exhaustive 
 explanation of the essence of the subject, but to view it, from 
 some standpoint or other, in a startling light, — which, of 
 course, does not hinder us from looking at it from other points 
 of view in a different light. Had not this thinker, who was 
 endowed with such brilliant, but dangerous talents, fallen into 
 utter mental darkness, many symptoms of which are especi- 
 ally discernible in his last work, he would, we may venture to 
 believe, soon have followed different channels, since further 
 exaggerations along the lines pursued by him were impossible. 
 What now, we might ask, becomes of the superhuman being 
 (JjbermenzcK) , after he has exhausted himself in thinking, 
 and has realized himself ? What is his real work in this 
 world ? It used to be regarded as the mission of heroes and 
 great men to lead their brothers to light and life. This 
 new superhuman being seems to despise such a task ; he 
 holds himself aloof from the masses and considers himself 
 superior to them, he will have nothing to do with these 
 worthless creatures, who simply exist to make him possible. 
 But how does he spend his time ? Does he contemplate 
 himself, write aphorisms, and marvel at the distance between 
 himself and the masses ? Is that all he can find to do ? 
 That would be rather trivial for a superhuman being ; and I 
 am inclined to think that the philosopher himself would soon 
 have shuddered at the emptiness of such an existence. And 
 then, perhaps, he might have understood the littleness of his 
 anti-Christ as compared with the Christ, in whom there was 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION 153 
 
 surely something more of the truly superhuman element than 
 in this swaggering despiser of humanity and self-conceited 
 boaster. 1 
 
 However, let all that be as it may. The question that in- 
 terests us is, What do these ideas signify as a sign of the 
 times ? What makes the Ubermensch so attractive to the 
 young? Nietzsche has become a staple article in the peri- 
 odicals and newspapers; on the application-blanks of our 
 public libraries the name of Nietzsche occurs more frequently , 
 perhaps, than any other ; yes, I have been told by teachers in 
 the gymnasium that traces of Nietzsche's spirit and writings 
 may occasionally be found in the German compositions of 
 their pupils, by no means of the least talented among them. 
 What draws them to Nietzsche ? Is it his impressive style ? 
 Is it his dazzling, blending, lightning-like, instantaneous illu- 
 mination of things ? Or is it the fact that all the old truths 
 have come to be regarded as trite by our youth, and that 
 they are insanely fond of the most unheard-of paradoxes ? 
 
 1 An article by Gallwitz has just fallen into my hands : Nietzsche as a Prepa- 
 ration for Christianity (Nietzsche als Erzieher zum Christentum) (Preussische 
 Jahrbiicher, February, 1896). The author admirably shows how far Nietzsche 
 misses the mark, when he absolutely opposes his ideal of life to that of Jesus. 
 There is a far-reaching formal agreement between them. The " gregarious im- 
 pulse " may frequently play a prominent part in the churches which call them- 
 selves Christian ; no one who is acquainted with them will look for it in Jesus 
 and his first disciples ; on the contrary, primitive Christianity is really char- 
 acterized by its extremely independent attitude towards the established and 
 prevailing opinions and customs, and even towards conventional values and 
 standards. Nor is it inclined to overestimate morals and morality ; on the con- 
 trary, the really important thing is, to use Nietzsche's words, " moralinfreie " 
 [moralin-less ?] virtue ; legality, has no value ; as the son of God, as the free 
 child of the Father, the Son of Man knows that he is superior to the law. 
 And Nietzsche could also have found in Jesus and his teaching the truth that 
 to rise above the world of sense and desire is the fundamental characteristic of 
 perfection. One thing, to be sure, he would not have been able to find there : 
 self-adoration, haughtiness towards the people, contempt for the masses. These 
 qualities he would have been more likely to find among the Pharisees. He found 
 them in Schopenhauer, not in Schopenhauer the thinker, but in Schopenhauer 
 the man. And he always remained a true follower of Schopenhauer the man, 
 even after he had repudiated the latter's philosophy. 
 
154 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 The young always have a predilection for the new and un- 
 heard-of ; it has at least the merit of being opposed to the 
 old and established forms, under the weight of which we 
 are groaning, to the trivial truths of the Sunday School class, 
 the trivial truths of morals, and those upon which candidates 
 for degrees are examined. Socrates the first Greek deca- 
 dent ; Kant a deformed, intellectual cripple ; a good conscience 
 the result of a good digestion; morality the castration of 
 nature by decadence-philosophers — indeed this is saying 
 something, something different from the old, tiresome stories 
 which have been heard and repeated ad nauseam. Are these 
 paradoxes intoxicating our young men, who have grown tired 
 of the everlasting disciplining and examining ? Are we like 
 the Athenians, can we no longer bear the customary, and have 
 we therefore become the slaves of every newest fad I 1 Or 
 has the biting sarcasm with which all the old heroes and 
 time-honored truths are cast aside, a pleasant ring in the 
 ears of an age that has been filled with distrust of all estab- 
 lished institutions by the din of the penny-a-liners and the 
 officiousness of the busybodies who are for stifling truth ? 
 Or is it the obscure prophecy of something new and great 
 that is to come that is making an impression? Perhaps 
 something of all of this. And the final and deepest reason 
 is perhaps the one to which we alluded before : the lack of 
 an ideal, of a ruling ideal, an ideal to elevate the hearts, 
 to inspire the will, and to give the multitude a common aim. 
 Hence the impatient unrest of the times, the feverish searching 
 and groping after something great and unusual, after a guide 
 to new and higher forms of life. What was it that attracted 
 so many readers to Rembrandt as an Educator, if not the 
 promise to show the helpless an ideal, an ideal of a freer, 
 richer, greater German life ? What is it that gains credu- 
 lous hearers and adherents for the other prophets, who spring 
 
 1 AovXot 6vres ruv del ar6iru>v, virepSvrat 5e rS»v tlud6rwv, so Cleon calls the 
 Athenians, in Thucydides, IH., 38. 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION 155 
 
 up in a single night and preach to the German people in 
 popular meetings and pamphlets, but the deep and universal 
 longing to learn something of the path which we now ought 
 to follow ? What else is it that is gathering around the 
 name of Paul de Lagarde a little community of reverent 
 admirers ? To point out to the German people new goals 
 and new ideals : that is the ultimate purpose of his German 
 Writings, which contain, besides much that is strange and 
 harsh, so much more that is good and great. 
 
 If it is this, the hunger for an ideal, that brings forth all 
 these phenomena, then they are not — however much there 
 may be in them that is unsatisfactory — symptoms of decline, 
 but symptoms of the unrest which precedes the birth of a 
 new age. In that case the struggle of art and poetry for new 
 forms and a new content will also have to be interpreted as a 
 struggle of the new ideal to reveal itself. 
 
 The young men engaged in this struggle do not like to 
 be referred to the past : their faces are turned to the future. 
 Nevertheless, I should like to ask the disciple of Nietzsche to 
 peruse with care the first book of the Platonic Republic. 
 He will meet in it a man who with great confidence and 
 self-conceit teaches the doctrine that injustice, when on a 
 sufficient scale, has more strength and freedom and mastery 
 than justice ; perhaps he will be tempted to read on in this 
 remarkable, so old and yet so modern book. And then, per- 
 haps, he may also be induced to re-read his Goethe, the 
 second part of Faust, the scene between Mephistopheles and 
 the Baccalaureus, in which the eternal theme of the old men 
 and the young men is so wonderfully worked out. 
 
 11. I cannot close this discussion on the modern conception 
 of life, without directly adverting to a question which has 
 already been partly answered, — the question concerning the 
 modern spirit in its relation to Christianity. 
 
 If we employ the name Christianity solely to designate a 
 mode of life and feeling, a belief and conviction, absolutely 
 
156 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 resembling that of the first Christian communities, then we 
 cannot call our modern life Christian. To abstain from the 
 world, to shrink from civilization, to turn to the Beyond : 
 these are the characteristic traits of old Christianity ; no one 
 will regard them as characteristic of the modern period of 
 history. 
 
 But if we do not take Christianity in this its narrowest 
 sense, if we apply the term to the entire historical movement 
 which begins with the life and death of Jesus — and that too 
 we have a good historical right to do — then the case is dif- 
 ferent. Then we shall have to confess, whether we like it or 
 not, that the modern era is still so greatly dominated by 
 Christianity that its history can and must be regarded as a 
 part of the history of Christianity. David Strauss propounds 
 the question in his Old and New Faith : 1 Are we Christians ? 
 He answers it in the negative, and shows that the old creed 
 no longer expresses the prevailing convictions of the modern 
 times. Herein he is undoubtedly right. Does it not follow, 
 then, that we are no longer Christians ? Certainly, if the 
 creed has the force of a definition, excluding every one from 
 Christianity whose belief it does not express, — which was 
 indeed its original purpose. But the inference would be 
 misleading if we were to conclude further: hence Chris- 
 tianity has become extinct. In answer to this proposition 
 we should have to say : Christianity is older than the creeds 
 and is most likely destined to outlive them ; it has become a 
 reality in the historical life of the European nations, and can 
 never again become unreal ; it can only perish with these 
 nations themselves. It has helped to fashion the will and 
 the heart of these nations into what they are, and has left its 
 mark indelibly impressed upon their character. Even those 
 who feel decidedly opposed to Christianity cannot escape its 
 influence ; it continues to determine their thoughts, feelings, 
 and volitions. 
 
 1 Dtr alte und neue Glaube, translated by M. Blind. 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION 157 
 
 The influence of Christianity upon the life and morals of 
 the nations which, during the Middle Ages, were being pre- 
 pared for their future mission within the bosom of the church, 
 has already been slightly touched upon above (page 123) ; I 
 do not wish to recur to it. 1 Here, however, I should like to 
 call attention to some traits in our mode of feeling and our 
 conception of life which have their origin in Christianity. 
 
 Three great truths Christianity has engraven upon the hearts 
 of men. 
 
 The first is : Suffering is an essential phase of human life. 
 This truth really escaped the Greeks. They were familiar with 
 suffering, but only as a fact which ought not to be. Their 
 philosophers, at least, never got beyond this view; although 
 the tragic poets divined its deeper meaning. Christianity has 
 taught us to appreciate suffering ; suffering is not merely 
 a brutal fact, but essential to the perfect development of the 
 inner man : suffering withdraws the soul from too complete 
 devotion to the temporal and perishable ; it is the antidote to 
 vanity and the love of show ; it is, in Christian phrase, the 
 great means of education by which God turns our hearts 
 from the earthly and temporal upwards, to the eternal, to 
 Himself. And so suffering leads to inner peace. Whoever is 
 familiar with suffering will understand the significance of 
 
 1 Let me refer the reader to a work that shows the enormous power which 
 Christian charity has exercised and continues to exercise even in our days, the 
 admirable work of Uhlhorn, History of Christian Benevolence (Geschichte der 
 christlichen Liehesthatigkeit). The third volume takes up the period from the 
 Reformation to the present. It shows how many deeds of charity, not only 
 money-offerings, but also personal ministrations, have been performed, especially 
 in the nineteenth century, the like of which has perhaps never been seen since 
 the days of primitive Christianity ; the Protestant world particularly, which, for 
 a long time, has been somewhat behindhand in this respect, is now rivalling the 
 Catholic church. — May we not see in the impartiality with which the work of 
 both churches is here described a sign that the time will come again when they 
 will respect and esteem each other as different forms of pure Christianity 1 
 Protestantism undoubtedly finds less difficulty in making this acknowledgment 
 than Catholicism ; should it ever meet with a sympathetic response from the 
 Catholic church, then only will the former defection, which caused so much 
 bloodshed and suffering ^among the German people, be wholly justified. 
 
158 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Christianity. Wherever sorrows are borne, a craving and 
 seeking for Christianity usually soon manifests itself ; a 
 healthy, vigorous, and active life is more apt to cling to the 
 Greek conception of life. But, inasmuch as no life is wholly 
 free from suffering, there will be times in every life when the 
 heart is susceptible to the influences of Christianity. 
 
 The second great truth which Christianity has impressed 
 upon humanity is this : Sin and guilt are essential phases 
 of human life. This truth, too, the Greeks did not see, or at 
 least not in its entire force. They were familiar with the ugly 
 and the base ; their comic poets ridicule these, and their philos- 
 ophers show how men err with respect to the highest good, and 
 how they miss the right road to happiness. For Christianity 
 it is the most serious and most awful truth that the incli- 
 nation to evil is deeply rooted in the essence of the natural 
 man. Theology has formulated this conception in the doc- 
 trine of original sin, whether happily or not need not con- 
 cern us here ; but it is an undoubted truth that human nature 
 contains, besides beautiful and good capacities and impulses, 
 inclinations which justify the harsh remark that man is the 
 wicked animal, V animal mechanic par excellence. Man is born 
 with two venomous teeth which are wanting in the other ani- 
 mals : they are called envy and malice. The Greeks, too, were 
 skilled in their use, as the horrible picture proves which 
 Thucydides gives of the self-laceration of this nation. But 
 with the exception of particular personalities like Thucydides 
 and Plato, the ancients were not conscious of the awfulness 
 of the thing; it did not seem to be incompatible with their 
 demands upon human nature. Christianity has raised the 
 standard ; it measures man by the justice and holiness of 
 God, which have become incarnate in Jesus. This way of 
 feeling, too, has been indelibly impressed upon us. It is 
 impossible for us to accept evil as complacently as did the 
 Greeks, to contemplate our lives with such self-satisfaction as 
 was possible to the Greeks and Romans. Occasionally, at 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION 159 
 
 some neo-humanistic funeral, the Horatian Integer vitce sceler- 
 isque purus, is sung ; I am inclined to believe that the song 
 would sound oppressive to the dead man, if he could hear it ; 
 perhaps it would remind him of the beginning of that prayer 
 of the Pharisee : God, I thank thee that I am not as other 
 men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this pub- 
 can ! And would the concluding lines of the song about the 
 sweetly laughing Lalage be likely to have a pleasant ring in 
 his ears at such a time ? Perhaps the old Good Friday hymn 
 would be more to his taste : " Christ, thou lamb of God, 
 thou who bearest the sins of this world, have mercy upon 
 us." The proud words of the dying Julian — "I die without 
 remorse, as I have lived without sin " — we too might possibly 
 utter before an earthly tribunal, but can we utter them before 
 the tribunal of our own conscience, before the tribunal of 
 God? 
 
 The third great truth which Christianity has impressed 
 upon us is : The world lives by the vicarious death of the just 
 and innocent. Whatever system-loving theology may have 
 made of it, it remains the profoundest philosophical-historical 
 truth. The nations owe their existence to the willingness of 
 the best and the most unselfish, the strongest and the purest, 
 to offer themselves for sacrifice. Whatever humanity pos- 
 sesses of the highest good has been achieved by such men, 
 and their reward has been misunderstanding, contempt, exile, 
 and death. The history of humanity is the history of martyr- 
 dom ; the text to the sermon which is called the history of 
 mankind is the text to the Good Friday sermon from the 
 fifty-third chapter of the Prophet Isaiah. According to an 
 old legend, an innocent life must be walled up in the founda- 
 tions of a building if it is to endure. This belief might have 
 been taken from history ; history, too, immures innocent lives 
 in the foundations of its structures. Among the institutions 
 of the Western world, the church has thus far proved to be the 
 most enduring; its foundation is laid in the vicarious death of 
 
160 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Christ ; for which reason the old church followed the sugges- 
 tive custom of placing the symbol of the eternal sacrifice in 
 the centre of the religious church life. — The question has 
 often been debated : What is the secret of the power of the 
 Catholic church, which has often been reported dead and 
 regarded as dead ? The superstition and ignorance of the 
 masses ? Their childish fear of things which do not exist ? 
 Or the firmness of the church organization? The prudence 
 of its leaders ? The support which it receives from the lords 
 of this earth ? Perhaps all of these contribute something, 
 although we might also say these are the very things which 
 more than once brought the church to the verge of ruin. The 
 real secret most likely is that men and women have always 
 found in it the strength to sacrifice their lives. Even though 
 their number was not great, yet so precious and effective is 
 sacrifice that it has been able to counteract the debasing and 
 pernicious influence of the many who used the church as a 
 means of good living. — Protestantism, too, owes what living 
 force it possesses to this fact. And so it will also be in the 
 future. Christianity will not be preserved by privy counsel- 
 lors and professors, it can only be preserved by those who are 
 ready to work, to suffer, and to die for it. 
 
 That is the eternal meaning of the belief in the divinity of 
 Jesus. Paganism endows its gods with happiness, beauty, 
 splendor, and honor ; the kings and lords of the earth are 
 most like them. Christianity recognizes God in the form of 
 the lowliest of all the children of men ; He was the most 
 despised and most unworthy among them, full of suffering 
 and sickness. This form God chose "when he became flesh. 
 Whoever wishes to imagine God as man, says the Christian 
 faith, let him not think of the victor on the field of battle, 
 of the king in his purple, of a wise and honored man whom 
 every one admires, but let him picture to himself a man who 
 suffers everything and endures everything, who bears the sin 
 of the whole race upon his shoulders, and who remains con- 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION 161 
 
 stant in all his sufferings, who exhibits infinite patience and 
 kindness, who turns even upon his tormentors a look of 
 infinite love and pity. That is the picture of the all-good 
 in human form, that is God himself. " To be good is to do 
 good, and to suffer evil, and to persevere therein to the end." 
 
 Joined with these three elements is a fourth : the longing 
 for the transcendent. Antiquity was satisfied with the earth ; 
 the modern era has never been wholly free from the feeling 
 that the given reality is inadequate. Something of the mood 
 which Christianity introduced into the Occident — the feeling 
 that the real home of the soul is not on earth, that this life is 
 a pilgrimage in a foreign land — constantly confronts us in the 
 poetry and in the life of the modern age, and not only among 
 those who accept the teachings of primitive Christianity, but 
 also among the children of the world. There are people 
 who believe that the time for transcendent religion has 
 passed, that a religion of morality will take its place. I do not 
 believe that the future will bear them out. The old theolog- 
 ical metaphysic of the dogma may indeed pass away, and I 
 fondly hope with the friends of ethical culture that religious 
 living will more and more take the place of religious believ- 
 ing ; but I do not believe that the Western nations will ever 
 be wholly free from the need of creating, with prophetic long- 
 ing, a reality of a higher order beyond the given world. Even 
 for a man like Goethe, who stands firmly upon the earth and 
 joyfully appropriates it with his entire being, it has always 
 been the deepest yearning of his heart to gaze into a bound- 
 less, purer realm, in which everything that the hazy atmo- 
 sphere of our narrow earthly existence encompasses dissolves 
 and vanishes. 
 
 After all this, we may say : The mixture, antagonism, and 
 reconciliation of Christian and Greek elements is character- 
 istic of the modern conception of life and the world. There 
 are times when the tormer, and there are times when the 
 latter, preponderates j the time for which Paul Gerhardt sang 
 
162 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 felt otherwise than the age of enlightenment, and the genera- 
 tion for which Wilhelm Meister and the Roman Elegies were 
 written. But even here hearts have never been wanting that 
 have sought and found consolation and deliverance from 
 earthly sorrow in the harsh sublimity of the church hymns. 
 And not only do these contrasts exist together in the same 
 age : they also exist together in the same heart. Friederich 
 Lange, the author of the History of Materialism, who was a 
 thorough-going disciple of the modern conception of the uni- 
 verse and life, once, so we are told in his biography, 1 had a 
 conversation with the philosopher Uberweg concerning the 
 future of religion or the religion of the future. Lange 
 demanded that there be added to the cheerful modern build- 
 ing in the Greek temple style, at least a Gothic chapel for 
 troubled hearts, and to the national worship certain festivals, 
 during which the happy mortal, too, might learn to plunge in- 
 to the abyss of misery and again find that he was as needy of 
 salvation as the unhappy and even the wicked. In our modern 
 Christianity misery and contrition are the rule, the feeling of 
 cheerful exaltation and the joy of victory the exception : he 
 desired to reverse this order, but " not to ignore the gloomy 
 shadow which, after all, accompanies our entire life.'* The 
 church hymns, too, he wished to adopt into the new 
 worship ; and to Uberweg's protesting question : " Which one, 
 for example ? " he at once replied : Raupt voll Blut und 
 Wunden. 
 
 It seems to me, we may regard Lange as a typical repre- 
 sentative of the modern man in his attitude to the opposition 
 between Hellenism and Christianity, as a more typical repre- 
 sentative than the somewhat one-sided Uberweg, who inclines 
 to a harsh logical dogmatism. For the intellectually-trained 
 logician the differences are irreconcilable, and he sees in the 
 attempt to reconcile them a lack of consistency ; the psycholo- 
 gist and sociologist, to whom nothing human is alien, sees the 
 
 i By Ellison, 214. 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION 163 
 
 predisposition to both tendencies in the human soul, and ex- 
 periences them himself in his own heart. 
 
 Indeed, if man were a purely logical being, then he would 
 have to draw the line sharply between these extremes ; the 
 affirmation and the negation of this earthly life, Hellenic love 
 of life and Christian yearning for deliverance from all that 
 is transitory, would be regarded by him as contradictory 
 opposites, between which there can be no middle ground. 
 But man is not mere intelligence, his inner life is not a logi- 
 cal mechanism which rejects everything contradictory ; he is 
 also and primarily a willing and feeling being, a being that 
 experiences pleasure and pain, hope and fear, love and hate, 
 admiration and contempt. The judgments, too, which he pro- 
 nounces as such a being he endeavors to comprehend into a 
 system ; thus arise the different conceptions of life, and the 
 interpretations of the world based upon them, the religious 
 systems. The greatest opposition which exists between them 
 is that obtaining between culture-religions, or world-affirm- 
 ing religions, and religions of redemption. But extremes 
 do not exclude each other here as in scientific systems. In 
 cosmology one accepts either the Ptolemaic or the Coper- 
 nican system. When, however, we deal with systems of 
 world-conceptions and life-conceptions, which have their deep- 
 est roots in feeling, the case is different ; here the lines are 
 not so sharply drawn, there is more inconsistency, mixture, 
 approximation, — nay these are in a certain sense natural 
 and necessary. 
 
 Every man experiences the great extremes of pleasure and 
 pain, health and sickness, youth and old age, life and death ; 
 he suffers good and evil from men, he arouses and feels love 
 and hatred, trust and distrust, admiration and contempt. 
 No one, therefore, is absolutely unfamiliar with the ex- 
 tremes of happiness and worldly joy, and disappointment, 
 disgust, world-weariness, and satiety of life. Inasmuch as 
 every mood is absolute while it lasts, and steeps the whole 
 
164 ORIGINS OF MOEAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 world and all life in its color, we may say that the tendency 
 is temporarily present in every man to produce these two 
 systems, the optimistic and the pessimistic. Every one has 
 in his own experiences, the fundamental conditions at least 
 for understanding both systems. It will depend upon his 
 temperament and his experiences, which of them will gain 
 the supremacy, and finally become habitual with him. But 
 in some form or other both will be present; in some form 
 or other he will employ them both to universalize his tem- 
 porary mood. To men like Goethe and Wilhelm von Hum- 
 boldt, who were able beautifully to develop and happily to 
 exercise healthy and remarkable natural powers, under happy 
 and appropriate conditions, the Hellenic conception of life, a 
 worldly optimism, was becoming and natural. But moments 
 were not wanting even in Goethe's life when he entertained 
 other feelings towards Christianity than aversion to the cross, 
 for did he not once call Saint Filipo Neri his saint ? And 
 perhaps Humboldt was not always in the mood which once 
 prompted him to write that even in the hour of death a few 
 verses from Homer, even though they be taken from the cata- 
 logue of ships, would be more consoling and elevating than 
 anything in the world. On the other hand, whoever is 
 endowed with a gloomy temperament and has suffered great 
 misfortunes, whoever has been disappointed and ill-treated 
 by men, whoever has erred much and sinned much, or 
 perhaps looks back upon a wrecked life, will be more in- 
 clined to seek and find rest in a view that absolutely 
 repudiates this temporal life, and looks forward to deliver- 
 ance and the hereafter ; Hamann and Schopenhauer were 
 natures of this kind. But their lives, too, were not devoid 
 of experiences which enabled them to appreciate the Hellenic 
 conception of the universe. In the representations of art at 
 least, Schopenhauer contemplates reality with pleasure and 
 love. 
 
 Moreover, the same mixture of opposites is not wanting in 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION 165 
 
 the earlier civilizations. The Greeks, too, were not unfamiliar 
 with the feeling of the transitoriness and nothingness of the 
 earthly. How often the feeling of world-sorrow and weari- 
 ness of life strikes a responsive chord in their poetry, in 
 Homer, in the tragic poets ! And so, conversely, a naive 
 love of nature is not wanting in the Gospels ; Jesus in the 
 parables lovingly contemplates the life of nature; and with 
 what love and pleasure his gaze rests upon the children ! 
 And Saint Augustine surely did not always think, in his 
 direct daily intercourse with men, of the system according 
 to which the natural virtues are splendid vices. 
 
 We shall therefore have to say, the systems of ethical nat- 
 uralism and supranaturalism, carried out consistently, are 
 logical schemes, that do not, like natural-historical defini- 
 tions, directly express the life, thoughts, and feelings of the 
 actual man. They mark a relation of the soul to reality as 
 it would be if certain experiences and moods were the only 
 ones. The real life oscillates between extreme moods, and 
 the judgment on life and reality correspondingly wavers be- 
 tween these extreme formulas. This is true of the life of indi- 
 viduals as well as of the life of nations and times. The 
 theoretical value of such conceptual schemes consists in this, 
 that they are an indirect means of understanding and deter- 
 mining reality. They have the significance of artificial lines, 
 of co-ordinate axes, by which we may determine for the infinite 
 variety of living forms their place in the historical -moral world. 
 It is the same here as with the definitions of the temperaments 
 or the forms of the state, which do not, as we know, immedi- 
 ately express or describe the concrete reality, but serve, as 
 logical schemes, indirectly to comprehend and describe it. 
 
 More important than the theoretical value of these schemes 
 is the practical value of the two great forms of life and their 
 self-expression in poetry and art. They supply the modern 
 nations with the spiritual forms for the great modes and 
 moods of life. In the history of the Gospel, in the life of the 
 
166 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 saints, the sister of charity finds the models which elevate 
 and strengthen her in her calling ; from the songs of Paul 
 Gerhard t the sick and troubled soul derives consolation and 
 comfort. I wonder how a Greek consoled himself when he 
 was sick and weak. Or were the Greeks never sick ? And, 
 conversely, in the great figures of Greek and Roman history, 
 in the vigorous eloquence of Demosthenes, the Germans 
 sought and found the means to revive the courage of a 
 vanquished people, and to direct it towards the goal of free- 
 dom and greatness. And so even now the poems of Homer 
 may inculcate in the souls of our boys the first examples of 
 youthful love of honor and prudence, manly vigor and dig- 
 nity. The advantage of this long and varied preliminary his- 
 tory is that it offers us clearly defined conceptions, according 
 to our different natures and talents, our different fortunes 
 and life-experiences. And we are therefore unquestionably 
 justified in introducing our young men to both worlds, to 
 that of antiquity and that of Christianity, not merely in 
 order to give them historical knowledge, but to enable them 
 to contemplate the different lots of life, so that each one may 
 prudently select that which is fitting for him. But for that 
 very reason we should not obliterate and dull the opposition 
 between those great historical forms of life, but should clearly 
 define it. Each of them can supply us with figures of inner 
 greatness and perfection, which, as typical examples, will 
 forever preserve their power of attraction. 
 
 So much for the subjective compatibility of the two types of 
 a perfect life. It is really possible to admire Saint Francis 
 and at the same time to feel a hearty and grateful sympathy 
 with a nature like Goethe's, however far apart their ideals of 
 life may be, objectively considered. Only we must not desire 
 to canonize Goethe or look for philosophy and culture in the 
 saint, — rather we should see the positive elements in both. 
 Yes, we shall be compelled to say that a world composed of 
 nothing but holy beggars would be as tiresome as it is impos 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION 167 
 
 sible ; the saints need the children of the world as a foil to 
 set them off. 
 
 In conclusion, let me say a word concerning an objective 
 approximation, which becomes apparent when we compare 
 the two types with a third, to which they are both opposed. 
 
 We may distinguish between three conceptions of a good 
 life, and accordingly between three forms of conduct. The 
 first seeks the good in sensuous enjoyment ; the second finds 
 it in the exercise of human-spiritual powers in a varied civili- 
 zation ; the third, at last, transcends the earth and discovers 
 the goal of life in the blessedness of the hereafter, which is here 
 enjoyed in anticipation. The first view is, according to the 
 Greek belief, the ideal of the Asiatic barbarians ; the second, 
 that of the Greeks ; the third, that of the Christians. 
 
 It is plain that the second and third views make common 
 cause against the first. The rule of reason, the limitation 
 and discipline of the sensuous desires, is demanded by both 
 as the precondition of perfection. So far as that goes, an ascetic 
 element is by no means wanting even in Greek morality ; it 
 is strongly enough emphasized by Plato, the Stoics, and still 
 more by the later philosophers. Indeed, the word asceticism 
 is derived from the Greek language, — it signifies, first of 
 all, the discipline of the animal nature, which was practised in 
 the gymnasia, and also that of the inner life, which was 
 practised in the philosopher-schools. It is well known that 
 even Paul is familiar with the figure. — Of course, Christi- 
 anity with its demand of self-denial and holiness, goes much 
 further than Greek asceticism, which always remained more 
 or less a form of self-preservation ; the development and exer- 
 cise of the spiritual powers in philosophy and science formed 
 the positive content of life, for the sake of which the discipline 
 of the senses was demanded. 
 
 On the other hand, however, we also find attempts at a 
 positive treatment of the mundane world in Christianity ; 
 among them, for example, the governance of human life ac- 
 
168 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 cording to the principle of brotherly love, the perfection of a 
 kingdom of God on earth. The love of neighbor becomes a 
 definite and tangible thing only in case an earthly goal is pre- 
 supposed, which it is the function of love to assist in attaining. 
 And a Christian doctrine, a kind of science, also existed even 
 at the beginnings of Christianity ; and blessedness consists 
 in contemplating God. When Christianity began to develop 
 as a permanent historical form of life, when the expectation 
 of an early end of the world failed to be realized, the positive 
 elements were unfolded ; in the church a universal form of 
 life was produced, in theology a Christian science, in wor- 
 ship a motive and tendency to art. That the Graeco-Roman 
 example exercised a highly important influence in all this 
 was natural and inevitable ; living in the world and attempt- 
 ing to pervade the world, Christianity adopted some of the 
 forms of the world. 
 
 Thus we have an approximation of the extremes from both 
 sides. The inner fundamental opposition remains, the ideal 
 of perfection is quite different in either case ; but still there 
 are approximations and agreements, not only in minor points. 
 And this made it possible, when the church abandoned its 
 original exclusiveness as a community of saints, for a broad 
 stratum to be formed, within the church, between pure Greeks 
 and pure Christians, composed of such as sought to combine 
 in their lives Christian and Hellenic elements, holiness and 
 worldly beauty and culture, faith and philosophy. We can 
 readily understand why such persons should have felt inclined 
 to minimize, as much as possible, the differences between the 
 two elements of their souls. Whoever looks at things histori- 
 cally will, it is true, deny the similarity between Hellenic 
 humanity and Christian holiness, but he will not doubt the 
 subjective sincerity of conviction in those who do minimize 
 the differences, and he will recognize the subjective possibility 
 of reconciling these opposites in human nature, as well as its 
 objective possibility in the two great historical forms of life. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN MORAL PHILOSOPHY * 
 
 1. The theological moral philosophy. 
 
 The supranaturalistic-religious conception of life and con- 
 duct, representing, as it does, one of the two possible courses 
 of life, is of very great interest to every thinking man. Not 
 so great is our interest in the attempts of the theologians to 
 construct a systematic ethics upon this view. These attempts 
 lack the fundamental precondition of theoretical interest : 
 the desire to solve, by means of an unprejudiced investigation, 
 the problems which life propounds to the acting and judging 
 man. Theology finds an answer for all questions in revela- 
 tion ; the Sacred Scriptures determine with absolute authority 
 not only the faith, but also the rules of life. The problem is, 
 therefore, simply to establish, to understand, and to arrange 
 the given content, to defend it against pagan and heretical 
 errors, and finally and above all to make it fruitful for life. 
 The moral sermon, the edifying interpretation, puts a check 
 upon scientific research. 
 
 The possibility of a really scientific ethics, an independent 
 theory of action, is absolutely precluded by the fundamental 
 principle of church Christianity. Greek ethics tries to dis- 
 cover by what conduct the goal of all human striving, eudae- 
 monia, can be naturally realized. The Christian, too, strives 
 for happiness, if we take this term in the widest sense, but 
 
 1 [For mediaeval ethics see the references on pp. 35 and 65 ; also the works 
 of Stockl, Haureau, and Rousselot on the history of scholastic philosophy. 
 
170 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 he finds it not in this earthly life, but in transmundane 
 blessedness, of which, it must be confessed, he already re- 
 ceives a foretaste in this life, in the happy feeling of peace 
 with God. Eternal blessedness is not, however, like Greek 
 eudaemonia, the natural effect of a certain mode of life, but 
 is bestowed by God as an act of grace upon those who do 
 His will. His will, however, He has declared in the Sacred 
 Scriptures. The function of the moralist is therefore not 
 scientifically to investigate the conditions of happiness which 
 are necessary in the very nature of things, but to interpret 
 and systematize the existing divine commands. If the will 
 of God is posited as the final and sole cause of the differ- 
 ence between good and bad, then there is no recognizable 
 natural connection between the goal of life and the conduct 
 of life. The final consequence of this conception is drawn 
 in the doctrine of predestination. 
 
 I shall confine myself to mentioning a few of the most im- 
 portant phenomena in this group of literature. 
 
 We may regard as the first attempt at a systematic ex- 
 position of Christian ethics the treatise of St. Ambrose on 
 the duties of the clergy (de officiis ministrorum). In form he 
 follows Cicero's work on duties ; the new content is, so far as 
 possible, inserted into the scheme of the four cardinal virtues. 
 The author candidly declares that he cares very little for the 
 form of the investigation ; to the objection that he does not 
 proceed systematically in his construction of ethics, he an- 
 swers: "But that is the business of the art of logic, first to 
 define the concept of duty and then to divide it into its kinds : 
 we, however, shun theory (nos autem fugimus artem) ; we 
 bring to view the examples of the ancestors, in order thereby 
 most effectually to urge others to imitate them." 1 The ex- 
 amples are mostly taken from the writings of the Old Testa- 
 ment. This is quite natural ; the New Testament does not 
 aim at the establishment of a worldly order ; far from it. In- 
 
 1 I., 35. 
 
MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 171 
 
 deed, an ethics that adapts itself to a life in this world will 
 find it hard to handle. The Old Testament is indispensable 
 to a church that endeavors to regulate our daily conduct by 
 means of moral legislation. Still, it remains a curious fact 
 that Ambrose, himself a Roman, now finds it possible to refer 
 the Romans to the patriarchs and kings of the Jews as their 
 ancestors. 
 
 The later moralists, and first among them Augustine, add 
 to the four cardinal virtues the three theological virtues, 
 faith, love, and hope, thus completing the sacred number 
 seven. Corresponding to these seven virtues are seven fun- 
 damental forms of sin : pride, avarice, anger, gluttony, licen- 
 tiousness, melancholy, dullness (acedia, a/cqBeta, satiety of 
 life would perhaps be the most appropriate translation). The 
 expositions are fond of describing the Christian life as a 
 battle against these powers of darkness which obstruct the 
 entrance to the kingdom of God. " Forces and counter- 
 forces are arranged, the dangers are brought to light, a speci- 
 fied number of virtues and sins are opposed to each other, 
 seven to eight fundamental names on both sides, and the 
 spiritual gifts of Isaiah besides ; this entire apparatus, which 
 was capable of still greater elaboration, served to keep before 
 the mind the thought of the constant conflict going on be- 
 tween the two forces." * 
 
 The rules of monachism were formulated according to the 
 same principles. Their aim was to fashion the entire sur- 
 roundings so that the realization of Christian perfection 
 might be facilitated to the greatest possible degree. The 
 state of holiness might also be attained outside of the cloister, 
 it did not consist in the observance of the rules of monastic 
 life ; but this life was supposed to be the easiest road to per- 
 fection ; all obstacles and hindrances which life in the world 
 placed in the way of the Christian were here removed, so far 
 
 1 Gass, History of Christian Ethics, I., 192. The two volumes of this work 
 give a detailed account of theological morals. 
 
172 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 as was possible. The monastery was the citadel in which the 
 warriors of Christ defended themselves, under the most favor- 
 able conditions, against the attacks which Satan directed 
 against them in the form of the flesh and the world. 
 
 The monastic rules circumscribed the life of Christian per- 
 fection, while a lower limit was reached for the average Chris- 
 tian life in the confessional and the penitential system, 
 which were gradually more definitely formulated. When the 
 church became state, and entire nations were received into 
 Christianity, it was of course no longer possible to carry out 
 the demand of a separation from the world. As the world 
 became less objectionable, especially on account of the dis- 
 appearance of idolatrous sacrifices, the church grew less timid 
 in recognizing the institutions and aspirations of the world. 
 Worldly feelings and a worldly mode of life became more 
 and more compatible with membership in the church. On 
 the other hand, a minimum of righteousness was demanded 
 from all members as a new law, and ecclesiastical penalties 
 were imposed upon unlawful acts and omissions. In the 
 penance-books, which became necessary, especially when 
 Christianity was transplanted to Germanic soil, we have the 
 origin of a church morality in the form of a legal system. 
 
 2. It is not my purpose, nor am I able, to give even an 
 outline of the history of theological ethics during the Middle 
 Ages and modern times. I shall content myself with indi- 
 cating the nature of this science. It was, as a rule, character- 
 ized by the desire to combine Christian holiness and human 
 perfection. Both the lex divina, the divine law, given by 
 revelation and authentically interpreted by the church, and 
 the lex naturce, the law of perfection impressed upon the 
 things by the Creator and recognized by the reason, were 
 accepted as sources of knowledge. The universal human 
 duties might be deduced even from the latter; here the 
 attempt of Aristotle served as the pattern ; besides, this law 
 was the subsidiary source in all cases where revelation failed 
 
MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 173 
 
 to give express commands. The specifically Christian-relig- 
 ious duties, on the other hand, were derived from the Scrip- 
 tures and the laws of the church. 
 
 Within the Catholic church this form of moral theology has 
 continued without change down to the present time. When 
 we take up one of the more modern works in this field — for 
 example, the widely-read and much admired book of the Jesuit 
 P. Gury * — what first surprises one not acquainted with 
 this literature is its impersonal-juristical character ; the author 
 presents a legal system, giving proofs and motives, interpre- 
 tations and precedents. The second surprising fact is that 
 time seems to have made no impression upon such works. 
 A number of authorities, continuing without interruption from 
 the beginnings of scholastic theology down to the present, 
 accompany the entire exposition ; writers of the twelfth and 
 thirteenth centuries are quoted by the side of those of the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth, as living and recognized authori- 
 ties. It is as though history had left no trace upon this sys- 
 tem ; only occasionally do we notice that we are dealing with 
 a work of the nineteenth century : namely, when an institu- 
 tion or a defect of the present gives rise to a question and a 
 response. — This branch of science owes its origin to the con- 
 fessional and the penitential system. It is necessary for the 
 father-confessor to know what is duty, what sin, what is the 
 degree of the sin, and where on the other hand the domain 
 of the allowable begins. This determines the form : sharply 
 defined definitions, their logical consequences, finally the solu- 
 tion of problems and difficulties. The formal principle of 
 authority in this system is the will of God, as expressed in 
 the ten commandments and the Sacred Scriptures in general. 
 The aforesaid lex naturce is recognized as a subsidiary source. 
 
 There is manifestly a serious danger in such an exact jurist- 
 ical formulation of morality : it tends to make our entire 
 moral life artificial. The natural inclination is apt to inter- 
 
 1 Compendium theologiae moralis, ed. vi., Romae, 1880, 2 vols. 
 
174 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 pret the system and its application in the confessional to mean 
 that the fulfilment of the requirements will permit the agent 
 to make the most of the allowable. And since, owing to the 
 nature of morality, the lines cannot be drawn as sharply as in 
 the case of the positive law, a wide margin is left for those 
 inclined to extend the boundaries of the permissible, to 
 evade the real demands by making fine distinctions and in- 
 terpretations, and to rest satisfied with mere appearances. A 
 large part of the Jewish formalism, which Jesus opposed with 
 the true and spiritual worship has again found its way into 
 the Catholic church. It cannot fail to act according to the 
 tendency peculiar to it : and this tendency is to entice such 
 natures as are not protected by an original sincerity of heart 
 to deceive God and themselves with a "statutory pseudo- 
 worship" (Afterdienst'), to use Kant's expression. 
 
 The section in P. Gury's work on the duty of Hearing Mass 
 may serve as a sample of this moral theology's method of 
 treatment. Three things are necessary for the performance of 
 this duty : (I) Bodily Presence ; (II) Attention of the Spirit ; 
 (III) The Appropriate Place. As for the first point, two things 
 are demanded, (1) The Moral, and (2) The Uninterrupted Pres- 
 ence. (1) Moral Presence ; that is, the person must be present 
 in such a way that he can be regarded as one of the partici- 
 pants in the sacrifice ; it suffices, however, that he be in a 
 place from which he can follow the mass in its three main 
 parts, either as a spectator, or as an auditor, or by watching 
 the signs made by the other participants. (2) Uninterrupted 
 Presence ; that is, from beginning to end, so that he commits 
 a serious sin who misses a considerable part of the mass, a 
 small sin who misses an inconsiderable part, unless excused 
 by a good reason. — Now follow solutions of doubts : (1) The 
 presence at the mass is valid even when the person does 
 not see the priest, or hear his words, but still distinguishes 
 the parts of the sacred act by the sound of the bell, the song 
 of the choir, and the movements of the participants, and 
 
MEDIEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 175 
 
 11 morally " joins them, even though he stand outside of the 
 church because there is no room inside. 2. There is also a 
 greater probability (est probabilius) that he, too, lawfully hears 
 the mass who is staying in a neighboring house from which 
 he can see the altar or the assistants through the window or 
 the door, or can distinguish the parts of the mass, provided 
 the intervening space is but small ; in case there is a large 
 space or a street between, he cannot be said to be " morally " 
 present. Some fix the limit at thirty steps. 
 
 Then follow answers to doubts and questions in refer- 
 ence to the Uninterruptedness of the Presence, with an 
 exact definition of the degree of guilt, which the omission of 
 each particular part involves. I omit these items, and pro- 
 ceed to the second point, the Attention of the Mind. A dis- 
 tinction is made between two kinds of attention : (1) Inner 
 Attention, in which a person really observes what the priest is 
 doing ; (2) Outer Attention, which consists in avoiding every 
 external act that hinders the mind from paying attention, as 
 for example, talking, drawing, etc. The Inner Attention in 
 turn is threefold : (a) that which is directed upon the words 
 and acts of the priest; (b) upon the meaning of the words 
 and mysteries; (c) upon God himself in prayer and pious 
 contemplation. The definitions and distinctions are now 
 followed by the principles of application : (1) For the valid 
 hearing of the mass (ad Missam valide audiendam) external 
 attention at least is absolutely necessary. So all authorities. 
 (2) Some inner attention is also requisite, at least the will to 
 hear the mass. (3) But any one of the three forms of inner 
 attention suffices (sufficif). (4) Loud prayers are not abso- 
 lutely necessary, but commendable. And now come again 
 questions (quasita*) and answers (responsa). Is the inner 
 attention necessary in order to avoid grievous sin (sub gravi) ? 
 The answer is in dispute : the affirmation is probabilior, but 
 the negation too is probabilis (that is, sanctioned by good 
 authority), since the presence with voluntary, though merely 
 
176 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 external, attention is an actus sufficienter religiosus. In prac- 
 tice, the author adds, the difference is not great. For even 
 according to the stricter view, a moderate attention (attentio 
 in gradu remisso) suffices, that is, if directed upon the main 
 parts of the mass. But according to the other, the requisites 
 are : (1) a pious emotion, or the real intention to honor God ; 
 (2) such attention that the participant can say to himself 
 that he is a real participant, and consequently that he pays 
 attention to the main parts, at least confusedly (in confuso). 
 Hence, believers should not be lightly accused of a lack of 
 attention while attending mass, but should rather be admon- 
 ished lovingly, devoutly, and diligently to turn their minds to 
 the divine mysteries. — It is evident that all this is not much 
 unlike a code of etiquette : for a social call a black coat, a 
 high hat, and gloves are requisite, but one or the other may 
 be dispensed with under certain circumstances. 
 
 The entire field of duties is gone through in the same way : 
 the duty of justice, which is really susceptible to this treat- 
 ment, likewise the duty of love of enemy, the duty of charity, 
 the duties of married life; everywhere we find the same 
 attempt to stake off exactly the boundaries of that which is 
 required (requiritur) ; everywhere the unfortunate sufficit, 
 according to the probable or more probable, or according to 
 the opinion of all. The advice, too, concluding the examina- 
 tion of the obligations in regard to the mass, is not infrequently 
 repeated: Do not interrogate punctiliously and frighten the 
 conscience, but admonish lovingly. But, on the whole, this 
 juristical treatment of morality will leave a painful impression 
 on one not accustomed to it, not on account of the harshness 
 of its demands — on the contrary, the sufficit often comes 
 surprisingly soon — but on account of its entire method of 
 fixed prescriptions and outward compliance, and its attempt to 
 appraise the most spiritual things in the world. 1 
 
 1 It is customary to criticise such text-books severely on account of their 
 treatment of the seventh commandment. Well, the perusal of this portion is cer- 
 tainly not an edifying task, and I am also of the opinion that the prescription and 
 
MEDIiEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 177 
 
 Such a moral theology is, of course, a necessary conse- 
 quence of the entire confessional and penitential system : 
 it was necessary to furnish the father-confessor, who did not 
 himself have the experience or the ability to settle such 
 difficult matters, with the most careful possible instructions 
 for his guidance. But it is undoubtedly well that the Prot- 
 estant churches are relieved of this necessity by the abolition 
 of the entire system. The individual confession is, of course, 
 theoretically, the only real confession ; but the regular en- 
 forcement of the individual confession was an awfully dan- 
 gerous step. The power of the church over souls may have 
 been strengthened by the practice and perhaps it also helped 
 to establish external obedience and discipline ; but it is 
 more than doubtful whether inner piety and conscientious- 
 ness have been promoted by it. And one thing surely has not 
 been promoted by the confessional — that is, man's truthful- 
 ness to himself and to his God. 
 
 Moreover, two things must not be forgotten here : first, 
 that these moral books are not intended for the layman 
 as text-books and books of devotion; their object is to 
 give instructions to the father-confessor. Secondly, this 
 morality does not formulate the ideal, but the minimum 
 of what is demanded of every one on pain of punishment. 
 The ideal to which the sermon constantly refers is the life 
 of the saints. The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis 
 describes it : a book of such simplicity and such deep knowl- 
 edge of the heart, and withal of such plainness and vigor of 
 speech, as have scarcely been equalled in any work of its kind ; 
 there is genuine inner monachism in it, and monachism of 
 that sort surely contains a large element of real Christianity. 
 
 presumably also the practice of the confessional here enters upon a subject which 
 had better not be discussed, for some agreement might surely be reached with- 
 out such discussion. On the other hand, it must be said that those who have in 
 charge the care of souls cannot ignore these things ; if medicine and jurisprudence 
 are compelled to deal with them, moral theology and the confessional will have 
 to look them square in the face. 
 
178 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Moreover, that the type of true, inner monachism has not 
 yet become extinct in the Catholic church the reader will 
 learn from a book in which he may perhaps not look for it, 
 in Kenan's Souvenirs de jeunesse. Renan was educated in 
 theological seminaries ; he remembers the teachers and edu- 
 cators of his youth with the deepest respect ; in four things, 
 he says, they remained his models — in unselfishness and 
 poverty, in modesty, in politeness, and in the preservation of 
 morality. 
 
 Besides, moral-theological works are not wanting in 
 Catholic theology which conceive and present the Christian- 
 moral life in a freer and deeper spirit. As such I mention 
 J. M. Sailer's Handbook of Christian Morals 1 and J. B. 
 Hirscher's Christian Morals. 2 
 
 Within the Protestant churches, moral theology was over- 
 shadowed by dogmatics and also lacked the logical con- 
 sistency of an ecclesiastical system. Though it still followed 
 the old scheme : lex divina and lex naturo?, the desire for a 
 juristical treatment of the subject gradually diminished 
 with the decline of church discipline. Moreover, the devel- 
 opment of the Protestant principle of faith also led to a 
 deeper conception of morality, but, of course, likewise tempted 
 the new church to engage in theological speculations to the 
 neglect of practical problems. On the other hand, owing to 
 the absence of an external binding authority, Protestant 
 moral theology entered into closer relations with philosophi- 
 cal ethics ; since the middle of the last century, it has 
 successively fallen under the influence of Wolff, Kant, and 
 Speculative Philosophy. Schleiermacher, to whose system I 
 shall return later on, betrays the influence of the latter. 
 R. Rothe has constructed a very comprehensive theological 
 ethics, 8 which is overburdened with an immense amount of 
 
 1 Handbuch der christlichen Moral, 3 vols., 1817. 
 * Die christliche Moral, 3 vols., 1835. 
 8 Second edition, 1867-71, 5 vols. 
 
MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 179 
 
 reading matter, upon Schleiermacher's principles. In addi- 
 tion we may mention, Dorner, System of Christian Ethics 1 
 and the work of the Danish bishop, Martensen, Christian 
 Ethics? 
 
 3. Modern moral philosophy . 
 
 The following exposition, which expressly disclaims being 
 a history of modern moral philosophy, simply desires to give 
 a few typical examples of the chief modes of treatment of this 
 subject in modern times. 3 
 
 At the head of modern moral philosophy we may place 
 Thomas Hobbes. 4 The fundamental idea upon which he 
 bases his practical philosophy is the concept of self-preserva- 
 tion. He thus returns to the Greek mode of treatment. 
 Although he does not always emphasize the fact, he is uni- 
 versally conscious of his opposition to the system of ethics 
 which demands self-denial. 
 
 It seems that Hobbes derived this conception of human 
 conduct from the science in which his age was pre-eminently 
 interested : from mechanical physics. Galileo had based 
 
 1 System der christlichen Sittenlehre, 1885 [English translation, 1887]. 
 
 2 [Fourth edition, 1888, 2 vols. (English translation in 3 vols., 1873-83). See 
 also N. Smyth, Christian Ethics, New York, 1892.— Tr.] 
 
 3 I refer the reader to Er. Jodl's History of Ethics in Modern Philosophy 
 (Geschichte der Ethik in der neueren Philosophie), 2 vols., 1882-89, an admirable 
 work which gives the first connected account of the history of modern moral 
 philosophy. G. von Gizycki's work on the Ethics of David Hume (1878) is also 
 valuable ; it contains, besides a detailed account of Hume, an outline of the 
 entire development of moral philosophy in England. An elaborate and thorough 
 exposition of the history of ethics and jurisprudence in the eighteenth and nine- 
 teenth centuries, especially of the Speculative School in Germany, is given by J. H. 
 Fichte in the first, historico-critical part of his System of Ethics (1850). [Consult 
 the references on p. 35, note ; also Whewell, History of Moral Philosophy ; 
 Vorlander, Geschichte der philosophischen Moral, Rechts- und Staatslehre; Mackin- 
 tosh, On the Progress of Ethical Philosophy during the 17th and 18th Centuries; 
 Stephen, English Thought of the Eighteenth Century ; Lecky, History of European 
 Morals, chap. I. ; Guyau, La morale anglaise contemporaine ; Fouillee, Critique 
 des systemes de morale contemporains ; Williams, A Review of Evolutionary Ethics. 
 See also the histories of modern philosophy, especially Kuno Fischer's able work, 
 and for bibliographies on particular authors, Ueberweg and Weber-Thilly. — Tr.] 
 
 4 [For bibliography, see Weber, p. 301, note 1 ; also Tonnies, Hobbes' Leben 
 und Lehre, and Snenth's Selections from Hobbes's ethical writings. — Tr.] 
 
180 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 modern physics upon the new fundamental law of the con« 
 servation of motion. Hobbes expressly places himself by 
 the side of Galileo, the founder of natural philosophy, as the 
 founder of the philosophia civilis, the science of the state. 
 He bases the latter upon the corresponding principle of ani- 
 mal life : the law of self-preservation. Just as all physical 
 processes are subject to the law of the conservation of motion, 
 so all the processes in the living world are subject to the nat- 
 ural law of self-preservation. Every living creature strives in 
 everything that it does to preserve its life; it desires what 
 furthers this and shrinks from what hinders it. However, its 
 acts do not always make for preservation ; it constantly aims 
 at the latter, but does not always hit the mark. This is es- 
 pecially true in the case of man. Hence arises the antithesis 
 between good and bad acts. Man always desires what is good 
 for him, but not infrequently does what is bad and pernicious. 
 The cause is a false opinion of what is good and bad. Good 
 action is therefore identical with prudent action, and to do 
 wrong is to act imprudently, or against " right reason." 
 
 Hobbes did not construct a system of ethics upon this 
 basis, but his politics rests upon it. 1 Man does not attain 
 to what he strives after, that is, self-preservation, outside of 
 society ; on the one hand, because his powers do not suffice 
 to subject nature to his will, on the other, because individuals 
 come in conflict with each other, and all therefore live in a 
 state of continual insecurity. The natural state is a uni- 
 versal state of war (helium omnium contra omnes). Since, in 
 such a state, no one can obtain that which he desires, the 
 preservation and perfection of individual life, right reason 
 demands the organization of society ; its form is the state, 
 which we may therefore designate as an institution for uni- 
 versal self-preservation. In the status civilis are peace, security, 
 wealth, welfare, in short, self-preservation. The state pre- 
 supposes the absolute submission of the individuals to its 
 
 * Dt cive, 1642 ; Leviathan. 1650. 
 
MEDIEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 181 
 
 will which prescribes to them by means of laws what to do 
 and what to refrain from doing. To act contrary to the law is 
 of course wrong, for it is contrary to the necessary means of 
 self-preservation, hence contrary to right reason. But this 
 does not at all mean, as some have misinterpreted Hobbes, 
 that good and bad are wholly synonymous with in accor- 
 dance with, or contrary to, law. The laws of the state may 
 themselves be good or bad, according as they promote or 
 retard welfare and hence are in accordance with or contrary 
 to right reason. The agent as such cannot, of course, judge 
 of this, but the philosopher as such can. 
 
 4. Spinoza 1 constructs a system of ethics upon this con- 
 ception in the work, Ethica? which did not appear until after 
 his death (1677). The starting-point of the truly ethical por- 
 tion of the book is the sixth proposition of Part III : " Every- 
 thing, in so far as it is in itself, strives to persist in its own 
 being." This is true of the body as well as of the soul. Now, 
 the essence of the mind consists in ideation. But ideas differ 
 from each other ; we have active and passive ideation ; the 
 former is scientific thinking, the latter, sensation and feeling, 
 — the former gives us adequate, the latter, fragmentary and 
 confused ideas, that is, ideas of which the causes do not, or do 
 not wholly, lie within the soul itself, but in the things outside 
 of it. Self-preservation is, therefore, for the mind, activity 
 in scientific thinking ; self-denial and weakness, the suffering 
 of things in sensation and feeling ; the former represents the 
 freedom, the latter, the bondage of man. Hence, in so far as 
 the soul is really master of itself, in so far as its striving is 
 guided by the proper insight into that which agrees with its 
 essence, it strives to preserve itself in pure thought, and to 
 remove everything that is contrary to it. And so we are 
 brought back again to the old proposition of Greek ethics : 
 Philosophy, or scientific knowledge, is the function of life and 
 the highest good. 
 
 1 [For bibliography, see Weber-Thilly, 323, note l.J 
 3 [Translations by White and Fnllerton.] 
 
182 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Spinoza shows the twofold value of knowledge : it is, on the 
 one hand, the highest, freest, most perfect activity of life, 
 the absolute end in itself ; on the other hand, it is a means 
 of freeing us from the bondage to which the irrational man 
 is subjected by his affections. 
 
 The fourth book of the Ethics regards reason as the means 
 of self-preservation. There are two great sciences, physics 
 and psychology, corresponding to the two phases of reality, 
 the world of bodies and the world of ideas (res — idece). 
 Physics forms the basis of two practical sciences, mechanics 
 and medicine ; psychology (or the science of mind), the basis 
 of ethics and politics. With these four practical sciences 
 reason regulates life. Spinoza discusses the two latter. 
 
 Ethics is the knowledge of the proper behavior of the 
 individual in reference to himself and to other individuals. 
 Animals and, as a matter of fact, most men, are determined 
 in their action by feelings ; anger incites them to requite 
 injury with injury, compassion impels them to assist those in 
 need, and so forth. The wise man, on the other hand, lives 
 according to reason (ex ductu rationis) ; he alone realizes the 
 end of self-preservation, while those governed by their feelings 
 often miss it: the desire for revenge, ambition, avarice, 
 the love of enjoyment, — whatever their names may be, — 
 frequently lead to ruin. He, however, who is governed by 
 reason knows the value and the measure of things, in what 
 respects they are wholesome, in what harmful. He sees that 
 the requiting of evil with evil gives rise to lasting enmity, 
 causing mutual insecurity, distrust, nay even destruction, 
 while hatred can be overcome, and love and friendship 
 produced by calmness and kindness. 
 
 Likewise basing itself upon the knowledge of human 
 nature, the science of politics shows how collective life must 
 be fashioned in ordei that not war and insecurity, but peace 
 and benevolence may be the result, and that all may co-operate 
 to preserve and promote life. 
 
MEDIEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 183 
 
 Knowledge, finally, accomplishes something else: it produces 
 peace of mind ; it leads to the conviction that everything that 
 happens follows by eternal necessity from the nature of things. 
 The fruit of this conviction is tranquilitas animi. We cease to 
 struggle against that the necessity of which we understand ; 
 that is unbearable which seems to happen contrary to fate 
 and justice: how men would rebel against death, if not 
 all, but only a few had to die ! Above all, knowledge makes us 
 tolerant in our judgment of men ; it is men's nature to be what 
 they are, vacillating, ungrateful, vain, revengeful, a frail race ; 
 the philosopher knows that their conduct is the result of their 
 nature, the weakness of reason and the strength of the feelings ; 
 and to understand everything means to forgive everything. 
 Hence, true knowledge is the means of the preservation and 
 the perfection of life. 
 
 Knowledge is at the same time, so the end of the fifth book 
 declares, life's highest and most valuable content. Knowledge 
 is, as distinguished from feeling, self-activity ; to become aware 
 of one's power and independence arouses joy ; the knowledge 
 of the highest in the highest form, the knowledge of God or 
 nature, the sum total of reality or perfection, produces the 
 highest joy. From joy arises the love of God {amor Dei in- 
 tellectualis'), who in knowledge fills the soul with blessedness. 
 Thus closes with a religious turn the ethics of Spinoza. 
 
 The union of knowledge, love of God, and blessedness, the 
 beginning and end of all his reflections, is evidently the result 
 of the philosopher's personal experiences. He excluded him- 
 self and was excluded from the community of faith into which he 
 was born ; he excluded himself and was excluded from practical 
 life and public activity ; he excluded himself and was excluded 
 from the competition for reputation and literary fame, and 
 withdrew entirely to the world of his thoughts where he found 
 peace, rest, and happiness. His system of ethics is the result 
 of these conditions. At the beginning of the Tractatus de 
 intellects emendations he himself declares : " After experi- 
 
184 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 ence had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social 
 life are vain and futile ; seeing that none of the objects of my 
 fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, ex- 
 cept in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved 
 to inquire whether there might be some real good having power 
 to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to 
 the exclusion of all else : whether, in fact, there might be any- 
 thing of which the discovery and attainment would enable me 
 to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness. I say 
 ' I finally resolved,' for at first sight it seemed unwise will- 
 ingly to lose hold on what was sure, for the sake of something 
 then uncertain. I could see the benefits which are acquired 
 through fame and riches, and that I should be obliged to 
 abandon the quest of such objects, if I seriously devoted my- 
 self to the search for something different and new. ... I 
 therefore debated whether it would not be possible to arrive 
 at the new principle, or, at any rate, at a certainty concerning 
 its existence, without changing the conduct and usual plan of 
 my life ; with this end in view I made many efforts, but in 
 vain. For the ordinary surroundings of life which are 
 esteemed by men (as their actions testify) to be the highest 
 good, may be classed under the three heads — Biches, Fame, 
 and the Pleasures of Sense : with these three the mind is so 
 absorbed that it has little power to reflect on any different 
 good." The quest for the highest good, therefore, could not 
 be reconciled with these things. "However, after I had 
 reflected on the matter, I came in the first place to the con- 
 clusion that these things were not, as I originally believed, 
 certain, but rather very uncertain goods ; nay I finally saw that 
 they would have to be regarded as certain evils, for they are 
 not only not means of preserving our being, but even act as 
 hindrances, causing the death not seldom of those that 
 possess them, and always of those who are possessed by them. 
 — All these evils seem to have arisen from the fact, that hap- 
 piness or unhappiness is made wholly to depend on the quality 
 
MEDIEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 185 
 
 of the object which we love. When a thing is not loved, no 
 quarrels will arise concerning it — no sadness will be felt if it 
 perishes, no fear, no hatred ; in short, no disturbance of the 
 mind. All these arise from the love of what is perishable, 
 such as the objects already mentioned. But love towards 
 a thing eternal and infinite fills the mind wholly with 
 joy, and is itself unmingled with any sadness, wherefore 
 it is greatly to be desired and sought for with all our 
 strength." J 
 
 5. This ethical philosophy was essentially supplemented 
 and developed by Lord Shaftesbury. 2 He gives the ethics of 
 self-preservation a broader anthropological foundation, by 
 abandoning the rigid individualistic egoism of Hobbes and 
 Spinoza, and thus bases virtue upon impulses and feelings, 
 whereas the former seem to base it solely upon reason and 
 calculation. His fundamental conceptions, the beginnings of 
 which we find in many other contemporary English moralists, 
 especially in Cumberland, 3 the most important among the 
 opponents of Hobbes, are about as follows. I am, in the 
 main, following the Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit, 1699, 
 contained in the second volume of the Characteristics.^ 
 
 We may accept the proposition that every being strives to 
 preserve itself, but must add : What we call an individual is 
 not an independent being aiming solely at its own preserva- 
 tion ; the species alone is independent in the full sense of the 
 term, — the individual is related to it as a member to its organ. 
 This is the case, considered from the purely biological point 
 of view : the individual owes its nature and existence to the 
 species ; by reproducing itself it serves as an organ for the 
 preservation of the species. 
 
 1 [Translation in Bonn's Library.] 
 
 2 [See Gizycki, Die Philosophie Shaftesbury's ; Fowler, Shaftesbury and Hutche- 
 ton ; Albee, Shaftesbury and Hulcheson (Phil. Review, vol. V.). — Tr.] 
 
 3 [De legibus natures, 1672 (Engl, transl. by J. Maxwell, 1727). See Ernest 
 Albee, The Ethical System of Richard Cumberland {Phil. Review, vol. IV.).— Tk.] 
 
 * [Edited by W. Hatch, 3 vols., 1869. — Tk.] 
 
186 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 This highly important fact, which Hobbes and Spinoza 
 absolutely ignored, is also noticeable in the soul-life of the 
 human individual. His self-preservative impulse does not 
 aim exclusively at the preservation of his own life, but just 
 as directly at the preservation of the species. Shaftesbury 
 expresses this truth as follows : two kinds of impulses may 
 be distinguished in man: individualistic and social; he calls 
 the former private, selfish affections, the latter, natural, kind, 
 social affections ; by his successor, Hutcheson, 1 the latter are 
 also more appropriately termed sympathetic affections. The 
 goal to which the selfish affections impel man is his own 
 individual welfare (private good) ; the goal to which the 
 social affections impel him is the common welfare, the preser- 
 vation of the system of which the individual forms a part 
 {public good). Both impulses are equally original, both 
 equally rooted in nature ; it is by no means possible to derive 
 the social impulses from the individualistic impulse of self- 
 preservation, say by the round-about way of prudence. Even 
 in animal life the impulse which serves the preservation of 
 the species in the reproduction and care of offspring, is as 
 strong and original as the individualistic, self-preservative 
 impulse, and uniformly asserts itself at the expense of self- 
 preservation. 
 
 In man as a rational being a third form is added to these 
 two primitive motives of the will ; which Shaftesbury calls 
 reflex, rational affections; they are the feelings which are 
 produced by reflection on human actions. Just as the con- 
 templation of works of art produces feelings of disinterested 
 pleasure and displeasure, so the contemplation of human acts 
 and qualities arouses feelings of approval and disapproval 
 in the spectator, and he accordingly designates them as good 
 or bad, just as he calls the former beautiful or ugly. We may 
 regard a moral sense as the source of the latter, as we regard 
 
 1 [Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, 1723 ; Philosophia 
 moralis institutis, 1745 ; A System of Moral Philosophy, 1755. — Tb.J 
 
MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 187 
 
 an aesthetic sense as the source of the former. The qualifying 
 judgment is first pronounced upon the conduct of others, but 
 it is also pronounced upon the agent's own conduct, and is 
 then called conscience. — These feelings, too, impel the will 
 to action, directing it towards the general welfare, which in- 
 cludes individual welfare ; such acts are disapproved as tend 
 to produce disturbances in the life of others and in the life 
 of the agent himself. 
 
 That is the result of the psychological analysis, or, as 
 Shaftesbury himself once said, of the anatomy of the soul. 
 The latter is the foundation of ethics, as the anatomy and 
 physiology of the body are the foundation of dietetics. 
 
 Now in what does the health or perfection of soul-life 
 consist? Precisely in what the health of bodily life con- 
 sists. The latter consists in the harmonious co-operation 
 of all the organs, the former in the harmonious co-opera- 
 tion of the well-regulated impulses, in the regulated econ- 
 omy of the selfish and social affections, as Shaftesbury once 
 expressed it. There are no impulses which are bad in them- 
 selves, — how could they have come into this God-created 
 nature ? The selfish impulses, too, are good as such, they 
 are indispensable to the preservation of living creatures; 
 they become bad through one-sided, excessive development. 
 The impulse to acquire wealth is good and necessary in 
 itself; only when as avarice it becomes the predominating 
 motive, and dwarfs the other impulses, does it become bad 
 Compassion is good in itself : if, however — which, of course, 
 does not frequently happen — it should gain such control 
 over man as to prevent him from thinking of his duties, 
 all on account of his pity and sympathy for the distress 
 of others, it would ruin his life and soon render him in- 
 capable of assisting others. Hence a soul has health or 
 natural perfection, in which the selfish impulses are strong 
 enough to urge the individual to perform all the functions 
 essential to self-preservation, and in which the social impulses 
 
188 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 are sufficiently powerful to arouse the proper regard for the 
 universal welfare. 
 
 In order to attain to true moral excellence (virtue), it 
 is necessary to fashion the moral sense into a strong regu- 
 lative principle. When conscience (the sense of right and 
 wrong) secures conduct against the fluctuations of inclina- 
 tion which occur even in a good nature, then we call a man 
 morally good or virtuous. We shall, therefore, also call a 
 man virtuous who is endowed with an unruly temperament, 
 say with strong selfish impulses, when he governs his nature 
 according to principles ; and the greater the resistance, the 
 more virtuous we shall consider him. 
 
 The similarity as well as the difference between these con- 
 ceptions and those of Hobbes may be easily seen. We have 
 the same fundamental idea: that is good which makes for 
 self-preservation ; but it is the self-preservation, not of the 
 isolated individual, but of the species or society and within it 
 of the individual, at which the will actually aims, and by 
 which its objective value is measured. Shaftesbury is fond 
 of emphasizing his opposition to Hobbes ; it is an opposition 
 based not merely on principles, but likewise on personal feel- 
 ings and judgments. Shaftesbury is an optimist, Hobbes a 
 pessimist, in his judgment of men. The latter likes to look 
 at the ferocious, the former at the lovable and benevolent 
 sides of human nature. He is fond of emphasizing the fact 
 that there is for man, according to the experience of every 
 one, no greater and purer happiness than to contribute to 
 the happiness of others. Hence the social virtues are a direct 
 source of happiness to those who possess them. And the 
 lack of them is just as certain to make men unhappy ; there 
 could be no greater misfortune for a man than to live abso- 
 lutely alone, without friends, without giving and receiving 
 sympathy. Hence all feelings and qualities which tend to 
 lead to such a state — anger, hatred, envy, coldness, selfish- 
 ness — are suited to make their possessor unhappy. And 
 
MEDLEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 189 
 
 therefore, so he concludes his Inquiry on Virtue, virtue is the 
 good, and vice the evil for every one. 
 
 In Shaftesbury we already meet that amiable optimism 
 which forms such a prominent trait of eighteenth century 
 philosophy : God is good ; the world is good ; man is good ; — 
 his nature is not so unfortunately constructed that the phases 
 essential to his happiness must first be artificially introduced 
 by way of deliberation and calculation, as Hobbes main- 
 tains. The only thing to do is to assist his real nature in 
 overcoming all kinds of obstacles and perversions. It is this 
 credulous optimism which Mandeville so keenly criticises 
 in his Fable of the Bees, 1 a little satire of great force, to 
 which a long commentary of little value was afterwards 
 added. 
 
 Modern moral philosophy reached its first climax in Shaftes- 
 bury ; none of the essential elements is wanting in his system. 
 It is the fundamental conception of ancient ethics enlarged 
 and enriched by the Christian mode of feeling and looking 
 at things. The social virtues and conscience have found 
 their appropriate place by the side of the individualistic ex- 
 cellences. The eighteenth century esteemed Shaftesbury very 
 highly ; Herder recommended to his son the Inquiry on 
 Virtue as the most complete and best system of morals. 
 Georg von Gizycki's opinion is : " Shaftesbury's system is 
 the chief system of English ethics, for all later systems 
 have, in reality, merely supplemented and developed his in 
 particular respects, without, however, ever attaining to its 
 great universality." 2 
 
 6. Hume's Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals 3 
 (1751) is conspicuous not so much for the originality and 
 depth of its thoughts as for the clear, subtle, convincing pre- 
 
 1 [ The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices made Public Benefits, 1714.] 
 
 2 Hume's Ethics, p. 17. 
 
 8 [Edited by Selby-Bigge. See also Green's edition of Hume's works. Selec- 
 tions from Hume's ethical writings by Hyslop. Bibliography in Weber, p. 417, 
 note. - Tr.] 
 
190 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 sentation of the fundamental theory of English moral phil- 
 osophy just set forth. Hume's question is : Why are certain 
 characters and actions pronounced amiable or odious, praise- 
 worthy or blamable ? He finds, after taking up the most 
 important ones : Such qualities are praised as are useful or 
 immediately agreeable to others or ourselves ; their opposites 
 are censured. 
 
 Hume's treatment of ethics already shows an inclination 
 to neglect the biological for the purely subjective view, and 
 accordingly to substitute satisfaction for preservation, a sub- 
 jective standard of value for the objective one. But this 
 tendency becomes still more pronounced later on, under the 
 influence of one-sided psychological theories, and reaches 
 its climax in J. Bentham, who declares : Pleasure is in 
 itself a good, nay the only good ; pain is in itself an evil, the 
 only evil. Everything else is good only in so far as it conduces 
 to pleasure. Pleasure differs only in intensity, duration, cer- 
 tainty, propinquity, fertility, purity, and extent, that is, the 
 number of persons to whom it extends, or who are affected 
 by it. The absolute goal and the absolute standard of all 
 values is, therefore, the greatest happiness of the greatest 
 number. However, Bentham owes his importance not so 
 much to his work in theoretical ethics as to his political and 
 legislative reforms ; the penal law, especially, engaged his 
 attention. The principles are discussed in the work : Intro- 
 duction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789. 1 
 
 James Mill is closely and also personally related to Ben- 
 tham. He deserves mention in the history of moral philoso- 
 phy on account of his acute application of the psychology of 
 association to the explanation of moral phenomena. 2 The will 
 of every creature primarily aims at the attainment of pleasure 
 and the freedom from pain. Gradually, however, things 
 which were originally desired merely as means come to be 
 
 1 Also found in the first volume of the works, edited hy J. Bowring, 1843. 
 * Analysis of the Phenomena of Human Mind, 2 vols., 1829. 
 
MEDIZEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 191 
 
 directly desired through association. Avarice furnishes the 
 classical example. Money is originally valued as a means, 
 but for the miser it has become an end in itself, the idea of 
 possible pleasure which it procures has become so firmly 
 associated with the money that he will forgo every pleasure 
 rather than part with a fraction of his gold. In the same 
 way certain modes of conduct receive absolute value. Praise 
 and admiration arouse feelings of pleasure ; gradually by 
 association we love the modes of conduct themselves which 
 are praised, the desire for praise is transformed into the 
 desire for the praiseworthy ; and at last we adhere to what is 
 praiseworthy, even when the praise is not forthcoming, nay 
 when it is threatened with obloquy and danger. Self-sacri- 
 fice is explained in the same way, only here we have, in addi- 
 tion to the love of honor, also sympathetic emotions which 
 are likewise explained by processes of association. — These 
 statements are not without an element of truth ; but they 
 share the errors common to the entire psychological view 
 from which they have been derived : they regard the indi- 
 vidual as an absolutely independent being and consequently 
 his relation to the species as accidental and secondary, while 
 on the other hand, they make pleasure the starting-point, in- 
 stead of impulse or will, which is prior to pleasure and not 
 first produced by it. But to this subject we shall recur 
 later on. 
 
 John Stuart Mill, 1 the son of James Mill , has given us 
 in his treatise on Utilitarianism (1863) a brief but compre- 
 hensive exposition of the principles on which this system of 
 ethics is based. It was he also who gave the school the name 
 by which it is generally known in England, Utilitarianism. 
 Moreover, for Mill as for Bentham, the principle of utility was 
 the guiding principle of political and social reforms. And 
 it must also be mentioned that Mill was greatly influenced 
 by Comte; he has explained his relation to the French 
 
 1 [For bibliography see Weber-Thilly, p. 581, note 2. — TrJ 
 
192 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 philosopher in the admirable monograph : Auguste Comte and 
 Positivism} 
 
 Besides utilitarianism there is another school of English 
 moral philosophy, which is usually called intuitionalism. 
 The former explains the distinctions in value between 
 human modes of conduct by their effects, while for the latter 
 good and bad are absolute qualities of human acts, which 
 cannot be explained, but can only be immediately perceived 
 and determined. Cudworth 2 and Clarke 3 advocate this theory 
 against Hobbes, Whewell 4 against Mill. I shall consider the 
 truth and falsity of this view later on. 
 
 Moral philosophy has received a new impetus from the 
 most recent development of the biological sciences. The 
 theory of evolution carries us beyond the superficial reflec- 
 tions of analytical psychology to the biological-historical 
 conception : the preservation and development of life is the 
 goal at which the will aims, not pleasure or the feeling of 
 satisfaction. It likewise shows the insufficiency of the rigid 
 individualism of the older psychology : morality represents 
 the experiences of the race, not the experience of the individ- 
 ual, with respect to what is good and bad, beneficial and 
 harmful. Charles Darwin 5 has made an attempt at moral 
 philosophy in the fourth chapter of The Descent of Man, 
 
 1 Volume IX. of the collected works. [Other adherents of this school are : A. 
 Bain, Mental and Moral Science, 1868; A. Barratt, Physical Ethics, 1869; 
 Hodgson, Theory of Practice, 1870; Fowler, Progressive Morality, 1884; Fowler 
 and Wilson, Principles of Morals, 1886-1887. — William Paley, The Principles of 
 Moral and Political Philosophy, 1785, is a theological utilitarian: "Virtue is the 
 doing good to mankind, in ohedience to the law of God, and for the sake of 
 eternal happiness." — Tr.] 
 
 2 [Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, 1688. — Tr.] 
 
 8 [Discourse concerning the Unalterable Obligations of Natural Religion, 1708. 
 
 — Tr.] 
 
 * [Elements of Morality, 1848 ; last edition, 1864. To the same school helong 
 alsoH. Calderwood, H andbook of Moral Philosophy, 1872; 14th edition, 1890; Mar- 
 tineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 1885 ; Porter, Elements of Moral Science, 1885. 
 
 — Tr.] 
 
 6 [For an exposition and criticism of Darwin's ethical view, see Schurman, The 
 Ethical Import of Darwinism. See also in this connection, Huxley, Evolution and 
 Ethics, 1893.— Tr.] 
 
MEDLEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 193 
 
 Herbert Spencer gives a systematic exposition of the evolu- 
 tionistic view in his Principles of Ethics. Henry Sidgwick 
 {The Methods of Ethics, fourth edition, 1890), Leslie Stephen 
 (The Science of Ethics, 1882), and S. Alexander (Moral Order 
 and Progress, 1889) have also been influenced by this theory. 
 T. H. Green (The Prolegomena to Ethics, 1883) and J. Macken- 
 zie (Manual of Ethics, 1891, second edition, 1895) approxi- 
 mate the Kantian view. 1 
 
 7. The new philosophy was introduced into Germany by 
 Leibniz, and formulated into a system by Wolff. It obtained 
 the mastery in German science and culture in the course of 
 the eighteenth century, driving out and supplanting scholas- 
 tic philosophy, which, in the form which it had received from 
 Melanchthon, became the prevailing system in the German 
 universities after the days of Humanism and the Reformation. 
 Wolff's entire philosophy is characterized by its opposition 
 to the scholastic-theological treatment of things ; this antag- 
 onism is already indicated by the title which he gives his 
 first works on philosophical subjects ; he calls them Rational 
 Thoughts, a name by which he defies the entire past. The 
 same spirit manifests itself in his ethics, the first systematic 
 edition of which was published under the title, Rational 
 Thoughts on the Actions of Men for the Promotion of their 
 Happiness 2 (1720). At the very beginning, the fundamental 
 concept of modern philosophy, the concept of self-preservation, 
 is introduced in a somewhat modified form as self-perfection, 
 and the definition given : That is good " which makes our inner 
 as well as our outer state perfect ; " the opposite is bad. And 
 emphatically rejecting a theological substructure for morals, 
 he adds : " Inasmuch as the free acts of men are good and bad 
 
 1 [With these two may also be classed ; Bradley, Ethical Studies, 1876 ; Dewey, 
 Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics, 1891; Muirhead, Elements of Ethics, 1892, 
 second edition, 1895 ; J. Seth, A Study of Ethical Principles, 1896. B. P. Bowne, 
 Principles of Ethics, 1893, is a follower of Lotze. — Tk.] 
 
 2 Verniinftige Gedanken von der Menschen Thun und Lassen zur Befb'rderung 
 ihrer Glilckseligkeit. 
 
194 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 because of their effects, and what follows from them must 
 necessarily follow and cannot fail, they are good or bad in and 
 for themselves, and are not first made so by the will of God." 
 In § 12 the most general formula of duty is then stated : 
 " Do that which makes you and your state and that of 
 others more perfect, refrain from that which makes it more 
 imperfect ; " and in § 21 follows the very objectionable state- 
 ment that an atheist, if only he is not foolish, and clearly 
 understands the nature of free acts, can easily be a virtuous 
 man. — A system of duties is then deduced from the above 
 formula in more than a thousand paragraphs. 
 
 8. The reign of Wolffian philosophy lasted till about the 
 end of the eighteenth century. Its place was taken by the 
 philosophy of I. Kant. 1 He presents his system of mo- 
 rality in the Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) 
 and in the Critique of Practical Reason ( 1 78 8) , 2 which was 
 followed, at the beginning of his old age, by the Metaphysics 
 of Morals (1797). 
 
 Kant's place in the history of ethics may be determined by 
 a comparison with the English intuitionists : his ethics is a 
 reaction against utilitarian eudsemonism, in which Wolff and 
 Hume, the rationalistic and empiristical schools, concurred. 
 Kant himself was at first an eudaemonist ; as late as the 
 year 1765 he spoke of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume 
 as authors who had made the greatest progress in the dis- 
 covery of the first principles of morality, and to whose inves- 
 tigations he would give the necessary precision and supple- 
 mentation in his lectures ; and he expressly promised to base 
 morality upon anthropology. Just as- his critical theory of 
 knowledge was a reaction against his own empiricism, which 
 had almost carried him to Hume's standpoint, so his critical 
 ethics was a reaction against his own empirical eudaemon- 
 
 1 [Cohen, Kant's Begriindung der Ethik ; Zeller, Uber das Kantische Moralprin* 
 dp ; Schurman, Kantian Ethics and the Ethics of Evolution ; Porter, Kant's Ethics ; 
 Forster, Der Entwicklungsgang der Kantischen Ethik ; Paulsen, Kant. — Tr.J 
 
 8 [See the translation of Abbott, fourth edition, London, 1889. — Tr.j 
 
MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 195 
 
 ism. The complete similarity of treatment in the moral- 
 philosophical and epistemological problems, which by the 
 way proved fatal to Kant's ethical writings, cannot leave us 
 in doubt about this matter. 
 
 The fundamental conceptions are as follows. — Chief among 
 them is the principle, which repudiates all eudaemonism or 
 utilitarianism, that the moral worth of acts is absolutely in- 
 dependent of their effects, that it is determined solely by the 
 disposition. " Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world 
 or even out of it, which can be called good without qualifica- 
 tion, except a good will." " A good will is good not because 
 of what it performs or effects, not by its aptness for the 
 attainment of some proposed end, but simply by virtue of 
 the volition ; that is, it is good in itself." With these propo- 
 sitions Kant begins his first ethical work, which we men- 
 tioned above. 
 
 But what will is good ? Kant answers : A will is good 
 when it is determined not by a material purpose, but solely 
 by respect for duty : " the pre-eminent good which we call 
 moral can therefore consist in nothing else than the concep- 
 tion of law in itself, which certainly is only possible in a 
 rational being, in so far as this conception, and not the ex- 
 pected effect, determines the will." 
 
 And what is duty ? What does the moral law command ? 
 — It commands, stated in the most general formula : " So act 
 that the maxim of the act may conform to universal law." 
 That is, if the realm of human conduct or freedom were 
 governed by universal laws, like the realm of nature or 
 causality, then this maxim would have to be regarded as one 
 of these laws. An example will make the matter clear. A 
 man finds himself forced by necessity to borrow money. 
 He knows that he will not be able to repay it, but sees also 
 that nothing will be lent to him, unless he promises stoutly 
 to repay it in a definite time. Is it lawful for him to make 
 the promise ? He can tell at once ; all he has to do is to ask 
 
196 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 himself the question : What would be the maxim of this action 
 expressed as a universal law ? Somewhat as follows : When 
 a man is in want of money and cannot obtain it except by 
 making a promise which he knows to be false, he may do so. 
 Then he asks himself the question : Is this maxim suited to 
 be a natural law in the domain of human action ? He will 
 at once see that it could never hold as a universal law 
 of nature, but would necessarily contradict itself. For sup- 
 posing it to be a universal law that every one when he 
 thinks himself in a difficulty should be able to promise what- 
 ever he pleases, with the purpose of not keeping his promise, 
 the promise itself would become impossible, as well as the 
 end that one might have in view in it, since no one would 
 believe that anything was promised to him, but would 
 ridicule all such statements as vain pretences. Hence 
 falsehood can only occur as an exception, not as a rule or 
 law of nature : if it were a law of nature that every one 
 could, every time it were to his advantage, tell a falsehood, 
 then no one would believe any one else, and lying would 
 defeat itself. The same may be said of theft: if it were a 
 law of nature for every one to take what he liked, there would 
 be no property, and theft would, if it became universal, de- 
 stroy both itself and property. 
 
 Basing himself upon this process of logical generalization 
 as the criterion, Kant next attempts to determine particular 
 duties, or rather to show that they are included in the formula. 
 It has often been pointed out that he accomplishes his pur- 
 pose only by the most violent method of procedure, — in spite 
 of the fact that he afterward makes the principle somewhat 
 more elastic : Act so that thou canst will as a rational creature 
 that thy maxim become a universal law of nature for conduct. 
 By means of barren and often sophistical arguments he finally 
 succeeds in bringing all the customary moral laws, including 
 the duty to strive for the perfection of self and the happiness 
 of others, under the formula. — His undertaking would have 
 
MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 197 
 
 proved more successful had he changed the formula as follows; 
 The moral laws are rules which are adapted to a natural legis- 
 lation of human life, that is, rules which, if they governed 
 conduct as natural laws, would lead to the preservation and 
 perfection of human life. And in a certain sense this is 
 Kant's meaning. In the Critique of Practical Reason the 
 notion of a " kingdom of ends" is introduced by the side of 
 the kingdom of natural causality ; all rational creatures are 
 to be regarded as members of this kingdom of ends and the 
 moral laws as its laws of nature. These are Leibnizian 
 notions : the kingdom of nature is governed by physical- 
 mechanical laws, the kingdom of grace by teleological-ethical 
 laws. Had Kant made these notions the cornerstones of his 
 system, his ethics would have been more fruitful. 
 
 After all, ethics has not a very serious function to perform, 
 according to Kant. It is not its business to prescribe what 
 ought to be done, for every one knows in every case, without 
 all science, what duty is. Nor must it give reasons for 
 duties ; there is absolutely no reason why we should act thus 
 or so ; the commands are categorical, not hypothetical ; if 
 there were a reason for them, they would be conditionally 
 true. All that ethics has to do is to collect the commands of 
 duty, to arrange them, and to embrace them under a univer- 
 sal formula. When a reviewer censured Kant for not set- 
 ting up a new principle, but only a new formula, the latter 
 did not regard this as a fault : " Who," he says in his preface 
 to the Critique of Practical Reason, " would think of intro- 
 ducing a new principle of all morality, just as if the whole 
 world before him were ignorant what duty was ? But who- 
 ever knows of what importance to a mathematician a formula 
 is, will not make little of the value of my moral formula." 
 Only, Kant should have compared his formula with the max- 
 ims of the jurists, for the moral formula by no means accom- 
 plishes what, according to the statements in the preface, the 
 mathematician's formula accomplishes, which defines accur- 
 ately what is to be done to work a problem. 
 
198 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 How did Kant reach this formalistic view ? In the first 
 place, he was undoubtedly influenced by the analogy of 
 a-prioristic rationalism in his theory of knowledge. The 
 schema of natural philosophy — that the reason prescribes 
 laws to nature, which possess absolute universality, regardless 
 of the matter of sense-perception — is carried over into moral 
 philosophy : the practical reason prescribes laws to the will 
 which possess absolute universality, regardless of the matter 
 of sensuous desire. — But we may, perhaps, also discover 
 material reasons, reasons based on feeling, which had some- 
 thing to do with his view. Two facts may be mentioned, one 
 positive, the other negative ; the former, the degeneration of 
 eudaemonism into a weakly sentimental praise of virtue; 
 the latter, the influence of Rousseau. 
 
 One of the numerous moral periodicals of the preceding 
 century — it had been published in Leipsic since 1745 under 
 the title, Ergetzungen der verniinftigen Seele aus der Sit- 
 tenlehre und der Gelehrsamkeit ilberJiaupt — contained in its 
 fifth volume, which was dedicated to the Prime Chancellor 
 Cocceji, an essay entitled : Proof that the Virtues are Pleasant 
 and Charming. In this we read : " Proper satisfaction with 
 one's self is the greatest happiness which a thinking being can 
 procure. Unless a man be a monster, he will feel how 
 charming is a virtuous deed which springs from love of 
 humanity ; I at least have so tender a soul that I do not 
 possess the power to suppress my feelings even when I 
 resolve not to give way to them. When I read books which 
 vividly describe a virtuous act inspired by the love of human- 
 ity, my soul is often carried away by such emotions, against 
 its will." The author gives examples from Marianne of 
 Marivaux, and then continues : " If the narrow space at our 
 command permitted us to consider the particular virtues in 
 detail, we should find how pleasant and charming each one is. 
 How charming is affability ! Nothing is more pleasant than 
 humility," etc. In the same way it is shown that the vices 
 
MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 199 
 
 are ridiculous, unpleasant, troublesome, and detestable. In 
 conclusion, the author asks the clergy to exhort their congrega- 
 tions to perform virtuous acts by showing how charming they 
 are, and anticipates great results from such a method. 
 
 These are the thoughts of English moral philosophy in 
 tasteless popular form. Moreover, even Hutcheson, in his 
 elaborate text-book, a German translation of which appeared in 
 1756 under the title, System der Moralphilosophie, often mani- 
 fests an alarming tendency to speak in this strain ; he, too, 
 has much to say of the pleasure of being happy. And so 
 Gellert hopes, in his lectures on moral philosophy, as the 
 introductory lecture declares, to be able to assist his hearers 
 in realizing virtue, that is, their highest welfare. " Would 
 that I might feel this zeal keenly as often as I appear before 
 7 ou, and would that it might make me eloquent in represent- 
 ing to you the duties of morality as the most charming and 
 most sacred laws of our welfare." 1 
 
 Let us suppose that Kant read the aforesaid essay in the 
 Ergetzungen der vernilnftigen Seele, or a similar one. In that 
 case we can readily understand his emphatic repudiation of 
 those who desired to serve as " volunteers of duty," and his 
 sharp accentuation of the opposition between the moral law 
 and the inclinations. A passage like the celebrated apos- 
 trophe to duty — " Duty, thou sublime and mighty name that 
 dost embrace nothing charming or insinuating, but requirest 
 submission, what origin is there worthy of thee, and where 
 is there to be found the root of thy noble descent which 
 proudly rejects all kindred with the inclinations?" — such a 
 passage sounds like an answer to that sentimental praise 
 of the charms of virtue which Kant could not but regard as 
 a repulsive prostitution. — And this is surely a merit of 
 Kant's which ought not to be underestimated. He revived in 
 the hearts of the moral preachers the strong consciousness 
 of the law of duty, which they had almost lost by their 
 
 1 Collected Works, 1770, vol. VI., p. 3. 
 
200 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 efforts to allure and to charm, and thereby rendered a ser- 
 vice, not to the science of ethics, it is true, but towards the 
 education of his people. 
 
 The second impetus was positive in character; it came 
 from Rousseau. It is well known in what high esteem the 
 latter was held by Kant. What attracted Kant to Rousseau ? 
 He himself tells us in a passage that reads like a note from 
 a diary : " I am myself an investigator from inclination. I 
 feel the intensest craving for knowledge, and the eager im- 
 patience to make some progress in it, as well as satisfaction 
 with every step in advance. There was a time when I 
 believed that all this might redound to the honor of mankind, 
 and I despised the rabble which knew nothing. Rousseau 
 has set me right. This boasted superiority has vanished ; I 
 am learning to respect mankind, and I should regard myself 
 as much more useless than the common laborers, did I not 
 believe that this reflection [occupation ?] could give a value to 
 all other occupations [namely scientific-literary works,] that is, 
 re-establish the rights of humanity" To re-establish the rights 
 of mankind, then, of the common people — this he regards as his 
 true mission and his work. The worth of a man depends on his 
 willy not on his knowledge, as aristocratic and self -conceited cul- 
 ture believes ; — that is the cardinal doctrine upon which Kant's 
 entire philosophy really turns. And here Rousseau helped 
 him ; he taught him — and for this he was thankful — not to 
 overestimate culture, science, in short, civilization ; he showed 
 him that goodness of heart and purity of thought were not 
 confined to the most educated and most aristocratic, that 
 simple and strong dutifulness might be found just as often, 
 perhaps oftener, among the lowliest. Kant is following 
 Rousseau when he speaks " of the masses who are worthy of 
 our respect. ,, In this way alone his scientific activity, which 
 he had formerly regarded as possessing absolute worth, re- 
 ceived its true value in his eyes : he could preach this great 
 truth and thus assist in establishing the rights of mankind, 
 
MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 201 
 
 the rights of the masses, who are commonly despised as the 
 rabble, on account of their lack of education. And here we are 
 also reminded of the fact that Kant himself once belonged to 
 these masses by birth, however far he may have risen above 
 them ; his parents were small tradespeople, without educa- 
 tion; but his father was a true and upright man, and his 
 mother a woman full of practical piety. Kant's democratic 
 views — not his political creed, but his love of the people — 
 were evidently rooted in the memories of his youth and the 
 admiration which he felt for his parents. 
 
 With all this his opposition to eudaemonistic morality had 
 something to do. It is the latter which gives rise to those 
 false standards, when for instance, as in Wolff's system, it 
 sets up self-perfection as the absolute goal. According to 
 Wolff, a man's worth depends upon his perfection, upon his 
 culture, learning, and taste. This view, which by the way 
 was not peculiar to the eighteenth century, but is presumably 
 more common in our days than at any former time — for 
 when has education counted for so much as at present? — 
 his view, which Kant had once accepted as a follower of 
 Wolffian ethics, now alienated him from all eudasmonism 
 and carried him to the other extreme : nothing in this world 
 is good except the good will alone. 
 
 To have emphasized this was also a great merit of Kant's, 
 not so much, however, a merit of the moral philosopher as of 
 the moral preacher. It was the renewal of the great truth of 
 Christianity, that before God man is judged not for what he 
 has, but for what he is : a truth which every one should make 
 it his daily task to learn. 
 
 9. The revolution in moral philosophy caused by Kant 
 coincided with a change in the German conception of life. 
 The ideal of the illumination — utility for society — was 
 superseded by the ideal of Goethe's age, perfection of the 
 personality. In classical poetry, especially in the poetry of 
 Goethe, this ideal was everywhere at work as the goal and the 
 
•202 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 standard. Here, too, Rousseau's influence was felt. The in- 
 dividual shall not be the slave of conventional circumstances 
 and views, his education shall not, as is now actually the 
 case, consist in training him for the role which he has to play 
 in society ; the natural capacities must be developed from 
 within and freely exercised according to the needs of the indi- 
 viduality — that was the gist of the sermon which Rousseau, 
 especially in the Bmile, preached to his contemporaries with 
 such passionate force. Goethe, too, and Herder and Schiller 
 and all of the strongest and freest minds gave heed to his 
 warning. Another sermon was preached, that of Greek 
 antiquity ; neo-Humanism, as opposed to the older classicism, 
 also called the age back to freedom and to nature. And 
 the Greek ideal of life, which was now revived, is an aesthet- 
 ical rather than a practical ideal ; not general utility, but the 
 perfection and the manifestation of the personality is the 
 function of the free man ; a slave serves merely by his work 
 and the products of his work. This view reached its climax in 
 Romanticism ; its programme was to despise utility and prose, 
 to worship the individual and poetry, in literature and in life. 
 Kant bears a dual relation to this movement : he is both 
 friendly and hostile to it. He agrees with it in rejecting utili- 
 tarianism and eudaemonism. On the other hand, the worship 
 of the individual, which always leads to a contempt for com- 
 mon morality, would undoubtedly have been extremely dis- 
 tasteful to him ; he was not at all attracted to the genius who 
 will acknowledge no law as binding upon himself. These 
 two phases plainly appear in Schiller's relation to Kant. 
 The matter is clearly and distinctly brought out in the 
 treatise Uber Anmuth und Wilrde, in the passage in which 
 Schiller develops the notion of the beautiful soul. He first 
 emphasizes as the great merit of the immortal author of the 
 Kritik that he has again restored the healthy reason by 
 separating it from the (falsely) philosophizing reason, and 
 has made duty and morality wholly independent of inclination 
 
MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 203 
 
 and interest. " However," he continues, " though I am thor- 
 oughly convinced that the association of inclination with a free 
 act proves nothing in regard to the pure dutifulness of that 
 act, I believe that we can infer from this very fact that the 
 moral perfection of man depends solely upon the part which 
 inclination plays in his moral conduct." Kant became the 
 " Draco of his age, because his age did not seem to him to be 
 worthy of a Solon or capable of receiving him. But what 
 had the children of the household done that he cared only 
 for the servants ? " The children of the household, however, 
 are those beautiful souls " in whom the moral sense has 
 gained such control over all the feelings that it may without 
 fear abandon to the affections the government of the will, 
 and never run the danger of contradicting its decrees. Hence 
 it is not really this or that particular act which is moral in a 
 beautiful soul, but the entire character." 
 
 The correction which Schiller makes in the Kantian ethics 
 is in itself admirable and necessary, but it is doubtful whether 
 it can be reconciled with the principles of the system. At 
 any rate, it would have been much easier to deduce Schiller's 
 views from Shaftesbury's presuppositions. It is certainly 
 not according to the Konigsberg philosopher's way of looking 
 at things, for he has a keener sense for the correctness and 
 exactness of the jurist than for the freedom and beauty of 
 the poet. 
 
 10. Now as for the progress of ethics in Germany after 
 Kant, we cannot but regard Kant's reaction in favor of in- 
 tuitionism as a disturbance, the effects of which have not 
 yet been overcome in philosophy ; from that time on the Ger- 
 mans have been constantly experimenting with new prin- 
 ciples, often completely neglecting the results of historical 
 development. Everybody's first and chief concern was to 
 produce a new system, for to have one's own system was the 
 mark of a philosopher. 
 
 Speculative Philosophy was the direct historical successor oi 
 
204 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 the Kantian philosophy, although, in many respects, it con* 
 pletely contradicted its source : the scientific arrogance, which 
 Kant regarded it as his mission to overcome, in order " to 
 establish the rights of humanity," never flourished so luxuri 
 antly as in the systems of Schelling and Hegel. 
 
 In ethics Speculative Philosophy abandons all previous con* 
 ceptions. Ethics had arisen as the science of right conduct 
 For such a practical discipline Speculative Philosophy sub- 
 stitutes the theoretical contemplation and conceptual con- 
 struction of mental-historical life. Ethics becomes mental 
 science or philosophy of history; it becomes a companion- 
 piece to natural philosophy. Just as the latter, following the 
 Kantian conception that the laws of nature are laws of our 
 understanding, constructs nature or the sphere of causality a 
 priori, so the former constructs history or the sphere of free- 
 dom a priori. 
 
 Of recent years, men who are far from accepting its prin- 
 ciples, as, for example, Wundt and Jodl, have shown a high 
 regard for Speculative Philosophy, not usual in former times. 
 Wundt expresses the opinion, in the preface of his Ethics, 
 that the attempts which he makes to approximate the funda- 
 mental notions of Speculative Philosophy in his ethics, will 
 also be made in other fields of philosophical inquiry. Per- 
 haps we may see herein, first of all, a sign that this phil- 
 osophy has almost become historical in Germany. If instead 
 of leading a retired life in dusty books, it were an active 
 living rival for the control of our thoughts, the attitude of 
 these thinkers would presumably be an entirely different one. 
 Nor is that which meets their approval- in these systems what 
 the systems themselves extolled as their peculiar merit: 
 namely, the method of " scientific " deduction and demonstra- 
 tion. 
 
 The idealistic-monistic conception of the universe is an old 
 philosophical heritage, and not merely a product of the Spec- 
 ulative Philosophy and its method. Nay, perhaps it might be 
 
MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 205 
 
 shown that this method has contributed, in no small degree, 
 to the contempt in which that conception has been held in 
 Germany during the last half of the century. The peculiar 
 characteristic of the Hegelian philosophy is its contempt for 
 the causal investigation of things, and its substitution of the 
 conceptual-logical method ; which is equivalent to despising 
 science itself, for all science, with the exception of mathe- 
 matics, which is not a science of facts, aims at the discovery 
 of causal connections. The same may be said of practical 
 philosophy ; its method of investigation is the teleological 
 method, the inversion of the causal investigation. And 
 exactly the same unfruitfulness which characterizes specula- 
 tive physics characterizes speculative ethics. Take Hegel's 
 Naturrecht 1 (1821) and its empty juggling with concepts ; 
 the investigation of institutions and forms from the stand- 
 point of their effects upon human life is ridiculed as a shallow 
 argumentation of the understanding ; instead, the reader 
 receives the simple assurance: It follows from the concept 
 of the state, or of the right, or of the monarchy. And with 
 this is connected the extreme reverence which these thinkers 
 have for the forms of historical life, for the state, for the 
 right : as though these forms and not the concrete personal 
 life which thrives in them were the thing of absolute worth j 
 The underrating of what Kant regards as the truly mora! 
 element, the good will, likewise connects itself with this. 
 
 11. Instead of giving a detailed account of Hegel, let mo 
 set forth the fundamental principles of the ethics of Schleier- 
 macher, so far as that can be done briefly. 2 
 
 1 [Selections from this work translated by Sterrett under the title, The Ethics 
 of Hegel. For bibliography see Weber-Thilly, pp. 496-7.— Tr.] 
 
 2 Entwurf eines Systems der Sittenlehre (Sketch of a System of Morals), edited 
 from his literary remains by A. Schweitzer, 1835 ; a few academic treatises in 
 the second volume of the philosophical writings. Die christliche Sitte nach den 
 Grundsatzen der evangelischen Kirche (Christian Morals according to the Prin- 
 ciples of the Evangelical Church), edited by L. Jonas, 1843, discusses the same 
 topics, often more concretely and fruitfully than the philosophical ethics [Die 
 philosophische Ethik, edited by Twesten). 
 
206 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 In a treatise discussing the difference between the natural 
 and the moral law, Schleiermacher advances the view that 
 the theory is inadequate which regards the moral laws as 
 merely prescribing what ought to be, for in that case 
 ethics would be a science of the non-existent ; but just as 
 the natural law is the expression of the behavior of something 
 real, the moral law must represent an actual occurrence. — 
 This real thing is the effect of reason upon nature. Nature 
 and reason, so the Sittenlehre teaches, material and spiritual 
 being, constitute the greatest antithesis within the sphere of 
 universal reality ; the former is the object of all natural- 
 scientific, the latter the object of all mental-scientific, knowl- 
 edge. All knowledge is twofold in form : speculative or 
 contemplative, and empirical or observational. Thus Schlei- 
 ermacher obtains the fourfold classification: contemplative 
 knowledge of nature, or doctrine of nature (physics) ; obser- 
 vational knowledge of nature, or natural history ; contem- 
 plative knowledge of the action of reason, or the science of 
 morals (ethics) ; and observational knowledge of the action 
 of reason, or the science of history. Ethics, therefore, bears 
 the same relation to history as speculative physics to the 
 science of nature or cosmography: it defines in general the 
 action of reason upon nature, which the science of history 
 investigates in detail. 1 
 
 The action of reason upon nature may be regarded as 
 two-fold : as organizing and symbolizing. By acting upon 
 things reason makes them the instruments of new effects. 
 But in so far as it gives a thing form by means of every 
 effect, reason makes the thing its "symbol, in which it ex« 
 presses itself and through which it is recognized. 2 There is 
 another antithesis: reason exists and acts in individuals as 
 one and the same and on the other hand as a peculiar and 
 individually distinct reason. This antithesis runs parallel 
 with the one mentioned above, and so we again have the 
 
 1 §§58ff. 2 §§124 ft 
 
MEDIEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 20Y 
 
 favorite fourfold division : the activity of reason is identical 
 and individual ; it is identical and differentiated organization 
 and likewise symbolization. 1 But these antitheses are not 
 mutually exclusive, but so many points of view from each 
 of which everything moral may be viewed. Now, in so far 
 as identical organization takes place, those goods arise whicli 
 each one may employ as the instruments of the activity of 
 reason in the same manner: they constitute the sphere of 
 intercourse ; this is the field ruled by the law and the state. — 
 In so far as the formative activity is individual or peculiar, 
 it gives rise to property, not to juridical property, which also 
 embraces exchangeable commodities, but to real property, 
 which cannot be separated from the person who has pro- 
 duced it without losing its value. The narrowest sphere of 
 property in this sense is one's own body ; the next the 
 encircling home, which includes the objective environment 
 belonging to the person, and is the more valuable the more 
 individual and inalienable it is. In so far as the home is 
 opened to others for participation, hospitality arises, corre- 
 sponding to intercourse in the sphere of identical organization. 
 The symbolizing activity, in so far as it occurs under the 
 character of identity, is knowledge, which manifests itself in 
 language. The social form in which it is produced is the 
 academy. The place of intercourse is the school. The sym- 
 bolizing activity, in so far as it occurs under the character 
 of differentiation or individuality, is feeling. It at first mani* 
 fests itself in gestures and in intonation ; it expresses itself 
 in a general way in the work of art. Art bears the same 
 relation to religion that language bears to knowledge ; the 
 social form in which religion, the manifestation of the uni- 
 verse in feeling, is communicated, is the church. — In the 
 same manner the entire field of morality is then defined as 
 the doctrine of virtue and the doctrine of duty, while the part 
 just discussed is called the doctrine of goods. 
 
 1 § iss. 
 
208 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 The wonderful skill with which Schleiermacher, not unlike 
 a far-seeing chess virtuoso, moves his concepts around, until 
 the whole of reality is surrounded and checkmated as it were, 
 has something fascinating in it when one follows his moves 
 with credulous and patient attention: it is really wonderful 
 to see how apparently the most remote things, obedient to 
 the will of the master, readily submit themselves to the most 
 surprising arrangements and relations which the magic wand 
 of his dialectics assigns to them. But after turning one's 
 back upon the game and again looking at the real world, one 
 is apt to feel that no permanent gain results from the labor 
 put forth: the whole thing is merely an ingenious game. 
 Lotze concludes his exposition of Schleiermacher's aesthetics 
 with the words : " If it be praised as a model of acute dia- 
 lectics, I hope that the predilection for this sort of perform- 
 ances, which take no real interest in the essence of the subject, 
 but become logical exercises, and portray anamorphotically 
 distorted pictures from their obstinately chosen secondary 
 standpoints, will gradually disappear in Germany." 1 This 
 hope was realized even before it was expressed. 
 
 12. The moral philosophy of J. F. Herbart, presented in 
 outline in the General Practical Philosophy 2 (1808), forms a 
 complete antithesis to the speculative treatment of the sub- 
 ject, in so far as it wholly separates ethics from the theoreti- 
 cal sciences, from metaphysics and anthropology. However, 
 it also agrees with the speculative method in that it wholly 
 abandons the old form of investigation ; it makes ethics sub- 
 sidiary to aesthetics. Herbart assumes the standpoint of the 
 pure observer : human acts and motives arouse in the specta- 
 tor feelings of pure aesthetic pleasure and displeasure ; these 
 are absolutely independent of his interest: he may as a 
 spectator be pleased with the act which from the standpoint 
 of his interest he despises ; in so far he calls it morally good ; 
 
 1 History of ^Esthetics, p. 166. 
 
 2 Allgemeine praktische Philosophie. 
 
MEDIEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 209 
 
 and he may, conversely, call bad what pleases and tempts him 
 as an appetitive being. — General aesthetics has further con- 
 vinced Herbart that particular elements as such never please 
 or displease, but always as relations. And so he comes to ask 
 the question which constitutes the problem of ethics : What 
 relations of the will please or displease us ? He discovers five 
 such fundamental relations : (1) The harmony between the 
 will and the moral judgment of the same person ; (2) The 
 greater by the side of the smaller, the stronger will by the side 
 of the weaker ; (3) The harmony between the wills of two 
 persons, — all these relations please us. (4) The conflict 
 between two wills displeases us, while (5) The requiting of 
 good with good and evil with evil pleases us. Herbart then 
 adorns these pleasing relations with the name of ideas : ideas 
 of inner freedom, of perfection, of benevolence, of law, of 
 justice, and bases upon them the forms of collective life : the 
 legal order, the wage system, the administrative system, the 
 system of civilization, the animated society. 
 
 I shall refrain from criticising this conception of the moral 
 phenomena. In my opinion, it is as futile in its general aspects 
 as it is forced and laborious in the details. Herbart's in- 
 ability to appreciate the real and the living, his incapacity 
 for constructing a unified system of thought, which, by the 
 way, is partly due to his aversion to the speculative philosophy 
 of his contemporaries and their extreme monistic tendencies, 
 is nowhere so pronounced and intolerable as in his attempt 
 to break up ethics into this conglomeration of so-called ideas. 
 
 13. A. Schopenhauer 1 presents his conception of life in 
 the fourth book of the World as Will and Idea ; 2 he makes 
 an attempt to construct a moral philosophy in his essay on 
 the Foundation of Morals, which, together with the treatise 
 on the Freedom of the Will, was published in 1841 under the 
 title : The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics. The first 
 
 1 [For bibliography see Weber-Thilly, p. 544.] 
 
 2 [Translation by Haldane and Kemp.] 
 
210 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 volume of the Parerga and Paralipomena contains Aphorisms 
 on Worldly Wisdom, which, though full of acute observations^ 
 is not in accord with the principles of his system. The 
 system rests upon the pessimistic view of life. Life is sin 
 and suffering, and not to live is therefore better than to live. 
 Selfishness, intensified in malice, is the characteristic of the 
 natural will. This mode of conduct is overcome in compas- 
 sion. In so far as pity is the motive of action, it has moral 
 worth. An act is called good when it has as its motive 
 compassion for the sufferings of others, bad, when the 
 agent rejoices at the woe of others, or at least attempts to 
 promote his own welfare at the expense of that of others. 
 The disappearance of the impulses which aim at individual 
 welfare consequently is favorable to moral progress. In the 
 saints of Christianity and Buddhism the selfish impulses are 
 entirely suppressed, and their hearts thus opened to pity ; 
 they themselves are unaffected by suffering, disappointment, 
 fear, anxiety, and want ; with deep sympathy they view their 
 brothers who are still fighting the useless battle for the vain 
 goods of this world. 
 
 I do not wish to enter upon a criticism of this theory at 
 this point; we shall find an opportunity for that later on. 
 But I should like to say a few words with respect to Schopen- 
 hauer's personal relation to the morality of his system. 
 
 It has often been pointed out that there is no harmony 
 between Schopenhauer's system and his life. The system 
 recommends renunciation of the world and negation of the 
 will-to-live ; his life shows nothing of the kind ; he does not 
 lead the life of an ascetic saint but' of an Epicurean, who 
 makes a study of good living ; look at the list of good things 
 which he placed before his will as motives when, after leav- 
 ing Berlin, he was casting about for a permanent place of 
 residence, and was wavering between Frankfort and Mann- 
 heim. 1 In his system he praises compassion ; but he seems 
 
 1 Gwinner, Schopenhauer's Life, 2d edition, p. 391. 
 
MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 211 
 
 to have been rather devoid of this feeling himself. No one 
 ever pursued his literary opponents more unmercifully than 
 did Schopenhauer. We may say he was actuated by the 
 love of truth, and regarded his adversaries as the enemies of 
 truth. Let us grant it, let us say that this was one of the 
 motives, although it does not justify the aspersions which he 
 cast upon their characters. But think of his behavior towards 
 his mother and his sister, when they were in danger of losing 
 their fortune, whereas he saved his, showing more skill in the 
 matter than, in his opinion, geniuses are wont to have; — he 
 was, to say the least, very cool. During his entire life he was 
 as careful as he was successful in guarding against sharing 
 others' losses and sufferings. 
 
 Then is not his philosophy of life one great lie ? 
 
 It would be a mistake to say so. It is true, Schopen- 
 hauer did not live the life which he praises as the best ; 
 but he deeply and sincerely appreciated the value of such 
 a life. 
 
 Schopenhauer is a very transparent character ; the dualism 
 of human nature, in which reason and desire form the two 
 opposite poles, becomes unusually, nay, alarmingly discord- 
 ant, in him. In so far as he is will, he lives an unhappy 
 life. From his father he inherited a melancholy tempera- 
 ment; he invariably sees things in the wrong light; little 
 things, too, annoy him very much. He is full of violent 
 desires, impetuous, high-tempered, ambitious, sensuous, and 
 withal very diffident: he is constantly plagued by all kinds 
 of vague fears of trouble, losses, diseases, which his sen- 
 suous ego might suffer; he is extremely suspicious of all 
 men without exception — in truth, a series of qualities, 
 any one of which would have been sufficient to make his life 
 unhappy. 
 
 That is the one side of his life. And now look at the 
 other ; he is also an intellect, nay a genius, endowed with a 
 remarkable power of objective intuition. He has experienced 
 
212 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 the blessedness of the life of pure knowledge as purely and 
 deeply as any thinker before him, nay perhaps more deeply 
 than any other one, on account of the contrast between the 
 intellectual side of his being and his restless, unhappy, 
 volitional life. He can describe the tranquillity, the peace, 
 and the joy of solitary contemplation, of the quiet commu- 
 nion with thoughts, in the most affecting manner. 
 
 Diirer has pictured this state of blessedness in a wonder- 
 ful painting: Saint Jerome is seated in a quiet, wainscoted 
 chamber, the cheerful sunlight falling through the round panes 
 upon the wall of the deep window-niche. The companions 
 of the Saint, the lion and the dog, anger and desire, are 
 lying side by side, peacefully sleeping upon the floor ; we 
 hear their deep, quiet breathing. A gourd, which is sus- 
 pended from the ceiling, a skull, which is lying on the 
 window-sill, diffuse about them the stillness which proceeds 
 from things perfectly matured and removed from the turmoil 
 of the world. A happy thought has just seized the Saint, and 
 he bends forward, in order to set it down in writing ; soon 
 he will lean back again and lose himself in contemplation. 
 A picture producing a remarkable effect upon the thoughtful 
 observer ! — it shows the wonderful power of real art to ex- 
 press a world of thoughts and feelings in a single perception. 
 How poor by the side of it seems that art which feeds on 
 imitation, which, when it has the task of portraying solitude, 
 silence, and philosophy, hits upon the plan of representing 
 a more or less aged, allegorical female figure ! 
 
 Schopenhauer might have sat as Durer's model for this 
 picture. Freed from all desires and cares, pursuing his own 
 thoughts, he enjoyed happy hours, without hurry and worry, 
 without fear and hatred. But then came other times; the 
 beasts which seemed to have been entirely tamed rose up 
 again, destroyed his peace, and filled his life with trouble 
 and anxiety. And he was helpless against them ; he often 
 »ays so himself : it is a curious but undoubted fact that the 
 
MEDIEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 213 
 
 clearest knowledge of the perverseness of the will can produce 
 no change in it. 
 
 This enables us to understand his ethical system : it is the 
 confession of his failings and sins, it is the yearning of his 
 better self for deliverance from the companion to whom it 
 finds itself yoked. 
 
 All this is neither surprising nor unusual. From what 
 should a man seek to be delivered if not from himself? 
 Petrarch writes De contemptu mundi and praises the freedom 
 and simplicity of the shepherd and peasant life in the remote 
 valley: he lives at the courts of the spiritual and secular 
 lords, purchasing participation in their luxurious pleas- 
 ures with flattery ; he wanders through the cities of France 
 and Italy in order to intoxicate himself with the fragrance 
 of his fame. He praises pure love and unselfish friendship : he 
 lives with beautiful women, and his friends are the heralders 
 of his fame, or assist him in his chase for benefices. He 
 inveighs against envy, and cannot pronounce the name of 
 Dante, because he hates him as a rival. — Is he a liar ? Not 
 at all; he thoroughly appreciates the value of the things 
 which he praises, he really feels a yearning for them, but 
 he is likewise attracted to the vanities of life. G. Yoight, 
 from whose masterly characterization I have taken the 
 above elements, presents us with a delicate and faithful 
 picture of him in his History of the Revival of Classical 
 Antiquity. " The gaze which he turned inward was keen 
 enough to penetrate the abyss of vanity to its very depth. 
 Then he shuddered at his own soul, and yet could not tear 
 his love away from it. He desired to bring it into harmony 
 with its ideals, and began the fierce struggle with himself; 
 but he never got beyond the determined mien and the angry 
 word; he could not turn the sharp weapon which seeks 
 the heart of the opponent against his beloved self. He 
 imagined that he was doing penance in thinking and writing, 
 but all his thinking and writing simply intensified his seli- 
 
214 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 love. This vain soul, which he desired to hate, he finally 
 loved all the more on account of its remorse and its painful 
 struggles." 
 
 So Rousseau : he preached against the corruption of morals, 
 and pointed out the way to natural education : he lived with 
 a concubine and sent his children to a foundling asylum, never 
 to hear of them again. Was he a liar ? Certainly not. His 
 passion for natural and pure human relations was perfectly 
 sincere ; he really felt the degradation of unnatural relations, 
 in which he had waded up to his knees ever since his youth, 
 more keenly than any one of his contemporaries. A man 
 that has never been sick does not know what health is. The 
 hunchback is the most sincere admirer of a straight back, 
 the bashful man of frank openness, the coward of martial 
 courage. Was ever a man more in love with bravery than 
 John Falstaff? Did ever a man prate more of princely 
 virtue and royal duties than Carl Eugen of Wurtemberg? 
 And what nation speaks more of civic virtue and republican 
 sentiments than the French ? 
 
 I once heard a proverb full of profound meaning : The man 
 who rings the bell cannot march in the procession. 
 
 14. The age of Speculative Philosophy was followed in 
 Germany by an age of absolute contempt for philosophy. 
 Historicism, the devotion to details, dominated science for 
 a few decades. Metaphysics and ethics were forgotten. 
 Of late the interest in these subjects is reviving. It is being 
 centred on ethics from two sides. The modern biological 
 theory propounds the question : How did custom and moral- 
 ity arise, and what is their import in the economy of the 
 nations and the individual ? On the other hand, the new 
 social sciences invite us to take up the ultimate problems 
 concerning the vocation of man and the conditions of its 
 realization. Hence it happens that even jurists and political 
 economists, physiologists and anthropologists, are beginning 
 to philosophize again in our days. 
 
MEDIEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 215 
 
 I shall content myself with mentioning a number of titles 
 of the rapidly increasing modern literature. 1 
 
 1 E. Dtihring, Der Wert des Lebens, 5th ed., 1894; M. Carriere, Die sittlicht 
 Weltordnung, 1877, 2d ed., 1890 ; J. Baumann, Handbuch der Moral, 1879 ; E. von 
 Hartmann, Phanomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins, 1879, 2d ed., 1886; W. 
 Schuppe, Grundziige der Ethik und Rechtsphilosophie, 1881 ; E. Laas, Jdealismus 
 und Positivismus, vol. II., 1882; G. von Gizycki, Grundziige der Moral, 2d 
 ed., 1889; H. Steinthal, Allgemeine Ethik, 1885; P. Re'e, Die Entstehung des 
 Gewissens, 1885; Th. Ziller, Allgemeine philosophische Ethik, 2d ed., 1886; W. 
 Wnndt, Ethik, 2d ed., 1891 (translated into English) ; Chr. Sigwart, Vorfragen der 
 Ethik, 1886; Fr. Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral, 1887; H. Hoffding, Ethik, 
 1887 (German translation, 1889) ; F. Tonnies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, 
 1887; A. Do ring, Philosophische Gutcrlehre, 1888 ; P. Viktor Cathrein, Moral- 
 philosophie, 2 vols., 1890-91 ; Th. Ziegler, Sittliches Sein und sittliches Werden, 2d 
 ed., 1890 ; H. Gallwitz, Das Problem der Ethik in der Gegenwart, 1891 ; G. Runze, 
 Ethik, vol. L: Praktische Ethik, 1891; G. Simmel, Einleitung in die Moral- 
 voissenschaft, 2 vols., 1892*,; A. Domer, Das menschliche Handeln, Philosophische 
 Ethik, 1895. Finally I also mention here A. von Ottingen, Moralstatistik, 4th 
 ed., 1887 ; and R. von Jhering, Der Zweck im Recht, 2d ed., 18*4-86, 2 vols. 
 
BOOK II 
 
 FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS AND QUESTIONS OP 
 PRINCIPLE 
 
If any man is able to convince me and show me that I do not 
 think or act right, I will gladly change; for I seek the truth, by 
 which no man was ever injured. But he is injured who abides in 
 his error and ignorance. — Marcus Auf^lius. 
 
METAPHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 I believe it will be wise to preface the following discussions 
 with a summary of the metaphysical and psychological con- 
 ceptions upon which they are based. A more detailed ac- 
 count of some of these problems will be found in my Intro* 
 duction to Philosophy. 1 
 
 1. Reality manifests itself in two phases. Seen from with- 
 out, by the senses, it manifests itself as a corporeal world ; seen 
 from within, in self-consciousness, as psychical life. 
 
 2. The two sides are co-extensive. Every psychical process 
 has its equivalent in the physical world, and, conversely, every 
 physical process has a psychical equivalent. 
 
 3. Body is a phenomenon and the symbol of psychical life, 
 which is the true reality, or reality in itself. 
 
 4. Psychical life is immediately experienced only in our 
 own inner life, of which our body is the phenomenon. 
 
 5. We reason by analogy from the form and movement 
 of bodies, and so come to assume the existence of psychical 
 life in things outside of us. But we reach an adequate and 
 penetrating knowledge of the inner human processes only, and 
 therefore regard the psychical world as co-extensive with his- 
 torical human life. 
 
 6. The unity of all mental life we call God. God's essence 
 transcends our knowledge. We conceive God by means of 
 the highest human psychical life. This explains the anthro- 
 pomorphic symbolism of all religions. 
 
 1 [Fourth edition, 1896 ; English translation by Frank Thilly. — Tb.] 
 
220 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 7. Psychical life has two phases, will and intelligence. The 
 will manifests itself in strivings and feelings, the intelligence 
 in sensation, perception, and thinking. 
 
 8. Biological and evolutionistic reflections reveal the will 
 as the primary and radical element of psychical life. Life 
 originally consists in blind striving, without presentation of 
 ends and means. The intelligence manifests itself as a sec- 
 ondary development, as a growth, like its physiological phe- 
 nomenon, the nervous system and brain. 
 
 9. Psychology also shows the will to be the primary ele- 
 ment. A specific will, aiming at a particular form of life, 
 manifests itself as the inner essence of man as well as of 
 every living being. The will-to-live, the will to live a specific 
 life, is not the result of previous knowledge or of the experi- 
 ence which we gain of its worth through feeling. 
 
 10. The development of the will may be characterized by 
 three stages: impulse, desire, and will in the narrower 
 sense. The goal at which it aims in each of the three stages 
 is the preservation and promotion of individual and generic 
 life. 
 
 11. The original form of the will is blind impulse ; in con- 
 sciousness it appears as a felt striving. In case the craving 
 is satisfied, the successful activity is accompanied by pleasur- 
 able feelings ; in case it is obstructed, pain ensues. 
 
 12. Sensuous desire is impulse accompanied by the percep- 
 tion of the object or idea of the movement at which it aims. 
 It presupposes a certain development of intelligence and a 
 fusion of will and idea. The satisfaction or inhibition of the 
 desire is likewise accompanied by pleasurable or painful 
 feelings. 
 
 13. Will, in the narrower sense, or rational will, is desire 
 determined by purposes, principles, and ideals. It arises in man 
 as the highest development of the will, when the intelligence 
 develops into rational, self-conscious thought. The will be- 
 comes conscious of itself in the practical ideal of life. Feel- 
 
INTRODUCTION 221 
 
 ings of satisfaction accompany conduct which conforms to the 
 ideal, while acts out of harmony with the ideal arouse feelings 
 of dissatisfaction. 
 
 14. The rational will, governed by an ideal, subjects the 
 lower forms of will, impulse, and desire, which persist even 
 in man as natural predispositions, to constant criticism and to 
 a process of selection. This criticism we call conscience. 
 The faculty of educating and disciplining the natural will by 
 means of the rational will is called freedom of the will. A 
 being who thus controls his inner life is called a personal 
 being. 
 
 15. The relation of will to feeling may be expressed as 
 follows : Every act of will is originally also an emotion, and 
 conversely, every emotion is at the same time positive or 
 negative willing. In feeling, the will becomes conscious of 
 itself, of its aim, and of its condition. Feeling is not the 
 cause of the act of will, the will is already present in feeling 
 as in its manifestation. 
 
 16. In the higher stages of development, the relation is 
 somewhat different. Here we have volitions which are not at 
 the same time feelings. A resolution or decision to do some- 
 thing may take place without being accompanied by feeling ; 
 indeed, it may be opposed to the immediate feeling. Con- 
 versely, we have feelings, especially aesthetic feelings, which 
 are no longer motives of the will, although the will i» still 
 mirrored in them. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 GOOD AND BAD. TELEOLOGICAL AND FORMALISTIC 
 
 CONCEPTIONS * 
 
 1. As was said before (p. 34), two problems formed the 
 original starting-point of ethical reflection; the same two 
 problems must invariably carry the thinking man back to 
 ethics again. The first springs from the function of moral 
 judgment : What is the ultimate ground of moral distinctions f 
 The second has its origin in the volitional and active nature 
 of man : What is the ultimate end of will and action ? 
 
 The first question, as our historical review has shown, gives 
 rise to two theories, the teleological and the formalistic. The 
 former explains the difference between good and bad by the 
 effects which modes of conduct and acts of will naturally 
 produce upon the life of the agent and his surroundings. 
 Acts are called good when they tend to preserve and promote 
 human welfare ; bad, when they tend to disturb and destroy 
 it. Formalistic ethics, on the other hand, claims that the 
 concepts good and bad, taken in their moral sense, designate 
 an absolute quality of the will, without any regard to the 
 effects of acts or modes of conduct ; that this quality can- 
 not be further explained, but must be accepted as a fact. 
 
 1 [For the teleological view : Mill, Utilitarianism, chap. II. ; Spencer, Data 
 of Ethics, chaps. I.-III. ; Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 420 ff. ; Stephen, Science of 
 Ethics, chaps. IV., V. ; Hoffding, Ethik, chap. VII. ; Ethische Principienlehre, 
 IV. ; also Int. Journal of Ethics, 1890 (October) ; Jhering, Der Zweck im Recht, 
 vol. II., pp. 95 ff. ; Wundt, Ethik, Part III., chap. II.-IV. Against the teleologi- 
 cal view : Abbott's translation of Kant's Ethics, pp. 9 ff . ; Lecky, History of 
 European Morals, chap. I. ; Bradley, Ethical Studies ; Martineau, Types of Ethi* 
 tal Theory, vol. II. ; Gallwitz, Das Problem der Ethik in der Gegenwart. — Te.J 
 
GOOD AND BAD 223 
 
 " That will is good," says Kant, " which is determined by 
 respect for duty; that will is bad which is determined by 
 the opposite." — I am an advocate of the teleological view. 
 
 The second question : What is the end of all willing ? has 
 also given rise to different answers, which may be reduced to 
 two fundamental forms : the hedonistic and the energistic. 
 The former asserts that the will is universally and invariably 
 bent upon pleasure (or avoidance of pain), and, hence, that 
 pleasure is the highest or absolute good, which is not desired for 
 the sake of anything else. The energistic view, on the other 
 hand, holds: The will does not aim at pleasure, but at an 
 ^objective content of life, or, since life consists solely of action, 
 at definite concrete activities. 
 
 I regard the latter conception as the correct one. My view 
 may, therefore, be characterized as teleological energism. Our 
 principle would then be : Such modes of conduct and volitions 
 are good as tend to realize the highest goal of the will, which 
 may be called welfare. I mean by it the perfection of our 
 being and the perfect exercise of life. 
 
 The two following chapters will set forth the reasons which 
 seem to me to support this view. But first let me say a word 
 concerning the terminology which I have chosen. 
 
 It is customary to use the term utilitarian instead of teleo- 
 logical. What induced me totally to discard the former ex- 
 pression in the later editions of my book has been, aside from 
 philological objections, the impossibility of guarding it against 
 misconception. It originated in Bentham's school; John 
 Stuart Mill confesses, in his Autobiography, that he coined 
 the term. It is, in its origin, inseparably connected with 
 hedonism ; hence the critics who have had time for nothing 
 but a superficial glance at the terminology employed in my 
 ethics have insisted on confusing it with Bentham's system. 
 In order to prevent the recurrence of this error, I have sub- 
 stituted for the term utilitarian the term teleological. The 
 latter has the additional advantage of suggesting the general 
 
224 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 theory of the universe from which this form of ethics takes its 
 rise, the Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy. Its fundamental 
 idea is that every being and, hence, also man, has a purpose 
 in the universe. This purpose, and the forms and functions of 
 life arising therefrom, it is the business of ethics to ascertain. 
 
 I have coined the term energism, in order to bring my 
 view into sharp contrast with hedonism : the end of the will 
 is not feeling, but action. Its resemblance to Aristotle's 
 ivipyeca may also serve to remind us of the origin of the con- 
 cept. The word welfare, finally, seems suited to designate 
 the highest good in its twofold aspect : it shows, first, that 
 the highest good is an objective content of life, consisting in 
 the perfect exercise of all human psychical powers ; then it 
 also suggests that such a life is accompanied with pleasure, 
 and hence that pleasure is not excluded from the perfect life, 
 but included in it. 
 
 2. I shall first attempt to show what the teleological theory 
 means, and give reasons for it. Popular opinion inclines 
 more to the formalistic view : Acts are not morally good or 
 bad according to their effects ; they are good or bad in them- 
 selves. The disposition determines the moral worth of the 
 act, not the effects. 1 Even if the compassion of the good 
 Samaritan in the Gospel had not saved the man who fell 
 among thieves, nay, even if it had caused his death, that is, if 
 the thieves bad attacked and killed the rescuer and had then 
 put to death the wounded traveller in order to destroy all evi- 
 dence of their crime — this would not in the least affect our 
 judgment of the moral worth of the act. Or, suppose that a 
 slanderous remark, instead of finding" ready acceptance, as is 
 usually the case, is repudiated and simply deprives the calum- 
 niator of the confidence which he has hitherto undeservedly 
 enjoyed. And suppose that the episode causes a greater 
 interest to be taken in the injured party and greater con- 
 fidence to be reposed in him. Nevertheless, however desir- 
 1 [See Abbott's Kant, pp. 9 ff . ; Martineau, vol. II., pp. 53 f . — Tb.] 
 
GOOD AND BAD 225 
 
 able such effects may be, they do not alter the baseness of 
 calumny. 
 
 We should answer : The statement is true, but it is not an 
 objection against the teleological theory. The theory does 
 not, of course, claim that the value of the particular acts is to 
 be judged by their actual results, but that acts and modes of 
 conduct are good or bad in so far as they naturally tend to 
 produce favorable or unfavorable effects. It lies in the very 
 nature of slander to deprive the victim of his good name and 
 the confidence of his surroundings. In the case mentioned it 
 was not the fault of the calumniator that the effect did not 
 appear, it was due to the conscientiousness, vigilance, and 
 knowledge of human nature of the person who saw through 
 the trick. The slanderous remark, one might say, adapting 
 the terminology of Aristotle, was causa per accidens, not 
 causa per se, an accidental occasion, but not the cause of the 
 favorable results. Morality, however, has to do not with 
 the actual consequences, but with the effects flowing from the 
 very nature of the act. Physics has to do with the law of 
 gravitation and not with the infinitely variable actual move- 
 ments of falling bodies ; it investigates the law of gravitation, 
 ignoring the fact that the tendency to gravitation is not the 
 sole cause of the actual movement of a body. Similarly, 
 medicine seeks to determine the natural tendency of a 
 remedy or a poison to act upon the organism, knowing full 
 well that a thousand other causes may diminish, modify, or 
 even counteract its effects in a particular case. In the same 
 way, ethics seeks to determine the natural tendencies of modes 
 of conduct and not the innumerable, variable, actual results of 
 the particular acts. It asks: What would be the effect of 
 calumny upon humanity if it alone determined the result ? and 
 judges its worth according to the answer. Similarly, to take 
 the other example, benevolence naturally tends to diminish 
 human misery, and is therefore good. 
 
 Or is this a mistake ? Is benevolence good in itself, regard- 
 
226 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 less of its effects, and malevolence bad in the same sense ? 
 Would not the Samaritan have been what he was if he had 
 been wholly unable to render aid, if he had been compelled 
 to remain at home, poor, sick and in need of help himself ? 
 Certainly; but the teleological view, rightly understood, does 
 not dispute it. Here, again, it is a pure accident that a 
 virtue does not realize its effects; its tendency remains the 
 same, and the tendency is what we judge. But suppose that 
 it were impossible, in the nature of things, for one man to 
 help another, suppose that each individual inhabited his own 
 planet and could see the misery of the inhabitant of a neigh- 
 boring planet without being able to help him in any way ? 
 Then would compassion be good ? Should we not say : It is 
 not good for him to feel pity, it simply doubles the sorrow ; 
 it would be much better if he lacked the power to see the 
 wretchedness of others ? Nevertheless, he would be a good 
 man, you say. Very true ; but it is tacitly assumed that if 
 he were near and could render aid, his being there would be 
 a benefit. We have here an instance similar to what we find 
 in the theoretical field ; we ignore a relation which is con- 
 stantly and necessarily presupposed. We say, The stars are 
 bright points, and believe that we are thereby attributing to 
 them an absolute quality. Epistemological reflections first 
 convince us that such a judgment presupposes a point of re- 
 lation, namely, an eye that is sensitive to light. Here, too, 
 common-sense would say : But the stars would surely shine 
 even if all eyes were closed. Certainly ; but that simply 
 means that if an eye were again opened, it would see them. 
 If there were no eyes at all, there would be no shining points. 
 Similarly, if men did not produce effects upon men, if they 
 were metaphysically isolated from each other, like Leibnizian 
 monads, it would be utterly absurd to say that malevolence 
 was bad and benevolence good. The words malevolence and 
 benevolence would be devoid of meaning. 
 
 3. But another objection is urged. Your theory does not 
 
GOOD AND BAD 227 
 
 meet the facts after all. The moral judgment is not con- 
 cerned with acts and modes of conduct, but with the disposi- 
 tion of the agent. The act is good when its motive is good, 
 that is, when it springs from the sense of duty, be its effect 
 what it may. 1 
 
 Nor is this statement untrue. It is a fact that the moral 
 judgment of a particular act first considers the disposition of 
 the agent. We try to ascertain the moral worth of the per- 
 son, which manifests itself in the act, and therefore inquire into 
 his motives. A physician performs a dangerous operation, and 
 the patient dies from it. The public now pronounces judg- 
 ment. Did the physician do it from a sordid motive ? No, 
 the patient was unable to pay. Was it ambition that prompted 
 him ? Hardly, for he had successfully performed the opera- 
 tion a hundred times, and this was a desperate case. Well, 
 then, he must have been extremely careless ! No, it took him 
 a long time to make up his mind to do it. He simply felt 
 that it was his duty to make a final attempt to save the 
 patient's life. — When that conclusion has been reached, it 
 means that the act was morally unassailable. 
 
 But it does not necessarily follow that the operation was 
 justified by the facts. This is a point that must be settled 
 by the physicians ; and if they find that the outcome of the 
 case could have been foreseen, they blame the physician and 
 say : He should not have done it. And, hence, it is not the dis- 
 position, but the result that decides after all. That is, not the 
 actual, particular result — no one can be held accountable 
 for an accident — but the result which was to be expected 
 from the nature of the case. 
 
 The same thing meets us everywhere : a distinction is 
 made between a personal and an objective judgment aroused 
 by the same act. Every act gives rise to two judgments, 
 a subjective, formal judgment of the disposition of the 
 person and an objective, material judgment of the act itself. 
 
 1 [Kant, ibid. ; Martineau, vol. II, Part II. ; Bradley, Eth'cal Studies.— Til.] 
 
228 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 In the former case, we inquire into the motive, in the latter, 
 into the effects following from the nature of the case. 1 
 
 It is of the utmost importance that we clearly understand 
 this difference, and also that we see that these two judgments 
 are independent of each other and may even contradict each 
 other. An act may be objectively wrong, and yet the agent 
 may be personally irreproachable. It is said of St. Crispin 
 that he stole leather to make shoes for the poor. Does that 
 make Crispin a thief and a rascal ? We shall hardly be will- 
 ing to say so. He would surely never have taken the mean- 
 est thing for himself. But when he saw poor children with 
 sore and half frozen feet, his heart was grieved, and having 
 nothing himself he took a piece of leather from the rich 
 merchant in order to help them. Not without some reluc- 
 tance, we may imagine ; for he, too, had learned the com- 
 mandment, " Thou shall not steal." But so great was his 
 pity that he risked the danger of the gallows. Of what use, 
 he may have thought, is his wealth to the rich usurer ? It 
 will merely lead to his damnation. Perhaps, God in his 
 mercy will credit him with the act of charity which he will 
 thus involuntarily perform. And so Crispin went and took 
 with a good conscience as much as he needed. If pity and 
 good will are absolutely good, they are certainly good in this 
 case also. The subjective formal judgment must be: The 
 will of Crispin, who served others with a clear conscience 
 and by sacrificing his own interests, was a good will. 
 
 But this judgment is not the only one to which the act 
 gives rise. The act itself is made the object of a judgment 
 which is formed on the basis of the -effects naturally belong- 
 ing to it. Objectively considered, the act is undoubtedly 
 theft : depriving a man of his property without the consent of 
 
 1 ["An act is materially good when in fact it tends to the interest of the sys« 
 tern, so far as we can judge of its tendency, or to the good of some part 
 consistent with the system, whatever were the affections of the agent." "An 
 action is formally good when it flowed from good affection in a just proportion.* 
 (HutchesonJ — Tr.] 
 
GOOD AND BAD 229 
 
 the owner. Such a mode of conduct has, from the very 
 nature of the case — whatever may be the motive — effects 
 which are extremely dangerous to human welfare. If such 
 conduct became general, if everybody were to act according 
 to the maxim : If in your opinion you can do more good by 
 taking a commodity from its owner and giving it to another, 
 then it is your right or your duty to make the transfer, re- 
 gardless of the owner's washes, what would be the result ? 
 Evidently, the complete abolition of the institution of prop- 
 erty, and with it, the disappearance of the desire to acquire 
 more than momentary needs call for, and the destruction of 
 human life. Hence, the effects which follow from the nature 
 of such an act are ruinous, and the act is bad. And so uni- 
 versal is this belief that such acts are prohibited and pun- 
 ished as stealing. Had Crispin been brought before a judge, 
 the latter would have been compelled to condemn him with- 
 out hesitation. Not only because the law required it; nay, 
 even if he had made the law himself, he could not have acted 
 otherwise. He would not have been willing to insert a clause 
 into the code in favor of Crispin's theft, to wit : But every 
 encroachment upon the property of another shall go unpun- 
 ished, provided a third party thereby receives a benefit 
 exceeding the damage done to the owner. No, the formula : 
 Interference with the property rights of others is punishable, 
 holds unconditionally. The most that the judge could have 
 done would have been to take into account extenuating cir- 
 cumstances. And he might, perhaps, have told the accused 
 privately how sorry he was to have been compelled to sen- 
 tence him. I know that your intentions were good, he might 
 have said, but I should like to show you that your mode of 
 procedure was not the proper one, so that you may not con- 
 sider yourself unjustly treated. And he might then have 
 proved to him that his act, innocent though it may have 
 seemed, was absolutely incompatible with the general welfare. 
 The historian will frequently find himself placed in a 
 
230 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 similar position. He will condemn an act without therefore 
 condemning the character of the agent, and conversely. So 
 far as we are able to judge from his letters and the testimony 
 of his friends, K. L. Sand, the murderer of Kotzebue, acted 
 in the firm belief that he was sacrificing himself for his 
 country. He believed that it was his duty to destroy the 
 enemy who was corrupting the soul of his people. And if it 
 is harder to die on the scaffold than on the field of battle, we 
 cannot underrate Sand's devotion to what he felt to be his 
 duty. But the same act was, objectively considered, highly 
 reprehensible. If every man were allowed to sit in judg- 
 ment upon the life of his neighbor, and to kill him in case 
 he considered him a menace to the community, all law and 
 order would disappear, and the war of all against all would 
 become inevitable. There is hardly a man, at least not in 
 public life, whose activity is not regarded by some one in the 
 community as a curse, and whose death some one would not 
 welcome as a blessing to humanity. Hence, the sentence of 
 death pronounced upon the murderer of Kotzebue was en- 
 tirely just and necessary. The inquisitors persecuted her- 
 etics and brought them to the stake. It is conceivable and 
 probable that some of them at least did what they did with 
 a heavy heart : not because they rejoiced in the sufferings of 
 others — nay, they suffered themselves — but because they felt 
 it to be their duty, because they were firmly convinced that it 
 would be better for a heretic to die than that a whole people 
 should be tempted and corrupted by him. Subjectively con- 
 sidered, their conduct was without blame, no less so than that 
 of the judge who sentenced poor Sand. The difference is a 
 material difference only : we are no longer convinced that 
 the safety of a people demands the persecution and execution 
 of those who differ from us in matters of religion. 
 
 The inability to keep these two views apart causes much 
 confusion. Whoever condemns the act believes that he must 
 assume an evil motive in order to justify his disapproval of 
 
GOOD AND BAD 231 
 
 the character, that he must attribute love of power and 
 cruelty to the inquisitors, vanity and a craving for notori- 
 ety to Sand. Conversely, whoever approves and under- 
 stands the character of the agent feels bound to approve of 
 the act, and gives it an innocent or even praiseworthy name. 
 The moralizing party-eloquence of the historians finds an 
 excellent field here. Such names and motives are selected 
 for acts as arouse the love and admiration or the hatred and 
 indignation of the reader. As a rule, writers of this class 
 do not care so much for the truth as to make things appear 
 good or bad in the eyes of the reader. 
 
 We now come back to our question. It is clear that the 
 objective, material judgment is justified teleologically : the 
 value of acts and modes of conduct depends upon their 
 ability to solve the problems of life, or upon their effects upon 
 the conduct of life. But the same may ultimately be said 
 of the subjective, formal judgment. First, however, let me 
 say that it is the real business of ethics to determine the 
 objective value of modes of action and conduct, not to decide 
 upon the subjective, personal value of the disposition of the 
 agent. It is manifestly not the function of the science to deter- 
 mine the motive and disposition in a particular case ; and it 
 is not its function, or at least only to a very small degree, to 
 establish the principles underlying this judgment. The prin- 
 ciple of the subjective, formal judgment is : An act is good 
 in so far as it springs from a will determined by the con- 
 sciousness of duty. In saying this we say everything that 
 can be said upon the subject. It is morally right to act 
 conscientiously, it is morally wrong to act contrary to one's 
 conscience, be the content of conscience whatever it may. 
 But there never was an ethics that stopped here ; it has in- 
 variably attempted to find an answer for the other question 
 also : What is it that duty really enjoins ? For no ethics can, 
 without ignoring the most patent facts, get around the fact 
 that conscience commands and permits different persons to 
 
232 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 act differently in the same case ; nay, that its dictates are 
 not infrequently different for the same person at different 
 times. Now, it is surely not the object of ethics merely to 
 command the individual to obey his conscience, but above all 
 to guide his conscience, that is, to teach him to decide what 
 is the content of a normal conscience. And if scientific ethics 
 cannot follow the example of theological ethics and appeal 
 to the commands of a transcendent law-giver, or to the 
 absolute decisions of an infallible court, and if it cannot, with- 
 out renouncing its scientific character, do what Herbart and 
 Lotze show an inclination to do, that is, appeal to the categor- 
 ical formula — My, the moralist's, conscience, the normal con- 
 science, decrees as follows — then it has no other course than 
 to measure the content of the conscience or of the duties 
 which it enjoins by an objective standard ; and this objective 
 standard, again, can only be the value which modes of action 
 and conduct derive from their relation to an ultimate and 
 highest good. 
 
 Finally, however, the subjective, formal conception itself 
 is reduced to the teleological view. To act from respect for 
 duty, from conscientiousness, is morally good. Why is con- 
 scientiousness good ? Or is this an absurd question ? I do 
 not believe it. Conscientiousness is objectively good, the 
 moral philosopher will find, because conscience tends to 
 determine the conduct of the individual to the end that he 
 may promote the welfare of the agent and his surroundings. 
 Inclinations are variable and untrustworthy ; conscience is, on 
 the whole, the same in all the individuals of a people, and there- 
 fore makes their conduct uniform in so far as it has power over 
 them. Even this formal point is a gain. Moreover, the con- 
 tents of the individual conscience represent positive morality, 
 the objective morality of the people, which is inculcated in the 
 individual during his entire life, by example, by praise and 
 blame. But the general moral code, in turn, contains the cus- 
 toms (Sitten) and laws of a people or an entire sphere of civili- 
 
GOOD AND BAD 233 
 
 zation. Customs, however, so anthropology tells us, are to be 
 regarded as a kind of social instinct, by which all the individ- 
 uals of a particular, historical society are impelled to perform 
 acts tending to the preservation of individual and social life. 
 Hence, conscience, thus interpreted, would have to be re- 
 garded as a principle which impels the individual to promote 
 his own most vital interests and the interests of the commu- 
 nity of which he is a member. Let this suffice, for the pres- 
 ent, upon this point. I shall return to it in the fifth chapter 
 of the second book. 1 
 
 The principle of teleological energism then would be : 
 The objective value of human conduct is ultimately de- 
 termined by its relation to a final and highest end or good, 
 which consists in the perfect development of being and the 
 exercise of vital functions ; and the worth of a good will, of 
 a will actuated by a feeling of duty, ultimately depends upon 
 its power to influence action for the highest good. 
 
 4. Before entering upon a more detailed definition of the 
 highest good, I should like to answer a few objections which 
 might be urged against my view. 
 
 In the first place, Is not this principle identical with the 
 oft-quoted maxim which, in spite of their protestations, we 
 are in the habit of attributing to the Jesuits : The end justi- 
 fies the means? If the value of a mode of conduct depends 
 upon its effects, must we not also grant it of a particular 
 act? 
 
 Indeed, I do not see how teleological ethics can deny the 
 proposition. But I see no reason why it should wish to deny 
 it. When rightly understood, the proposition is harmless and 
 necessary. When misconstrued, of course, it becomes absurd 
 and damnable. If we mean by it : So long as the end is per 
 missible or good, any means may be employed to realize it, — 
 then, indeed, there is not a crime which might not be justi- 
 fied by it. It is lawful and good to acquire money for one's 
 
 1 [See Stephen, Science of Ethics, chap. IV., § 4. — Tb.] 
 
234 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 self and one's family. Now, if the proposition be interpreted 
 in the sense just indicated, then it would be right not only 
 to work for wages, but even to hire out as an assassin, pro- 
 vided it were done for the sake of the good end. It is good 
 to help your neighbor in need ; if the proposition were entirely 
 true, it would be right to perjure one's self in order to acquit 
 a good friend in court. This is evidently the interpretation 
 which the opponents of the Jesuits accuse them of having put 
 upon the maxim. The idea is : The Jesuits act according to 
 the principle that any means, as for example, the murder of 
 heretical kings, breach of faith, perjury, where heretics are 
 concerned, etc., which furthers any end which the Jesuits 
 themselves consider good, say the increase of papal power 
 and the advancement of their own order, or the annihilation 
 of Protestantism, is right. It is easy to understand why the 
 Jesuits are unwilling to acknowledge the proposition either 
 as the actual maxim of their acts, or as the principle of their 
 morality. 
 
 If, on the other hand, we interpret the proposition to mean : 
 Not any lawful end you please, but only the end justifies the 
 means ; and there is only one end which determines all 
 values, namely, the highest good, the welfare or perfection of 
 humanity, then it is not only harmless, but inevitable. An 
 act that realizes this purpose is not only permissible, but 
 good and necessary. Everybody, with perhaps the exception 
 of a few philosophers who have a principle to defend, will 
 acknowledge this. There can be no controversy on the 
 point whether it is right to do what is proved to be neces- 
 sary to realize this end ; the only question is, whether an 
 act that violates a universal law may, under certain condi- 
 tions, produce such an effect. If that were proved, every- 
 body would admit the objective goodness of such an act. If 
 an intentional falsehood had and could have only beneficial 
 effects, it would not be a reprehensible lie. If by depriving 
 a man of his property, we should and could injure no one. 
 
GOOD AND BAD 235 
 
 neither the owner nor the community, by the bad example, 
 nor the thief, by creating a habit in him — if the act resulted 
 in the greatest good, it would not be theft. When a physi- 
 cian removes a patient's eye in order to save the other eye, 
 or cuts off his leg to save his life, his act is not criminal as- 
 sault and battery, but a means justified by the end. Should 
 the same physician yield to the fervent entreaties of an 
 absolutely hopeless patient afflicted with an incurable and 
 highly contagious disease contracted in a foreign land, and 
 give him a fatal poison, and then bring the matter to the 
 attention of the authorities, it would not be murder. The 
 physician would, of course, be culpable before the law, and 
 it is obvious why the law which punishes such offenses could 
 not be suspended. But, morally considered, the case is the 
 same as when an officer, after the necessary formalities, 
 shoots down the ring-leader of a riot. How else could we 
 justify the latter act if not by the end which it subserves, that 
 is, the maintenance of public order ? If the killing of a man 
 were in itself bad, a command of the state could not make it 
 good, for a command cannot make black white, or change the 
 nature of things. 
 
 Then shall we say that falsehood, deceit, and murder are 
 justifiable, or even meritorious, provided they have nothing 
 but beneficial effects upon the welfare of humanity ? There 
 are two reasons why it is impossible to affirm this question 
 without further comment. In the first place, on account of 
 the contradictions involved in the meaning of the terms. 
 The words, murder and falsehood, signify not merely an 
 objective fact, intentional killing or deception, but likewise 
 imply condemnation. The judgment, Murder is wrong, is 
 an " analytical " judgment ; it means an act of homicide 
 that is legally and morally wrong. Hence, in order to 
 obtain a pure judgment, we must eliminate the condemna- 
 tion expressed in the term, and pronounce judgment upon 
 the objective fact alone, that is, upon the intentional act of 
 
236 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 homicide. Now homicide can unquestionably be a lawiui 
 and even dutiful act ; indeed it is enjoined by statute, the 
 execution of which is enforced. — Yery true, we hear the 
 objector say ; nevertheless, the individual as such is prohibited 
 from killing any one except in self-defense ; the killing of a 
 foreigner or a native for the sake of the welfare of the people 
 would be punished as murder. And yet, even such killing 
 would be justifiable according to the principle, provided we 
 were thoroughly convinced that it is essential to the welfare 
 of humanity. 
 
 Our answer is : The mere conviction is by no means suffi- 
 cient to justify the act ; nothing but the actual impossibility of 
 a different effect can do that. This brings us to the second 
 reason why we cannot accept the above proposition. We 
 may say, the proposition : The welfare of humanity is an 
 end which justifies, without exception, every act that is a 
 means to that end, is in theory wholly unobjectionable, but 
 cannot be applied in practice We can never figure out 
 whether an act of this kind, for example the killing of a 
 corruptor of the people, a revolutionist, or a tyrant, by a 
 private person, will have only favorable or approximately 
 favorable effects upon the welfare of humanity, or even 
 upon the permanent welfare of a particular people. When 
 Napoleon I. trampled upon the nations of Europe many a 
 brave man must have felt a desire to kill him and so to 
 free his oppressed people. Let us suppose that such a 
 person had succeeded in assassinating the Emperor at 
 Erfurt, in 1808, at the sacrifice of his own life. Would he 
 have rendered humanity, the oppressed and down-trodden, 
 a service ? Many of his contemporaries would probably have 
 believed it. We of the present day, however, should feel 
 inclined to say : It is well that such a thing did not happen. 
 It is well that the nations of Europe were compelled to win 
 their freedom in open, honorable battle. Had Napoleon 
 fallen by the hand of an assassin, the bad example might have 
 
GOOD AND BAD 237 
 
 corrupted the moral judgment of men for centuries, it might 
 have had a pernicious influence upon the relations existing 
 between the different nations, the German people would not 
 have experienced that inner regeneration which gave back 
 to them their national consciousness and made possible their 
 political existence in the new Empire. True, we cannot 
 absolutely prove it. — Some one may reply : If the tyrant 
 had been killed in time, much bloodshed would have been 
 avoided, there would have been no Holy Alliance of notori- 
 ous fame, and the feeling of national pride which has taken 
 such hold upon the nations of Europe, and is now terrorizing 
 them with the fears of war and weighing them down with 
 armaments, would not have gained such an unfortunate as- 
 cendency over the feeling of universal brotherly love, and so 
 on. This view too, may be true, and we cannot prove by any 
 form of reasoning that it is false. Nay, we cannot even prove 
 that the battle of Sedan was a blessing for the German people. 
 'All that we can do is to believe these things, and faith rests 
 -♦upon the will. 4 *It is just as impossible to make an absolute 
 calculation of the effects of a movement in physics, because 
 every effect continues ad infinitum, as it is to determine 
 the objective value of a particular act from its relation to 
 the highest human end, in moral philosophy. Here, as in the 
 former case, we are dealing with infinite quantities. We can 
 merely estimate the general tendencies of motion in physics, 
 and the tendencies of modes of action to further or retard 
 welfare in morals. 
 
 Still, we must confess that circumstances may arise under 
 which the end justifies exceptions to the rule, just as poisons 
 may sometimes be used as remedies. It is the same in morals 
 as in politics. No statesman, no historian, will refuse to 
 grant that a breach of positive law may, under certain cir- 
 cumstances, become a necessity. But no one will dare to claim, 
 unless he is a partisan and not a theorist, that he can strictly 
 prove the necessity of a particular revolution. Such things 
 
238 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 can be believed, but not proved. No one can ever estimate all 
 the consequences of a violation of law, especially not the 
 more remote ones. A revolution as such invariably tends to 
 destroy the legal order, and to weaken the authority of law. 
 To what extent this actually occurs no one can tell. The 
 feeling of insecurity produced by the example of such a vio- 
 lation of law may continue for centuries after its occur- 
 rence. We can no more calculate the unfavorable effects 
 than we can calculate the favorable ones ; we can never prove 
 that the sum of the latter exceeds that of the former. The 
 same may be said of infractions of the moral laws. There 
 may be cases in which these become necessary, but we can 
 never prove it in a particular instance. It will never be pos- 
 sible to prove that the sum of all the evil effects which a 
 breach of law may directly and indirectly produce in 
 one's own life and that of others, is overbalanced by the im- 
 mediate good effects which are aimed at. Consequently, 
 whoever breaks the law, always does so at his own peril. 
 The man who remains within the bounds of the law can 
 make no mistake. Of course, energetic natures do not care 
 chiefly for their own safety. The men who have brought 
 about great crises in history have, as a rule, in some way 
 or other, departed from the safe course of universal morality 
 and law. 
 
 The most serious thing about our proposition is its tendency 
 to make us forget the more remote consequences, and empha- 
 size the immediate ones. The end justifies the means, says 
 the partisan to himself, when he attempts to secure the victory 
 for his party at an election by slandering the opposing can- 
 didate. The end justifies the means, says the politician who 
 strives to gain an advantage for his country by fraud or by 
 force. The end justifies the means, says the churchman who 
 calumniates and disgraces an honest man because he does 
 not accept the "sound doctrine." The maxim in its evil 
 meaning finds the freest scope in partisan activity. Party 
 
GOOD AND BAD 239 
 
 morality is always and everywhere inclined to identify the 
 advantage of the party with the welfare of the people or 
 humanity. The cause of the party is, of course, the good 
 cause, hence whatever conduces to it is lawful ! 
 
 Did the Society of Jesus innocently employ this mode 
 of reasoning ? It is commonly assumed that it did, and 
 indeed the proposition, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, suggests 
 the conclusion : Whatever tends to increase the power of the 
 church, to shatter the power of its enemies, or to advance the 
 power of its friends — among whom we are the most faithful 
 and the most zealous — is good, whether it be brought about 
 by the suppression of truth or the circulation of falsehood, by 
 the assassination or the public burning of human beings. We 
 may presume that the history of the order shows acts which 
 were performed according to this principle, and that some of 
 its members thought and acted in accordance with it. It is 
 but fair to say, however, that such persons exist in every 
 party. Indeed, we may say that every party, be it merely a 
 literary sect or a school of philology, in a certain sense ac- 
 cepts the motto : There can be no salvation except in us. 
 Bat, we must also add, the order surely contained members 
 whose consciences did not permit them to draw such a con- 
 clusion. Most likely the Society of Jesus, like other societies, 
 was neither made up of saints only, nor yet of scoundrels or 
 " men in wickedness " (Manner an Bosheit), as a Protestant 
 historian calls them, but of human beings. And, a defender 
 of the order might add, there is a very obvious reason why 
 such a maxim should have come to be regarded as their 
 special property. The stronger a party, the more trouble- 
 some it is to its opponents ; and the greater and more sur- 
 prising its victories, the more surely will they be attributed 
 by its opponents to the employment of dishonest means. 1 
 
 1 I call the reader's attention to a book written by a Jesnit, Father B. Duhr, 
 Jesuit Fables (Jesuitenfabeln) , 2d edition 1892, which gives a long list of ex- 
 amples, extending to the present, to show that the enemies of the order 
 have themselves acted in accordance with the principle that the end justifies the 
 
240 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 5. Another objection to the teleological moral philosophy is 
 the following. It is contended that the teleological view can- 
 not explain the absolute importance attached to particular acts 
 by genuine ethical feeling. If the violation of the moral laws 
 is to be avoided solely on account of the effects, why should an 
 offence whose effects are manifestly utterly insignificant, pro- 
 duce such violent emotional reactions in the agent and the 
 spectators. Pestalozzi tells us an interesting story in his 
 Lienhard and Gertrude. The oldest son of the mason's 
 starving family takes a few potatoes from the field of a rich 
 neighbor, bakes them in ashes, and shares them with his 
 brothers and sisters. His old grandmother, who is on her 
 death-bed, becomes alarmed and excited at the discovery of 
 the theft ; she cannot die in peace until the boy confesses his 
 sin to the neighbor and obtains his forgiveness. Now, if the 
 teleological theory is correct, how shall we explain the dis- 
 proportion between the intensity of the emotion and the 
 insignificance of the harm done ? The neighbor will not miss 
 the few potatoes, and it is somewhat fantastic to fear that a 
 boy might, by taking them, undermine the institution of 
 property. Hence, the objector might continue, making a 
 practical application, if the theory were to become universal, 
 it would result in shaking the authority of the moral laws, 
 or lessen the fear of violating them. 
 
 I shall not attempt to offer a psychological explanation of 
 the emotional reactions following the infraction of the moral 
 law until I reach the chapter on Duty. 1 All I can say here 
 is that they do not result from a computation of the damage 
 done or feared, and that it is hardly to be supposed that this 
 will ever be the case. I shall simply endeavor to justify the 
 
 means. The annihilation of the Jesuits is a consummation devoutly to be 
 wished, hence everything that is calculated to lower them in the eyes of men is 
 a priori believable ; at all events it is unnecessary to make any investigation, 
 and one is doing the world a service by circulating the slanders about them. 
 [For some of the literature on the subject gee Runze's Ethik, p. 208. — Tr.] 
 * Chapter V. 
 
GOOD AND BAD 241 
 
 intensity and absoluteness of the feelings of aversion and re- 
 morse, which are aroused by intended or accomplished offences, 
 from the standpoint of teleological ethics. 
 
 It is said that a Greek sage, when asked by a friend why he 
 had punished his son so severely for some trivial offense, re- 
 plied : And do you regard habit as trivial ? His words con- 
 tain the answer to the objection urged against our theory. If 
 the particular act were an isolated act, it might, indeed, be of 
 little moment. The important thing, however, is that it tends 
 to form a habit, from which similar acts afterwards result. 
 I once read a striking remark made by a Frenchman : Conse- 
 quences would not be so important if they did not in turn 
 become causes. It is true, the trivial act of the boy in our ex- 
 ample may not have injured the neighbor, indeed, it may not 
 have harmed any one, no one might ever have heard of it. 
 But one person it would certainly have injured, the boy him- 
 self, had not the damage been averted by penitence and 
 punishment. He would have remembered how he once suc- 
 ceeded in overcoming want, and if he had ever found himself 
 in trouble again with the same opportunities of getting out 
 of it, he would have recalled his past experience and acted in 
 the same way. Having stolen once, he would have become an 
 habitual thief, and then a professonal thief. Perhaps, it would 
 not have come to this. Nevertheless, the first, apparently harm- 
 less, transgression was the first step in that direction. No one 
 ever stole anything for the first time with the intention 
 of becoming a thief ; certainly not, he simply wanted this one 
 thing, this so desirable, so absolutely necessary thing ; but the 
 result was inevitable. — No one ever told his first lie intending 
 to become a liar ; no drunkard ever began as a drunkard, — he 
 began with a single spree, and with the firm resolve to guard 
 against its recurrence in the future. And every subsequent 
 state of drunkenness began with the first glass and the firm 
 resolve that it should be the last. But the second glass and 
 the second spree and the second lie and the second theft came 
 
242 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 of their own accord, finding the door wide open to admit them. 
 Innocence is a negative term, but a positive thing. The first 
 trangression breaks down the barrier which separates the good 
 path from the evil one. Nowhere is this more apparent than 
 in the sphere of sexual life, as the term innocence ( UnschuloT) 
 in the narrower sense implies. With the first false step we 
 enter upon the downward path which leads to an abyss. You 
 will be careful and not fall down ? That is what the thou- 
 sands believed who were dashed to pieces at the bottom of 
 the pit. " The first is free to us ; we 're governed by the 
 second," 1 is the law of the evil spirits. And of the good 
 ones too. After the first temptation has been overcome, 
 the danger of the second is only half as great. The first 
 victory which we win over ourselves is the hardest, every 
 ensuing struggle becomes easier, until at last we do the right 
 without effort. 
 
 This is the first reason why each particular act has such 
 great moral influence. In performing it, we are not merely 
 deciding the case at hand, but somehow determining our whole 
 course of life. This is true not only of the first decision, 
 although it is of especial importance, but of every subsequent 
 one. Each decision leaves a deeper imprint upon our nature, 
 until it becomes absolutely impossible to counteract it. 2 
 
 But there is another reason. Not only does every act tend 
 to create a habit in the agent, but it likewise tends to produce 
 a similar habit in the surrounding individuals, and thereby to 
 make the habit of the individual a characteristic of the race. 
 This is brought about in two ways: by imitation and retaliation. 
 
 Everybody knows how great is the force of example. Cer- 
 tain plants produce germs which are carried through the air 
 until they fall upon fertile soil and grow. Similarly, we may 
 say, good and evil deeds produce germs which permeate the 
 moral atmosphere until, passing through the eyes and ears of 
 men into human souls, they fall upon rich ground and thrive. 
 
 1 Faust. 2 [See James's chapter on Habit.] 
 
GOOD AND BAD 243 
 
 This mode of dissemination is peculiar to acts which do 
 not immediately affect the agent himself, but others. An 
 attempt is made " to get even," first, with the person who has 
 done the good or evil deed, and then with any one who may 
 happen to come along. Darwin tells us of an Australian 
 whose wife died, and who could find no rest until he had 
 killed a woman of another tribe, in retaliation for her death, so 
 to say. This seems to be a very unnatural method of pro- 
 cedure, and yet it is practised, to some extent, by all human 
 beings. When a man has been injured or treated unkindly, 
 and cannot revenge himself upon the responsible party, 
 either because the latter cannot be reached or is not known to 
 him, he usually visits his anger upon the first individual who 
 happens to cross his path. We all know this, and get out of 
 such a person's way. Some one or other has palmed off a 
 counterfeit half-dollar on a man. You may wager ten to one 
 that, however honest he may be, he will attempt to pass it on. 
 The " public " has swindled him, it is a lawful act of self- 
 defence to return to the public its counterfeit coin. But acts 
 of politeness and kindness are no less contagious. A stranger 
 does me a favor ; I have forgotten my pocketbook and he pays 
 my car-fare ; I feel impelled not only to thank him, but also to 
 be kind to other strangers. 
 
 Nowhere are good and evil more easily transmitted than in 
 the family ; nowhere is the power of example more effective, 
 and retribution more sure to follow. What we receive from 
 our parents we pay back to our children. Good training and 
 bad training are both hereditary. 
 
 Hence, an examination of the moral judgments pro- 
 nounced upon human acts and qualities universally leads 
 to the conception of universal welfare as the principle which 
 governs all determinations of value. 
 
 6. Let me supplement these reflections by briefly showing 
 that the other path which moral philosophy can pursue and 
 has pursued leads to the same goal. The question : What is 
 
244 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 the ultimate end of willing? likewise suggests the answer: 
 The welfare of the individual and of his surroundings. 
 
 There is a view which claims in opposition to this that the 
 will naturally aims, not at universal but at egoistic or indi- 
 vidual welfare. Everybody strives for what is agreeable or 
 useful to him, regardless of whether it hinders or furthers 
 the welfare of others. This idea formulated into a theory 
 is egoistic or individualistic utilitarianism. Hobbes is the 
 first modern representative of the view that the will of every 
 animal is directed towards self-preservation ; that self-preser- 
 vation is the law of its nature; that whatever benefits it is 
 good, and whatever is good for others is good for it only in 
 so far as it is a means to its own preservation. 
 
 I do not believe that we can maintain this theory without 
 flying in the face of the facts. The egoistic, self-preservative 
 impulse undoubtedly plays an extremely important part in life ; 
 and only too frequently does it assert itself at the expense 
 of others' interests. But no one is an egoist in the sense 
 of caring exclusively for his own weal and woe, and of being 
 utterly regardless of the welfare of others. There are at least 
 a few persons in his immediate surroundings whose good is as 
 dear to him as his own, whose welfare he is ready to pro- 
 mote, at least if it can be done without endangering his own 
 interests. Indeed, most persons will, in a measure at least, 
 even be ready to sacrifice their own interests for the sake of 
 a small group ; they will be willing to give up some of their 
 comforts in order to help it. Some men, finally, are so 
 deeply interested in the weal and woe of others, not only of 
 those closely related to them, but even of utter strangers, as 
 to be governed by sympathy in their entire conduct. We 
 also notice that individuals are directly interested in the wel- 
 fare of society as a whole. Whenever an individual betrays 
 his country for gain, the indignation aroused shows how 
 violently the instincts of the masses resent it. Hence, we 
 may say in general : The will universally aima at individual 
 
GOOD AND BAD 245 
 
 and general welfare, in quite different combinations, it is true, 
 but yet so that neither element is ever entirely lacking. We 
 call those persons unselfish who, in an unusual degree, sub- 
 ordinate their own interests to those of others ; we call those 
 egoistic whose regard for the interests of others falls consider- 
 ably below the average. The union in one will of selfish and 
 social impulses, of idiopathic and sympathetic feelings, is an 
 expression of the biological truth that the individual is not 
 an independent individual being, but a member of a collective 
 whole. This objective relation appears subjectively in the 
 constitution of the will and the feelings. Even in the animal 
 world the impulse of self-preservation is invariably accom- 
 panied by the generic impulse, the impulse to produce and 
 preserve offspring even at the sacrifice of individual life. 
 In human life, the generic impulse, if we may so designate 
 all will-impulses that are rooted in the relation of the individ- 
 ual to the species, is expanded and intensified. The individual 
 is conscious of forming a part of the whole ; he regards him- 
 self as belonging to a family, a community, a people; he 
 adopts their purposes into his own will ; his interests are so 
 closely interwoven with the general interests as to be insepar- 
 able from them in his consciousness. We may therefore 
 designate, as the goal of his willing, the universal welfare 
 inclusive of individual welfare, or individual welfare within 
 universal welfare. There are, it is true, certain persons 
 whose social impulses are so poorly developed as to be almost 
 entirely absent, persons who are indifferent to the weal and 
 woe of their surroundings, nay, who delight in the injury of 
 others' interests. But this is no more an objection to the 
 view than the existence of idiots is a contradiction to the 
 truth of the proposition that man possesses reason and 
 speech. Physicians and anthropologists agree that an in- 
 dividual incapable of sympathetic feelings is as much of a 
 monstrosity as an idiot. 
 
 So much, for the present, in reply to the theory of individ- 
 
246 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 ualistic egoism. After the concept of welfare has been more 
 clearly denned, I shall come back to the antithesis between 
 egoism and altruism. Here I should simply like to state that 
 I cannot ascribe the importance to the matter which many 
 moral philosophers ascribe to it. Schopenhauer and his fol- 
 lowers regard it as the cardinal question in morals. The 
 natural man is absolutely egoistic and therefore without 
 moral worth; only such acts are moral as have for their 
 sole motive the weal and woe of others. But since such moti- 
 vation is really impossible in nature — for how can the will 
 be influenced by what does not concern it ? — all morality is 
 really supernatural. 
 
 I do not believe that the world in which we live is so mys- 
 teriously arranged. There is a place for the will even within 
 the natural order. Only so pessimistic a judge of empirical 
 human nature as Schopenhauer can regard compassion as 
 supernatural. Schopenhauer somewhere says in one of those 
 climaxes by which he loves to dazzle credulous readers : " The 
 natural man would, if forced to choose between his own de- 
 struction and that of the world, annihilate the whole universe 
 merely for the sake of preserving himself, this drop in the 
 ocean, a little while longer." — I do not know whether any one 
 would make such a choice on the spur of the moment. But I 
 do know that there is not a man living who would not regret 
 his choice immediately after the destruction of the world, and 
 who would not wish to be freed from a useless and unbearable 
 existence. Even the greatest egoist would then see that he 
 was not intended by nature for complete isolation. He would 
 need other beings if only to be admired, feared, or envied by 
 them. But the individual hardly exists whose relations to 
 humanity are completely exhausted by these feelings, who has 
 not some one whose weal and woe is not altogether immaterial 
 to him or merely fills him with antipathy. And we may say 
 that the welfare of the overwhelming majority is so closely 
 interwoven with the welfare of others, of their relatives, 
 
GOOD AND BAD 247 
 
 friends, and people, that they cannot fare well, either objec- 
 tively or subjectively, without these. Such absolute egoists 
 exist only in theory and not in reality ; they are mere speci- 
 mens, so to speak, prepared by moral philosophers to prove a 
 theory, and a false theory at that. 
 
 In a certain sense, of course, egoism is inevitable. Even 
 the most unselfish man desires the welfare of others because 
 their welfare is not immaterial to him. The furtherance of 
 the weal of others or the alleviation of others' woe is a source 
 of satisfaction and relief to him. Indeed, if it were not so, 
 if the welfare of others did not concern him, it could not 
 become an object of his willing. My will can be moved only 
 by my feelings ; I cannot have and feel the feelings of others. 
 In this sense the ego remains the centre of things. It will 
 not, however, be necessary to show that this is not what we 
 mean when we speak of selfishness or egoism in the usual 
 acceptation of the term. These words mean the inability to 
 feel the misfortunes of others, or to rejoice at their welfare. 
 Only an abstract moral philosopher, one who regards the con- 
 tradiction of the natural will as the essential characteristic of 
 duty, or the exclusion of all satisfaction as the condition of 
 moral worth, will be troubled by the fact that the promotion 
 of others' welfare is invariably accompanied by a feeling of 
 selfish satisfaction. These are fruitless quibbles indulged in by 
 an intellect that no longer deals with the things themselves, 
 but merely endeavors to uphold a system. 
 
 Let me add another statement. It has been said that the 
 teleological moral philosophy cannot explain self-sacrifice, 
 that a man like Regulus in the Roman legend contradicts 
 the theory. 
 
 I can see no difficulty here, provided we do not regard 
 absolute egoism as a part of the theory. Regulus, who 
 returns to his Carthaginian captivity after having warned his 
 friends against concluding a peace which would have given 
 him his freedom, may be explained as easily by the teleological 
 
248 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 as by the formalistic theory of ethics. He was undoubtedly 
 actuated by a grand purpose, a purpose that bore him up and 
 gave him strength ; he desired to give to his people a glorious 
 and never-to-be-forgotten example of heroic sacrifice of private 
 interests for the public weal, and at the same time to show 
 the enemy the proud dignity and grandeur of his country in 
 his own person : Behold, such sons are begotten by Rome, 
 who know how to die for the glory of the city, not only on 
 the field of battle, but under the hands of the torturers ! The 
 consciousness of such a purpose, the conviction that such 
 glorious effects will follow, produces heroes. I do not regard 
 it as proved that the dry consciousness of duty : One must 
 not break one's word, can do the same. 
 
 Besides, it might be added, every real sacrifice is at the 
 same time self-preservation, namely, preservation of the ideal 
 self. What did Regulus want, what was the real aim of his 
 willing ? His life ? Why, of course, but that does not mean 
 the preservation of this particular physiological mechanism, but 
 action in peace and in war, in the service of his country. To 
 increase the greatness and glory of the Roman people : that 
 was all that life meant to him, that alone would satisfy his 
 will-to-live. And how could his purpose have been better 
 realized than in the way marked out by fate — than by glori- 
 fying his people and himself in bravely and proudly choosing 
 to die. 
 
 7. Let me sum up. The conduct of a man is morally good 
 when it tends to further the welfare or the perfection of the 
 agent and his surroundings, and is accompanied by the con- 
 sciousness of duty. It is, on the other hand, morally repre- 
 hensible when it lacks both of these characteristics of goodness, 
 or at least one of them. In case the objective quality is 
 absent, it is called wicked Qschleeht), and in case the agent is 
 conscious that it is contrary to duty, it is called bad (hose), 
 especially if it tends to injure the welfare of others. 
 
 We call a man good when he fashions his own life in 
 
GOOD AND BAD 249 
 
 accordance with the ideal of human perfection, and at the 
 same time furthers the welfare of his surroundings. We call 
 him bad when he has neither the will nor the strength to do 
 anything for himself or for others, but, instead, disturbs and 
 injures his surroundings. 
 
 Virtues and vices, then, are to be explained as the different 
 aspects of the good and bad man. Corresponding to the 
 different problems of life we have a number of different capa- 
 cities or virtues, which represent so many forces of the will 
 tending to solve them. Opposed to them are the vices which 
 express so many incapable wills. 
 
 The concept good, therefore, always presupposes a relation ; 
 it means good for something. According to common usage, 
 a thing is good when it is capable of doing its work properly, 
 of realizing its purpose. Similarly, when applied to man, 
 the term signifies the ability to accomplish something. A 
 good manager, a good soldier, a good citizen, a good friend, a 
 good father, is one who efficiently performs the functions of a 
 father, citizen, friend, soldier, or manager. The word good 
 means the same in morals : a good man is a man who effi- 
 ciently solves the problems of individual and social human 
 life. 
 
 The term loses its relative character only when applied to 
 the whole ; the perfect life of society, perfect reality in gen- 
 eral, is not good for something else, but good in and for itself. 
 But every individual thing is good for something ; every par- 
 ticular act or virtue, every particular human being, is good 
 for something ; they have a purpose or object in the whole, 
 and are therefore good in so far as they realize it. * 
 
 But we must add: In so far as, in the moral world, the 
 individual thing is not an indifferent means of realizing an 
 external end, in so far as the individual man is himself a 
 member of the moral whole, he forms a part of the highest 
 good, and is, as such, an end in himself, like the highest 
 
 1 [See Spencer, Data of Ethics, chap. III. — Tk.] 
 
250 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 good. And the same may be said of the virtues : In so far as 
 they represent aspects of the good man, they are not merely 
 external means to an external end, but themselves a part of 
 the perfect life and highest good. Similarly, moral acts, the 
 expressions of virtues, are at the same time realizations of 
 the purpose, and not merely external means. 
 
 As in a work of art or fiction everything is both a means 
 and an end, so it is in the moral world. In neither case are 
 the means external : they are always also parts of the end. 
 In both cases, however, the whole is the absolute end, and the 
 worth of the parts depends upon their usefulness for the 
 whole. We show the necessity of a verse or scene in a drama 
 by proving that it is indispensable to the whole. So, too, we 
 prove the necessity of a virtue or a duty by showing that it is 
 indispensable to life, to the perfect life of the individual and 
 society. 
 
 It must be observed, however, that the individual need not 
 be conscious of this relation in order that his conduct have 
 moral worth. The good old mother mentioned above, who 
 despised theft simply because it is against the eighth com- 
 mandment, is as moral in her willing as the philosopher who 
 understands the teleological necessity of the institution of 
 property for human life. For, after all, it is not his insight 
 that keeps him from stealing, but his inherited and acquired, 
 instinctive aversion to theft. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE HIGHEST GOOD. HEDONISTIC AND ENERGISTIC 
 CONCEPTIONS i 
 
 1. In the preceding chapter we were led to the notion of 
 welfare. By that term we meant the highest goal of the will 
 and the ultimate principle underlying our moral judgments. 
 It is also called the highest good. In what does welfare or the 
 highest good consist ? 
 
 We have already declared that the highest good of an indiv- 
 idual as well as of a society consists in the perfect development 
 and exercise of life. This, of course, is a purely formal defin- 
 ition, but we cannot make it more specific. It is as impossible 
 to define the perfect life as it is to define a plant or animal 
 species. We can simply give a description of it : this it is the 
 business of the doctrine of virtues and duties to do. 
 
 Before giving a more detailed account of this conception, 
 however, 1 deem it wise to discuss another view of the nature 
 of the highest good. An influential ethical school contends 
 that welfare or the highest good does not consist in the objective 
 
 1 [For criticism of hedonism, see : Plato's Philebus and Bk. IX. of the Republic ; 
 Aristotle, Ethics ; Kant ; Lecky, chap. I, ; Darwin, Descent of Man, chap. IV. ; 
 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, Pleasure and Desire ; Bradley, Ethical Studies, 
 Essays III. and VII. ; Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, Bk. II., chap. II., Bk. III., 
 chaps. I. and IV., Bk. IV., chaps. HI. and IV. ; Martineau, vol. II. ; Murray, 
 Handbook of Ethics, Bk. II., Part I., chap. I. ; Simmel, Einleitung in die Moral- 
 wissenschafl, vol. I. chap. IV. ; Hyslop, Elements of Ethics, 349-385 ; also the 
 ethical works of Calderwood, Bowne, Muirhead, Mackenzie, J. Seth. For hedon- 
 ism, see Democritns ; Cyrenaics ; Epicurus ; Locke, Essay, Bk. II., chap. XX., 
 §§ 1 ff., chap. XXI., §§ 42 ff. ; Bk. I., chap. HI., § 3 ; Bk. II., chap. XXVIII., 
 §§ 5 ff . ; Hutcheson ; Paley ; Hume ; Bentham ; James Mill ; J. S. Mill ; Sidg- 
 wick ; Barratt ; Bain ; Hodgson ; Fowler ; Gizycki ; all of whom are mentioned 
 in the historical part of thiB work. See also Santayana, The Sense of Beauty, 
 1896. — Tr.] 
 
252 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 content of life, but in the feeling of pleasure which life pro- 
 cures ; that pleasure is the thing of absolute worth, and that 
 everything else has value only in so far as it conduces to 
 pleasure. This view is commonly called hedonism ; the theory 
 opposed to it we have called energism. 
 
 The antagonism between these two schools is of long stand- 
 ing; it runs through the entire Greek philosophy. On the 
 one side are the Cyrenaics and Epicureans; on the other, 
 the followers of Plato and Aristotle and the Stoics. The 
 same antithesis appears in modern philosophy. On the one 
 side we have the empirical psychologists ; on the other, the 
 older rationalistic thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries, and the German philosophers who follow Kant. 
 According to the former, the subjective feeling of pleasure, 
 regardless of how it is produced, is the absolute good ; accord- 
 ing to the latter, it is the objective development of individ- 
 ual and social human life, regardless of whether it yields 
 pleasure or not. Of course, they add, such a life is actually 
 experienced with inner satisfaction. 
 
 I do not regard it as superfluous to preface my examination 
 of hedonism with the statement that the question at stake here 
 is : Is the hedonistic view true or false ? and not, Is it good 
 or bad ? The attempt to prove the falseness of this theory by 
 calling it immoral is old. In an old maxim of the Stoic 
 school both hedonism and atheism are repudiated in this 
 way. 1 
 
 That is not a legitimate argument. Theories are bad only 
 in so far as they are false. The orator will hardly be willing 
 to abandon the method of proving their falsehood by their 
 immorality, but philosophy cannot afford to employ it. Let 
 me add that pure and moral men have never been wanting 
 among the representatives of this view. Epicurus lived a 
 blameless life, while Bentham and Mill battled zealously and 
 
 1 'HHov)) r(\os, -KopvTjs Myfia* ovk ton irpovoia, ovSk Tt6pvr\t $6yua. A 
 Gellius, IX., 5. 
 
THE HIGHEST GOOD 253 
 
 energetically for the realization of practical ideas, and have a 
 better claim to the title of idealists, if that is a title of honor, 
 than many of those who arrogate it to themselves. 
 
 How can the assertion that pleasure is the thing of absolute 
 worth be proved ? It seems to me, only by showing that 
 human beings actually prize it as such. Here, at least, the 
 function of the moralist is not that of a lawgiver, but that of 
 an interpreter of nature. It would be absurd to say : True ; 
 human nature does not esteem pleasure of absolute worth, but 
 it ought to do so. And as a matter of fact all hedonists 
 assert that all men, nay, that all living beings, invariably 
 and universally strive after pleasure ; and that pleasure (or 
 freedom from pain) is the only thing which is desired abso- 
 lutely ; that all other things are desired not for their own sake, 
 but as a means to the end of pleasure or freedom from pain. 
 
 I do not believe that this view is substantiated by the facts. 
 Let me first attempt to point out that the will does not 
 aim directly at pleasure, but at a particular content of life, 
 which in man is a human and at best a spiritual-moral 
 content. 1 
 
 What is the evidence of self -consciousness on this point ? 
 Does it reveal pleasure as an end and everything else as a 
 means ? Let us first make clear to ourselves what we mean 
 by ends and means. I am cold and desire to get warm. I 
 can accomplish my end in different ways. I can take exer- 
 cise, I can put on warmer clothes, or I can light a fire. For 
 the latter I can use wood or turf or coal. Here we have a 
 pure relation of means to end : the end is warmth, and I 
 desire it for its own sake. The means I desire only for the 
 sake of the end ; in themselves they are totally indifferent ; I 
 
 1 [For the psychology of willing see the standard works on psychology ; 
 especially, Hoffding, pp. 308-356 ; James, eh. XXVI., esp. pp. 549-551 ; Ladd, 
 Descriptive Psychology, chaps. XI., XXV., XXXVI. ; Baldwin, vol. II. Bain 
 is the chief advocate of psychological hedonism: Emotions and the Will, pp. 
 804-504 ; Mental and Moral Science, Bk. IV., chap. IV. See also Jodl, Lehrbuch 
 der Psychologie, chap. XII. — Tb.] 
 
254 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 choose that one among them which will help me to realize 
 my purpose in the quickest manner possible and at the least 
 expense. Now, does the same relation obtain between all 
 human activities and pleasure ? We sit down at a table 
 hungry. Is pleasure our end, and is eating related to it as 
 an absolutely indifferent means, like the coal in our example ? 
 The lover of music goes to a concert. Is pleasure his end, 
 and music the means ? Did Goethe — applying Bentham's 
 formula that "the constantly proper end of action on the 
 part of every individual at the moment of action is his real 
 greatest happiness from that moment to the end of his life " 
 — select as the means to his greatest happiness poetry and 
 prose, amours with girls and women, business affairs and 
 travels, scientific and historical investigations ? — Well, that is 
 manifestly absurd, and no one will make such a claim. No, 
 impulses and powers slumbered in him which craved for exer- 
 cise and development, just like the forces dwelling in the seed of 
 a plant. And when these powers were exercised and unfolded, 
 pleasure ensued, but this pleasure did not pre-exist in con- 
 sciousness as an end of which the other things were the means. 
 The impulse and the craving for activity preceded all conscious- 
 ness of pleasure. The consciousness of pleasure did not exist 
 before the impulse, and produce or arouse it. Only the blase* 
 and worn-out idler first experiences a desire for pleasure, 
 and then looks about him for some means of procuring it. 
 Healthy men do not act that way. 
 
 Or must we ignore this apparent absurdity and boldly say 
 that all desires actually aim not at the thing or action, but at 
 pleasure ? James Mill, a bold and acute thinker, claims that 
 we must. In the nineteenth chapter of his Analysis of the 
 Phenomena of Human Mind, he teaches that desire is solely 
 another name for the idea of pleasure. There is an am- 
 biguity, however, he points out, caused by a process of asso- 
 ciation ; the term desire is also applied to the ideas of the 
 causes of our pleasures and pains. We have a desire for 
 
THE HIGHEST GOOD 255 
 
 water to drink ; that is, strictly considered, a figure of 
 speech. Properly speaking, it is not the water we desire, 
 but the pleasure of drinking. The illusion that we desire 
 to drink is merely the result of a very close association. 
 
 This reminds me of an anecdote which appeared in the 
 Fliegende Blatter. An Englishman is seated on the bank of 
 a lake, fishing. A native approaches him and informs him 
 that there are no fishes in the stream. Whereupon, the 
 Englishman stolidly replies that he is not fishing for fish, but 
 for pleasure. This man had evidently dissolved the asso- 
 ciation, and regarded fishes, fishing, and pleasure in the 
 light of means and end. Do other people do the same ? It 
 seems to me that the mirth occasioned by his answer is a 
 sufficient reply. Indeed, so far as I know, the will or desire 
 is never directed upon a quantum of pleasure, but always 
 and immediately upon the thing itself, the action, the change 
 of condition. An idea of the thing frequently precedes the 
 desire, but I never find in consciousness an idea of the 
 pleasure as such, to which the thing is related as a mere 
 means. Moreover, we may even say that, as a rule, the 
 desire produces the idea of the thing. 
 
 The following argument also seems to make for the view 
 that the idea of pleasure does not set the will in motion. If 
 it were so, we should have to expect that the more vivid and 
 distinct the pleasure in consciousness, the greater the im- 
 pression which it makes. Now, the pleasure is usually 
 intensest immediately after the enjoyment. Hence, the desire 
 for pleasure ought to be most intense at that time. The 
 reverse is obviously the case. After the meal the idea of the 
 enjoyment does not excite the will at all, which plainly shows 
 that the impulse precedes the pleasure. The idea of pleasure is 
 not the cause of the impulse or desire, but the impulse becomes 
 the cause of the pleasure when it realizes its objective end. 
 
 Consequently, hedonism would at least have to modify its 
 claim and say : Although pleasure is not the conscious aim, 
 
256 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 it is the actual goal which, unbeknown to consciousness, 
 acting like a concealed weight, really sets the machine in 
 motion. The things which appear in consciousness as the 
 ultimate ends — food, honor, riches — are therefore mere pre- 
 texts deluding the intellect, while the will in reality always 
 pursues one thing alone, and that is pleasure. A lover leaves 
 his home to attend to some business. Much to his own 
 surprise he comes to a place where there is a chance of 
 meeting his sweetheart. And now he sees that his business 
 was a mere pretence on the part of his desires to anticipate 
 the objections of his reason. Does the same hold true of 
 the case in hand ? Is pleasure the mistress of the will, so 
 to speak, whom the will incessantly strives to meet, deluding 
 the understanding with all kinds of pretexts. 1 
 
 I know of no other way of proving this assertion than by 
 showing that the will invariably realizes not the pretended 
 but the real end, as happened in our example, in which the 
 lover's hidden yearning was revealed by the actual attain- 
 ment of the goal secretly desired by him. Can that be done? 
 I do not believe it. Nay, it would be easier to claim the 
 reverse : it is not the alleged secret end that is realized, but 
 the ostensible one. The miser may acquire wealth, but the 
 pleasure and satisfaction which he promised himself fail to 
 appear. The ambitious man succeeds in obtaining rank and 
 honor, decorations and titles, but the sum-total of pleasure 
 procured is meagre, his desires always exceed the satisfaction. 
 The reproductive impulse may lead to the propagation of 
 the species, but its satisfaction brings disappointment and 
 trouble to the individual. 
 
 But, some one may say, perhaps all that is so ; neverthe- 
 less the fact remains that whatever we do or strive for, we 
 do or strive for because it yields or promises satisfaction. If 
 it were not so, should we do it ? If there were no satisfac- 
 tion and its opposite, all striving would cease, everything 
 
 1 [See Sidgwick, Methods, pp. 53 f. — Tr.] 
 
THE HIGHEST GOOD 257 
 
 would be indifferent to us. — But what else does this mean 
 than that feelings of pleasure ultimately determine all dis- 
 tinctions of value ? 
 
 Indeed, of that there can be no doubt ; if there were no feel- 
 ings of satisfaction and their opposites, there would be no 
 distinctions of value. Good and bad would be meaningless 
 words, or rather we should never use them. The proposition : 
 That is good which satisfies a will, is so true that we may 
 call it an identical one. But the proposition : Pleasure or sat- 
 isfaction is the end for the sake of which all things are 
 desired, does not seem to me adequately to express it. It is 
 not satisfaction or pleasure that is desired, but pleasure is a 
 sign that the will has realized what it wills. It is pure 
 tautology to answer the question, What is the final goal of 
 the will ? by saying that satisfaction is the goal, — as much so 
 as to answer the question, How is the will ultimately 
 satisfied ? by saying : By satisfaction. Of course, that is true ; 
 but the information will hardly satisfy the questioner. What 
 he wants to know is : What is the objective content that satis- 
 fies the will ? Aristotle long ago discovered the true relation 
 obtaining between pleasure and the will : Pleasure is not the 
 goal, but a uniform accompaniment of the will, a sign, as it 
 were, that the end has been realized. In pleasure the will 
 becomes conscious of itself and its realization ; but to call this 
 consciousness the good itself is as tautologous as to say : Not 
 the thing, but the value which it has is valuable, not the activity 
 or the sport, but the satisfaction which it yields, is satisfactory. 
 
 The hedonistic theory appears in another phase, that is, in 
 a negative form. What uniformly prompts living beings to 
 action is not the idea of pleasure, but the pain or discomfort 
 experienced by them. Freedom from pain is, therefore, the 
 final and universal aim of all striving. 1 
 
 1 [This is the view of Hegesias, the Cyrenaic, and of Schopenhauer. See the 
 chapter on Pessimism, pp. 291 ff. of this work; also Rolph, Biologiache Prob- 
 lem*.— Tn.] 
 
 17 
 
258 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 But this form of the theory likewise seems to me unable to 
 explain the facts. Pain and discomfort doubtless frequently 
 appear in consciousness as spurs to action. The burning 
 wound impels the sufferer to seek relief ; tedium {Langeweile) 
 consumes the idler and compels him to seek diversion or 
 troubles. But is this universally the case ? Is it always an 
 actual or anticipated feeling of discomfort that urges us to 
 action ? Was it a feeling of discomfort that compelled Goethe 
 to make poetry, and Diirer to paint ? Is it pain that forces 
 the child to play ? I do not believe we can say so. No, the 
 impulse is at first painless ; the pain ensues only in case the 
 impulse is not satisfied ; very often there is no sign of pain 
 even at the moment when the impulse begins to act itself out. 
 The peasant does not wait until hunger impels him to cultivate 
 his fields ; he sees the sun rise, he breathes the air of spring, 
 and can hardly wait for the time to go to work. Is this a 
 feeling of pain ? It may become so when obstacles are placed 
 between the desire and its satisfaction, but it is not pain. On 
 the contrary, the hopeful impulse is a joyful feeling ; to look 
 forward to something with pleasure is not to experience 
 pain. 
 
 Hence, I do not believe that a feeling, be it a conscious 
 pain or an anticipated pleasure, is the invariable cause of 
 striving and action. Nay, the reverse is the case : Impulse 
 or will is primary ; feeling, on the other hand, secondary. 
 Pleasure accompanies the realization of the objective end ; 
 pain, its obstruction or failure. This is what biology teaches, 
 as I shall show presently. 
 
 2. The hedonistic theory also presents its thesis in a slightly 
 modified form : It is not pleasure in the abstract that is uni- 
 versally desired, but a pleasurable activity or a pleasure- 
 giving good. Every creature at every moment decides to 
 strive for and to do that of which it happens to have the most 
 pleasurable idea at the time. This notion undoubtedly comes 
 much nearer to the truth than the other. And yet I cannot 
 
THE HIGHEST GOOD 259 
 
 accept the statement as a satisfactory explanation of the 
 facts, because it lays too much stress on presentation. I 
 believe, Schopenhauer is right in saying that the will does not 
 originally presuppose presentation. Certainly not in animal 
 life, where action is originally governed by blind striving. 
 Nor does ideation play such a very prominent part in human 
 life. It neither creates the original goal of the will, nor does 
 it always guide the will in action. Habit is the greatest guide 
 of action. Perhaps it would be safer to say : Man invariably 
 does that which agrees with his purposes and wishes and at 
 the same time meets with the least resistance from the con- 
 stitution of his inner life and his external circumstances. 
 This naturally yields him satisfaction, but whether it gives 
 him the greatest amount of satisfaction possible for him at 
 that moment cannot, of course, be proved. He may decide in 
 favor of a life of ease ; and it is at least doubtful whether that 
 would give him the maximum of pleasure. 
 
 Moreover, I should say, the formula is apt to obliterate the 
 distinction between wishing and willing. We may will what 
 does not appear in presentation as pleasant or pleasurable, 
 and may, conversely, reject that which, for the moment, has 
 the greatest attraction for our desires. I will not deny that 
 such cases may also be explained from the hedonistic stand- 
 point. Nevertheless, the difference between sensuous fear and 
 the respect for duty, between animal desire and moral voli- 
 tion, between the pathological feeling of pleasure and the 
 feeling of satisfaction with a noble deed, is so great that we 
 can easily understand why many moralists regard it as a 
 generic difference, which will not allow us to embrace these 
 feelings under a common head. This is the view of Kant 
 and Herbart, with which Steinthal agrees when he distin- 
 guishes between formal and pathological pleasure. 
 
 Finally, it must also be added that pain and painful activity 
 are indispensable to human life. Hence, the notion of pleas- 
 are or satisfaction would, in a measure, have to be extended 
 
260 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 so as to include the painful. We cannot, in my opinion, 
 doubt it. If a god were to offer to eliminate from our lives 
 all pain and everything that causes pain, we should most 
 likely at first be strongly tempted to accept the offer. When 
 we are overburdened with work and care, when pain lays hold 
 upon us and we are transfixed with fear, we feel as though 
 nothing could be better than a life of rest and security and 
 peace. But I believe a trial would soon cause us to regret 
 our choice, and make us long for our old life with all its 
 troubles and sorrows and pains and fears. A life absolutely 
 free from pain and fear would, so long as we are what we 
 are, soon become insipid and intolerable. For if the causes 
 of pain were eliminated, life would be devoid of all danger, 
 conflict, and failure, — exertion and struggle, the love of 
 adventure, the longing for battle, the triumph of victory, all 
 would be gone. Life would be pure satisfaction without ob- 
 stacles, success without resistance. We should grow as tired 
 of all this as we do of a game which we know we are going to 
 win. What chess player would be willing to play with an 
 opponent whom he knows he will beat ? What hunter would 
 enjoy a chase in which he had a chance to shoot at every step 
 he took, and every shot was bound to hit ? Uncertainty, diffi- 
 culty, and failure are as necessary in a game, if it is to 
 interest and satisfy us, as good luck and victory. 
 
 Well, the same holds true of life. The lion in the desert, 
 suffering from hunger and thirst, frost and heat, may perhaps 
 think : How happy I should be if only I could dwell in a safe 
 cave with game enough about me to satisfy my daily needs. 
 Before he knows it, he is lodged in a. most comfortable house 
 in a beautiful garden, where he receives the best possible treat- 
 ment. Even his lioness has not been forgotten. At first he 
 likes the arrangement. But soon he finds his beautiful cage, 
 which is constructed according to all the rules of lion-hygiene, 
 somewhat narrow and tiresome. His keeper observes his 
 dissatisfied mien, so a large park is placed at his disposal 
 
THE HIGHEST GOOD 261 
 
 with the finest game for him to prey upon. But he soon 
 wearies of the ease and certainty of the chase. He has every- 
 thing, but he does not feel at ease. What is lacking ? Well, 
 he is without the very things which he desired to get away 
 from ; what he wants is to prowl around and to be hungry, 
 the excitement of the real chase and the fight ; he misses the 
 desert. — Who knows but what the sons of the desert who 
 fell in the battles of Mohammed yearned for the desert and 
 the strife, after enjoying the pleasures of Paradise for three 
 days ? 
 
 Poetry is a mirror of human life and of the will which 
 manifests itself in it. What productions do we like best? 
 Those which portray a life of ease and peace, comfort and 
 universal benevolence ? Wieland's Aristippus is one of the 
 few books of this kind. Aristippus and Lais, Cleonidas and 
 Musarion, and whatever the names of the characters in the 
 novel may be, have everything that the heart can desire. 
 They are rich, they live in beautiful mansions and villas, 
 equipped with everything that nature and art can supply. 
 They are beautiful and strong, they are intelligent and witty, 
 possessing such powers of observation and expression as never 
 to be at a loss for the best sort of amusement. They have 
 the happiest temperaments in the world, being equally willing 
 to entertain others and to be entertained themselves ; they 
 love each other tenderly but without passion, and therefore 
 look upon what would excite pangs of jealousy in others with 
 the equanimity of the sage, who is no more affected by the 
 alteration of love than by an interesting event in nature. 
 Finally, both Lais as well as Aristippus have constructed a 
 system of philosophy adapted to their lives : " It is my natural 
 mission," thus Lais philosophizes in a letter to her friends, 1 
 a to make men happy without being married to them. It 
 would be foolish modesty on my part were I to deny that I 
 understand the art of making happy whomever I please, and 
 
 1 Vol. III., fragment 26. 
 
262 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 that nature was not niggardly in bestowing upon me the gifts 
 necessary to accomplish this. I am also willing to confess 
 that the consciousness of having made a worthy man happy 
 may, for a short time, arouse in me the pleasant illusion that 
 I am happy too. But that both the pleasure which I give 
 and the pleasure which I receive in return is indeed a mere 
 illusion, — of that the few persons with whom I have experi- 
 mented are as convinced as I am. This must seem unnatural 
 to you honest housewives, but it is nevertheless a fact, and I 
 would not have it otherwise. Nature, who, like a good 
 mother, takes care that none of her children shall be treated 
 too niggardly, has arranged things so that no one would vol- 
 untarily exchange his ego for another's. So it is with me ; 
 being what I am, I gracefully yield to Cleonis and thank her 
 for having taken from me the burden of making my friend 
 Aristippus the happiest of men." Accompanying the letter is 
 a casket of pearls : " You will be somewhat frightened, but I 
 am so rich in such trifles that you need not worry about their 
 value. The pearls are absolutely alike in purity, size, and 
 form. You will therefore simply have to count them and 
 divide them among yourselves in a sisterly fashion. You can 
 cast lots for the casket." 1 
 
 Why is Aristippus such a tiresome book ? Because it is 
 
 1 Some biographies remind us of Wieland's Aristippus; for instance, J. C. 
 Bluntschli's autobiography {Denkwurdigkeiten aus meinem Leben, 3 vols., 1882). 
 Bluntschli was a talented and amiable man, a healthy optimistic politician and 
 philosopher. He took part in everything : he was grand master of the Masons, 
 founder of the Protestant Society, member of the congress for the codification of 
 international laws, he was First Speaker and honorable President in all the 
 meetings of both societies, President of the Rhenish Credit Bank, a member of 
 the Upper House in Baden, a famous Professor at the Heidelberg University, 
 a celebrated writer on jurisprudence and politics, a member of seven academies, 
 an honorary doctor of five universities (Vienna, Moscow, Oxford, Lahore, and 
 member of the University of St. Petersburg), knight of eight or more orders, 
 he was honored and congratulated on numerous anniversaries, his works were 
 translated into eight languages, he was successful in everything, he met with 
 only one little disappointment : in spite of repeated attempts, he never succeeded 
 in becoming Prime Minister; but he bore this disappointment gracefully. — A 
 happy life in truth, and an enviable one. And yet — 
 
THE HIGHEST GOOD 263 
 
 untrue ? Perhaps. But why, aside from the trivial senti- 
 mentalities of Lais, are we not gratified at the illusion of such 
 perfect happiness ? I think it is because we ourselves should 
 find such a life unbearable. It would fail to exercise and 
 satisfy the most powerful impulses of our nature. Who would 
 care to live without opposition and struggle ? Would men 
 prize truth itself as they do, if it were attained without effort 
 and kept alive without battle ? To battle and to make sacri- 
 fices for one's chosen cause constitutes a necessary element of 
 human life. Carlyle states this truth in a beautiful passage 
 in his book on Heroes and Hero- Worship : " It is a calumny to 
 say that men are roused to heroic actions by ease, hope of 
 pleasure, recompense, — sugar-plums of any kind in this 
 world or the next. In the meanest mortal there lies some- 
 thing nobler. The poor swearing soldier hired to be shot has 
 his ' honor of a soldier,' different from drill, regulations, and 
 the shilling a day. It is not to taste sweet things, but to do 
 noble and true deeds, and vindicate himself under God's 
 heaven as a God-made man, that the poorest son of Adam 
 dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest 
 day-drudge kindles into a hero. They wrong man greatly 
 who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, 
 martyrdom, death, are the allurements that act on the heart 
 of man." 
 
 To be sure, they are not the only influences, we must add ; 
 yet they influence all. And that is why Wieland's novel is 
 tiresome, why epics and dramas which deal with passions and 
 conflicts, with victory and death, irresistibly attract and move 
 the hearts of men. Here they find their life's ideal portrayed 
 and not in the idyllic and the bucolic. Aristotle discusses the 
 question why the contemplation of the painful and horrible in 
 the tragedy pleases us. He thinks it is because it arouses 
 feelings of fear and compassion. These emotions, too, must 
 be exercised, and, by affording an opportunity for this, the 
 tragedy gives us relief. To tell the whole truth, Aristotle 
 
264 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 should have added that the tragedy also excites other power, 
 ful emotions — anger and indignation, love of power and 
 revenge, remorse and despair, love and sacrifice, magnanimity 
 and mercy, triumph and courage ; in short, all the deep feel- 
 ings and impulses which slumber in the heart of every human 
 being. Nature, which yearns for the realization of these feel- 
 ings and impulses in actual life, finds relief when they are 
 sympathetically aroused by the poem. 
 
 Then shall we say that even fear and pity may, at times 
 at least and under certain circumstances, be pleasurable feel- 
 ings ? And is the sorrow which we feel at the death of a 
 beloved one, and which the heart would not exchange for all 
 the treasures of the world, not a feeling of pain, but a feeling 
 of pleasure ? I believe that would be a rather curious 
 notion. No, if we may accept the evidence of self -conscious- 
 ness, a maximum of pleasurable feelings or a minimum of 
 painful feelings is not the goal which attracts the will of man ; 
 what he strives after is to live his life in accordance with his 
 ideal. Pleasure and pain are not revealed by introspection as 
 the positive or negative ends of life, but as states of conscious- 
 ness which accompany actions and in which the will becomes 
 aware of itself and its bent. 
 
 3. The testimony of self-consciousness concerning the 
 significance of pleasure and pain is confirmed by biology. The 
 naturalist has little trouble in explaining the part which 
 pleasure and pain play in the economy of life. 
 
 As for pain, we may say that it originally accompanies the 
 destruction of vital processes, which may be caused by violent 
 injuries or by the disturbance of the inner equilibrium. Its 
 significance is obvious : it tends to preserve life by impelling 
 the animal to seek safety in flight or defence. Let us suppose 
 that two living beings resemble each other in every respect, 
 except that one is sensitive to pain, the other not. The 
 former would evidently stand a much better chance of being 
 preserved, provided, of course, the conditions of life were 
 
THE HIGHEST GOOD 265 
 
 equal. The latter animal would be surprised by danger and 
 perish, while the former would be warned by pain and strive 
 to escape from the disturbing cause. Insensitiveness to pain 
 would have the same effect as the absence of a sense-organ. 
 — Pleasure seems to be the original concomitant of two 
 animal functions, nutrition and reproduction. In more highly 
 developed animals, the pleasurable feeling extends to allied 
 functions. Thus the movements which precede the taking of 
 food, the chase, using the term in its broadest sense, includ- 
 ing the scent, the pursuit, the seizure, the laceration of the 
 prey, are also accompanied by feelings of pleasure. The 
 pleasure which accompanies the function of reproduction also 
 extends to the care of offspring. The significance of both 
 these functions in the animal economy is very plain. They 
 are the immediate conditions of preservation ; in the former 
 case, of the preservation of the individual, in the latter case, 
 of that of the species. Organic life consists in a continuous 
 process of disintegration and reparation. Waste material is 
 constantly given off, and new elements are taken up and 
 assimilated. In case the latter process does not take place, 
 death soon ensues. The social life of the species reveals a 
 similar behavior: the waste material is constantly passing 
 out, — that is, individuals die ; but the equilibrium is main- 
 tained by the reproduction of offspring ; otherwise the species 
 would soon disappear. 
 
 What, then, is the significance of pleasure ? The biologist 
 will not hesitate for an answer. Just as pain serves as a 
 warning, pleasure serves as a bait. In pain the will becomes 
 aware of danger, in pleasure it becomes aware of the further- 
 ance of life. The former warns it to seek safety in flight, the 
 latter, to continue on its path. Pain and pleasure are, we 
 might say, the most primitive forms of the knowledge of good 
 and evil. 
 
 The will or impulse as such does not presuppose the pres- 
 ence of feelings or of intelligence. The newly-hatched chick 
 
266 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 immediately begins to pick up grains of wheat. It surely 
 does not bring along with it into its new stage of existence a 
 feeling of painful hunger, or an idea of the pleasure produced 
 by the introduction of food. Impulses govern action just as 
 other natural forces govern the falling of a stone, or the 
 formation of a crystal, or the growth of a plant. The same 
 may be said of the sexual impulse. The individual who 
 has just arrived at the age of puberty is driven by a blind 
 impulse to exercise the functions which result in the preser- 
 vation of the species, without knowing beforehand the feelings 
 that will arise. Perhaps, scarcely any feeling accompanies 
 the function in the lower stages of animal life. But as life 
 develops, the sensibility increases ; in the higher animals and 
 in man every activity is accompanied by a specific feeling. 
 This feeling has either a painful or a pleasurable tone, accord- 
 ing as action is retarded or furthered, according as it impedes 
 or promotes life. The division of the feelings into painful and 
 pleasurable is as unsatisfactory to the biologist as the classifi- 
 cation of plants as herbs and weeds. Pleasures and pains 
 are merely characteristic tones of feeling, which correspond to 
 the different functions, or in which the functions first become 
 conscious of themselves. 
 
 In a higher stage of mental evolution intelligence rises from 
 feeling and above it. Its original purpose is merely to accom- 
 plish more perfectly what feeling accomplishes, that is, to in- 
 struct the will concerning what is wholesome or unwholesome. 
 Sensations may be characterized as anticipations of feelings. 
 The sense of touch anticipates the pain occasioned by bodily 
 injuries. Taste is a kind of predigestion ; it decides, before 
 the object is taken into the body, whether it is wholesome or 
 not. Taste is the specific feeling which accompanies the 
 function of nutrition, and depends upon the peculiar nature 
 of the food, or to be exact, upon the process of assimilation 
 which begins on the tongue. It is always either pleasant or 
 unpleasant, and consequently either excites or inhibits the 
 
THE HIGHEST GOOD 267 
 
 will. Smell is a kind of preliminary taste, a taste acting at 
 a distance. From the minutest particle emitted by an 
 object, it tells whether the object can be assimilated or not, 
 as well as whether it is friendly or hostile. The eye and the 
 ear do not have to come in contact with matter ; they recog- 
 nize the nature of the distant object from its slightest move- 
 ments. Originally they, too, are a means to the knowledge 
 of what is wholesome and unwholesome ; hence, their sen- 
 sations still have feeling- attachments, pleasure and pain. 
 These, however, are not very prominent ; the sensations of 
 the objective senses, as the eye and ear have aptly been 
 called, can hardly be regarded as direct motives of the will ; 
 they guide the will by furnishing it with more remote signs 
 of what is beneficial or dangerous. The understanding, 
 finally, or the faculty of deducing the unknown from the data 
 of perception, is almost entirely without feeling. Its primary 
 purpose, however, is to assist the will in obtaining what is 
 beneficial and avoiding what is harmful. 
 
 The biologist, therefore, will not regard pleasure as the ab- 
 solute end of life, but will consider both pleasure and pain as 
 means of guiding the will. In the feeling of pleasure the will 
 becomes conscious of the furtherance of life by the exercise 
 of a function. Hence, pleasure is not a good in itself, but a 
 sign that a good has been realized. Indeed, it is hard to un- 
 derstand why the question, What is the significance of pain ? 
 did not prevent the hedonistic conception of the significance of 
 pleasure. Both of these feelings evidently belong to the same 
 category. Now, if pleasure is an absolute end, what is pain '! 
 Something with absolutely no purpose ? Manifestly not. 
 Pain is evidently a very purposive means of warning the an- 
 imal against the harmful. Pleasure will, therefore, have to 
 be explained similarly. 
 
 Finally, the biologist might also point out how decidedly 
 opposed nature is to being interpreted in the hedonistic sense. 
 When the impulse is satisfied, the pleasure ceases. After the 
 
268 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 food needed for preservation has been eaten, the feelings o A 
 pleasure cease, and opposite feelings soon arise. Pleasure 
 can be aroused to a certain degree, only by stimulating the 
 organs which are secondarily connected with nutrition. The 
 same may be observed in the impulse which tends to the 
 preservation of the species. But whenever the organs of 
 preservation are used as instruments of pleasure, nature pun- 
 ishes the abuse with disturbances and disease, and in case her 
 hints are not followed, with the destruction of the organs and 
 ultimately of the individual who obstinately persists in mis- 
 understanding their purpose. 
 
 4. Pleasure, then, is not the absolute goal of the will. 
 Nor does the evaluating judgment of the impartial spectator 
 seem to me to make pleasure in itself, regardless of its cause, 
 the thing of absolute worth. Let us suppose that we could 
 distil a drug like opium, capable of arousing joyful dreams, 
 without, however, producing harmful effects in the intoxicated 
 one or his surroundings. Should we recommend the use of 
 the drug, and praise the discoverer as having made life more 
 valuable ? Perhaps not even a hedonistic moral philosopher 
 would do that. Why not ? Because the pleasure is illusory ? 
 But pleasure is pleasure, whatever be its cause. Or, because 
 the philosopher has found out by computation that the pleas- 
 ures of our sober waking life are still greater ? It would not 
 be easy to prove it in the example assumed. The simple rea- 
 son is that such pleasures would be " unnatural," and a life 
 composed of them would no longer be a "human" life. How- 
 ever rich in pleasure it might be, it would be an absolutely 
 worthless life for a human will and human standards. 
 
 Perhaps the philosopher will reply : Yes, but that is simply 
 because a person addicted to such pleasures would neglect his 
 duties to others, and consequently decrease the maximum of 
 pleasure, even though he might greatly increase his own 
 pleasure. Well, then, let us change the example a little ; let 
 us suppose that the drug will, without expense and trouble s 
 
THE HIGHEST GOOD 2G9 
 
 arouse in an entire people a permanent state of pleasurable 
 dreams. Should we celebrate the discoverer as a benefactor 
 of the human race ? Perhaps it might be shown to our sat- 
 isfaction that a nation's best means of realizing permanent 
 happiness would be to submit absolutely to an absolutely be- 
 nevolent government. Let us suppose that a man, the Pla- 
 tonic philosopher for example, had discovered the secret of 
 making a nation absolutely obedient. Should we be willing 
 to place our people in his power ? The Jesuits are said to 
 have thought and acted for their native subjects in Paraguay 
 in every regard, and to have guided them, daily and hourly, 
 and according to all the rules of hygiene, in their labors and in 
 their enjoyments, in their waking and sleeping. Let us sup- 
 pose that they succeeded, as we are told that they did, in 
 absolutely satisfying the governed. Will the hedonistic 
 philosopher grant that such a regime is the most perfect and 
 desirable solution of social and political problems, and that 
 the life of these well-behaved and contented Indians repre- 
 sents the highest goal of human striving ? If so, he will most 
 likely also regard German statesmanship as having performed 
 its mission when the entire German people shall have been 
 transformed into a lot of well-behaved and obedient Philis- 
 tines, who drink their mug of beer every morning and play 
 their little game of Skat, and in the evening play their little 
 game of Skat and again drink their beer, in the meantime reg- 
 ularly attending to their duties in the bureau or the work- 
 shop, and sleeping soundly at night. And, finally, he will 
 also be compelled to recognize the sorceress Circe, who 
 changed the visitors of her island into swine, into well-fed and 
 thoroughly contented swine, as a benefactress of humanity, 
 and deem it as the greatest blessing for any one to have been 
 cast on her shores. Unless he is willing to acknowledge 
 this, he must, it seems to me, confess that pleasure or satis- 
 faction is not the thing of absolute worth. It is valuable only 
 m so far as it follows as the result of virtuous activity ; we 
 
270 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 regard it as base, when it is obtained by stimulating the lower, 
 sensuous side of our nature and by suppressing our higher 
 spiritual capacities. 
 
 5. Now that we have rejected the hedonistic theory, let us 
 attempt to give a positive definition of the highest good. We 
 may say in a most general way that the goal at which the will 
 of every living creature aims, is the normal exercise of the vital 
 functions which constitute its nature. Every animal desires to 
 live the life for which it is predisposed. Its natural disposi- 
 tion manifests itself in impulses, and determines its activity. 
 The formula may also be applied to man. He desires to 
 live a human life and all that is implied in it ; that is, a 
 mental, historical life, in which there is room for the exercise 
 of all human, mental powers and virtues. He desires to play 
 and to learn, to work and to acquire wealth, to possess and to 
 enjoy, to form and to create ; he desires to love and to ad- 
 mire, to obey and to rule, to fight and to win, to make poetry 
 and to dream, to think and to investigate. And he desires to 
 do all these things in their natural order of development, as 
 life provides them. He desires to experience the relations of 
 the child to its parents, of the pupil to his teacher, of the ap- 
 prentice to the master; and his will, for the time being, finds 
 the highest satisfaction in such a life. He desires to live as a 
 brother among brothers, as a friend among friends, as a com- 
 panion among companions, as a citizen among citizens, and 
 also to prove himself an enemy against enemies. Finally, 
 he desires to experience what the lover, husband, and father 
 experience — he desires to rear and educate children who shall 
 preserve and transmit the contents of his own life. And 
 after he has lived such a life and has acquitted himself like an 
 honest man, he has realized his desires ; his life is complete , 
 contentedly he awaits the end, and his last wish is to be 
 gathered peacefully to his fathers. — This outline, however, 
 receives its concrete content from the historical life of the 
 people. Hence we may also say: Man's will seeks to ex- 
 
THE HIGHEST GOOD 271 
 
 press the life of his people in an individual form, and thus at 
 the same time, to preserve and enrich the life of the people. 
 In this way, it seems to me, the impartial anthropologist 
 and biologist would look at the matter. The will of a living 
 being is nothing but a system of impulses, the exercise of 
 which constitutes the life of the species. Every individual 
 shares the desire of the species to preserve and promote its 
 life, or rather, the species merely exists in the individuals, 
 which live and act as its members. The same holds true of 
 man. In his case, however, an ideal self-preservative impulse 
 grows out of the primitive animal impulse of self-preservation. 
 The will-to-live, which in sub-human creatures appears as 
 blind impulse or striving, becomes conscious of itself in man. 
 Man has a conscious idea of the life aimed at by his will ; the 
 type which his life desires to express and to realize hovers 
 before him as an ideal. This he strives after, this is the 
 standard by which he measures himself and his activity. The 
 ideal of perfection assumes a different form in different 
 human beings. The ideal is different for the Greek, Roman, 
 and Hebrew ; different again at Athens and at Sparta ; it is 
 not the same for man as for woman, for the warrior as for 
 the scholar, for the sailor as for the peasant. Only in certain 
 fundamental features is it the same in all, just as the funda- 
 mental anatomical-physiological type of the human body is 
 common to all men. The higher the development of mental 
 life, the more differentiated and individualized the inner life 
 becomes ; just as the outward form, corresponding to the inner 
 development, becomes more and more individualized. The 
 ideal is also conceived with different degrees of clearness by 
 different individuals. Individuals also differ in the power and 
 certainty with which they guard their ideals against the action 
 of particular momentary impulses, and govern their lives 
 according to their ideals. But in some form or other such an 
 ideal is present and active in every man ; the will has before it 
 some picture or other of what his innermost nature desires, 
 
272 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 a picture which reveals itself in his mode of life and in his 
 judgment of himself. 
 
 Vor jedem steht em Bild des, das er werden soil ; 
 So lang er das nicht ist, ist nicht sein Friede roll. 1 
 
 Not only the individual, but the nation too has an ideal of 
 what it desires to be. The ideal expresses itself in its religion 
 and poetry. The gods and heroes represent the types of per- 
 fection. At a later stage of development historical recollec- 
 tions are added, and paint a comprehensive picture of the 
 nation's past, a picture which forms a poetical ideal in the 
 popular consciousness. But the historical collective life of an 
 entire period of civilization and of the aggregate of nations is 
 also governed by ideas. Types of character and life spring 
 up, gain possession of all hearts, move the thoughts of men, 
 and, at last, control affairs. Think of the Humanistic move- 
 ment in the fifteenth century and its new ideal; of the 
 Reformation and its new type of Christian faith and life ; or 
 of the age of Louis XIY. and its ideal of power and dignity, 
 of the French Revolution and its new ideal of a natural and 
 rational mode of life. New ideas of human culture realized 
 themselves in these great historical epochs, and seizing the 
 individual wills, forced them into harmony with it. 
 
 Here we plainly see that the will unconditionally strives to 
 realize the idea or the type. A people desires freedom, or 
 power or honor, or whatever catch-word may designate the 
 cherished ideal, and desires it absolutely, not for the sake of 
 something else, say pleasure or happiness. True, all action 
 tending towards the realization of the ideal yields satisfaction. 
 But no one cares whether this represents the greatest amount 
 of pleasure obtainable by the whole. A nation does not 
 reckon the cost of its ideal, it does not compute how much 
 happiness may be won or lost in a war for its freedom or its 
 honor, or even for its position among other nations. In order 
 to realize its controlling ideal, it recklessly sacrifices the 
 
 1 Riickert. 
 
THE HIGHEST GOOD 273 
 
 interests and lives of individuals. And the individuals them- 
 selves desire it ; even though they dread the sacrifice as indi- 
 viduals, as members of the nation they desire that their 
 country remain true to itself and its ideal. 
 
 The historical judgment, like the historical will, is deter- 
 mined by this goal. A nation does not judge its own past by 
 the standard of pleasure ; it judges historical persons and 
 events by the ideal which it happens to have at the time, and 
 determines their worth accordingly. Thus our judgment of 
 Frederick the Great and his wars is not based on a computa- 
 tion of the pleasures and pains which they caused, but upon 
 the honor and dignity which the German people achieved 
 through them. We ask ourselves, has the nation made any 
 advance towards its objective goal ? Our age answers the 
 question in the affirmative ; the prevailing notion of the objec- 
 tive end is the German Empire on a Prussian basis. The 
 scientific historian follows the same plan. It never enters 
 his head to balance pleasures and pains against each other. 
 Indeed, this notion is a mere fancy in the heads of a few 
 philosophers. But, so far as I know, not one of them has ever 
 tried to apply it in practice. 
 
 6. The view here advanced of the final goal of the human 
 will and the ultimate standard of our judgments of value is 
 not new. It was thought out and definitely formulated long 
 ago, by Greek moral philosophy. Indeed, we may say that 
 all great ethical systems, with the single exception of hedon- 
 ism, advocate it. Plato and Aristotle expressly state : The 
 highest good is life and action in harmony with the idea ; the 
 eudsemonia of a man consists in the possession and exercise 
 of all human virtues and capacities. The Stoa teaches the 
 same : Life according to nature is the end of every being ; for 
 man, therefore, a life conforming to human nature, that is, to 
 reason, is the absolute end ; in it he finds his welfare (evpota 
 yStou). Thomas Aquinas teaches the same : Every being seeks 
 it« perfection in accordance with its nature ; rational creatures 
 
274 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 seek it through the rational will, sensible creatures through 
 the sensuous impulse, insensible ones through the natural 
 impulse. The same conception reappears in Hobbes and 
 Spinoza. According to them, self-preservation is the goal ; 
 only, a living being preserves itself by living and acting, and 
 a thinking being, Spinoza insists, by thinking. Similarly, 
 Shaftesbury and Leibniz declare that the harmonious devel- 
 opment of capacities and powers is the law of man as well as 
 of the universe. Kant, too, might be called as a witness for 
 this theory : The real and innermost essence of man expresses 
 itself in a will, determined by the practical reason or the 
 consciousness of duty, and acts in accordance with its nature. 
 Likewise Hegel and Schleiermacher regard the great histori- 
 cal content of human life as a thing of objective value ; in so 
 far as the individual participates in it he gives a meaning and 
 value to his life and at the same time satisfies the deepest 
 longings of his nature. 
 
 Darwin, who in a certain sense continues the attempt of 
 Speculative Philosophy to reach an historical conception of 
 the entire universe, and tries to solve the problem by new 
 methods, reaches a similar conclusion from the biological 
 standpoint. In the fourth chapter of his work on The 
 Descent of Man, he examines the hedonistic theory and 
 flatly contradicts it. Pleasure-pain, he concludes, is neither 
 the motive nor the end of all action. I quote the passage in 
 question : " In the case of the lower animals it seems much 
 more appropriate to speak of their social instincts as having 
 developed for the general good than for the general happi- 
 ness of the species. The term, general good, may be defined 
 as the rearing of the greatest number of individuals in full 
 vigor and health, with all their faculties perfect, under the 
 conditions to which they are subjected. As the social in- 
 stincts both of man and the lower animals have no doubt 
 been developed by nearly the same steps, it would be advis- 
 able, if found Dracticable, to use the same definition in both 
 
THE HIGHEST GOOD 275 
 
 cases, and to take as the standard of morality, the general 
 good or welfare of the community rather than the general 
 happiness." 1 Finally, I should like to mention that John 
 Stuart Mill, unconsciously, so closely approximates the 
 thoughts developed above that there is no longer an essential 
 difference between the two views. By assuming qualitative 
 differences in pleasures besides quantitative differences he at 
 last reaches the following formula : " It is better to be 
 a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied." 2 It seems 
 to me that Mill thereby tacitly abandons the principle that 
 pleasure and satisfaction are the only absolutely valuable 
 things. It is no longer pleasure as such that is valu- 
 able, but the functions to which it is attached. When Mill 
 speaks of the different kinds of enjoyment, he really means 
 the different functions, the exercise of which is accompanied 
 by different feelings in different creatures. 
 
 Hence, the old Aristotelian definition of the final goal or 
 the highest good seems to me to be as satisfactory to-day as it 
 ever was : Eudoemonism or welfare consists in the exercise of 
 all virtues and capacities, especially of the highest. 2 
 
 7, But, some one may say, has not this entire discussion been 
 moving in a circle ? At first it was said that the value of virtue 
 consisted in its favorable effects upon the development of life. 
 And now it is held that the value of life consists in the nor- 
 mal performance of all functions, or in the exercise of capac- 
 ities and virtues. Is not the exercise of virtue thus made an 
 ultimate end again, after having first been conceived as a 
 means ? 
 
 I repeat what was said before : the statement is true. But 
 the same relation everywhere confronts us in the organic 
 
 1 [Part L, chap. IV., Concluding Remarks, p. 120. — Tr.] 
 
 2 [Utilitarianism, 11th ed., p. 14. — Tr.] 
 
 3 [See also Stephen, Science of Ethics, chaps. IV., IX., X. ; Jhering, vol. II., 
 pp. 95 ff. ; Wundt, Ethik, pp. 493 ff. ; Hoffding, Ethik, VI. ; Williams, Review of 
 Evolutional Ethics, Part II., chap. IX.; Ziegler, Sittliches Sein und sittlichn-s 
 Werden. — Tr.] 
 
276 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 sphere ; here everything is both a means and an end, or a 
 part of the end. Heart and brain, hands and eyes, muscles 
 and bones, are means of preserving bodily life; but they 
 are at the same time parts of the body. The body does 
 not exist apart from its organs or the means of its self- 
 preservation ; it is composed of these. The functioning of 
 each organ is a means of preserving life, and life at the 
 same time consists in the functioning of all the organs. 
 The same remarks apply to a work of art. The particular 
 scenes in a drama are essential to the whole, otherwise they 
 would be mere superfluous episodes, but they are at the same 
 time necessary parts of the whole, which is simply made up 
 of all its parts. So, too, in the moral sphere, every excel- 
 lence or virtue is an organ of the whole, and at the same 
 time forms a part of life ; it is therefore, like the whole, an 
 end in itself. The mental-moral life is an organism in which 
 every power and every function is both a means and an 
 end ; everything is valuable in itself, but everything receives 
 additional importance from its relation to the whole. Courage 
 has value for life as a means of solving certain problems ; it 
 cannot be conceived as an isolated element, any more than 
 the eye can exist for itself, but only as the organ of a living 
 body. Just as sight, however, is valuable in itself, so is the 
 exercise of courage in battle, from which no life can be free, 
 for, as the poet says : Ein Mensch sein, heisst ein Kampfer 
 sein. The same may be said of all virtues, that is, of all 
 positive virtues, for the negative virtues, if we may call them 
 so, the virtues of not-lying, not-stealing, and not-committing- 
 adultery, are valuable solely as means. To refrain from such 
 acts is not good in itself, but merely a means to the goods 
 which they subserve : truth and property and marriage. The 
 positive virtues, on the other hand, the love of truth, the 
 sense of justice, and the domestic virtues, are all both means 
 or instruments of the perfect life and parts of its content. 
 Tirtues or capacities which are exercised in the acquisition of 
 
THE HIGHEST GOOD 277 
 
 knowledge and in the service of the truth, in labor and in the 
 accumulation of wealth, in the regulation of social affairs, in 
 family life and in the rearing of children, are means to life 
 and at the same time constitute important parts of it. 
 
 The Stoics long ago observed this truth. They divided goods 
 into three classes — goods which have absolute worth, goods 
 which have value as means, and, finally, goods which have 
 value both as means and ends (rcov a<ya6wv ra jxev eivai reXi/cd, 
 
 TCt $6 TTOLVTiKCL, TCL $€ TTeXlKCL KCll TTOL^TLKa). 1 AH external 
 
 goods are efficient goods (ttocvtiko). All kinds of actions 
 done according to virtue and the accompanying feelings of sat- 
 isfaction are final goods. Virtues are both efficient and final ; 
 for inasmuch as they produce perfect happiness (ev&aifiovla), 
 they are efficient, and inasmuch as they complete it by being 
 themselves part of it, are final. 2 
 
 And now, we may go on and say : All virtues and excel- 
 lences are both means and ends in themselves, but not all of 
 them are so in the same degree. Not all the members or or- 
 gans of a living body are equally necessary, just as some 
 scenes in a drama more nearly express the leading thought 
 or idea of the play than others. Similarly, some functions in 
 moral life occupy a more central, others a more peripheral, 
 position ; some are secondary means, while others have their 
 purpose in themselves. 
 
 Aristotle recognized this truth. The central purpose of a 
 creature is the exercise of its specific nature or power. Now, 
 man's peculiar characteristic is the exercise of reason. Hence, 
 the function of scientific knowledge, that is, philosophy, con- 
 stitutes the central purpose of human life. The exercise of 
 the ethical virtues, all of which are based on practical reason, 
 comes next ; further down in the scale comes the exercise of 
 the economic and finally of the animal functions ; they are 
 
 1 [Of goods some are final, some are efficient, and some are both final and 
 efficient.] 
 
 2 [Diogenes Laertius, VII., 57. Engl, translation by C. D. Yonge, pp. 
 294 f. —Tb.] 
 
278 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 the necessary pre-conditions or natural foundations of real 
 human life. The naturalistic view is confirmed by the direct 
 testimony of feeling : man finds the greatest satisfaction or 
 evhaijjLovla in a life consisting of the exercise of the theoretical 
 and practical reason. 
 
 The evolutionistic theory, with its principle that the later 
 form is at the same time the higher one, suggests a similar 
 arrangement. In the lowest stages of animal life, action 
 consists solely in the search for food and the endeavor to es- 
 cape unfavorable external conditions. Gradually the repro- 
 ductive functions, with the care of offspring in rudimentary 
 form, and, on the other hand, intelligence, at first in the form 
 of sense-perception, are added. The foundations of social and 
 intellectual life are now laid. They reach their highest de- 
 velopment in man. Their evolution forms the chief content 
 of the only part of the history of progress of which we have 
 some direct knowledge, — namely, through historical recollec- 
 tion, — that is, the history of humanity. Now, what has taken 
 place in the historical life of humanity, what is its essential 
 content ? We have reached a more comprehensive and deeper 
 knowledge of reality, and we have developed a more compre- 
 hensive and more complicated social organization. Corre- 
 sponding to this growth of function we necessarily have a 
 perfection of powers: reason, the function by which the 
 knowledge of things is attained and the will is guided in the 
 kingdom of ends, and social virtues, the functions upon which 
 the family, the state, and society depend, constitute the 
 essence of man as a historical being. 
 
 That human life will therefore be the most valuable which 
 succeeds best in developing the highest powers of man and in 
 subordinating the lower functions to the higher. A life, on 
 the other hand, in which the vegetative and animal functions, 
 sensuous desires and blind passions, have control, must be re- 
 garded as a lower or abnormal form. A perfect human life 
 is a life in which the mind attains to free and full growth, and 
 
THE HIGHEST GOOD 279 
 
 in which the spiritual forces reach their highest perfection in 
 thought, imagination, and action. This is, of course, possible 
 only in human-historical surroundings. Hence, we must in- 
 clude among the essential faculties of life the social virtues, 
 whose purpose it is to create peaceful and mutually beneficial 
 relations between the agent and his immediate and remote 
 human environment. Wisdom and kindness, so says common- 
 sense, are the two sides of perfection. Yet we must guard 
 against a false spiritualization. The sensuous and even the 
 animal side have their rights. The pleasures of perception 
 and play which throw such a glamour around childhood, also 
 belong to life ; nay, we shall not exclude the pleasures of 
 eating and drinking and kindred functions from the perfect 
 life ; only they must not presume to rule it. 
 
 We may now extend this conception of means and ends be- 
 yond the limits of individual life. A perfect human life is an 
 end in itself. But it is at the same time a part, and hence, a 
 means of a larger whole, a national life, a sphere of civiliza- 
 tion. In his Republic, Plato conceives the state as a human 
 being on a larger scale, and discovers in it the same general 
 functions and powers. The individual is related to the com- 
 munity as means to end, as a means, however, which is, at 
 the same time, a part of the end, for the whole merely exists 
 in the totality of individuals. We now obtain a new standard 
 of value for the individual : the greater and higher the services 
 which he renders to the whole, the more he contributes to the 
 mental-historical life of his people by providing it with good 
 institutions, by honoring it with noble deeds, by enriching it 
 with true and good thoughts, by adorning it with beautiful and 
 elevating works and symbols, the greater is his value and the 
 more highly will he be appreciated by history. Moral worth 
 in the narrower sense does not depend upon this ; it is deter- 
 mined by the faithfulness and devotion with which the indi- 
 vidual fulfils his mission, be it great or small. Here the good 
 will is the standard of measurement, and this even the poor 
 
280 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 in spirit may fully possess. Here, again, we must guard 
 against a false spiritualization. We are not to understand 
 that the value of a nation is to be judged solely by what it 
 achieves in science and philosophy or in art and poetry. Our 
 times are perhaps inclined to overestimate these things. A 
 nation likewise needs its warriors and statesmen to defend it 
 and to advance its external interests, its merchants and sailors 
 to open up new countries and oceans to commerce and to create 
 fruitful relations with foreign nations, its inventors and arti- 
 sans to discover and practise their countless arts, its peasants 
 and laborers to till the fields and to feed the steeds, and its 
 mothers to rear its children in love and faith, and the children 
 themselves who play about the streets. All these belong to 
 the nation ; they are not merely the external basis without 
 which there could be no spiritual life, but form a part of its 
 life. Indeed, this perfect spiritual life is produced by them as 
 well as for them. The creative leaders and the receptive 
 masses exist for each other. 
 
 We may, finally, also regard the nations themselves as 
 members of a higher unity. Mankind, the concrete expres- 
 sion of the idea of humanity in the infinite variety of the 
 peculiar and beautiful forms of which the latter is capable, 
 is the ultimate goal in our empirical conception of the highest 
 good. Perfect humanity, or, in Christian phraseology, the 
 kingdom of God on earth, is the highest good and the final 
 end to which all nations and all historical products are 
 related as means, not as indifferent means, it is true, but as 
 organs or parts of the end. This will also furnish us with 
 the highest criterion for judging the nations and different 
 stages of civilization : their value is measured by the degree 
 in which they serve to realize and express the idea of humanity. 
 Although no nation and no stage of civilization is absolutely 
 worthless, they nevertheless differ in value and importance 
 according as the development of their social-political, mental- 
 moral, artistic and religious life approximates this idea. 
 
THE HIGHEST GOOD 281 
 
 It is not hard to see, of course, that we have now reached 
 a concept which we cannot realize. We cannot give a con- 
 crete exposition of the idea of humanity ; all we can do is to 
 outline it by means of the general concepts of a historical- 
 mental life. All anthropological and historical investigations 
 furnish us with materials, but we cannot construct the idea : 
 we cannot form an idea of the contents of the humanity-life 
 in which the contents of the lives of all races and peoples, 
 of the Greeks and Romans, Egyptians and Babylonians, 
 Chinese and Japanese, of the countless Negro and Indian 
 tribes, shall be included as teleologically necessary means of 
 realizing the idea. The divine poem, as the history of 
 humanity has been called, surpasses our comprehension ; 
 we observe isolated fragments and compare them, but we 
 cannot grasp the unity of the poem, the idea of the whole, 
 which will explain the necessity of the members or frag- 
 ments. The so-called philosophy of history has attempted 
 to gather the fragments into a whole, and to interpret them 
 from the standpoint of the whole. It has, however, not 
 succeeded in doing more than making a schematic arrange- 
 ment of them ; taking the narrow circle of civilization em- 
 bracing antiquity and the Middle Ages and the beginnings 
 of modern times, it has at most been able to point out a 
 historical connection here and there which may, to a certain 
 extent, be regarded as teleologically necessary. And there 
 is evidently little hope that this science will ever attain to 
 greater perfection in the future. Even the history of the 
 past is highly fragmentary ; literature, which Goethe once 
 called the fragment of fragments, is apparently the best 
 preserved portion of historical tradition. But even if we had 
 a clear and complete survey of the entire past history of the 
 human race, we should probably possess but a very insignifi- 
 cant fragment of the whole : the future would be lacking. 
 Perhaps the history of humanity is in its first beginnings ; 
 perhaps the historical life of particular nations and civiliza- 
 
282 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 tions is but a prelude to the real historical life of a united 
 humanity, for which the modern era is preparing, and which 
 in our age, with its enormously developed means of com- 
 munication, seems so close at hand. Perhaps the centralized 
 world-market and the universal postal system are the fore- 
 runners of the coming unification of the mental-historical 
 life of humanity. Under these circumstances, how can we 
 presume to understand the plan of universal history which 
 shall enable us to assign to each particular element of his- 
 torical life its place within the whole, as we understand the 
 particular parts and verses of a poem, which are essential 
 means of realizing the idea of the whole ? 
 
 It is still more difficult to give a concrete conception of 
 the ideal when we insert the life of humanity into another 
 greater and more comprehensive reality, and characterize it 
 as a part of a total life of the All-Real. Here we are dealing 
 entirely with schematic concepts which absolutely transcend 
 the imagination. The inconceivable and ineffable we can 
 express only symbolically ; in so far as we desire to char- 
 acterize the All-Real as the highest good we call it God. 
 And its manifestation in a world of mental-historical life, 
 which is embraced in the unity of its spiritual essence, we 
 call the kingdom of G-od. These concepts do not, like the 
 concepts of science, comprehend reality as it is given to us 
 in perception. Nay, they do not really belong to the domain 
 of knowledge ; they merely indicate the direction in which we, 
 as feeling and willing beings, are moving when we attempt to 
 complete our conception of reality. They express our belief 
 that all reality tends to some highest end. If the idea of a 
 divine plan in the history of humanity already transcends our 
 comprehension, how much more must this be the case with 
 the divine world-plan! All attempts to define it theoreti- 
 cally result either in the trite enumeration of a few empiri- 
 cal facts and the reversal of the causal order, as in the 
 teleology of the last century, or in the barren logical con- 
 
THE HIGHEST GOOD 283 
 
 struction of general concepts, as in Hegel's philosophy. 
 The understanding can never grasp the contents of the 
 highest good. The symbols of religion and art endeavor 
 to render it accessible to the feelings ; by means of the 
 finite and comprehensible, they suggest the infinite and 
 incomprehensible. 
 
 Im Innern ist ein Universum auch ; 
 Daher der Vblker loblicher Gebrauch, 
 Dass jeglicher das Beste, was er kennt, 
 Er Gott, ja seinen Gott benennt, 
 Ihm Himmel und Erden ubergiebt, 
 Ihn fiirchtet und womoglich liebt. 
 
 8. G. von Gizycki has entered a protest against the views 
 expressed in this chapter, in the name of the hedonistic 
 theory. 1 I confess that his remarks have not changed my 
 opinion ; nor do I dare to hope that my reply will induce any 
 one to give up his theory. There is something like habit 
 even in our thinking ; whoever has become accustomed to 
 look at things in a certain way will regard different concep- 
 tions as a mechanic regards a tool to which he is not used, 
 and will reject them as unsatisfactory. I am, of course, like 
 other people in this respect. It is impossible for me to think 
 that the thing of absolute worth is not the objective content 
 of life, but the feeling of satisfaction with which it is expe- 
 rienced, and that the former is merely an indifferent means 
 to the latter. The value seems to me to lie in the thing 
 itself and not in the recognition of the value by the feeling 
 of satisfaction. By the objective content of life I do not 
 at all mean the vegetative organic processes constituting 
 bodily life, as another somewhat too hasty critic has as- 
 sumed. I mean by it, above all, the mental life, which ap- 
 pears in human beings as rational thinking and rational 
 willing and acting, plus the feelings which are attached to all 
 
 1 In an elaborate review of this book in the Sunday supplement of th« Vosrische 
 Zeitung, February, 1889. 
 
284 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 conscious processes. I deny that this feeling element is the 
 thing of absolute worth; it belongs to the phenomena of 
 inner life, but not as their absolute end. 
 
 However, I do not desire to repeat what has already been 
 said ; I simply wish to say a word on one point. Gizycki con- 
 tends that my system of ethics has no criterion for measuring 
 the worth of acts and qualities, since it rejects the only pos- 
 sible one : the feeling of pleasure or happiness. Hence, he 
 declares, it has no right to speak as it does of higher and 
 lower powers and actions. 
 
 I believe, however, that it possesses such a standard : the 
 standard is what has been called the normal type, or the idea, 
 of human life. To be sure, this type cannot be defined as 
 accurately as a mathematical concept, and yet it exists and 
 has its function. Our judgment of the symmetry and beauty 
 of the bodily form is based upon the fact that we uncon- 
 sciously compare it with a normal type. Similarly, our judg- 
 ment of the mental-moral form rests upon comparison with 
 a normal type of the inner man. The same is true of the 
 conscience, which pronounces upon one's own life ; its judg- 
 ments are based upon the comparison of actual life with an 
 ideal. So far as I can see, we never measure the value of a 
 life, be it an individual or a social life, by employing a method 
 which might be designated as the method of computing the 
 balance of pleasure. The same fact may be observed in 
 practical affairs. In choosing his remedies, the physician 
 does not first consider the balance of pleasure, but inquires 
 into their effect upon the functions of life. What, he asks, 
 is the effect of bodily exercise, of baths, opiates, etc., upon 
 the functions of life and upon the organs ? Nor does the 
 educator ask whether such and such methods of discipline 
 or instruction will give the pupil the greatest possible amount 
 of pleasure, but whether they will develop his intellectual and 
 moral capacities. The politician does the same. A measure 
 is discussed in a legislative gathering; one party favora it; 
 
THE HIGHEST GOOD 285 
 
 the other opposes it ; neither party bases its conclusions upon 
 a computation of pleasures, but upon the supposed favorable 
 or unfavorable effects of the measure upon the development 
 of the people along the line of their ideal. 
 
 Is this a defect ? Is such comparison with a normal type a 
 crude and merely provisional method, and must philosophy 
 substitute for it the more perfect method of the balance of 
 pleasures ? 
 
 It appears to me that if this is so, then the problem of phi- 
 losophy is a rather hopeless one. Our means of finding such a 
 balance of pleasure are, in my opinion, exceedingly poor, and 
 I do not look for any great improvement along these lines in 
 the future. Bentham's scheme of measuring the quantum of 
 pleasure is still waiting for some one to apply it, and will, I 
 believe, have long to wait and in vain. 
 
 What ethics actually and universally does is this : it at- 
 tempts to analyze and describe the normal type of which we 
 have spoken. The doctrine of virtues, the fundamental part of 
 ethics, gives such an analysis, and the doctrine of duties differs 
 from it only in form ; it gives us a general description of 
 the function of the virtuous character. Just as dietetics 
 describes the normal functions of the body, and points out 
 their importance for life, so moral philosophy describes the 
 normal functions of man as a rational, volitional being, and 
 shows their value for individual and collective life, calling at- 
 tention, at the same time, to disturbances and deviations, and 
 indicating how they may be avoided and counteracted. It like- 
 wise distinguishes between the more and the less important 
 phases of life, between the controlling and the subordinate 
 functions. Dietetics is satisfied, without entering upon a 
 computation of pleasures, that the spinal column is a more 
 important part of the body than a finger or a tooth, that the 
 action of the heart has a greater significance for life than the 
 tear gland, that the proper care of the functions of nutrition 
 is more important than the cut of one's hair. Similarly, 
 
286 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 ethics, considering the conditions and relations of human his- 
 torical life, is convinced, without calculations of this kind, that 
 self-control and justice are more important than polite man- 
 ners, that the functions of the teacher and judge are worth 
 more to a people than those of an opera singer or acrobat. 
 
 In his Ethics Gizycki modifies the hedonistic theory as fol- 
 lows : The highest subjective goal of life, he says, is the sat- 
 isfaction produced by the consciousness of having done the 
 right, or the feeling of a good conscience. Doring agrees with 
 him when, in his Guterlehre, he defines the highest good as the 
 proper regard for self, or the satisfaction of the desire for indi- 
 vidual worth. — We see thus that the difference between the 
 various conceptions of morality may be practically insignificant 
 or may entirely vanish. The question is a purely theoretical 
 one. But for this very reason it seems proper to me to say : 
 Life itself and its healthful, virtuous, and beautiful activity is 
 the absolutely desirable and valuable thing, not the isolated 
 feeling-reflex accompanying it. Feelings, of course, exist 
 and belong to life, but not as the absolute good ; they are not 
 the final motives of the agent's will, nor the truly valuable ele- 
 ments in the judgment of the spectator. 
 
 The difference between Gizycki's conception and my own 
 has, as he himself assumes, its ultimate root in psychology. 
 He attributes my error to a false psychology, and corrects it 
 by referring me to Bain and others. Well, I confess, despite 
 all my respect for the English thinkers, I do not believe that 
 the analytical psychology has said or will say the last word on 
 this subject. A mere analysis of conscious processes — which, 
 moreover, fails to confirm the hedonistic view — does not 
 go to the root of the discussion. It must be supplemented by 
 biological reflections, and these do not show us that the will 
 is primarily determined by pleasures and pains, and is their 
 product, as it were, but favor the view advocated by Schopen- 
 hauer : that a particularly determined will, a specific will 
 (em Wesenwille~), to use Tonnies's term, is the fundamen- 
 tal fact of all psychical life. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 PESSIMISM i 
 
 1. Before taking up the second fundamental concept of 
 ethics, the concept of duty, I should like to consider a theory 
 which occupies an important place in the thoughts and delib- 
 erations of the present: pessimism. Pessimism opposes the 
 view advanced in the foregoing chapter, that life itself, or the 
 normal exercise of all vital functions, is the thing of absolute 
 worth, and asserts : Life has no value ; or, if it contains valu- 
 able elements, their sum is so far exceeded by the worthless 
 ones that the total value falls below zero, and hence, it is 
 better not to live than to live. 
 
 The Italian poet Leopardi pathetically expresses this mood 
 in the lines " To Myself." Let me quote them : 
 
 " Rest forever heart ; enough 
 Hast thou throbbed. Nothing is worth 
 Thy agitations, nor of sighs is worthy 
 The earth. Bitterness and vexation 
 Is life, and never aught besides, and mire the world. 
 Quiet thyself henceforth. Despair 
 For the last time. To our race fate 
 Has given but death. Henceforth despise 
 Thyself, nature, the foul 
 
 Power which, hidden, rules to the common bane, 
 And the infinite vanity of the whole." 2 
 
 1 [Sully, Pessimism, A History and a Criticism ; Sommer, Der Pessimtsmut 
 *nd die Sittenlehre ; Pliimacher, Der Pessimismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, 
 (History and Criticism.) — Tr.] 
 
 2 [I have taken this translation from Sully's Pessimism, p. 27. — Tit.] 
 
288 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 In so far as these lines represent the real feelings of the 
 poet, they are, of course, incontrovertible, — just as incon- 
 trovertible as the lines of Matthew Arnold; 
 
 " Is it so small a thing 
 To have enjoyed the sun, 
 To have lived light in the Spring, 
 To have loved, to have thought, to have done ; 
 To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes ? " * 
 
 Feelings are not true or false ; they are facts which can be 
 analyzed and explained, which may be considered praise- 
 worthy or detestable, but not refuted. 
 
 The case is different where pessimism aims to be a phil- 
 osophical theory. Schopenhauer does not merely desire to 
 express the feeling that he finds nothing in life, but he tries 
 to prove that there is nothing in it, and that whoever finds 
 anything in it deceives himself. He gives reasons, and 
 reasons, unlike feelings, can be examined, and may, if false, 
 be refuted. The argument will not necessarily change the per- 
 sonal mood of the pessimist, but it will destroy the validity of 
 his theory. Such an examination I propose to place before 
 the reader. Unless I mistake its value, it will show that 
 philosophical pessimism is not a proved theory, whose propo- 
 sitions can lay claim to universal validity, but the expression 
 of individual feelings, and as such can be merely subjectively 
 true. 2 
 
 We may divide the attempts which have been made to prove 
 pessimism into two classes : the sensualistic-hedonistic and the 
 moralistic. By the former I mean the argument which en- 
 deavors to show that life yields more pain than pleasure, 
 and concludes from this that it is worth less than nothing. 
 
 • l Poems, IT., 32 : Empedocles on Etna. 
 2 [For philosophical pessimism see : Schopenhauer, The World as Will and 
 Idea, vol. L, Book IV. ; vol. II., Appendix to Book IV. ; Parerga, chaps. XL, 
 XII., XIV. ; Mainl'ander, Die Philosophic der Erlosung ; Hartmann, Die Philo- 
 sophic des Unbewusiten ; Zut Geschichte und Begrundung des Pessimismut, etc.— 
 Tb] 
 
PESSIMISM 289 
 
 The latter adds that life, considered objectively and morally, 
 has no value, and that it is therefore not only unhappy, but 
 deserves to be unhappy. I also mention a third form : the 
 proof from the philosophy of history ', which tries to show that 
 as life develops, especially with the progress of civilization, 
 pain and immorality increase. 
 
 2. The hedonistic argument contends that human life yields 
 more and greater pains than pleasures. It is evident from 
 the very nature of the case that such an assertion can be 
 proved only by statistics. A phrase frequently used by the 
 most recent pessimistic writers would seem to imply that 
 such an argument can really be made; they speak of a 
 balance of pleasure, which is against the value of life. The 
 term is borrowed from commercial language. The merchant 
 adds up the debit and credit accounts of his ledger, and 
 strikes the balance. It would appear from the phrase that 
 the pessimistic philosopher employs a similar method, that he 
 keeps books, as it were, entering on opposite sides, under the 
 headings, pleasure and pain, the respective amounts yielded 
 by life ; that some day he posts his books, and finds that the 
 total of the pain-columns exceeds the total of the pleasure- 
 columns. 
 
 I do not know whether such an attempt has ever been 
 made ; I have discovered nothing of the kind in the writings 
 of the philosophical pessimists with which I happen to be 
 acquainted. And yet it seems to me no method could furnish 
 so convincing a proof that the thing is possible as the 
 attempt to post the items even of a single day of a human 
 life. Imagine the average day of an average human life 
 treated according to such a scheme ! We might have an 
 account like the following : A. Receipts in Pleasure : 1. 
 Slept well — equal so many units ; 2. Enjoyed my break- 
 fast — ; 3. Head a chapter from a good book — ; 4. Received 
 a letter from a friend — ; etc. B. Pain : 1. Read a disagree- 
 able story in the paper — ; 2. Disturbed by a neighbors 
 
290 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 piano — ; 3. Received a tiresome visit — ; 4. Ate burnt soup 
 — ; etc. — The philosopher is requested to insert the amounts 
 in the proper places. 
 
 But that is an absurd and childish demand, you say ! I 
 certainly agree with you that it would be an absurd under- 
 taking. But the demand itself does not seem to be absurd. 
 If it is wholly impossible to make a statistical estimate 
 of the pleasure and pain quanta, how can the assertion be 
 proved that the pains exceed the pleasures ? If it is impos- 
 sible to fix a definite value for the separate items, how can the 
 value of the totals be compared ? If we are utterly unable to 
 handle the simplest cases, if we cannot even say whether the 
 pleasure yielded by a good breakfast is greater or less than 
 the pain occasioned by burned soup, how can we make even the 
 faintest conjecture in more difficult cases ? How can we, if 
 we are unable to compute the results of a single day, dare to 
 assert anything concerning the results of an entire life, and 
 then not of a single individual life, mind you, but of all human 
 lives ? 
 
 In his novel, Four Germans, Melchior Meyer gives the his- 
 tory of two young men who grow up together under the same 
 conditions, with the same prospects and demands on life. 
 They study together, they are friends, and hold essentially 
 the same views. At the end of their college days, the differ- 
 ences in their natures begin to manifest themselves. The 
 one enters the government-service ; he becomes an affable 
 and capable official, and soon discards such notions as are 
 considered objectionable in high circles. He begins to rise 
 more rapidly ; he enters the Cabinet, becomes the son-in-law 
 of the Prime Minister, and finally Prime Minister himself. 
 His friend, who has a more reflective nature, follows a uni- 
 versity career ; he becomes a privat-docent and a writer. 
 Caring only for his own convictions, he refuses to be gov- 
 erned by the prevailing opinions. Before knowing it, he 
 becomes unpopular, the orthodox thinkers begin to shake 
 
PESSIMISM 291 
 
 their heads. His influence wanes, his books are not read, as 
 is natural, for he has written them for himself. At the age 
 of thirty and thirty-five, he is still living in destitute circum- 
 stances. His father grows impatient, his mother grieves ; 
 then comes the year 1848, and places both young men in 
 new circumstances, — which we need not mind now. What 
 shall we say of the balance of pleasure in these two lives up 
 to this point ? I do not believe that these are particularly 
 difficult cases ; and yet who would dare to decide which life 
 had yielded the most happiness ? Who can measure the ratio, 
 in the life of the former, between the pleasures following the 
 satisfaction of ambition and the pain inseparable from the 
 fears and hopes of preferment, the disappointment accom- 
 panying the attainment of vain goods ; and who can compute 
 the relation, in the other life, between the quiet joys of the 
 thinker and the pains caused by neglect and outward 
 failure ? 
 
 The pessimists, therefore, have never even attempted to 
 prove their assertions, as demanded by the nature of the case. 
 They offer us general phrases instead. Listen to some of 
 them. First we are told the old story that pleasure is in the 
 last analysis nothing but freedom from pain ; that it invariably 
 arises only when a desire is satisfied, when a disease is cured 
 or a fear removed. Pleasure, so it is held, is therefore nega- 
 tive in its character, while pain alone is positive ; there 
 are in reality no figures in the pleasure-column of our imagi- 
 nary ledger ; one hour differs from another merely in the 
 amount of pain suffered. — Now if this were really true, if 
 we really regarded as pleasure what is only freedom from 
 pain, would that in the least alter the fact that pleasure and 
 pain are positive feelings ? And is not the feeling, after all, 
 the final and absolute judge ; would it not be absurd to claim 
 that pleasure is nothing but freedom from pain ? All that 
 we could say would be that it never arises except when 
 preceded by a painful desire. This statement, however, 
 
292 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 would be obviously false. Is appetite pain? Is it not 
 rather an anticipation of pleasure, and is it not felt as such 
 by the healthy man ? With eager eyes the child watches his 
 mother baking cakes; does he experience pain, and is this 
 silenced only after he has eaten the cake ? Does he, after 
 waking from a healthy sleep, soon experience painful tedium, 
 and does he get rid of the feeling only after it has forced him 
 to play ? No one can believe such a thing unless he ignores 
 the facts and makes up his mind to see nothing but the pro- 
 positions of his system. — Besides, the falsity of the view 
 may be shown in another way. If pleasure were freedom 
 from the pain of desire, it would have to be the greater, the 
 greater the desire has been. That is by no means always the 
 case. On the contrary, the individuals who have the strongest 
 desires experience the least pleasure after realizing them. 
 The people who wait most patiently enjoy the purest and 
 intensest pleasures, when they obtain what they neither asked 
 for nor expected. We see this in children; I believe it 
 always happens that the greater the desire, the less pleasure 
 its satisfaction yields. 
 
 Schopenhauer proves pessimism by reference to the nature 
 of the will, which per se is unintelligent, aimless striving. 
 It is not originally moved by the idea of an end, but appears 
 as a blind will-to-live. Hence, he says, there can be no state, 
 no good, which can give the will definite satisfaction. This 
 determines the nature of the feelings : pain and misery, dis- 
 appointment and tedium are the inevitable result. The pain 
 which is caused by need urges the will to action; in case 
 it does not realize its end, the pain becomes torture. If it 
 realizes its end, the relief is momentarily felt as pleasure. 
 But soon this disappears ; possession, which from a dis- 
 tance promised permanent satisfaction, soon fails to arouse 
 feelings of pleasure ; hence the end of all pleasure is disap- 
 pointment. In case the will endeavors to put an end to this 
 restless striving, tedium soon goads it into preferring misery 
 
PESSIMISM 293 
 
 and torture to a state of rest. These are the feelings between 
 which the will constantly oscillates. We might, therefore, 
 compare life to a foot-path running between two thorny 
 hedges, a path so narrow that when the wanderer attempts 
 to avoid one of the hedges, he is invariably torn by the 
 other. 
 
 Impartial judges will regard this view as extremely one- 
 sided. Perhaps no life is absolutely free from suffering and 
 tedium, but many an existence will, for some days, be almost 
 entirely without them. The path between the hedges is not so 
 narrow as to make it impossible for any one but an unusually 
 awkward man to pursue it without serious injury. A healthy 
 child, reared in simple, healthy surroundings, will not know 
 very much about distress and tedium when leaving the parental 
 home. And if the conditions of life continue half-way favor- 
 able, he may not experience them to any great extent for 
 many years to come. The peasant does not wait for want to 
 urge him to his work. In the daytime he rejoices at what 
 he has accomplished, and at night he enjoys his rest. It 
 would be a vain undertaking to make him believe that the 
 former is pain and the latter tedium. And so work-days and 
 holidays, summer and winter may come and go, year in and 
 year out, without bringing great troubles and without leaving 
 much opportunity for tedium. Of course, some sorrows will 
 come, but we also find that sorrows turn into blessings. 
 Hence, we might perhaps quote, at the end of such a life, 
 the words of the Psalmist, in a slightly modified form : The 
 days of our years are threescore years and ten ; and if by 
 reason of strength they be fourscore years, and if their 
 strength be labor and sorrow, yet they have been sweet. — Are 
 such lives mere isolated exceptions ? Inasmuch as we have 
 no statistics on the happy and unhappy lives, the successes 
 and failures, I am for the present inclined to put as much 
 faith in the judgment of a plain man of the people as in the 
 eloquence of a pessimistic philosopher. The plain man would 
 
294 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 most likely argue somewhat as follows : If an honorable and 
 healthy life is not an exception, then a happy life is not an 
 isolated exception either. The will, as described by the phi- 
 losopher of pessimism, is not the will of a healthy human 
 being, but that of a moody and spoilt child, and such a will 
 may perhaps experience the things mentioned. 
 
 But, Schopenhauer replies, it may be that some lives are 
 fairly successful in avoiding collisions ; but does that change 
 the fact that life as a whole is an empty, aimless striving? 
 We may, he believes, compare life to the struggles of a 
 shipwrecked mariner, who for a few moments struggles with 
 all his might to save himself from drowning, only to be en- 
 gulfed by the waves at last. Life is a ceaseless battle with 
 death, to which we are approaching nearer and nearer every 
 day. And the hopelessness of this futile business is increased 
 by the cruel irony of nature, which deludes us with the con- 
 stant promise : " To-morrow there will be a change for the bet- 
 ter ! " If only I were a man, sighs the unhappy schoolboy ; if 
 only my examinations and apprenticeship were over, and I had 
 an independent position and fortune, says the youth chafing 
 under restraint ; if only I were a millionaire or a privy coun- 
 sellor, cries the troubled man, how I should enjoy life ! And 
 all these wishes are ultimately fulfilled, but the satisfaction 
 never comes. Yet the illusions continue, until old age car- 
 ries the last ones into the grave. But long before this, the 
 cycle has begun anew in children and grandchildren. Does 
 not the will-to-live play us a miserable trick ? The tortures 
 described by Greek mythology, the Sisyphus stone, the barrel 
 of the Panaides, the wheel of Ixion, represent life itself, not 
 the exceptionally unhappy life, but the average life of all mor- 
 tals, whose absolute futility is experienced every day and yet 
 remains forever new. 
 
 Indeed, it is true that the will-to-live is aimless in the sense 
 of never attaining to a state of absolute satisfaction ; it is true 
 that it daily looks forward to the morrow, expecting from it 
 
PESSIMISM 295 
 
 what today has failed to bring ; it is true, also, that death 
 comes at last, and that life does not produce as a recompense 
 for its troubles an absolutely permanent good that may be 
 possessed and eternally enjoyed or bequeathed to others. — 
 But does that not prove the worthlessness of life ? — It seems 
 to me that an error has crept into the argument. Life is 
 here conceived as a function which has its end, not in itself, 
 but external to it. This is an inadequate conception. It is 
 customary to compare life to a journey. We regard the 
 latter as futile when the purpose for which it was under- 
 taken fails to be realized, and we look back upon our fruitless 
 troubles with dissatisfaction. But does life resemble a busi- 
 ness trip ? I do not think so. It has not, like the latter, an 
 external end, an end of which it is the means. Nay, life is not 
 a means, but an end in itself. We could, with much better 
 right, compare it to a pleasure trip. The latter too, we 
 may say, is aimless, and yields no lasting gain. We may also 
 say that we are never satisfied while it lasts, in the sense of 
 being willing to remain at one place forever. The desire is 
 always in advance of the traveller, fixating a point in the dis- 
 tance, and when this is reached, new desires arise. Even 
 before setting forth he thinks of the remote summit, and when 
 he ascends the mountain, groaning and perspiring, his longing 
 eyes, deceived by many a projecting ridge, are turned in the 
 direction of the goal. But hardly has he reached his destina- 
 tion, when his desires again temptingly point to the inn with its 
 promise of rest and recreation and final satisfaction. Tired, 
 exhausted, and foot-sore, the traveller at last reaches his 
 abode, and hardly enjoying a few moments of the hoped-for 
 rest, begins to make plans for the morrow. So it goes 
 day after day, until he comes back to his home, and rests 
 his weary limbs under his own roof. Now, was the entire 
 journey merely one continuous torture, and will our trav- 
 eller swear never to enter upon such a foolish undertaking 
 again ? No, indeed ; he has had an excellent time ; he joy- 
 
296 CONCEPTS AND PKINCIPLES 
 
 fully remembers every part of his travels, especially the most 
 dangerous and difficult parts, and enjoys the pleasure of mak- 
 ing plans for another trip next year. 
 
 Well, the arguments against the value of life prove no more 
 than the same arguments against the value of a pleasure trip. 
 In spite of its aimlessness, in spite of its illusions and disap- 
 pointments, in spite of its pains and exertions, in spite of the 
 fact finally, that we never reach a stopping-place where we 
 could bear to abide permanently, it may be a very enjoy- 
 able affair on the whole. So long as it is full of action and 
 change in work and in play, full of care for self and others, 
 the mind will delight in recalling the memories of the past, 
 lingering with special satisfaction upon the dangerous and 
 tempestuous, troublesome and difficult parts of the traversed 
 journey. In achieving this the will realizes the goal at which 
 it aims : an honorable human life with all the experiences 
 belonging to it. 
 
 Old people delight in narrating incidents from their lives, 
 either by word of mouth to their friends, or to the world at 
 large in printed autobiographies. Would they feel inclined 
 to do so if life were a Sisyphean labor ? They evidently re- 
 gard it in a different light, as an interesting drama, perhaps, 
 full of action and excitement for both actor and spectator, 
 which, in spite of its troubles and conflicts, its happy and 
 dangerous crises, at last comes to a peaceful ending. The 
 excitement is over, the actor in the play breathes more 
 freely ; as a spectator he now rehearses the contents of the 
 drama in his mind. — Would he be willing to play the role 
 again ? Schopenhauer believes that if we were to ask the 
 dead in their graves whether they would be willing to live 
 again, they would shake their heads. Perhaps he is right ; 
 who would be willing to witness a play once more, immedi- 
 ately after having seen it performed ? But that surely does 
 not prove anything against the value of the drama. We 
 should not be willing even to repeat the experiences of the 
 
PESSIMISM 297 
 
 most delightful journey, immediately after having reached 
 home. — Besides, is it so rare a thing to hear old people 
 expressing the wish to be young again ? The mature man 
 does not desire to be a youth again, the youth does not wish 
 to be a boy again, the boy does not wish to be a child again ; 
 but many an old man wishes to be young again. Is it not 
 because he has enjoyed his rest, and now has the courage to 
 begin the journey afresh ? 
 
 I cannot, therefore, convince myself that the statement: 
 Life uniformly brings more pain than pleasure, more disap- 
 pointment than satisfaction, — the subjective evidence of feel- 
 ing declares it to be valueless, — is proved by these reflections 
 of the philosophers of pessimism. 
 
 3. The moralistic argument asserts that life is as worth- 
 less as it is unhappy, that it is absolutely devoid of any- 
 thing that, objectively considered, can make it worth living. 
 Virtue and wisdom are the exception, wickedness and fool- 
 ishness the rule. Schopenhauer does not weary of abusing 
 mankind in this strain. Nature, he is fond of saying, 
 produces human beings in bulk, like worthless factory wares, 
 and throws them away in bulk, in accordance with the 
 maxim of wholesale production, as cheap and bad. Malice 
 and ignorance are the two characteristic qualities of the 
 average man. Mediocrity is more conspicuous among the 
 masses ; the many are poverty-stricken wretches, with no 
 higher spiritual desires, intent only upon eking out their 
 miserable existence to the very last. Their sole aim is to 
 procure food, and perhaps to produce progeny for the same 
 unhappy lot. Grovelling in the dirt, they live on, and when 
 they are gone the very trace of their existence is wiped out. 
 Nor are they free from an admixture of malice : they look with 
 envy and hatred upon those who excel them in mental and 
 physical gifts, or in wealth and rank. Only with great ef- 
 fort can the police keep them from attacking each other. As 
 wild beasts must be kept apart by cages, men must be pro* 
 
298 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 tected against each other by criminal laws, cages whose bars 
 are forged by fear. Whenever an opportunity is offered of 
 cheating a fellow sufferer or inflicting damage upon an 
 envied one, without danger of punishment, it is immediately 
 embraced. Even their so-called virtues are, when rightly 
 viewed, made of the same stuff. They are sociable from van- 
 ity, compassionate from self-love, honest from fear, peace- 
 loving from cowardice, benevolent from superstition. — There 
 is a small minority among whom malice preponderates over 
 ignorance, and since greater intelligence is usually connected 
 with a stronger will, the laws are invariably powerless to re- 
 strain them from pouncing upon the others, like beasts of 
 prey. The many are like sheep, cowardly, stubborn, and nar- 
 row ; the few like wolves and foxes, ferocious and deceitful. 
 — Wisdom and virtue, on the other hand, are rare products. 
 Nature scarcely succeeds in producing two or three geniuses 
 in a century, and saints are equally few and far between. 
 
 Thus Schopenhauer, the despiser and accuser of the human 
 race, describes, with passionate eloquence, its moral and intel- 
 lectual shortcomings. He is not the only man who entertains 
 this opinion. Ever since the old Greek sage declared that 
 "the most are worthless," the sentiment has been con- 
 stantly repeated. Hobbes holds the same view of man, and 
 La Rochefoucauld has given us, in his Reflections and Maxims, 
 a kind of hand-book of philosophical medisance, which, in ever- 
 changing periods, proclaims selfishness and vanity as the real 
 motives of human nature. Nor did Kant have a very favor- 
 able opinion of human beings. 
 
 Are these views correct ? Again I ask : How can their 
 truth be proved ? In my judgment, ultimately by statistics 
 alone. The assertion that there are more wicked men than 
 good ones, more fools than sages, can be proved only by a 
 census. We have only to make such a demand to see the 
 impossibility of the undertaking. Interesting though such 
 an investigation would be, the classes bad, wise, and stupid 
 
pessimism ayy 
 
 mil never appear in the census lists. We may measure age, 
 height, and wealth ; for moral and intellectual qualities there 
 is no method of measurement. Every judgment concerning • 
 the average value of men is therefore purely individual and 
 subjective ; it depends upon the experiences of the person • 
 judging, and the standard which he applies to man. The 
 judgment can lay a certain claim to universality only in case , 
 it can be proved that the investigator's demands were normal, 
 and that he had such favorable means for making observa- " 
 tions as to give his personal experiences an average value. . 
 Have those who proclaim the unworthiness of the great mass ■ 
 of mankind fulfilled these requirements ? 
 
 We may divide the accusers of human nature into two 
 groups : on the one side, we usually find courtiers and men of 
 the world ; on the other, philosophical recluses. 
 
 We are in the habit of saying that people who live at court 
 have a knowledge of the world and human nature. Is court- 
 life a suitable environment for the study of human nature ? 
 At court we become acquainted with men who live at court. 
 Is the life of these men a normal life, and can we expect from 
 them a normal behavior ? It seems to me to be more than 
 doubtful. La Rochefoucauld made his observations at the court 
 of Louis XIV. Perhaps there never was a better medium for 
 breeding vanity and selfishness than the court at Versailles. 
 Read Taine's description. The entire nobility of France were 
 gathered together at this place, not for work, but in order to 
 reflect the grandeur and splendor of the monarchy by their 
 mere presence. The entire life was one of idle representation ; 
 no one lived at home and for himself, but everybody was con- 
 stantly in the public gaze. Courtiers were chiefly occupied in 
 pocketing, in the form of pensions and endowments, as much 
 as they could of the proceeds which the laboring people poured 
 into the royal treasury. The daily business of each individual 
 was to enjoy himself with the aid and at the expense of the 
 rest. It is not surprising that of all the human vices, vanity 
 
800 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 and malice should have flourished most under such condi- 
 tions. — Frederick the Great is quoted as having said to Sulzer 
 that he, Sulzer, did not know the accursed tribe to which 
 they belonged. This was not a chance remark, the outburst 
 of a temporary mood, but revealed a contempt for humankind 
 which had become habitual with the king during his old age. 
 Did Frederick possess a knowledge of human nature ? He 
 undoubtedly did ; but with what kind of people had he come 
 in contact? With people, of course, who gathered at his 
 court : with diplomats, whose business it was to outwit him 
 and each other; with literati and savants, who begged for 
 favors and support, and envied each other for what they re- 
 ceived ; with servile and beggarly office-seekers, who vied with 
 each other to get the best places ; with a crowd whose pur- 
 poses the practical eye could not fail to fathom. There were 
 doubtless good people around him too, honorable officers and 
 upright officials ; but the others took the greatest pains to 
 attract his attention. The great majority of his subjects who 
 were quietly cultivating the fields or making shoes, he did not 
 see; they merely represented so many units in the census 
 lists. 
 
 The philosophers, too, have the reputation of knowing, if 
 not men, at least man. Did Schopenhauer, Kant, or Hobbes 
 have favorable opportunities for studying human nature ? I 
 doubt it. Their point of view was abnormal in more than 
 one respect. Above all, they lacked the environment in 
 which are developed the most important relations of man to 
 humanity : they had no family ties. Surrounded by strangers 
 whom they distrusted, they reached, a helpless old age as 
 lonely and disconsolate old bachelors. Frau Martha Sch we rt- 
 lein is certainly right : " Us hat noch keinem wohlgetfian." 1 
 We cannot read without the deepest pity the descrip- 
 tions of Kant's old age, of his worries over household 
 affairs, of his troubles with his servant ; of Schopenhauer^ 
 
 1 Goethe, Faust. 
 
PESSIMISM 301 
 
 efforts to conceal his money from burglars, of his despair 
 of ever enjoying a decent conversation at the hotel table. 
 These men not only needed some one to care for them ; 
 more than that, they needed some one for whom to care. 
 Man is even more attached to those for whom he cares and 
 whom he loves than to those who love and care for him. 
 What wonder is it, then, that these men could not sympathize 
 with mankind at large when their relations to individuals 
 were so unsatisfactory ? A man's confidence in and love for 
 humanity depends upon a few experiences. Should any one 
 of us lose the five or ten persons who are near and dear to 
 him, he would be a stranger in the world ; he would be- 
 come an enemy to mankind if these five or ten should prove 
 false to him. We must also remember that these pessimists 
 were writers and scholars, and that their knowledge of human 
 nature was acquired in the world of authors and scholars. 
 But where are we more apt to find vanity and dogmatism, 
 flattery and an inability to recognize the merits of others, 
 than in such surroundings ? I believe also that Schopenhauer 
 would not have formed so low an estimate of the intelligence 
 of men, if he had paid less attention to book and newspaper 
 writers, and more to the common-sense people who are en- 
 gaged in the practical pursuits of life. 
 
 Let us now hear the opinion of healthy, unprejudiced men, 
 of real men of the people. Take Goethe. His was a rich and 
 healthy nature, and few persons came into such direct personal 
 contact with, and gained so deep and wide a knowledge of, the 
 life of the German people as did he. Indeed, we can say that 
 hardly a single phase of it was entirely unknown to him. He 
 also possessed remarkable powers of perception, and had the 
 happy faculty of describing his impressions with unusual force. 
 His letters and autobiographic writings acquaint us with the 
 world in which he lived; we are introduced to the parental 
 home and the surroundings of his youth in Frankfort ; then 
 to the circles at Leipsic, Strasburg, Sesenheim, Wetzlar, and 
 
302 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 Weimar. What kind of people does he meet? We find 
 agreeable and disagreeable characters among them ; most of 
 them are not troubling about their morality; they live as 
 human beings usually live, as their natures dictate. Few of 
 them resemble the descriptions of the moralistic pessimist. 
 Here and there, of course, we notice a little perverseness and 
 some malice, but more often we find ourselves face to face with 
 natural, amiable, honest, and sensible human beings. Goethe's 
 poetical creations, in which he typifies his conceptions of 
 human nature, impress us similarly. In Gotz, in Egmont, in 
 Hermann und Dorothea, works in which he portrays the popu- 
 lar phases of German life, everywhere we discover vigorous, 
 calm and energetic, cheerful and contented characters. True, 
 the petty, effeminate, deceitful, and violent natures are not 
 lacking; but, after all, they merely serve as foils for the 
 others. 
 
 Was Goethe unacquainted with the other side of the pic- 
 ture ? Did he fail to see what constantly aroused Schopen- 
 hauer's anger and indignation ? Surely not. In his Xenien, 
 in his Sprilche in Versen und JProsa, in which Goethe settles 
 accounts with his literary contemporaries, many a harsh 
 word is uttered against vanity and emptiness, against narrow- 
 mindedness and baseness. It would not be hard to form a 
 complete catechism of pessimism by collecting different pas- 
 sages from Goethe's writings ; think of what might be done 
 with Mephistopheles alone ! But all this did not prevent him 
 from going right on loving and trusting humanity. 
 
 If now we are not satisfied with the testimony of this wit- 
 ness, let us turn to Jeremias Gotthelf and his charming stories 
 of Swiss peasant-life, or to Fritz Reuter's incomparable 
 Stromtid. Here we become acquainted with the base scoun- 
 drel, the reckless idler, the vain fool who ruins himself; but 
 we also come in contact with modest, quiet, fruitful labor, 
 rugged honesty, healthy common-sense, a wholesome love of 
 everything beautiful and good, active devotion to the welfare 
 
PESSIMISM 303 
 
 of others, stern opposition to falsehood and rascality, and we 
 are not made to feel that the latter virtues are in the minority ; 
 they by no means give up the battle in despair, but unite in 
 making a brave and successful attempt at resistance. Or 
 look at the human world portrayed by Ludwig Richter's 
 pencil, and do not fail to read, at the same time, this ex- 
 cellent man's Autobiography, — the most charming of all 
 autobiographies. 
 
 Are these men self-deluded and deluding optimists ? I do not 
 believe it. I do not believe that the virtuous and healthy men 
 are in the minority in the world. Viewed from the outside 
 and in the mass, human beings do not make a particularly 
 favorable impression. The observer who sees them pushing 
 and crowding each other on the trains and in the streets of 
 the metropolis, at entertainments and theatres, in public 
 gatherings and meetings of all kinds, and notices their flat- 
 teries and backbitings, their self-conceit and envy, will not 
 be favorably impressed with the tribe. But when we follow 
 the particular individual into the narrow home and into his 
 family and workshop, we often find a quite different person, 
 a sensible workman, a prudent manager, a loving father. 
 Even the clamorous and offensive partisan quietly and mod- 
 estly converses with you here ; the high-sounding phrases 
 which he used in his speech at the mass meeting scarcely occur 
 in his talk ; he can listen, deliberate, and doubt, — things which 
 no one, knowing him in his public capacity, would ever have 
 thought him capable of. I believe that the nearer we ap- 
 proach the real life of the individual, the more, as a rule, we 
 shall find to appreciate and to love, or at least to understand 
 and excuse. That is what the poet does. Schopenhauer, 
 however, saw mankind only from the distance and in the 
 mass ; like Wagner in Faust, he heard the distant noises of 
 the throng and turned away in disgust. 
 
 Of course, there are other poets, who see things in a dif- 
 ferent light. Byron and Thackeray and many among the 
 
304 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 more recent French and Northern poets, seem to believe that 
 the closer we come to life, and the clearer the view which we 
 get of it, the more completely the beautiful illusion van- 
 ishes. Splendor and happiness, amiability and cordiality, are 
 but the theatrical masks of life ; behind the scenes we come 
 face to face with its wretchedness and brutality. — Who 
 would deny that this is often the case ? But is it not true 
 that this description applies to circles in which the chief 
 business of life is to appear upon the stage of publicity, be it 
 in the garb of the politician or actor, the artist or society 
 man, the promoter or author ? It has been said that politics 
 ruins the character. I believe we must say that all forms 
 of public life have a tendency to destroy character. Osten- 
 tation and sham are almost inseparable from publicity. But 
 these persons, who, it is true, particularly attract the public 
 eye, do not constitute the essence of a people ; a nation con- 
 sisting merely of such actors could not live. 
 
 Is this craving for theatrical effect a peculiar product of 
 our age ? It almost seems so. And yet what age has ever 
 been free from it ? And when have persons been wanting who 
 made it their business to destroy the illusion by giving us a 
 glimpse at the life behind the scenes ? It is doubtful, however, 
 whether any age has ever taken such delight in disenchanting 
 us as the present. To cast aspersions upon mankind and to 
 expose the less beautiful phases of our nature is one of the 
 most popular literary occupations of the times ; it has become 
 a fad to show up falsehood and coarseness, in poetry and in 
 prose. Is this a favorable sign ; does it mean that the public 
 mind is turning towards the truth ? I confess, I am not wholly 
 convinced of it. Besides the craving for truth, there is 
 another impulse in us that may be satisfied by these things ; 
 it is the craving which feeds upon gossip and scandal. I 
 therefore doubt very much whether the new school of art, 
 which calls itself the realistic school, is to be welcomed as 
 a healthy movement. To be sure, falsehood is not good, and 
 
PESSIMISM 305 
 
 we should not close our eyes to the real. No doubt, there are 
 penitentiaries and hospitals, and insane asylums to boot, and 
 perhaps not all are in them who ought to be there. But that 
 most persons ought to be there, as our pessimistic litterati 
 try to make us believe by carefully selecting the material for 
 our study of human nature, cannot, as yet, be regarded as 
 proved. And perhaps even those who really ought to be in 
 these institutions do not like to visit them. We cannot advise 
 every one to visit the dissecting room. George Eliot some- 
 where beautifully says : " Poor outlines and shadows of souls 
 that we are, with but a quickly passing glimpse of the perfect 
 and the true, well would it behoove us to help each other in 
 beholding the blessed light of heaven, instead of searching each 
 other's eyes in order to detect the motes in them." 1 And 
 August Francke utters a no less valuable truth when he says : 
 " We may praise the works of God, but we must be very 
 careful in speaking of the works of the devil. For the 
 human heart contains sparks of evil which easily catch fire." 
 Besides, we cannot, perhaps, abandon ourselves to pessi- 
 mistic reflections without some danger, — provided, of course, 
 we do not aim to destroy the will-to-live, as Schopenhauer 
 intends that we should. It is undoubtedly wise not to expect 
 too much of life, hence we shall do well to familiarize our- 
 selves with the thought that not all our wishes will be ful- 
 filled, and that not everybody can be trusted. Thus we shall 
 guard against disappointments. On the other hand, continued 
 concentration of the attention upon the shadow-sides of life 
 and human nature will help to create an habitual contempt for 
 humanity and a hatred of life even in cases where these would 
 not necessarily have ensued. Pessimistic reflections will have 
 but little influence upon an energetic and healthy nature, but 
 where the person is disposed to be pessimistic, he will, by 
 brooding upon these things too much, develop an abnormal 
 
 1 [I have not been able to find this passage in the original, and have therefore 
 been compelled to translate it from the German. — Tr.] 
 
306 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 state of mind in reference to them. If a man were constantly 
 to watch the weather, to see whether it was not too warm or too 
 cold, too moist or too dry for him, he would most likely soon 
 discover that not three days in the year were suitable for a 
 walk. Similarly, if a man should take Schopenhauer's advice, 
 and carefully treasure up in his mind, as alimenta rnisan- 
 thropice, all the disagreeable experiences which he had had with 
 human beings, brooding over them day after day, he would 
 certainly come to regard all men as scoundrels and abor- 
 tions, or " factory-wares of nature," and succeed in making 
 himself miserable. If you are not willing to do this, it 
 will be wiser for you to contemplate the sunny sides of life, 
 and to search for what will raise your estimate of mankind, 
 or at least serve to excuse them. Schopenhauer advises us to 
 be constantly on the lookout for the baseness of men, and to 
 use it as a means of feeding our hatred of humanity. Perhaps 
 the following would be sounder advice : Do not expect human 
 beings to serve you without asking something in return, but 
 rejoice nevertheless when you find an exception, and believe 
 firmly that there are not only persons who will take advantage 
 of their fellows, wherever they can do so with impunity, but also 
 that there are some who will delight in being able to help them 
 without being asked. Likewise do not count upon gratitude ; 
 but rejoice when you meet a man who cheerfully and sincerely 
 accepts your help, and whose eye betokens his appreciation of 
 the gift as well as of the giver ; and firmly believe that such 
 men still exist, pessimism and social-democratic arrogance to 
 the contrary notwithstanding. And I should regard it as one 
 of the functions of poetry to arouse .such sentiments. To be 
 sure, it ought to portray people as they are, and not shadowless 
 phantoms. The sugar-dolls Of sentimental novels destroy our 
 taste for reality and produce moral dyspepsia, utterly cor- 
 rupting the taste. The present, t seems, is afflicted with this 
 very disease. During the days of Auerbach's and Freytag's 
 novels, we flattered the vanity of the virtuous bourgeoisie and 
 
PESSIMISM 307 
 
 professorial tribe too much; under the influence of socialistic 
 criticisms of society we are now experiencing the reaction. We 
 shall recuperate, of course ; and then art will again recognize 
 that it is its mission to portray healthy, active, and energetic 
 life, using baseness and mendacity simply as a foil. A poem 
 which contemplates and portrays the base for its own sake 
 must be regarded as a pathological phenomenon, and can only 
 serve as a means of spreading disease. 1 
 
 But let us return to our subject. In view of what we have 
 said, it does not seem to me that pessimism can claim to be a 
 scientifically proved theory. It is, in the last analysis, nothing 
 but an expression of the individual's experiences with life and 
 man, presented in the form of universal judgments. The 
 conclusion, Life is worthless, means, when reduced to its 
 simplest terms : It did not yield what I expected. The 
 proposition, Men are worthless, means : Men have treated me 
 badly ; I take no pleasure in them and do not care for their 
 welfare. We are generally inclined to express our individual 
 experiences in the form of universal propositions. A parti- 
 cular person has met three Englishmen during his lifetime ; 
 he did not like them ; he will invariably say : Englishmen are 
 unmannerly or crazy people. It is as Spinoza says : Et dum 
 tram evomunt, sapientes videri volunt. 
 
 There is another fact which encourages men to form univer- 
 sal propositions in regard to the baseness of life and mankind. 
 There is something quieting and consoling in the thought. 
 When a man has been deceived by his wife, he declares that 
 women are good for nothing. When a writer is ignored by 
 the public, he says : The masses have never been able to tell 
 
 1 If I interpret the play correctly, Shakespeare's Hamlet aims to show — at least 
 it does show — how a great soul may be ruined by constantly attending to the 
 vulgar and base. Hamlet's entire life is devoted to the detection and unmask- 
 ing of evil, to the analysis and microscopic examination of the low, to tbe 
 rhetorical exaggeration of the repulsive ; and the paralysis of his own being is 
 the result. I have developed this idea in an article in the Deutsche Rundschau, 
 (May, 1889), Hamlet, Die Tragodie des Pessimismus, 
 
308 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 the difference between the good and the bad. It intensifies 
 our pain to tell ourselves that what we have suffered is an 
 exception, and contrary to fate, as it were ; our grief is 
 assuaged by the reflection that it is the universal lot. Schopen- 
 hauer made a theory for all the pains he suffered, for those 
 caused by women and by men, by street arabs and university 
 professors. His pessimism is the general theory of his partic- 
 ular theories. It undoubtedly helped him to endure his 
 sorrows. Pessimism was his household remedy against his 
 chronic ill-humor which resulted from his temperamental 
 defect, dyscholia. The remedy did not succeed in removing 
 the disease, but it acted like an opiate, it assuaged his pain. 
 Who does not use it in the same way occasionally ? It has 
 another property : it quiets the conscience. The universal 
 proposition acquits the ego, so to speak. If I were the only 
 one having a hard time of it, if I alone were unable to get 
 along with men, it would be hard to deny that not the others, 
 but that I myself was at fault. In case, however, everybody 
 meets with the same experiences, then they are perfectly 
 natural, and I am not to be blamed. Besides, I am inclined 
 to think that the most pronounced egoist usually complains 
 most of egoism. He accuses others of egoism when they 
 refuse to lend themselves to his selfish desires. Goethe seems 
 to have noticed the same thing : he dedicated the following 
 lines to the " Crotchet-mongers" (Grrillenfdnger) : 
 
 Fiirchtet hinter diesen Launen, 
 Diesem ausstaffierten Schmerz, 
 Diesen truben Augenbraunen 
 Leerheit oder schlechtes Herz. 
 
 4. The historical-philosophical argument aims to show 
 that as civilization advances, mankind becomes more and 
 more unhappy and bad. Schopenhauer represents historical- 
 philosophical pessimism on the hedonistic side, Rousseau on 
 the moralistic side. The former is fond of telling us that civil- 
 ization tends to increase pain, while the latter emphasizes the 
 
PESSIMISM 309 
 
 other aspect, and claims that civilization tends to destroy 
 morality. 
 
 It is worthy of note that the pessimistic view of history 
 can, in a certain measure, appeal for support to common- 
 sense. The conception of historical life which has been cur- 
 rent among European nations since the advent of Christianity 
 follows the Jewish myth, and places perfection at the begin- 
 ning of things. The original state of the human race was 
 divided between the happiness and innocence of Paradise. 
 History really begins with the fall of man, and the end 
 towards which it is moving is the judgment day. Sin, 
 misery, and corruption will continue to increase until they 
 reach their maximum in the kingdom of the Antichrist, and 
 inaugurate the end of the world. — The Greeks, too, were 
 familiar with this conception of the progress of human his- 
 tory. Hesiod gives expression to it in his description of the 
 ages of the world, beginning with the golden age and ending 
 with the iron age, in which the poet complains that he has 
 been condemned to live. — Perhaps the conception may be 
 explained psychologically. The temperament of old age is 
 optimistic in reference to the past. The old man is unable 
 to keep in touch with the present ; he is powerless to accom- 
 plish anything, and seeks the cause for it, not in himself, but 
 in the times, which, in his opinion, are growing worse and 
 worse. The past, on the other hand, glows with the memo- 
 ries of youth. Old age is the bearer of historical reminis- 
 cences ; from it the young receive intelligence of the past, and 
 are taught to view the past in the light of old age. The ten- 
 dency to admire, which is peculiar to youth, and the tendency 
 to believe in a great and glorious descent, assist in the pro- 
 cess. Finally, the tendency to employ history as an instru- 
 ment of moral preaching has the same effect. Whoever, for 
 any reason or other, is dissatisfied with the present, loves to 
 humiliate it by holding up to it the picture of a better past. 
 
 With the rise of historical research, the splendor with 
 
310 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 which legend surrounded the beginnings vanished. The 
 scientific investigations of modern times have begun to throw 
 light upon the real past. As a consequence, our historical con- 
 ceptions have been completely changed. The leaders of the 
 seventeenth century transferred the golden age from the past 
 to the future, and the eighteenth century systematized the new 
 view, conceiving history as a steady progress from meagre 
 beginnings to a state of glorious perfection, which, it was 
 supposed, would be realized in the period of Enlightenment. 
 
 Rousseau inaugurated a reaction against the optimistic con- 
 ception of history. Romanticism created the notion of a wise 
 and perfect primitive race, which also haunted the philosophy 
 of Schelling. Schopenhauer too is a genuine child of Roman- 
 ticism in his philosophy of history. He absolutely fails to 
 see a change for the better in history ; indeed he is inclined to 
 deny that there is any logic in history. The names and cus- 
 toms change, but the contents of the play remain eternally 
 the same. Only in one respect does Schopenhauer find un- 
 mistakable evidences of development : pain is certainly in- 
 creasing. Brutes are the happiest, or, rather, the least un- 
 happy creatures ; while increase of knowledge means increase 
 of sorrow for man. Qui auget scientiam, auget dolorem. 
 
 His reasons for this view may be summarized as follows : 
 
 (1) With the increasing complexity of its nature, a creature 
 becomes more and more sensitive to pain. Now, every ad- 
 vance in civilization means a multiplication of needs and 
 the necessary means of satisfying them. Hence, as civiliza- 
 tion advances, desire, misery, and disappointment increase. 
 
 (2) Intelligence develops, and man gains an insight into the 
 future. The animal lives in the present ; it feels the pain of 
 the moment only. In case the conditions of life become too 
 unfavorable, it dies without really experiencing the death 
 which it did not foresee. Man sees the evils coming upon 
 him ; he foresees old age and death ; fear and anxiety are 
 added to pain, and they are greater tortures than pain itself. 
 
PESSIMISM 311 
 
 Indeed, the fear of death may lead to suicide. (3) Man's per- 
 sonality is doubled, as it were ; in addition to his real self he 
 has an ideal self. The ideal ego is no less vulnerable, no less 
 susceptible to pain, than the real ego. Defeated ambition, 
 wounded pride, unrequited love, are inexhaustible sources of 
 torture ; calumny and dishonor wound us more deeply than 
 bodily hurts. This vulnerability also increases with the prog- 
 ress of civilization ; the higher the stage of civilization, the 
 more complex society grows, and the more dependent men 
 become upon each other. The higher the social rank of an 
 individual, the more he is exposed to the criticisms of others. 
 How unconcerned the peasant lives in this regard ; and how 
 much sorrow falls into the life of the politician and author ! 
 (4) In still another respect is the life of man expanded, 
 and his vulnerability increased. The sympathetic feelings 
 develop, and he now feels the sorrows of others as well as his 
 own. The animal is unaffected by the sufferings and death 
 of its companions, while even the brutal man sympathizes 
 with his surroundings. He is moved by the sufferings and 
 death of those he loves, and so dies many deaths. And the 
 best men suffer the most : in addition to their own particular 
 sorrows they feel the universal sorrows; we can hardly 
 imagine great and good men without a trace of melancholy. 
 
 These statements are not untrue, but they are onesided. 
 Not only is the susceptibility to pain increased : sensibility 
 is intensified in both directions. Pleasures as well as pains 
 become more manifold and intense. We undoubtedly inter- 
 pret the phenomena of bodily life correctly when we assume 
 that vertebrates suffer more violent pains than invertebrates. 
 The tearing of the body of a worm surely causes pain, but 
 this can hardly be compared to that suffered, say by a dog, 
 when a single nerve tract is severed. It is also unquestion- 
 ably true that the pleasurable feelings aroused in a dog by 
 the chase are incomparably more intense than those experi* 
 enced by the rain worm in searching for its food. 
 
312 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 We must therefore supplement the above pessimistic 
 reflections if we would reach the truth. It is said : (1) As 
 life develops, needs and therefore pains increase. Yery true ; 
 but the means of satisfying the needs also increase. To 
 this end action becomes more and more complex, greater 
 and more developed powers and capacities are set in motion, 
 and as a consequence the accompanying pleasures are also 
 increased. Compare the life and activity of the prehistoric 
 inhabitants of our coast, who have left the traces of their 
 existence in the so-called Kjokkenmoddingem, with the life 
 and the activity of the peasants and mechanics, the fishermen 
 and sailors, who at present inhabit the same regions. We 
 are surely justified in saying that for the increase of trouble, 
 want, and wretchedness in their lives, there has been a corre- 
 sponding increase of pleasure in their work and its results. 
 I do not wish to claim that the increase in pleasure exceeds 
 the increase in pain ; this may be so, but it cannot be proved. 
 But it is surely just as hard to prove the reverse. 
 
 (2) It is held that the fear and anxiety caused by the pre- 
 vision of future pain increases pain. Indeed, if all pains 
 consisted merely in momentary feelings, they would not be 
 hard to bear; privations, sorrows, and even physical pains 
 oppress us so because they are regarded as the beginning of a 
 long series. But pleasures, too, owe their real human char- 
 acter and worth to the fact that they are anticipated by hope ; 
 and we may say that the human heart is not so unhappily 
 constituted as to be more susceptible to fear than to hope. 
 Temperaments differ; but perhaps our expectations of the 
 future are falsified by hope more often than by fear. And 
 perhaps memory is a still greater falsifier, if you please, 
 than hope, in giving us a cheerful view of life. The happy 
 and joyful days which we have spent linger in memory as a 
 source of pleasure ; nay, memory idealizes them : it retouches 
 the picture by removing the unpleasant and disturbing ele- 
 ments which are seldom wanting in reality. Days, on the 
 
PESSIMISM 313 
 
 other hand, which were full of misery and struggle, sorrow 
 and care, lose their sting in memory ; sorrow at the loss of a 
 good is transformed into a mild, tender sadness ; the remem- 
 brance of miseries and troubles endured fills us with pride : 
 olim meminisse juvabit, — so the Roman poet consoles 
 the heavy-laden. Are not autobiographies almost always 
 biodicies ? 
 
 Die Freuden bliihn mir noch, 
 
 Die Leiden sind erblichen. 1 
 
 (3) As for the pains caused by hurts to the ideal self, we 
 may also say that they are supplemented by the pleasures which 
 result from the recognition we receive from others, and from the 
 successful struggle for the prize bestowed upon merit. And 
 could the higher human functions ever have been developed 
 if men did not strive after honor and distinction ? We may 
 also call to mind that human nature possesses a cure against 
 ideal wounds. Injury and neglect make us proud, and pride 
 heals pain. Schopenhauer had ample opportunity for observ- 
 ing this truth in his own case. 
 
 (4) The same may be said of the pains which arise from 
 sympathy : they, too, are supplemented by the pleasures which 
 arise from our participation in the weal and woe of others. 
 If we may believe an old proverb, sympathy with the lot 
 of others has a very favorable effect upon the happiness of 
 the parties concerned : Creteilter Schmerz ist halber Schmerz ; 
 geteilte Freude ist doppelte Freude ; 2 which would make a four- 
 fold gain. 
 
 To sum up : As civilization advances, the sorrows and the 
 pleasures grow in extensity and in intensity. Does the pleas- 
 ure exceed the pain ? Historical optimism confidently asserts 
 that the progress of history increases happiness. Pessimism 
 with equal confidence sets up the counter-claim that it in- 
 creases sorrow. I regard both assertions as equally incapable 
 
 1 Riickert. 
 
 a A divided pain is half a pain; divided pleasure is double pleasure. 
 
314 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 of proof. Both of them may be made very plausible by 
 rhetorical arguments, but there is really no way of definitely 
 deciding the matter. One thing alone seems certain to me, 
 that as sensibility increases, sorrows and pleasures become 
 more intense. In the same ratio ? Perhaps. But this would 
 not mean that the sum-total of the pains and the pleasures, 
 considered and added as negative and positive quantities, was 
 always equal to zero. I rather incline to the view that, just as 
 health and normal forms are more common than disease and 
 malformations, pleasure is more common than pain. But let 
 me repeat : We cannot measure and add the feelings or their 
 intensities. Nay, I believe that if any one, with a view to 
 gathering statistics, were to ask particular individuals whether 
 they felt pain or pleasure at that particular moment, he would 
 frequently receive the answer : I have not paid any attention 
 to the matter ; and if he were to persist in interrogating his 
 subjects, he would be told: I really do not know myself — 
 which would plainly show that they did not attribute the im- 
 portance to pleasure and pain which hedonistic and pessimistic 
 philosophers ascribe to them. 
 
 5. Let me say a few words in reference to the moralistic 
 phase of historical pessimism, which Rousseau preached with 
 such impassioned eloquence during the second half of the last 
 century. He regards the primitive state of man as a state of 
 innocence and virtue, from which civilization is deviating more 
 and more. The nearer we approach the original state, the 
 more purity and virtue we find. These virtues may, in 
 Rousseau's opinion, still be found among shepherds and 
 peasants ; we shall seek for them in vain in Parisian society, 1 
 at the court of Versailles. In his celebrated maiden work, in 
 which he discusses the question whether the revival of science 
 and letters has contributed anything to purify morals, he is in- 
 clined to seek the causes of moral decay in the development of 
 the sciences and the arts. A second question, proposed by 
 
 1 [Discours sur les sciences et les arts, 1749. — Tb.] 
 
PESSIMISM 315 
 
 the Academy of Dijon, concerning the origin of the inequal- 
 ity among men, gave him an opportunity to modify his state- 
 ment to the effect that the development of social classes is 
 the immediate cause of moral decay. 1 As civilization advances, 
 so we may summarize his views, differences arise between the 
 rich and the poor, the high and the low, masters and servants ; 
 and thus human nature, which is fundamentally good, deterio- 
 rates. On the one side arise the lordly vices : haughtiness, 
 arrogance, and cruelty. Social differentiation likewise tends 
 to destroy our natural judgments of value. The natural value 
 of things consists in their satisfying genuine needs. In society 
 a conventional value takes the place of the natural one ; 
 things are prized in so far as they confer social distinction. 
 Diamonds and pearls have no natural value, or, perhaps, only a 
 trivial one as ornaments. In society, however, they are highly 
 prized as marks of wealth and nobility ; they owe their value 
 to the fact that others do not possess them. So knowledge 
 receives a conventional value in society ; under the name of 
 culture it confers social distinction. But such knowledge is 
 not the same as that which is really valuable for life. That 
 knowledge has true worth which makes its possessor wiser or 
 more prudent. Culture and learning often do the opposite ; 
 they suppress healthy common-sense and natural power of 
 judgment. In the same way polite manners and good form 
 usurp the position which belongs to virtue alone. Thus false- 
 hood and semblance corrupt the life of society. Nous avons 
 de Vhonneur sans vertu, de la raison sans sagesse, et du plaisir 
 sans bonheur : thus Rousseau's Contrat Social sums up his 
 opinion of the culture and enlightenment of his age, in one 
 of those epigrams which leave such a vivid impression upon the 
 memory. 
 
 These statements, again, are not untrue, but they are one- 
 sided. Civilization, with its accompanying social differentia- 
 tion, undoubtedly creates new perversities and vices, but it also 
 
 1 [Discours sur Forigine et h fondement de Vinegalite parnii les hommes, 1754 ] 
 
316 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 produces new virtues. There are lordly virtues as well as 
 vices : courage, magnanimity, self-control, dignity, circum- 
 spection, benevolence. And servants, too, have their virtues 
 as well as their vices : loyalty, devotion, faithfulness. When 
 his social position corresponds to the natural endowments of a 
 man, when every man takes the place for which his natural 
 capacities fit him, there can be no more favorable conditions 
 for the development of character, and both sides will regard 
 the relation as a happy one. Just as little reason have we to 
 believe that the commodities which civilization produces have 
 merely an artificial value. Science and art surely possess 
 natural and genuine worth, even though perverse forms of 
 pedantry and pseudo-culture are not infrequent ; nor have the 
 commodities produced and made accessible by trade and com- 
 merce mere artificial value. — Rousseau's dream of a happy 
 and innocent state of nature belongs to the past; it is the 
 dream of the age of Louis XV. ; it does not reflect a 
 real world found in the South Sea Islands or among the 
 Indians, but represents the exact opposite of the society which 
 dreamed it. Contact with uncivilized peoples never reveals the 
 proud and sincere, the virtuous and happy savages who are 
 mentioned in the novels of the eighteenth century. J. S. Mill 
 holds, in an essay On Nature, that no remarkable human 
 quality is a natural endowment, but the result of civilization. 
 Courage, veracity, cleanliness, self-control, justice, benevo- 
 lence are acquired characteristics ; fear, mendacity, filthiness, 
 intemperance, brutality, selfishness, — these are the character- 
 istics which impartial observers discover in the physiognomy 
 of the savage. 
 
 Shall we, then, say that the race grows more moral as civil- 
 ization advances ? I should not deny it, but historical pessi- 
 mism might bring some powerful arguments to bear against 
 Mill's view. It may be that the uncivilized do not possess the 
 virtues referred to, but they also lack the vices of civilization. 
 If we look at the criminal life of a European metropolis, or 
 
PESSIMISM 317 
 
 peer into the secrets which hide behind the name of polite 
 society, and which the writers most popular with that class 
 are so fond of divulging, we shall have to confess that the 
 vices of the savage are childish pranks compared with the 
 subtle forms of repulsive pleasure, deceitful malice, and utter 
 baseness to be found there. — Can we say that these are 
 unfortunate exceptions ; that, generally speaking, there is a 
 greater gain on the side of virtue than on the side of 
 vice ? How hopeless it would be to attempt to prove such an 
 assertion may be seen by asking a concrete question : Are the 
 Germans of the new Empire better or worse, morally con- 
 sidered, than the Germans of the Aufklarung, the Reforma- 
 tion, the Crusades, or of the days of Hermann? — All that 
 can be said with certainty in this connection is, again, that 
 there is an increase in moral differentiation. Just as the 
 pains and pleasures are growing in intensity, the virtues and 
 vices are becoming greater and more specific. Animals, we 
 might say, stand at the zero-point ; they are neither good nor 
 bad. Moralization begins with humanization. In the lower 
 stages the differences are insignificant, the individuals resem- 
 ble each other, they are exemplars which, on the whole, express 
 the genus in the same way. As civilization advances, indi- 
 vidualization increases ; good and evil stand out in greater 
 relief. The masses, to be sure, do not rise beyond a colorless 
 mean ; they have good as well as evil impulses. But in par- 
 ticular personalities good and evil stand out in bold relief. 
 On the one hand, we have deep and reverent love, self-sacrific- 
 ing loyalty, passionate devotion to truth and justice ; on the 
 other, complete and total depravity. Nevertheless, nothing 
 prevents us from believing that there is more good than evil 
 in the world, that the evil, as the abnormal, is the less fre- 
 quent. One thing alone seems undeniable, and that is that 
 the contrasts are becoming more marked. And perhaps this 
 will continue to be the case. Just as, according to the 
 Hebrew myth, the natural world began with the separation 
 
318 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 of darkness from light, so, according to the same profound 
 story, the historical world began with the distinction between 
 good and evil. And according to the Christian conception, 
 which adopts this myth, history consists in continuing the 
 process of separation. In the kingdom of God and in the 
 kingdom of the devil the opposition between good and evil is 
 most highly marked. Humanity stands between the two, and 
 gradually divides into two groups, some being attracted and 
 wholly absorbed by the kingdom of God, others by the king- 
 dom of the devil, until the judgment day shall bring about the 
 absolute and final expulsion of the evil. 
 
 6. But, some one may ask, if all this is so, if one thing 
 alone is certain, namely, that as civilization advances sensi- 
 bility and consequently the intensity of pleasures and pains 
 increase, and moral differentiation and a corresponding 
 increase in the intensity of good and evil take place ; and if 
 it is doubtful whether the gain on the side of virtue and 
 happiness exceeds that on the side of vice and unhappiness, 
 if the natural course of historical development does not lead 
 to the expulsion of evil, but this must await the coming of 
 the judgment day, that is, the end of our temporal earthly 
 life, — if all this is so, then is not pessimism in the right ? 
 Then is not Schopenhauer's statement concerning the aim- 
 lessness and un worthiness of life correct ? Are not all work 
 and care, all struggle and sacrifice, in vain ? 
 
 I do not think so. It would not be the case, even if we 
 granted that good and evil, pleasure and pain, were always 
 present and increased in the same ratio, so that their sum, 
 as positive and negative quantities, would always be equal 
 to zero. We shall be still less willing to decide in favor of 
 pessimism when we make an assumption which cannot be 
 proved, but which nothing hinders us from believing, namely, 
 that virtue and welfare always overbalance vice and failure, 
 and that this preponderance is always in the same ratio. 
 
 The pessimistic argument falsely assumes that the worth 
 
PESSIMISM 319 
 
 of historical life consists in its realizing a final state of 
 absolute happiness and absolute perfection. But, in the 
 first place, there can never be such a final state. Life, his- 
 torical life, is inconceivable without oppositions : absolute 
 happiness and absolute perfection make striving and there- 
 fore life impossible. Moreover, the value of life is not 
 determined by the end which it reaches, but by its entire 
 course. So it is with an individual life. Boyhood and youth 
 are valuable not only because they lead up to manhood, but 
 valuable in themselves, just as valuable as manhood and 
 old age. The same may be said of historical life. Let us 
 sincerely hope that later generations will be happier and 
 more virtuous than their predecessors ; but it will be no 
 reproach to history if they are not. The preceding ages 
 are not merely means to an end, not merely so many stages 
 over which the last one passes to perfection and happiness : — 
 they lived their own life, and this had an independent 
 value. The Greeks and Romans did not live in order to 
 leave us a few remnants of their civilization ; they lived for 
 their own sakes, and their life merely receives additional 
 value from the fact that it forms a part of the larger life 
 of humanity. Had history ended, as primitive Christianity 
 expected, with the first century of our era, the value of 
 the historical life preceding it would not have been destroyed 
 and annulled, as it were ; but just as each day of historical 
 life has its own cares, so it has its own worth, of which no 
 subsequent occurrence can deprive it. It can only be enhanced 
 in value by being rationally connected with the next day. 
 Historical life has often been compared to a drama ; indeed, 
 it is the great drama, of which all the dramas of the poets 
 are but small imitations. No one believes that the drama 
 on the stage receives its value from the last act or from the 
 final state realized by the persons in the cast. Its value is 
 determined by the contents of the entire play ; each scene 
 contributes to it. We, of course, demand that the scenes of 
 
320 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 the drama be more than disconnected fragments ; we expect 
 them to make a rational whole, in which each particular ele- 
 ment shall have its teleologically necessary place. We expect 
 a similar connection and progress in history. The particu- 
 lar events and the particular actors must not merely form a 
 disconnected aggregate or succession, but a natural and har- 
 monious whole. It is true, as I have repeatedly pointed out, we 
 cannot reveal the logical connection in the history of 
 humanity, as we can interpret a drama, and show how the 
 different parts necessarily follow from the idea of the whole ; 
 this would be the business of the philosophy of history. But 
 to this branch of knowledge the Pythagorean maxim that God 
 alone has philosophy is particularly applicable. We human 
 beings look at history as the multitude, according to Goethe, 
 look at a play ; they see the particular occurrences and are 
 pleased with the constant change of scene, but they do not 
 grasp the meaning of the whole. So our historical science 
 brings together a lot of fragments ; but the master who will 
 form them into a whole, who will rethink the divine thought 
 of the history of humanity and give it expression, has not 
 yet appeared, and will perhaps never appear. Only occa- 
 sionally do we seem to see rational connections. This may 
 strengthen our faith that there is a universal reason per- 
 vading the universe, which combines the elements of histori- 
 cal life according to an inner necessity. I said above that 
 autobiographies were usually biodicies. If ever humanity 
 writes its autobiography at the end of its days, replete though 
 it may be with accounts of work and struggle, misery and 
 failure, it will, we believe, be a biodicy and a theodicy. 1 
 
 Die Menschheit selbst in ihrem dunklen Drange 
 War sich des rechten Weges wohl bewusst. 
 
 1 [Williams, A Review of Evolutionary Ethics, Part II., chaps. VIL, VIII. ; 
 Mackenzie, Manual, Moral Progress, chap. XV. See also, Lessing, Erziehung 
 des Menschengesrhleckts (Engl. tr. in Bonn's Library), and Kant, Das mag in der 
 Theorie richtig sein. — Tht.j 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE EVIL, THE BAD, AND THEODICY* 
 
 1. Theodicies are not in favor in our times. We derive 
 more pleasure from the analytical contemplation of evil and 
 from reviling the nature which produces it. Nevertheless, I 
 shall venture to make the untimely attempt to justify the 
 evil in the world. Of course, we cannot prove that the world 
 as it exists, is absolutely good, or even that it is the best of 
 possible worlds — we do not know much of the absolute or 
 the possible ; but we can endeavor to say what it is for us. 
 And it may, in my opinion, be shown that the universe, as 
 it is, is essentially adapted to our nature. It supplies us with 
 appropriate conditions of growth, furnishes our capacities 
 with the necessary tasks, and gives to our life, if only we 
 wish it, a rich and beautiful content. We could not, being 
 what we are, have any use for, or tolerate, a world differently 
 constituted. Whoever regards this as self-evident, holding 
 that our nature no less than the organism of every animal 
 species is suited to its environment, may dismiss all dis- 
 cussions concerning the evil as superfluous. I desire to add, 
 however, that the evil in the world can be justified only in a 
 general way. It will always be impossible to point out the 
 teleological necessity of a particular evil in a particular case, 
 
 1 [See the writings of the Stoics, Plotinus, Augustine ; also Spinoza, Tractatus 
 politicus ; Leibniz, Theodic€e ; Kant, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blosser 
 Vernunft (First Part tr. in Abbott), Uber das Misslingen aller pkilosopkischen 
 Versuche in der Theodice'e ; J. Miiller, Die Lehre von der Siinde : Hoffding, Ethik, 
 VI., Das ethisch Bose ; Runze, Ethik, §§ 13, 18; Paulsen, Introduction to Phil* 
 osophy, pp. 262 ft— Tr. J 
 
 21 
 
322 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 just as physics cannot explain the causal necessity of every 
 particular movement. But it may be shown that human 
 historical life with all the truly valuable elements it contains, 
 as a rule, demands the very conditions under which it actually 
 exists. Take away all evils, and you abolish life itself. Evil 
 remains evil, none the less, and bad, bad, but they are not things 
 that ought absolutely not to be. 1 They must be, not for their 
 own sake, however, but for the sake of the good. Yet it cannot 
 be denied that, however we may look at the matter, our think- 
 ing is confronted with peculiar difficulties. We are, in a meas- 
 ure, compelled to form the notion of a life that is wholly free 
 from evil, but every attempt to give it concrete expression 
 fails. The kingdom of God and eternal blessedness are tran- 
 scendent concepts. 
 
 2. It is customary to distinguish between physical and 
 moral evils. We may subdivide the former according as 
 they are caused by nature outside of us or by the nature 
 within us. 
 
 To the first class belong all the things in nature which 
 oppose the needs and wishes of man : the barrenness of the 
 soil, which condemns a people to abject poverty, extreme cli- 
 matic conditions, oppressive heat or severe cold, which dwarf 
 the vital powers ; also all those unfortunate accidents which 
 destroy the fruits of labor and endanger life: floods and 
 droughts, which ruin the crops, lightnings which consume 
 houses, earthquakes which overturn cities. 
 
 All evils of this kind may be embraced under a common 
 head : they thwart our plans or purposes. Let us first con- 
 sider the normal impediments. It is easy to see that there 
 could be no action and purpose without them. All work, all 
 civilization, consists in overcoming such obstacles. If the 
 fields yielded harvests of their own accord, if the forests pro- 
 duced an abundance of all fruits, there would be no agricul- 
 
 i [For the distinction made in the German language between evil and bad, see 
 Kant, Practical Reason, Bk. I., ch. II. (Abbott, pp. 150 f.)— Tk.j 
 
THE EVIL, THE BAD, AND THEODICY 328 
 
 ture or horticulture; if the climate were always absolutely 
 suited to the comforts of mankind, there would be no need of 
 houses ; if tools of all kinds grew upon trees, or shoes fell from 
 heaven once a year, we should need no trades, — we should 
 be living in Utopia. What distinguishes the real world from 
 such a dreamland is the obstacles and the labor made neces- 
 sary by them. Now, no one can doubt that our own world is 
 more adapted to our nature, constituted as it is, than Utopia. 
 As for the extraordinary calamities, it is easy to see that 
 they have the same effect : floods teach us the art of dike- 
 building ; hailstorms, the art of insurance ; earthquakes, the 
 art of public aid. Of course, we cannot prove to the indi- 
 vidual that his misfortune was necessary and good for him in 
 a particular case ; nor would the attempt to do so meet with 
 a favorable response. On the other hand, we may advise him 
 and help him to make the most of his troubles. And perhaps 
 he may at some future time see the evil in a new light. An 
 evil that has been overcome through one's own exertions and 
 with outside help is not only no longer an evil, but has been 
 transformed into a genuine blessing, upon which the memory 
 loves to linger. Who has not at some time or other made the 
 discovery that time transforms evils into blessings ? 
 
 The same may be said of the evils which are peculiar to 
 human nature, all weaknesses and infirmities of body and 
 soul. We can imagine a body that is much more capable of 
 resisting all kinds of harmful influences, one whose strength 
 and endurance is greater, than our own. We can likewise 
 imagine an intellect that far surpasses human intelligence, 
 one that is not forced to wrest every advance in knowledge 
 from error, prejudice, and superstition. But it is easy to see 
 that this brings us to the same conclusion we reached above : 
 the increase of power has the same effect as the decrease of 
 impediments ; the former would lead to Utopia. We prize 
 the products of the soil because we have acquired them by the 
 sweat of our brow. We should not prize truth as we do if it 
 
324 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 were to fall into our laps without any effort on our part. The 
 Pater Seraphicus at the end of Faust speaks of his eyes as 
 " organs of the earthly sphere." This holds of our entire 
 nature ; it is adapted to the universe and the earth, and hence 
 the latter are adapted to our feelings and volitions. Other 
 creatures may require other organs ; ours are suited to our 
 tasks. What was said above of accidental misfortunes may 
 also be said of those which dwarf our nature and our powers, 
 of disease and infirmity and blindness and other organic de- 
 fects. Disease has produced the art of medicine and the 
 science of the body and of life ; it educates the patient and his 
 surroundings, it warns and impels him to economize his vital 
 powers, it is the great school of patience, resignation, tender 
 love, and mercy, qualities which are valuable not only in time 
 of sickness. 1 Similarly, blindness and deafness give to man 
 new and unusually difficult problems to solve ; but they thereby 
 awaken new powers and invent new aids. An ingenious 
 legend deprives Homer of the light of his eyes, merely to 
 endow him with a more brilliant light. Nor can we prove in 
 this case that every evil is invariably necessary to develop- 
 ment and education, but we may say here as before that it is by 
 nature fitted for such a purpose, and that it is a good for him 
 who turns it to good account. At all events, it is wise to in- 
 terpret it so, to regard evil as religious faith regards it, as a 
 trial intended for our salvation. And we must also learn from 
 faith the lesson of modesty, and not claim to understand the 
 connection between evil and salvation in particular cases. 
 Only in a general way can we understand that evils are not 
 only real, but necessary, teleologically necessary. 
 
 " The light dove dividing the air in her flight and feeling 
 
 1 How much surgery, the care of the sick, and the humane regard for life owe 
 to the recent great wars, so that we may perhaps say that the lives of more 
 people have been saved through them during the last twenty-five years of peace 
 than have been lost in the wars, has been shown by Dr. Brinkmann in a beautiful 
 essay in a work published by Licentiate Weber : Geschichte der sittlichen, relig- 
 Often und sozialen Entwickelung Deutschlands in denktzten 35 Jahren (1895). 
 
THE EVIL, THE BAD, AND THEODICY 825 
 
 its resistance, might perhaps imagine that she could succeed 
 much better in a vacuum." Thus Kant illustrates the neces- 
 sity of the facts of experience for the activity of our under- 
 standing. In the same way, the will needs the resistance of 
 the object, evil : there can be no action without resistance, no 
 happiness without obstacles. " Pure " happiness, like pure 
 truth, exists for God alone. We need the additional impetus 
 of ignorance and error, of opposition and evil. 
 
 3. But could not, and should not, at least, moral evil, the 
 bad, have been left out ? 
 
 I believe we must answer the question in the negative, curi- 
 ous though it may sound. Moral evil, too, is, in a certain 
 sense, teleologically necessary. If it were wholly eliminated, 
 human historical life would lack an indispensable element 
 Moral evil appears in two fundamental forms, as sensuality 
 and selfishness. The former embraces all the weaknesses and 
 vices which result when reason and morality surrender the 
 control of life to particular sensuous impulses : intemperance, 
 dissipation, indolence, frivolousness, cowardice. Selfishness 
 is the root of the vices which threaten the welfare of the 
 surroundings : avarice, injustice, malice, haughtiness. We 
 cannot conceive of the possibility of exterminating evil in 
 either form without at the same time striking at the good. 
 The virtues of the first class, prudence, perseverance, cour- 
 age, all presuppose the existence of sensuousness as a medium 
 of resistance. Without the sensuous man's fear of sensuous 
 pain or evil, there would be no courage, without the stimulus 
 of pleasure, no moderation ; hence without potential badness, 
 no virtue, that is, no human virtue. The virtues of the angels 
 may be of a different type, but we can form no notion of 
 them. So, too, the social virtues presuppose the natural self- 
 ishness of the sensuous man : without this there would be no 
 virtues of justice and benevolence in their particularly human 
 form ; they, too, possess an element of self-denial. 
 
 But not only is the potential evil in our own nature an in- 
 
326 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 dispensable means of realizing the good, but the actual evil 
 outside of us is the same : in battling against it virtue grows 
 strong. Injustice arouses in the spectator or victim the idea 
 of the right and the sense of justice ; falsehood and deceit 
 make truth and veracity valuable ; cruelty and malice form 
 the foil for kindness and nobility of soul. In a poem entitled 
 My Teachers, Robert Hammerling brings out the thought that 
 we first become conscious of the true worth of goodness 
 through evil. 1 
 
 All the great heroes of humanity became what they were 
 only by struggling with evil. The sentence and execution of 
 Socrates gave his life the proper setting. Jesus had to be 
 glorified by death. He himself tells us so : " Ought not 
 Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his 
 glory ? " Nothing in this world so moves the heart of man, 
 nothing has aroused greater reverence and has given greater 
 consolation to humanity than the picture of the Crucified One. 
 
 1 I quote a few lines from the poem, which was published in the journal 
 Deutsche Dichtung (1889): 
 
 Yon wem ich wahr sein lernte % Von den Liignern, 
 
 Den Heuchlern, Schmeichlern, Doppelziingigen, 
 
 Klatschbriidern und Skandalgeschichtenjagern, 
 
 Nicht minder von Phantasten, Phrasendrechslern, 
 
 Schonfarbern, geckenhaften Faselhansen. 
 
 Bis in den Grund der Seele so zuwider 
 
 Ward mir die Unwahrheifr durch alle diese, 
 
 Selbst die geringste, dass ich hassen sie 
 
 Und meiden lernte fur mein ganzes Leben. 
 
 Von wem ich Milde lernte 1 Von den Splitterrichtern, 
 
 Von riicksichtslosen Spottern, bosen Zungen, 
 
 Meinungstyrannen und Parteiwiitrichen. 
 
 Von wem ich lieben lernte 1 Von den Hassern, 
 
 Von Egoisten, Menschenfeinden, Neidern, 
 
 Von Seelenmaklern, Thier- und Menschenqualern, 
 
 Vivisektoren, seelenlosen Weibern. 
 
 Von wem ich schweigen lernte ? Von den Schwatzern i 
 
 Von wem ich treu sein lernte ? Von Flatterseelen ! 
 
 Characterfest ? Von Wind- und Wetterfahnen. 
 
 Habt Dank, ihr meine Lehrer ! Was als Lehrgeld 
 
 Ich ench entricbtet, nicht zu theuer acht' ich's. 
 
THE EVIL, THE BAD, AND THEODICY 327 
 
 But it cannot be presented without its historical surroundings, 
 without the Pharisees and the scribes, without the bigoted 
 high priest and the cowardly procurator, without the fanatical 
 mob and the brutal soldiers ; these form the foil for the bright 
 figure of Christ. The old church hymn speaks of a happy 
 fault, a felix culpa, which gave us such a Savior. 
 
 Hence, if we eliminate all evil from history, we at the same 
 time eliminate the conflict of the good with the evil, and lose 
 the highest and grandest possession of humanity : moral 
 heroism. 
 
 But not this alone ; we lose the entire content of historical 
 life. All historical institutions are the product of a struggle 
 between good and evil. Without rapacity and the love of 
 war on the part of neighbors there would be no defensive 
 union ; without injustice and violence among confederates, 
 no legal order ; the original function of the state is to preserve 
 unity and order : it is an armed union against violence and 
 injustice. Eliminate these, let justice and peace, prudence 
 and benevolence, become perfect on earth, and there will be 
 no more work for armies and diplomacy, for courts and police, 
 for governments and officials. The perfect state defeats itself. 
 The church, too, like the state, was established as a power for 
 good, to battle with sin. It, too, would cease to exist if it 
 had completed its work, if it had entirely sanctified humanity: 
 without sin, no church, no forgiveness of sins, no ministry, no 
 missions. On earth there can be only a militant church, the 
 church triumphant belongs to heaven. 
 
 Hence goodness can thrive and grow strong upon earth 
 only in the struggle for existence with evil. We cannot even 
 imagine a history without this antithesis. 1 
 
 But shall we, in acknowledging the teleological necessity of 
 
 1 This is the kernel of truth in Mandeville's remarkable reflections, Private 
 Vices Public Benefits. Hasbach calls attention to the importance of this man in 
 an interesting article in Schmoller's Jahrbuch (1890), and also points out that 
 Pierre Bayle, the great lover of truth and paradox, advanced the same funda* 
 
 mental ideas before him. 
 
328 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 evil, also recognize it as one of the legitimate constituents of 
 reality, equal in. value to the rest ? 
 
 That is not my meaning. The evil has no value whatever 
 as such, and no claim to existence. It exists only for the 
 sake of the good, to enable it to act and realize itself. We 
 have the same relation here as between light and darkness. 
 The painter cannot paint without employing shadows : his 
 aim, however, is not to paint shadows, but lights and colors. 
 So, too, the poet cannot paint without shadows, he needs the 
 ugly, the vulgar, and the base. It is not his purpose, however, 
 to portray these, but the beautiful, the good, and the grand, 
 and in order to bring them out more clearly he places the 
 base by the side of the good, to confound the evil and 
 exalt the good. So, too, the good exists in history and in life 
 for its own sake, and evil for the sake of the good, as a stim- 
 ulus, as an obstacle, as a foil. It is a negative quantity, 
 valueless as such ; it receives a kind of power and reality 
 only through its opposite, the good. But its power does not 
 benefit it, for it is characteristic of evil that it has no con- 
 structive force, because it is divided against itself. It has, as 
 Kant once said, " the quality, inseparable from its nature, of 
 being opposed to itself and self-destructive." This is also 
 shown by the fact that there can be no positive anti-morality ; 
 immorality is, like error, without law. All truth forms a 
 unified system, but there is no system of errors. There is no 
 mark, says Epictetus, for the misses. 
 
 Goethe has a similar conception of the purpose of evil in 
 the world : it is the principle of negation and destruction, the 
 nothing which constantly opposes the something, reality. 
 But Mephistopheles confesses : 
 
 So viel als ich schon unternommen, 
 Ich wusste nicht ihr beizukommen. 1 
 
 1 [That which to Naught is in resistance set, — 
 The Something of this clumsy world, — has yet, 
 With all that I have undertaken, 
 Not been by me disturbed or shaken. 
 
 — Bayard Taylor's Translate 
 
THE EVIL, THE BAD, AND THEODICY 329 
 
 On the contrary ; the spirit which invariably denies, always 
 wills the bad and always works the good. And the Lord 
 expresses the same idea in the Prologue : 
 
 Des Menschen Th'atigkeit kann allzu leicht ersehlaffen, 
 
 Er liebt sich bald die unbedingte Ruh ; 
 
 Drum geb' ich gern ihm den Gesellen zu, 
 
 Der reizt und wirkt und muss als Teufel schaffen. 1 
 
 The inherent unworthiness and failure of the evil also mani- 
 fests itself in self-consciousness : the consciousness of good- 
 ness is peace and joy, the consciousness of evil is discord and 
 unhappiness. This is Mephistopheles' experience. From his 
 first meeting with Faust, in which he bitterly complains that 
 so far everything has gone wrong with him, down to the very 
 end — man mochte rasend werden ! — to his last appearance at 
 the conclusion of the second part, when he feels 
 
 Hiobsartig, Beul' an Beule, 
 
 Der ganze Kerl, dem's vor sich selber graut 
 
 Und triumphiert zugleich, wenn er sich ganz durchschaut — 2 
 
 his mood remains the same : discontent and self-derision are 
 the feelings which he harbors against himself. Whatever he 
 undertakes — though at first it succeeds admirably — finally 
 turns out against him. Both parts of the poem end with the 
 rescue of the soul already caught in his meshes. The last 
 word uttered by him is: 
 
 Du bist getaiischt in deinen alten Tagen, 
 
 Du hast's verdient, es geht dir grimmig schlecht. 8 
 
 Goethe interprets the history of mankind in his poem. The 
 memory of man favors this interpretation. History readjusts 
 
 1 [Man's active nature, flagging, seeks too soon the level ; 
 
 Unqualified repose he learns to crave ; 
 Whence, willingly, the comrade him I gave, 
 Who works, excites, and must create, as Devil. 
 
 — Bayard Taylor's translation.] 
 
 2 [Like Job, the boils have cleft me 
 
 From head to foot, so that myself I shun ; 
 
 Yet triumph also, when my self- inspection's done. — lb.] 
 
 3 [Tricked so in one's old days, a great disgust is ; 
 ^nd I deserve it, this infernal spite. — lb.] 
 
330 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 the good and the bad, which so often seem to change places 
 in the present; she exalts the good and great which dur- 
 ing life appeared in the servant's garb and sat in the prisoner's 
 dock, and proclaims it to all the world ; she confounds the 
 evil and base, which once bestrode the world in pomp 
 and glory, and which was proclaimed so loudly by its satel- 
 lites as the great and real, and reveals it in all its noth- 
 ingness. Thus she derives good from evil. "Ye thought 
 evil against me, but God meant it unto good : " that is 
 the great lesson of history. That is the teaching of the 
 greatest history that was ever lived on earth, the history of 
 Jesus. There is no more elevating and consoling history 
 than the history of the passion. How great Pilate seemed 
 to himself when he sat in judgment upon Jesus : Do you not 
 see that I have the power to condemn you or to set you 
 free ? The poor mad fool, arraigned before him as the Jewish 
 pretender, surely did not look like a dangerous man, like 
 a man destined to influence the history of the world. Surely, 
 there was no need of killing him, he would not disturb the 
 peace of the Roman Empire. But, Pilate might have been 
 saying, it is a very provoking affair. If I turn him loose, I 
 shall have this band of fanatical priests with their troublesome 
 complaints at my back ; the hounds will not lose the scent of 
 the game. And, after all, what difference does it make whether 
 the fool lives a day more or less ? Therefore take him away 
 and put an end to this business ; I don't want to be annoyed 
 with it again. — And now how the roles have changed ! 
 Long ago Pilate would have been consigned to the great sea 
 of oblivion which had engulfed so many procurators and high 
 priests before him, had not his name attached itself to the 
 memory of the man whom he nailed to the cross : the his- 
 tory of this crucifixion cannot be told without the name of 
 Pilate. And so the story of the sentence pronounced upon 
 Jesus by this easy-going procurator, who was, without doubt, 
 anxious to please his superiors and at the same time to 
 
THE EVIL, THE BAD, AND THEODICY 331 
 
 be popular with the masses and if possible also to be a 
 just man, will be told as long as historical memory lasts 
 upon this earth ; and so, too, the story will be told, till 
 the crack of doom, of the extremely cautious high priest, 
 who succeeded so admirably in proving to his own satisfac- 
 tion and that of the worthy college of counsellors that it was 
 better for one man to die than that a whole nation should 
 perish. The story will be told, not because of any merit on 
 the part of these men, and not to their credit, but in order 
 to impress it strongly upon all high priests and procurators 
 of justice in all the corners of the earth that their judg- 
 ment is not the final judgment upon the value of men and 
 things ; and conversely, in order to give to all those accused 
 and condemned for the sake of truth and justice the con- 
 soling certainty that their cause will be decided before a still 
 higher tribunal than that of their present judges. 1 
 
 So moral evil is constantly annihilated in the memories 
 which mankind preserves of its life; it is degraded to the 
 rank of the worthless and non-existent, serving merely as a 
 foil for something else. 
 
 Would it be foolish to imagine that this memory is a frag- 
 ment of an absolute divine memory, and that the true reality 
 of spiritual things consists in their existing in such an eternal 
 consciousness, and not in their being parts of a passing, 
 temporal consciousness of individuals ? — and that the good 
 alone constitutes the real in the absolute consciousness, while 
 the evil appears merely as the non-existent, just as darkness 
 is not a reality as compared with the light, but merely its 
 negation ? 
 
 1 Thomas Carlyle, the great poet-historian, develops this thought in all his 
 historical dramas. Whatever is real, true, and just is honored by history, not 
 merely by written, but by actual history ; while falsehood and selfishness and 
 vanity are consigned to the nothingness to which they belong. The universe 
 itself constantly strives to do away with the worthless institutions which have no 
 more vitality ; a monarchy or an aristocracy that no longer labors but merely 
 enjoys, is cast off. Only that which labors is real ; that which does not labor 
 does not deserve to be real. 
 
332 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 This conception reminds us of an old remark which Augus- 
 tine, following Aristotle, addressed to the Manichseans : " The 
 evil has no real essence, but the loss or the absence oi the 
 good has received the name of evil.' , 1 Both Spinoza and 
 Leibniz are of the same opinion. Perfection and reality alone 
 are in God. We make a distinction between good and evil 
 simply because our way of looking at things is inadequate; 
 we simply judge the world by its relation to a peripheral 
 point, that is, to ourselves. Everything is necessary and 
 perfect in relation to the unity of reality, that is, God. — 
 True, it must be added, we continue to be peripheral points 
 and cannot get away from ourselves. But we can understand 
 that such is the case, that our conception of things is no 
 more absolute in these matters than in others. And we 
 shall at all events adhere to the view that evil is not on 
 a par with reality and does not possess the force of a 
 negative quantity over and against reality. Hence, we can- 
 not by adding up the good and evil prove that the world 
 is worthless. 
 
 4. Does this conception of the nature and import of evil 
 make us quietistic f It has been charged that it does. I do 
 not believe that the charge is well founded. Our conception 
 does not encourage a man to fold his hands, to recognize the evil 
 as inevitable, and to give it free scope, but rather incites him 
 to combat it and overcome it wherever he finds it ; — indeed, 
 its sole purpose in the world is to be antagonized and over- 
 come. Only in this way can its existence be justified, not by 
 letting it alone. An evil that is given full sway misses its 
 mark. A disease that fails to stimulate the science of medi- 
 cine, that is not employed as a means of exercising patience 
 and benevolence ; poverty which is stolidly borne ; falsehood 
 which is not opposed by the truth ; wickedness which is not 
 confounded, which is not overcome by the good with good- 
 ness, — all these are really evils. You make evils of them, 
 
 1 De Civ. Dei, XL., 9. 
 
THE EVIL, THE BAD, AND THEODICY 333 
 
 you who ought to turn them to good, but surrender to them 
 instead, and give them free scope. 
 
 But, it is said, if evil will abide with us, and, in a certain 
 measure, must abide with us so long as the earth stands 
 and humanity has historical problems to solve, will not the 
 struggle be a futile one ? Of what use is it to strike off a few 
 heads from Hydra if new ones are constantly to take their 
 place ? Will not those who understand the nature of evil 
 necessarily grow tired of the game, and resign themselves to 
 fate? 
 
 My answer is : The impulse to combat evil does not spring 
 from a conception of a perfect state to be realized by the con- 
 flict, but from the feeling aroused by the pressure of the 
 particular evil at hand. The general belief that the satisfac- 
 tion of every need, the removal of every evil, will invariably 
 be followed by new ones will neither hinder action nor weaken 
 its effects. Even if we should be convinced that want and 
 misery, injustice and falsehood, will exist world without end, 
 we shall not cease combating them wherever they show 
 themselves. And this is as it should be ; the struggle can 
 never be absolutely ineffectual. One result is bound to follow 
 under all circumstances : our antagonism places us in the 
 ranks of those who are fighting for the good and the right. 
 The immediate and real purpose of every human being is not 
 to obtain happiness and perfection for the human race, but to 
 live his own life worthily, and this end he can realize under 
 all conditions. " The important thing to the man of action is 
 that he do the right ; whether the right is done or not need 
 not concern him." l Whoever is guided by these thoughts will 
 realize something besides. Whoever weakly succumbs to evil 
 as to something that cannot be overcome, will surely be over- 
 come by it ; inaction is followed by discouragement and 
 weariness. So soon, however, as a man begins to defend him- 
 self, he becomes conscious of his own activity and strength, 
 
 1 Goethe, Spriiche in Prosa. 99. 
 
834 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 and feels that the evil which he is attacking recedes. The 
 satisfaction thus experienced by him is not destroyed by the 
 thought that another evil may take the place of the van- 
 quished one. Let the coming generations cope with the un- 
 known evils in store for them as best they may. That is not 
 our concern ; sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. 
 
 Only in a certain sense will our conception make us, not 
 quietistic, but calm and patient. It makes us hopeful of the 
 final outcome ; the good will conquer, for it is God's cause, it 
 is the only true reality. And it softens our anger, it trans- 
 forms it into the deepest pity. If the evil-doers were really 
 and ultimately successful in the world, it would be difficult or 
 impossible to tolerate them or to forgive them. But the evil 
 does not benefit itself ; nay, it benefits the good, it serves 
 as a means to its perfection, in spite of itself. Jesus does not 
 part from the world with a curse upon his lips, but with a 
 prayer : Forgive them, for they know not what they do. They 
 will not accomplish what they desire, my death ; but they are 
 working for what they do not desire ; the curse will fall upon 
 them ; not my curse, but the consequences of their own deeds, 
 as the eternal order of things demands. " It must needs be 
 that offences come ; but woe to that man by whom the offence 
 cometh." 
 
 So, too, the great poet lets his good characters depart from 
 the world without hatred and bitterness, after they have suf- 
 fered the deepest and most cruel wrongs : Cordelia and Des- 
 demona die in peace, without hatred. Thus they overcome 
 evil with good, the evil has no power over them, it cannot 
 destroy their inner peace, it is a means of testing and purify- 
 ing them; the evil defeats itself and is annihilated. 
 
 The proper use, therefore, which we should make of evil 
 and wickedness is this : we should antagonize it honestly and 
 energetically, and make it a means of our own perfection and, 
 so far as we can, of that of others. 
 
 On the other hand, it may also be put to a false use. We 
 
THE EVIL, THE BAD, AND THEODICY 335 
 
 may either endure it stolidly and ill-humoredly and permit it 
 to conquer us, or we may exercise our wits in contemplating 
 and analyzing it. The latter was Hamlet's art, and the cause 
 of his ruin. 
 
 5. I wish to add a few words concerning an experience 
 which we naturally regard as the greatest of all evils, death. 
 Individuals die, nations die, humanity will die. Does not 
 this seem like a judgment in which reality pronounces upon 
 the vanity and nothingness of life ? 
 
 That is a false view in my opinion. It is true that death at 
 first sight seems to be an external necessity for the indi- 
 vidual. But it is not hard to convince ourselves that its 
 necessity is not an external, but an inner, teleological neces- 
 sity. A saying of Goethe's is often quoted : " Death is an 
 artifice of nature to have much life." It is certainly the arti- 
 fice which nature employs to have historical life. Without 
 change of generations, there would be no history. Immortal 
 men would lead an unhistorical life, a life of whose contents 
 no mind could form a picture. Moreover, without the relation 
 of parents and children the virtues would be lacking which 
 give human life its greatest value : love, care, reverence, 
 piety. Hence, whoever desires life, historical human life, 
 also desires its condition, death. 
 
 Furthermore, a human life is not infinite in its nature ; it 
 exhausts its powers and its contents. Every action, so 
 physiology and psychology tell us, leaves behind it a tendency 
 to repetition. Thus arise fixed habits of thought and action, 
 the conditions of efficient activity. But the same principle 
 that leads to evolution also leads to involution, and at last 
 produces torpor. The will and the understanding gradually 
 lose the flexibility which they must have to adapt themselves 
 to the ever-changing problems and conditions. The old man 
 at last completely loses the faculty of receiving new impres- 
 sions from the external world, and, with it, the power to act 
 upon them. He becomes a stranger in the world ; he has lived 
 
336 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 himself out of it, so to speak ; his exit is the last necessary 
 step in a long journey. A timely death is not to be inter- 
 preted as the overthrow of life by an external force, but as 
 its inner necessary conclusion. So it is regarded by the 
 friends of the dying man, and not infrequently also by 
 the dying man himself. After the completion of his life 
 he desires to be gathered to his fathers ; he parts from life 
 with thanks to its giver. If such a death were the rule, no 
 one would call it an evil, neither the survivors nor the dying 
 man. He has realized his desires, and that for which he 
 lived abides ; — his descendants, his nation, the true, the 
 beautiful, and the good ; everything for which he lived, abides. 
 It is different when death cuts off a life before its time, be- 
 fore it is completed, perhaps even before it has begun. 
 Here we stand as before an insoluble riddle. An epidemic 
 breaks out in a town ; like a blind fate it steals through the 
 multitude, attacking now this person, now that one, as 
 chance decrees. Even the most cocksure interpreters of the 
 ways of Providence are in the habit of confessing here that 
 God's counsels are inscrutable. Indeed, it would evidently be 
 presumptuous for the human mind to attempt to understand 
 the teleological necessity of the particular cases. Here 
 humble resignation alone is fitting. And it is possible. For 
 no one knows what might have been in store for him who, 
 as we say, dies before his time. Many a man would have 
 been esteemed happy if an early death had spared him from 
 outliving what was the joy of his life. As may be gathered 
 from Solon's remark, a beautiful death in the bloom of youth 
 was not regarded by the Greeks as- necessarily a misfortune. 
 And the teleological necessity of the universal law that death 
 does not merely take away the old and decrepit, but also 
 cuts down youth in the full power and enjoyment of life, 
 may also be explained in another way. The Greek sage, 
 Bias of Priene, is said to have uttered the following wise 
 remark : " So seek to live as though you were fated to live a 
 
THE EVIL, THE BAD, AND THEODICY 337 
 
 long and a short time." 1 The thought which this maxim 
 wishes to convey is this : You do not know when the end will 
 come, hence arrange your life so that you may cheerfully die 
 to-morrow, and also so that you may have the strength and the 
 courage for a long life. To be prepared is everything ; you 
 ought to be ready for life as well as for death. If you are, 
 you will believe what the hymn says, that the best time for 
 dying is God's time. 
 
 When the individual dies he is uplifted by the thought that 
 his life and its achievements will benefit those who come 
 after him ; he himself is perpetuated in the life of his 
 descendants and people. But suppose we are forced to assume 
 that our people, too, will die ; yes, that the time will come 
 when there shall be no more life on the earth ? Does not this 
 break down the last support, the last prop, as it were, upon 
 which all values are based ? And it seems hardly possible to 
 escape the thought. That the peoples repeat the stages of life 
 passed through by the individual, on a larger scale, or rather, 
 that the individual repeats the evolution of the race on a 
 small scale, is a fact which forces itself upon us. History 
 shows us that nations, too, grow old and stand still. The 
 stock of fixed habits of thought and action, traditional con- 
 ceptions, institutions, rights and customs, gradually increases. 
 Tradition robs us of the power and courage to act upon the 
 world; the past weighs heavily upon the present. The ina- 
 bility to adapt themselves to new conditions causes the death 
 of historical institutions, although the individuals may, say 
 by receiving new blood into their veins, perpetuate themselves 
 and be employed with the elements of the old civilization, to 
 form a new historical being. It is true, history does not 
 show us that the same thing will happen to humanity as a 
 whole — namely, that it will exhaust itself; but that, indeed, 
 
 1 I find the quotation in one of the able addresses of Franz Kern, Schulreden 
 bei der Entlassung von Abiturienten, 2d ed., 1887 : ovrot iretpi ^v ws Kal b\(yov na) 
 iro\vv xp^ vov $iaxr6fi€vos. [See Diog. Laertius, Book I. — Tr.] , 
 
338 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 has it hardly begun to live as a self-conscious whole. Anal- 
 ogy, however, suggests this thought, while physical reflections 
 also seem to lead us to it. A world-body, too, a stellar sys- 
 tem experiences something like birth, growth, and death. 
 It arises through separation from a mother body, it develops, 
 ripens, produces thousands of living forms ; then grows old 
 and dies. The whole earth with all the living forms upon it, 
 humanity included, undergoes this process. 
 
 Would these thoughts, if they were inevitable, prove the 
 worthlessness of humanity and all life ? Does the transitori- 
 ness of the world prove its nothingness ? I do not believe it. 
 The flower blooms but for a moment, and we have no fault to 
 find. A drama, a tone-poem, has an end ; we do not believe 
 that lessens its value. A finite thing cannot extend its real- 
 ity into infinity, so to speak. The same may be said of the 
 life of a man. It will also hold of the life of a people, nay, 
 of the life of humanity ; its essence, too, is finite and is ex- 
 hausted by a finite evolution. Everything finite is perish- 
 able ; God alone, the Infinite One, fills all times with His 
 presence. — But would not the destruction of humanity mean 
 the destruction of all goods and values ? For what, then, 
 have the untold generations labored, battled, and suffered ? — 
 Well, surely not for a final generation, for one that is 
 not to appear until the end of things. If the life of a gen- 
 eration has no value in itself, if its relation to its immedi- 
 ate ancestors and descendants cannot make it valuable, then 
 its relation to those most remote successors cannot give it 
 worth. The value of our science and philosophy, of our 
 art and poetry, depends upon what they do for us ; it is ex- 
 tremely doubtful whether a remote future will have any use 
 for them. Scholastic philosophy has passed away ; we no 
 longer prize it. That is no argument against its value. If 
 it made the generations who lived in the second half of the 
 Middle Ages wiser and more prudent, if, besides, it prepared 
 the forces which were capable of rising above it, it did every- 
 
THE EVIL, THE BAD, AND THEODICY 389 
 
 thing that could be expected, and it was perfectly proper 
 for it to die after having completed its work ; no philosophy 
 has eternal value. And the same may be said of poetry and 
 art, of states and laws. Nothing that is earthly is imper- 
 ishable, nor is its value dependent upon its imperishability. 
 Life is, as a whole as well as in part, an end in itself. 
 
 Or are we afraid that death will destroy life and its con- 
 tents by hurling it into the past, and hence into nothingness ? 
 But it is n't death that does this ; the passing of time does 
 it at every moment. Every moment of life passes over into 
 the past ; it is destroyed, if going into the past is equivalent 
 to annihilation. If the past life is nothing, death does not 
 have to destroy it. If, however, it is not destroyed and anni- 
 hilated by being past, if it still has reality and significance, 
 death can no longer destroy it. For death has no power to 
 react; nay, it is nothing but cessation, the absence of con- 
 tinuance. Or is the past really worthless and nothing, is 
 only that real which exists now, has only that part of myself 
 and my life reality which is in my consciousness at the pres- 
 ent moment ? If you think so, beware lest reality dissolve 
 before your very eyes. The moment has no breadth, it is a 
 point in which no life can be extended. Life can exist only 
 in a process of time which includes the past and the future, 
 not in a moment of the present. If to be past in life means 
 to be unreal, then life cannot possibly ever be a reality. But 
 we shall return to this subject in a later discussion. 1 
 
 1 Chapter VIII. [See Fechner, Zend-Avesta and Das Buchlein vom Leben 
 nach dem Tode. — Tr.] 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 DUTY AND CONSCIENCE^ 
 
 1. The Origin of the Feeling of Duty. In the preceding 
 chapters we reached the conclusion: That is good which 
 satisfies the will, or toward which it is by nature directed. 
 We found that the will aims at the preservation and perfection 
 of individual and social life. With this view the results of 
 our analysis of the judgments of value which are expressed 
 in language agreed: Such human acts and qualities are 
 called good as have the tendency to promote the welfare of 
 the agent and his surroundings. 
 
 Here, however, we seem to be confronted with a contradic- 
 tion: Good, we may also say in conformity with popular 
 usage, is not to do what we will to do, but what we ought to 
 do. To do good means to do our duty, and our duty does 
 not seem to coincide with the natural will ; hence there is a 
 
 1 [For explanations of conscience, see : — Rational intuitionists : the mediaeval 
 schoolmen ; Cudworth ; Clarke ; Kant ; Fichte ; Janet, Theory of Morals, Bk. 
 III., chap. I. ; Calderwood, Handbook, Part L, chaps. I.-VI. Emotional intuition- 
 ists : Shaftesbury ; Hutcheson ; Hume ; A. Smith ; Rousseau ; Herbart ; Brentano, 
 Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntniss ; Schwarz, Grundzilge der Ethik. Percep- 
 tional intuitionists : Butler, Sermons on Human Nature ; Martineau, Types, vol. 
 II. ; Lecky, chap. I. Empiricists : Hobbes ; Locke ; Paley ; Bentham ; James 
 Mill; John Stuart Mill; Bain, The Emotions and the Will, The Emotions, chap. 
 XV., The Will, chap. X., also Mental and Moral Science. Evolutionists : Darwin, 
 Descent of Man, chap. IV. ; Herbert Spencer, Data of Ethics, §§ 44 ff., Induc- 
 tions of Ethics, Social Statics; Stephen, Science of Ethics, pp. 311 ff. ; Ho ff ding, 
 Ethik, IV. ; Jhering, vol. II., pp. 95 ff ; Wundt, Ethik, Part III., ch. I., 4, pp. 
 480 ff. ; Ree, Die Entstehung des Gewissens ; Miinsterberg, Ursprung der Sittlichkeit; 
 Simmel, Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft, vol. I., chap. I. ; Baldwin, Social 
 Interpretations. — See also Hyslop, pp. 250-348 ; Gass, Die Lehre vom Gewissen. 
 — Tr.] 
 
DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 341 
 
 conflict between duty and inclination. Before the act, the 
 feeling of duty opposes the inclination : it acts as a deterrent ; 
 after the act, if the inclination has triumphed against the 
 feeling of duty, it condemns : it was bad to do what the 
 inclination characterized as good. We call that phase of 
 our nature which opposes inclination and manifests itself in 
 the feeling of obligation and duty, conscience. 1 
 
 What is the meaning of this phenomenon, and how can 
 we resolve the antinomy : That is good which I will, and that 
 is good which I ought to do ? Or is our entire previous 
 conception false ? Is the truly moral good, after all, abso- 
 lutely different from the other good, the end of the natural 
 will, and only like it in name ? 
 
 An examination of the origin of the feeling of duty will 
 assist us in answering this question. 
 
 How does obligation arise in the willing being ? Whence 
 this conflict between natural inclination and duty ? Is it 
 something supernatural, something breaking into the unity 
 of the willing being from without ? According to the 
 religious view it is : for it, conscience is the voice of God. 
 
 This notion contains a germ of truth, but it has no value 
 as an explanation. We have no more right to appeal to God 
 as the cause in morals than in physics. Both the natural 
 law and the moral law may point to something beyond them, 
 to something transcendent. But we cannot assume the 
 transcendent in order to deduce from it the facts of experi- 
 ence ; we must seek for the explanation within the empirical 
 world ; and I believe that we can find it there. 
 
 Darwin attempts such an explanation in the fourth chapter 
 of his Descent of Man. He refers to the traces of similar 
 processes among animals. A female dog is with her puppies ; 
 
 1 [For the psychology of conscience see especially : Sully, The Human Mind, 
 vol. II., pp. 155 ff. ; Baldwin, Feeling and Will, pp. 205 ff. ; Ho ff ding, Psychology, 
 VI., 8, 9 ; Ladd, Descriptive Psychology, pp. 579 ff. ; Jodl, Lehrbuch der Psychologic, 
 pp. 715 ff. — Tk.] 
 
342 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 she sees her master getting ready for the chase ; she hesi 
 tates for a while and finally slinks away to them. Upoi 
 the return of her master she meets him with all the signs 
 of shame ; she feels remorse for having proved unfaith 
 ful to him. A struggle may often be observed in domestic 
 animals between different instincts, or between an instinct 
 and some habitual disposition. Here we have, Darwir 
 believes, the phenomenon in its most primitive form; il 
 is the result of a conflict between an acquired habit oi 
 the will and an original natural impulse. The feeling 
 of inner compulsion to obey the acquired habit instead 
 of the natural impulse is the feeling of duty in its most 
 primitive form; the feeling of discomfort and shame which 
 arises after the original natural impulse has been satisfied in 
 spite of this opposition, is the most primitive form of re- 
 morse. We might, therefore, define the latter as the reaction 
 of a persistent social or artificial instinct against the gratifi- 
 cation of an original impulse, which, though not permanent, 
 is for the time very powerful. The condition of its appear- 
 ance is a memory sufficiently developed to retain vivid 
 impressions of past acts. Now, these feelings necessarily 
 become especially intense in man. His memory retains the 
 past longer and more faithfully, while his will is permanently 
 and powerfully determined by customs, which, to a large 
 extent, emancipate his conduct from temporary impulses. 
 
 The objection is urged : This cannot explain the authorita- 
 tive character which belongs to the human feeling of duty. 1 
 The peculiar compulsion characteristic of obligation does 
 not spring from the impulsive nature of the individual ; re- 
 actions of conscience are totally different from the feelings 
 aroused by the non-satisfaction of impulses. 2 Duty opposes 
 the individual will with an authority which cannot be 
 derived from the natural impulses. 
 
 1 [See, for example, Schurman, Ethical Import of Darwinism, chap. V. — Tb.] 
 a [Martineau, vol. II. p. 419 ff. — Tb.J 
 
DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 343 
 
 I do not believe that it is impossible to explain this fact on 
 the evolutionistic hypothesis. The authority of duty springs 
 from the relation of the will to custom (Sitte), or, what 
 amounts to the same, of the individual to society. 
 
 By the term custom (Sitte) I mean the acts performed by 
 all the members of a tribe, which correspond to the instincts 
 of animals. The actions of animals are governed by three 
 principles : impulse, instinct, and individual experience. 
 Impulse regulates the vegetative-animal functions — nutrition, 
 respiration, reproduction. The term instinct is applied to 
 uniform modes of behavior which solve more complicated prob- 
 lems of animal life, like nest-building, migration, etc. ; such 
 as are acquired by the species in the course of its life, trans- 
 mitted to individuals by heredity, and practised by them 
 without knowledge of their purposiveness. They have been 
 characterized as the organic intelligence of the species. 1 In 
 addition to these, the animal also acquires a small measure 
 of individual intelligence through its own experience. 
 
 The same three principles again meet us in man. The 
 instincts undergo the most peculiar transformation, — they 
 appear as customs. The latter resemble the instincts in that 
 they are stereotyped modes of conduct for the teleological 
 solution of complicated life-problems, as well as in that they 
 are followed without a knowledge of their purposiveness : 
 they represent the intelligence of the race, in which the 
 individual participates. But they differ from instinct : the 
 individual knows of them ; in obeying them, however, he is not 
 conscious of their purposiveness, but of their existence and 
 obligation. He insists upon their observance by others as well 
 as by himself, formulating them into those universal rules 
 which begin with a " thou shalt" or a " thou shalt not." We 
 may therefore define customs as instincts that have become 
 conscious of themselves. The difference is that customs are 
 
 1 [For the psychology of instinct, impulse, etc., see Ladd, James, Baldwin, 
 Sully, Hoffding, etc. — Tb.] 
 
344 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 not, like instincts, inherited organically as natural charac- 
 teristics, but transmitted by conscious activity, through educa- 
 tion. Moreover, customs are upheld by the conscious action of 
 the community : an animal that does not obey its instincts is 
 left to suffer the natural consequences of its behavior ; a 
 man who acts contrary to custom causes a reaction in his 
 surroundings, which may assume many forms, all the way from 
 a scarcely perceptible form of disapproval to extermination. 1 
 Let us take an example. Among many higher animals the 
 sexual function is governed by a peculiar instinct. Their 
 intercourse is not promiscuous, but one male lives with 
 one or more females, at least during the breeding season, 
 jealously excluding other males. This habit is noticed in 
 anthropoid apes, among others ; they are either monogamous or 
 polygamous, each family living separately, or several families 
 living associated in a body ; but under all circumstances the 
 male jealously excludes all rivals. 2 Hence, instinct regulates 
 the function of reproduction so as to hinder promiscuous 
 intercourse as much as possible ; an arrangement which 
 doubtless tends to preserve life. — In man we find the same 
 thing in the custom of monogamous and polygamous marriage. 
 The custom is impressed upon the succeeding generation by 
 education, particularly upon the female ; it is established in 
 the individual by the virtues of modesty and chastity. 
 Whatever offends against these is kept out of reach, and 
 every open breach of propriety is frowned upon as abominable 
 and detestable. The social environment continues the process 
 of education : deviations from the rules of chastity are severely 
 censured, especially in women and by women ; the disapproval 
 of the surroundings is shown by the change in their attitude 
 towards the offenders. In case the custom itself is violated, 
 
 1 Wundt also compares instinct with custom, Ethik, pp. 88 ff . [Eng. trans, 
 pp. 127 ff.]. See also in the same place interesting discussions on the relation be- 
 tween custom and law, usage, habit, fashion, and worship. 
 
 7 Darwin, Descent of Man., ch. XX. 
 
DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 345 
 
 a stronger reaction ensues ; the unmarried woman is excluded 
 from marriage, and a man who marries her and thereby abro- 
 gates the punishment is himself punished with contempt. In 
 case, however, the offender is a married woman, custom 
 demands the punishment of each of the guilty parties, the 
 punishment being especially severe among polygamous 
 nations. 
 
 We may, perhaps, find a similar basis for other customs in 
 natural instincts. Thus, for example, the custom upon which 
 the oldest legal codes were universally based, the custom pro- 
 hibiting the killing, assault, or robbery of a member of the 
 same tribe, may have sprung from the instinct which hinders 
 the individuals of a herd from attacking each other. The 
 relation of authority and obedience, which reaches its highest 
 perfection in the state, is also present, in germ, in the animal 
 herd. 
 
 We can now understand why duty does not appear to be 
 rooted in the will of the individual, but seems to be some- 
 thing external to him, something opposing him with absolute 
 authority. Custom forms the original content of duty . In the 
 higher stages of development the relation between duty and 
 custom changes ; duty gradually assumes a more personal 
 and individual character ; a point to which I shall return 
 later on. But, originally, duty enjoined a life in accordance 
 with custom. Popular usage follows the old conception when it 
 calls dutiful behavior sittlich (customary ; moral), undutiful 
 conduct, unsitilich. Hence we may say: Duty is invested 
 with the authority of custom. In it the will of parents and 
 educators, the will of ancestors, the will of the people, speak 
 to the individual will. To these highest human authorities, 
 a still higher and final authority, the authority of the gods, is 
 universally added. The gods, who are made in the image of 
 man, admit into their nature the will of the people that 
 creates them. As religion develops, they uniformly become 
 the guardians of custom and law. This triple authority of 
 
346 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 parents, people, and gods, reveals itself in the sense of duty : 
 it is a feeling of obligation to a higher will, which sets a 
 limit to the inclinations. To be sure, this higher will is not 
 supra-powerful, like one governing by force or fear ; it is 
 acknowledged internally by the individual will as one having 
 absolute right to command, as one which must, under all cir- 
 cumstances, be obeyed, even where it has not the power to 
 compel. 1 
 
 2. Relation between Duty and Inclination. We return to the 
 question raised at the outset. What is the relation between 
 the good in the sense of the dutiful, and the good as 
 something which agrees with our inclinations and promotes 
 welfare ? 
 
 In the light of our previous discussions, we may now say : 
 The two conceptions of the good are harmonized in the inter- 
 mediate notion of custom (Sitte). Customs are, like in- 
 stincts, to which they were found to be analogous, purposive 
 modes of behavior for solving the various problems of life. 
 They conduce to the preservation of the social whole which 
 creates them, and to the normal development of the individ- 
 uals of whom the whole consists. In so far as duty 
 requires the individual to regulate his acts according to cus- 
 tom, dutiful conduct will tend to promote the welfare of the 
 individual and his surroundings. And inasmuch as the will 
 of every individual primarily aims at this end, the will ulti- 
 mately aims at what duty demands. Inclination and custom, 
 the individual will and the social will, tend, on the whole, to 
 determine conduct in the same way. — Thus, to come back to 
 our example, custom demands that sexual life conform to 
 monogamous or polygamous marriage. In reality, the will of 
 the individual naturally aims at the same thing ; only in ex- 
 ceptional cases do our inclinations deviate from the normal. 
 Custom prohibits the individual from killing, robbing, or 
 
 1 [For a more detailed account of the view advanced in this paragraph, gee 
 Spencer and Bain. — Tr.] 
 
DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 347 
 
 injuring his fellows. In the last analysis, the will of the indi- 
 vidual is also opposed to this ; he desires the life and welfare 
 of his tribe, he also desires to live in peace and friendship with 
 the members of his tribe. That is the meaning of the ancient 
 phrase : Man is by nature an animal sociale ; only in rare, ex- 
 ceptional cases is injury done to a member of the tribe, 
 namely, when the individual will cannot gain a particular pri- 
 vate end in any other way. Custom as such aims at the 
 preservation and welfare of the collective body. Fixed, well- 
 regulated domestic relations, inner peace and security, are ap- 
 parently essential conditions of the welfare of a community as 
 such. If a tribe or people were wholly without them, or if de- 
 viations from them were the rule, the tribe would necessarily 
 succumb, in the struggle for existence, to neighboring tribes 
 having a firmly established moral order. But the welfare 
 of the community includes the welfare of the individuals, 
 indeed the community does not exist apart from its mem- 
 bers. Hence we may also say that custom aims at the pres- 
 ervation and welfare of the individual. And in so far as 
 the individual desires the preservation and welfare of his own 
 life, he desires exactly what custom desires. Indeed he can- 
 not realize his welfare except as custom prescribes, — on 
 the one hand, because this is the most appropriate means 
 of solving a particular problem of life, on the other, because 
 departures from custom would produce a conflict between 
 him and the whole, which would necessarily react unfavor- 
 ably upon his individual welfare. Hence custom and the 
 individual will, duty and inclination, really affect conduct in 
 the same way. Conflicts between the two are accidental and 
 exceptional. 
 
 What a firm hold custom has upon the will of the individ- 
 ual may be noticed when a custom is violated. All the mem- 
 bers of the community at once rise in its defence ; they must 
 consequently desire the stability and supremacy of custom. 
 Only in occasional isolated cases does the individual desire an 
 
348 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 exception to be made in his favor. A custom obeyed by no 
 one and supported by no one would no longer be a custom. 
 The law of custom is therefore also a natural law in the sense 
 that the formula is an expression of actual, universal occur- 
 rences, and not merely of pure obligation. 
 
 But how does it happen that duty and inclination oppose 
 each other in consciousness, if not uniformly, at least fre- 
 quently ? — I believe this may be explained as follows : The 
 individual becomes clearly conscious of custom only when his 
 inclinations are directed towards something contrary to cus- 
 tom. So long as they conform to custom, conscience has 
 nothing to say to him ; silence gives consent. Conjugal affec- 
 tion is not felt as a duty, but when the impulse takes a differ- 
 ent direction, custom arises in consciousness and declares that 
 the satisfaction of such impulses is contrary to duty. The 
 inclination to marry is not felt as a duty ; only in case the 
 impulses no longer tend in the direction of matrimony, as 
 happened during the decline of the ancient nations, is mar- 
 riage regarded as a duty by the community, and felt to be 
 such by the individual. We do not speak of the duty of liv- 
 ing, because the will naturally aims at life. But whenever a 
 man feels an inclination to abandon life, he becomes conscious 
 of the fact that suicide is immoral, and that it is a duty to 
 live. We do not look upon the satisfaction of hunger as a 
 duty, but if it is a duty to live, it surely must be a duty to 
 satisfy hunger. So long as we satisfy our hunger according 
 to custom and usage, the voice of duty is silent, but when we 
 feel inclined to violate custom, it appears in consciousness, 
 say for example, as a prohibition against excess or a parti- 
 cular kind of food. So, too, we feel it to be our duty to 
 acquire and preserve property only when the natural impulse 
 to acquire and possess is absent ; as a rule, we regard it as a 
 duty merely to limit the impulse ; hence the command : Thou 
 shalt not steal, cheat, be avaricious, greedy, or extravagant. 
 We do not feel that it is our duty to speak ; inclination impels 
 
DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 349 
 
 us to do it ; it is a duty to limit the desire ; hence the com- 
 mand : Thou shalt not be garrulous and indiscreet, thou shalt 
 not lie. — It may therefore be said that duty uniformly arises 
 as a limitation of impulses, whose existence it presupposes ; 
 without impulses there would be no duty. It is in its 
 origin essentially negative : Thou shalt not is the formula 
 with which custom, law, duty, originally oppose the indi- 
 vidual when his impulses go too far. The positive formula 
 does not read : Thou shalt, but : I will. Only when the natural 
 impulse or will is lacking does the formula of duty make 
 its appearance, and change the : I will, into the : Thou 
 shalt. 
 
 Hence a contradiction between duty and inclination is to 
 be explained as an exception. The commands of duty or the 
 moral laws are formulae expressing the nature and direc- 
 tion of the real will of a community, which, as a rule, mani- 
 fests itself in all the members of the same. It is no more 
 strange that there should be exceptions in these rules than in 
 physiology ; they are empirical laws of exceedingly com- 
 plicated phenomena. There are blind men and deaf men, and 
 yet it is the rule that men have sight, hearing, and speech. 
 Similarly, the existence of adultery, theft, and falsehood does 
 not do away with the rule that men live in permanent families, 
 possess property, and give expression to their inner states in 
 speech. When we look at a people as a whole, the matter be- 
 comes perfectly plain : obligation and will coincide, the people 
 wills its customs and laws, for these are not imposed from 
 without; — they are the expressions of the nation's particular 
 will. Will and obligation do not entirely coincide in the in- 
 dividual ; there are cases in which he wills what he ought not 
 to do, and conversely : then he looks upon the law as some- 
 thing outside of him, as something limiting his will. Generally 
 speaking, however, he too wills what custom wills, and is always 
 ready to assist in hindering deviations on the part of others, if 
 not in deed at least in word and thought. 
 
35U CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 3. Critique of the Kantian View, 1 According to Kant the 
 conflict between inclination and the feeling of duty is essen- 
 tial to morality. An act, in his opinion, has moral worth, 
 only when the feeling of duty determines the will, in the absence 
 of all inclinations or in spite of them. Hence he does not re- 
 gard it as meritorious to do good from inclination. The "Vicar 
 of Wakefield confessed that nothing gave him greater pleasure 
 than to make people happy ; and that he was not unsuccessful in 
 his efforts his friends are well aware. But, according to Kant, 
 the moralist would have to say that " an action of this kind, 
 however proper, however amiable it may be, has nevertheless 
 no true moral worth, but is on a level with other inclinations. 
 . . . For the maxim lacks the moral import ; namely, that 
 such actions be done from duty, not from inclination. Put 
 the case that the mind of that philanthropist were clouded by 
 sorrow of his own, extinguishing all sympathy with the lot of 
 others, and that while he still has the power to benefit others 
 in distress, he is not touched by their trouble because he is 
 absorbed with his own ; and now suppose that he tears him- 
 self out of this dead insensibility, and performs the action 
 without any inclination to it, but simply from duty, then first 
 has his action its genuine moral worth." 2 The same is true 
 of the preservation of one's own life and the promotion of 
 one's own happiness : " The anxious care which most men 
 take for it has no intrinsic worth." " On the other hand, if 
 adversity and hopeless sorrow have completely taken away 
 the relish for life ; if the unfortunate one, strong in mind, 
 indignant at his fate rather than desponding or dejected, 
 wishes for death, and yet preserves . his life without loving 
 it — not from inclination or fear, but from duty — then his 
 maxim has a moral worth." 3 
 
 1 [Janet, Theory of Morals, Book III., chap. V. ; Mackenzie, Manual, chap. 
 IV., §§ 8 ff. ; Mnirhead, Elements, § 56 ; Bradley, Ethical Studies, Essay IV. — Tr.] 
 
 2 Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Hartenstein's edition, IV., p. 246. 
 [Abbott's translation, Kant's Theory of Ethics, p. 14.] 
 
 3 Ibidem. 
 
DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 351 
 
 This view of Kant's called forth the ridicule of Schiller's 
 well-known lines. A pupil of the critical ethics reveals to the 
 master his scruples of conscience : 
 
 " Gern dien' ich den Freimden, doch thu' ich es leider mit Neigung, 
 Und so wurmt es mieli oft, dass ich nicht tugendbaft bin." * 
 
 Whereupon he receives the following advice : 
 
 " Da ist kein andrer Rath, du musst' sucben sie zu veracbten, 
 Und mit Abscbeu alsdann thun, was die Pflicbt dir gebeut." 2 
 
 This ridicule, we must confess, is not undeserved. Accord- 
 ing to Kant's theory, a man's worth depends entirely upon his 
 ability to eliminate inclinations and impulses from his will, 
 and to determine it solely by the feeling of duty. Such a 
 human being, doing his duty solely for duty's sake, is the 
 most wooden mannikin ever constructed by a system-builder. 
 Nevertheless, there is a germ of truth in the view. The con- 
 flict between duty and inclination is not the rule, and the 
 suppression of inclination by the feeling of duty is not the 
 condition of all moral worth. Still we may say that the true 
 moral character is plainly revealed in such a conflict. When 
 a rich man finds a purse on the street and restores it to its 
 /awful owner, we look upon his conduct as perfectly natural, 
 without regarding it as an evidence of remarkable honesty. 
 The man is perhaps on his way to the stock exchange, where 
 he may, by skilfully manipulating the market, deprive a fellow- 
 speculator of his entire fortune without feeling the slightest 
 compunction. When, however, a poor man finds himself in 
 a similar position, and, actuated by the feeling of duty to 
 return the money, resists his desire to appropriate what is 
 not his, we recognize this as a strong proof of his honesty, 
 nay of his morality. So it is everywhere : where there has 
 
 1 [Gladly I serve my friends, but, alas ! I do it from inclination, hence I am 
 plagued with the doubt that I am not virtuous. — See Schiller's distich-group, 
 Die PhilosopJien. — Te.] 
 
 2 [Your only resource is to try to despise them, and then to do with aversion 
 that which duty enjoins upon you.] 
 
352 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 never been a conflict between inclination and duty, where the 
 will has never had an opportunity of deciding against incli- 
 nation and for duty, the character has not been tested. We 
 have no assurance of moral trustworthiness until the will has 
 shown itself proof against temptation. 
 
 On the other hand, we shall not concede that a will which 
 always naturally inclines to the right, is on that account less 
 worthy than one which has had to battle for its rectitude 
 against an unwilling or dangerous temperament. Kant leans 
 to this view. " If nature," we read in the same place, " has 
 put little sympathy in the heart of this or that man : if 
 he, supposed to be an upright man, is by temperament cold and 
 indifferent to the sufferings of others, perhaps because in 
 respect of his own he is provided with the special gift of pa- 
 tience and fortitude, and supposes, or even requires, that 
 others should have the same — and such a man would cer- 
 tainly not be the meanest product of nature — but if nature 
 had not specially framed him for a philanthropist, would he not 
 still find in himself a source from whence to give himself a, far 
 higher worth than that of a good-natured temperament could be ? 
 Unquestionably. It is just in this that the moral worth of the 
 character is brought out which is incomparably the highest of all, 
 namely, that he is beneficent, not from inclination but from 
 duty." 1 Such a man would certainly be an estimable man, 
 much more so than an effeminate, will-less person, who yielded 
 to the promptings of a compassionate heart ; it does not seem 
 improbable to me that Kant was thinking of himself when he 
 drew this picture ; nevertheless such a character would not be 
 the highest and most perfect type of human nature imaginable. 
 An angel from heaven would, according to the Kantian for- 
 mula, necessarily lack the moral worth " which is incom- 
 parably the highest of all," in so far as his " temperament " 
 would not be in need of and capable of being improved by 
 the will. And yet who would reproach him for this defect ? 
 
 1 [Abbott's translation, pp. 14-15.] 
 
DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 353 
 
 In the poem Das Q-luck Schiller contrasts two persons : the 
 one has, through his own exertions, made an honest man of 
 himself, while the other has been endowed by the gods with 
 a beautiful and noble nature. He calls the latter happy, and 
 assigns to him the higher rank in the moral order : 
 
 Vor Unwiirdigem kann dich der Wille, der ernste, bewahren, 
 Alles Hochste, es kommt frei von den Gottern herab. 1 
 
 He expresses the same idea in a similar poem : Der Genius : 
 
 Muss ich dem Trieb misstraun, der leise mich warnt, dem Gesetze, 
 
 Das du selber, Natur, mir in den Busen gepragt, 
 
 Bis auf die ewige Schrift die Schul' ihr Siegel gedriicket, 
 
 Und der Formel Gef ass bindet den fliichtigen Geist ? 2 
 
 He answers the question : 
 
 Hast du, Gliicklicher, nie den schiitzenden Engel verloren, 
 Nie des frommen Instincts liebende Warnung verwirkt : 
 O dann gehe du hin in deiner kostlichen Unschuld 1 
 Dich kann die Wissenschaft nichts lehren, sie lerne von dir ! 
 Jenes Gesetz, das mit ehernem Stab den Straubenden lenket, 
 Dir nicht gilt's. Was du thust, was dir gefallt, ist Gesetz. 8 
 
 Indeed, Kant, and Fichte still more, exaggerate the role 
 which the consciousness of duty is destined to play in life. 
 Not only is it not true that we are impelled at every step we 
 take by the consciousness of duty, but we cannot even regard 
 this as a fault. It is neither conceivable nor desirable that the 
 natural impulses should be replaced by the " respect for the 
 moral law " as the sole motive of the will. The moral phil- 
 
 1 [The will, the serious will, can guard thee against unworthy things ; but every- 
 thing great is freely bestowed by the gods.] 
 
 2 [Must I distrust the impulse which silently warns me, the law which thou 
 thyself, Nature, hast written upon my heart, until the school has set its seal 
 upon the eternal impress, and the rigid formula binds the soaring spirit ?] 
 
 8 [If thou hast never, thou blessed one, lost thy guardian angel, and hast never 
 suppressed the loving warning of the pious instinct ; O then go on in thy precious 
 innocence ! Science can teach thee nothing, nay, let her learn from thee ! 
 That law, which with an iron rod rules the resisting ones, is not meant for 
 thee. What thou dost, what pleases thee, is law.] 
 
354 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 osophers, to be sure, are all inclined to regard that as the 
 most perfect state in which the action of the will is solely de- 
 termined by the idea of duty. Spinoza's sage is governed 
 wholly by the dictates of reason (ex dictamine rationis ducitur), 
 the impulses no longer influence his conduct ; and the wise 
 man of Bentham or Mill does not essentially differ from him. 
 Indeed, they are both modelled after the Stoic and Epicurean 
 sage. In the real world, the reason or the idea of duty does 
 not play so important a part. It is a necessary regulator of 
 the natural impulses, but it cannot replace them ; the im- 
 pulses are the weights, so to speak, which keep the clockwork 
 of life in motion ; the reason cannot take their place, it has 
 no motive force of its own. 
 
 Kant is here still entangled in the notions of the old ration- 
 alism, whose power, it must be confessed, he did so much to 
 break. In the following period, nature again received her due, 
 the fundamental conception being that the highest and best is 
 not invented by the reason and made according to conscious 
 rule, but is the result of an unconscious growth. This holds 
 true of the good no less than of the beautiful ; the beautiful 
 is not thought out and produced by rational reflection, ac- 
 cording to the rules of aesthetics, any more than the good and 
 perfect is planned and manufactured according to the rules of 
 ethics. The true work of art is unconsciously conceived 
 and produced by the genius ; aesthetics does not play an im- 
 portant part in the process. So, too, the moral genius, " the 
 beautiful soul," safely guided by instinct, lives a good and 
 beautiful life, without constantly reflecting upon the moral 
 law. The rules of aesthetics and ethics possess no inherent 
 motive power. It is their province to guard against trans- 
 gressions ; they are not productive, but restrictive. And it 
 is by no means necessary that the rule be present in con- 
 sciousness during the production of the work of art or moral 
 act, or even occupy the centre of attention ; this would impede 
 and disturb the process of organic growth. It is a well- 
 
DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 355 
 
 known fact that when we begin to reflect upon rules of 
 spelling in writing, we become confused and uncertain. The 
 easiest way to answer a question in orthography is to write 
 the word mechanically. Similarly, many a man decides a 
 moral question better and with greater certainty by perform- 
 ing the act than by reflecting upon it. As Goethe says : 
 
 All unser redlichstes Bemiihn 
 
 Gliickt nur im unbewussten Momente. 1 
 
 Hence the unbiassed mind will not make the moral worth 
 of a man dependent upon whether he thinks much of duty and 
 is conscious of it as a motive. The designedly-moral character 
 is apt to possess something of that " intentionality " which 
 makes such an unfavorable impression upon us, when com- 
 pared with the natural disposition. I do not know whether 
 the descriptions which are given of Kant's life are absolutely 
 faithful, whether Kant really was such a living clockwork, 
 having duty as the mainspring ; but I must confess that these 
 descriptions have never pleased me. The feeling of duty 
 may have prevented much evil in the world, but the beautiful 
 and the good have never sprung from the feeling of duty, but 
 from the living impulses of the heart. 
 
 The creative artists are all familiar with this thought ; it is 
 constantly emphasized by the poets, by Goethe and Schiller, 
 as well as by Riickert : 
 
 Mein Herz, sieh an den Baum in seiner Bliitenpracht ; 
 Es wird ihm gar nicht schwer, was ihn so herrlich macht 
 Aus seineni Innern seheint, er braucht sich nicht zu zwingen, 
 Ein Strom von Lust und Licht und Liebe zu entspringen, 
 Mit Miihe ringt er nicht, das Einzle zu gebaren, 
 Das Ganze lebt und wirkt, er lasset es gewahren, 
 Du solltest deine Pflicht, wie er die seine, thun, 
 Dann warest du so licht, und bist so triibe nun. 
 
 4. Let me add a remark concerning a few other errors of 
 the a-prioristic-intuitionalistic moral philosophy. It asserts 
 
 i [All our best endeavors succeed only in the unconscious moment. — Tk.J 
 
35$ CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 that the laws of duty are axiomatic formulae, which are recog- 
 nized with immediate and intuitive certainty, like the mathe- 
 matical axioms. The propositions : Just and honest action is 
 good, Lying and cheating is bad, are accepted as absolutely 
 true as soon as they are understood. It is neither necessary 
 nor possible to prove their validity. 
 
 We shall have to concede that the moral laws are im- 
 mediately and universally recognized as valid propositions. 
 They are nothing but the positive or negative expressions of 
 custom, and every member of the community is conscious of 
 custom, if he has any part in the life of the community. He 
 knows of custom (Sitte) through the countless particular judg- 
 ments by which others and he himself have approved and dis- 
 approved of acts ; the certainty with which he immediately 
 decides in individual cases depends upon practice. He also 
 knows of custom through universal formulae ; commandments 
 and prohibitions have been impressed upon him from child- 
 hood up ; and Schopenhauer says, not without reason, that 
 truths which we do not remember having learned are regarded 
 as innate. Moreover, language has incorporated moral judg- 
 ments into the meaning of the words which designate modes 
 of conduct: the terms falsehood and avarice express disap- 
 proval, just as frankness and frugality express approval. 
 Hence the proposition : Falsehood is bad, is an " analytic " 
 judgment which is formed a priori. Finally, it is no less cer- 
 tain that the moral laws arise in consciousness as " categorical 
 imperatives " : they do not counsel us to promote individual 
 or universal happiness, but appear as absolute commands and 
 prohibitions. So far, therefore, intuitional ethics asserts facts 
 which cannot be doubted. But it is in error when it goes on 
 to claim that these imperatives are objectively groundless, and 
 that the sole business of ethics consists in systematizing the 
 particular commandments and prohibitions, and perhaps in 
 subsuming them under a universal principle, say for example, 
 their fitness to become universal law. There is unquestion- 
 
DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 357 
 
 ably an objective ground for the existence and validity of the 
 moral laws, which appear in consciousness in the form of ab- 
 solute commands and prohibitions ; their observance is the 
 condition of the welfare of the individual and the species. 
 And it is the business of moral philosophy to discover this 
 ground, just as it is the business of a philosophy of law to ex- 
 plain the raison d'etre of law, that is, to prove its teleological 
 necessity by indicating the problems of human collective life 
 which it solves. Inventories and codifications will never 
 make a science, least of all a philosophical science. 
 
 Another error to which intuitional ethics inclines is the 
 error that conscience invariably reveals to everybody, with 
 subjective certainty and objective infallibility, what duty de- 
 mands. Thus Kant contends that " the commonest intelli- 
 gence can easily and without hesitation see " what the moral 
 law requires to be done ; or, "what duty is, is plain of itself to 
 every one ; but what is to bring true durable advantage, such 
 as will extend to the whole of one's existence, is always veiled 
 in impenetrable obscurity." 1 
 
 The latter statement is certainly true ; but it is as cer- 
 tainly not true that no one is ever in doubt as to what duty 
 demands. In many cases, of course, our duty seems perfectly 
 clear immediately, but by no means in all. 
 
 An official of an insurance company, in violation of the 
 rules of his corporation, shows partiality to an insurer, and 
 receives compensation for his act. That is theft, says con- 
 science. He does the same thing, to please a colleague, or 
 because of his friendship for a neighbor, but without gain 
 to himself. That is contrary to duty, says his conscience, 
 you are employed to use your best endeavors to promote the 
 interests of the company and to protect it against loss. But 
 let us again change the conditions, let us say that the insured 
 has fulfilled all his obligations to the company, but has 
 
 1 See Critique of Practical Reason, Book I., ch. I., § 8, Remark II,, Abbott's 
 translation, p. 12G. 
 
358 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 overlooked a trifling, purely technical detail, and that this 
 oversight legally releases the company from its obligations. 
 Let us imagine that, upon the day of payment, the official acci- 
 dentally discovers the mistake. He knows that the company 
 can refuse payment. But he also knows that, unless the 
 payment is made, the insured or his heirs will suffer extreme 
 hardships. The company, however, is paying a dividend of 
 eighty per cent. What shall he do ? Has he the right to 
 overlook the mistake ? Or shall he appeal to the company's 
 sense of justice ? As though he did not know that corpora- 
 tions have no souls ! His conscience does not tell him what 
 to do. — Can a Kantian with his magic formula : Act as if the 
 maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal 
 law of nature, reacli an unambiguous conclusion? 
 
 It is undoubtedly contrary to duty to gain possession of my 
 neighbor's property by burglary or theft. But there are other 
 means : he is in trouble, and I can lend him money, and I 
 can by skilful operations get hold of his property in a lawful 
 way. That is usury, says conscience. But to another man's 
 conscience it may seem perfectly proper: what is not pro- 
 hibited is allowable ; business is business, and everybody will 
 have to look out for himself. But let us modify the case. 
 Is it right for me to lend a man money at interest, when I 
 know that it is to my advantage, but not to his, to do so ? 
 Must I at least first convince myself that I am not benefit- 
 ing myself at his expense ? And how about commercial 
 transactions ? A banker is in possession of a piece of news 
 that is not yet known to others ; say, for example, he has 
 heard of a revolution in Spain. He sells his Spanish bonds, 
 and the buyers, instead of him, lose a million, as the next 
 morning shows. Is that right? A beginner on the stock- 
 exchange may feel somewhat ill at ease after such a venture. 
 His conscience reminds him : Do not do unto others as you 
 would not have them do unto you ; he would presumably not 
 like to look his customers in the face the next day. But 
 
DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 359 
 
 shall I first inquire, every time I make a trade, whether the 
 other party is going to suffer thereby ? But that is impossible. 
 Commerce is possible only on the assumption that both 
 parties are tacitly agreed that each is guarding his own 
 interests, and expects the other to do the same. Even the 
 most honest woman buys where she can buy the cheapest, 
 without asking whether the seller can exist under the cir- 
 cumstances ; and every seller takes what he can get without 
 asking whether his goods are worth so much to the buyers 
 or not. Where shall we draw the line between that which 
 is unquestionably right and that which is unquestionably 
 wrong ? 
 
 The above cases are taken from the sphere of common 
 honesty, and are comparatively simple. The difficulties be- 
 come still more apparent when we consider more com- 
 plicated, delicate, personal relations. A young man has 
 promised a girl to marry her; must he keep his promise? 
 Certainly, he has given his word — his word is sacred. But it 
 happened at a time and under conditions in which he was 
 not wholly master of himself; he now sees that he cannot 
 keep his word without getting into all kinds of trouble. 
 Can he break the engagement without her consent ? But 
 what would promises be worth if they could be broken as soon 
 as we found it inconvenient to keep them? But he was de- 
 ceived in the person, he was deluded into taking the step by 
 all sorts of feminine artifices, and now he finds, upon closer 
 acquaintance, that it would be intolerable for him to live with 
 her, that it would be as much of a misfortune for her as for 
 him : what ought he to do ? She will not give him up ; ought 
 he to marry her, or to keep putting it off from year to 
 year, or shoot himself through the head ? Or would it be 
 right and dutiful to say, I cannot and I will not? 
 
 A politician or a statesman differs from the party or the 
 government to which he belongs. A platform is made or a 
 manifesto published in which the point at issue is emphasized 
 
360 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 as an essential doctrine of the party, or as a special aim of 
 the government. He is asked to sign the paper. What 
 ought he to do ? Sign it ? But then he would be subscrib- 
 ing to a lie. Leave the party ? By doing this, he would not 
 only end his public career, but perhaps also seriously damage 
 the cause which he is supporting. What shall he do ? Will an 
 appeal to the Kantian formula of duty tell him ? I do not be- 
 lieve it. He will ask himself whether it is a matter of great 
 importance. If not, then it will be possible for him to com- 
 promise ; for how could there be co-operation without compro- 
 mise ? If, however, the matter is of vital importance, he will 
 say to himself : It is better for me to separate from my col- 
 leagues than to be an insincere and half-hearted follower. — 
 But what are the essentials ? — When the German bishops 
 who opposed the dogma of infallibility, accepted the dogma 
 after the decision had been rendered, they were bitterly re- 
 proached. Ought they to have continued in their opposition, 
 and left the church ? But could they not justly have said the 
 church is more than a piece of church constitution ? Still, 
 does any one among them recall those days with any degree of 
 satisfaction ? And has any one of those who took the opposite 
 course reproached himself for it ? 
 
 But, it i iA ay be retorted, this makes all moral questions 
 uncertain, and subjects them to unbridled casuistry. I do 
 not believe that it makes them uncertain, they are uncertain, 
 and will always remain so. The matter is really not so 
 simple as those imagine who hold that an innate power, called 
 practical reason, or conscience, infallibly regulates a man's 
 conduct by subsuming each case under a general rule. The 
 problem surely does not consist merely in deciding given 
 cases according to a ready-made formula. 
 
 The mistaken idea that there can be no doubt in particular 
 cases concerning what is dutiful or undutiful connects itself 
 with another error, peculiar to intuitional ethics, that the 
 laws of morality are laws with absolutely no exceptions, and 
 
DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 361 
 
 that every act not agreeing with the formula of the law must 
 be contrary to duty, and immoral. We have already touched 
 upon this point above (pp. 233 ff.). Inasmuch as it most 
 clearly emphasizes the difference between the two schools of 
 moral philosophy, I shall again consider it here. 
 
 Kant regards the absolute logical necessity of the moral 
 laws as the backbone of his entire theory ; according to him, 
 uniformity (Gesetzmas&igkeit) is inseparable from morality. 
 For teleological ethics, on the other hand, the moral laws 
 are empirical laws, like the laws of physiology, or the rules 
 of dietetics based upon them. Like all empirical laws they 
 are open to exceptions. Although it is undoubtedly true that 
 certain modes of conduct have the tendency to promote or, 
 as the case may be, to injure the life of the agent and his sur- 
 roundings, it is always possible, owing to the great complexity 
 of human relations, for circumstances to arise in which the 
 natural effect is changed into its opposite. Hence the formal 
 breach of a moral law may become morally possible, nay 
 necessary. We are never in doubt about this when it comes 
 to actual practice. That intuitional ethics cannot explain this 
 fact is a further proof of its insufficiency. 
 
 Let us take an example. The first duty of the soldier is 
 obedience, unconditional obedience in the service. Military 
 obedience is a fundamental condition of the existence of the 
 modern state. With what terrible seriousness we regard this 
 duty may be seen from the severity of the penalties imposed 
 for the slightest infraction of the rule. Nevertheless, circum- 
 stances can arise under which this duty may be violated with- 
 out remorse and without reproach. In the convention of 
 Tauroggen General York made a treaty with the enemy on his 
 own responsibility, basing his action upon his individual 
 opinion of the political situation, in open opposition to the 
 commands of the king, and, therefore, openly breaking the 
 rule of military obedience. Was the act contrary to duty, 
 and therefore morally wrong? Certainly, according to the 
 
362 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 Kantian formula. York surely could not have willed that the 
 maxim of his action become a universal law of nature and 
 determine the actions of the Prussian soldier, as, for instance : 
 When the situation of the country seems to you to demand a 
 different course of conduct from the one ordered by the com- 
 mander-in-chief, then act according to your own judgment and 
 contrary to his command. Nevertheless, York decided after 
 much hesitation, to do that very thing. The outcome was 
 doubtful ; his conduct might, to say nothing of the breach of 
 obedience and the bad example, have caused the ruin of 
 the State. And yet he acted as he did. It seemed possible 
 to him to save the country from a humiliating and unten- 
 able position at that particular time, perhaps only at that 
 time and only by his independent action. The results justi- 
 fied his conduct ; the king himself afterwards recognized 
 this, and history now praises York's decision ; even a French 
 historian will hardly blame him. This amounts to a con- 
 fession that cases can occur, in which the safety of the 
 country may demand of an officer what the fundamental law 
 of the service prohibits : independent action in political 
 questions, against the express command of the government. 
 No general rule can state when such an emergency exists. 
 We can lay down as the only possible universal rule : The 
 soldier must obey, and under no circumstances shall he be 
 impelled by independent political reflections to act contrary to 
 his orders. But nevertheless a condition is tacitly added : 
 Provided the welfare of the country does not make a different 
 procedure absolutely necessary. Salus populi suprema lex: 
 an awfully dangerous, yet never-to-be-abolished proviso of all 
 particular laws, even of the most inviolable. It is just that a 
 mistaken appeal to this law on the part of the soldier should 
 be punished with death. 
 
 There is no moral law which is not subject to the same 
 condition, none, therefore, that does not admit of exceptions. 
 Like the Sabbath, the moral laws are made for man, not man 
 
DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 3t>3 
 
 for the moral laws. The jurists have an old maxim : Fiat 
 Justitia,pereat mundus. In accordance with this, the Kantian 
 moral philosophy says : Fiat lex, pereat vita. There is a good 
 reason for the formula : the stability of law is more important 
 than such and such a particular purpose ; but, ultimately, the 
 law exists for the sake of the people, to preserve them and not 
 to destroy them. And the same relation obtains between the 
 moral law and human life. Ultimately it owes its value 
 solely to the fact that it has the tendency to preserve life and 
 not to destroy it. Should a case arise in which obedience to 
 the law would produce permanent ruin, the form must give 
 way to the content, the means to the end. We shall have oc- 
 casion, later on, to show that the particular moral laws are 
 subject to this condition ; the lie of necessity, the necessary 
 wrong, which the jurists call the law of necessity, are such 
 exceptions. 
 
 5. Conscience. We defined conscience as the consciousness 
 of custom or the existence of custom in the consciousness of the 
 individual. The authority with which it speaks is the au- 
 thority of all those who support and protect custom and law 
 against the particular deviating will: first, the authority of 
 parents and teachers, who impress custom or objective moral- 
 ity upon the soul of the child ; then the authority of the wider 
 circles, which pronounce judgment upon the conduct of the 
 individual by the bestowal of praise and blame, honor and 
 disgrace ; further, the authority of the law and the magistracy, 
 which deters the offender by threats and punishments ; finally, 
 the authority of the gods, which surrounds custom and law 
 with religious awe. The individual compares his conduct 
 with the standard thus sanctioned and protected, and regulates 
 his individual will according to the universal will, which, after 
 all, is his own general or fundamental will. Hence arise those 
 emotions which are experienced before the deed as the de- 
 terrent or impelling conscience, and after the deed, as 
 remorse or moral satisfaction, The content of conscience is 
 
364 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 varied, as varied as the customs themselves, which the differ- 
 ent tribes and nations evolve according to their different 
 natures and different conditions of life. The form, however, 
 is universally the same : a knowledge of a higher will, by 
 which the individual will feels itself internally bound. This 
 higher will, is, in the last analysis, universally regarded as 
 the will of a superhuman, of a divine power. 
 
 Those who interpret conscience as a voice from above, and 
 regard their conception as an explanation of its origin, reject 
 the historical-psychological explanation, not only as an unsat- 
 isfactory, but even dangerous theory : it robs conscience of its 
 sanctity, and hence also destroys its efficacy. And this con- 
 clusion is not infrequently accepted by those at whom it is 
 aimed. Thus P. R£e, in his subtle work on the Origin 
 of Conscience?- holds : " The practical consequence of the his- 
 torical-psychological examination is that the commands of 
 conscience will lose their sanctity ; whoever knows how human 
 were the agencies which produced conscience loses the abso- 
 lute fear of violating its commands." 2 
 
 I cannot share this view. It does not seem to me that the 
 loss of the authority of conscience is either a logical conse- 
 quence or a necessary psychological effect of the anthropolog- 
 ical explanation. It is not a logical consequence, for why 
 should the moral laws lose their validity because we are con- 
 vinced that they express the experience gradually acquired by 
 the race in regard to what is wholesome and harmful ? On 
 the contrary, what stronger proof can we desire than the 
 hereditary wisdom of a people ? In conscience we have the 
 subjective reflex of the objective natural order of moral life, 
 as it has developed in custom and law ; surely this knowledge 
 cannot destroy the validity or the teleological necessity of the 
 
 1 Ur sprung des Gewissens. 
 
 2 [See also Guy an, Esquisse d'une morale sans obligation ni sanction: "The 
 scientific spirit is the enemy of all instinct ; it tends to destroy the sense of 
 obligation on which instinct is based. Every instinct disappears upon conscious- 
 ness." — Tk ] 
 
DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 365 
 
 order. Nor can the psychological effect of the view be 
 indifference to custom. Not even when we have convinced 
 ourselves of the falseness or absurdity of inherited or educa- 
 tionally acquired elements of soul-life, do they cease to 
 influence us. I should like to know how many of our most en- 
 lightened natural-scientists are absolutely free from supersti- 
 tious fear ; people who do not believe in ghosts in the day-time 
 are plentiful, but how is it at night ? And here, in our case, 
 we are not dealing with false or meaningless elements of pre- 
 sentation and feeling, but with highly essential and important 
 ones. Surely no one believes that a nation wholly devoid of 
 what we call custom and conscience, in which the individual 
 is governed in his actions by prudence and fear, could live a 
 single day. Even the most enlightened philosopher is guided 
 in his daily conduct, not by moral philosophy, but by impulses 
 and feelings, by custom and conscience, by his love for the 
 good, his aversion to the vulgar and bad. Chemistry is good 
 and useful, but it does not make taste and smell superfluous ; 
 we shall continue to employ these senses in discriminating 
 substances ; indeed they often prove to be vastly superior to 
 the re-agents of the chemists. And who would rather obtain 
 his kitchen recipes frcm a chemistry of foods than trust the 
 hereditary wisdom of the race concerning what is wholesome 
 and palatable, which has been transmitted and increased from 
 generation to generation ? It is the business of chemistry 
 not so much to invent as to explain these subtle things ; 
 which, of course, will not hinder it from giving us something 
 better now and then. But if any one should decide to throw 
 away appetite and hereditary wisdom, and trust himself 
 solely to chemistry, we should regard him as rery foolish. It 
 would be equally foolish for a man to discard conscience and 
 custom, and to regulate his life solely by moral philosophy. 1 
 
 1 " The painful feelings of shame or a bad conscience serve the practical 
 ends of nature. They are the preventives, as it were, which hinder us from doing 
 what is injurious to the totality of our organism, just as animals can distinguish 
 
366 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 But the transcendent sanction would surely disappear 1 — 
 Here let me simply say that in my opinion the time will never 
 come when men will cease to regard the morality and holi- 
 ness which they have evolved from their innermost being as 
 derived from the essence of God or the nature of the All-Real. 
 How could these enter into the heart of man were they not 
 rooted in the very nature of things ? Is man an anomaly in 
 the universe ? Is he merely an accidental or external object 
 in it ? — Are not he himself and his entire essence grounded in 
 the All-Real ? The words of Hippocrates, with which Stein- 
 thai prefaces his treatise on the Origin of Language, are 
 applicable to every historical-psychological view of human 
 affairs : All things are divine and all things are also human 
 (irdvra Beta teal avOpcoTrtva iravra). 
 
 Certain individuals may, no doubt, when enlightened as to 
 the origin of conscience, come to believe that everything is 
 right that can be done without danger of falling into the 
 hands of the police. When a person who has been accus- 
 tomed to look upon the moral laws as the arbitrary commands 
 of an almighty being, who has declared his intention of pun- 
 ishing all violations sooner or later, begins to doubt the exis- 
 tence of such a being or to disbelieve in him altogether, he will 
 necessarily conclude that these laws have no meaning. And 
 I do not know how we can escape the conclusion if we accept 
 the premises upon which it rests. Indeed, I know of no 
 way of escaping it, except by showing that these laws are not 
 the accidental injunctions of an arbitrary being, but that they 
 are inherent in the nature of things, in the nature of man. 
 So teleological ethics conceives them ; and conscience it con- 
 ceives as the reflection of the objective uniformity of moral 
 life in the consciousness of the individual. Hence it regards 
 
 between wholesome and unwholesome food by means of their more finely devel- 
 oped nerves of taste. Whenever an individual or a nation is deprived of the in- 
 stinctive feelings of shame, dissolution follows." — Zollner, Ueber die Natur d«* 
 Kometen, 3d edition, 1883, p. 4. 
 
DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 367 
 
 conscience as a highly important organ for preserving life, as 
 an organ which cannot be destroyed by speculations con- 
 cerning its origin ; any more than the value of language can be 
 impaired by abandoning the old superstitions which explained 
 it as a direct communication from heaven. Or do the rules of 
 grammar lose their validity, as soon as we become convinced 
 that they originated in a human way ? Well, then, neither will 
 the moral laws lose their validity. Whoever desires to parti- 
 cipate in the intellectual life of his people must speak their 
 language and obey their laws, whoever desires to participate 
 in their moral life must follow their customs and obey the dic- 
 tates of his conscience. And he must not merely do these things 
 as though he could refrain from doing them if he chose : he must 
 do them because the language of the people is his conscience, 
 because he with his entire volitional and emotional nature is 
 the product of the popular soul. — A representative of the age 
 of Enlightenment, like Voltaire, who regards the u annihilation 
 of infamous superstition " as the sole great object of science, 
 might perhaps triumphantly exclaim, after having satisfied 
 himself as to the falsity of the theological explanation of con- 
 science : Hence, conscience is nothing, it is but a clever 
 invention of unscrupulous priests to enslave the souls of men. 
 The historical school, which starts from the hypothesis that 
 everything has developed naturally, the evolutionistic anthro- 
 pology of the nineteenth century, will view with surprise 
 this outburst of joy : as though the falseness of the theory 
 implied the falseness of the thing itself, as though the latter 
 would have to stand and fall with the former ! Nay, it will 
 be convinced on a priori grounds that an organ so universal as 
 this, must perform a function essential to the preservation 
 of life ; otherwise, how could \t have arisen ? And it will 
 regard it as the business of science to show the importance of 
 this organ for human life. 
 
 But if science also has a practical function to perform here, 
 it will by no means be to destroy, but to preserve and develop 
 
368 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 the organ. To destroy the conscience — and this may unques- 
 tionably be done to a certain extent, not only by false 
 methods of education, but by false theories, namely by the 
 half-enlightenment resulting from a false theological ex- 
 planation — is the most serious injury which can be done 
 an individual or community. As Sidgwick admirably says : 
 "For, though the imperfection that we find in all the actual 
 conditions of human existence is ultimately found even in 
 morality itself, still, practically, we are much less concerned 
 with correcting and improving than we are with realizing 
 and enforcing it. The Utilitarian must repudiate altogether 
 that temper of rebellion against established morality, as 
 something purely external and conventional, into which the 
 reflective mind is always apt to fall when it is first convinced 
 that its rules are not intrinsically reasonable. He must, of 
 course, also repudiate as superstitious that awe of it as an 
 absolute or Divine Code which intuitional moralists inculcate. 
 Still, he will naturally contemplate it with reverence and 
 wonder, as a marvellous product of nature, the result of 
 long centuries of growth, showing in many parts the same fine 
 adaptation of means to complex exigencies as the most elab- 
 orate structures of physical organisms exhibit : he will handle 
 it with respectful delicacy as a mechanism, constructed of 
 the fluid element of opinions and dispositions ; by the indis- 
 pensable aid of which the actual quantum of human happiness 
 is continually being produced ; a mechanism which no politi- 
 cians or philosophers could create, yet without which the 
 harder and coarser machinery of positive law could not be 
 permanently maintained, and the life of man would become 
 — as Hobbes forcibly expresses it — 'solitary, poor, nasty, 
 brutish, and short.' " * 
 
 6. Individualization of Conscience. Conscience is originally 
 the manifestation of custom or objective morality in the con- 
 sciousness of the individual; it acts essentially as an in- 
 
 1 Methods of Ethics, pp. 470 f. 
 
DUTY AND CONSCIENCE Sb'9 
 
 hibition of particular will-impulses which deviate from the 
 normal. But this is not its final and highest form. It exer- 
 cises a more positive function in that it reflects an ideal 
 of the perfect life. The elements of this ideal it first obtains 
 from the objective morality of the people. In its religious 
 and poetical creations every nation produces concrete images 
 of perfection ; these take possession of the consciousness of 
 the individual, and fashion his nature and will. He measures 
 himself and his conduct by the ideal ; he is pained when he 
 falls short of it, pleased when he approximates it. 
 
 With the development of mental life, this life-ideal gradu- 
 ally assumes a more specific and individualistic form. All 
 historical evolution proceeds by differentiation. From the 
 original unity of the human species, which we must presup- 
 pose, the different types of races and nations have gradually 
 been differentiated ; different religions and different customs 
 express their mental individuality. As civilization advances 
 still further the individuals also differentiate themselves 
 from the mental life of the people, and lead separate mental 
 existences. In the lower stages of civilization the different 
 members of a people are wholly alike ; they have the same 
 ideas, thoughts, opinions, habits, modes of conduct ; in short, 
 their lives are filled with the same content, determined by 
 their religion and customs. As the race develops, its life 
 becomes richer and more varied, and at the same time 
 greater differences appear among the individuals. The in- 
 dividual begins to think his own thoughts ; he is no longer 
 satisfied with the general conceptions of the world and life, 
 offered by his religion and mythology ; he begins to philoso- 
 phize. All philosophy begins with the emancipation of the 
 individual from commonly accepted opinions. And in the 
 same way, the individual's attitude to custom and to the opin- 
 ion of his surroundings changes ; he begins to follow his own 
 bent and to mould his own life's ideal. The sphere of free, 
 individual action expands The richer and more varied the 
 
370 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 activities and relations of the individual become, the less 
 able is custom to rule authoritatively ; the more personal the 
 life of the individual and his relations to others become — 
 for instance the relations existing between husband and wife, 
 parents and children — the more difficult is it to subject them 
 to rule, the more they call for special laws. 
 
 Conscience thus acquires a new meaning : at first it 
 measures the value of the individual life solely by custom ; 
 now it measures the actual life by its special ideal. This 
 individual ideal will exhibit the traits of the particular 
 national life of which it is the product, it will not be 
 unrelated to custom ; still it may differ widely from the 
 universal conception and mode of life, so widely, indeed, that 
 it may even bring the agent into conflict with custom, and 
 that this conflict may not arouse pangs of conscience, but be 
 recognized as a moral necessity. Objective morality is now 
 opposed by a subjective morality, a higher form, which applies 
 a new standard to things. 
 
 Whenever the personality whose individual ideal brings it 
 into antagonism with the objective morality of the times and 
 leads to a recasting of moral values is endowed with remarkable 
 powers of intellect and will, those conflicts arise which form 
 the dramatic climaxes in history. The real heroes of man- 
 kind have fought such battles. They rebel against the con- 
 ventional values, against the ideals which have become useless 
 and false, against sham and falsehood, against the salt that 
 has lost its savor. They preach new truths, point out new 
 aims and new ideals, which instil new life into the soul and 
 raise it to a higher plane. Jesus fought this fight. He rose 
 above the religion and the customs of his nation ; he conceived 
 of a different and higher relation to God than that recognized 
 by his people ; and hence he was not satisfied with the right- 
 eousness of his people, with their punctilious and yet scant 
 and self-sufficient fulfilment of the law. So he placed himself 
 and his disciples outside of the law of his people ; he broke 
 
DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 371 
 
 the Sabbath, he did not fast, and taught his disciples to follow 
 his example ; he gave them instead a new commandment : 
 " Love ye one another.'' And when the established system, the 
 objective righteousness, protested against the revolt, he entered 
 upon the struggle of annihilation which ended in his death. 
 What sustained him in his battles and sufferings and led him 
 to victory was his firm conviction that he had a special mis- 
 sion to perform, that he was sent by the Father to proclaim 
 the new kingdom of love and mercy. " My meat is to do the 
 will of him that sent me." Thus Jesus has become the 
 eternal prototype of all those who are thirsting after and 
 battling for the kingdom of God, for truth and justice, of all 
 those for whom life, as they find it, has too little force and 
 spirituality, too little love and freedom, of all those who from 
 the fulness of their hearts reveal their feelings and thoughts, 
 and are then crucified and burned by the rabble, high and 
 low. 1 
 
 The counterparts of these highest heroic types of mankind 
 are furnished by those monstrous criminals, of whom Plato, 
 
 1 Such an individual conscience we find, remarkably developed, in the man 
 who occupies such a peculiar position in the moral history of the Greek people, 
 — Socrates. The Socratic dcemon is essentially nothing but Socrates's con- 
 viction that he has a particular, individual purpose to realize, a mission to fulfil. 
 As L. Schmidt admirably declares in his Etlrik der alten Griechen, I. 224 : 
 "Natures with strongly marked individualities and clearly conscious purposes in 
 life feel it as a moral necessity to abstain from that which is contrary to their 
 individual dispositions : I cannot and must not, although other persons would, if 
 they were in my place, be allowed to do it. The universal conscience, on the 
 other hand, commands : I must not do it, nor would it be right for any one else 
 in my place to do it." He adds an apt quotation from Vilmar : " It (the daemon) 
 is nothing more nor less than what Goethe called the lines of fortification of his 
 life, a gift peculiar to every noble and finely constructed soul : to know and to keep 
 firmly in mind what one cannot do without exceeding and transcending one's 
 capacities and powers. This gift is indeed closely related to conscience, not only 
 because of its originally negative and prohibitive nature, but also because its 
 dictates cannot be violated or even temporarily ignored without arousing a 
 spiritual reaction similar to ethical remorse : whenever we occupy ourselves with 
 things which (without having any great significance in themselves or being 
 morally reprehensible) transcend our capacities or do not come up to our 
 spiritual powers, we cannot suppress our dissatisfaction with ourselves, a feeling 
 which almost amounts to aversion." 
 
372 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 for instance, gives us a poetical though apparently faithful 
 picture in the tyrant of the Republic, or whom J. Burck- 
 hardt describes with historical accuracy in his History of the 
 Renaissance in Italy: those terrible characters, the Sforza 
 and Borgia, who, fearing neither God nor man, accomplish 
 their nefarious designs with superhuman efforts and absolute 
 recklessness. 
 
 Perhaps we may say that every one of these tremendous 
 personalities has in him the making of a true hero as well as 
 of a criminal tyrant. Goethe's Faust portrays the transforma- 
 tion of one of these beings into the other. In the first part 
 Faust appears as the titanic individual who has emancipated 
 himself from the beliefs and customs of his people, and now 
 seeks satisfaction for his desires : that which is allotted to 
 the entire race he desires to enjoy in his own person, and 
 then, like the race, to perish. He destroys the peace of a 
 family, he sacrifices the happiness of an innocent and lovable 
 girl to his lusts ; through him Gretchen murders her mother, 
 her brother, and her child. He forsakes her, and joins the 
 cavalcade which moves upon the Blochsberg. There is un- 
 doubtedly something of Goethe's own nature in all this ; 
 we find similar traits in the Prometheus poems. The second 
 part of Faust aims to show how the "superhuman being" 
 (JJbermenscK) again subjects himself to measure and law. 
 The execution of this plan, however, falls far below the mark. 
 Faust could have been purified and " saved " only by great 
 sufferings, or by struggling zealously to attain some high end. 
 His salvation by the " eternally feminine" is in truth a rather 
 easy solution of the problem ; nor are we satisfied with the 
 curious hydraulic enterprises of the old man. It is true, 
 Goethe's own life was free from great sufferings and great 
 struggles, and he was either too honest or too subjective to 
 introduce into his poem anything that did not form a part 
 of his own experiences. 
 
 The two types, however, which outwardly resemble each 
 
DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 873 
 
 other in ignoring custom and law, differ in their inner rela- 
 tions to customs and the people. The tyrant despises and 
 breaks the moral laws in order to give full play to his de- 
 sires ; he wishes to enjoy and to rule. Jesus announces as 
 his mission not the destruction of the " law " but its fulfil- 
 ment ; his object is to give it a higher content than the pro- 
 fessional interpreters can give it. He knows what his fate will 
 be, he does not anticipate splendor and power, but humiliation 
 and death. " The son of man came not to be ministered 
 unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." 
 7. Moral nihilism. The distinguishing mark of moral 
 nihilism in concrete, individual cases is a complete absence 
 of conscience both in the form of the consciousness of duty 
 as well as of a life ideal. As a theory or argument it denies 
 the validity of all rules of duty or moral laws. It declares : 
 Duty is an empty word ; life is a struggle for existence, and 
 in the struggle for existence all means are permissible. Mur- 
 der, falsehood, violence, are good provided they are success- 
 ful ; they are merely decried as bad by weaklings and gre- 
 garious beings, because these are made to suffer by them. 
 Or : Justice and law and religion were invented by despots to 
 enslave the minds of the oppressed; the enlightened man 
 knows that nothing binds him. And just as there are no 
 duties towards others, there can be no duties towards self. 
 So-called ideals are soap-bubbles to delight children, or in- 
 tended by clever people to delude the fools. Goodness con- 
 sists in doing and boldly carrying out what our momentary 
 desires demand. Some one has quoted as the motto of an 
 aristocratic Russian : Je ne crois rien, je ne crains rien, je 
 rfaime rien ; or, Nothing binds me, neither morals nor duty, 
 neither fear nor hope, neither love nor ideals ; the free sover- 
 eign individual lives in the moment, regardless of the future 
 as well as the past. 1 
 
 1 [See the Greek Sophists ; Plato's Gorgias, 481 ff . ; Stirner, Der Einzige und 
 sein Eiyenthum, 1845, 2d. ed., 1882; Nietzsche (pp. 150 ff. supra); Steine^, 
 
374 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 Is it possible to refute nihilism ; can we prove to any one 
 who reasons thus that he is in the wrong ? I do not believe 
 it. We can tell and show him that others feel differently, but 
 he will answer : What do I care ? You may find feelings of 
 duty and ideals in yourselves ; in me there is nothing of the 
 kind, and I do not regret it either. If we say to him : 
 That is a defect; a human being capable only of momen- 
 tary pleasures is a contemptible creature, he will reply : 
 I do not agree with you ; on the contrary, he is contemptible 
 who has not the courage to do what he pleases, but lets all 
 kinds of imaginary scruples defraud him of the pleasures of 
 the moment. — This position may be logically maintained. 
 We cannot force the nihilist to confess its falseness ; this we 
 could do only in case there were some point of agreement 
 between us, a common regard for that which gives life its 
 value. Without this all reasonings are vain, nay, perhaps 
 evil, because they simply confirm the nihilist, who is in love 
 with his opinions and his own astuteness, in his error. The 
 feeling that he cannot be refuted will simply intensify his con- 
 viction that he is in the right. Aristotle did not regard the 
 following hint as superfluous : " It is not necessary to exam- 
 ine every problem or every assertion, but only such about 
 which some one is really in doubt who needs instruction and 
 not punishment or sharpened wits ;" — a truth of which the 
 age of paradoxes in which we live also needs to be reminded. 1 
 
 It is quite a different question, however, whether nihilism, 
 which cannot be refuted logically, can be consistently applied 
 in practice, and whether any man really feels that only the 
 satisfaction of momentary desires has worth. Perhaps he 
 
 Philosophie der Freiheit, 1894. Compare Kreibig, Geschichte und Kritilc des 
 ethischen Scepticismus, 1896; Nordau, Degeneration, yol. II. See also Turgenev's 
 novels, New ; Fathers and Sons (English translations by Mrs. C. Garnett). — Tr.] 
 1 Aristotle, Topics, I., 11: ov 5e? nav irp6/3\r}iJ.a ovSe itaaav Occriy iiricrKOirslv, 
 &\\' *r\v &irop-f)(T*L€j' &v ris twv \6yov deo/j.evai', Kal fi^f KoAdcews $ alffO-fiaeoos * ol 
 fiev yap airopovvres, iroTtpov 5e? tovs deobs TyiS? % ov, KoAacrews d4ovrai, ol 8i, ir^ 
 repay r\ xiwv Xcvk)} ^ ov, alcrdJifftots. 
 
DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 375 
 
 believes it, but is mistaken about himself and his own will. 
 Perhaps it will be possible to change him by appealing from 
 his understanding to his will : You really do not mean what 
 you say *, in you, too, the impulse of self-preservation exists, 
 as more than a desire to satisfy your momentary cravings ; 
 in you, too, there is something of an impulse of ideal self- 
 preservation ; it manifests itself when you combat and despise 
 whatever you regard as falsehood and sham. The epitaph 
 of Sardanapalus or of the Count Zaehdarm (in Carlyle's 
 Sartor Hesartus') would not wholly suit you after all. You 
 are not so indifferent to the welfare of others as you yourself 
 say and imagine. Nay, perhaps your belief that customs and 
 the feeling of duty have no influence over you is a delusion. 
 You may really be convinced of it for the time being ; under 
 suitable circumstances you would perhaps discover to your 
 surprise that you still have a conscience. I cannot prove this 
 to you ; I cannot force the " ought " into you by means of 
 arguments ; but perhaps it is in you without your knowing it. 1 
 
 1 In Dostoievsky's novel (RaskolniJcow, Eng. title, Crime and Punishment), which 
 is of unusual interest to moralists and psychologists, moral nihilism forms the cen- 
 tral theme. The hero of the novel is a student, whom all kinds of unhappy condi- 
 tions have made miserable and tired of life. In this frame of mind he develops 
 the disease of moral nihilism : All moral judgments and feelings which educat- 
 ion has implanted in him now seem to him ridiculous, childish prejudices, 
 contemptible weakness, to emancipate oneself from which is the mark of a free 
 and strong mind. Encouraged by such reflections, he kills an old repulsive 
 usuress, in order to obtain money, but at the same time also to test his theory : 
 " I wanted to know," he afterwards says in discussing the matter, " whether I 
 was, like all of them, merely vermin, or a man, whether I was able to break through 
 the barriers or not, whether I would really dare to stoop to gain power or not, 
 whether I wae merely a trembling creature, or whether I had a right — .'' The 
 reaction of human feeling and conscience against these nihilistic sentiments 
 and reflections before and after the deed is described with thrilling truthfulness. 
 He finds it impossible to turn his thoughts from the crime ; it is ever before his 
 mind, in his waking and in his dreaming, when he is alone and with others. As a 
 kind of counterpart to this novel, let me call the reader's attention to an admir- 
 able story of country life by Anzengruber, Der Sternsteinhof. The heroine of the 
 narrative is a poor girl, full of natural vitality and a strong desire to assert her- 
 self. She encounters many moral dangers, and even commits crime, and passing 
 over more than one broken heart makes straight for her goal, which is, to 
 become the peasant mistress of the Sternsteinhof. She is not troubled much with 
 
376 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 It is just as impossible to force the nihilist by argument to 
 abandon his position as it is logically to refute a man who 
 denies the existence of the sun in the heavens. But this does 
 not mean that nihilism is a valid theory. We cannot prove to 
 the fever-patient that he sees only hallucinations, or to the 
 madman that his fixed ideas are crazy notions. That does not 
 prevent the former from being sick or the latter from being 
 crazy. An anthropologist, a biological observer of the genus 
 homo — let us assume, in order to insure his perfect impartial- 
 ity, that he has descended from Saturn to the earth, as in 
 Voltaire's Mikr omegas — would soon convince himself that a 
 man really living according to the principles of moral nihilism 
 was abnormal. He would say : He lacks an organ which is 
 usually present, namely, conscience. And he would add : It 
 seems to be an organ of some importance, for individuals 
 in whom it is lacking invariably perish. And if he were to 
 investigate more closely, he would perhaps find that, as a rule, 
 such abnormal natures at the same time exhibit dangerous 
 perversions of impulse; alcoholism and perverse sexual de- 
 sires, which are often hereditary, are the usual concomitants 
 or the causes of such perverse feelings and volitions. The 
 usual consequences of the disease, however, he might say, are 
 disgust with life, and suicide. 1 Only in case the abnormal 
 
 moral reflections ; and pangs of conscience affect her only for a moment. The 
 law of her being proves to be stronger than the moral law : it ignores her own 
 conscience and the opinion of her surroundings. As soon as she reaches her 
 goal and establishes herself in the place for which nature intended her, she 
 labors freely and ably, without worrying much about the past. 
 
 1 Some psychiatrists regard " moral insanity " as a peculiar form of disease, 
 tt is characterized by a complete lack of conscience. Krafft-Ebing (Lehrbuch 
 der Psychiatrie, II., 65) describes the disease "as complete moral insensibility. 
 Moral notions and judgments are apprehended by the understanding and the 
 memory, but they have absolutely no feeling-accompaniments, and are therefore 
 wholly incapable of moving the will. "Without interest in anything that is 
 noble and beautiful, dead to all feeling, these unfortunate malformations show 
 a woeful lack of filial and domestic love, of all social instincts, indifference to the 
 weal and woe of their surroundings. They are utterly insensible to the moral 
 approval or disapproval of their fellows, wholly devoid of feelings of conscience 
 and remorse. They do not know what morality means ; the law they look upon 
 
DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 377 
 
 feelings are not the result of organic conditions, but of intel- 
 lectual error, of half-truths, can the diagnosis be more favor- 
 able. Here a more thorough knowledge, based upon wider 
 experience, new problems of life, and advancing age may lead 
 to the removal of the erroneous views and consequently to a 
 change of feeling and volition. 
 
 8. In conclusion, let me answer a few questions suggested 
 by the notion of duty. What do we mean by meritorious con- 
 duct ? Can a man do more than his duty ? What is allowable ? 
 Are there acts which duty neither enjoins nor prohibits — that 
 is, indifferent acts ? Are there duties towards self ? 
 
 Such and similar questions deal with difficulties which arise 
 more from the ambiguities of language than from the nature of 
 the subject itself. They may be easily answered by a more 
 careful definition of the terms. 
 
 Duty in the narrowest sense means the performance of acts 
 or the abstention from acts in which others have a legal inter- 
 est. It is your duty to pay your debts, to keep your contracts, 
 not to steal or defraud. On the other hand, it is not a duty in 
 this sense to do a man a favor, to help him when in trouble. 
 The former is an obligation, the latter a purely voluntary 
 affair. — According to this meaning of the term, there can, 
 of course, be no duties toward self. 
 
 merely as a police regulation, and the most heinous crime they view about as 
 an ethically sound person would regard the violation of a police ordinance. This 
 defect renders such inferior beings incapable of living permanently in society and 
 makes them fit candidates for the workhouse, insane asylum, or penitentiary. — 
 Besides this lack of ethical, altruistic feelings, they manifest formal affective 
 derangement, great emotional irritability, which in conjunction with the absence 
 of moral feelings impels them to acts of great brutality and cruelty." On the 
 other hand, these patients seem to be unaffected intellectually, if we regard formal 
 logical thought, prudence, action according to plan, as decisive. Hallucinations 
 and illusions are absent. Still, intellectual degeneracy is never entirely lacking. 
 " Not only are they ignorant of what is immoral, but they do not even know what 
 is detrimental to their interests. In spite of all evidence of shrewdness they often 
 surprise us by their total disregard of the simplest rules of prudence in their 
 criminal acts. On the formal side, we must especially emphasize the defective 
 way in which they reproduce ideas." Finally, perverse impulses are common in 
 tiie organic and particularly in the sexual sphere. 
 
378 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 Duty in a wider sense means conduct in accordance with 
 the demands of custom, or the laws of morality. According 
 to this interpretation of the term, it would, undoubtedly, be 
 a violation of our duty to humanity to refuse to answer a 
 stranger's polite question concerning the road to take: the 
 duty of love of neighbor enjoins kindness. On the other 
 hand, duty does not demand that I save another's life at the 
 risk of my own : whoever does this performs a meritorious act, 
 but whoever refrains from doing it violates no duty. Heroism 
 and holiness are not duties. In this sense we also speak of 
 duties to self. It is a duty to develop our own capacities ; 
 it is a violation of duty for one to ruin his health by acts 
 of imprudence, to waste his mental powers in idleness and 
 dissipation. But here, too, there is a limit to the requirements 
 of duty, and here, too, we have heroism which does more than 
 is demanded, which is meritorious. — Hence merit consists in 
 doing more than average virtue requires. This likewise de- 
 termines the concept of the allowable. It is allowable to take 
 recreation, although we have plenty of work to do and the 
 power to do it ; it is allowable to seek enjoyment, although 
 there are others whom we might help by denying ourselves. 
 In a word, it is allowable to remain within the limits of 
 average virtue. 
 
 The word duty, finally, is also used in a widest, fullest 
 sense, in which both the notion of merit and the notion of the 
 allowable have no meaning. Christianity commands its dis- 
 ciples : " Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father which 
 is in heaven is perfect." In the face of this imperative there 
 can, of course, be no excess in virtue ; hence there can be no 
 merit before God. Whoever has kept the commandments, 
 let him say : I have done my duty ; or, as the saint prefers to 
 say, since human beings do not achieve this goal: I am an 
 unworthy servant. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 EGOISM AND ALTRUISM » 
 
 1. Acts are called egoistic when their motive is individual 
 weal or woe, altruistic when their motive is the weal and woe 
 of others. Some moralists regard these motives as mutually 
 exclusive. Every act is the product of either egoistic or 
 altruistic motives, and is therefore either egoistic or altru- 
 istic. This view gives rise to two opposing schools. Pure 
 altruism sets up the principle : Acts have moral worth only in 
 so far as they are determined by purely altruistic motives. 
 Pure egoism asserts : It is not only allowable, but morally 
 necessary to make individual welfare the sole end of action. 
 
 A. Comte, who coined the term, inclines to altruism. 
 Schopenhauer advocates the theory in its extremest form. 
 Every act, he argues, has a motive ; only weal or woe can be 
 a motive ; the weal or the woe is either that of the agent him- 
 self or that of another. Only in the latter case, does an act 
 possess moral worth ; this depends solely upon " whether the 
 act is committed or omitted for the good of another. When- 
 ever this is not the case, the weal or woe impelling or hinder- 
 ing the performance of each act can only be that of the agent 
 himself ; then the act is invariably egoistic, and hence without 
 moral worth." It becomes bad when the welfare of self is 
 
 1 [See the ethical works of Bacon, Cumberland, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, But- 
 ler, Hume, A. Smith, J. S. Mill, Bain, Darwin, Sidgwick ; Spencer, Data of Ethics, 
 chaps. XI.-XIV. ; Stephen, Science of Ethics, chap. VI. ; Simmel, Einhitunq, 
 chap. II. ; Mackenzie, Manual, chap. IX., also p. 322 ; Williams, Evol. Ethics, 
 Part II., chap. V. ; Hoff ding, Ethik, VIII. ; Harris, Moral Evolution ; Drum 
 mond, Ascent of Man. — See also James's Psychology, vol. I., chap. X. — Tr.] 
 
880 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 sought at the expense of others' welfare. 1 Popular usage 
 seems to favor this view ; the adjective selfish implies blame, 
 while the adjective unselfish implies moral approval. 2 
 
 The absolute altruism of Schopenhauer and his disciples is 
 opposed by its direct contrary, absolute egoism. This is not 
 so common, and appears in the form of a paradox. Nietzsche 
 approximates it: it is the reaction against Schopenhauer's 
 altruism. Besides, there is a tendency to absolute egoism in 
 Schopenhauer himself ; his contempt for the masses and 
 humanity, and the high estimate which he places upon genius, 
 suggest it. If humanity has worth, solely because of the few 
 geniuses it produces, then it is right that the masses be 
 regarded and employed by them as means ; an absolute aris- 
 tocratic-egoistic morality would be the consequence. But a 
 democratic-egoistic form of morality is equally conceivable. 
 The individualistic utilitarianism of Hobbes 3 and Spinoza 
 approximates it: Everybody strives exclusively for his own 
 self-preservation, that is the order of nature, but likewise 
 the moral order. When a man solely pursues his own real 
 good, he does right, that is all that morality demands. More- 
 over, he, at the same time, does the best he can for others ; 
 by a kind of pre-established harmony the true interests of all 
 individuals coincide. 4 
 
 Indeed, the standpoint of absolute egoism is logically ten- 
 able ; we can imagine a society in which every one acts accord- 
 
 1 Grundlage der Moral, § 16. 
 
 2 [Cf . Fichte, Characteristics of the Present Age, § 70 : " There is but one virtue, 
 and that is to forget oneself as a person ; but one vice : to think of oneself. Who- 
 ever in the slightest degree thinks of his own personality, and desires a life and 
 being and any self-enjoyment whatever, except for the race, is fundamentally 
 and radically ... a low, petty, wicked, and wretched fellow." — Tr.] 
 
 8 [Leviathan ; On Liberty and Necessity.'] 
 
 4 [Egoists : Mandeville, Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue ; Fable of the 
 Bees ; La Rochefoucauld, R€flexions y 1665 ; La Bruyere, Les caracteres et les moeurs 
 de ce siecle, 1687 ; Lamettrie, L'homme machine, 1748 ; Helvetius, De Vesprit, 1758; 
 Holbach, Systeme de la nature, 1770; Paley, Moral Philosophy ; Bentham, Prin- 
 ciples of Morals and Legislation. Hartley and the associationists derive the sym< 
 pathetic feelings from egoism. See also Jhering, vol. II. — Tr.] 
 
EGOISM AND ALTRUISM 381 
 
 ing to the maxim of pure egoism, whereas a society in which 
 every one uniformly acts according to the maxim of pure 
 altruism is not even conceivable. In so far as the economic 
 world is based upon contract and commerce, it approxi- 
 mately realizes the principle of egoism ; we have here a plu- 
 rality of individuals, each of whom has in view only his own 
 interests, and yet a certain harmony of the interests of all. 
 If, on the other hand, we make pure altruism the leading 
 principle, every man caring only for the interests of others 
 and never for his own, we evidently bring about such an 
 absurd exchange of interests as to make collective life incon- 
 ceivable. — Neverthless, pure egoism, too, is practically just 
 as impossible as pure altruism. A society based solely upon 
 egoism is conceivable, but psychologically impossible. Even 
 in economic affairs, other motives, besides calculating self- 
 interest, play a part, e. g., emotional influences of all kinds, a 
 sense of what is proper and improper, a regard for the con- 
 dition of others, the inhibition of egoistic impulses by shame 
 and conscience. And it is really doubtful whether the com- 
 plete elimination of these motives could be borne, whether 
 we could always choose with sufficient accuracy between our 
 true interests and our apparent interests, whether a temporary 
 advantage would not often defeat a real advantage, and whether 
 the war of all against all would not put an end to the life of 
 society. Still less possible would be the more personal rela- 
 tions, such as those existing between husband and wife, or par- 
 ents and children, without their natural foundation, the 
 sympathetic feelings. We may, perhaps, conceive of a mother 
 who cares for and educates her children solely from selfish 
 considerations ; but nobody will regard her as psychologically 
 possible, unless, of course, he includes the welfare of the child 
 m the selfish interests of the mother, in which case the dis- 
 pute is merely a verbal one. For we called the feeling for the 
 weal and woe of other individuals altruistic or sympathetic 
 feeling as distinguished from egoistic or idiopathic feeling. 
 
382 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 But if I insist that the sympathetic feeling, too, is my feel- 
 ing and consequently an egoistic motive, there can, of course, 
 be no other motives than egoistic motives. I can be deter- 
 mined to action only by my motives and feelings, not by those 
 of another. Still, this does not obliterate the distinction ; we 
 should then have directly egoistic and indirectly egoistic 
 impulses; the latter, however, would be the same as those 
 usually called sympathetic or altruistic. And we should have 
 to say that without these sympathetic-altruistic motives, a 
 human life would be just as impossible as without the egoistic 
 ones. Both together are needed to make the life of the in- 
 dividual and the life of the whole possible. 
 
 Both of these false moral principles, pure altruism and pure 
 egoism, are ultimately based upon a false anthropology. They 
 presuppose with the old system of rationalistic individualism, 
 that every individual is an absolutely independent being, and 
 comes in contact with other beings only occasionally and acci- 
 dentally. In these relations, for which we can keep separate 
 accounts, he is either egoistic or altruistic. In the latter case, 
 altruism says his conduct is moral, at other times it is indiffer- 
 ent or bad, whereas, egoism demands that he seek his own 
 advantage even in his occasional dealings with others. Both 
 theories are founded upon a view like the one advanced by 
 Jeremy Bentham at the beginning of his Principles of Morals 
 and Legislation : " A community is a fictitious body, composed 
 of individual persons who are considered as constituting, as it 
 were, its members." This conception has been abandoned 
 since the eighteenth century, at least in Germany ; a people 
 is not & fictitious body, of which the individuals are the ficti- 
 tious members, but a unified being to which the individuals 
 bear the same relation as organs to a body. Just as the 
 organs are produced by the whole and exist in it alone, so 
 the individuals are produced by the people and live and move 
 in it alone ; they function as its organs, they speak its lan- 
 guage, they think its thoughts, they are interested in its wel- 
 
EGOISM AND ALTRUISM 383 
 
 fare, they desire its life ; they propagate and rear offspring, 
 and so perpetuate the race. And this objective relation 
 of the individual to the whole manifests itself subjectively 
 in his volitional and emotional life. Everywhere the circles of 
 the ego and the non-ego intersect. This fact is universally 
 accepted ; only in moral philosophy we still find persons 
 who do not see it, who insist on regarding the antithesis 
 between altruism and egoism as an absolute one. I should 
 like to show how little the facts agree with this view ; in our 
 actual life and practice there is no such isolation of in- 
 dividuals ; the motives and effects of action are constantly 
 intersecting the boundaries of egoism and altruism. 
 
 2. Let me first prove it for the effects. There is no act 
 that does not influence the life of the individual as well as 
 that of the surroundings, and hence cannot and must not be 
 viewed and judged from the standpoint of both individual 
 and general welfare. The traditional classification, which 
 distinguishes between duties towards self and duties towards 
 others, cannot be recognized as a legitimate division. There 
 is no duty towards individual life that cannot be construed 
 as a duty towards others, and no duty towards others that 
 cannot be proved to be a duty towards self. 
 
 Care of one's own health appears at first sight to be purely 
 selfish. Reflection, however, will clearly show that the pos- 
 sessor of good health is by no means the only interested 
 party. Every disturbance and its consequences spread from 
 the seat of its origin to the surroundings. The ill-humor 
 which results from an improper mode of life or a neglect of 
 self, is not confined to the guilty person ; he is cross and 
 irritable, and his moodiness and moroseness are a source of 
 annoyance to the entire household. In case of serious sick- 
 ness, the family becomes uneasy and anxious, and perhaps 
 suffers materially from a diminished income and an increase of 
 expenditures. When the patient is an official, his colleagues 
 are made to suffer ; they have to do his work ; if he has 
 
384 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 absolutely ruined his health, he becomes a pensioner, and so 
 increases the public burdens. Conversely, whoever cares for 
 his health perhaps does his surroundings the greatest service 
 which he can do them ; hence we may say, with Spinoza : 
 Conatus sese conservandi primum et unicum virtutis est fun- 
 damentum. Indeed, with only a little more rational self-love, 
 the largest portion of human misery would disappear. Take 
 away drunkenness and dissipation, and nine-tenths of the 
 wretchedness would be gone. — It is the same in the economic 
 sphere. To acquire wealth seems to be the central purpose 
 of our egoistic strivings. But industry, energy, and frugality 
 may, with equal right, be denned as duties towards others. 
 The beneficent effects make themselves directly felt in the 
 family, and in the education of the younger generation. But 
 the community, too, and finally the nation, nay, even the 
 entire economic world, have an interest in them. The welfare 
 of a community, or a nation, consists in the welfare of the 
 particular families. Conversely, the vagrant, the spendthrift, 
 injures first himself, then his family, perhaps to remote gen- 
 erations — for shiftlessness and mendicancy are hereditary as 
 well as bodily defects — and at last, the entire nation, either 
 by becoming a burden upon public charity, or by helping to 
 turn production into false channels and by destroying mor- 
 ality with his bad example. 
 
 So we may say in general : All qualities and acts which 
 promote or disturb the healthy development of individual life, 
 at the same time tend to have beneficial or injurious effects 
 upon the development of collective life. Or, as Spinoza puts 
 it : Quum rnaxime unusquisque suunt sibi utile quaerit, turn 
 maxime homines sunt sibi in vicem utiles. 
 
 But the converse is likewise true : Social virtues tend to 
 have a good effect upon individual welfare, whereas their ab- 
 sence is detrimental to individual life. 
 
 The family is the most important sphere for the develop- 
 ment of social virtues ; for the large majority of men the 
 
EGOISM AND ALTRUISM 385 
 
 most serious duties towards others are embraced in this circle. 
 It requires no argument to show that all acts and qual- 
 ities which promote the welfare of the family have beneficial 
 effects upon the individual. The surest and greatest source 
 of happiness to parents, nay, almost the only one in their old 
 age, is the good training which they have given their children ; 
 hardly any other neglect of duty is followed by such certain 
 and painful penalties as improper training. We are accus- 
 tomed to regard honesty in economic life as a duty to others. 
 It is no less a duty of the individual towards himself. Many 
 proverbs express the experience of the race on this point : 
 Honesty is the best policy ; Ill-gotten goods seldom prosper ; 
 The biter is sometimes bit ; 111 got, ill spent. We cannot 
 adduce a statistical proof for the truth of these observations, 
 but a psychological proof is not hard to find. Dishonesty 
 deadens the desire for honest acquisition ; and theft is always 
 an uncertain and precarious means of livelihood. What we 
 have honestly acquired is productive of blessings ; stolen 
 goods have the opposite effect. And if all this were not true, 
 if it were possible to enjoy the fruits of theft permanently and 
 in safety who is proof against his own conscience? Every 
 man shares the sentiments and judgments of society; they 
 may be temporarily obscured, but no one can be sure that 
 they will not manifest themselves again some day ; no one 
 has ever done well to burden himself with a black secret. — A 
 modest, open, peaceable demeanor we regard as a duty to- 
 wards others. There is no surer way of making one's own 
 life happy. It wins friends for one, it creates an atmosphere 
 of peace and good cheer in the surroundings, which is reflected 
 back to its source. And vice versa, a haughty, envious, 
 quarrelsome, deceitful, malicious nature is a certain means 
 to an unhappy, sorrowful life. 
 
 Hence duties towards others and duties towards self do not 
 exclude each other ; individual welfare and the welfare of the 
 collective bodies of which every one forms a part — the family, 
 
 25 
 
386 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 the social and economic sphere, the community, the state — are 
 so interwoven that whoever cares for his own true welfare at 
 the same time promotes that of these bodies ; and vice versa, 
 whoever faithfully performs the duties which are imposed by 
 them works for his own good. 
 
 3. It is as impossible to distinguish absolutely between 
 egoistic and altruistic acts on the ground of their motives as 
 it is to separate them according to their effects. Indeed, it is 
 a somewhat curious notion, this notion that every act must 
 have one motive. Nay, just as many causes co-operate in the 
 physical world to produce a movement, so many motives work 
 together to determine the will. As a rule, a particular act 
 results from the interaction of a permanent tendency of the 
 will, which in turn depends upon the agent's nature and life- 
 conditions, and the surrounding circumstances. Altruistic 
 motives have invariably contributed to educate the will, 
 while among the conditions referred to we may often reckon 
 the entreaties, commands, exhortations, admonitions, praise 
 and censure of persons who exert an influence either directly, 
 in word, or by their mere existence, even without being 
 actually present. Is it an egoistic or an altruistic motive 
 that impels the peasant to cultivate his fields, to improve his 
 land, to work industriously year after year, and day after day ? 
 This is an absurd alternative. If the peasant himself were 
 asked whether he did all these things for his own or others' 
 sake, he would look at the questioner in a perplexed way, as 
 though doubting his sanity, and if he answered at all, he 
 would say : I do them because they must be done ; otherwise 
 my property will go to rack and ruin. And why should n't it 
 go to ruin ? Well, it would be a shame to ruin it. Besides, it 
 gives me and my family a living. — And if the moralist were 
 to investigate more closely, he would perhaps find that this 
 same peasant was laboring zealously for his community, that 
 he was rearing sons for his country and furnishing the army 
 with soldiers, and that he really desired to do all these things, 
 
EGOISM AND ALTRUISM 387 
 
 and that he could not do them without working as he does. 
 He is not working, say a little for himself and a little for 
 others, but for both at the same time. His action is deter- 
 mined by all his conscious and unconscious purposes taken 
 together, and there are no separate accounts in his bookkeep- 
 ing, for himself, for his family, and for the community. 
 Such exact calculations are, like the balance of pleasure, to 
 be found only in the works of moral theorists whose hair- 
 splittings hinder them from seeing the facts. 
 
 Is the case different with the artist, scholar, or statesman ? 
 Perhaps he will be told upon his seventieth anniversary, or 
 upon some other occasion, that he has lived and worked 
 solely for the welfare of the people or the cause of humanity. 
 Now and then a man may be found who will give himself 
 such a character as Christian Wolff gave himself in one 
 of his prefaces, where he states that he had always felt a 
 great love for the human race and had composed all his works 
 for its benefit. I do not like to question old Wolff's veracity, 
 but I am rather inclined to doubt his statement. Did he 
 really first decide to benefit the human race, did he then 
 deliberate how to serve humanity, and, after finding that 
 nothing could be more useful than " rational thoughts," begin 
 to write his books ? Hardly ; I imagine that he first felt 
 impelled to think about things in order to clarify his own 
 thoughts; that after he had succeeded in doing this to his 
 own satisfaction, he could not rest until he had written out a 
 clear and elaborate account of his views ; that he occasionally 
 considered with satisfaction how lucidly they were expressed, 
 how his readers would praise his work, in what glowing 
 terms the learned journals would speak of it, how chagrined 
 his opponents would be at the telling arguments against them ; 
 that, now and then, he may have thought of humanity and of 
 the value of knowledge for the world and of the advance- 
 ment of truth by means of his labors. And the worth of these 
 books will not be diminished by the fact that they were made 
 
388 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 in a perfectly human way. On the contrary, the value of 
 works composed " for others " is perhaps much more doubtful 
 than the value of those whose authors were interested solely 
 in the subject itself, and perhaps occasionally thought of their 
 fame. Schopenhauer was not in the habit of worrying much 
 about the weal and woe of others ; what he thought and wrote 
 he wrote for his own sake, in order to solve the great riddle of 
 existence, in order to preserve the thoughts which pleased 
 him, in the happy moment of their birth, and to create for 
 himself happy surroundings in them. He did not write for 
 others ; he wrote no text-books, no systems, no learned works, 
 but he wrote for himself just as the true poet writes poetry 
 for himself, and the true artist creates for himself and gives 
 expression to what his soul conceives. Of course, if there 
 were no "others," nothing would be created. No orator 
 would speak without an audience to hear him, no poet make 
 poetry without a people to read or sing his songs, no author 
 write unless there were, at least in his imagination, persons 
 who would read what he wrote. Nevertheless, if a man is not 
 so full of his subject that he cannot help speaking of it, if he 
 must first be impelled to do so by his consideration of others 
 and their good, he may save his efforts without endangering the 
 welfare of others. Hoffding quotes a remark of Goethe to 
 Eckermann : " I never asked myself in my profession as a lit- 
 erary man : What do the masses want, and how can I serve 
 humanity ? But I always simply endeavored to make myself 
 wiser and better, to enrich my own personality, and then 
 always to say only what I had found to be good and true." 
 
 And the same may be said of genuine self-sacrifice also. 
 Was the motive which actuated Leonidas and his band, egois- 
 tic or altruistic ? The question is absurd and tries to separate 
 what cannot be separated. Certainly, they battled for their 
 country ; but of course, the country was their country and not 
 a foreign country. On the other hand, they fought and fell for 
 their own glory, but their glory was likewise the glory of Sparta* 
 
EGOISM AND ALTRUISM 389 
 
 How would it be possible to distinguish between the personal 
 and the altruistic element here ? Hence, we may say : Every 
 self-sacrifice is at the same time self-preservation, namely 
 preservation of the ideal self ; indeed, it is the proudest kind 
 of self-assertion for me to sacrifice myself, for me to stake my 
 life, in battling for a good which I esteem higher than my life. 
 A purely passive sacrifice would not be my act, and hence not 
 self-sacrifice. There is therefore always a " selfish " element 
 in it ; " unselfish " conduct is a contradiction in terms. The 
 self is always involved, it sacrifices a good only for a higher 
 good, possessions for fame, a good name for a good conscience, 
 life for the freedom and honor of the people. And vice versa, 
 the traitor sacrifices his friend or his reputation or his people 
 for thirty pieces of silver ; he, too, would rather have the 
 thirty pieces of silver without the sacrifice. The only differ- 
 ence lies in the evaluation of the goods ; and this is what de- 
 termines the value of the man : he expresses his own worth, 
 his innermost disposition, in the values which he places upon 
 the goods. 
 
 Physicists claim that there is no isolated point in the uni- 
 verse, that every element of the corporeal world stands in 
 reciprocal relation with every other one. There is no isolated 
 point in the moral world either. Every act of every man in- 
 fluences the entire moral universe, and every act in the universe 
 reacts upon every individual. We cannot trace these effects 
 and show what they are, nor can we do this in the physical 
 world : the fall of a stone does not change the earth's centre 
 of gravity to any perceptible degree, but it changes it none 
 the less. Similarly, an individual's liking for or aversion to 
 coffee or tobacco does not noticeably affect the market value 
 of these commodities, yet it changes it, and thereby influences 
 agriculture and the economic activity of mankind. The indi- 
 vidual's like or dislike for a mode of conduct, a form of art, 
 a thought, or a word, does not perceptibly change, but still it 
 changes, the morals, the art, the opinions, and the language 
 
390 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 of his surroundings, his people, and humanity. That there is 
 such an inter-relation between all is seen from the fact that 
 no one is wholly indifferent to the behavior of others : he 
 approves or disapproves others' conduct as soon as he wit- 
 nesses it, and every judgment is the beginning of some form of 
 interference, which furthers or retards such action. It seems 
 as though every one felt : Whatever my fellowman does con- 
 cerns me, it promotes or opposes my ultimate ends. 
 
 Is the antithesis between egoism and altruism therefore 
 meaningless ? Is there no difference in acts and motives, 
 which gives rise to this division ? 
 
 I do not, of course, claim that. Cases unquestionably arise, 
 in which individual interests conflict, or seem to conflict, with 
 foreign interests. Acts doubtless occur in which the individ- 
 ual seeks his own advantage at the expense of others' welfare, 
 and conversely, there are acts in which individual interests and 
 inclinations are sacrificed for the welfare of others ; from which 
 it does not necessarily follow that individual welfare, if we take 
 the word in its profoundest meaning, is promoted in the former 
 instance and retarded in the latter. And it cannot be disputed 
 that these facts have great moral significance. The above re- 
 flections simply desire to show that the opposition between in- 
 dividual and general welfare, selfish and altruistic motives, is 
 not the rule, but the exception. As a rule, there is harmony 
 in the effects as well as in the motives. Life is not such an 
 antagonistic affair as some moralists make it appear : it is 
 not one constant struggle between mine and thine. No hu- 
 man life, perhaps, is wholly free from conflict, but there are 
 many lives in which it plays no prominent part. Persons who 
 enjoy healthy domestic relations and live in well-regulated 
 communities, and pursue honorable and regular callings, do 
 not experience many such conflicts, nor do they by any means 
 believe that the altruistic settlement of such conflicts forms 
 the essential content of their life, and determines its moral 
 worth. 
 
EGOISM AND ALTRUISM 391 
 
 4. And how are such cases to be judged morally ? Is the 
 sacrifice of individual interests for those of others always 
 a duty, or, if not a real duty, at least praiseworthy and good ? 
 Schopenhauer believes that it is, and popular usage seems 
 to confirm his view : language, which has created the words 
 kindness and malice, self-interest and selfishness, suggests it. 
 The matter does not seem so simple upon closer analysis. It 
 has been observed, in the first place, that not every act which 
 springs from the impulse to do good to others, is really benefi- 
 cent ; the altruistic intention does not guarantee a beneficent 
 effect. There are many forms of " beneficence " which pro- 
 duce evil ; indeed, there are many people who are so infinitely 
 " good " that no one is benefited thereby, and every one who 
 comes under their influence is spoiled. Kindness ( Gute) with- 
 out wisdom is not good but pernicious, as pernicious as any 
 undisciplined natural impulse. In his Timon Shakespeare 
 has portrayed with cruel fidelity the effects of kindness that 
 is not governed by reason. Consequently, the mere fact that 
 desires are altruistically inclined, by no means makes them 
 morally good, much less the only moral good. 
 
 Moreover, can we grant that the sacrifice of personal in- 
 terests, even when it really promotes the welfare of others, is 
 invariably meritorious and praiseworthy, or even a duty ? I 
 do not believe it. Ought I, in order to give others a little 
 pleasure, to ignore my own important and essential interests ? 
 Ought I to sacrifice my possessions, health, and life in order 
 to fulfil a sick man's harmless whims, and to lighten his lot ? 
 Is that my duty, or, if not my duty, always meritorious or praise- 
 worthy ? Ought I to look upon the promotion of my family's 
 welfare as selfish ? Ought I to deny to my brother, or to my 
 child, that which would prove of great value to him, but could 
 not be realized without in a measure interfering with the 
 desire of another ? The unprejudiced man will not hesitate 
 for a moment, but will say : On the contrary, my kith and kin 
 are nearer to me than strangers, and it is not a duty, but a 
 
392 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 violation of duty, to neglect their welfare in order to gratify 
 the wishes of others. Therefore, we may say, the sacrifice 
 of individual desires and interests is not good in itself, but 
 only in case the vital interests of others demand it: whoever 
 risks his life to save another's, whoever sacrifices himself for 
 his people, will be admired and praised ; conversely, whoever 
 allows a fellow man miserably to perish rather than sacrifice 
 his comforts or a pleasure, is condemned as selfish and 
 hardhearted. 
 
 It seems, therefore, that our judgment depends upon our 
 estimate of the objective value of the ends. Can we, 
 then, making this our starting-point, set up as the universal 
 norm for deciding between the interests of self and of others : 
 The greater interest universally takes precedence over the 
 smaller interest, regardless of whether my interest or that of 
 others is the greater? Universalistic utilitarianism seems to 
 hit upon this standard : If the greatest happiness of the 
 greatest number is the absolute end, and if the objective worth 
 of acts is measured by their pleasure-producing qualities, then 
 the sacrifice of personal happiness is necessary whenever it 
 brings greater happiness to others, and inadmissible whenever 
 it brings less or no happiness to others. 
 
 Perhaps the universal formula can stand as such. In order 
 to guard it against misconceptions, it will be necessary, how- 
 ever, to define it more accurately. Above all, it must be 
 remembered that happiness or welfare is not like a coin that 
 may be passed from hand to hand. Happiness is the result of 
 successful action ; it cannot therefore be bestowed upon a man 
 as a gift, — he must work for it. All that another can do is 
 to provide him with the external means of realizing it, that is, 
 to lend him occasional assistance. This at once shows that the 
 formula is not suited to solve mere problems in arithmetic. 
 It will never be possible to calculate what direction my altru- 
 istic deeds must take at any particular moment in order to 
 yield the maximum of happiness. Here moral tact will 
 
EGOISM AND ALTRUISM 393 
 
 always have to decide. This tact, however, cannot be guided 
 so much by balancing the objective magnitude of the interests 
 involved as by a kind of natural hierarchy of ends. First in 
 importance are the duties which my position and calling in 
 life impose upon me ; next come the duties which my par- 
 ticular relations to others impose upon me ; and then those 
 depending upon occasional relations to people in general. 
 Even though the interests of the latter may in themselves be 
 greater, my action is invariably partially influenced and, as 
 a rule, determined by their distance from the ego, the centre 
 of my activity. It is evident that our conduct is actually guided 
 by such considerations ; every ego, we might say, arranges all 
 other egoes around it in concentric circles ; the farther away 
 the interests from this centre, the less weight and motive force 
 they possess. That is a law of psychical mechanics. Its 
 teleological necessity is obvious : if the different interests 
 were to influence us according to their objective value, it 
 would lead to the most curious confusion in our natures. A 
 corresponding confusion in our actions would render the latter 
 utterly fruitless ; the efficacy of all aid generally decreases 
 in direct proportion to the distance between the giver and the 
 recipient. 
 
 This view does not, of course, deny that remote interests 
 may, under certain circumstances, necessitate the sacrifice of 
 nearer interests. No life is too precious when it comes to pre- 
 serving the life and freedom of a people. And this is right. 
 The interests of justice and of truth may demand and justify 
 the sacrifice of domestic happiness. And we shall praise the 
 mercy of the good Samaritan, who, without thinking of his own 
 interests and safety, hastened to the rescue of the man who 
 had fallen among thieves : at that moment he was indeed that 
 man's nearest friend ; he was able to help him, and he alone 
 was able to help him. But the rule still holds that those 
 nearest to us are dearest to us. Charity begins at home, says 
 a good old English proverb. 
 
394 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 5. Let me add a few words concerning the attitude of the 
 theory of evolution to the antithesis of egoism and altruism. 
 
 It is claimed that a system of moral philosophy which is based 
 upon the theory of evolution cannot explain the social virtues. 
 Natural selection may, perhaps, develop strength, shrewdness, 
 and energy in the pursuit of selfish interests, but it can never 
 produce self-denial, and still less self-sacrifice. Nay, the more 
 selfishly an individual asserts his own interests, the stronger 
 he must be, other things being equal ; and natural selection 
 will necessarily produce such types. Moreover, evolutionistic 
 ethics must regard these types as best adapted to the surround- 
 ings, and must approve of their development : the most selfish 
 egoism gives the individual the greatest power to assert his 
 claims, and therefore the greatest perfection. 1 
 
 Our answer is : This would be the case if men lived in 
 isolation. But they live and, as human beings, can live only in 
 societies and communities, in tribes and nations. Beasts of 
 prey live in isolation, at least most of them, and here we actu- 
 ally find the type mentioned above. That, however, which 
 has given man such an immense advantage over all other liv- 
 ing creatures, even over the strongest and fiercest brutes, is 
 his peculiar fitness for collective life and collective activity, 
 to which are due the development of language and intelligence, 
 and likewise the invention of tools. The union of many indi- 
 viduals for purposes of concentrated effort produces powerful 
 effects. Hence sociableness becomes a life-preserving quality, 
 like the qualities upon which it depends, such as loyalty and 
 fidelity to companions, devotion and obedience to leaders, even 
 at the sacrifice of individual interests,. nay of life itself. These 
 qualities, in turn, are deeply and firmly rooted in the indivi- 
 dual's feelings of attachment and piety to the social whole and 
 in his affection for all its members. Hence all these qualities 
 tend to preserve the life of a social being, and can therefore be 
 developed by natural selection. They will be exercised and 
 
 1 [See Huxley, Evolution and Ethics ; Kidd, Social Evolution. — Tk.] 
 
EGOISM AND ALTRUISM 395 
 
 developed especially in the struggle for existence which the 
 tribes are constantly waging with each other ; man is man's 
 most dangerous foe. Hence the more fiercely the tribes 
 struggle for their interests, power, and existence, the stronger 
 the pressure is from without, the more essential and the firmer 
 becomes the internal union. Disobedience, selfishness, dis- 
 loyalty, and cowardice are condemned most severely and 
 eliminated most thoroughly when the tribe is threatened by 
 an enemy; whereas external peace tends somewhat to loosen 
 the internal union. In times of peace there arises a desire for 
 individual liberty, an inclination to advance selfish interests, 
 to obtain advantages over companions, in short, the calculating 
 commercial spirit. So long as the tribe exists pre-eminently 
 for battle, it will not permit such inclinations to show them- 
 selves, and will ruthlessly suppress them whenever they arise. 
 We therefore find the social instincts unusually well developed 
 upon primitive stages of civilization. The individual lives only 
 as the member of a tribe or city ; he cannot, nor does he care 
 to, live outside. Piety, loyalty, and courage are the virtues 
 extolled by the heroic ages. 
 
 Let us now consider Herbert Spencer's view that the altru- 
 istic or social impulses are constantly growing at the expense 
 of the egoistic impulses. He shows in his Data of Ethics 1 
 that human nature more completely adjusts itself to the con- 
 ditions of social life. Wars become less frequent, hence the 
 militant instincts, which are adapted to the natural state of 
 the war of all against all, gradually disappear ; the social 
 instincts take their place, the militant type gives way to the 
 industrial type, the type produced by peaceful co-operation. 
 Spencer refers to his great biological generalization, accord- 
 ing to which, " altruistic labors on behalf of the young in- 
 crease with a decreasing sacrifice of parental lives to the lives 
 of offspring." He therefore expects altruism to attain a level 
 "such that the ministration to others' happiness will be- 
 
 i [Chapter XIV.J 
 
396 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 come a daily need, a level such that the lower egoistic 
 satisfactions will be continually subordinated to this higher 
 egoistic satisfaction." Simultaneously with the progress of 
 civilization, natural sufferings and privations of all kinds 
 become less frequent, and altruism gradually ceases to be 
 compassion and self-sacrifice and assumes the form of sym- 
 pathetic gratification, " which costs the receiver nothing, but 
 is a gratis addition to his egoistic gratifications." Indeed, 
 Spencer is occupied with the thought that the desire for altruis- 
 tic satisfactions may at some future time become so strong 
 that each may insist on taking an undue share of them ; but, 
 he hopes, " altruistic competition, first reaching a com- 
 promise under which each restrains himself from taking an 
 undue share of altruistic satisfactions, eventually rises to a 
 conciliation, under which each takes care that others shall 
 have their opportunities for altruistic satisfactions." 
 
 Spencer adds that he does not expect that these conclusions 
 will meet with any considerable acceptance, or that those " who 
 profess Christianity and practise paganism " can feel sympathy 
 with such a view. Even at the risk of being reckoned among 
 the latter, I cannot refrain from recording my objections. 
 
 Spencer bases his expectations of the future upon the past 
 course of development, which is their only possible ground. 
 His idea of this evolution, however, seems to me to be 
 one-sided. He overlooks a fact, of which he is, of course, 
 usually aware, that war is a strongly socializing force ; sim- 
 ultaneously with the hostile instincts it produces social 
 instincts. Civilization, which makes wars less frequent, weak- 
 ens the militant instincts, on the one hand, and loosens the 
 internal unity on the other. Spencer describes historical 
 development as a progressive socialization, in which there is 
 a gradual abatement of war. Something like this un- 
 doubtedly occurs ; we no longer live, like the Indian, with 
 weapons constantly in our hands ; and economic labor is be- 
 coming more and more differentiated and organized. We 
 
EGOISM AND ALTRUISM 397 
 
 also have the right to assume that human nature will adapt 
 itself to these changes in the conditions of life, that it will 
 become better fitted for social labor. The Germans who 
 fought against Marius and Caesar, two thousand years ago, 
 could hardly work side by side with their modern descendants 
 in the factory or the counting room. But we should not 
 identify fitness for collective life with altruistic feelings ; men 
 may work together constantly without experiencing feelings 
 of brotherly love : their feelings may be intensely egoistic. I 
 believe there can be no doubt that feelings of distrust, hatred, 
 and envy are much more common in our industrial society than 
 they were among the old German peasants : among the latter 
 competition, forgery, fraud, speculation, friction between labor- 
 ers and employers, were unheard of ; every household formed 
 an essentially separate economic unity. The more complicated 
 the co-operation, the greater the opportunity for friction. 
 Where shall we find the most collisions : among a group of 
 officials, teachers, and clergymen, or among a group of peas- 
 ants or a company of soldiers ? No one will be in doubt as 
 to his answer. Of course, I do not wish to deny that, whereas 
 in a peasant village men are rather indifferent to each other, 
 feelings of respect, devotion, and friendship are, if not more 
 frequent, at least more intense in particular cases, among 
 the former group ; all I mean to say is that the personal 
 relations existing between the members are more pronounced 
 in every direction : there is greater enmity and disrespect on 
 the one side and more friendship and confidence on the 
 other. 
 
 Spencer appeals to the evolution of domestic relations in 
 support of his view. I believe these relations show the same 
 characteristics ; they are more pronounced in every way. 
 Families are now living together in much closer union than 
 was possible in primitive times ; but there are also families 
 among whose members discord and mutual hatred prevail 
 to a degree absolutely unknown to primitive ages. This is 
 
398 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 quite natural, for the more marked the individualities, the 
 more intensely will they attract and repel each other. How 
 happily and indifferently the animals dwell together in the 
 herd ! 
 
 The same is true of the relations existing between the 
 different nations. True, peace seems to be the permanent 
 condition of civilized nations, war an interruption, while 
 among savage tribes the permanent condition is war. But 
 by the side of the bloody and destructive wars of the former, 
 the conflicts of the latter seem like child's play. Will wars 
 disappear ? Spencer anticipates that they will. But will 
 nations cease desiring power, honor, advantages, and fame, 
 at each other's expense ? I fear, not until they cease to 
 prefer their existence to the existence of others, that is, not 
 until they cease to exist. Perhaps the nations will cease 
 to be what they now are ; it seems idle, however, to speculate 
 upon what will happen then, what new historical forms of life 
 will take their place, and what relation these will bear to 
 each other. 
 
 Is Spencer's error — supposing that the dream of eternal 
 peace is an illusion — a useful error ? Perhaps some will be 
 inclined to believe that it is ; that it gives us strength and 
 courage to labor for the future. It may do this for partic- 
 ular individuals, although such remote considerations can 
 hardly exercise a great influence upon human feeling and 
 action. We love and hate, desire and despise, things that are 
 near us. It may also have another effect : it may make us 
 discontented with and unjust to the past and the present. 
 Spencer does not always seem to be free from this fault. 
 Just as his great biological generalizations not infrequently 
 blind him to the manifoldness of historical reality, so his fan- 
 tastic optimistic view of the future renders him incapable of 
 understanding and appreciating the past. Even if the future 
 should be blessed with perfect happiness and virtue, the past 
 generations might still maintain — if they could defend their 
 
EGOISM AND ALTRUISM 399 
 
 cause — that their mode of life was not only the best for 
 them, but also that it forms a stage in the development of 
 humanity and possesses value in itself, just as the age of 
 boyhood and youth with its games, its pleasures, and ideals 
 has an independent value for the life of the individual. Let 
 the " industrial type " have its happiness and its admirers, 
 but let the " militant type " also receive its due ! Perhaps 
 Achilles and Alexander will still find admirers in the world 
 of the perfectly just and benevolent cotton-spinners. Or 
 will this be possible only so long as man has something of 
 the brute nature in him ? But it is not even certain that the 
 brutes are most admired by the brutes. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 VIRTUE AND HAPPINESS 
 
 I should like to present the views which I have expressed 
 at random in the foregoing pages, on the relation between 
 virtue and welfare, in connected form. We may consider the 
 subject from two points of view: (1) What influence has 
 virtue upon happiness ? (2) What is the effect of happiness 
 upon character ? 
 
 1. The first great and fundamental truth to which all 
 peoples have been led in their reflections upon moral matters is 
 the truth that the good man fares well and the wicked man ill. 
 This conviction, which represents the experiences of the race, 
 is expressed in countless proverbs. L. Schmidt has made an 
 exhaustive collection of such proverbs and passages from 
 Greek literature in the first chapter of his work on the Ethics 
 of the Greeks. " It was firmly believed by the ancient Greeks," 
 so he begins his work, u that the fates of men were controlled 
 by stern justice, which rewards the good and punishes the 
 bad." He shows that this thought, which remained the 
 fundamental theme of Greek poetry and history, already per- 
 vaded the Homeric poems. The administration of justice and 
 the fates of men are in the hands- of the gods, or rather of 
 the divine principle, for the gods as individuals are, at least 
 for the poet, full of human moods and feelings ; whereas the 
 gods of popular faith are essentially the guardians of justice 
 and morals. They punish the evil-doer who breaks his oath, 
 violates piety or the laws of hospitality, they pursue the 
 murderer until his crime is avenged. To be sure, vengeance 
 
VIRTUE AND HAPPINESS 401 
 
 is often delayed, perhaps it first strikes the descendants of 
 the criminal, or it may not overtake the victim, according to 
 the belief in the transmigration of souls and the judgment of 
 the dead, which came from the Orient, until in the hereafter. 
 But no evil-doer escapes punishment. The good man, on 
 the other hand, is the favorite of the gods. They protect him 
 and his own against evil, and permit him to complete his life 
 in happiness and without sin. In the concept of the God- 
 loved one (Oeofyikrjs) the notions of piety, philanthropy, and 
 divine favor are inseparably interwoven. 
 
 We discover the same fundamental note in the historical 
 and poetical books of the Old Testament. The historical books 
 show how the Lord makes good the promises and threats 
 with which He accompanied the laws, in the lives of the in- 
 dividuals and of the people. In the Psalms, too, the righteous- 
 ness, faithfulness, and truth or trustworthiness of God 
 are a subject of praise : He does not forsake the righteous 
 who keep His commandments, but rewards their children and 
 their children's children for their obedience. The righteous 
 man, too, suffers, but the Lord does not forsake him, nay, the 
 sufferings themselves turn into blessings; the ungodly, on 
 the other hand, perish ; the wages of sin is death. 
 
 The theoretical development of this thought forms the con- 
 tent of Greek moral philosophy. Virtue and happiness are 
 connected, not merely accidentally, through the mediation 
 of the gods, but in the very nature of things. The concep- 
 tion of happiness, however, is spiritualized ; not external 
 happiness or good fortune (euTu^ta), but internal happiness, 
 peace and repose of spirit, is directly joined with the exer- 
 cise of virtue, or follows as its necessary effect. External 
 welfare does not always fall to the lot of the wise and vir- 
 tuous man ; but virtue tends to realize this also ; and in 
 case he does not obtain it he is sure of finding happiness 
 in his own heart. This is also the prevailing sentiment in 
 modern ethics. Hobbes and Spinoza, Leibniz and Wolff, 
 
402 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 Shaftesbury and Hume, all attempt to point out the neces- 
 sary connection between righteousness and welfare. They, 
 too, regard as their cardinal doctrine the proposition that 
 good conduct has welfare, bad conduct, misfortune as its natu- 
 ral consequence. Virtue, welfare, honor, and inner peace go 
 together as well as vice, misery, disgrace, and inner dis- 
 cord. This is especially true of the two extremes : virtue and 
 inner peace, vice and inner discord. The two middle terms 
 of the series are not so constant. 
 
 A pessimistic conception runs parallel with this view of the 
 relation of virtue and happiness which may be called the 
 optimistic view : The evil-doer is the very one who fares 
 well ; fortune favors him ; while the good man fares ill. It 
 would not be difficult to gather a considerable number of 
 examples from the literature and the proverbs of nations, 
 all of which aim to show that the wicked man succeeds 
 better in the world with his evil arts than the man who 
 pursues the path of truth and justice. Strategy and vio- 
 lence, the latter against the weaker, the former against the 
 stronger, are the means by which men rise and maintain 
 themselves. The old fable of Renard the fox, which Goethe 
 once called a profane world-bible, illustrates this : the lion and 
 the fox, violence and strategy, control affairs, they are the king 
 and the chancellor; the honest ram and the innocent hare, 
 the straightforward bear and the inexperienced wolf, always 
 get the worst of the bargain. — And the other bible, that is, 
 the Bible of the New Testament, does not seem to contradict 
 this farcical animal bible. It is one of the fundamental con- 
 ceptions of primitive Christianity that the just must suffer 
 much for the sake of justice and truth. Like the master, 
 the disciples must endure many sufferings, disgrace, and 
 persecution. 
 
 Which of these two views is the correct one ? Is the truth of 
 the first overthrown by that of the second? I do not think so. 
 
 The sporadic pessimistic moods which now and then take 
 
VIRTUE AND HAPPINESS 403 
 
 possession of every nation and every individual, may perhaps 
 be explained as follows, and reconciled with the optimistic 
 view. It is, of course, an undeniable fact that the good 
 do not always fare well outwardly. A man may become 
 sick, even though he is temperate and prudent, and, con- 
 versely, a man who has no regard for his health may re- 
 main hale and hearty. An able and honest man may fail in 
 spite of all his exertions, and a scoundrel may accumulate 
 wealth by dishonest means. Frankness often draws upon 
 us the hatred of the mighty, and flattery gains their favor. — 
 But the very fact that such occurrences attract so much at- 
 tention and arouse such indignation seems to indicate that 
 they are not the rule, but the exception. No one is 
 surprised to hear of the ruin of a frivolous and reckless 
 fellow ; we say it is as it should be, and forget the incident. 
 But when a sensible and honest man is destroyed by all 
 kinds of misfortunes, while the former prospers, it seems to 
 be contrary to the nature of things, and we console our- 
 selves with the general statement that ill weeds grow apace ; 
 or, fools are lucky. When an honest man wins the confi- 
 dence of his surroundings, and the scoundrel is unmasked 
 and disgraced, everybody regards it as a matter of course. 
 When, however, a man grazes the penitentiary and gets his 
 millions into a safe place, we become excited, and the matter 
 is discussed for months. Everybody recalls similar cases, 
 and so at last the verdict is rendered : " Well, that 's the 
 way of the world ! " 
 
 Here, too, the exception proves the rule. These cases 
 would not cause such excitement if they were not contrary 
 to the nature of things. It is the rule that honest labor is a 
 surer road to economic welfare than fraud and dishonesty ; 
 that sincerity and truthfulness arouse confidence ; that false- 
 hood and deception are poor means of making friends ; in 
 short, that virtue is approved before God and man, and that 
 vice is despised and condemned. 
 
404 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 There is, however, an important exception to the last rule . 
 among the vicious virtue does not beget love, but hatred. 
 The shameless strumpet hates the virtuous maiden ; the very 
 existence of the latter is a reproach to her, she seeks her re- 
 venge in ridicule, calumny, and whatever her hatred may prompt 
 her to do. It is the greatest source of satisfaction to her to 
 drag her innocent sister down to her own disgraceful level, for 
 it silences reproach. This explains the awful impulse to lead 
 others into temptation which is so common to vice. So, too, 
 the flatterer and place-hunter hates the honest and truthful 
 man, who goes through life with his head erect; he imagines 
 that the latter watches, sees through, and despises him. 
 
 Should vice ever gain the ascendency in society, virtue 
 would no longer be attractive ; it would arouse among most 
 men, if not contempt, at least hatred and aversion. And 
 since the vices cannot make those who possess them agree- 
 able in the sight of men — for virtue is agreeable to the vir- 
 tuous, but vice is not esteemed by the vicious, especially not 
 social vice — a feeling of universal hatred would take pos- 
 session of society. Such a condition is foretold in the re- 
 markable lines of Hesiod's pessimistically-colored poem, 
 Works and Days : 
 
 Nor sire with son, with brethren brethren blend, 
 
 Nor host with guest, nor friend, as erst, with friend: 
 
 Reckless of heaven's revenge, the sons behold 
 
 The hoary parents wax too swiftly old ; 
 
 And impious point the keen dishonoring tongue, 
 
 With hard reproofs and bitter mockeries hung : 
 
 Nor grateful in declining age repay 
 
 The nurturing fondness of their better day. 
 
 Now man's right hand is law : for spoil they wait, 
 
 And lay their mutual cities desolate : 
 
 Unhonored he by whom his oath is feared ; 
 
 Nor are the good beloved, the just revered : 
 
 With favor graced the evil-doer stands, 
 
 Nor curbs with shame nor equity his hands ; 
 
 With crooked slanders wounds the virtuous man. 
 
 And stamps with perjury what hate began. 
 
VIRTUE AND HAPPINESS 405 
 
 Lo ! ill-rejoicing Envy, wing'd with lies, 
 Scattering calumnious rumors as she flies, 
 The steps of miserable men pursue 
 With haggard aspect, blasting to the view. 1 
 
 We have here a description of hell on Grecian soil. 
 
 This will help us to understand the Christian conception of 
 the worldly success of virtue. The old Christian view of the 
 world was very much like Hesiod's description. Compare 
 with the latter the picture of the Grseco-Roman world in the 
 first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans : " Being filled with 
 all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, 
 maliciousness ; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity ; 
 whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, 
 boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 
 without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural 
 affection, implacable, unmerciful, who knowing the judgment 
 of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of 
 death, not only do the same but have pleasure in them that 
 do them." Entering the world with such notions of the 
 world, which they made no endeavor to conceal, the old 
 Christians could not, of course, expect to please the world ; 
 they could not hope for anything but hatred and persecution, 
 which did not fail to overtake them. 
 
 The old Christians expected something else besides : the 
 end of the world. They felt that such human beings could 
 not live, and did not deserve to live. They were right: a 
 world like the world described by Hesiod and St. Paul could 
 not possibly exist. But the world did not come to an end; 
 nay the unexpected has happened, and the world, after ex- 
 hausting all the means of persecution at its command, has 
 in a certain measure accepted Christianity and preserved it 
 to the present day. Hence we are justified in assuming that 
 the picture which was painted of humanity could not have 
 been an exact likeness. Moreover, primitive Christianity ia 
 
 1 [Banks's translation, Bonn's Library, lines 239 f£., p. 345. — Tr.J 
 
406 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 not always so hopelessly pessimistic: Christians are not 
 infrequently exhorted to do good, " that they may see their 
 good works and glorify their Father which is in Heaven." 
 And in another place we even read that "godliness is profit- 
 able unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, 
 and of that which is to come," l a passage which, it must be 
 confessed, would, so far as the promise of this life is con- 
 cerned, have surprised us less in the Old Testament. 
 
 We must add, moreover, that afflictions and persecutions 
 are not evils for the Christian ; they are essential to his per- 
 fection ; nay, they cannot disturb his peace of mind, his godli- 
 ness, even for a single moment. Persecution gives him the 
 blessed conviction that he is not of this world, but a child of 
 the eternal kingdom of God. And so for him too, and for 
 him especially, virtue and outward happiness, or at any rate 
 piety and inner blessedness, are most intimately connected, 
 nay they are one and the same, as the word euo-eySeta ( Grott- 
 seligkeit) indicates. 
 
 Here, too, then, we reach the conclusion that for the truly 
 good man, for one whose will is completely ruled by virtue, 
 virtuous action is always the greatest blessing, even though it 
 should not bring external happiness, and should prove hard 
 for his sensuous nature. Spinoza's maxim applies to him : 
 Beatitudo non praemium virtutis, sed virtus ipsa. He, how- 
 ever, whose will is not ruled by virtue, who does good from 
 fear or calculation, may feel disappointed, when the outward 
 success which he hoped to realize from his honesty, temper- 
 ance, and benevolence, does not appear. To such a person vir- 
 tue seems to be an unprofitable, or at least uncertain, means of 
 happiness, and he utters pessimistic complaints, holding that 
 the evil-doers fare well and the good fare ill. This, however, 
 does not mean that he would have been better satisfied if he 
 had reached by crooked means the goal which he complains of 
 having missed by fair means. — Hence the fact remains that 
 
 i 1 Timothy, IV., 8. 
 
VIRTUE AND HAPPINESS 407 
 
 there is a universal inner relation between virtue and success or 
 prosperity or happiness, while the connection between wicked- 
 ness and unhappiness is equally necessary. We may perhaps 
 imagine a man who satisfies his desires without fear and 
 scruple, who enjoys without pangs of conscience everything 
 that fortune offers him, and whom fortune favors during his 
 entire life ; but can there really be such a man ? At all 
 events, it would not be wise for any one of us, constituted as 
 we are, to follow his example. Even though he should suc- 
 ceed in everything, the hour may come when he would give 
 up all that he has achieved to wipe out the past. 
 
 2. The second question is : What is the effect of happiness 
 upon character? By happiness (Gliick) we here mean ex- 
 ternal happiness (euTu^/a) : wealth, power, success, fame, 
 honor, health, strength, victory. What effect has the pos- 
 session or pursuit of these things on character ? 
 
 Observation of human affairs has convinced all the more 
 highly civilized nations of the second great fundamental truth 
 that happiness, or prosperity, or good fortune, is a menace to 
 character, and finally also to welfare. We mentioned above, 
 as the first maxim of Greek wisdom, the proposition that the 
 good fare well and the wicked ill. We may add as the 
 second : Eutuchia is not identical with eudcemonia ; un- 
 alloyed happiness is not happiness. 
 
 Prosperity produces satiety, a fat heart, as the Psalmist 
 says. Such souls are filled with pride, and pride leads to 
 iniquity, which calls down upon its head the wrath of God, 
 and destruction. That is, according to the conception of the 
 Greeks, as expressed by their poets and historians, the 
 natural course of events. Only an unusual amount of good 
 sense will enable a man to bear prosperity. 1 The view is 
 
 1 Theognis, 153: 
 
 TiVrei roi icSpos v&piv, '6rav ko.k$ 6\@os cinjTai 
 'hvQpdyirip, Kal 8r<p /*)? v6os &prios if. 
 
 Aristotle gives us in his Rhetoric (II., 15-17) an admirable description of the 
 influence of eutuchia and its different forms — aristocracy, wealth, influence, and 
 
408 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 undoubtedly well-founded that prosperity and success have 
 the tendency to make one self-satisfied and insolent. The 
 prosperous man is prone to judge others harshly and himself 
 mildly. His success he considers to be due entirely to his 
 own exertions ; he is ready to speak uncharitably of the mis- 
 fortune or failure of others, and to lay all the blame on them. 
 He has no respect for the striving of others, nor sympathy 
 with their misfortunes, and thus arises the habit of mind so 
 hated by gods and men, which the Greeks call #/3pt? 5 inso- 
 lence. This leads to the contemptuous treatment of both 
 things and men, and to the shameful abuse of the weak and 
 vanquished ; to a state of careless self-assurance that is soon 
 followed by the fall, the inevitable result of inner exhaustion 
 and heedlessness. 
 
 It is a noteworthy fact that the mere sight of sensuous 
 enjoyment usually fills the spectator with disgust ; thus, for 
 instance, to watch a company of people feasting and drinking 
 is apt to arouse feelings of repulsion. We naturally shrink 
 from observing the satisfaction of sensuous needs. Lovers 
 likewise seek solitude, and it is right for them to do so ; 
 lookers-on are apt to be disgusted by their happiness. What 
 makes the vain man so unbearable is the fact that he needs 
 and seeks people to whom to narrate his deeds and suf- 
 ferings. Biographies usually become uninteresting as soon 
 as the hero has overcome all the difficulties and obstacles, the 
 dangers and battles, which separated him from his goal. The 
 years of rest and universal recognition, of fame and wealth, 
 however well deserved they may be, are passed over by the 
 biographer. Groethe showed his good sense in not extending 
 his autobiography beyond the period of his entrance into 
 Weimar. — "Enjoyment is degrading," says Faust — a pro- 
 found truth, for the soul addicted to pleasure is conquered 
 and degraded. The real secret of Faust's power of resist- 
 
 power — on character. We moderns should have to add as a prominent form, 
 literary or artistic success and a brilliant career. 
 
VIRTUE AND HAPPINESS 409 
 
 ance to evil is his failure to find satisfaction in pleasure. 
 The devil hopes to debase him by means of enjoyment : 
 Staub soil er fressen und mit Lust} Faust eats the dust, but 
 not with zest, and hence the devil cannot wholly win his 
 soul. There is a noble discontent in him, which makes his 
 salvation possible. 
 
 What is true of individuals is also true of collective bodies, 
 of nations, classes, parties : prosperity ruins them. They lose 
 their capacity for self-criticism and self-control, they lose their 
 strength and dignity, they lose the sense of what is proper and 
 their standards of reality, and so, inwardly ruined, they are 
 ingloriously defeated by the despised foe. Nothing in the 
 world is more repulsive than a company of well-fed and self- 
 satisfied persons, who boast of their fatness and satiety ; 
 nothing is so apt to arouse all the healthy instincts of hu- 
 manity against it, nothing therefore so certain of destruc- 
 tion, — as history proves. — The history of the church also 
 confirms this truth, nay, perhaps it is nowhere so self- 
 evident as there, for the church triumphant and dominant 
 invariably becomes haughty, stubborn, hard-hearted, and per- 
 secuting. But as her external authority increases, her inner 
 authority decreases, until ruin overtakes her. Then comes 
 the reaction. The despised and persecuted church revives ; 
 humility, self-sacrifice, and heroism again show themselves ; 
 she again gains power over the souls of men. Then the 
 cycle begins anew. The powers of the world approach her, 
 she becomes a power among others, who must be reckoned 
 with, who can give favors and accept favors. Honors and 
 wealth are showered upon her, she controls desirable posi- 
 tions, she places the dogmas and the worship under the 
 protection of the police. And now come the clever, the 
 covetous, the worldly, and the aristocratic, and are anxious 
 to serve the church. And the church allows them to serve 
 her and to control her, and again to ruin her. 
 
 1 Dust shall he eat and with a zest. 
 
410 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 Such are the consequences of prosperity. Now look at the 
 other side of the picture, at the educating, strengthening, 
 purifying effects of adversity, failure, and suffering. Misfor- 
 tune steels the will ; the will that can bear trouble is made 
 elastic and grows strong under pressure. It gives us patience 
 to bear the inevitable, it exercises our ability to measure and 
 to test ourselves and our powers ; it makes us modest in our 
 demands and charitable in our judgments of others' failings. 
 Prosperity develops the repulsive qualities of human nature ; 
 adversity unites men, making them friendly, patient, and 
 just. When a storm suddenly comes up on a summer day, 
 we may see how the persons of high and low degree who 
 avoided and repelled each other while the sun was shin- 
 ing, now seek refuge beneath the same roof, and bear and 
 even jest with each other. So it is when a great misfortune 
 overtakes a city or a nation ; it breaks down all the barriers 
 of pride and hatred which were erected in the days of pros- 
 perity. Finally, the highest moral perfection is not matured 
 without misfortune and suffering. Christ entered into glory 
 through suffering. Rejected by the leaders of His people, 
 condemned by the unjust, mistreated by the puppets of the 
 mighty, reviled and cursed by the mob, denied and forsaken 
 by His disciples, He won the highest crown. Well could 
 He say, upon the cross, with head bowed down, " It is 
 finished " ; the highest that can be achieved upon earth 
 had been accomplished: He had suffered evil for the sake 
 of the good, without losing faith in the good, and without 
 changing His inner peace into hatred and contempt for 
 humanity. 
 
 Christianity is wholly a philosophy of suffering. Tentatio 
 est vita hominis super terram, Job's maxim, expresses the fund- 
 amental mood of Christianity. Nor did the Greeks fail to 
 appreciate this truth. Misfortune has an educating influence. 
 " No human being can be trained without blows," says a line 
 of Menander, which Goethe, who could hardly be called a friend 
 
VIRTUE AND HAPPINESS 411 
 
 of suffering, significantly places at the beginning of his auto- 
 biography. But the faith of the Greek people in the purify- 
 ing and elevating power of suffering is especially emphasized 
 in the writings of the tragic poets. The chorus in iEschylus's 
 Agamemnon gives voice to it : " For Zeus leads us to wis- 
 dom and sanctifies the law that suffering is our teacher." 
 
 Suffering is punishment ; but for him who accepts the pun- 
 ishment, it is also a remedy against that disease of the soul, 
 which is caused by prosperity, vppis, self-righteous harshness. 
 That is the idea expressed in the (Edipus tragedies. The pure 
 man, however, who becomes the victim of undeserved misfor- 
 tune shows, by bearing it tranquilly, the most sublime power 
 and independence of the human will with regard to the 
 natural course of things. So the dying Socrates has become 
 for the philosophers a living witness of the truth that no 
 evil can befall man so long as he refuses to regard it as 
 such. " How can that be an evil," Marcus Aurelius asks, 
 " that does not make me worse ? " 
 
 Hence we may say that real happiness is a proper mixture 
 of so-called happiness (good fortune) and misfortune. A 
 man's lot is not happy when all his desires are always and 
 fully realized, — but when he obtains a proper share of joy 
 and sorrow, success and failure, plenty and want, struggle 
 and peace, work and rest, and obtains it at the right time. 
 Just as the plant needs sunshine and rain in order to thrive, 
 so the inner man cannot prosper without both cheerful and 
 gloomy days. If everything went against him, if he experi- 
 enced nothing but trouble, he would, if such a life were at all 
 possible, necessarily turn from the world and life with horror. 
 Nor could a man call himself happy if his wishes were 
 realized as soon as they rose in his soul. Even if satiety 
 and pride would not ruin him — a result hardly to be avoided 
 — he would miss some very important human experiences, 
 he would not bring out some quite essential phases of human 
 nature. Just as a general who has never met with defeat 
 
412 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 would remain ignorant of all the resources of his mind, and 
 be unable to unfold them, so a man who has never wanted 
 for anything, and has never failed in anything, would not 
 be able to develop all the powers of his mind and will. He 
 would feel that fate had withheld from him something essen- 
 tial to the perfection of his being, and he would, perhaps, like 
 Polycrates, feel terrified at his " happiness." 
 
 And so we may be permitted to say that life, as we find it, 
 ig on the whole adapted to the real needs of human nature ; it 
 brings to every one good and evil days, success and trials. We 
 do not hear many complaining that there are too many happy 
 days, but the complaint is common that there is an excess of 
 misery and want. It can, of course, never be proved that 
 fate succeeds in producing the proper combination in every 
 case : that is simply a matter of faith. And perhaps it is 
 often hard to believe it, perhaps harder to believe it in the 
 presence of the infinite misery suffered by others than of our 
 own. We see countless creatures perishing from a lack of 
 care and prosperity, from a lack of appropriate problems 
 to solve, from a lack of the necessaries of life. And yet 
 would other life-conditions have produced more favorable re- 
 sults ? Who can tell ? How often have nations afterwards 
 looked back upon times which they at first regarded as times 
 of degradation and extreme misery, with feelings of grati- 
 tude and pride ! Is there an epoch in the history of Ger« 
 many upon which the eye would rather dwell than upon the 
 period after the battle of Jena ? Is not the time of " the 
 greatest humiliation " in truth also the time of the greatest 
 elevation ? Were all the good and- great men ever so hon- 
 ored, so united as then ? And the reverse is also true. The 
 days of victory, success, wealth, and greatness, look differ- 
 ent in retrospect. The Dutch painters of the seventeenth 
 century evidently wish to show us how a nation lives when 
 it is too prosperous. We might, if we chose, make soma 
 observations nearer home. 
 
VIRTUE AND HAPPINESS 413 
 
 We are reminded of the thoughtful poem of Chamisso : 
 Die Kreuzschau. A man complaining of the heaviness of 
 his cross is taken to a large hall where the crosses of all 
 human beings are stored. He is allowed to choose a new one 
 for himself. He lays down his own and begins to look 
 around for a more suitable one. After a careful and deliberate 
 search he finally finds a cross that seems most satisfactory 
 to him. Upon examining it more closely, he discovers that 
 it is his own cross, which he had for the moment failed to 
 recognize. 
 
 There are people who would show us a better world 
 than our real world, and therefore denounce the real world 
 as a failure. If they were allowed to realize their im- 
 aginary world and to live in it, they would perhaps discover 
 that the conditions are far more satisfactory in our despised 
 world. It frequently happens that persons leaving their 
 country full of hatred and contempt, experience a change of 
 heart after they have lived in their new home for a short 
 while, and discover, for the first time, how deeply they 
 really love their fatherland. If our pessimists could be trans- 
 ported to another planet for a short period, they would per- 
 haps learn to think of the earth with longing and gratitude. 
 Perhaps the cure is nearer at hand than we imagine. 
 Perhaps a time will again come when misfortune and sorrow 
 will teach our people to appreciate life and its goods more 
 highly. Pessimism flourishes in times of prosperity and 
 exuberance. May the following lines — in which one who 
 lived in those days of misfortune and spiritual exaltation, 
 Wilhelm von Humboldt, gives expression to his philosophy of 
 life — prepare us for the future : 
 
 An ehernen Gesetzen fiihrt gekettet 
 Der irdischen Geschleehter Wandelreihen 
 Das Schicksal unerbittlich seinen Pfad ; 
 Zufrieden, wenn das hohe Ziel es rettet, 
 Bleibt kalt es, ob sie leiden, ob sich freuen. 
 Auch uns hat es auf Rosen nicht gebettet \ 
 
414 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 Doch aus des Busens Tiefe strtimt Gedeihen 
 Derfesten Duldung und entschloss'ner That. 
 Nicht Schmerz ist Ungliick, Gliick nicht immer Freude, 
 Wer sein Geschick erfiillt, dem lacheln beide. 1 
 
 1 From Haym's Life of Humboldt, p. 258. [Inexorable Fate leads th€ 
 changing ranks of the earthly generations, shackled by iron laws ; happy when 
 she realizes her high goal, she remains indifferent to their joys and sorrows. 
 We too have not been resting on a bed of roses ; but our hearts are strong in 
 patience and full of energetic action. Pain is not a misfortune, pleasure noli 
 always a blessing ; whoever fulfils his destiny suffers both.] 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION * 
 
 1. The question which I shall attempt to answer in this 
 chapter is : Is there an inner connection — one inherent in 
 the nature of things, and therefore indissoluble, — between 
 religion and morality, or are morality and religion independent 
 of each other, and merely accidentally related ? 
 
 An historical reflection will prepare us for the answer. 2 — 
 It is one of the safest propositions of anthropology that a 
 very intimate relation exists between the religion and the 
 morality of a people, at least at a certain stage of its develop- 
 ment. The customs have the sanction of the gods ; the com- 
 mandments of religion and morality form a unified code of 
 laws ; piety and morality are regarded as one and the same 
 thing. Let me simply call to mind the best known example. 
 In the laws of Moses, religious, moral, and legal duties appear 
 as wholly homogeneous parts of one law of God. All of 
 them are equally binding ; all flow from the will of God, and 
 the punishment of every violation is regarded by the people 
 as a religious duty. The fear of God is the foundation of 
 
 1 [Janet, Theory of Morals, chap. XII. ; Steinthal, Allgemeine Ethik, pp. 
 9 ff. ; Hoffding, Ethik, XXXI.-XXXIII. ; Gizycki, Moralphilosophie, pp. 
 329-495; Coit's translation, pp. 208-276; Schurman, Belief in God, Lecture 
 III. ; Wundt, Ethik, Part I., chap. II. ; Hyslop, Elements of Ethics, chap. IX. ; 
 Mackenzie, Manual, chap. XVII.; Bowne, Principles of Ethics, chap. VII. ; 
 Smyth, Christian Ethics, Introduction, V. ; J. Seth, Ethical Principles, Part III., 
 chaps. II., III. ; Pollock, Essays in Jurisprudence and Ethics, chap. XI. ; Runze, 
 Ethik, p. 56. — Tr.] 
 
 2 I have worked out many ideas which are merely suggested here, in my Intro- 
 duction to Philosophy (5th edition, 1898) [translated by Frank Thilly]. 
 
416 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 morality; pious and good, godless and bad, are synonymous 
 terms. Christianity and Mohammedanism accept this view. 
 We find it also among the Greeks and Romans, Hindoos and 
 Persians, Egyptians and Assyrians. The entire life of the in- 
 dividual and society is regulated by religion ; all the institutions 
 of the state and society, all customs and usages which govern 
 the life of the individual, have a religious basis. We note the 
 same connection between religion and morals among the most 
 civilized tribes of all the native peoples of America, among 
 the Mexicans and Peruvians. Waitz quotes several examples 
 of Mexican wisdom which would do credit to a Hebrew or 
 Christian moral philosopher. This he considers a convincing 
 proof of the high state of mental advancement reached by 
 those nations. " There is," this experienced student of 
 anthropology adds, "hardly a more trustworthy sign and a 
 safer criterion of the civilization of a people than the degree 
 in which the demands of pure morality are supported by their 
 religion and interwoven with their religious life." 1 
 
 How are we to explain the union of religion and morality ? 
 Many facts seem to oppose the view that the connection is an 
 absolutely necessary one. In the lowest stages of development 
 religion exercises a separate function. It appears in the form 
 of magic practices, having no connection with morality, so far 
 as there is such a thing ; fetiches are indifferent to the conduct 
 of men, except so far as the latter directly concerns them ; 
 " idolatry " and " morality " have nothing to do with each 
 other. Hence, if this is to be regarded as the original state, 
 how was the connection between religion and morality brought 
 about ? Or, if this question is left- unanswered, upon what 
 was the connection originally based ? 
 
 1 Th. Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturculker, IV., 128. An elaborate and thought- 
 ful historical discussion of the relation of religion to custom and morality may be 
 found in Wundt's Ethics, Section I., chaps. 2 and 3. The work of Fustel de 
 Coulanges, La cite' antique (translated), shows that the political and legal insti- 
 tutions of the Greeks and Romans were originally intimately connected with 
 religion ; the oldest codes embrace worship, morality, and law, just like the laws 
 of Mosea. Law was for a long time a priestly science among the Romans. 
 
THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 417 
 
 We might, looking at the matter in a somewhat superficial 
 manner, attempt the following explanation. Acts of worship 
 constitute the earliest subject-matter of science. Complete 
 accuracy and correctness are of the utmost importance ; the 
 slightest mistake may make the act ineffectual or even injuri- 
 ous : think of the Hindoo or Jewish sacrificial worship. 
 Hence the priests are the first scientists They develop and 
 transmit the great science of correct worship. Here arise 
 the first fixed rules which exclude all arbitrariness. To these 
 the demands of custom and of law are added and gradually 
 form with them a unified code of law, which embraces every- 
 thing that is binding upon all the members of the people. 
 The transcendent sanction, which first attaches to religious 
 duties, is thereby extended to the decrees of morals and law. 
 
 An original inner affinity between religious and moral-legal 
 duties perhaps favors the union. All religious command- 
 ments resemble each other : they demand sacrifices, ablutions, 
 abstinences, restrictions of desire. All acts oi worship ex- 
 press submission of the individual will to a higher and more 
 mighty power ; humility wins the favor of the gods, insolence 
 provokes their wrath. The same is true of the demands of 
 custom ; they too limit and bind the individual will, they too 
 enjoin submission to authority. With them too insolence 
 leads to the violation of custom and to impiety towards the 
 gods. The gods are enemies of insolence, and so become the 
 protectors of custom. It is worthy of note that the weak and 
 outlawed, strangers and helpless ones, everywhere enjoy the 
 protection of the gods. Offences against guests, or against 
 helpless old age or children are particularly punishable by the 
 gods. 
 
 The subject, however, is capable of a profounder treatment. 
 — We may define religion in a general way as faith in the 
 transcendent. It invariably presupposes a feeling of the 
 insufficiency of the empirical world. Fetichism and shamanism 
 too are attempts to accomplish by magic influences upon trans^ 
 
418 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 cendent powers or beings what cannot be attained by natural 
 means. As life develops, the will is spiritualized. In the 
 lowest stages of human existence it desires scarcely more 
 than the satisfaction of animal needs. With the advance of 
 civilization it aims not merely at life, but at a beautiful and 
 good life, at an ideal of humanity. This change in the 
 direction of man's will produces a corresponding change in 
 the form of the transcendent world : the manifold world of 
 gods of polytheism is the creation of the higher will. Perma- 
 nent, personal, historical beings take the place of the vague, 
 perishable, nameless magic forces of fetichism. In the gods, 
 man's ideals of a beautiful and good life are realized. The 
 Greek world of gods is the objectification of the ideal human 
 world, created by the longing of the Greek people for the 
 beautiful and the good. Each of these divine personages 
 represents some phase of the Greek ideal of humanity. And 
 this transcendent world is not indifferent to or without 
 influence upon the empirical world ; the gods are ever mind- 
 ful of man ; guiding him, protecting him, and punishing 
 him, they fashion his will to perfection. The magic char- 
 acter is not entirely lost ; the attempt to influence the will of 
 the gods in order to realize through them immediate indi- 
 vidual purposes, health, wealth, victory, success, undoubtedly 
 occupied a prominent place in the actual religious practices of 
 the people. But theurgy gradually lost its importance among 
 the leaders and even among the larger circles of the popu- 
 lation — particularly through the mediation of art — and the 
 disinterested contemplation of the gods as the perfect models 
 and guides of life, an attitude which-is expressed in the beauti- 
 ful figure of the praying boy, came to be regarded as one of the 
 essential elements in religion. — In monotheism which appears 
 in history as the last and highest development of religion, the 
 ideal element is still more pronounced. Christianity does 
 away with magic entirely ; Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, 
 Thy will be done! Christian prayer presupposes the belief 
 
THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 419 
 
 that whatever may come comes from God and is good ; its 
 real purpose is to make the heart submissive to God's will. 
 God's will, however, is absolute holiness, justice, and grace. 
 The deepest will of the purest man objectifies itself in the holy 
 will of God, and then conceives itself as a revelation of God. 
 
 We may therefore say that the religion of a people mirrors 
 its own will in a transcendent world, in which the objects 
 of its deepest longings are realized. For faith this transcend- 
 ent world is the real and true reality, compared with which 
 the empirical world is unworthy and unreal. But they are 
 not separated by an absolute chasm. All pure striving comes 
 from above and tends upward. 
 
 This determines the relation of morality to religion. Both 
 spring from the same root, the yearning of the will for 'per- 
 fection. But that which is a demand in morals becomes a 
 reality in religion. Perfection is described by morality in 
 abstract formulae, it is intuited in religion in concrete form 
 as a divine, holy, and blessed life. And so, too, morality 
 and religion are seen to be two phases of the same thing in 
 the subject : the individual is moral in so far as his willing 
 and acting strive after perfection, pious in so far as his 
 feelings, his faith, and his hopes, are inspired with the image 
 of the highest. 
 
 Let us now consider the effect of the union of religion and 
 morals. There can hardly be a doubt that the religious 
 sanction of custom and the moral laws has, in a large 
 measure, assisted in the moral discipline of the individual. 
 The absolute fear (religio) which hinders the violation of 
 religious commandments is extended to the moral laws. 
 The belief in a life after death has been especially influential 
 in this direction. In the next world man is in the immediate 
 power of the gods ; here upon this earth their power is more 
 remote, their interference occasional ; the transgressor be- 
 lieves that he can sin in secret. In the hereafter, however, 
 he appears before the judgment seat without concealment, 
 
420 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 before the judgment of the dead, which is pictured by bo 
 many religions as the gradually approaching goal of life. 
 Then everything will be brought to light, merit and guilt 
 will be judged before a just judge. Whoever is full of guilt, 
 whoever has lived an unworthy life, whoever has been remiss 
 in his duties towards the gods, will suffer for it, and con- 
 versely, whoever has lived a brave, pious, righteous life, may 
 hopefully enter eternity. Nowhere is this idea more effec- 
 tively brought out than in the Christian church. The great 
 judgment day, which will end our earthly history, and finally 
 decide the fate of all human beings, rewarding some with 
 eternal blessedness, punishing others with eternal damnation, 
 is a conception which has made a powerful impression upon 
 the consciousness of man. 
 
 Thus the fear and the hope of the hereafter become 
 powerful protectors of morality. 
 
 These impulses appear in purer form in deeper souls. 
 God is not merely the stern judge, but also a father who in 
 his merciful love forgives man. The chief concern of the 
 pious man is, not to prove unworthy of this love, not to dis- 
 appoint the Holy One, not to exclude himself by deeds of 
 darkness from fellowship in the realm of light. In the 
 base soul religion becomes base ; future reward and punish- 
 ment become a matter of speculation as it were: the re- 
 mission of moral duties is purchased by an exact fulfilment 
 of ecclesiastical duties, the forgiveness of sins by dispensa- 
 tions. This is a perversion of religion which the systemati- 
 zation of worship tends to produce in a church. Jesus found 
 it in Judaism as Pharisaism, Luther found it in Christianity 
 as the system of " good works," Spener found it in Luther- 
 ism as " orthodoxy ; " " faith " (fides mercenaria, to use 
 Kant's expression) had become the ultimate "good work," 
 taking the place of all the others ; and we find the same thing 
 existing to-day. This " pseudo-worship (Afterdiemt) of 
 God in the statutory religion" as Kant calls it, is a great 
 
THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 421 
 
 menace to religious-church life. It dulls the sense of truth 
 and the moral feeling; it also fosters fanaticism: Whoever 
 fails to respect our worship, cannot respect us; he is our 
 enemy and therefore God's enemy, who favors and recognizes 
 our service; to persecute and kill him is therefore a good 
 work and one with which he is well pleased. 
 
 2. Let us now return to the question which we asked at the 
 outset : Is the relation between morality and religion an es- 
 sential one, and therefore indissoluble, or is it merely a pass- 
 ing phenomenon, peculiar to a particular stage of development ? 
 Will the connection be severed in the future ? Will there 
 then be a perfect morality without any religiosity ? 
 
 This question was not seriously debated until recently. For 
 centuries nothing seemed more self-evident than the insepar- 
 ableness of morality and religion. The tie between the two 
 was first loosened by the violent commotions to which all 
 theoretical conceptions have been subjected since the beginning 
 of modern times. The church belief first began to wane in 
 scientific and educated circles ; infidelity has gradually taken 
 possession of the masses also. A purely physical conception 
 of the universe now widely prevails. The belief is also com- 
 mon that morality and religion, ethics and metaphysics, are 
 wholly different things; that conduct is totally independent of 
 the idea which one may have of the constitution of the world, 
 and that his world-view is therefore the individual's private 
 concern. A man may be a materialist, atheist, pantheist, 
 sceptic, or anything else, without in the least affecting our 
 estimate of his moral worth. 
 
 There are unquestionably also narrower circles in which this 
 view is emphatically opposed. The consequence of infidelity, 
 it is declared, is to enjoy the present, regardless of the future ; 
 theoretical materialism necessarily produces practical materi- 
 alism, — at any rate this is its logical consequence, even though 
 many a theoretical materialist is hindered by custom and habit 
 from drawing it in practice. 
 
422 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 After all we have said before, we cannot support the view 
 that a life ignoring the laws of morality follows as a logical 
 necessity from any particular metaphysical belief or unbelief. 
 We shall prefer to say : Whatever may be a man's notion of 
 the nature of things, the laws of morality are none the less 
 binding upon him ; they are not arbitrary prescriptions, the 
 observance of which is advisable from the standpoint of re- 
 wards and punishments. They are rather laws of nature in 
 the sense that the welfare of a life depends upon their ob- 
 servance. And the opinions of men in no wise affect them. 
 Hence if any one were to infer from an atheistic-materialistic 
 conception that the laws of morality had no further claim 
 upon him, he would be in error, and would have to bear the 
 consequences of his error. 
 
 Nor do I believe that an immoral life will actually result 
 from unbelief, any more than I believe that a moral life is the 
 invariable consequence of faith. There are, undoubtedly, 
 honest and reliable men, nay even passionate and self-sacrific- 
 ing idealists, in the ranks of those who have repudiated not 
 only the church creed, but all religion, just as there are 
 among those whose church-belief has not been shaken in the 
 least, who perform all their religious duties in the most punc- 
 tilious and conscientious manner, and who are also capable 
 of true religious feeling, men whose lives and acts are full of 
 stubborn perverseness, cold-hearted pride, and hypocritical 
 falsehood. 
 
 Still, I do not believe that morality and religion, conduct 
 and Weltanschauung ', are entirely indifferent to each other. 
 
 There are two views of the world which are radically 
 opposed to each other. The central thought of the one is that 
 the good is an essential element in the world, that reality 
 exists through the good and for the sake of the good. We 
 can call this conception idealistic, following Plato's terminology, 
 who bases the world upon the idea of the good. We may also 
 call it theistic, if we mean by belief in God the trust that the 
 
THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO BELiGION 423 
 
 good is the ground and the goal of the world, or, to use 
 
 Fichte's expression, that the world-order is in the last analysis 
 a moral order. Every theistic belief, in whatever form it may 
 arise, can be embraced under this most general formula. 
 Opposed to idealism we have materialism ; according to it the 
 world-principle is in its essence absolutely indifferent to dis- 
 tinctions of value. The atoms and their uniform motions, of 
 which the whole of reality is composed, have originally abso- 
 lutely nothing to do with the good and the evil, the rational 
 and the irrational. In the course of time all kinds of com- 
 binations, among them also living beings, are formed by the 
 purely accidental conjunction of atoms ; in these, feelings of 
 pleasure and pain arise, as peculiarly modified processes of 
 motion, and things are accordingly characterized as pleasant 
 and unpleasant, good and bad. Like all combinations of 
 atoms, these, too, will again be dissolved by chance ; the indi- 
 viduals will constantly perish, and finally also the species will 
 die ; the conditions for the formation of living beings will no 
 longer exist, and then pleasure and pain, good and evil, will 
 disappear together, leaving nothing but unfeeling atoms and 
 irrational laws behind. 
 
 Now I believe that the acceptance of either one of these 
 antagonistic world-views is not wholly unrelated to a man's will 
 and conduct. A life containing ideal elements itself will 
 naturally incline to the idealistic conception, while an empty 
 and planless life will tend to the opposite view. For not 
 the world-view, as has often been thought, but the disposition 
 of the will is the all-important thing. Life determines faith, 
 not faith life. What kind of philosophy you will choose, as 
 Fichte truly said, depends upon what kind of man you are. 
 If your life is a medley of blind impulses and momentary 
 desires and moods, how can you form a higher conception of 
 the universe ? Every man judges the value of the world 
 by the value of human life, and he forms his opinion of 
 the value of human life from the experiences of his own life. 
 
424 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 In case the latter is an aimless whirl of empty momentary 
 desires, it will be suited by a world which is itself an aimless 
 play of atoms. An empty life produces a nihilistic conception 
 of the universe. Conversely, whoever fills his own life with 
 things of permanent value, whoever pursues lasting ends, great 
 ideals, will place a different value, first, upon his own life, then 
 upon the life of humanity, and finally upon the world at large. 
 He will see a purpose and meaning in history, of which his 
 own life forms a part ; he will interpret the past in the light of 
 his own aspirations, believing that all good and great men 
 battled for the same cause ; he will look upon the future as 
 his : men of faith and action always believe that the future is 
 on their side ; finally, the whole of reality will seem to him to 
 be governed by the purpose to bring about the very things for 
 which he is zealously and honestly striving. Thus the value 
 which we put upon our own lives is finally predicated of the 
 things themselves. 
 
 One's conception of the universe, we may therefore say, is, 
 so far as it includes and expresses judgments of value, the 
 mirror of one's will. Everybody interprets the phenomena so 
 that they may harmonize with his character. Just as every 
 life surrounds itself with symbols of what it holds dear and 
 valuable, so it strives to formulate a conception of things 
 which will have a quieting and elevating influence upon the 
 will. An empty will is satisfied with a nihilistic world-view ; 
 an idealistic world-view would leave a painful sting in it ; it 
 would appear before the world as the only being unwilling to 
 harmonize with the purposes of the universe. A will with 
 ideals, on the other hand, could not .bear to think of itself as 
 nothing but a strange anomaly in the world, as a freak of 
 nature again to be cast aside. The thought alone would 
 satisfy it that it was derived from the world-principle it- 
 self, and in essential harmony with it, and that neither its 
 achievements nor its strivings could be lost. 
 
 Thus life influences faith. Faith then also undoubtedly reacts 
 
THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 425 
 
 upon life. The belief in the power of the good, the belief in God, 
 strengthens the courage and arouses hope. We shall perhaps 
 be compelled to say, that nothing truly great has ever been 
 accomplished in this world without faith. All religions are 
 based upon faith ; through faith their founders and disciples 
 have overcome the world. Believing in an idea all martyrs 
 have lived, fought, and suffered, — believing in the ultimate 
 triumph of the good for which they sacrificed their lives, 
 they have died. Who could die for a cause in whose ultimate 
 and enduring success he did not believe ? And what would 
 be left of the history of the world if all these things were 
 stricken out ? Unbelief, on the other hand, is discouraging : 
 what is the use in trying ; let the things go as they please ; 
 who knows what the next day will bring forth ? So Goethe 
 says : " The real and sole theme of the history of the world 
 is the conflict between belief and unbelief. All epochs in 
 which faith reigns supreme, under whatever form it may be, 
 are bright, uplifting, and fruitful for contemporaries and 
 posterity. All epochs, on the other hand, in which unbelief, 
 in any form, gains a weak victory, even though temporarily 
 boasting of a sham glory, will pass away, because no one will 
 take the trouble to acquire a knowledge of the unfruitful." 1 
 
 3. But has not the progress of scientific knowledge rendered 
 faith idle f Are not theism and idealism a mere shamefaced 
 survival of the ancient superstition which first flourished so 
 luxuriantly in the miraculous world of gods of polytheism ? 
 Has not science convinced all those who are capable of seeing 
 things as they are, that blind forces which know nothing of 
 good and evil determine the course of the world ? 
 
 Many are of the opinion that such is the case ; they believe 
 that scientific knowledge has left religion with nothing to 
 stand on. I do not share this belief. This is not the place 
 to develop a system of metaphysics; but I shall suggest a 
 few points of view from which the matter may be considered. 
 
 1 Notes to Westostlichcr Divan. 
 
426 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 It is true that the belief in gods as individuals resembling 
 human beings, having an empirical existence somewhere and 
 occasionally acting upon our world, is dying out and will never 
 be revived. And it is immaterial whether we assume several 
 such beings or only a single one. A monotheistic scheme, 
 which conceives God as an individual by the side of others 
 and permits him occasionally to act upon the world as upon 
 something external and foreign to him, does not essentially 
 differ from polytheism. If it be insisted that such a concep- 
 tion alone can be regarded as theism, it will be hard to contra- 
 dict those who claim that science leads to atheism. We 
 should, however, have to add that atheism in this sense is evi- 
 dently not the end but only the beginning of philosophy. It 
 is not a positive theory of reality, but simply negates the view 
 that there exists before, outside of, by the side of, above, the 
 world a separate being who made the world, as a watchmaker 
 constructs a clock, according to a plan, and now occasionally 
 interferes with its course. The repudiation of a false theory 
 is, however, not itself a theory. The question remains : How 
 shall we explain the universe, how is it constructed, what is 
 its essence? 
 
 Or is that no longer a problem ? Is it perhaps a settled 
 fact that the world is nothing but an accumulation of an 
 infinite number of little bodies, which accidentally congre- 
 gating in empty space, come into reciprocal action with each 
 other, and in this way produce the particular combinations 
 which reality reveals to us ? 
 
 There are persons who regard this view almost as self- 
 evident. It is especially common among young people who 
 have just discarded their school notions, and have substituted 
 for them a few ideas gathered from popular scientific writ- 
 ings. It is rarely held by the deeper and more independent 
 thinkers ; indeed such men are not easily persuaded that any- 
 thing is self-evident. Neither Plato nor Aristotle, Spinoza 
 nor Leibniz, Hume nor Kant, Schopenhauer nor Hegel, Lotze 
 
THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 427 
 
 nor Fechner, Mill nor Spencer, was able to convince himself 
 of the adequacy of the theory. And in truth, no one can 
 regard it as self-evident unless he is anxious to have an 
 hypothesis without God, and therefore refuses to subject the 
 view to a closer examination. When we look into the matter 
 a little more carefully, we find some rather strange and sur- 
 prising results. So the world consists of innumerable abso- 
 lutely self-sufficient atoms, absolutely independent of each 
 other in essence and being, each existing for itself, and re- 
 gardless of all the rest ? But then how does it happen that 
 all of them really do have regard for each other, so much 
 so that, according to the assumptions of the physicist, the 
 behavior of each element is uniformly determined by that 
 of all the others ? For that is what the law of universal in- 
 teraction means : it asserts no more and no less than that 
 the totality of all physical processes constitutes but one 
 single large interconnected process. Is not the actual be- 
 havior of the atoms somewhat surprising in the light of the 
 above theory ? Should we not rather expect each atom, 
 since it is absolutely independent, to act in an absolutely inde- 
 pendent way, regardless of all the rest ? Or are the atoms 
 compelled by the laws of nature to agree with each other ? — 
 But the laws are nothing but the expression of the actual 
 behavior of these atoms, not something existing for itself 
 and controlling them from without. — And how astonishing 
 that these atoms which have come into the world without 
 any regard for each other, should exhibit such a similarity 
 of essence and behavior that it can be expressed in uni- 
 versal formulae ! Should we not rather have to regard an 
 infinite diversity of essence and behavior as a priori probable ? 
 And how strange, moreover, that so much should be evolved 
 from these atoms: cosmic systems, organic bodies, beings who 
 feel and think ! How remarkable that such processes should 
 arise by a mere change in the arrangement of those little 
 pebbles of which the world is said to be composed ! Would the 
 
428 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 atomist not be surprised if he had never seen the world as it 
 now is, but had merely observed the assumed chaos of atoms, 
 and should suddenly, after trying all sorts of combinations, 
 hit upon sensations and thoughts ? Would he not perhaps say : 
 It seems that there is something more in the atoms than ex- 
 tension and motion ? Would he not even conclude : After 
 all, reality cannot be constructed out of atoms, however 
 simple the matter may at first have seemed ; in some form 
 or other unity and spirituality must be assumed as original ; 
 it is not possible to conceive them as the accidental results of 
 the conjunction of atoms ? 
 
 We might, by continuing these reflections, reach a view like 
 that which Spinoza logically formulated in his Ethics : The 
 world or reality is an absolutely unitary being, a substance ; 
 the particular things, which at first seem independent, are 
 in truth only dependent manifestations of the essence of the 
 universal being. The All-One unfolds itself in a dual world 
 of modifications, in a world of conscious processes and in 
 a world of processes of motion ; between them there is uni- 
 versal parallelism. The laws of nature, which govern each 
 of the two worlds, and are conceivable by thought, are 
 nothing but forms of the self-determination of the All-Real ; 
 and the latter is not pushed or shoved from without by 
 mechanical compulsion — for there is nothing outside of it 
 that could push or shove it — but, yielding to the inner 
 impulse or craving, it unfolds its essence in the fulness of 
 reality and is itself its own and free cause. 
 
 Had not Spinoza been too deeply absorbed in his anti- 
 theological and antiteleological speculations, he would have 
 made the following additions to these conceptions : Our 
 knowledge of the universe is in the main a physical and as- 
 tronomical knowledge, dealing with the outside of things. 
 Their inner side, the world of consciousness, which our uni- 
 versal metaphysical speculation discovered to be as far-reach- 
 ing as the world of motion, is not so open to observation. 
 
THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 429 
 
 Everybody has immediate knowledge of it only in so far as 
 he experiences it in his own inner self. Reasoning by anal- 
 ogy we infer from the bodily manifestations the existence of 
 an inner life in the human and animal world. Assisted by 
 the written and spoken word, we attain to some knowledge 
 of the historical-mental life of humanity. Of a superhuman 
 spiritual life we have absolutely no knowledge. We interpret 
 the soul-life of animals by means of the lower manifestations 
 of our own inner life. This is all we can do here. We read 
 into the higher spiritual life conceived by metaphysics the 
 highest phases of our being. In this sense we attribute to 
 God, or the All-Real, wisdom, goodness, justice, and holiness. 
 We do not intend thereby to define His essence theoretically, 
 that is utterly impossible ; we shall not even dare to attribute 
 reason and will to Him, reason and will are perhaps only 
 earthly powers, just as sight and hearing are possibly merely 
 earthly organs. We simply mean that we desire to imagine 
 His essence in the form of the most perfect things of which 
 we know. Art has always pictured God in human form, 
 and will continue to do so; here we do not really intend 
 to attribute such a form to God; we simply use the human 
 countenance, the most perfect and important form of cor- 
 poreality that we have, as a symbol of absolute perfection. So, 
 too, we use the spiritual form of the most perfect humanity 
 as a symbol of God's essence, which we cannot imagine and 
 conceive. 
 
 And in this we seem simply to be following the sugges- 
 tions of reality itself. The earth, the only member of the 
 universal system with which we are in any degree familiar, is 
 predisposed to organic life, and tends to realize it. Organic 
 life in turn aims at mental life, which reaches its goal in 
 man. What Speculative Philosophy defined in logical con- 
 cepts, modern biology attempts to represent as a process of 
 historical evolution. If now we discard the false concepts of 
 causality, according to which the cause pushes or forces the 
 
430 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 effect into existence, so to speak, and conceive it, with Lotze, 
 as the spontaneous organization of all parts or members of 
 reality into a unified system of motion or change, we can 
 rightly say : The process of development of our planet, which 
 culminates in human historical life, is moved or attracted by 
 this its highest content as its goal. And in a similar man- 
 ner, to follow Aristotle, the All is moved or attracted by God 
 as its goal. 
 
 Our conception of the moral laws as laws of nature, that is, 
 laws of mental-historical life, suggests the same view. Since 
 historical life is a part of universal life, the moral laws too 
 must be based upon the essence of the universe, and give 
 expression to it. Yes, we shall say, if human mental life is 
 the highest and fullest development of inner life of which 
 we know, then the moral laws are for us the highest forms 
 of the self-determination of the All-Real. Here, too, the 
 new biology serves as a bond of union between nature and 
 history. This notion agrees with the old saying of Hera- 
 clitus : All laws are nourished by one divine law. And 
 Goethe says the same: 
 
 So im Kleinen ewig, wie im Grossen 
 Wirkt Natur, wirkt Menschengeist, und beide 
 Sind ein Abglanz jenes Urlichts droben, 
 Das unsichtbar alle Welt erleuchtet. 
 
 In this sense we may conclude with Bacon : " Undoubtedly 
 a superficial tincture of philosophy may incline the mind to 
 atheism, yet a farther knowledge brings it back to religion." 1 
 
 It is true, not all the philosophers mentioned above have 
 accepted this world -formula, although no system has fewer 
 opponents than this. But they all agree that reality is far 
 from being simple and perfectly intelligible. They all 
 ieclare, in some form or another, that the universe is a 
 wonderful miracle, whose infinite depths even the profoundest 
 human thoughts cannot fathom. And they all assert, each in 
 
 1 [Advancement of Learning, Bk. I.} 
 
THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 431 
 
 his own way, that it behooves man reverently to acknowledge 
 the infinite and unfathomable. 
 
 Forsooth, we must confess that, remarkable though the 
 progress of science has been during the last few centuries, it 
 has utterly failed to solve the great riddle of existence. In- 
 deed, the mystery seems to have deepened and to have grown 
 more wonderful. The more we study the universe, the more 
 immeasurable seem its depths, the more inexhaustible the 
 variety and wealth of its forms. How simple and intelligible 
 was the world of Aristotle and St. Thomas ; into what incon- 
 ceivable abysses astronomy and physics have since led us ! 
 The billions of miles, years, and vibrations, with which these 
 sciences reckon, carry the imagination to the dizzy edge of 
 infinity. With what profound secrets of its organization, 
 development, and existence biology sees herself confronted, 
 now that she has learned to manipulate the microscope, and 
 has called evolutionary science to her aid : back to what 
 infinite beginnings progressive historical research stretches 
 the life of man, which a few centuries ago seemed so clearly 
 and distinctly bounded by the creation on the one side, and 
 the judgment day on the other! So far is science from 
 having transformed the world into a simple problem of 
 arithmetic ! Science does not carry the thinking man to the 
 end of things, she merely gives him an inkling of the illimit- 
 ableness of the universe. She arouses in those who serve her 
 with a pure heart, not pride, but feelings of deep humility 
 and insignificance. These are the feelings which inspired 
 Kant and Newton. Goethe, too, is full of this thought, which 
 runs through his Prose Maxims (Spruche in Prosa) and his 
 Conversations with Echermann : " The greatest blessing that 
 can befall a thinking man is to fathom what can be fathomed 
 and silently to adore the unfathomable." 
 
 This feeling of awe in the presence of the Infinite from 
 which our life springs, and into which it flows, forms the root 
 of our religious conception of things. Reverence includes 
 
482 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 two elements, humility and trust; humility, the feeling of 
 our own littleness and insignificance in the presence of the 
 Infinite ; trust, the feeling that the Infinite is not merely an 
 external transcendent force, but harbors and bears within its 
 bosom our own life and striving as something that was created 
 by it and cannot be lost. Of such feelings the heart-beats of 
 religion consist. The ideas in which it clothes itself, the 
 conceptual formulae in which philosophers and theologians 
 attempt to comprehend the ideas, constitute the accidental 
 and transitory element in religion. The value of these ideas 
 and concepts consists in this : they are symbols in which 
 feeling objectifies itself, and make religious fellowship and 
 communion possible ; for no religion can exist except in a 
 permanent social life. The individual participates in it as he 
 participates in language and poetry, morals and law. — 
 Besides, conceptual formulae have never exerted the greatest 
 influence in the world ; art, which Goethe calls the mediator 
 of the ineffable, and worship, with which the former is most 
 intimately connected, have always been more important bearers 
 and creators of religious life ; it is their function to express 
 man's relation to the suprasensuous in a sensuous-visible 
 manner. 
 
 Now I believe that these feelings are qualities of human 
 nature which will never be lost. The forms in which they 
 are clothed will continue to change, their essence will remain. 
 Whatever conceptions scientific research may form of reality, 
 there will always be room for religious feeling. Religion will 
 never die out ; it satisfies the innermost and deepest needs of 
 the human soul. In order that it may not be stricken with 
 pride and blindness in prosperity, the heart must turn heaven- 
 ward, thankfully and joyfully accepting its happiness, not as 
 something due to its own merit, but as a gift of grace. In 
 the death of its hopes and plans it must remember that 
 earthly things have no absolute worth ; in its absolute uncer- 
 tainty concerning all human things, and in its ignorance of its 
 
THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 433 
 
 own future, that it may not fall into baneful superstition, it 
 needs the trust that whatever may come is meant as a bless- 
 ing. It is surely not an accident that wherever this belief 
 disappears superstition spreads. 
 
 I also believe that the hearts of the best men always have 
 been and always will be most susceptible to religious feeling. 
 The purer and more beautiful a human soul, the more capable 
 will it be of that reverence which constitutes the basis of reli- 
 gion ; the more seriously and profoundly it regards life, the 
 more humbly will it acknowledge how far short it falls of its 
 ideals. The greater and freer the aspirations of a man, the 
 stronger and more intense will be his faith in the ultimate 
 victory of the good cause. 
 
 4. But, it will be said, how does it happen that so many 
 serious, able, and truth-loving men of our times not only stand 
 outside of the church, but neither have nor even claim to have 
 religion in any form ? Granting the truth of this statement — 
 and I do not believe that we can doubt it — we may perhaps 
 explain it as follows : First, the capacity for religion is not 
 equally developed in all individuals. There are men in whom 
 intellect or will so strongly preponderates, as to hinder the 
 growth of the more refined and freer emotions. The story is 
 told that a mathematician, after having listened to the read- 
 ing of a poem, impatiently inquired : What does it prove ? 
 His mind was so set upon demonstrations that there was no 
 place nor interest in it for anything else; from nature he 
 learned nothing except that she gave him problems to solve. 
 Darwin seems to have passed through a similar experience. 
 He tells us how his taste for poetry gradually disappeared 
 Indeed, no one will wholly escape these influences who devotes 
 his entire strength to a scientific task. Others are so deeply 
 interested in practical problems as to care for nothing except 
 what bears on these. They may be honest, efficient, and 
 good men, but we cannot regard them as normally developed. 
 An essential phase of their inner life seems to be wanting, 
 
434 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 that part of it, namely, by which human nature senses beauty, 
 poetry, and freedom. We may perhaps say that our age is 
 especially productive of men of this stamp. The division of 
 labor, the mechanization of life, specialism, which constitute 
 the glory of the present, apparently favor such a one-sided 
 development. Many are proud of their limitations, not to say 
 narrowness. The old Greek philosophers, the mediaeval 
 scholars, the thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
 turies, came into broader and freer touch with the universe 
 than many of the investigators of the present, who begin to 
 delve in some special field, and then, buried in their shafts, 
 see nothing of heaven or of earth. Similar one-sidedness re- 
 sults from the extreme devotion to an official or industrial 
 sphere of activity, which the present demands. Life used to 
 be simpler and more versatile, our relations to men and things 
 were more varied, and hence fancy was more active, and the 
 emotional life richer and more uniform. Specialism, and par- 
 ticularly scientific specialism, encourages the feeling least 
 favorable to religious life, that is, pride. I read somewhere 
 that the salamanders living in the stalactitic caves of Car- 
 niola have lost their vision, according to a well-known law of 
 biology that organs which are not exercised disappear. It 
 would seem that the science-specialists of our age often meet 
 with a similar fate. Accustomed as they become, by constant 
 practice, to the microscopic view of things, in philology and 
 history as well as in natural science, they gradually diminish 
 and finally lose entirely the power to see things in their great 
 connections. And in the same ratio the tendency develops 
 to regard all those who do not see the little things as stupid 
 ignoramuses, and all those who strive to insert them into a 
 larger whole, as meddlesome and fantastic bunglers. Is it 
 not possible that the blind salamanders, groping about in 
 the darkness of their caves, have the same contempt for those 
 that see, and regard eyes as dilettantic organs of orientation ? 
 Another circumstance, which causes a great deal of confu- 
 
THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 435 
 
 sion and unhappiness, has the same effect : the contradiction 
 between our professions and our real convictions. The creed 
 contains much that sounds strange to us now, for example, 
 the belief in miracles and demons. No one objected to these 
 things as late as three hundred years ago. But with the 
 triumph of the scientific mode of thought, which starts from 
 the hypothesis of the universal reign of law, and then seeks 
 to verify it in particular cases, the intellect has come to rebel 
 somewhat strongly against miracles and magic. There may 
 be more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in 
 our philosophy, as witness the hypnotic phenomena, the reality 
 of which we found it so hard to acknowledge. But the ten- 
 dency to consider all phenomena as obeying the universal 
 order of nature, as uniform occurrences, whose formula must 
 be discovered, will not disappear again, unless science itself 
 perishes. And no intelligent man would welcome such a 
 calamity ; the decline of science would prepare the soil for 
 the rank weed of superstition. We are here confronted with 
 an alternative ; there are riddles, says science, which we can- 
 not, as yet, solve, but there are no miracles, no occurrences 
 which exclude, in principle, the possibility of a natural 
 explanation. 
 
 The Biblical miracles are no exception to this rule ; they 
 belong to a category of world-views which has disappeared, 
 and cannot long survive them. If we accept the Biblical 
 miracles, we must also admit the possibility of modern 
 miracles. If we have not the courage or find it impossible to 
 accept the latter, at least in the Protestant world, we must 
 draw the logical conclusion, and repudiate the former also. 
 Protestant theology evidently appreciates the situation ; it at- 
 tempts to set a limit to miracles or to discard them altogether, 
 e.g., by interpreting them naturally or by explaining them 
 away exegetically. This was the method of old rationalism, 
 and it gave rise to many artificial and forced interpretations. 
 Nevertheless, such a procedure was perhaps more honest and 
 
436 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 also more appropriate than a later one in which the attempt 
 is made to complicate the question by all kinds of so-called 
 speculative considerations or critical investigations of the 
 sources, and so to avoid taking a definite stand in the matter. 
 The impartial reader is apt to feel that such investigations 
 are intended to confuse him and to conceal from him the 
 author's failure to reach any decision whatever. 
 
 I do not believe that the church can again win the confi- 
 dence of thinking men until she decides to discard the belief 
 in miracles. All these endeavors to make the miracles appear 
 credible, simply serve, I fear, to increase the distrust. 
 
 Besides, it may perhaps be shown that miracles not only 
 contradict the scientific conceptions of our age, but also the 
 spirit of our religious faith. They really belong to the poly- 
 theistic stage in the evolution of theism ; gods work miracles, 
 God works no miracles. According to the dogma of the 
 church, God originally created all things out of nothing, and 
 it is He who is constantly keeping them in existence ; they 
 do not exist through themselves. That is, stated in different 
 words : God alone is an independent being, all things are and 
 exist, not in themselves, but in Him ; or according to Spinoza's 
 formula : God is the substance, the things are modifications 
 of His essence. Miracles presuppose a different relation of 
 God to the world: God, a particular being by the side of 
 other beings, upon which He occasionally acts arbitrarily, but 
 which, in other respects, have their own reality. Miracles 
 are exceptional effects, they are makeshifts, by which the 
 world, which usually runs its own course, is corrected from 
 without. Fetiches and gods only, can work by miracles. 
 The all-powerful God of the first article, however, is an all- 
 active God, and such a God works no miracles. Whoever 
 takes monotheism seriously, whoever regards the difference 
 between monotheism and polytheism not as a numerical 
 difference, but as a difference in the divine essence, and does 
 not look upon God as the only survivor of a great host of 
 
THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 437 
 
 gods, whoever interprets monotheism to mean that God 
 alone truly exists, cannot at the same time believe, without 
 contradicting himself, that He reveals Himself in miracles 
 and signs. And it is equally plain that theurgic practices 
 of all kinds, aiming to produce changes in the course of 
 nature, are necessarily connected with the polytheistic con- 
 ception of the nature of the gods. 
 
 Nor should we hide from ourselves the consequences of 
 such an historico-critical " abstinence-policy " as was men- 
 tioned before. The objection is raised to Strauss's criticism 
 that it is dogmatic and not historical. Thus Bishop Mar- 
 tensen of Zealand tells us in his Autobiography 1 that he 
 noticed, immediately after reading the book for the first time, 
 that " the Life of Jesus, which pretends to adhere to the prin- 
 ciple of free thought, proceeds from a crass dogmatism : for 
 Strauss boldly assumes that miracles are not possible." 
 To be sure, if we should have to regard miracles as possible 
 and true, until historical criticism had proved beyond a doubt, 
 in case of each and every one of them, that the account of it 
 was founded upon error, deception, or fraud, they would be 
 safe for all time. We must not forget, however, that the 
 same certainty would attach to the countless miracles which 
 are mentioned in the literature of antiquity and the Middle 
 Ages. They may all be defended against a " groundless nega- 
 tive criticism " by the objection that their sources have not, as 
 yet, been sufficiently investigated to compel us to abandon 
 them ; and that it is crass dogmatism to assert their impos- 
 sibility a priori : why, for example, should it be unthinkable 
 that thunder and lightning, the flight of birds, and the condi- 
 tion of entrails stand in some relation to human affairs, 
 be it through supernatural intervention or through pre- 
 established harmony ? 
 
 It would, in my opinion, be no loss, at least to the Protes- 
 tant church, should these things be entirely discarded. It may 
 
 1 1., 142. 
 
438 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 be that miracles and signs were once needed to strengthen 
 the faith of the church ; at present they merely discredit it. 
 The story is told that F. A. Wolf once chose the New Testa- 
 ment, the Gospel of St. Mark, as the subject of his lectures ; 
 but when he came to the fifth chapter, to the story of the cast- 
 ing out of devils in the country of the Gadarenes, and the 
 events following it, he laid the book aside forever. Why did 
 he not find the same fault with the ghost-stories and the 
 fables in Homer? Surely because he did not have to be- 
 lieve them, because he was allowed to take them for what 
 they were worth. The Gospels certainly contain wonderfully 
 serious and important matters, much more important matters 
 than the works of Homer ; but Wolf could not see them on 
 account of these miserable Gadarene swine. For another 
 person Balaam's ass or a similar calamity proves to be the 
 stumbling-block. He is taught in the schools to take such 
 things literally ; the miracles are perhaps emphasized as 
 especially important facts and as corroborating the truth of 
 all the other contents. As soon as he escapes from the 
 school-room, and his impulse to believe and to doubt is no 
 longer subjected to compulsion, he revenges himself by repu- 
 diating these books once and for all ; to his own detriment 
 of course, but not wholly through his own fault. How 
 wonderful, deep, poetically affecting, are the stories with 
 which legend has surrounded the birth of Jesus : the annun- 
 ciation, the appearance of the angels among the shepherds, 
 and the gloria in excelsis, the star, which appeared to the 
 wise men of the East, and showed them the way to the 
 new-born babe, the Savior of the world, the flight to Egypt ; 
 how full of meaning is the story of the temptation, of the 
 feeding of the multitude, of the catching of the fishes. But 
 who can endure a sermon that uses these narratives to con- 
 tradict rationalism, and to prove their literal possibility ana 
 truth ? Demonstrations are absolutely out of place here ; 
 where these stories are accepted with the old faith, proof 
 
THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 439 
 
 is superfluous ; where the faith is gone, such arguments 
 will never bring it back, they will simply destroy the poetical 
 effect, and produce distrust, which will spread from point 
 to point until it has finally eaten away all faith and all 
 religion. 
 
 If, in addition to this, the church undertakes to defend the 
 creed by outward means, if the worldly powers aid her therein 
 to their utmost, and if rewards are bestowed upon ostensible 
 orthodoxy, and punishments inflicted upon its opposite, — 
 then the sincerest natures will be the first to assume an 
 attitude of decided hostility, they will look upon the creed 
 as the Caudine Forks through which the path leads to ap- 
 pointment and promotion, as the praemium servitutis. History 
 shows it ; for example, the history of the forties and fifties ; 
 but who heeds her warnings ? It seems to be fated that all 
 the absurdities of humanity should be produced anew with 
 every generation. So, too, the attempt is periodically made to 
 bolster up religion by means of outward force. And the con- 
 sequences are always the same ; human nature rebels against 
 what is forced upon it, and philosophers assert that such 
 methods are absolutely contrary to human nature. If the ex- 
 periment could be made to employ force, not in behalf of, but 
 against religion — an experiment which the first French revo- 
 lution actually tried, and which presumably will be tried again 
 in some form or other — it would be found how deeply re- 
 ligion is rooted in the heart of man. 
 
 5. Let me also consider briefly the relation between the 
 belief in immortality and morality. It has long been believed 
 and is still claimed at the present time that the belief in im- 
 mortality, in the sense that death is followed by another life, 
 is the keystone of all morality. If this life were the end of 
 everything, virtue would be an empty dream ; then it would 
 be the part of wisdom to enjoy the moment. 
 
 According to the view herein presented, morality as a 
 acience does not depend upon this belief. The latter is of 
 
440 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 great importance to conduct, but not to moral philosophy. 
 Ethics will not change a single proposition, whether there be 
 a life after death or not. The moral laws are natural laws 
 of the human historical life existing at this time and upon 
 this earth. Should this life be the preparation for another 
 life, we could not give the slightest indication of how to pre- 
 pare ourselves for it except by filling our present life with a 
 moral content. And should this earthly life be the whole of 
 life, the same course would be advisable and necessary ; nor 
 would such a life need another as a reward, it would be a 
 sufficient reward in itself. 
 
 And I should like to add that it does not seem advisable 
 from & pedagogical and practical standpoint, to make the truth 
 or the value of the moral laws dependent upon so uncertain a 
 thing as the belief in a future life. For it cannot be denied 
 that this belief is becoming more and more unsettled in our 
 times ; and the future will hardly succeed in strengthening it. 
 It is being undermined by the increasing spread of the scien- 
 tific and anthropological mode of thought. The conception of 
 a life after death, as anthropology shows us, is a dream which 
 all peoples have dreamed in infinitely different forms. The 
 Indians and Esquimaux dreamed of hunting and fishing 
 grounds, the old Germans of battles and drinking bouts, the 
 Eastern Mohammedans of beautiful women and beautiful gar- 
 dens : everywhere the imagination creates a future world, in 
 which the will realizes its desire for happiness. 
 
 Then I should continue as follows. Even though a tem- 
 poral life after death were a dream, that would not make the 
 belief in immortality a wholly vain illusion ; we have here in 
 sensuous garb a possible and perhaps necessary thought, the 
 thought to which the Kantian philosophy leads : The temporal 
 life is the phenomenal form of a life which is eternal as 
 such. 
 
 Consider : what is time ? The form of reality as such ? 
 If so, to be in time would be the condition of being real. In 
 
THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 441 
 
 thafc case, however, we should have to say further : To be in 
 the present is the condition of being real ; for that which is 
 not in the present, is necessarily either past and hence no 
 longer existent, or future and hence not yet existent ; there- 
 fore that only is real which is in the present. — But note the 
 consequence : absolutely nothing can be in the present ; at 
 the moment in which being is predicated of it, it has already 
 passed with the moment ; the present is not a space, but a 
 point. To be in the present can therefore not be the con- 
 dition of being real ; if reality is not to disappear entirely, 
 even the past must in some way be real, and hence also the 
 future. — Perhaps after we have reflected upon this, it will 
 be easier to grant : To be in time is by no means the condi- 
 tion of being real, or, to speak with Kant : Time is not a 
 form of reality, but a form of our sense-perception. That 
 which appears in our consciousness, which is bound to this 
 form of intuition, as a process extending through time, is in 
 and for itself a timeless existence, eternal. Every moment of 
 reality, hence also a human life, has absolute or eternal exist- 
 ence in reality. It is irrational to think : Death ends all, for 
 then life is gone and annihilated, and it is just as though it 
 had never been. A life can in no wise be destroyed by death ; 
 what has once been experienced is an eternal and indelible 
 constituent of reality, never more to be erased or altered. It 
 is a foolish doubt which Karl Moor expresses with the pistol 
 in his hand : " If the paltry pressure of this paltry thing 
 makes the wise man and the fool, the coward and the hero, 
 the noble and the villain, equal — " That cannot be ; death 
 severs the thread of the earthly life, but the content of life 
 can neither be altered nor annihilated by it ; reality is eternal 
 in its essence, nothing that is real can, to quote Angelus 
 Silesius, ever perish and cease to be. 1 
 Are these useless, abstract reflections ? Perhaps not alto- 
 
 1 Weil die Geschopfe gar in Gottes Wort bestehn, 
 Wie konnen sie denn je zerwerden und vergehn ? 
 
442 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 gether. Whenever we appear before men, even though it 
 be but for a moment, it is not immaterial to us what pic- 
 ture they form of us; we know that it will hardly abide 
 with them for a second, then to be forgotten forever, and 
 yet we take care that it may not be a repulsive or ugly pic- 
 ture. Countless human beings have lived and died thinking 
 of the picture which future generations will form of them ; 
 and should we then care nothing for the picture which is 
 impressed, not upon a momentary consciousness, not upon 
 the memory of the succeeding generations, but, as it were, 
 upon the very essence of reality for all eternity ? And not a 
 picture merely but rather our very being ? Should we, seek- 
 ing only the enjoyment of the moment, be careless whether 
 our being manifests itself forever in the eternal reality as a 
 useless, empty, and contemptible, or as a beautiful and good 
 thing ? 
 
 But the world has no consciousness, and I myself will have 
 no consciousness ; and what do I care for an existence in 
 which neither I nor any one else is to have consciousness ? 
 
 Well, who says that reality is without consciousness ? May 
 not the All-Real have an absolute consciousness of itself, of 
 its essence ? Surely the thought which so many of the pro- 
 foundest thinkers of all ages regarded as a necessary thought, 
 cannot be an absurd one. The divine consciousness will be 
 different from the earthly-temporal consciousness of man, and 
 we cannot conceive it, imagine it, or describe it. But who 
 dares to assert that nothing can exist except what he can 
 imagine ? — And who will claim that the individual beings, 
 who here have a temporal consciousness, could not also 
 possess an eternal consciousness ? Why should not a being 
 which is conscious of its inner life as a process extended in 
 time, also be able to become aware of it sub specie ceterni- 
 tatis? Do we know how temporal consciousness arises, and 
 how it can exist ? 
 
 And we might point out how consciousness is modified with 
 
THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 443 
 
 advancing age. Youth lives in the future. But the past 
 gradually expands, and old age finds rest in the contem- 
 plation of the past as the true reality, as something no longer 
 subject to change. When we look back upon the past, what 
 is it that determines our judgment of the value of life ? The 
 pleasure which it yielded, or the fact that it was a worthy 
 and a righteous life ? Christian moralists constantly exhort 
 us to remember death and to be mindful of eternity, and 
 to act and to live as though we were in the presence of 
 death. Indeed, this advice is as sound as it is effective; 
 death is really, as it has been called, a good professor moralium. 
 The time will come for you, whoever you may be and what- 
 ever you may think and believe, — even though not until your 
 life is drawing to a close, — when it will be absolutely im- 
 material to you what pleasures you have enjoyed in this 
 world, how much honor and wealth you have won, how far 
 you have succeeded in asserting your claims ; the time will 
 come, even though not until you are on your death-bed, when 
 one thing alone will not be immaterial to you : whether you 
 have honestly done your work in this world, however great 
 or small it may have been, as a righteous man, whether you 
 have fought the battle of life as a brave and faithful soldier. 
 Yes, ask yourself, and honestly answer the question, What is 
 it that really pains you now when you look back upon your 
 past ? Is it the sorrows you have suffered, is it the evils, 
 the injustice, the losses which you have borne ? Or is it the 
 sins you have committed, the wrongs you have inflicted upon 
 others, the injury you have done yourself, contrary to your 
 better nature ? And what is it that makes you happy, what 
 adds value to your life in your eyes ? The pleasures and 
 good meals ? These are gone and will never more delight 
 you ! But the noble and honest deeds you have wrought, the 
 good you have done to others at the sacrifice of your own 
 inclinations, — these are the things which you still cherish and 
 hold dear. Does this not express an immediate conviction on 
 
444 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 your part that the past is not absolutely vain and unreal, 
 but permanent and real ? for what do we care for the 
 non-existent ? — Why, you say, it exists in memory. — Well, 
 suppose being in memory were the real being, suppose all 
 recollection formed a part of the absolute memory, or rather 
 of the absolute consciousness of God ? Then life, clearly 
 seeing itself in the light of the eternal self-consciousness of 
 God, would be engraven upon the background of eternal reality 
 for all eternity. 1 
 
 If we were to seek for terms to express the faith of Chris- 
 tianity in philosophical language, we should, it seems to me, 
 be forced to adopt a similar formula. The Scriptures tell us 
 that the eternal life is not a sensuous-temporal life, but a 
 suprasensuous-eternal life ; that it does not consist of eating 
 and drinking, but of an unspeakable glory and blessedness, 
 or its opposite ; that the end of this earthly life destroys the 
 possibility of a change of its essence and hence of its state, 
 which means that no life in time will follow, for a life in time 
 without change is something that cannot possibly be con- 
 ceived. To be sure, faith does not rest here, in these abstract 
 and negative expressions, which strip off the sensuous and the 
 temporal ; it soon clothes the thought of a non -sensuous-time- 
 less life in the forms and colors of the sensuous-temporal 
 life ; it speaks of a city of God, measures its length and its 
 breadth, builds the streets of gold and the gates of pearls, 
 makes the saints, clothed in white raiment and carrying palms 
 in their hands, sing songs of praise to God and the Lamb ; 
 while hell is filled by the imagination with repulsive and 
 
 1 The mind which is immortal makes itself 
 Requital for its good or evil thoughts — 
 Is its own origin of ill and end — 
 And its own place and time : its innate sense, 
 When stripp'd of this mortality, derives 
 No color from the fleeting things without, 
 But is absorb'd in sufferance or in joy, 
 Born from the knowledge of its own desert. 
 
 Btkow'b Manfred. 
 
THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 445 
 
 horrible phantoms. These are images, and yet not merely 
 images. It is peculiar to faith that it raises itself above the 
 sensuous world, and yet remains in it and clings to it ; what 
 it throws away with the right hand, it again picks up with 
 the left. The entire church creed moves along this boundary 
 between the sensuous and the suprasensuous, between imagin- 
 ation and thought. On the one hand, God receives no qual- 
 ities of sensuous-temporal finitude : he is infinite, omnipresent, 
 eternal, unchangeable ; and then again he possesses the 
 qualities of finite beings : he thinks, feels, wills, acts, suffers, 
 is sorrowful and glad. The polytheistic religions naively 
 attributed sensuous-human characteristics to the gods ; this 
 gave them their aesthetic perfection, which we cannot help 
 admiring in the Greek gods even to this day. Christianity 
 assumed a different relation to the world of sense from the 
 very beginning. Nor must it be forgotten that it entered a 
 world in which the great division between thought and imag- 
 ination, which were originally one, had long ago been made ; 
 Xenophanes and Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle, had not 
 lived in vain. But it did not always adhere to the division ; 
 the pseudo-science of the old dogmatics constantly attempted 
 again to unite imagination and thought into one system. 
 Will the time ever come which will recognize the futility of 
 these endeavors, and decide to recognize the difference be- 
 tween thoughts and pictures, concepts and symbols ? Will 
 the time ever come which will have the courage to confess 
 that the formulae of the creed are symbols, and no more 
 adequate definitions of the divine essence and activity than 
 the pictures of Raphael are portraits of the Holy Family ? 
 Have the latter no value in case tbey are not exact likenesses? 
 What would be the result if a pseudo-science should endeavor 
 to prove the portrait-character of these pictures ? Would 
 not the indignation aroused by such a procedure, vent itself 
 against the pictures themselves, especially if they were placed 
 under the protection of the authorities ? 
 
446 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 6. The foregoing conception of the relation between 
 morality and religion has been criticised by Gizycki in a 
 review of this work which I mentioned above. 1 It seems to 
 him that I underrate a valuable, indeed the most valuable, 
 quality of a man of science, " intellectual honesty." " There 
 really are," he says, " some intellectually honest men who 
 strive after the truth with their whole souls, who desire to 
 possess a faithful picture of the world, and therefore do not 
 allow themselves to believe anything that is not immediately 
 self-evident, or cannot be deduced with logical necessity from 
 such absolutely certain principles." The above view, he 
 believes, does not do these men justice. He mentions a 
 number of such unbelievers, and compares them with others 
 who combine great moral defects with much religion. Lom- 
 broso has shown in his work on the criminal that few 
 criminals are unbelievers. Gizycki considers the facts ad- 
 duced by Lombroso as very suggestive. I confess that I do 
 not find them so to any great extent. That criminals are 
 superstitious is not surprising; for there is a close connec- 
 tion between crime, intellectual decay, and insanity. It is 
 much more surprising that Lombroso, and following him 
 Gizycki, should so naively confuse superstition with religion. 
 — But as for those sincere and honest men who have no reli- 
 gion, I have of course never dreamed of denying either their 
 existence or their integrity. I have even attempted to explain 
 their lack of religion by their honesty. Because religion is 
 so often confused and adulterated with superstition, religiosity 
 with hypocrisy, sincere natures are repelled, and so repudiate 
 all " faith," all attempts to transcend the facts adduced by 
 scientific research. I did not reproach them for this, but, 
 on the other hand, I cannot follow Gizycki, and regard their 
 attitude as deserving especial praise. Nay, I cannot help 
 regarding it as a kind of narrowness, particularly when it 
 claims to be the only proper and legitimate attitude. 
 
 1 See p. 283. 
 
THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 447 
 
 Now, is it really true, are there really people who strictly 
 adhere to the principle, " not to believe anything that is not 
 immediately self-evident, or cannot be deduced with logical 
 necessity from such absolutely certain principles ? " Do not 
 these persons also form notions of the future, either of their 
 own or of the future in general, which partake of the nature 
 of faith ? Do not they, too, make use of unverified elements 
 to construct their conceptions of reality ? Gizycki quotes a 
 passage from an American author in his Moral Philosophy i 1 
 " When a man believes things simply because Christ or the 
 Bible says so, without knowing other reasons, then, even 
 though his belief be true, the truth itself, which he possesses, 
 becomes his heresy; — it is wrong to accept the Bible with- 
 out investigation, even if every sentence were literally true." 
 — Does this rigid rule apply only to the Bible or also to other 
 books, for example, to the collected works of Lombroso ? I 
 believe that it could do no harm to re-examine the generaliza- 
 tion that most criminals are very religious. 
 
 But that is most likely not our author's meaning. The 
 rule does not really apply to the world of empirical facts, in 
 which we are obviously constantly compelled to make assump- 
 tions without ourselves verifying them, but to the world of 
 religious faith, to the faith in " transcendent " things. At the 
 beginning of this chapter I defined religion provisionally as 
 faith in the transcendent. Gizycki says that he does not 
 know what I mean by the transcendent, and that he has not 
 been able to form a clear notion of it from my remarks. It 
 seems to me that I am not altogether to blame for this. To 
 be sure, I did not give a description of the transcendent, and 
 I do not intend to give one now ; I believe that Kant's Criti- 
 que has put an end to such attempts : only the empirical world 
 is an object of description and of knowledge. But I am also 
 convinced with Kant, and I might add, with Plato and Spinoza 
 
 1 [P. 457. The author is Stanton Coit, Intellectual Honesty in the Pulpit, New 
 York, 1888.— Tr] 
 
448 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 and Schopenhauer and a thousand others, that the world of 
 our experience, or nature, is not the world in and for itself, 
 and that our science does not exhaust reality. But what 
 is reality in itself ? I do not know ; but it does not seem 
 absurd to me to think that it bears a closer relation to my 
 own inner experiences than may at first sight appear to one 
 looking at it from the outside, with the eyes of the physicist 
 All philosophers, the materialists alone excepted, are agreed 
 upon this point ; in addition to physical being they attribute 
 to reality a metaphysical essence ; they merely differ in their 
 interpretation of the latter. This thought of an Absolute 
 being becomes faith when it is at the same time conceived as 
 absolute goodness, as a world of ideas, as a divine essence, as 
 a kingdom of grace, as a moral world-order, or whatever we 
 may choose to call it. 
 
 And for such a belief Gizycki demands a theoretically 
 satisfactory proof; otherwise it must be rejected as super- 
 stition. Gizycki says that my theological reflections sur- 
 prise him. Well, I confess that his demands, coming, as 
 they do, one hundred years after the establishment Ji the 
 Kantian philosophy in Germany, surprise me. Or has Kant 
 become antiquated, has his philosophy been overthrown and 
 replaced, say by the advance of the natural sciences or 
 by the system of the " philosophy of reality " 1 - If that is 
 Gizycki's opinion, we are unquestionably pretty far apart, too 
 far apart to be able to settle our differences here. 
 
 But I should also like to add : Gizycki seems to be afraid 
 that I may, after all, attempt to base my ethics upon theology 
 or metaphysics, and that is perhaps the ultimate ground of 
 his opposition. Such a thing is really far from my thoughts. 
 I am as convinced as he is that morality can and must be 
 explained purely immanently. But it may, perhaps, serve 
 as a starting-point and support for metaphysics. And this 
 
 1 [ Wirklichlceitsphilosophie, the name under which German Positivism is 
 known See Weber-Thilly, p. 583, note 1. — Tr.] 
 
THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 449 
 
 is precisely what I believe. If we wish to form a final con- 
 ception of the nature of things in general, we shall have to 
 take into consideration not only the facts of physics and 
 astronomy, but also the facts of our inner life, and especially 
 those with which moral philosophy is concerned. I have 
 repeatedly emphasized the truth that the moral laws are 
 likewise laws of nature, in the sense that a healthy and 
 happy life is possible only where they determine the will. 
 Gizycki calls this fact, which he recognizes as such, 1 a 
 simple and self-evident fact, almost a tautologous truth. I 
 regard it as a very suggestive truth : if the moral law is a 
 biological law, then " unfeeling, involuntary nature " is 
 brought into a very remarkable relation with mental-histor- 
 ical life. 
 
 It has always seemed strange to me that the thinkers who 
 so solemnly declare that human life is merely a piece 01 
 universal nature, do not see the necessary consequence of 
 their view : namely, that the historical life of humanity may 
 in turn be used in interpreting the nature which produces it. 
 For, on their hypothesis, the logical and moral laws also form 
 a part of the universal order of nature, and the materialist, 
 too, will have to regard them as such. He explains thought 
 and conscience by the mechanics of the brain, that is, he 
 assumes the possibility of such an explanation; hence the 
 mechanism functions, at least in part, as a logical and moral 
 machine. Is n't that surprising ? 
 
 How would the nature of things have to be constituted in 
 order to impress the " philosophers of reality " as remarkable ? 
 If immediately after each bad deed, the sinner were to receive 
 from an invisible power a series of painful electrical shocks, 
 corresponding to the degree of his guilt ; and if every good 
 deed were, in the same way, immediately followed by its re- 
 ward, then would they regard the phenomenon as strange and 
 significant? Well, such an arrangement might seem sum- 
 
 1 Mord Philosophy, §§ 11 f. 
 
450 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 ciently obvious to a childish intellect ; the primitive mind has 
 always imagined that every misdeed is followed by a misfor- 
 tune, as a punishment, not of nature, but of the supernatural 
 power of the fetiches or the gods. The thinking man, on the 
 other hand, would find it difficult to become reconciled to such 
 a demoniacal, spectral arrangement ; he will regard a natural 
 and uniform relation between reality and the good as more 
 appropriate. Well, such a relation actually exists in the 
 world ; that which the moral instinct of man has from time 
 immemorial designated as the good or the bad, is found to be 
 uniformly conducive to preservation and happiness, or, con- 
 versely, to cause destruction, pain, and discord. Besides, it 
 has not escaped healthy common-sense that God's justice 
 does not assume the form of demoniacal intervention: The 
 mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine. 
 
 Is the relation here spoken of self-evident ? Is the pro- 
 position that virtue preserves life, that vice destroys it, a 
 tautologous proposition, equivalent to the statement that 
 preservative qualities preserve life, and destructive qualities 
 destroy it? — We cannot compel any one to meditate upon 
 these matters. But I believe there will always be men who 
 will ponder over things more than the " philosophy of reality " 
 may be pleased to regard as good. Nay, I am inclined to be- 
 lieve that philosophy will, in the course of its development, 
 come to view this connection between morality and life as the 
 most remarkable and significant fact of all, from which all 
 attempts to explain the essence of reality must take their be- 
 ginning. Of course, it will never be possible to give a com- 
 plete theoretical explanation of the world with this as our 
 starting-point. We are simply afforded a glimpse into the 
 ultimate connections of things. And so the ultimate relation 
 to reality will always remain for us a belief, not an intuition. 
 
 I certainly prize intellectual honesty very highly ; but 1 
 cannot convince myself that it compels me to say that faith 
 and religion are always a mistake in man, either of the head 
 
THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 451 
 
 or of the heart ; that he is either incapable or unwilling to 
 see things as they are. This view held by many " philoso- 
 phers of reality " is, however, not Gizycki's : he regards re- 
 ligion as something wholly indifferent and accidental. I, on 
 the other hand, believe religion belongs to the normal func- 
 tions of human nature, and that its absence always indicates 
 a disturbance, either in the individual life or in the life of 
 society. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILLI 
 
 1. We now enter upon the discussion of a problem which 
 likewise borders on ethics and metaphysics : the problem of 
 free will. 
 
 Let me discriminate, at the outset, between two senses of 
 the word : we may speak of freedom of the will in a psycho- 
 logical or in a metaphysical sense. The former means the 
 ability to cause decisions and acts by one's own will 
 (freedom of choice) ; the latter means that the will or the 
 particular decisions themselves have no cause. 
 
 In popular speech, the term free will is employed solely in the 
 first sense. An act is called free when the will of the agent 
 
 1 [For the psychology of willing, see : Wundt, Physiologische Psychologie, chaps. 
 XV., XX., XXI , XXII. ; Hoffding, Psychology, VII. ; Baldwin, Feeling and Will, 
 Part IV. ; Mental Development, chap. XIII. ; James, Psychology, chap. XXVI. ; 
 Sully, Human Mind, vol. II., Part V. ; Ladd, Descriptive Psychology, chaps. XI., 
 XXVI. ; Jodl, Lehrbuch, chaps. VII., XII. ; Kulpe, Die Lehre vom Willen in der 
 neuern Psychologie, Phil. Studien, V. — Riehl, Der philosophische Kriticismus, vol. n., 
 Part II., pp. 216-280; Sidgwick, Methods, Bk. I., chap. V.; Baumann, Wundfs 
 Lehre vom Willen, Phil. Monatshefte, vol. XVII., pp. 558-602 ; XIX., 354-374 ; 
 James, The Dilemma of Determinism, Unitarian Review, September, 1 884, also in 
 his The Will to Believe ; Martineau, Study of Religion, vol. II., Book III., pp. 196- 
 324; Green, Prolegomena, Bk. I., chap. III.; Bk. II., chap. I.; Stephen, The 
 Science oj. Ethics, pp. 264-294 ; Munsterberg, Die Willenshandlung ; Fouille'e, La 
 liberie" et determinisme ; Le sentiment de V effort, Revue Phil., 1890; Sigwart, Der 
 Begriff des Wollens und sein Verhaltniss zum Begriff der Causal itdt ; Steinthal, 
 Allgemeine Ethik, pp. 312-382; Wundt, Ethik, Part III., chap. I., 1, 2, 3; Frank 
 Thilly, Freedom of the Will, Phil. Review, vol. III., pp. 385-411 ; Fowler and 
 Wilson, Principles, Part II, chap. IX. ; Hyslop, Elements, chaps. IV., V. ; 
 Mackenzie, Manual, chap. VIIL; Seth, Ethical Principles, Part HL, chap 
 
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 453 
 
 is its immediate cause ; determined, when it is caused by an 
 external force, that is, either directly, by physical compul- 
 sion, or indirectly, by threats, misrepresentations, etc. In the 
 latter case, the will is really not the cause of the decision ; 
 but here there is a wide range between gentle persuasion and 
 irresistible compulsion, and therefore a corresponding grad- 
 ual transition from complete freedom to complete deter- 
 minism. A person remains in a room because his business 
 keeps him there, or because he feels no inclination to leave, 
 or because he has been promised something to stay, or because 
 he will be punished if he leaves, or because a sentry is posted 
 at the door who will shoot him if he goes out, or because the 
 door is barred and he himself is bound hand and foot. Here 
 we have a graduated scale from perfect freedom to absolute 
 compulsion. 
 
 That there is psychological freedom has never been doubted. 
 But whether the will can be free in the other sense is a 
 subject of endless debate. It is contended by the defenders of 
 metaphysical freedom that the will itself is not determined by 
 causes, but is the final uncaused cause of its decisions, that 
 it is absolutely independent of the world-process, which is 
 subject to the causal law. Here again there are two possibil- 
 ities. We may, first, assume that the will of a man is an 
 agens ; which though itself uncaused and standing outside of 
 the causal nexus, nevertheless acts according to immanent 
 law, in the sense that its effects follow from its nature. So 
 Schopenhauer : 1 operari sequitur esse ; but the esse, the will 
 itself, has no cause, or is, so to say, its own cause (causa 
 8ui). Or, secondly, we may assume that the particular acts 
 of will are uncaused as such, that each enters the world as an 
 absolutely new element, in no wise determined by the previous 
 course of outer and inner events. On the latter hypothesis, 
 
 1 [Die Freiheit des Willens. See R. Penzig, Arthur Schopenhauer und die 
 menschliche Willensfreiheit, which contains also a brief historical review of the free- 
 will question. — TrJ 
 
454 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 the will would be, if we could still speak of a will here, an 
 absolutely lawless agens. 1 
 
 The problem of the metaphysical freedom of the will is 
 still regarded by some as one of the greatest and most difficult 
 problems of philosophy. I do not regard it as such. It is a 
 problem that owes its origin to certain conditions, and will 
 disappear with these conditions : it belongs to philosophizing 
 theology, or scholasticism. 
 
 The problem did not really exist for Greek philosophy ; 
 only occasionally was it touched upon ; man was impartially 
 conceived as a part of the whole of nature, from which he 
 sprang, and to whose universal law — • so far as Greek phil- 
 osophy was familiar with this notion — he remained subject. 2 
 
 The philosophy of the church, on the other hand, which 
 grew out of the dogmas, considered it a problem of great 
 difficulty. 3 
 
 Two things are settled : God created man by an act of his 
 will, hence man must have been good originally. On the 
 other hand, it is no less certain that man, as we know him, 
 is by nature bad. This second fact is the presupposition of 
 the fundamental dogma of salvation, which, again, assumes 
 the necessity of the church. But how did evil come into the 
 world ? Through God, the Creator ? That is impossible. God 
 is good and almighty, and hence his works as such are neces- 
 sarily good. Evil then must have come into the world after 
 he created it. Not from the outside, for outside of God and 
 the world there is nothing; hence through the creatures 
 themselves. But how can a creature become other than it 
 is, other than the Creator made it ? .Here the metaphysical 
 freedom of the will presents itself as a solution. God has 
 given man a free will in order that he may of his own accord 
 decide in favor of the good ; without free choice there can be 
 
 1 [See Martineau, supra; Dr. Ward, Dublin Review, July, 187*. — Tr.] 
 
 2 [See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book III. — Tr.] 
 
 3 [Cf. Augustine and the Pelagian controversy, Thoma» Aquinas, Dims 
 Scotus, Luther, Calvin. — Tr.1 
 
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 455 
 
 no morality. But freedom is, in the nature of things, the cap- 
 acity to turn to either side. Now man made use of his free- 
 dom by deciding in favor of the evil : Adam sinned by his 
 disobedience, and with him fell the entire race. Hence evil 
 came into the world, not through God, but through man, 
 although with God's sanction. 
 
 Whether this solution removes the difficulty need not be 
 decided here. The question might be asked : Can a creator 
 really give such freedom to a creature, that is, the capacity to 
 will or to do anything with absolute independence ? Will not 
 every act and every decision follow necessarily from the 
 nature of the creature ? And then is not the cause of its 
 nature also the cause of all its actions ? But if the reply 
 should be given that the decision does not follow as a con- 
 sequence from the nature of the creature, then indeed we 
 have absolute fatalism. — Besides, purely theological objections 
 may still be urged against such a solution, for example, ob- 
 jections based upon the omnipotence and omniscience of God, 
 or upon the necessity of God's grace and man's natural in- 
 capacity for good. Calvin and Luther deny the freedom of 
 the will, the former in his doctrine of predestination, whose 
 logical consistency we are forced to admit, the latter in his 
 teaching of the incapacity or " unfreedom " of the natural man 
 to choose the good. The entire subject is, therefore, in the 
 words of Ovid, instabilis tellus, inabilis unda. 
 
 Modern philosophy, which is an outgrowth of the new 
 natural sciences, has not, it is true, solved the problem ; 
 it has simply dropped it. The conception of the unity 
 and uniformity of nature is one of the fundamental con- 
 ceptions of the modern era, one that took root immediately 
 after it was first enunciated by the great thinkers of the 
 seventeenth century. And our interpretation of psychical 
 processes has also been gradually determined by this concep- 
 tion as the regulative principle. Hobbes regards the mental 
 processes themselves as motion ; hence metaphysical freedom 
 
456 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 of the will is as impossible as the creation of motion or 
 matter out of nothing. On the other hand, freedom in the 
 psychological sense is a self-evident fact. He sums up his 
 view in an epigrammatic formula, which may indeed be termed 
 the last word in this controversy : Libertas non est volendi, 
 sed quae volumus faciendi; we have the will to act, and this 
 we call freedom, but not the will to will. Spinoza, whose 
 system leaves absolutely no room for isolated or exempt ele- 
 ments of reality, speaks of the soul as a spiritual automaton 
 (automaton spirituale) . Leibniz and Wolff vainly endeavor 
 to purge themselves of the charge of determinism by distin- 
 guishing between physical and mathematical necessity. Kant 
 and Schopenhauer, to be sure, speak of an " intelligible " free- 
 dom ; but in the empirical world, which all human beings call 
 the real world, the law of causality rules. The occurrences 
 of the psychical world take place according to the natural 
 laws governing it, with the same necessity as those in the 
 physical world. 1 It is merely accidental, that is, owing to 
 their great complexity, that they cannot be calculated or 
 foretold, which, however, likewise holds true of many pro- 
 cesses in the physical world ; for example, of meteorological 
 and physiological occurrences. Theoretically, nothing stands 
 in the way ; a perfect intellect, capable of taking into account 
 all the necessary facts, would understand the acts of a man as 
 perfectly as the movements of the planets. The physiologists 
 of our times are still further influenced in their acceptance of 
 the causal dependence of all mental processes, by the prevail- 
 ing view that the psychical processes must be conceived as 
 concomitant phenomena of physiological processes in the brain 
 and nervous system. If now the law of causality is absolutely 
 valid for the latter as physical processes, it must also be as- 
 sumed to apply to the concomitant mental processes. If the 
 proposition is true that organic bodies which are absolutely 
 identical will respond to the same stimuli in exactly the same 
 
 1 [See also Green, supra. — T*.] 
 
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 457 
 
 manner, then the proposition also holds that souls exactly 
 alike in nature and character, inclinations and moods, expe- 
 riences and ideas, will respond to the same stimuli in the 
 same way. And similarly : If the law of causality applies to 
 transmission of bodily characteristics, it will apply no less to 
 the psychical predispositions which depend upon the former. 
 
 2. Whatever view we may take of these ultimate specula- 
 tions, the facts will hardly allow us to doubt the causal 
 determination of the nature and development of the will, and 
 hence of action. Indeed, no one really doubts it, no one 
 believes that the human will is an ens a se, or that, a certain 
 nature and certain conditions being given, a certain stimulus 
 will sometimes produce one act, and sometimes another. 
 
 Let me indicate the facts, which force themselves upon our 
 attention. 
 
 How does a man, a human will, come into the world ? So 
 far as we know, his life begins in time. Is the beginning 
 without cause, or is it the result of his own choice ? Hardly ; 
 man, like the animal, is conceived and produced by parents ; 
 he resembles them in body and in soul, he inherits their temper- 
 ament, their desires, their sensuous-intellectual powers, as well 
 as their bodily characteristics. He receives all the physical- 
 spiritual qualities of the people from whom he descends, as 
 his natural endowment. His sex, too, which exercises such 
 a potent influence upon his entire life, is determined, by what 
 causes we do not know, yet no one will claim that it is the 
 result of his own choice. Hence nothing in the origin of man 
 indicates that he constitutes an exempt territory, an enclave 
 in the kingdom of nature, which is not subject to her laws. 
 
 These predispositions or tendencies are then developed 
 under the determining influences of environment, of natural 
 and, above all, human environment. The child is educated 
 by the family in the form of life peculiar to his people. He 
 acquires their language, and with the language a more or less 
 complete system of concepts and judgments. He is educated 
 
458 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 into the customs and habits of his nation, by which the actions 
 and judgments of most persons are governed during their 
 entire lives. He is sent to school, and here obtains the gen- 
 eral culture of the age ; he is taken into the church, where 
 he receives further training, which, positively or negatively, 
 exercises a permanent influence upon his inner life. He is 
 finally dismissed from the home and the school, but only to 
 be subjected to the influence of a new educative force, — 
 society. The individual is also born into society; there is, 
 as a rule, little room for choice ; he belongs to a certain class 
 by descent and, as a rule, for life. Society incessantly works 
 upon him ; it tells him in words and in deeds what is right 
 and what is wrong, what is proper and improper, what is at- 
 tractive and repulsive. It assigns to him his tasks according 
 to the law of supply and demand. Each man receives his 
 instructions from his times. The builder does not build as 
 he chooses, but as the age chooses : in the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, in the Gothic style ; in the sixteenth, Renaissance ; in 
 the eighteenth, Rococo. Nor does the scholar choose his 
 scientific task, his age selects it for him : in the fourteenth 
 century, a logical disquisition on substance and accident ; in 
 the sixteenth, Latin verses, modelled after Yirgil ; in the 
 eighteenth, a mathematical-physical investigation, or a treat- 
 ise on the harmfulness of superstition. In our days he makes 
 an historical examination of a lost Greek writer or digs up 
 prehistoric ruins. 
 
 There seems to be no break in the chain : nation and age, 
 parents and teachers, environment and society, determine 
 the predisposition and development, rank and life-problems, of 
 each individual human being. He is the product of the col- 
 lective body from which he springs. Just as the twig on a 
 tree does not owe its form and function to its will, but to the 
 whole body on which it grows, so a man does not exist prior 
 to himself, as it were, and determine his form and lot in life 
 by the decision of his will. He comes into the world and 
 
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 459 
 
 acts in the world as the member of a collective body. And 
 as a part of this people his life forms a part of the total 
 historical life of humanity, and, finally, of universal nature. 
 
 But, it is said, self-consciousness knows nothing of such ne- 
 cessity. Every one has an immediate feeling of certainty that 
 he is not moulded into what he is from without, that every- 
 thing would have happened otherwise if he had willed other- 
 wise. 1 And he is likewise absolutely sure that the future 
 shaping of his life depends upon his will: I could give up my 
 business right now and start another one ; I could emigrate 
 to St. Petersburg or to London or to America, — all this lies 
 wholly in my power ; and such a course would evidently com- 
 pletely change my life. I could also, and perhaps ought to, 
 says self-consciousness, alter my mode of life, my behavior 
 to others, my character. Is all this an illusion ? 
 
 Certainly not. Self-consciousness does not deceive us. But 
 what does it say ? Surely this, that to the influences which 
 have determined and will continue to determine my life and 
 character, must be added my wishes and inclinations, my con- 
 victions and resolutions, and particularly these. It tells me 
 that I am not moved from without like a cogwheel in a 
 machine, but through the mediation of an inner element 
 which I call my will. The organic differs from the inorganic 
 in that the former is not determined by external, mechanical 
 effects, but by the action of an inner principle : a statue is 
 fashioned by chiselling or moulding, an organism may be de- 
 stroyed, but it cannot be formed, by mechanical influences. 
 Similarly, man is not moulded mechanically by things and 
 men, but the outer as well as the inner man is formed by 
 the reaction of an inner principle upon extraneous influences, 
 by w r hich process his nature is gradually developed. That is 
 
 1 [Sidgwick, Methods, p. 67 : " I hold, therefore, that against the formidable 
 array of cumulative evidence offered for Determinism, there is but one argument 
 of real force : the immediate affirmation of consciousness in the moment of 
 deliberate action." — Tb.J 
 
460 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 what self-consciousness says ; never, however, does it tell uj 
 that the particular processes arise without cause, that at any 
 moment of life any occurrence whatever can take place, utterly 
 regardless of all preceding ones ; this would, if it really hap- 
 pened, be equivalent to the complete resolution of life into a 
 series of disconnected and irrational accidents. Nor does it 
 say that this inner principle, the character, the ego, or what- 
 ever we may choose to call it, is itself absolutely uncaused, 
 that it enters the world as an absolutely isolated element. In 
 no sense does it contradict the view that the ego, like the 
 organized body, is the product of evolution ; that it and its 
 entire nature originally sprang from something else ; that it 
 is exceedingly plastic during the earlier period of its develop- 
 ment, but gradually becomes more capable of resistance, and 
 acquires the ability to change its relations to its surround- 
 ings, and thus indirectly its own form, through its own 
 decisions. 1 
 
 3. But in that case what becomes of responsibility ? Then 
 each man is ultimately what God or Nature made him, and 
 God or Nature is to blame if he does not turn out well. He 
 himself cannot help it ; if he did not choose his original en- 
 dowments, nor his character, nor his parents, nor his society, 
 he could not, being what he was under those particular con- 
 
 1 One of the reasons why it is so hard to bring about a reconciliation between 
 determinism and indeterminism is above all a false conception of the nature of 
 causality. It is customary to conceive the relation between cause and effect 
 according to the notion of mechanical impact, and hence to regard necessity or 
 compulsion as an essential element in it, a view which makes it impossible to 
 apply the causal notion to the processes of psychical life. A more penetrating 
 analysis of the relation, as we find it in thinkers, like Leibniz, Hume, and Lotze, 
 shows that both compulsion and necessity are out of the question: the causal 
 law says that there is a spontaneous concomitance of all elements, Leibniz's con- 
 comitance universelle, not that each element is coerced or compelled by every 
 other element. From this standpoint, causality is compatible with teleology ; the 
 universal concomitance points to an original unity of plurality, at first in a suh 
 stance, and ultimately in a unified reason. I can merely suggest these thoughts 
 here. The reader will find a more elaborate treatment of them in my Tntrodvc 
 Uon to Philosophy, pp. 212 ff. [Eng. translation, pp. 218 ff. — Tb.] 
 
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 461 
 
 ditions, have helped becoming what he now is. How can we 
 blame him, how can we punish him for something which he 
 really did not do, but suffered ? 
 
 We reply : There is some ground for the first part of this 
 conclusion, but none for the second. It is true, God or 
 Nature cannot shirk the responsibility for their creations, 
 if they cannot deny their authorship. We should despise 
 a family as bad and worthless that had produced nothing 
 but degenerate individuals for a number of generations ; we 
 should hate and detest a nation that brought forth nothing 
 but repulsive and base characters. If the world produced 
 nothing but ugly and deformed creatures, we should un- 
 doubtedly say it was worth nothing, and if we assumed the 
 existence of a Cause, we should feel as little admiration 
 for Him as for His work. If a good and beautiful human 
 life is a credit to God, a worthless and disgraceful life is 
 doubtless to His discredit. It is utterly incomprehensible 
 how one conclusion can be drawn without the other. We 
 cannot justify God for the evil in the world by saying that 
 the human will is its absolute and ultimate cause, but only 
 in the manner indicated above, 1 that is, by showing that 
 evil, even though it remains evil, is in a certain measure 
 necessary to the good, because the latter cannot exist and 
 manifest itself without the former. 
 
 Hence, to refer evil to causes means to shift the respon- 
 sibility upon these causes. But, it must be added, this does 
 not alter our feelings, our judgment, and our attitude towards 
 the worthless and evil individual. To be sure, we should 
 say, nothing good can come from such a source ; but this 
 would not mean that the product, base though it may be, 
 was pure and guiltless, and that we should treat it as such. 
 Our judgment of the worth of a person depends upon what 
 he is, not upon how he became so, and our attitude towards 
 him depends on the same thing. " Every tree which bringeth 
 
 1 Pp. 325 ff. 
 
462 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 5 ' 
 We know very well that it cannot help its badness, that it has 
 not chosen its own existence and nature, but that does not pre- 
 vent us from saying : "Cut it down, why cumbereth it the 
 ground ? " So, too, we kill a ferocious and dangerous domes- 
 tic animal without supposing that it has voluntarily chosen 
 its evil nature; its nature is evil, and that settles it. One 
 thing alone could induce us to modify our behavior. Should 
 we become convinced that the displeasing quality was due not 
 so much to an original endowment as to unfavorable condi- 
 tions of development, should we find, for example, that the 
 tree was planted in poor soil, that the animal was in the 
 hands of brutal men, then we should deliberate and perhaps 
 attempt to remove the unfavorable influences, and remedy the 
 defect by changing the external conditions of life. In case, 
 however, the original endowment itself is bad, our repudia- 
 tion of the form is final. 
 
 We assume practically the same attitude towards human 
 beings. It is no excuse for a worthless and degenerate fellow 
 to appeal to the fact that he comes from a family that has 
 been profligate for generations. Nay, this will hardly justify 
 him in his own eyes. If a man should say to himself : I am 
 by nature, by descent, a wicked knave, endowed with all 
 kinds of perverse instincts and moral defects, it would not 
 alter the fact that he possesses the feelings which go with 
 wickedness and degeneracy. It would, however, excuse him 
 in his own eyes and before others, if he could say: I am 
 not naturally a bad man, I really do not belong to the set in 
 which you find me. I owe my downfall to certain circum- 
 stances — of course, I am not altogether free from blame — 
 but I am a human being, my will is not absolutely proof 
 against temptation; I was overtaken by want, without any 
 fault of my own ; I have been treated outrageously by men ; 
 I fell into bad company without knowing it. In case we 
 believe him, our feelings change, anger gives way to pity, 
 
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 468 
 
 we endeavor to bring the unfortunate individual into more 
 favorable surroundings, so that his better nature may find 
 an opportunity to assert itself. 
 
 Hence, we find here a double responsibility : First, we hold 
 the individual himself accountable ; then the collective bodies 
 which moulded him, his family, his social class, his nation, 
 humanity at large ; and finally the All-Real itself. This is 
 what actually happens everywhere : we invariably judge of 
 the value of collective bodies by the goodness and badness of 
 the individuals belonging to them. But this does not make 
 unnecessary our evaluation of the individual ; on the contrary, 
 the latter remains the essential precondition of the wider 
 judgment. The individual is the point from which our feel- 
 ing and judgment extends to the whole, of which he forms 
 a part. 
 
 I have always wondered why in our anxiety to save respon- 
 sibility we invariably think of accountability for evil. Why 
 are we not equally concerned about the responsibility for 
 good ? Is it because we plainly recognize that our judgments 
 of value are independent of the question of origin in the 
 latter case ? We do not allow our enjoyment of the beauti- 
 ful and the good to be the least disturbed by the knowledge 
 of how they became what they are. Or is it because the im- 
 pulse to reward is not so strong in us as the impulse to 
 revenge ourselves and to punish ? 
 
 What is true of moral accountability is likewise true of 
 legal responsibility, which rests upon the former. Practical 
 jurisprudence has never doubted that freedom of choice alone, 
 and not metaphysical freedom, decides the question of respon- 
 sibility. It has never been considered necessary to inquire 
 whether the criminal owed his evil tendencies to heredity and 
 education, or whether he created them by an absolute act of 
 the will. Only occasionally have theorists, by constantly 
 brooding over the problem of metaphysical freedom, or by 
 gazing blankly at the figures furnished by statistics, become 
 
164 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 entangled in all kinds of curious perplexities and doubts : as 
 to whether society has the right to punish, or whether it 
 is not itself the guilty and responsible party. The same 
 relative number of crimes, it is held, recur annually with 
 the regularity of natural events, — perjury, murder, and 
 crimes against morals ; a kind of necessity seems to prevail, 
 particular criminals being selected as the victims to complete 
 the criminal budget of society. 1 
 
 We may reply to this : It is quite true ; society is guilty 
 and therefore liable to punishment, it produces individuals 
 with criminal tendencies, it also creates temptation and 
 opportunities for crime. But is society not punished ? 
 Is not, in the first place, the crime itself a punishment which 
 it suffers ? The person against whom the offence is com- 
 mitted is as much a part of society as the criminal. And the 
 feeling of fear and insecurity caused by the crime is a further 
 punishment. And the punishment itself, which is inflicted 
 upon the criminal, is an additional punishment : when he 
 suffers, a member of society suffers, the member namely, 
 through whom it has sinned. And finally, society as a whole 
 suffers the punishment which it inflicts ; for is it not a pun- 
 ishment for a nation to watch, to support, to clothe, and to 
 employ many thousands in penitentiaries and prisons at 
 enormous expense ? Ought society to be punished in other 
 ways? Shall all the others, with the sole exception of the 
 criminal as the only innocent party, be punished ? Or what 
 do these wonderful people mean ? 
 
 We should further have to add that from the standpoint 
 of collective life punishment is to be considered as a remedy 
 against certain ills of society, a painful remedy which society 
 prescribes in order to rid itself of these ills, that is, the crimes. 
 The remedy is, naturally, applied to the seat of the disease, 
 that is, to the criminal ; and here we expect to produce the 
 
 1 [See Drobiech, Die moralische Statistik und die menschliche Willensfreiheit. t 
 1867. —Tr.] 
 
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 465 
 
 immediate effects. The criminal, let us say, is imprisoned. 
 This teaches him that his conduct is not appropriate, even 
 for him. He cannot wish to relinquish his privilege to live 
 in and with society ; the punishment reminds him that this 
 is possible only under certain conditions, and that, in case 
 he does not fulfil these conditions, he is hopelessly at the 
 mercy of the stronger. At the same time labor shows him 
 the way to a peaceful and profitable life. So the penitentiary 
 is, in a sense, a hospital for the morally insane, in which, as 
 in other hospitals, there are both curables and incurables. 
 Society likewise protects itself against infection by isolating 
 and deterring its offenders, or at least attempts it, for it is 
 not wholly successful. Capital punishment is to be regarded 
 in the same light : it is the last means of curing the criminal 
 of his wicked will ; what good would it do him to prolong his 
 life and enable him to increase his guilt ? And at the same 
 time society protects itself against further disturbances, which 
 are bound to spread from a hopelessly incurable member. 
 
 This fact has, as we said before, never been doubted in the 
 practical world. Accountability and legal responsibility 
 merely presuppose freedom in the psychological sense. 
 When the will of a man is expressed in his act, it is his act, 
 and he is responsible for it. The question whether this will 
 itself was fashioned into what it is by causes outside of it, is 
 never broached by the judge. When, however, an act does 
 not express the real will of the agent there is no responsibility. 
 Insanity makes volition in the real human sense, choice as a 
 result of rational deliberation, impossible. Violent passion 
 may, under certain circumstances, and in a certain measure, 
 have the same effect, in which case the real will of the entire 
 man does not express itself. Therefore, deeds done in the 
 heat of passion and without reflection are excused before the 
 law ; not entirely, it is true, for the inability to control one's 
 temper is a defect of the will, for which punishment is im- 
 posed as an effective remedy. When, on the other hand, the 
 
4b'b CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 act is accidental or unavoidable, the agent is wholly exoner- 
 ated ; there is no need of a remedy when the will has abso- 
 lutely nothing to do with the deed. 
 
 Some one, however, disturbed by such psycho-physical spec- 
 ulations, might argue as follows : Well, after all, the same 
 remarks apply to insanity. If we regard and treat this as a 
 brain-disease, why not do the same with other abnormal 
 states ? The criminal impulse of the thief or incendiary must 
 be explained scientifically, as an inherited or acquired predis- 
 position of the brain, and hence the person thus afflicted must 
 be treated as diseased. Our answer would be : We can cer- 
 tainly look at the matter in this way ; the impulse to commit 
 arson is an abnormal tendency of the brain, likewise the im- 
 pulse to steal ; and of course, the impulse of the boy who 
 wantonly destroys his playthings, or of the little girl who 
 annoys her parents and teachers by her carelessness and 
 fickleness, all these, too, are to be regarded as abnormal or 
 diseased predispositions of the brain. But, now draw the con- 
 clusions. We attempt to cure diseases with the remedies 
 which experience has found to be efficacious. If the physician 
 can heal the insane by dietaries and shower-baths and medi- 
 cines, very well ; and if he can also cure those afflicted with the 
 impulse to commit arson with the same or similar remedies, 
 very well ; we shall be glad to place such persons under his 
 care, as well as the bad boy whose pranks annoy us. But in 
 case his remedies prove unsuccessful here, let him not hinder 
 us from trying other cures, especially such as have stood the 
 test of experience ; for example, for bad boys a natural remedy 
 that grows on the hedges. And in case he cannot reach the 
 impulse to steal or the impulse to destroy, by the remedies of 
 the apothecary, let him allow us in the meantime to continue 
 the use of an old remedy which, though not absolutely sure, 
 has nevertheless met with a certain degree of success as an 
 antidote against such impulses ; that is, the prison and the 
 penitentiary. So soon as he discovers a more certain, s ; m* 
 
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 467 
 
 pier, less roundabout and expensive specific, we shall be glad 
 to dispense with these disagreeable and inadequate cures of 
 ours. — But why do you not treat the maniac in the same way, 
 why do you not bring him before court, and sentence him to 
 jail when he commits a crime ? — "We should certainly do so 
 if we believed that the treatment employed by judges and 
 prison-guards would produce better results in his case than 
 that applied to him and others similarly afflicted, by physi- 
 cians and nurses. In the meanwhile, we are of the opinion 
 that to subject him to the process of the criminal law would 
 make no impression upon him, would have no such influence 
 upon his future behavior as the rod has upon the boy, or the 
 penitentiary has — at least occasionally — upon the thief and 
 his possible successors. Besides, we certainly do place the 
 insane person under restraint when he becomes dangerous to 
 himself or to others, and protect ourselves against him, so far 
 as we can, as much as against the thief. 
 
 Indeed, it is a very strange procedure, first to explain 
 criminal impulses as diseases, and then to conclude from this 
 that nothing ought to be done against them. Against diseases 
 we employ all remedies that help, even though they burn and 
 smart. 
 
 4. Then is there no such thing as free will ? 
 
 Lest any one may draw this conclusion from my argu- 
 ments, I add the following : 
 
 The expression freedom of the will signifies in popular 
 speech a real, positive property of human nature. Animals, 
 too, have wills, but we do not attribute free will to them. 
 Wherein does the difference consist ? 
 
 Animals are moved to action by momentary impulses 
 and perceptions. An animal observes its prey, hears the 
 approach of the foe ; the percepts immediately produce ap- 
 propriate movements of pursuit or flight. Deliberation, hesi- 
 tation, and choice exist only in rudimentary form among the 
 most highly developed animals. 
 
468 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 Now such processes are characteristic of man. He deter- 
 mines his conduct by resolutions. Resolutions are the result 
 of deliberation; in deliberation several possible courses of 
 action or modes of behavior are compared with the ultimate 
 aims of individual and social life, and chosen accordingly. 
 Man, therefore, is not determined by his impulses, but he 
 determines himself by ideas of ends. In his purposes, man 
 comprehends his whole activity, his whole life, into a unity, 
 as it were, and chooses the particular acts according to 
 their relation to this principle. Animal life is divided into 
 a plurality of isolated, disconnected functions ; human life 
 is embraced into the unity of an idea, and the latter evolves 
 the particular moments demanded by the purpose of the 
 whole. The unity of practical self-consciousness, or con- 
 science, exercises a constant control over the particular 
 processes of inner life, feelings, strivings, acts, thoughts. 
 Well, this faculty of regulating and determining the particu- 
 lar functions of life by an idea of one's life, is precisely what 
 we mean by free will. Hence we may also say that a person's 
 acts are free, when he is determined not by present stimuli 
 and the momentary desires aroused by them, but by ideas 
 of ends and ideals, by duty and conscience ; in the former 
 case he is driven (agitur), in the latter alone he acts (agit). 
 
 We may accordingly add that, in a certain sense, the 
 view that the human will is exempt, or forms a kind of en- 
 clave in nature is correct. The animal is a point of transition 
 for natural processes ; it is itself a part of nature, deter- 
 mined from without by constantly -approaching stimuli and 
 influences. Man, on the other hand, in a certain manner, 
 emancipates himself from the course of nature ; he rises 
 above nature and opposes it as a self, he determines it and 
 employs it, is not determined by it : man becomes a person- 
 ality. As such he is able to put his whole self, his ego, into 
 every phase of his life, and therefore he is responsible for 
 every particular act. 
 
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 469 
 
 It is apparent that freedom in this sense is not an original 
 endowment of human nature, but an acquired characteristic ; 
 it has been acquired by the entire race in the course of his- 
 tory, and must be acquired anew by each individual. The 
 new-born child does not bring with it a ready-made freedom ; 
 nay, it is driven like an animal by momentary cravings. 
 But gradually the rational will, supported by education, 
 rises above the animal impulses. This occurs in a different 
 degree in different individuals ; some are wholly controlled 
 by these impulses during their entire lives, others acquire 
 such a remarkable control over nature in themselves that 
 they seem to regulate even the smallest details of their lives 
 by rational deliberation, and never do anything or leave 
 anything undone, except by choice. It is to be observed, in 
 this connection, that though it is vulgar and base to give 
 the impulses complete mastery over one's self (a/coXao-ia) , 
 yet the complete suppression of them fills us with fear and 
 awe : no one, as has been said, is lovable without his weak 
 nesses. Man seems to be intended as a mean between an 
 animal and a purely rational being. 
 
 Hence, can man determine himself by his own will ? Can 
 he fashion his will by means of his will ? — Yes and no. Yes, 
 for he undoubtedly has the faculty of educating himself ; he 
 can fashion his outer and inner man, with conscious purpose, 
 according to his ideal ; he can discipline his natural impulses, 
 nay, even suppress them so that they will no longer move 
 him. To be sure, he cannot do this simply by wishing or 
 resolving it ; he can do it only by constant practice and by 
 employing appropriate means, in the same way that he ac- 
 quires bodily skill. We cannot when awake immediately force 
 ourselves to sleep, by an act of the will ; but we can, by 
 proper diet and work, exercise such an influence upon the 
 body that sleep will come in time of its own accord. It is 
 said that Demosthenes's pronunciation was naturally indis- 
 tinct and defective; the will to be an orator was not able, 
 
470 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 per se, to coerce the organs of speech, but it was able to 
 prescribe to nature long and arduous tasks and to make these 
 serve the desired end. Inner nature is susceptible of being 
 influenced in the same way. A man knows that he has a 
 dangerous tendency to anger. He decides to overcome it. 
 His prudence and his good resolutions alone cannot, of course, 
 by their mere presence, repress the violent fit of temper the 
 very first time it breaks out again. But they can take the 
 proper precautions necessary to subdue it gradually. They 
 determine him to avoid temptation ; every organ, however, 
 that is not exercised decays. His mind is filled with examples 
 of the injurious effects of anger as well as with examples of 
 self-control ; he even makes use of trivial aids : we accustom 
 ourselves to say a prayer or to recite a few verses when we 
 are seized with anger. Hence, a man can unquestionably 
 transform his nature by his will. He may by inhibiting cer- 
 tain impulses destroy them, and develop and strengthen 
 weak impulses by habit. Habit, says the proverb, is second 
 nature. 
 
 On the other hand, we shall have to say that this formative 
 principle itself must be native to him ; this he cannot give him- 
 self by his will, for it is the innermost will itself. Man does 
 not exist before himself, choosing or determining his will by 
 his will ; that would be equivalent to Miinchhausen's attempt 
 to pull himself out of the mire by his own cue. Only 
 a pre-existing fundamental will can determine the develop- 
 ment of the empirical character in the course of life. In so 
 far, but only in so far, Schopenhauer is right : the character 
 does not change. Unless a man sees .the harmfulness of anger, 
 the disgracefulness of cowardice and falsehood, unless he 
 already has the will to oppose these, he will, of course, 
 not be able to train himself to gentleness or courage. But 
 Schopenhauer is wrong when he misinterprets the proposition 
 to mean that a change of the nature and of the modes of 
 action of the will is impossible. That is not only a false, 
 
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 471 
 
 but also a dangerous, discouraging doctrine. We are bound 
 to hold that whoever desires to change can do so ; only, the 
 will must be in earnest, it must desire the means which lead 
 to the end. Empty wishes will not do it. 
 
 The old psychology, which was developed mainly as an 
 aid to practical philosophy, offers some useful conceptions 
 for our practical guidance. Thus, for example, the Pla- 
 tonic division of the soul into reason, will, and animal desire, 
 is an admirable help to the moral preacher. Here the subject 
 of freedom is, practically considered, a very simple and effect- 
 ive affair. The reason is the real ego, the free self of man ; 
 it is combined in our earthly life with animal desires and 
 feelings ; its function is to educate and control these in such 
 a way that they will serve the reason and its ends. Noble 
 courage, righteous anger, the joyful craving for honor and 
 distinction, assist it in disciplining the sensuous desires. 
 The moralist always appeals to the real self, he urges man to 
 be mindful of his mission and his dignity ; he pictures the 
 rule of sensuous desire as disgraceful slavery, in which the 
 self is subordinated to the animal part of nature. Spinozistic, 
 Wolffian, and Kantian ethics employ similar conceptions. In 
 the first two systems the opposition between reason and the 
 affective states, between the higher and lower faculties of de- 
 sire, is emphasized ; in the latter, stress is laid upon the oppo- 
 sition between the homo phaenomenon and the homo noumenon, 
 between practical reason and the sensuous, selfish inclination. 
 We are everywhere confronted with the notion : The freedom 
 of man means the control of the spirit, the slavery of man 
 means the rule of the animal desires. 
 
 This is the positive significance of the freedom of the will. 
 And ethics should not permit the whimsical attempts of a few 
 metaphysicians to explain freedom of the will as the cause- 
 lessness of the individual will or volition, to induce her 
 absolutely to reject the so fruitful and necessary concept of 
 free will. Freedom of will means, according to the popular 
 
472 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 usage of all men, these metaphysicians excepted, the faculty 
 to determine one's life, independently of sensuous impulses 
 and inclinations, by reason and conscience, according to pur- 
 poses and laws ; and that man has such a faculty, that this 
 really constitutes the very essence of man, no one has ever 
 doubted. 
 
BOOK III 
 
 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
I possess three treasures, these I guard and prize highly. The 
 first is the love of humanity ; the second, frugality ; the third, that 1 
 do not presume to be better than any one else. 
 
 Love of humanity — with this I can be fearless ; frugality — 
 therefore I can give to others ; freedom from ambition — hence 1 
 have no one above me. 
 
 Nowadays we despise love of humanity and are insolent, we 
 despise economy and are wasteful, we despise modesty and strive to 
 surpass every one else. These paths lead to death. 
 
 Laotsee, Taoteking 67. 
 (After the translation of Noack.) 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 VIRTUES AND VICES IN GENERAL * 
 
 The doctrine of duties and the doctrine of virtues are dif- 
 ferent modes of presenting the same subject-matter. The 
 former gives us a system of rules which, as commands or 
 laws, specify the modes of conduct essential to the solution 
 of the problem of life. The doctrine of virtues describes the 
 system of powers by the exercise of which this end is realized. 
 We have already discussed the nature of duty. Let me now 
 add a few words concerning the nature of virtue. 
 
 Virtues may be denned as habits of the will and modes 
 of conduct which tend to promote the welfare of individual 
 and collective life. Impulses form their natural basis. 
 Virtues are not inventions of the moralists ; they are natural 
 predispositions. Predispositions only, remember; for im- 
 pulses are not themselves virtues : as impulses they have no 
 moral quality. The impulse to eat is not good or bad, but it 
 is the foundation of rational self-preservation. The sexual 
 impulse is not good or bad, but it is the natural basis of the 
 virtues on which family-life depends. Compassion or sym- 
 pathy, the impulse to alleviate the pains of others, is not good 
 or bad, but it is the natural foundation of the virtue of 
 benevolence. Similarly, indignation at wrong and the impulse 
 
 1 [Aristotle, Ethics, Bk. II. ; Sidgwick, Methods, Bk. III., chap. II. ; Porter, 
 Moral Science, Part II., chap. I. ; Fowler and Wilson, Principles of Morals, 
 Part II., chap. VII. ; Dorner, Das menschliche Handeln, Part II., section 1 ; 
 Wiese, Die Bildung des Willens ; Runze, Practische Ethik, § 17. Run ze gives 
 bibliographies of the topics discussed in the following chapters. See also works 
 on Practical Ethics : Hyde, Everett, and Gilman. — Tr.] 
 
476 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 of revenge form the natural basis of the sense of justice. 
 Moreover, impulses form the permanent basis of the virtues. 
 They cannot, as many moralists are prone to assume, be sup- 
 planted by rational reflection. A being like Spinoza's sage, 
 who is determined to action, not by impulse, but by reason 
 alone, does not exist and cannot'exist ; any more than Kant's 
 dutiful man, whose will is governed solely by respect for the 
 moral law, without impulse and inclination. Such a being 
 would not be a human being, but a phantom. 
 
 Impulses are fashioned into virtues or moral excellences by 
 the reason. We are educated, first, by the reason of 
 others, then by our own reason. Human life begins as a 
 purely impulsive life ; the reason is developed slowly and 
 at a late stage. During the long period of youth, the col- 
 lective reason of the race, as represented by parents, edu- 
 cators, and teachers, takes the place of individual reason. 
 Fixed habits are the result of this education; in them the 
 customs {Sitteri) of the community become individualized. 
 Acquired habits constitute an extremely important part of 
 moral culture ; they obtain control over life, and guide it with 
 automatic certainty. The important elementary functions 
 of life, especially, are governed by them. Cleanliness, for 
 example, against which the child at first rebels, becomes a 
 habit, which acts with the regularity of a natural function. 
 Most closely related to it, is shame, which is implanted and 
 established by education, and soon acquires the force and 
 certainty of an instinct. So, too, aversion to falsehood, or 
 politeness to others, becomes a second nature. The formation 
 of such automatic forms of reaction constitutes a primary and 
 important phase of moral education. The second stage is the 
 gradual development of the individual's appreciation of the 
 value of moral goods : this is the function of moral instruction. 
 The latter will always have to consist, at first, in the presen- 
 tation of concrete examples of the good, and — provided the 
 proper oare is exercised — of examples of the evil also. After 
 
VIRTUES AND VICES IN GENERAL 477 
 
 many concrete facts have been handled, the abstract or philo- 
 sophical treatment of moral concepts will gradually be taken 
 up. Perhaps our public instruction is too cautious in this re- 
 spect. Our schools, the higher as well as the lower, are afraid 
 of the evil effects of premature abstract instruction in morals, 
 and therefore decide to omit it altogether. I fear that the 
 omission is disastrous. The time is bound to come in the 
 life of every young man when he will begin to inquire into 
 the principles of moral conduct and judgment ; and there is 
 danger that, being wholly without guidance, he will become 
 the helpless victim of his own crude thoughts or of the sophistry 
 of " enlightened " companions. Principles and moral in- 
 struction are not in themselves necessary to secure correct 
 judgment and action, but they are necessary to protect the 
 individual against inadequate and misleading principles. 
 
 But not only is the individual educated by others, he 
 gradually learns to educate himself. The important thing is 
 to learn the great art of governing the inclinations by means of 
 a rational will, one that is determined by principles, to fashion 
 and educate the impulses according to an idea of perfection, 
 which gradually assumes shape. When the child leaves 
 school and the parental home, his education by others practi- 
 cally comes to an end. The most eventful period of his life 
 now begins, the period of incipient moral independence. His 
 previous training is now put to the test ; it must show 
 whether it has succeeded in establishing the power of self- 
 government. Not many discover the right path at once ; the 
 art of self-government, like everything else, has to be learned. 
 It can be acquired only by constant intercourse with the 
 world ; hence there is an instinctive desire at this period of 
 life to come into frequent contact with men and things ; these 
 are the years of travel (Wanderjahre*), which follow the years 
 of apprenticeship (Lehrjahre). At the end of the Wander- 
 jahre, between the ages of twenty and thirty, or in some cases 
 not until the close of this period, the inner man has assumed 
 
478 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 definite and permanent shape. The following years do not 
 possess the dramatic interest of their predecessors, the time 
 of great crises and decisions is past ; the exercise of the 
 physical, mental, and moral powers and capacities which have 
 been acquired forms the content of the age of manhood, the 
 Meisterjahre. In old age the powers diminish, life gradually 
 loses itself in reminiscenses, and so drifts into the past. 
 Differences in moral types correspond to these four ages of 
 life. Pliant modesty constitutes the inner habit of the well- 
 trained boy ; hopeful, optimistic idealism, that of the youth ; 
 persistent and energetic action, that of the man ; the tranquil 
 peace of contemplation, that of old age. 
 
 This would answer the old question, the discussion of which 
 marked the beginning of Greek moral philosophy : Can virtue 
 be taught f We answer with Aristotle : It certainly can ; but, 
 like all excellences, it must be practised first of all ; hearing 
 others talk about it will not avail. We do not learn to walk 
 and to ride, to teach and to govern, by hearing these things 
 talked of ; so it is with virtue. Of course, practice can and 
 must afterwards be supplemented by theoretical instruction ; 
 this applies to moral efficiency as well as to physical dexter- 
 ity and skill. The counsels and teachings of parents and 
 teachers, of spiritual advisers and preachers, may assist the 
 moral development in a most effective way. We shall there- 
 fore by no means agree with Schopenhauer that moral instruc- 
 tion and moral preaching are utterly useless ; employed at 
 the right time and in the proper place they constitute an 
 important part of the great art of governing souls. Of course, 
 mere babble will not avail. Such instruction will prove effec- 
 tive only in case it comes from the proper source, and rests 
 upon a profound knowledge of life, its order, and its laws. 
 
 Virtues are normal powers of the will, tending to preserve 
 and unfold human mental life. Vices, on the other hand, 
 are abnormally-developed powers of the will, which tend to 
 destroy individual life and that of the surroundings ; or, 
 
VIRTUES AND VICES IN GENERAL 479 
 
 rather, not really powers of the will at all, if we mean by will 
 the rational human will, but abnormally-developed natural 
 impulses. Vice always indicates a lack of will ; indeed, all evil 
 is, according to the old view, nothing really positive ; it does 
 not belong to the essence of the will, but must be defined as 
 a lack of will. And this is true also in the sense that even 
 the natural will essentially aims at the good ; evil as such is 
 never the goal of the will, it becomes a part of it only in 
 case the will cannot realize a good, a real or apparent good, 
 except at the price of the evil. 
 
 The fundamental form of vice is lack of will-power to 
 harmonize the impulses ; strong natural impulses gain abso- 
 lute supremacy, while weak ones entirely disappear. When 
 the sympathetic impulse or the instinctive faculty to anticipate 
 in feeling the more remote consequences of acts, is poorly 
 developed, and the defect is not remedied by education and 
 self-government, the habit of selfishness or inconsiderateness 
 arises. Certain impulses may be hypertrophically developed, 
 and may gradually crowd out all the others. So for example, 
 in the case of the alcoholist, the desire for certain stimulants, 
 gradually increases in strength, and all other impulses die 
 out, such as the impulse to work and acquire, the love of 
 knowledge and spiritual activity. The sympathetic feelings 
 and social impulses are likewise weakened and finally extin- 
 guished, and with them shame and conscience, which at first 
 reacted against the excesses, disappear. In the same way 
 life is debauched by other abnormally-developed impulses, by 
 unbridled sexual impulses, by the impulse to acquire and 
 possess property, which is intensified in rapacity and greed, 
 by the love of fame and honor, which degenerates into am- 
 bition, etc. ; these monopolize all powers and all strivings, 
 and finally render the soul completely insensible to all other 
 interests and considerations. 
 
 As a rule, vice is the result of defective natural endow 
 ments and unfavorable conditions of life and development. A 
 
480 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 defective education, evil associations, unfavorable economic 
 conditions, unhappy domestic relations, will utterly destroy 
 a nature that would have been preserved and might have 
 adapted itself to its surroundings under more favorable con- 
 ditions. By proper treatment, fitting self-denial, and exer- 
 cise, an impulse inclining to excess may be held in check, 
 while weak impulses may be developed and strengthened by 
 timely care. This shows the immense importance of educa- 
 tion, environment, established custom, and public opinion; 
 upon these rests the responsibility of society towards the 
 individual. Had it cared for him and educated him, he would 
 not have perished. 
 
 Can and must we say that, however unfavorable the natural 
 predisposition of an individual may be, he can, under the 
 proper conditions of life and development, become an honest 
 and virtuous man? Is Rousseau right in holding that all 
 wills are by nature good, that every child may become a 
 righteous man, that if he does not, education and unfavorable 
 conditions are to blame ? * The age of pedagogical reform 
 accepted Rousseau's view, and was stimulated by his example 
 to the performance of great and fruitful deeds. Even 
 at present we base our practice on the hypothesis that this 
 theory is correct, and must do so. Education universally pre- 
 supposes that every human being may, with the proper 
 attention, love, and care, become an honorable and efficient, 
 virtuous and happy man. 
 
 So far, however, as the theory itself is concerned, our age 
 has become somewhat uncertain and sceptical. Rousseau's 
 optimistic view of human nature will not easily find supporters 
 in our day. We no longer believe that education can make 
 anything out of any one. Too many facts contradict the old 
 dogma of empiristic psychology that the soul is at birth a 
 white piece of paper, capable of receiving any impressions 
 whatsoever. Hence we are inclined to agree with a realistic 
 
 i [See Runze, §§ 13, 18.— Te.] 
 
VIRTUES AND VICES IN GENERAL 481 
 
 or pessimistic conception of humanity that there are children 
 of sin for whom nothing whatever can be done, individuals 
 endowed with such perverse impulses, exhibiting such a total 
 lack of shame and reverence and sympathetic feeling, as to 
 be utterly impervious to the influences of education. 1 The 
 concept " moral insanity " has been formed to apply to such 
 cases. 
 
 Facts undoubtedly exist for which this concept has been 
 formed. Not only are there persons who show a lack of in- 
 tellectual power which amounts to an almost total absence of 
 intelligence in idiocy, but there are some who are completely 
 devoid of moral endowments, without being totally deficient 
 in intelligence, although the latter is frequently dwarfed and 
 perverted in such cases. Nevertheless, we may uphold the 
 claim that there is no absolute lack of moral endowment, 
 no absolute perverseness ; even in such dwarfed natures there 
 is some tendency to the good. If only they had received the 
 proper sympathy and training from the very beginning, they 
 might have been saved. Perhaps there is no longer any hope 
 for them later on ; when such a defective soul is subjected to 
 unfavorable influences at the outset, it may soon become in- 
 curable. And this is apt to be the case ; for hereditary 
 defects and imperfect early training go together. Conclusive 
 arguments are, in the very nature of things, impossible here ; 
 faith, however, which governs our practical life, must cling 
 to the assumption expressed in Riickert's lines : 
 
 Schlage nur mit der Wunschelrut' 
 An die Felsen der Herzen an ; 
 Ein Schatz in jedem Busen ruht 
 Den ein Verstandiger heben kann. 
 
 It is customary to distinguish between two kinds of duties : 
 duties towards self and duties towards others. The notion of 
 duty towards self has been rejected by some ; there can be 
 duties, it is held, only where there are legal rights. It seems 
 
 1 [See Lombroso, The Criminal ; Striimpell, Pedagogische Pathologic — Tr.J 
 
482 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 to me that this is an unnecessary contraction of the concept. 
 If the individual life has its moral problems to solve, it likewise 
 has its duties. If the individual as such has absolutely no 
 moral problems to solve, I cannot see how there can be any 
 duties to others, either to individuals or collective bodies, ex- 
 cept the purely negative duty of non-interference. We cannot 
 obtain a positive quantity by multiplying zeros. Hence I 
 shall retain the old classification, reminding the reader, how- 
 ever, that it is not a legitimate division : there are, as was 
 shown above, 1 no acts which affect only the individual or 
 society, hence also no duties towards self which are not 
 at the same time duties towards others, and conversely. 
 
 Corresponding to this classification of duties, we may also 
 divide the virtues into two groups; we may call them in- 
 dividualistic and social virtues. The fundamental form of the 
 former is self-control, the fundamental form of the latter, 
 benevolence. They are rooted in the two fundamental forms 
 of impulsive life : the impulse of self-preservation and the 
 sexual impulse. 
 
 We shall first treat of the duties towards self and the in- 
 dividualistic virtues, which are based upon the self-preserva- 
 tive impulse of the individual. We shall take up the separate 
 spheres of action, and first deal with the education of the 
 will and the dietetics of the affective states; then we shall 
 consider the bodily, economic, and spiritual life, and every- 
 where attempt to define the problems and duties, as well as 
 the capacities and virtues pertaining to them. In conclusion, 
 we shall discuss the problems which arise from our relations 
 to others, and examine the duties and virtues peculiar to this 
 sphere. 
 
 i L, 383 Si 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE EDUCATION OF THE WILL AND THE DISCIPLINE OF THE 
 FEELINGS, OR SELF-CONTROL i 
 
 1. The chief purpose of all moral culture is to fashion the 
 rational will so that it may become the regulative principle 
 of the entire sphere of conduct. We call the virtue or ex- 
 cellence which regulates our behavior and conduct by the 
 rational will, independently of momentary feelings, self- 
 control. We may also define it as the capacity to govern 
 life by purposes and ideals. It is the fundamental condition 
 of all moral virtues, the fundamental precondition of all 
 human worth, nay, the fundamental characteristic of human 
 nature. Animals are determined by blind impulses, but the 
 specific excellence of man consists in his determining his 
 life by his will ; without self-control, no freedom and no 
 personality. The Greeks call the virtue of self-control 
 o-GHppoavvT], healthy-mindedness. 'Afacov, senseless, foolish, 
 is the man whom fear, anger, and desire, control, causing 
 him to act irrationally and to ruin himself ; acocppcov, 
 healthy-minded, rational, on the contrary, is the man who 
 keeps his wits even in difficult situations, and acts in ac- 
 cordance with the law of self-preservation. 2 
 
 i [Aristotle, Bk. II., chs. VII. ff . ; Bk. III., chs. IX. ff . ; Bk. VII. ; Paley, Moral 
 Philosophy, Bk. IV. ; Sidgwick, Bk. DDL, chs. IX., X. ; Spencer, Inductions of 
 Ethics, chs. XII., XIII. ; Porter, Moral Science, Part II, chs. II., V. ; Runze, §§ 
 20 ff . ; Smyth, Christian Ethics, Part II., ch. II. ; Dorner, pp. 356-378 ; Fowler 
 and Wilson, Part H., ch. I. — Tr.] 
 
 2 It is a well-known fact that no virtue was more universally recognized ana 
 extolled by the Greek poets than self-control. Perhaps, however, it would he a 
 aelusion to suppose that the predisposition to awtypoavvq was a particular trait 
 
484 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 Self-control 1 assumes different phases, corresponding to 
 the different forms of impulsive life. As its two fundamen- 
 tal aspects we may, with the Greek moralists, designate tem- 
 perance (iy/cpdreia) and courage. Temperance may be 
 denned as the moral power to resist desires attracted by 
 
 of the Greek national character. Perhaps Lessing's celebrated remark also 
 applies to nations : we talk most of the virtues which we least possess, and whose 
 value we have learned to appreciate because we have felt their lack. The 
 Greeks were gifted with fine sensibilities and high intelligence, which especially 
 fitted them for and made them keenly alive to all kinds of play and art, dial- 
 ectics and philosophy; but they were somewhat lacking in energy and per- 
 severance. That is the way the Romans regarded them ; in comparison with 
 their own natural seriousness and gravity (gravitas) the Greeks seemed sanguine 
 and mobile, cunning and fickle : the Frenchmen of antiquity. They had a poor 
 opinion of their talents for politics and war. However, it is this very thing 
 that made the Greeks the great teachers of the virtue of self-control. The 
 Stoics became the moral preachers of the world, directly or indirectly. Their 
 entire system of morality, however, is a guide to the discipline of the emotions. 
 
 Among modern authors may be mentioned the physician Feuchtersleben, 
 who has written a widely read Dietetics of the Soul (Dietatik der Seele). An 
 excellent little book is Harriet Beecher Stowe's (the authoress of Uncle Tom's 
 Cabin) Little Foxes. Two good books of the last century are B. Franklin's 
 Autobiography and Campe's Theophron. Everybody is familiar with Goethe's mag- 
 nificent Spriiche in Prosa und Versen. Lagarde's writings (3d edit., 1891 ) have the 
 form of public moral sermons, addressed to the German people. They remind us 
 of Fichte's Reden. The book of the Swiss Hilty, Glitch (4th edit., 1895), is 
 making many friends. The Addresses of the American W. Salter also con- 
 tain moral sermons. — These addresses were delivered before " Societies for Ethical 
 Culture," which exist in several American cities. The idea of such a society, of a 
 united ethical party regardless of nationality and creed, had already attracted the 
 attention of B. Franklin (see his Autobiography). " Ethical Societies " have of 
 late been transplanted to Germany ; whether they will take root here, remains to 
 be seen. The universal love of morality is not a strong bond of union between 
 men ; a particular purpose, even accidental hatred or superstition, has greater 
 binding force. These ethical societies are, first of all, opposed to church morality ; 
 moral sermons based upon dogmatics they regard as ineffectual. There is cer- 
 tainly room for much improvement here : and if the ethical societies succeed, in 
 the slightest degree, in bringing ethical culture to those who have turned their 
 backs upon the church, they deserve not hatred and contempt, but gratitude and 
 recognition. They may, perhaps, even help Christianity in gaining a foothold in 
 these circles. For it is certainly true that no more important moral events ever 
 occurred upon this earth than are reported in the New Testament ; and we shall 
 search in vain for more effective moral sermons than those in the Gospels and 
 Epistles. [Blackie's Self-Culture deserves a place in the list of books mentioned 
 here.— Tk.] 
 
 * [See also Runze, §§ 9 f . — Tb.] 
 
SELF-CONTROL 486 
 
 tempting enjoyment, when the gratification of such desires 
 tends to endanger an essential good. Courage is the moral 
 power to resist the natural fear of pain and danger, 
 when the preservation of an essential good demands such 
 resistance. 
 
 2. Temperance or moderation, 1 the ability to resist temp- 
 tation to sensuous pleasure, is the precondition of humaniza- 
 tion. The animal is essentially blind impulse, in the satis- 
 faction of which its life consists. Man, too, is endowed with 
 an animal nature, but its purpose is to serve as the soil for 
 a higher, spiritual life ; this soil is prepared by the discipline 
 of the natural impulses. The latter are not to be eradicated, 
 that would mean insensibility and finally death, but their satis- 
 faction is to be so regulated that they will not only not disturb 
 the development of higher life, but rather assist it. The rela- 
 tion is reversed in the opposite habit, intemperance (afcoXaala) ; 
 intemperance is not merely a relapse into an animal state : nay, 
 the higher powers and gifts of man are here subordinated to 
 sensuous desire. So in gluttony and the worship of the belly ; 
 all the arts of civilization are here employed to excite and 
 satisfy sensuous desires. So pleasure-seeking and also sexual 
 dissipation have drawn into their service an entire industry 
 of exquisite enjoyments. 
 
 Even the most superficial examination of the facts cannot 
 leave us in doubt as to the value and effects of these two con- 
 trary modes of action. Intemperance, dissipation, inordinate 
 love of pleasure, first of all destroy our sense and capacity 
 for higher things ; the will and the intellect are exhausted by 
 excesses ; finally the sensibility is blunted until at last even 
 the faculty for enjoyment is lost. Ail passive enjoyments 
 deaden the sensibilities ; stronger and more refined excitations 
 are constantly needed to procure feelings of pleasure through 
 the exhausted organ, until at last the chronic state of dulness 
 which is characteristic of the roue is reached ; the powers of 
 
 1 [Spencer, Inductions, XII. ; Stephen, ch. V., 3 ; Seth, Part II., ch. I. — Tr.] 
 
486 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 the organism and its irritability are exhausted ; nothing is 
 left but the repulsive dregs of life. — Temperance has the 
 opposite effect ; it makes the entire man healthy and vigorous, 
 capable of action and enjoyment. 
 
 This virtue, like all habits, is acquired by experience. The 
 foundation is laid by a good education. The best way to pre- 
 vent the growth of excessive desires is to satisfy the natural 
 needs in an appropiate and orderly manner. This can easily 
 be done in a well-regulated household, but is extremely diffi- 
 cult under conditions of luxury as well as of poverty. Per- 
 haps we can still agree with John Locke that an honest 
 farmhouse is the best place for rearing a child. Gradually 
 the child may be encouraged to give up little things of its 
 own accord ; we cannot begin too soon in teaching the child 
 the great art of life : to sacrifice to-day for to-morrow. The 
 child then educates itself. The sense of honor may be ap- 
 pealed to as an ally against desire. The ability to bear priva- 
 tion with equanimity is so closely related to courage that the 
 boy too sees the connection : it is weak and cowardly to yield 
 to desire. Greek ethics is full of excellent moral advice on 
 this very subject. How disgraceful, it says, to be compelled 
 to obey the animal or child in us, which is full of needs and 
 desires ; how beautiful and praiseworthy and in keeping with 
 man's dignity, on the other hand, is the freedom and inde- 
 pendence which is not disturbed by privation and want! 
 Whoever succumbs to his desires is a slave to objects ; they 
 draw him now hither, now thither, through pleasure and fear. 
 The gods are without needs, and therefore without fear and 
 desire ; the fewer our needs, the nearer we are to the gods. 
 These are sentiments which the youth of all ages can uuder- 
 stand. When the sense of honor works in the opposite direc- 
 tion, as happens, to a large extent, in our times, the relation 
 is an unnatural one. There are perhaps two essential reasons 
 for such perverseness. The first is the wish of the youth to 
 show that he has the means, the second, that lie has the 
 
SELF-CONTROL 487 
 
 power and the courage to indulge himself. The latter motive 
 exercises a particularly strong influence upon the young man. 
 He is afraid of being looked upon as a baby, standing in awe 
 of the rod, or as a " goody-good" boy, who is afraid of hell 
 and the devil. He demonstrates his independence as a man, 
 and freedom of mind, by an open violation of the law. The 
 lad who has just been confirmed proudly struts up and down 
 the village street with a pipe in his mouth and " shows off." 
 In the same way, the satisfaction of other cravings becomes a 
 matter of show. We are ashamed, to use Augustine's expres- 
 sion, of not being shameless. The reaction of the years of 
 indiscretion (Flegeljahre l ) against the compulsion of educa- 
 tion will, to some extent, make its appearance everywhere. 
 Perhaps our methods of instruction contribute largely to make 
 the reaction so acute among us. The type of the libertine is, 
 like the type of the priestling QPfaffe), a form of degeneracy 
 which thrives upon Christian soil. It was not known to the 
 classical world. 
 
 The most fruitful method of counteracting the growth of 
 cupidity and the inordinate love of pleasure is to train the 
 individual to efficient action. All successful exercise of nat- 
 ural powers and skill in labor and in play is, as Aristotle 
 teaches, accompanied by pleasure. And this pleasure is 
 superior to the pleasure of passive enjoyment. It can be 
 procured without the sting of desire. It is more independ- 
 ent of external conditions ; enjoyment consumes, activity 
 creates commodities. It is intensified by repetition ; for while 
 passive pleasure increases the intensity of the desire but 
 dulls the faculty of enjoyment, action increases our efficiency ; 
 and the greater the skill, the greater the pleasure of exercis- 
 ing it. As in all cases, the better is here the enemy of the 
 good : the pleasure which we derive from action, especially 
 that resulting from play, is the most effective means of sup- 
 pressing the pleasures of passive enjoyment. The Greeks 
 
 1 [The puppy-dog stage.] 
 
488 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 possessed a powerful antidote against the love of pleasure 
 among the youth in their gymnastics and military exercises 
 and games. Since it was impossible to attain to proficiency 
 in them and be dissipated and effeminate, the sense of honor 
 operated in the right direction. — We, too, have our military 
 exercises, but, apart from other unfavorable conditions under 
 which they take place, they come a little too late. Between 
 the school days and the time of military service a long period 
 of freedom intervenes which is but too often spent in dissipa- 
 tion. For this reason, too, it would evidently be desirable 
 gradually to advance a part of the general military training to 
 an earlier age. To be sure, this change should not be brought 
 about by a police regulation, which might simply make mat- 
 ters worse, but by a change in popular custom. Perhaps the 
 old Germanic love of athletic sports will be revived among 
 us, as indications seem to show. 
 
 A word concerning asceticism l may not be out of place here. 
 An ascetic life is characterized by the habitual renunciation 
 even of moderate and legitimate pleasures. Modern moral- 
 ists, as a rule, reject it as an aberration ; and, indeed, the 
 principle on which it rests seems to be the exact opposite 
 of the principle of welfare. The three vows of monachism 
 signify the renunciation of wealth, or material culture ; of 
 fame and power, or ideal culture ; and finally, of family life, 
 that is, the preservation of the species, or the precondition 
 of all human culture. Nevertheless, it is undoubtedly true 
 that genuine asceticism arouses not contempt and aversion, 
 but respect and admiration, even among pronounced " chil- 
 dren of the world," that is, when they have no principle to 
 defend. The phenomenon may perhaps be explained as fol- 
 lows. The tendency to go to the other extreme of excess 
 is natural and universal ; incontinence causes the ruin of 
 many. Excessive temperance, therefore, does not seem to be 
 
 1 [Lecky, History of European Morals, I., 113, 130; II., 101 ff.; Harnack, Das 
 MOnchthum; Runze, §11. — Tr.] 
 
SELF-CONTROL 489 
 
 dangerous, but meritorious ; for two reasons : The incon- 
 tinence of some is, in a certain sense, directly compensated, 
 by the extreme continence of others. The doctrine of the 
 good works of the saints finds a natural support in this view ; 
 the people forms a whole, the good and evil acts of its mem- 
 bers are placed to its account. And absolute continence is 
 indirectly meritorious in so far as it shows, by great and 
 striking examples, that the impulses which often lead to ruin- 
 ous excess can be mastered. Gratitude for this educative 
 effect assumes the form of admiration. 
 
 This at the same time explains why asceticism and a love 
 of the world go hand-in-hand. We may find occasional 
 examples of intemperance among a poor and uncivilized 
 people, but not radical continence. Philosophical asceticism 
 first appeared in the Hellenic world when the art of good 
 living reached a high state of perfection. The Roman 
 Empire was the soil on which Christianity found favorable 
 conditions of development. The more sensuous a nation, the 
 greater its admiration for the ascetic life. It is surely not 
 accidental that the excitable Romance nations cling to Cath- 
 olicism and celibacy and monachism, whereas temperance 
 societies are common among the Germanic peoples, who are 
 addicted to drink. — Moreover, even in particular individuals, 
 an intensely sensuous nature is apt to seek refuge in asceti- 
 cism. The man who is not exposed to temptation needs no 
 heroic antidotes. 
 
 From this it also follows that asceticism cannot become 
 a universal ethical rule. It would defeat itself with both 
 physical and psychological-aesthetical necessity : without 
 its opposite there would be neither sense nor merit in it. 
 The value of absolute continence and the admiration shown 
 for it are conditioned by the fact that there are others who 
 have not received the donum continentice, even in a moderate 
 degree. The ascetic himself must recognize this; he cannot 
 expect everybody to imitate him, nay, he cannot even say or 
 
490 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 intimate that his mode of life is better than that of others. 
 He may, at most, deem himself fortunate for having escaped 
 such task-masters as most persons constantly have near them 
 in their impulses. A stern and haughty puritanism is not 
 edifying; it arouses antagonisms. A man, however, who is 
 gentle and humble in spirit, who asks nothing for himself 
 but desires others to have everything that is good, even that 
 which he denies himself, will gain the respect and confidence 
 of all, especially of children of the world. Since he does not 
 enter into competition with the world, he may become the 
 repository of very worldly secrets, like Friar Lorenzo in 
 Romeo and Juliet. In his novel, _Z~ Promessi Sposi, Man- 
 zoni has drawn for us, in the person of Cardinal Borromeo, a 
 wonderful picture of a man who renounces everything, 
 and thereby obtains the greatest influence over others. — 
 Moral preachers, spiritual as well as secular, are in the 
 habit of complaining that no one will listen to them and 
 give heed to their counsels. Man's hardness of heart has 
 been the subject of their lamentations from the days of the 
 old prophets down to the present. Perhaps the fault does not 
 lie entirely with the hearers. If these preachers would only 
 examine themselves as closely as others, they would perhaps 
 occasionally find that it is not only their zeal for saving souls 
 that actuates them ; the things which they cannot or dare not 
 or do not wish to enjoy, they begrudge others, and so revenge 
 themselves upon them for their own privations. He alone 
 has a right to preach morality who is in the safe possession 
 of a good that absorbs his whole soul, and is entirely without 
 envy ; he that cannot without bitterness bear the sight of 
 others enjoying what he desires to convince them is worthless, 
 should first preach to himself. 1 
 
 1 The Imitatio Christi admirably describes the true moral preacher and his 
 opposite, the habitual moral grumbler, in the chapter " Of a Good and Peaceable 
 Man." " First keep thyself in peace, and then shalt thou be able to make peace 
 among others. A peaceful man doth more good than he that is well learned. 
 A passionate man draweth even good into evil, and easily believeth the worst. 
 
SELF-CONTROL 4yi 
 
 3. Unpretendingness or modesty is a modification of temper- 
 ance, its inner form, as it were. It is moderation of desire as 
 such, the moderation of the desire for wealth and fame, posi- 
 tion and pleasure. Unassuming modesty consists in habitu- 
 ally lowering one's pretensions to the level of one's fortunes. 
 Its effect is contentment ; and hence it is the safest guide to 
 happiness, just as its opposite, covetousness, or cupidity is the 
 surest means to unhappiness. Everybody is complaining of the 
 rarity of contentment and of the prevalence of discontent. 
 Although the conception of a past golden age of universal 
 happiness is an optical illusion, the growing discontent among 
 the European peoples of the present is not an illusion. Dis- 
 content increases in direct proportion with inordinate desire, 
 for the development of which the conditions are unusually 
 favorable in our age. We no longer have a settled population ; 
 everybody is on the move. Several generations ago it was the 
 rule for a person to remain in the surroundings into which 
 he was born, during his entire life. Now everybody is en- 
 gaged in fortune-hunting. The large cities are the centres of 
 the chase, they excite and tempt everybody, and everybody 
 visits them or lives in them, at least in the imagination ; every 
 inhabitant of every little village has relatives in the city, a 
 son in the army and a daughter at work. The metropolis is a 
 large bazaar, in which thousands of desirable things constantly 
 excite desire. These wares are intended for all ; it is purely 
 accidental that not everybody can buy them ; you and I could 
 own them and make use of them just as well as some one else 
 who has accidentally drawn a prize in the lottery or won a 
 fortune on the stock exchange. Class pride and class customs 
 
 A good and peaceable man turneth all things to good. He that is in peace, is 
 not suspicious of any. But he that is discontented and troubled is tossed with 
 divers suspicions ; he is neither quiet himself, nor suffereth others to be quiet. 
 He often speaketh that which he ought not to speak ; and leaveth undone that 
 which it were more expedient for him to do. He considereth what others are 
 bound to do, and neglecteth that which he is bound to do himself. First, there- 
 fore, have a careful zeal over thyself, and then thou mayest justly show thyself 
 zealous also of thy neighbor's good." 
 
492 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 have disappeared in the " anonymousness " of metropolitan 
 life. The equality of the masses, manifested in the similarity 
 of dress and appearance, gives all the same rights. Hence, 
 since every one constantly sees before him the things which 
 others possess and which he must do without, for no good 
 reason whatever — horses, servants, drawing-rooms, villas, 
 clothes, jewels, articles of food — why should not everybody be 
 discontented ? — In addition to this, the dam which religion 
 formerly erected against covetousness, has been as good as 
 washed away in our times. The thought of the transitoriness 
 of everything earthly and the promise of eternity have lost their 
 hold upon mankind. This is as true of the cultured classes 
 as of the masses. Formerly, the hope of a future life, though 
 it was not very inviting to the rich and the pleasure-seekers, 
 consoled mankind in general for the hardships of this life. 
 But what can console men now who have no hope of a 
 future reward, when fortune fails to give them what it 
 bestows upon others ? 
 
 Is there no curp for this disease ? We are referred to the 
 church and the restoration of its power. If by this we mean, 
 not external power, but an inner frame of mind, humility and 
 piety, then there can be no doubt that the remedy would prove 
 effective. Perhaps nothing but true inner religiousness can 
 give us perfect peace in regard to earthly things. And I am 
 fully convinced that the church has had and still continues 
 to have a salutary influence. I know of nothing that has 
 greater power to raise the heart above the vain and transitory 
 things of life than the Gospels with their simple and grand 
 facts, teachings, and symbols. A . proper interpretation of 
 them will not fail to move the hearts even of our age ; and it 
 certainly is a misfortune that a constantly increasing portion 
 of our population is becoming farther and farther removed 
 from the influences of these teachings. 
 
 The Greek philosophers, too, suggested a remedy to their 
 times, which suffered from the same disease : Abandon your 
 
SELF-CONTROL 493 
 
 false conceptions, above all, the false view that happiness de- 
 pends upon prosperity. What is troubling you is not the lack 
 of certain things, but the belief that you cannot be happy 
 without them. Are you really sure that their possession 
 would make you happy ? But certain it is that it makes 
 you unhappy to desire them and not to get them. Now, 
 since it is in your power not to desire them, but not in your 
 power to obtain them, how foolish you are for resolving to get 
 them instead of resolving not to desire them. — Yes, you say, 
 but it is not in my power not to desire them. — Have you 
 ever really and earnestly made the trial ? Have you, who 
 have devoted so much attention and energy to so many 
 things, ever devoted your attention and energy to this art ? 
 Have you reflected upon it and practised it ? Have you em- 
 ployed the aids at your disposal? Have you ever turned 
 your gaze away from the things which excite desire ? Have 
 you studied others, who do without the same things and 
 others besides, and still are of good cheer? Look at Socrates: 
 he passes through the market-place and enjoys the sight of 
 all the beautiful things because he does not need them. Have 
 you ever appealed to your pride to help you against vanity ? 
 Some one has been promoted, and you have been passed by ; 
 you have not been invited to a dinner ; have you, Epictetus 
 asks, paid the price ? Of course, the price is flattery and sub- 
 serviency. Well, then, pay the price at which these things 
 are sold, if you deem it wise ; but if you are unwilling to 
 pay, well, then, is it not shameless in you still to wish to 
 have them ? — And if theories alone will not help you, try 
 practice, try asceticism : in order to break your own vanity 
 and cupidity, voluntarily give up such things as you have. 
 Strength grows with exercise ; you must merely give the will 
 an opportunity to feel its power against desire. You are 
 fighting for the best seat in the theatre, or on the train, and 
 you become extremely angry because some one has beaten 
 you ; now try to let the other man have it of your own free 
 
494 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 will, and note whether you have fared worse than usual, and 
 then make the application to greater things. — And, above all, 
 have you torn envy from your heart, the ugly weed, which 
 poisons and tortures both body and soul ? If not, do it at 
 once ; and do not believe that you have done anything for 
 your happiness so long as you have failed in this. It is pain- 
 ful to desire and not to obtain ; but much more painful is 
 it to desire to have more than others and to be unable to 
 bear the thought of others having anything. 
 
 Again ; if you have children, help them. There are two 
 ways of looking at life, one of which will certainly make it 
 happy, the other unhappy. The first is the habit of regarding 
 everything good that life yields as surpassing your expecta- 
 tions, and every misfortune as falling below them ; the sec- 
 ond is the reverse of this. You have it in your power to 
 give your child either mood. Grant all his wishes, give him 
 everything he sees, let him choose what he ought to eat and 
 drink, what he ought to do and to leave undone, remove all 
 obstacles from his path, bear his burdens for him, praise his 
 ability and goodness ; in short, be all tenderness and devo- 
 tion ; and you may be sure that he will, upon entering the 
 world, find it hard and niggardly ; that he will be discon- 
 tented and unhappy. If you are unwilling that this should 
 happen, steel your own heart, and do not be afraid of being 
 called an unnatural mother by all educated mothers. 
 
 Not long ago I witnessed the following little incident : Once 
 there were two little girls, perfectly healthy and cheerful, and 
 blessed with the best of appetites. They went to visit an aunt, 
 who loved them very much, and .did everything she could to 
 please them. She used to ask them before each meal what 
 they liked to eat, and when the meal was served, what they 
 preferred to have. Before two weeks had passed, these two 
 little girls no longer enjoyed their food ; one of them could n't 
 eat this, the other could n't eat that ; their plates were always 
 half full, and at the end of every meal they were discontented 
 
SELF-CONTROL 495 
 
 and in tears. " How is it," asked the aunt, when the mother 
 of the two girls came to see her, " that things are so different 
 at home ? " "I will tell you," she answered ; " at home I never 
 ask them what they want, and never give them as much as 
 they call for." 
 
 Happy the man whom Fate treats in the same way. He 
 that is able to choose each day what to do and what not to 
 do, he that can have as much as he desires to have, will soon 
 tire of life. — Hence, be thankful that you do not get every- 
 thing you ask for ; learn to desire, so Marcus Aurelius coun- 
 sels you, not that things govern themselves according to 
 your wishes, but that your wishes govern themselves according 
 to the things. 
 
 4. By the side of temperance Greek philosophy places 
 courage? the ability to resist painful, dangerous, and terrible 
 impressions by means of a rational will. The former is the 
 normal conduct in respect of pleasure ; the latter, of pain and 
 danger. We may, with Aristotle, define both virtues as a 
 mean between two vices : temperance is the proper mean 
 between insensitiveness to sensuous enjoyment and licen- 
 tiousness ; courage the mean between abject cowardice and 
 blind foolhardiness. 
 
 When an animal finds itself threatened by a hostile attack, 
 we may notice one of two things : either the attack arouses 
 fear and impels it to flight ; or it produces rage and rouses it 
 to defend itself. The latter behavior is peculiar to beasts of 
 prey, the former to their victims. Both forms of action are 
 evidently adapted to the animal's nature and mode of life ; 
 the defenceless animal, whose body and temperament do not 
 fit it for attack, strives to preserve itself by flight and con- 
 cealment. Fear, which scents the danger from afar and 
 impels the animal to rapid flight, is for it a useful natural en- 
 dowment. The other quality, rage and ferociousness, is 
 equally well suited to the beast of prey, which can defend 
 
 1 [Stephen, chap. V., 2.— Tr.1 
 
496 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 itself ; it must constantly be on its guard, externally and inter- 
 nally, against surprises and attacks; its preservation depends 
 upon the success with which it solves this problem. 
 
 Both modes of conduct are also found among men. There 
 are men who run away like sheep at the first sign of danger. 
 There are others, on the contrary, who, like beasts of prey, 
 are straightway impelled to blind and ferocious attacks, when 
 threatened or injured. Both modes of conduct are condemned 
 by men, the former as cowardice, the latter as blind rage 
 or foolhardiness. A different kind of behavior is required of 
 man, and that is courage. That man is brave who, when 
 attacked and in peril, neither blindly runs away nor rushes 
 into danger, but retaining his composure, carefully and 
 calmly studies the situation, quietly deliberates and decides, 
 and then carries out his resolution firmly and energetically, 
 whether it be resistance and attack, or defence and retreat. 
 Prudence, therefore, constitutes an essential part of valor. 
 A significant custom is said to have prevailed among the 
 Spartans. Before the battle the king first offered sacrifices 
 to the Muses, "presumably," says L. Schmidt, 1 "to implore 
 them that his army might, even during the battle, retain the 
 pure Apollinic freedom from wild passion." — The origin of 
 this virtue might be explained biologically, as follows. The 
 most dangerous enemy of man is man. In battle with this ad- 
 versary courage has been acquired ; it is the means of de- 
 fence against the most fearful weapon of attack, the intellect. 
 Against this, neither blind flight nor blind aggression will 
 avail, as is seen in the battle of man with animals. Fear 
 carries the fleeing ones into his net, while rage brings the 
 ferocious ones within range of his sword or gun. Such an 
 enemy can be resisted only by means of the same weapon, 
 the intellect, that is, by courage, by presence of mind in 
 battle. The nature of courage is somewhat obscured in 
 popular speech. According to the above explanation, courage 
 
 1 Ethik der Griechen, II., 37. 
 
SELF-CONTROL 497 
 
 may be exhibited in retreat as well as in resistance or attack. 
 Popular usage is inclined to regard retreat under all circum- 
 stances as incompatible with bravery. Perhaps the cause of 
 this one-sided conception may be sought in the following. 
 The battle of man with man is uniformly not a battle of the 
 individual with the individual, but a battle of one collective 
 body against another. It is evidently an essential condition 
 of the strength of a company of fighters that the individual 
 persevere in the struggle, at all hazards, and rather fall than 
 $y ; the power of the collective body depends on the confi- 
 dence which each individual has in the trustworthiness of 
 the other. Courage is a social virtue. 
 
 Martial courage is the first form in which this quality 
 receives recognition, perhaps the very first virtue which wins 
 admiration. Courage is originally the virtue, cowardice the 
 vice, as the Greek and Roman usage of language attests. 
 And youth has no sincerer regard for any virtue than for 
 stern and shrewd, and especially magnanimous courage. 
 
 As civilization advances, its importance diminishes. Civi- 
 lization makes for peace. The individual does not have to 
 protect himself by his own strength and courage, he enjoys 
 the protection of the laws and the police. The Indian con- 
 stantly carries his life in his hands. Even during the Middle 
 Ages everybody bore arms, at least outside of the city walls. 
 We have laid down our arms because we no longer need 
 them. It is not improbable that we have thereby lost our 
 inner readiness to defend our lives with the weapon in our 
 hands. The average European could hardly dare to compete, 
 individually, with the individual Indian or Bedouin in personal 
 bravery. He is also inferior to them in bearing hardships. 
 But what gives him his superiority is, besides the instruments 
 of war, organization and discipline. These are the things 
 which turn the scale in the great battles of civilized nations. 
 The personal bravery of the individual soldier does not count 
 for very much. Our entire civil and military education is 
 
498 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 little adapted to produce it; its main object is to develop 
 discipline : obedience, however, is, to a certain extent, the 
 opposite of courage. 
 
 5. As civilization advances, other forms of resistance come 
 to surpass martial courage in importance. Chief among these I 
 mention what might be called civil courage, independence of 
 thought, characterful self-assertion against the great pressure 
 exerted by superior and inferior forces. Civilization has the 
 tendency to create relations of dependence ; dependence upon 
 men takes the place of dependence upon nature : dependence 
 upon superiors and patrons, friends and fellow-partisans, 
 customers and voters, society and public opinion. Depen- 
 dence has the tendency to pervert the will : it inclines the 
 individual to accommodate himself, to let things take their 
 course, to obsequiousness, to cowardly self-denial, to falsehood 
 in every form. So the moral duty arises to develop the inner 
 power of resistance which calmly and firmly opposes every 
 attempt to subject the individual to established customs 
 and authority, which serves and remains loyal to truth and 
 justice, regardless of whether such conduct brings favor and 
 popularity or disfavor and contempt. To remain true to 
 oneself, that is the aim of such ideal courage. No one can 
 have it, the centre of whose life does not lie within himself ; 
 whoever makes external things his ultimate goal cannot 
 attain to inner freedom. Spinoza was, in his life and teach- 
 ing, a great preacher of this doctrine of freedom. 
 
 Another form of courage is perseverance or persistence, 
 the power of the will to accept and continuously to endure all 
 kinds of hardships and exertions, which are necessary to 
 realize one's ends. It is the virtue of the working man. 
 Martial courage was the virtue of the heroic age, persever- 
 ance is the courage of the industrial age. It is in this virtue 
 that the civilized man so immeasurably surpasses the savage. 
 The savage is capable of great momentary exertions, but not 
 of making a continued effort to overcome the small obstacles 
 
SELF-CONTROL 499 
 
 in which all work consists. A partial reason for this is his 
 inability to conceive far-reaching aims. Hence, as soon as the 
 momentary pressure of want or of the natural impulse ceases, 
 he yields to the law of inertia, which also governs living 
 bodies. 
 
 The love of order may also be regarded as a phase of 
 perseverance, the habit of doing everything with business- 
 like regularity : a very valuable quality, which procures for 
 us freedom and tranquillity. The consequence of disorder is 
 confusion, which begets fear and trouble. This is especially 
 true of the tendency to procrastinate. When our work is 
 done, we feel at peace, but when we put off our tasks, we are 
 constantly fretting about them, and are finally forced to per- 
 form them hastily and unsatisfactorily at an inopportune 
 time. The man who is fifteen minutes late, suffers torture 
 during the rest of the day. 
 
 Patience, too, is related to perseverance. It is the ability 
 to bear pain and suffering without being overcome by them. 
 We may distinguish two aspects of patience : a somewhat 
 passive patience, which bears sufferings without complaint 
 and opposition, and the more active power of the soul, the 
 ability to survive defeats, disappointments, and losses, and 
 to begin life anew. — Patience is feminine courage. Both 
 forms, especially the former, are more characteristic of women 
 than of men ; women not infrequently display a remarkable 
 capacity for enduring pain. This fact is evidently due to the 
 natural difference of the sexes ; women are more experienced 
 in all kinds of suffering than men. A man's nature is im- 
 pelled to attack and defence : hence he finds it more difficult 
 to yield to the inevitable. But active patience, too, the elastic 
 resistance of the soul, is one of the most beautiful and valu- 
 able qualities of the woman. It is harder for a man to get up 
 again after he has met with misfortunes. A woman generally 
 finds less difficulty in beginning anew ; she soon begins to hope 
 and fear again, to work and strive ; she has a more flexible 
 
500 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 nature. Man's strength is more unbending and brittle. A 
 woman is also better able to battle with long-continued troubles 
 and obstacles ; when the man impatiently sinks beneath the 
 load, she retains her equanimity and even her cheerfulness. 
 For that reason woman is the born guardian of youth, the 
 nurse of the sick, and the counsellor of old age. 1 
 
 Great patience in suffering is the invariable mark of a noble 
 character ; courage and perseverance may belong even to a 
 selfish and malicious will. Patient resignation in suffering 
 is a sign that the violent natural impulse to life, which rebels 
 against suffering, has been broken and silenced by a higher 
 will. This is why sufferings which are accepted by the heart 
 and patiently borne are expiatory : think of the thief on the 
 cross. 
 
 6. A third form of self-control is calmness, the ability to 
 control, by the rational will, such emotions as result from 
 disturbances in our relations with our fellow-men : e.g., anger, 
 vexation, ill -humor. To the lack of this virtue, and to envy 
 and pride, are due most of the disagreeable annoyances which 
 wear out the lives of so many men. Without the ability to 
 overcome the inevitable petty collisions, intercourse with 
 human beings becomes a constant torture. A man moves 
 into an apartment house. On the floor above him lives a 
 family with half-a-dozen children, who are making diligent 
 use of the first right of man to use his hands and feet. The 
 noise annoys him, he loses his temper and in his anger sends 
 up a servant to say that the noise is intolerable, and that 
 the gentleman downstairs insists upon greater quiet. What 
 is the effect ? The family thus addressed resents such inter- 
 ference, and henceforth lets the children make more noise 
 
 1 Iua certain sense the greater capacity of women for bearing sufferings and 
 misfortune is statistically shown by the smaller number of suicides among women. 
 According to statistics, four times as many men commit suicide as women. 
 Hence, if suicide is due to the person's inability to endure life any longer, we can 
 say that the power of the woman to bear suffering is four times as great as that 
 of the man. 
 
SELF-CONTROL 501 
 
 than before. And now the battle is on : our friend begins to 
 storm around himself, slams the doors, stamps with his 
 feet, sends for the landlord and the police, and becomes an- 
 grier and more displeased every day. In this way his house 
 becomes a perfect hell. His mind is filled with venomous 
 discontent ; and, like a vessel full to the brim, overflows with 
 bitterness and poisonous malice at the slightest contact. 
 And in the meanwhile he is deploring the baseness of man 
 in general. 
 
 And yet, no one, evidently, is to blame but himself, he 
 is annoying and tormenting himself. He is reaping what 
 he sowed ; wie der Grruss, so der Dank. Had he, instead of 
 sending his servant, put on his best coat and called upon the 
 mother of those children, whose feet are ruining his brain, 
 had he confessed to her that he had an unfortunate failing, 
 that he was extremely sensitive to sounds, and had he begged 
 of her, to have a little regard for his feelings if she could ; 
 had he likewise not forgotten, upon leaving, to praise the 
 beauty and good behavior of her children and to admire 
 her taste in furnishing her home : everything would have 
 been so different. In at least nine cases out of ten — and 
 such a probability makes it worth a trial — he would have 
 been kindly received, and one-half or three-fourths of the 
 disturbance would have been removed. He might then have 
 prescribed for himself a little Stoic philosophy, to enable 
 him to endure the remaining fraction. " If you are going to 
 bathe," Epictetus admonishes us, " place before yourself what 
 happens in the bath : some splashing the water, others push- 
 ing against one another, others abusing one another, and 
 some stealing: and thus with more safety you will under- 
 take the matter, if you say to yourself, I now intend to bathe, 
 and to maintain my will in a manner conformable to nature." 
 So it is here: when you move into an apartment house, 
 think of what will happen there ; the neighbor's dog will 
 bark, his boys will romp around, his daughters will play 
 
502 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 on the piano ; if you cannot endure these things, do not move 
 in, but build yourself a house outside of the city, be it ever 
 so modest. But if you must move in, tell yourself before- 
 hand that you must, and yield to the inevitable. 
 
 To do all this you need not even have any love for human- 
 ity — that, of course, would make it easier for you ; it is 
 simply a matter of prudence. However righteous your anger 
 may be, suppress it; anger will destroy your life and 
 happiness. When people try to make you angry, say: I 
 shall not allow myself to be made angry, for I shall be the 
 one to suffer for it. 
 
 Indeed, it is very strange : we know that we must always 
 adapt ourselves to the nature of the things which we desire 
 to subject to our purposes; only when it comes to human 
 beings do we seem to forget it. A stone is in my way, I 
 do not scold it, but walk around it or push it aside. A 
 watch or a machine is out of order ; we do not beat it, but 
 inquire into the cause, or hand it over to an expert to mend 
 the defect. But when a human being fails to do our bidding, 
 when a neighbor displeases us, or a friend acts in a manner 
 which we do not consider right, when a pupil does not know 
 his lesson, or the soup does not taste right, we get angry and 
 scold. As though abuse and anger were the panacea for 
 governing human souls ! A human soul is of all things in 
 the world the most complicated and most difficult to handle ; 
 and hence the art of governing souls is the hardest of all 
 arts. And since it is the most important art for our happi- 
 ness, it surely deserves to be studied with greater care. The 
 most important thing in this art, however, is the ability to 
 retain one's composure ; only calm and prudent investigation 
 will succeed in discovering the causes of the trouble, and not 
 until these have been found can the proper attempts be made 
 to remedy it. However this may be brought about, whether 
 by instruction, example, counsel, encouragement, assistance, 
 admonition, entreaty, threats, punishment, — under all cir- 
 
SELF-CONTROL 503 
 
 cumstances, Bacon's word will hold good that he alone can 
 rule nature who obeys her. Any one, of course, can get 
 angry and scold, but this is merely a confession of helpless- 
 ness, and does not tend to improve matters ; nay, it is apt to 
 make them worse. Even where punishment is the proper 
 remedy, it will be all the more effective, if administered 
 calmly and firmly. 1 
 
 7. The fruit of self-control, which reaches its completion in 
 the virtues of temperance and unpretendingness, courage and 
 perseverance, patience and tranquillity, is inner peace and 
 cheerfulness of mind, Democritus's einQv^Ca, the tranquilitas 
 animi of the Stoics. This is not only in itself the greatest 
 part of human happiness, but also the source of real human 
 pleasures. The calm and cheerful soul is capable of the 
 quiet pleasures of reflection : the forms of things are mir- 
 rored best in the tranquil lake. The social duties thrive in the 
 contented heart, — justice, veracity, tenderness, benevolence, 
 faithfulness ; and from these in turn spring the joys which 
 friendship and domestic happiness yield. 
 
 This is the path which leads to self-preservation and wel 
 fare. Wisdom is needed to find and follow it. Hence all 
 peoples praise wisdom as the great guide of life. The royal 
 sage of the Hebrews mingles his praises with those of the 
 Greek philosophers : " Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, 
 and the man that getteth understanding. For the mer- 
 chandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and 
 the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious 
 than rubies : and all the things thou canst desire are not 
 
 1 C. G. Gordon, the hero of Khartoum, who quelled the great Taiping in- 
 surrection in China, one of the greatest tamers of men that ever lived, once 
 wrote : The older we grow the hetter we learn to treat human heings as though 
 they were lifeless objects ; that is, to do for them what we can without caring 
 whether they will thank us or not. So God acts towards us. He lets the rain 
 fall on the just and the unjust, he seldom meets with gratitude, he is most often 
 forgotten. (In an anonymous biography, C. G. Gordon, the Hero of Khartoum, 
 1885, p. 178.) [I have not been able to obtain the book, and cannot therefore 
 quote the passage exactly. — Tr.J 
 
504 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 to be compared unto her. Length of days is in her right 
 hand; and in her left hand riches and honor. Her ways 
 are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She 
 is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her : and happy 
 is every one that retaineth her. The Lord by wisdom has 
 founded the earth ; by understanding hath he established the 
 heavens." 1 
 
 1 [Proverbs, IIL, 13-19.] 
 
CHAPTER in 
 
 THE BODILY LIFE* 
 
 1. The function of the body is to serve as the organ and 
 symbol of the soul. There is no difference of opinion concern- 
 ing this practical estimate of the two phases of man's nature. 
 Even the materialist, who regards the soul as a passing func- 
 tion of matter, will accept our proposition ; for him too the 
 body is the servant of the soul. Every one is likewise agreed 
 as to what constitutes a good servant. To accomplish and 
 endure much and to demand little, — these are the qualities 
 which we all consider valuable in a servant. These also 
 determine what is desirable in a body ; the healthy, strong, 
 and hardened body endures much and wants little : the 
 sickly, weak, and pampered body does little and makes great 
 demands. Hence follows the rule of duty : Do what is suited 
 to preserve and increase the health and strength of the body ; 
 avoid what impairs and weakens it. — The other function of 
 the body is to express or symbolize psychical life. Beauty 
 and grace are the visible corporeal manifestations of a good 
 and beautiful soul. Grace is acquired beauty ; the quiet se- 
 curity of the soul which is master of itself, is reflected in 
 quiet, steady, and appropriate movements. Hence follows 
 the rule of duty : Educate the body, so that it may appear in 
 this visible world as a pleasing expression of the invisible 
 beauty of the soul. 
 
 1 [Rousseau, Emile ; Porter, Part IL, ch. III. ; Hoffding, XI. ; Wundt, Etkik, 
 Part I., ch. III., 2, 3 ; Fowler and Wilaon, Part II., ch. I. ; Runz«, §§ 9 f. ; Dornar, 
 pp. 336-356.— Tr.] 
 
506 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 It must be left to dietetics and gymnastics to develop these 
 general formulae into a system of rules. Huf eland's Macro- 
 biotic, a simple book, full of common-sense, may be mentioned 
 as giving a brief presentation of the subject. I shall merely 
 touch upon a few phases of the problem. 
 
 2. Let us first consider the question of nutrition. 1 It is 
 characteristic of human beings to prepare their food artificially; 
 and they do it universally with the aid of fire. The use of 
 fire for this purpose plays an important part in the emancipa- 
 tion of man from nature. Whereas the animal is limited to 
 the territory producing the plants or animals upon which it 
 feeds, and is itself a product thereof, man has made himself 
 lord of the earth ; everywhere he finds what may, with the 
 help of fire, be converted into food. In other respects also, 
 the use of fire in the preparation of food has exercised an 
 important influence upon the development of human life. 
 Wundt calls attention to the fact that by necessitating the 
 common preparation of certain foods, it at the same time led to 
 their common consumption ; to it we owe the origin of the com- 
 mon meal at the hearth. With the meal is connected the sac- 
 rificial worship, growing out of the funeral feasts ; the hearth 
 becomes the altar. The meal coming at regular intervals 
 and dividing the day, also leads to the first division of time. 
 The child still receives its first lessons in the discipline of the 
 animal desires by governing its appetite according to the 
 meals. 
 
 Let me add a word or two concerning degeneracy in nourish- 
 ment. In emancipating himself from the natural guidance of 
 instinct, which controls and likewise preserves the animal, 
 man exposes himself to aberrations. The palate is stimulated 
 by artificially prepared food, and the reception of food excites 
 pleasure even when it is not needed. Gluttony and hoggish- 
 ness are universally characterized by the perversion of the 
 
 1 [Spencer, Ethics of Individual Life, ch. IV. ; Brillat-Savarin, Phytiologie 
 dugout. — Tr.] 
 
THE BODILY LIFE 507 
 
 organs of nutrition into organs of pleasure. It appears that 
 such abuse never occurs among animals, but that among 
 human beings it is common to all ages and all peoples. Travel- 
 lers bring us horrible reports of the coarse forms of gluttony 
 practised by uncivilized tribes. All of these seem also to have 
 hit upon the manufacture of intoxicating liquors, or to have 
 introduced them into their countries from abroad. 
 
 Everybody knows to what extent the life of modern civilized 
 nations is devastated by drunkenness. It seems that the Ger- 
 manic nations have from time immemorial been more predis- 
 posed to this vice than the Romance peoples ; which is perhaps 
 to be explained by conditions of climate. In certain parts of 
 Germany a considerable part of the male population is directly 
 ruined by drunkenness ; and there is no country in which this 
 vice does not cause the most serious disturbances. The imme- 
 diate effects of drunkenness are these ; the economic life 
 becomes unsettled, family-life is neglected and destroyed, the 
 moral-spiritual life brutalized and debauched. Pauperism, 
 crime, a host of diseases, insanity, suicide, degeneracy of off- 
 spring, follow in its melancholy wake. 1 
 
 The conviction is growing among earnest and thoughtful 
 men that a very serious danger here confronts the future pro- 
 gress of civilized peoples. How shall we meet it? 2 
 
 In 1881 the German government introduced a bill in the 
 Reichstag, making offensive drunkenness in a public place 
 punishable (by a fine not to exceed sixty marks and fourteen 
 days in jail, the penalty to be increased in case of repetition). 
 The permission was also asked for the temporary confinement 
 of habitual drunkards in asylums. The measure did not pass. 
 During the discussion of the bill the objection was raised, 
 among others, that the passage of such a law would lead to 
 
 1 Compare A. Baer, Der Alcoholismus, seine Verbreitnng, und seine Wirkung 
 t uf den individuellen und sozialen Organismus, sowie die Mittel ihn zu bekampfen, 
 1878. [See the articles on Temperance, Abstinence, Prohibition, in Johnson's 
 Cyclopedia. — Tr.] 
 
 * [Spencer, Ethics oflnd. Life, ch. VI. — Tk.] 
 
5U8 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 the unlawful restriction of personal liberty. I do not know 
 whether the objection had anything to do with the defeat of 
 the proposition, but it seems to me that it must be regarded 
 as thoroughly unsound. Drunkenness incapacitates a man 
 for rational deliberation, but it does not hinder him from 
 acting irrationally. Hence it leads him to treat others irra- 
 tionally and possibly to abuse them ; indeed the causal 
 connection between drunkenness and crime, especially crime 
 against persons, is a well known fact. Therefore, it is un- 
 doubtedly an attack against the security of others to put one- 
 self into such a condition ; even the threats and the fears 
 to which, for example, the wife and children of the drunkard 
 are subjected, constitute a serious wrong against which the 
 law has an absolute right to proceed. And it is no less 
 beyond cavil that society has the right to proceed against 
 habitual drunkenness by confining individuals in asylums. 
 We have as much right to isolate and to cure the alcoholist 
 who has lost his will power, in order to protect him and his 
 surroundings against the consequences of his disease, as we 
 have to incarcerate the maniac against his will, that he may 
 not injure himself and others. Of course, it goes without say- 
 ing that great care would have to be exercised to hinder the 
 arbitrary and unjust execution of the law. 1 
 
 Hence, it seems utterly unwarranted to oppose such a law 
 on the score of personal liberty. The freedom temporarily to 
 put oneself in a state of moral and intellectual insanity can- 
 not be regarded as one of the universal rights of man. 
 
 1 In his text-book on Psychiatry, Krafft-Ebing defines intoxication as a volun- 
 tarily-produced, temporary state of insanity. (1,35.) He shows in detail its 
 similarity to forms of mental disease. Its beginning is marked by a slight mania- 
 cal excitation, with exalted self-consciousness, and apparent intensification of vital 
 functions. The continued use of alcohol is followed by a gradual decline, as in 
 the case of the violent maniac : at first the aesthetic and moral presentations, 
 which in health have a controlling and inhibiting influence, disappear; the 
 drunkard " lets himself go," ignores the rules of decency and morality, becomes 
 cynical and brutal. A state of complete exhaustion follows, consciousness is 
 deranged, illusions and hallucinations appear, his speech becomes thick and un- 
 certain, his walk tottering, just as in the case of the paralytic ; the end is a deep 
 and idiotic stupor. fSee Zola's powerful novel L'Assommoir. — Tr.1 
 
THE BODILY LIFE 509 
 
 Nevertheless, I doubt whether the defeat of the measure, at 
 least of the part relating to the punishment of public drunken- 
 ness, is to be deplored. In addition to the injustice or the 
 harmfulness of a law, another decided objection may be urged 
 against it, and that is its inefficacy. It is to be feared that a 
 penal law against drunkenness would, as matters now stand, 
 have very little effect ; it would not contribute much to the 
 improvement of morals, and that after all is the end to be 
 desired. 
 
 The efficacy of such a law would essentially depend upon 
 its ability to render drunkenness disgraceful in the eyes of the 
 public, which it is not at present. But I doubt very much 
 whether that can be done so long as public opinion, not only 
 of the lower classes, but also of so-called good society, judges 
 this vice so leniently. Several years ago a riot occurred in a 
 German university town, which for several days kept the 
 entire city in a state of great excitement. The reason which 
 induced a part of the student body to revolt was a police- 
 regulation ordering the saloons to be closed at twelve o'clock 
 midnight : a highly beneficial measure, one would imagine, 
 for all the parties concerned, for the beer-drinkers as well as 
 for the other inhabitants of the city. It was, however, re- 
 garded by the liberty-loving youth as an intolerable restriction 
 of their personal freedom, or perhaps also of their academic 
 freedom, about which some rather curious ideas exist. Now 
 imagine these same defenders of liberty five or ten years later 
 pronouncing judgment upon drunkenness in court ! I can- 
 not make myself believe that the law administered by such 
 representatives would exercise an educative influence upon 
 public morality. Or will they have changed by that time ? 
 Perhaps ; but even then would not their own past rise up 
 against them ? And do they actually change, as a general 
 thing ? The hilarity which one of the advocates of personal 
 liberty succeeded in arousing among the representatives of the 
 people, when the measure mentioned above was discussed in 
 
510 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 the Reichstag, was not calculated to remove all doubts con- 
 cerning the high gathering's respect for sobriety. When this 
 speaker remarked that the drunken men whom he met on the 
 streets were for the most part elderly gentlemen with white 
 cravats, and that the sight of them did not arouse in him feel- 
 ings of anger, but sympathetic cheerfulness, his statement did 
 not arouse anger in the meeting either, at least there was no 
 perceptible sign of it, while the sympathetic cheerfulness 
 mentioned by him, which goes by the name of general hilarity 
 in the reports of parliamentary proceedings, became plainly 
 audible. And the long and sentimental accounts of the 
 drinking bouts (Kommerse) of old gentlemen, followed by the 
 KaterfruhstucTc, which so frequently appear in all our news- 
 papers, are evidently written with the intention of exciting 
 good-humored laughter in their readers. 1 
 
 So long as " good society " treats itself so leniently in these 
 matters, it will have every reason to doubt its ability to cure 
 " bad society " of drunkenness, by means of penalties. The 
 law cannot create customs, it can merely protect existing 
 ones. 
 
 May we expect an improvement of custom in the future ? 
 Perhaps the case is not hopeless. A student of history might 
 reach this conclusion. At the beginning of the modern era 
 the habit of bestial drunkenness prevailed at the courts of 
 princes and among the nobility. Call to mind the chronicles 
 of Hans von Schweinichen. The vice was gradually sup- 
 pressed in these circles during the seventeenth and eigh- 
 teenth centuries, through the influence of the French courts. 
 From the courts, however, it had spread to the middle classes 
 of society ; it seems to have reached its climax in the aca- 
 demic world during the second half of the seventeenth cen- 
 
 1 W. Martins (Der Kampf gegen den Alkoholmissbrauch, 1884, pp. 40 ff.) gives 
 us an idea of the feeling of the public in reference to drinking and drunken- 
 ness. He also publishes the bill mentioned above, and the constitution of the 
 Society against the Abuse of Spirituous Liquors, and many other items of 
 interest in the history of the crusade against drunkenness. 
 
THE BODILY LIFE 511 
 
 tury. Here, too, it has had to give way, since the middle of 
 the eighteenth century, to the more refined manners which 
 gradually came to prevail, owing to the development of higher 
 spiritual aspirations. The habit still persists with great stub- 
 bornness in certain academic circles, but I believe we can say 
 that it is really no longer considered good form. Among offi- 
 cials and the substantial citizens, drunkenness, though judged 
 rather mildly in individual cases, is not regarded as one of 
 the legitimate habits of life. At present it is largely confined 
 to the lower and lowest strata of society, into which it has 
 gradually found its way since the seventeenth century. We 
 may measure its growth there by the increase in the manu- 
 facture of brandy, which has reached an enormous extent in 
 the nineteenth century. Will the plague, after having passed 
 through the body politic from the top to the bottom, leave it 
 again ? Perhaps we may hope so. When the higher classes 
 of society, who set the example in all things both good and 
 bad, take the lead in this matter and repudiate drunkenness, 
 it will gradually lose caste among the masses. Whatever is 
 no longer regarded as " refined," is doomed ; so soon as it be- 
 comes " vulgar " it is cast out. The progress in this direction 
 may perhaps be hastened by the fact that drinking assumes a 
 more and more brutal and repulsive form, under the influence 
 of the whiskey-habit ; there is some poetry in wine, and, if 
 need be, also in beer, but there is no poetry in whiskey. So 
 soon as public opinion comes to look upon intoxication as de- 
 cidedly vulgar and disgraceful, it will be possible to combat 
 what is left of the old vice by laws and penalties. 
 
 In the meanwhile, we have here a wide field for the work 
 of societies ; but we must not forget the good old rule : First 
 sweep before your own door. The beer-drinking habit of the 
 academic and non-academic Philistines, which is so common 
 in Germany, and the worship of the belly to which the rich 
 and aristocratic are addicted, are equally degrading. Can any 
 one who, day after day, from morning till night, for hours 
 
512 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 and hours, sits in the beer-shops, enveloped by tobacco 
 smoke, and listens to the selfsame stupid talk or plays the 
 same old tiresome game of Skat, and who at last carries 
 home with him an empty and stupefied head, do any serious 
 and earnest work ? Can any one who, day after day, revels in 
 the pleasures of the table at dinners and suppers, throw his 
 soul into anything ? Will not a feeling of lazy satiety take 
 possession of him and extinguish all higher aspirations ? 
 
 Now what remedies shall we employ against drunkenness 
 among the masses ? All effective measures will, perhaps, aim 
 chiefly at two things : the removal of temptation and the 
 discovery of a suitable substitute for whiskey and the dram- 
 shop. The so-called public coffee-houses, which were originally 
 established in England and afterwards on the Continent, at 
 first by societies and subsequently as private enterprises, 
 have made a good beginning in the latter respect. Moreover, 
 every improvement that is made in the conditions of life 
 will tend to counteract alcoholism among the lower classes. 
 Wretchedness and want, insufficient food, poor habitations, 
 injurious labor, over-exertion, indeed an uncomfortable mode 
 of existence, constitute its favorite soil ; the effect desired 
 is the temporary stupefaction, the blunting of the sensibility, 
 caused by the use of alcohol. The so-called Gothenburg sys- 
 tem has happily succeeded in diminishing the temptation in 
 Sweden. In 1865 a stock company was formed in Gothen- 
 burg which obtained possession of all the dramshop-licences 
 of the city, and considerably decreased the number of drink- 
 ing places. It then placed these saloons in charge of its own 
 employees and limited the sale of liquors to a very short 
 period of the day. The net profits, minus the usual rate of 
 interest, are turned into the city treasury. The system, which 
 has been adopted in many cities throughout the North, not 
 only directly diminishes the opportunity for drinking, but also 
 removes some of the conditions encouraging drunkenness, 
 for example, the saloon-atmosphere and the landlord's love 
 of gain. 
 
THE BODILY LIFE 513 
 
 Here, moreover, the State too may interfere, without hesi- 
 tation, by employing the proper safeguards. The legislature 
 has finally resolved to limit the gambler's freedom to ruin 
 himself, by closing the gambling-houses ; it has passed laws 
 commanding the utmost care in the sale of poisons, and may 
 consequently take precautionary measures against, and limit 
 the sale of, the poison which claims a thousand times more 
 victims than all the others put together. A Dutch law of 
 the year 1881 contains some very stringent regulations ; it 
 limits the number of dramshops in proportion to the popu- 
 lation, and grants licenses only for one year at a time ; it also 
 punishes drunkenness. The regulations which call the land- 
 lord to account for encouraging excess are also wise. And 
 the demand of the temperance societies that no one be legally 
 bound to pay debts incurred by the purchase of alcoholic 
 liquors surely deserves approval. Finally, it is also feasible to 
 increase the tax on whiskey, and thereby to limit its consump- 
 tion, or at least to hinder its increase. To be sure, these 
 restrictions are opposed in Germany by quite influential 
 circles, which have a selfish interest in increasing the sale of 
 whiskey. But is it not, perhaps, conceivable that the masses 
 will some day see that the whiskey-drinker is making a volun- 
 tary tax-payer of himself and is at the same time paying trib- 
 ute to the whiskey-distilling landowner ? Will not the German 
 social democracy some day, perhaps, adopt abstinence from 
 spirituous liquors as one of its weapons against the existing 
 order of society ? It would not in my opinion be the worst, 
 nor the least effective weapon. The English trades-unions 
 have made the beginning in the fight against alcohol. The 
 leaders of the labor movement in that country are all advo- 
 cates of total abstinence. 
 
 Let me say a few words regarding another stimulant, 
 tobacco, which entered upon its triumphant march through 
 civilized Europe simultaneously with brandy. It is, as is well 
 known, one of the guest-gifts of the new world to the old. If 
 
514 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 ever the Middle Ages could be supposed to pass judgment 
 upon modern times, they would most likely say, in revenge 
 for the many evil things said of them : Three things charac- 
 terize the modern era : whiskey, tobacco, and the French dis- 
 ease (die Franzosen'), as a certain affliction was called which 
 made its appearance in Germany at about the same time. 
 The modern times, they might proceed, are fond of boasting 
 that their civilization is superior to that of the Middle 
 Ages. Now if civilization consists of these three things — 
 a view which the " savages " outside of Europe to whom the 
 Europeans have brought " civilization " might easily be led 
 to take — then, the Middle Ages might say, our own lack of 
 civilization need not trouble us very much. Indeed, " it is a 
 very remarkable fact that a barbarous Indian custom, the 
 custom, namely, of drawing the smoke of the dry leaves of 
 a narcotic plant into the mouth by means of a tube or a 
 twisted roll, and then puffing it out again, or of stuffing the 
 same leaves in pulverized form into the nose, should have 
 been transmitted by the redskins to white, yellow, and 
 black men all over the world, and should have taken root." 2 
 Tolstoi', too, has pondered over this strange fact. In a little 
 pamphlet, Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves ? he gives his 
 answer : In order to stupefy their consciences ; for which 
 tobacco and alcohol are especially fitted. There is a great 
 deal of rhetorical exaggeration in the reply ; but it likewise 
 contains a germ of truth. Why does the student smoke and 
 drink ? Because he likes it ; or because he does not know 
 what to do with himself, and so deludes himself about his 
 empty and burdensome life ? 
 
 It is estimated that the German nation spends about three 
 hundred million marks for tobacco annually. I certainly do 
 not desire to begrudge any one his pleasures ; but could we 
 not buy something better for three hundred million marks 
 
 1 V. Hehn, Kulturpjianzen und Hausthiere in ihrem Ubergang aus Asien nack 
 Europa, p. 449. 
 
THE BODILY LIFE 515 
 
 than smoke ? If, for example, this sum were spent in im- 
 proving and beautifying our homes, then, at least, the three- 
 fourths of our people who are only passively interested in 
 smoking would be the gainers ; and perhaps even the smokers 
 themselves would not lose anything. For I confess that I 
 am still in doubt, after many years of experience, as to 
 whether smoking causes more enjoyment on the whole than 
 annoyance. Was any father ever pleased to see his sons or 
 his daughters acquire the habit ? 
 
 Furthermore, what was said above about drinking is also 
 true of smoking : after it has become universal, it will become 
 vulgar, and then it will be abandoned, first by the privileged 
 classes and afterwards by all. Has this process already be- 
 gun ? It seems to me, there are more students to-day who 
 do not smoke than there were thirty years ago. 
 
 Another sign of the times is vegetarianism, which has made 
 many converts of late. I do not believe that everybody will 
 or ought to follow its standard. There are most likely sound 
 reasons for the consumption of animal food beside vegetable 
 food, and it is on the whole indispensable. I also doubt whether 
 abstention from meat would, as the enthusiasts predict, lead 
 to the extermination of all vices and ills. And as for the 
 animals in whose behalf we are appealed to to abstain, — why, 
 the abstention from meat would prove disastrous to them ; the 
 animal at least " with the rose-colored skin, whose cries are 
 so much like human cries" (Tolstoi), would be doomed by 
 the triumph of vegetarianism. On the other hand, the move- 
 ment is evidently the expression of a desire for a more beauti- 
 ful, more spiritual, more human form of life ; and voluntary 
 abstention from animal food (the involuntary abstention is not 
 wanting, as we know) cannot fail to have beneficial results, 
 under certain circumstances. 
 
 3. Let me add a few words concering habitation * and cloth- 
 ing. The dwelling, originally a protection against heat and cold 
 
 1 [See also Oettingen, Morahudistik, § 34. — Tr.] 
 
516 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 as well as against hostile attacks, has gradually far outgrown 
 its original purpose : the cave, the tent, the hut, the house, the 
 burg, the city, mark the stages of its evolution. Its mission 
 has been enlarged so as to embrace the whole of civilized life. 
 What clothing is to the individual, the domicile is to the 
 family. Within the walls of the house the family finds pro- 
 tection against all kinds of annoyances, and seeks refuge from 
 inquisitive curiosity and insatiate greed. In the home it 
 reveals its character; the occupation, the mode of life and 
 thought of the family, are expressed in the form, furniture, 
 and decoration of the house. The memories of the past, both 
 joyful and sorrowful, cling to it, and so the dwelling becomes 
 the necessary framework of the family history. It is no less 
 apparent that the development of great historical institu- 
 tions is closely connected with the evolution of the home : 
 without the dividing walls of the individual's own hut, we 
 cannot imagine the separation of the particular families from 
 the original herdlike unity of the horde. The evolution of 
 property-rights is doubtless also closely related to the same 
 dividing walls. Moreover, by the side of the human dwell- 
 ing erected by the individual rises the house of the gods, the 
 temple, which has proved so stimulating to religion and the 
 arts. The temple has also had a great influence, as Wundt 
 remarks, upon the evolution of the sense of justice. The 
 peace of God made the temple the refuge for fugitives. The 
 temple-peace reacted upon the development of the house- 
 peace : the gods avenged its breach, whether the offence were 
 committed against the host or against the guest. Again, the 
 first notions of international law owed their origin to the 
 reverence which the tribe felt for the temples of kindred 
 gods. 
 
 One of the most deplorable results of the recent develop- 
 ment of social life is the forced abandonment by larger and 
 larger portions of the population of the dwelling as a perma- 
 nent home for the particular family, and the crowding together 
 
THE BODILY LIFE 517 
 
 of great masses of people, who are unknown to each other, 
 into the tenement and apartment houses of our large cities. 
 Even the wealthy family suffers serious loss in this respect, 
 being deprived of its peace and comfort, its freedom of move- 
 ment, its pleasure of possession, its feeling of neighborliness, 
 and the love of home. And among the lower classes these are 
 not the only disadvantages. The overcrowded condition of 
 the houses tends to endanger the life and health, happiness, 
 morality, and domestic feeling of the occupants. When one 
 family possesses but a single room, which it shares with sub- 
 tenants and lodgers, real human life is no longer possible. 1 
 It would be a great blessing if the modern means of transpor- 
 tation could be so perfected as again to disperse the crowds 
 of people whom they have poured into the large cities. Many 
 families, who are at present living in crowded tenement- 
 houses, to their great injury, could, even now, if they so 
 desired and ceased regarding a bad habit as a natural neces- 
 sity, occupy their own homes in the suburbs. Here, again, 
 the wealthier classes must inaugurate the reform by forming 
 better habits themselves. 2 
 
 The original purpose of clothing 8 was partly to protect, 
 partly to decorate the body and to reveal the importance of 
 the wearer. Its negative object was to conceal the animal 
 portions of the body, leaving only the face, the symbol of the 
 spiritual powers, uncovered. Dress has retained this dual 
 nature in the vicissitudes of historical life. The costume 
 symbolizes rank and office, age and sex, joy and sorrow, tem- 
 perament and mode of thought, time and people. By means 
 of clothing the historical and social position of the individual 
 is constantly impressed upon him and his surroundings. In- 
 
 1 [See Rupprecht, Mensch und Wohnung in Wechselbeziehung ; Laspeyres, 
 Tiber den Einfluss der Wohnungsverhaltnisse auf die Moralitdt der arbeitendtn 
 Classen. — Tr.] 
 
 2 Die Wohnung snot der armeren Klasaen, Schriften des Vereins fur Sozialpolitik, 
 vol. I., XXX.-XXXIL, 1886. 
 
 8 [See also Jhering, voL II., 311-329. — Tr.] 
 
518 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 deed, we may say that dress is so essential that historical life 
 and social order cannot be imagined without it ; naked men 
 are unhistorical men. Sameness of exterior marks brutes as 
 unhistorical beings, dissimilarity in dress is the outward 
 manifestation of historical and social beings. Hence, histori- 
 cal changes in the life of nations reveal themselves in changes 
 of costume ; try to imagine Luther in a swallow-tail coat and a 
 white cravat, or Goethe with a moustache and a cut-away, and 
 you will see that dress is as characteristic of man as an his- 
 torical being as its skin is of the animal. — The abolition of the 
 old class distinctions and the levelling tendency of the nine- 
 teenth century clearly manifest themselves in the disappear- 
 ance of class costumes. On the other hand, the dress of the 
 state, the uniform, has become more prominent ; distinctions 
 spontaneously created by society are giving way to distinc- 
 tions made by the state. Furthermore, the uniform is an ex- 
 cellent means of uniforming and controlling the inner man. 
 It compels the wearer to represent the office and to obey 
 orders ; he cannot retreat, he must seem to be what the uni- 
 form proclaims him to be, and so becomes it. What would 
 an army be without uniforms ? 
 
 The difference between costume and fashion consists in 
 this : the latter is an arbitrary invention of particular individ- 
 uals and lasts only for a short time. Its climax is marked by 
 the complete decline of costume. Fashionable attire differ- 
 entiates its wearer, makes a " distinguished " person of him, 
 not so much because it is a sign of taste, wealth, or costliness, 
 but because it creates the impression that he is a leader in 
 society or that he stands close enough to the leaders to notice 
 the changes immediately and to keep pace with them ; hence, 
 also, the need of rapid changes. Fashion is the feminine 
 form of sport or speculation, and is, like all sport, capricious 
 and tyrannical, stimulating its followers to do their best. 
 The health and welfare of many a woman, the peace and 
 happiness of many a home, are sacrificed to this tyrant without 
 
THE BODILY LIFE 519 
 
 a murmur. Should the psychologist succeed in inventing a 
 process for the transformation of psychical forces — as the 
 physicist has for changing thermal or electrical forces 
 into motion — and should the process ever succeed in con- 
 verting but one-half of the energy which the women who 
 obey the dictates of fashion expend in destroying their com- 
 fort, welfare, and freedom, into other forces of self-sacrifice, 
 the invention would presumably produce a greater increase in 
 real happiness among civilized humanity than all the inven- 
 tions of this century put together. 
 
 4. Another important part of dietetics is the development 
 and exercise of bodily powers. Life is, according to Aristotle, 
 action ; the body deteriorates when it cannot act. These 
 powers are exercised in two ways : in play and in work. 1 
 Work is the exercise of powers for the sake of an external end ; 
 in play the activity is an end in itself, it has no end outside of 
 itself, it is free activity ; while work is constrained or unfree 
 action. Play is especially characteristic of youth. In the 
 life of the adult it is overshadowed by work ; but it is not 
 wanting here and cannot be wanting without depriving life of 
 an essential element. A country consisting entirely of fertile 
 cultivated fields would not wholly please us ; we should miss 
 the heaths and the forests, the moor and the wilderness, we 
 should miss the poetry of freedom. Nor would a life please 
 us that consisted solely of useful work : without play it would 
 be without the poetry of freedom. 
 
 It cannot be denied that with the advance of civilization, 
 certain dangers are threatening life from this side. The sphere 
 of play is becoming more and more restricted, and work is 
 growing more monotonous and mechanical. In primitive 
 stages of civilization work is freer and more varied ; it has 
 something of the character and charm of play. That 
 
 1 [See also Spencer, Ethics of Individual Life, chaps. II., III., VII.; Runze, §§ 
 22 ff . ; J. E. Erdmann, Ernste Spiele ; Santayana, The Sense of Beauty > 
 Bk. I. — Tr.] 
 
520 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 this is true may be seen from the fact that civilized 
 men indulge in hunting and fishing as a kind of play and 
 sport. Agricultural pursuits, too, are quite free and full of 
 change ; each season yields new forms of action. The peasant 
 practises a hundred arts, he handles numberless tools, and 
 comes in daily contact with a thousand living and lifeless 
 things. The work of the mechanic is not so free ; he is tied 
 to his workshop ; the circle of his activities is narrow ; his 
 work consists rather in the constant repetition of the same 
 performance, which consequently becomes more mechanical. 
 He is not so dependent on nature, upon the weather and the 
 seasons, but more dependent upon human beings. All these 
 features are greatly emphasized in the great metropolitan in- 
 dustries. Labor becomes more specialized and monotonous, 
 the working man is less dependent upon nature, but more 
 dependent upon men; the natural laws which govern the 
 life of the peasant are replaced by the laws of the factory 
 and, in more modern times, by the laws of the state, which 
 is interfering with these matters more and more. The 
 metropolis resembles a great prison, in which men are 
 confined within a narrow space and compelled to perform 
 monotonous tasks ; the factory and the workshop, the store 
 and the counting-room, the street and the home, — everything 
 is so small and contracted ! How great is the sense of oppres- 
 sion felt by the masses may be seen from the eagerness with 
 which they seek the open when they are dismissed from their 
 work-houses for a few hours on a Sunday. Even corporeal 
 labor is apt to be somewhat mechanical and disappointing in 
 these places. It is not accidental that art shuns the towns. 
 The painter does not paint the people around him, the privy 
 counsellor in his office, the teacher in his class, the book- 
 keeper at his desk, the workman in the factory ; or when he 
 does it, there is almost always something comical, or satirical, 
 or sentimental in the picture. He prefers to seek the fisher- 
 man on the sea, the huntsman in the forest, the shepherd on the 
 
THE BODILY LIFE 521 
 
 mountains, the peasant in the fields, the carrier on the high- 
 ways. Why ? Most likely because the latter live and act as 
 free men out in the open air, while the former, the prisoners 
 of labor, seem ludicrous or pitiable. 
 
 The greatest sufferers are the young, and those of the 
 higher classes perhaps suffer most because they are sub- 
 jected to such conditions for a greater length of time. The 
 truth that life is movement is especially applicable to the 
 young. Their impulses are directed towards the exercise of 
 bodily powers ; they desire to run and to climb, to jump and 
 to dance, to build and to destroy. There is neither room nor 
 opportunity for such action in the " flat." Free and unim- 
 peded play is utterly impossible ; children living in large 
 cities — as any one raised in the country cannot but^ note 
 with surprise — know no games ; they have no play-grounds, 
 no companions, and without these, games cannot thrive and 
 grow. In polite society the child, instead of playing, is taken 
 out for a stroll by the governess, or goes to the doll bazaar, 
 or attends a children's party. But all these artificial things 
 do not satisfy our children, and inasmuch as their love of 
 movement and exercise cannot be suppressed, they are in the 
 way in the metropolitan household. Under these circum- 
 stances the school proves to be a veritable refuge : there they 
 are taken care of and kept busy for a number of hours each 
 day, and then a few more hours are consumed at home in 
 preparing lessons. Among the upper classes a few more 
 lessons in music and drawing are deemed indispensable, and 
 afterwards a few more hours are devoted to novel-reading and 
 card-playing. And so it happens that young people, from fif- 
 teen to twenty years of age, at a time when the body needs 
 most exercise, spend ten, twelve, or fourteen hours of the 
 day sitting down, until the body gradually becomes accus- 
 tomed to it, and the desire for exercise gives way to a gen- 
 eral feeling of torpor. In this way the foundation is laid, 
 during the period of youth, for the ailments by which the 
 
522 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 members of good society might easily recognize each other 
 in case all the other characteristics should ever disappear: 
 indigestion, nervousness, and near-sightedness. And all the 
 physicians and watering-places in the world cannot restore 
 what nature gratuitously bestows upon him who keeps her 
 commandments : namely a state of healthy exhaustion and a 
 sound sleep, a good appetite and good digestion. 
 
 Matters are still worse among the female portion of the 
 population than among the men. We may justify or at 
 least excuse the men on the ground that society, as it is 
 constituted, demands mental labor in addition to manual 
 labor, and that this is so difficult and complicated as to make 
 it impossible to train the mind properly without in some 
 measure injuring the physical powers, and that therefore the 
 hypertrophic development of the brain at the expense of the 
 other organs must be regarded as a sacrifice to society. Such 
 an apology can be offered, although the question may still be 
 asked : Is not the cultivation of the mental faculties compat- 
 ible with an harmonious development of the physical powers, 
 and is not bodily health the precondition of all healthful 
 activity ? With women, on the other hand, the case is dif- 
 ferent. Spencer quotes a remark of Emerson's : The first 
 requisite of a gentleman is to be a good animal. The thought 
 expressed in this saying is especially applicable to women. 
 Indeed, there is absolutely no excuse why the health of girls 
 should be sacrificed to " culture." Their duties in after life 
 will not, as a rule, demand that they be able to speak three or 
 four languages, but that they be able to manage their house- 
 hold affairs and educate their children, things with which 
 good health, strong nerves, and good eyes have a great deal to 
 do, and learning and languages desperately little. Nor can we 
 accept the excuse that there is neither room nor opportunity 
 for work in the city home ; young girls will always find plenty 
 of opportunity for work and service in every household. 
 
 This, of course, brings us to the very root of the evil. 
 
THE BODILY LIFE 523 
 
 Work, that is, manual work, has become vulgar ; the honor of 
 the educated daughter would be compromised by her doing 
 housework — that is what the servants are for. It is not 
 even genteel to wait upon oneself, much less upon others. 
 I confess that I regard this custom of being waited upon at 
 all times and under all circumstances as a highly efficient 
 means of moral and physical degeneration. Sir John Lub- 
 bock tells an interesting story. 1 A species of ants which 
 were once warlike and vigorous conquered and made slaves 
 of another species. They became so accustomed to be 
 waited upon that they were finally absolutely unable to help 
 themselves ; they could not even feed themselves, the slaves 
 pushing the food into the masters' mouths ; the only thing 
 which they still did without aid was to digest their food 
 and to propagate their kind. Does not this sound like a 
 satirical fable on good society ? A man that has been con- 
 stantly surrounded from youth up by servants who do every- 
 thing for him, will finally become so helpless and dependent 
 that he cannot take a step, cannot tie or untie a knot, without 
 others' assistance. However aristocratic such a state of de- 
 pendence may be, it necessarily becomes a continual source 
 of annoyance and discontent. " Tout notre mal vient de ne 
 pouvoir etre seul," Chamfort once said ; I wonder whether he 
 also had in mind our dependence on servants. 
 
 In this respect, too, imperial Rome seems to be the model 
 for our age. " The desire," says Friedlander, in his Sitten- 
 geschichte Rom's? " to do, nay even to think, as little as 
 possible, was exaggerated to such a degree as to become posi- 
 tively ludicrous. Not only was the business of remembering 
 the names of clients and followers assigned to nomenclators, 
 there were even people who had slaves to remind them when 
 to eat and when to take their baths. They are, says Seneca, 
 so completely exhausted that it requires too much effort for 
 them to know whether they are hungry or not. One of them 
 
 1 [Ants, Bees, and Wasps, chap. IV.] 2 III., 124. 
 
524 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 asked, after being taken from his bath and placed upon a 
 chair : Am I sitting down already ? A hundred years later 
 Lucian reports, to his surprise and disgust, that it was cus- 
 tomary for aristocratic Romans to be preceded by slaves 
 whose business it was to inform them of any roughness or 
 obstruction in the street." (No one was allowed to drive 
 through the narrow streets of Rome during the day.) We 
 see, the aging Romans were on the very point of falling into 
 the habits of the ants mentioned above. 
 
 Friedlander compares the slave-luxury of imperial Rome 
 with the servant-luxury of modern Russia ; hence, a descrip- 
 tion of the conditions in that country may not be out of place 
 here. Leo Tolstoi thus portrays the wretched state which 
 aristocratic Russian society regards as essential to its hap- 
 piness : " They lack five essential conditions of human hap- 
 piness : contact with nature, manual labor, family life, 
 intercourse with human beings, health and a painless death. 
 One of the chief requisites of happiness is a life in the open, 
 in the sunlight, with plenty of fresh air, communion with the 
 earth, with plants and animals. Man has always regarded 
 the want of such things as a great misfortune. These people, 
 however, see nothing but woofs, stones, and wood fashioned 
 by human hands; they hear only the sounds of machines, 
 equipages, cannons, and musical instruments ; they smell 
 only spirituous liquors and tobacco smoke. Nor do their 
 constant travels bring them any relief. They are carried 
 in closed boxes ; wherever they go, they find the same stones 
 and the same wood under their feet, the same curtains shut- 
 ting out the light of the sun, the same lackeys, coachmen, 
 and house boys, who will not allow them to come in contact 
 with the earth, plants, and animals. Wherever they may 
 happen to be, they are everywhere, like prisoners, deprived of 
 the conditions of happiness." Another condition of happi- 
 ness is labor, free manual labor, which stimulates the appetite 
 and invites sleep. Here, too, it may be said that the more 
 
THE BODILY LIFE 525 
 
 happiness any one has acquired, according to the opinion of 
 the world, the more he lacks this second condition of happi- 
 ness. " All those whom the world deems fortunate, high 
 dignitaries and millionaires, either have absolutely nothing 
 to do, like prisoners, and struggle in vain against diseases 
 resulting from want of physical exercise — and battle with 
 still less success against the ennui which consumes them ; 
 or they do work which they despise, like the bankers, the pro- 
 curors, the governors, and ministers and their wives, who buy 
 gorgeous furnishings for themselves and their children." 1 
 
 Count Tolstoi, who was destined by birth and rank to 
 become a member of this society, had the rare courage, when 
 he came to recognize the true meaning of life, to renounce 
 such a lot, and to strive after true happiness. 
 
 Many efforts are now being made in Germany, let me say 
 in conclusion, to counteract these evils. Especial mention 
 must be made of gymnastic exercises (Turneri), which, of 
 course, as prescribed school exercises, are a poor substitute 
 for free play. They came into vogue at the beginning of the 
 century, with the rise of the military spirit among the Prus- 
 sian people, and were originally aimed against every form 
 of effeminacy. Jahn and his disciples desired to rid them- 
 selves of the effeminate habits which resulted from French 
 hyper-culture, by means of bodily exercise, hardships, and 
 privations, and to regain the vigor of the German peasant. 
 It was regarded as disgraceful to give way to any form of 
 pampered sensuousness. Gymnastics have gradually come to 
 be recognized as a part of the education of the young and 
 likewise of military training. Perhaps the hope is not 
 groundless that they will make even greater progress in the 
 future. Should their hygienic necessity fail to gain for them 
 the recognition which they deserve, their military utility may 
 perhaps aid them. It is not likely that the European nations 
 will be able permanently to bear the enormous burdens now 
 
 1 My Religion, p. 210. 
 
526 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 imposed upon the community and the individual by the 
 increase of military armaments, and it may ultimately become 
 necessary to improve the instruction in gymnastics as well as 
 the exercises connected with them, and to begin the general 
 preparation for military service at an earlier age than at 
 present. This plan would not only release the citizen from 
 service during the later years of his life when the long inter- 
 ruptions occasioned by military service are bound to cause 
 him serious injury, but would have many other wholesome 
 effects. The bodily exercises could be carried on, during the 
 earlier years, in direct connection with the games of boy- 
 hood ; they might be continued with zeal during the years 
 intervening between the school days and the time of service, 
 and thus serve to counteract disorderliness and dissipation ; 
 and finally they might encourage and lead to the revival of 
 public games for the young. And should these games, which 
 formerly occupied an important place in our national life, be 
 revived, and give rise to more beautiful popular festivals, the 
 German people would derive from its gymnastic exercises the 
 same benefits which the Greeks derived from theirs. 1 
 
 Athletic sports are also coming into vogue of late years — 
 races, boating, mountain-climbing, bicycling, and so forth. 
 Though a great many evils are connected with these exercises, 
 they have this good, that they promote the physical vigor of 
 the upper classes of society. The English, the leaders in 
 these things, owe no small part of their success in inter- 
 national affairs to the robust strength which the gentry 
 acquire through physical exercises and games. 
 
 Still more recently efforts have been made to improve the 
 manual skill of the young by giving them an opportunity to 
 train themselves in the use of tools. It is to be hoped that these 
 attempts will succeed. Practical skill is a desirable thing. 
 I am convinced that at least ninety out of every hundred young 
 people who attend our higher schools, would find more pleasure 
 
 * [Runze, §§ 46, 47. — Tr.1 
 
THE BODILY LIFE 527 
 
 in manual labor than in their school exercises. When nature 
 formed the eve and the hand, she evidently did not intend 
 them to be used in the way which is almost the only one known 
 to our pupils : that is, for reading and writing. The Germans 
 used to be very proud of their mechanical skill ; during the 
 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries their cities were renowned 
 above all others for the skill of their artisans. Leibniz once 
 described the difference between the French and German na- 
 ture as follows : Frenchmen, he said, make useless things, 
 which are simply beautiful to look at, while Germans make 
 things which not merely please the eye and satisfy the 
 curiosity of great lords, but also accomplish something ; they 
 bring nature under the control of art and lighten human 
 labor. — As late as a century ago there were places in Ger- 
 many in which sailors and peasants spent their leisure 
 moments in carving ; at present the only things which many 
 a man can handle, besides his knife and fork, are his pen and 
 his cigar. May it not be possible for us to return to our first 
 love ? And if by doing so we can get rid of the new-fashioned 
 contempt for manual labor, that too will be a blessing ; in- 
 deed, we should not regret the loss of some of the idealism 
 which, in imitation of the ancients, affects to despise banausic 
 work. I am rather afraid anyhow, that we are not making 
 much headway in Hellenizing our people, and perhaps we have 
 less reason to regret being honest Germans than old and new 
 humanists try to make us believe. 
 
 In conclusion, let me allude, in a few words, to the opposite 
 of action, to rest and recreation. Activity means expenditure 
 of energy ; hence nature demands that activity be suspended 
 in order that the loss may be restored. Regular, long 
 periods of rest for the entire psycho-physical system follow 
 the changes of day and night. Jewish tradition has estab- 
 lished an additional period of rest in the Sabbath. This is a 
 highly beneficial institution, one that is so interwoven with 
 our life and feelings as to seem like a part of the natural order 
 
528 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 itself. How was it possible for the Greeks and Romans tti 
 live without their Sunday ? Finally, during more recent 
 years, it has become customary for those engaged in tho 
 higher pursuits to lay down their work for longer intervals ; 
 vacations, which were originally confined to schools, have 
 gradually extended to other circles. The need for them evi- 
 dently grows as the work becomes more arduous, systematic, 
 and monotonous. Hence it is to be assumed that greater 
 portions of the population will be affected by the custom. 
 
 Periods of rest have a double purpose : first, the restora- 
 tion of consumed energy ; secondly, the exercise of functions 
 not employed in the regular calling. The latter, too, is 
 recreation. Those whose calling makes especial demands 
 upon their mental powers will find recreation in the proper 
 exercise of their bodily powers, in play, in travel, in mechan- 
 ical activity ; those, on the other hand, whose work chiefly 
 calls into play physical forces will find relief in mental 
 activity, in reading. Social pleasures, music, games of all 
 kinds, are excellent means of recreation for all alike. 
 
 A proper balance between work and recreation is an essen- 
 tial condition of health, efficiency, and happiness. An excess 
 on either side is equally dangerous. It is now universally 
 admitted that the development of industrial production has 
 led to an intolerable excess of mechanical work. The efforts 
 of the labor party to shorten the working time merit our 
 entire approval. Work must not make a slave of man, but 
 should enable him not only to acquire commodities, but to 
 develop his powers. He should not be a mere tool, but a 
 personal end in himself. When this becomes impossible, when 
 daily labor leaves only time enough for the necessary animal 
 functions of nutrition and sleep, man's life ceases to be a 
 human life. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE ECONOMIC LIFE* 
 
 1. The economic life has its origin in the natural needs, 
 which man shares with the brute. When the functions en- 
 gaged in the satisfaction of these needs are systematized by 
 reason, two institutions arise which form the basis of 
 economic life : labor and property. The accumulation of 
 commodities, which is the original form of property, enables 
 man to free himself from the slavery of momentary needs, to 
 which the animal is subjected. This freedom is the precondi- 
 tion of all real human life ; without it there can be no syste- 
 matic, purposive activity, no mental-historical life. Through 
 it, what remains a natural process in the animal world is raised 
 to the moral sphere. 
 
 We shall find occasion later on to make a more thorough 
 examination of the institution of property and the historical 
 forms which have been evolved from it. 2 Here I simply 
 desire to outline the moral duties which the acquisition and 
 consumption of commodities impose upon the individual. 
 
 Commodities are acquired through labor. In the more 
 highly developed stages of civilization, this assumes the form 
 of a calling or profession. Professional efficiency and fidelity 
 to calling are the virtues peculiar to this field. 
 
 1 [Pale/, Bk. III., Part 1 ; Spencer, Inductions, ch. XI. ; Porter, Part II., ch. 
 VI.; Jhering, vol. I., ch. VII.; Wundt, Part I., ch. III., 2 (d), 3 (a) ; ch. IV. 2 
 (b), (c), (d) ; Runze, §§ 52-64 ; Fowler and Wilson, Part II., ch. 1 ; Dorner, pp. 
 347-353, 418-429 ; Ho ff ding, pp. 265-312 ; Oettingen, Moralstatistik, Part II, 
 ch. 1. — Te.] 
 
 * In Bk. IV. 3, ch. I. 
 
 u 
 
530 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 Under healthy conditions, the duties of the calling form the 
 centre of one's entire life. The boy practises his future 
 profession in play ; the youth leaves the parental home to 
 learn it, and the man devotes his whole energy to it. The 
 avocation determines our essential relations to the exter- 
 nal world ; it brings us into contact with our colleagues during 
 the periods of work and rest ; and upon it depends the manner 
 in which we exercise our faculties in play. Hence the calling is 
 the guiding principle in life ; it gives it steadiness and purpose. 
 The teleological necessity of the calling becomes apparent 
 when we consider the consequences of its lack. Both rich 
 and poor may be without a calling. The individuals without 
 a calling who form the lower fringe of society constitute the 
 proletariat. This group is composed of those who have no 
 steady work, but wander from place to place and beg or steal, or 
 otherwise gain their livelihood. Aversion to work, dissipation, 
 drunkenness, recklessness, vanity, are the vices which draw 
 individuals into this group. Moreover, this mode of life is 
 transmitted by heredity ; degenerate families raise degenerate 
 offspring. The metropolis is the most favorable soil for the 
 proletariat. The covetousness which finds nourishment there, 
 the temptations which lurk about in thousands of guises, the 
 isolation and " anonymousness " in which the individual lives 
 among the masses, the occasional scarcity of work and the 
 loneliness which confront him, — all these are conditions 
 favorable to the development of a proletariat. Such a life 
 reaches its completion in the infamy and shamelessness ac- 
 quired in workhouses and prisons. 
 
 Another group of persons who have no calling is formed at 
 the upper fringe of society. I mean the professional idlers 
 who live on their interest and absolve themselves of the duty 
 of having a calling. Looked at from the outside, their 
 manner of life differs from that of the other class ; seen 
 from within, however, it shows many points of resemblance. 
 Besides, these two classes come into personal contact with 
 
THE ECONOMIC LIFE 531 
 
 each other ; thev meet in the demi-monde and among the 
 gambling fraternity. Both congregate in large cities, both 
 have peculiarly perverse notions of honor, both, above all, 
 are restless in disposition and unsettled in their movements. 
 Just as a ship without a cargo is aimlessly tossed about by 
 the wind and the waves, so the life of the rich idler is the 
 plaything of every whim or mood that happens to strike him. 
 Nothing is required of him, so he takes up now one thing, now 
 another, only to abandon it again at the earliest opportunity. 
 The ability to will, which simply means the ability to perse- 
 vere, even in the face of temporary distractions, is gradually 
 lost when not exercised, and the victim perishes from an in- 
 curable softening of the will. The disease was already known 
 to Plato. In the Republic he describes it with all of its 
 symptoms : " So he lives [in Plato " he " appears as the demo- 
 cratic son of an oligarchical father] through the day, indulg- 
 ing the appetite of the hour ; and sometimes he is lapped in 
 drink and strains of the flute ; then he is for total abstinence, 
 and tries to get thin ; then, again, he is at gymnastics ; some- 
 times idling and neglecting everything, then once more living 
 the life of a philosopher ; often he is at politics, and starts to 
 his feet and says and does anything that may turn up ; and, 
 if he is emulous of any one who is a warrior, off he is in that 
 direction, or of men of business, once more in that. His life 
 has neither order nor law ; and this is the way of him — this 
 he terms joy and freedom and happiness. — Admirably, said 
 Glaucon,have you described the life of a ' man of freedom.' " l 
 Indeed, this is an admirable picture, true to life, the model 
 for which it would not be hard to find even among us. 
 The son of the " oligarchical " money-making father, loving 
 " democratic " liberty and sport, enjoying the life of the 
 metropolis, is evidently a peculiar product of the times. 
 Prince Bismarck once declared in the Reichstag that no 
 one was rated highly in Germany who did not have an 
 
 1 [Plato's Republic, 561 B ; JWett's translation. — Tr] 
 
532 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 honorable calling. I am afraid this judgment expresses the 
 opinion of an older generation rather than of ours. At any 
 rate, the view is becoming very popular of late that the 
 calling of the capitalist {Rentier) is the most genteel of all, 
 and everybody seems to agree that his life is, to speak with 
 Plato, joyful and free and happy. 
 
 Of course, this is a mistake. For man was not designed 
 by nature merely to enjoy, but to work and acquire. How- 
 ever plausible it may at first sight appear, the attempt to 
 live a life of enjoyment merely, has invariably failed. Toil 
 and pleasure, that is an old law of nature; without the 
 former we cannot obtain the latter. Whoever possesses the 
 freedom which goes with wealth, of choosing any calling, 
 and chooses none at all, but releases himself from all obli- 
 gations, undoubtedly chooses the very worst : nothing causes 
 more anxiety in the long run than the thought of how to 
 spend the long weary days. If ever the proverb which con- 
 nects the words choice and torture 1 was true, it is true here. 
 We observe this in spoilt children : they pick up everything, 
 they try everything, and throw everything away, only to 
 desire something else ; and when they get that, they throw 
 it away again, and again wish for something new; and so, 
 constantly desiring the other thing, they are the unhappiest, 
 most discontented, and contrary creatures in the world. 
 Those who make idleness the business of their lives experi- 
 ence the same thing ; they take up one thing after another, 
 and then abandon it again, and thus become the victims of 
 the professional disease of the idler, tedium, Langeweile, 
 ennui. Kestlessly they toss about and make all kinds of 
 desperate attempts to get rid of the trouble : they try amuse- 
 ments, games, love-affairs, and sports, they take to drink, 
 form societies, travel, enter politics, speculate on the stock 
 exchange, until at last they are exhausted and sick of life. 
 
 1 [Wer die Wahl hat, hat die Qual. (Literally : He that has the choice has the 
 torture, i. e., Choosing is difficult.) — Tr.] 
 
THE ECONOMIC LIFE 533 
 
 2. Not only do we owe it to ourselves to pursue a serious 
 calling but likewise to society at large. The man who refuses 
 to work in some way or other lives at others' expense. 
 This is no less true of one who idly spends his inheritance 
 than of the professional beggar or thief. From the legal 
 point of view the former consumes what belongs to him and 
 does no wrong ; from the moral standpoint, however, — that 
 is, in reality, — he accepts the products of others' labor with- 
 out making any return ; he lives as a parasite at the table of 
 the people, without helping to defray the costs. 
 
 It was formerly customary for philosophers to apply the 
 principle of the tacit contract in the social sciences. John 
 Locke endeavors to base upon it the income which the land- 
 lord derives from his rents. After deducing the right of 
 property in a thing from the labor by which it is acquired 
 or produced, he asks : How does it happen that any one 
 possesses more land than he can cultivate himself? He 
 finds that the thing can be justified only by the consent of 
 the people ; that this was given, tacitly, of course, by the 
 introduction of an invention which enabled an individual to 
 obtain the revenue of more land than he could cultivate, 
 that is, by the introduction of money. An indirect accumu- 
 lation and hoarding of products beyond the amount needed 
 for self-consumption is made possible by converting them 
 into money. But inasmuch as money possesses a conven- 
 tional value only, society has, by adopting the invention, 
 tacitly given its consent to the consequences thereof. 
 
 But to this (somewhat imaginary) contract, we might con- 
 tinue, society has, likewise tacitly, added a clause: it shall 
 be valid only on condition that the person who thus becomes 
 possessed of wealth shall make some return for the surplus 
 which he acquires with the tacit consent of society. A con- 
 tract assumes that some return be made, otherwise it is a 
 donation ; and there is no reason to suppose that society 
 intended to donate anything to any one, nor has society any 
 
534 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 right to do so, at least if future generations are to bear the 
 burden. The individual may make such a return by assum- 
 ing public responsibilities : say by leading and representing 
 his people in peace and in war, by serving as a judge or 
 legislator, by performing the duties of the priestly calling, 
 or by administering the spiritual possessions of a nation in 
 science and in art. And it may still be regarded as such a 
 return to systematize and guide economic production, nay 
 even to influence consumption in a manner conducive to 
 welfare, by example and encouragement, by public gener- 
 osity and private beneficence. — During the time when the 
 nobility and clergy still were an active power in the body 
 politic, they so conceived and performed their functions. 
 The man who does nothing ignores the obligations tacitly 
 assumed by accepting property, and, therefore, has no right 
 to it, from the moral point of view. The pure capitalist 
 (unless he be an emeritus) is a thief. The people fully ap- 
 preciate this fact ; and evidently the law against usury, estab- 
 lished by the old church, was based upon some such feeling : 
 whoever lives without working and consumes inherited wealth, 
 lives upon the products of others, for money, as Aristotle says, 
 bears no fruit. 
 
 The law does not execute the judgment of morals, it does 
 not repudiate ownership in property when no return is made, 
 or in case of misuse, and it is probably well that it does 
 not. For it would not only be impossible to formulate the 
 necessary rules and to enforce them, but there would arise a 
 feeling of insecurity in reference to property which would 
 carry greater evils in its train than the most flagrant abuse of 
 property-rights in particular instances could effect. In a 
 certain sense, however, history realizes the judgment of mor- 
 ality. Whenever the nobility and clergy renounced their 
 obligations and merely retained the corresponding privileges 
 as an inalienable right, things went along in this way for a 
 while, but the day of reckoning came at last, and they were 
 
THE ECONOMIC LIFE 535 
 
 cast off from the social body as useless members or as harm- 
 ful parasites. Thus history pronounced sentence upon the 
 French nobility in the French revolution ; and the ecclesiasti- 
 cal revolution of the sixteenth century condemned the clergy, 
 who had proved false to their trust. History will not hold the 
 capitalist more sacred than the nobility and the clergy. 
 
 It is furthermore worthy of note that, with the progress of 
 history, society is to a greater and greater extent changing 
 the tacit contract into an explicit one, by transferring the 
 aforesaid functions, which were originally performed by the 
 wealthy without direct emolument, in honorary positions, to 
 appointed and salaried officials. Appointed and salaried min- 
 isters and privy counsellors, officers and judges, are now 
 expressly commissioned to discharge the duties which, in the 
 Middle Ages as well as during antiquity, were the prerogatives 
 and duties of the great families. Even the economic functions 
 are beginning to be separated from possession. The great 
 landowner transfers the cares of administration to the tenant ; 
 in the great industrial enterprises of modern times salaried 
 employees relieve the capitalist of all work ; the owner 
 becomes an annuitant. It is evident that this state of affairs 
 diminishes the teleological necessity of ownership in land and 
 capital, and correspondingly affects the stability of the insti- 
 tution. Things which are no longer rooted in the life-condi- 
 tions of society perish. Let us suppose that several thousand 
 families in Germany should gain possession of all the pro- 
 perty, so that all the others would be forced to live upon the 
 product of their labor, while the former merely consumed their 
 rents. What happened to the French nobility a hundred years 
 ago would obviously happen to these capitalists. Are we on 
 the eve of a new great judgment-day of history ? Are the days 
 of the bourgeoisie numbered ? An evil presentiment seems to 
 have taken hold of society. It is certain that a social revolu- 
 tion would not come upon us as unexpectedly as in 1789. 
 But perhaps this is a sign that it is not so near at hand : the 
 
536 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 judgment-day of history always seems to steal upon us una^ 
 wares, like the thief in the night. One thing, however, is 
 plain : whoever consumes rents without making some return 
 or other, is hastening the coming of the judgment. The 
 eighth commandment is never broken with impunity. The 
 law, however, Thou shalt not steal, is merely the negative 
 formula of the positive command : " By the sweat of thy face 
 shalt thou eat bread." 
 
 3. Let us cast a glance at the other side of economic life, 
 at the question of consumption} The virtue peculiar to this 
 field is the virtue of frugality, or economy, the capacity to 
 manage one's affairs according to one's income as well as 
 according to the needs and obligations which grow out of 
 individual conditions and social rank. This virtue, too, we 
 may define, following the Aristotelian principle, as a mean 
 between two faults or vices, greed and prodigality. The miser 
 saves where he ought to spend, the spendthrift spends lavishly 
 where he ought to save. The good manager is distinguished 
 from the prodigal by the virtue of frugality, from the miser 
 by the virtue which Kant calls liheralitas moralis (in opposi- 
 tion to liheralitas sumptuosa) : he lives decently himself, and 
 is generous to others who need his help. 
 
 Of the two vices, avarice is the more disgraceful, extrava- 
 gance the more dangerous. Greed characterizes a base nature. 
 The soul in which it has taken root withers and dies ; all higher 
 aspirations disappear. The miser at last begrudges himself 
 and others all that is good. Extravagance, on the other hand, 
 may exist in connection with grand aspirations. It is closely 
 allied to a much admired virtue, generosity. The spendthrift 
 always regards himself as a liberal man, and is likewise 
 praised as such by those who profit by his extravagance. 
 Avarice, on the other hand, has no one to sing its praises ; nay, 
 even the virtue of which it is a degenerate form, frugality, 
 finds few admirers, especially when practised by princes and 
 
 i [Aristotle, Ethics, Bk. IV. — Tr.] 
 
THE ECONOMIC LIFE 537 
 
 great lords. All lackeys, big and little, whose expectations are 
 not realized, show their gratitude by reviling the frugal giver. 
 Generosity, however, even when practised at others' expense, 
 makes a good impression upon all, even upon those who bear 
 the loss. For this reason prodigality is a tempting vice, 
 and in avarice there is nothing seductive ; indeed it is strange 
 that avarice should exist at all. And this also explains the 
 well-known fact that greed is confined almost entirely to old 
 age. Old men become indifferent to opinions and appear- 
 ances ; experience shows that the impoverished spendthrift 
 becomes an object of ridicule to his former friends and ad- 
 mirers ; hence it is not the man who has wasted his substance, 
 but the man who still has his money in his pocket that is well 
 thought of in the long run. Besides, all desires diminish as 
 the capacity for enjoyment becomes weaker in old age, while 
 the abstract desire for possession continues strong to the end. 
 Hence, we might, perhaps, regard this process as a strategy 
 of nature to transmit the products of the parent generation 
 to its successors. 
 
 Avarice, therefore, debasing though it be, is not altogether 
 injurious in its effects. The consequences of extravagance, 
 on the other hand, are absolutely destructive to individual 
 as well as to social life. The first consequence of extrava- 
 gance is a lack of means for the necessaries of life, and the 
 resulting need of exercising strict economy in the wrong 
 place. What the wife wastes on dress and show must be 
 made up in the home and on the table. What is spent on 
 receptions and sports, on horses and dogs, is deducted from 
 the household allowance. Still more often there is not 
 money enough to meet legitimate expenses : the servants 
 are not properly fed, niggardly wages are paid, public en- 
 terprises make vain appeals for aid, contributions to com- 
 munity and state are made as small as possible and given 
 reluctantly ; — we invariably think of the noblesse oblige at 
 the wrong time. And just as extravagance leads to false 
 
538 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 economy, it leads to improper methods of acquisition. The 
 landowner fleeces his tenants and day laborers, the prince 
 his subjects, the physician his patients, the lawyer his clients, 
 the gentleman of leisure takes to gambling, the merchant 
 speculates on the exchange, the tradesman adulterates his 
 goods, the official accepts bribes or fawns upon his superiors 
 for promotion or an increase in salary, the courtier begs for 
 pensions and presents, the author and the scholar cater to the 
 popular tastes, the artist tickles the palate of the money-bag ; 
 money must be made, money at any price, even at the price of 
 freedom and honor, body and soul ! There is no joking when 
 it comes to money matters, said a well-known financier ; in 
 money matters most people also lose their pride. When it 
 comes to fees, the process described by the proverb in refer- 
 ence to thieves is reversed ; here the big ones are accepted 
 and the little ones rejected with scorn. Money has no 
 smell. The maxim reaches farther than one would imagine ; 
 even the most " respectable " classes act upon it. How ready 
 many rich people are to shift the public burdens upon the 
 poor man, the new assessment-lists for the income-tax have 
 recently shown in mortifying figures. 
 
 But, it is contended, when a man has means he surely ought 
 not to be blamed for spending them ; he causes money to 
 circulate among the people. How many busy hands receive 
 employment and earn money through a ball or a masquerade ! 
 — This is the popular view, but it is superficial. Would these 
 hands remain idle if there were no demand for costumes? 
 Of course, now that these costumers and their train are 
 here, such entertainments must be given to keep them 
 alive. But would they be here if there were no such de- 
 mand ? Apparently not ; the demand creates the supply. 
 Consequently, would the individuals who now depend upon 
 such orders have had nothing at all to do ? Apparently not ; 
 for instead of ball dresses for the baronesses of finance they 
 would now be making cotton clothes. The effect, therefore, 
 
THE ECONOMIC LIFE 539 
 
 of this method of making money circulate among the people 
 is simply to divert production from the manufacture of 
 commodities intended for general use to the manufacture of 
 luxuries. When a great lord keeps ten servants and twenty 
 fancy horses, he consumes what these consume, and when he 
 transforms a square mile of farmland into a game preserve, 
 he practically enjoys the grain formerly harvested on this 
 field, in the form of the pleasures which he derives from the 
 chase. 
 
 This, of course, by no means settles the question whether 
 such a diversion of production may not be good for those 
 directly concerned as well as for the community. Everything 
 will depend upon the value these luxuries have, not merely for 
 the person directly enjoying them, but also for the community. 
 Whoever believes that the life of a people is enriched and 
 ennobled by balls and parties and artistic dinners, must praise 
 those who arrange them for turning national production into 
 these channels. Whoever thinks differently will not place 
 the same estimate upon the services of these persons. It 
 is to be observed, in this connection, that it is a difficult 
 matter to judge of the value of products which do not satisfy 
 average needs. The Parthenon and its sculptures, the fes- 
 tivals for which iEschylus and Sophocles composed their 
 tragedies, the mediaeval cathedrals with their decorations and 
 utensils, — these, too, are luxuries, and presumably, fault- 
 finders were not lacking ; surely not in the Middle Ages. 
 Religion does not require such worldly pomp, thought the 
 evangelical brothers, and how much misery and want might 
 have been alleviated with the money thus expended ! Yet 
 we should be inclined to say that the money was well spent 
 and that a higher purpose was realized in this way than if 
 it had been used in clothing and feeding the poor. All, with 
 the exception of those to whom they gave offence, enjoyed 
 these works ; then, too, they stimulated the arts, which in 
 turn developed architecture and manufacture, thereby bene- 
 
540 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 fiting even the poorest. Similarly, we are not to blame a 
 great lord for building grand and beautiful houses, and fur- 
 nishing them splendidly ; by laying out a park he may be 
 putting his land to the best possible use, even from the 
 standpoint of the community. And who would be narrow- 
 hearted enough to object to the care and money expended 
 upon beautiful and enjoyable social entertainments of a 
 grand character ? There are diversities of gifts : this truth 
 will hold even against a morose Puritanism. 1 
 
 4. The most favorable condition for the development of 
 the economic virtues, is, as the old Greek sages already 
 declared, the possession of moderate means; wealth (Wohl- 
 stand) our language significantly calls it. Pleasure in 
 acquisition and possession, efficient work, and moderation in 
 the use of commodities, are most common in the middle 
 classes. The " too much " and the " too little " are equally 
 dangerous. Riches are dangerous in hat they tend to en- 
 courage idleness, arrogance, ostentation, and extravagance. 
 Excess, however, begets sorrow and ruin. Especially dan- 
 gerous is sudden wealth not acquired through labor. The 
 money won in lotteries and stock speculations usually soon 
 goes the way it came ; not, however, without first ruining 
 the life of the lucky winner. Inherited possessions are not 
 so dangerous. A family that has been long accustomed to 
 certain conditions of life develops the power to resist the 
 temptations of riches ; the man who inherits the wealth of 
 his ancestors in a certain measure inherits their sense of 
 duty and honor. The feeling that he is destined to do 
 great things serves to counteract the empty feeling of power 
 which easily turns the head of the nouveau riche. 
 
 Poverty is equally unfavorable to the development of eco- 
 nomic virtues. Inherited poverty deadens the sense of owner- 
 ship. Children reared in utterly destitute families, in families 
 living from hand to mouth, fail to experience the pleasures of 
 
 i [Runze, § 59. — Tr.] 
 
THE ECONOMIC LIFE 541 
 
 acquisition and ownership. The desire to have more than is 
 required to satisfy daily needs does not manifest itself, or at 
 least remains an idle wish, and never grows into a strong voli- 
 tion. When this state becomes a habit, the individual be- 
 comes improvident and reckless, giving no heed to the morrow. 
 Poverty tends to blunt the sense of ownership in another sense : 
 it weakens the person's ability to discriminate between mine 
 and thine. When a man possesses property himself, he appre- 
 ciates the sacredness of property. When he looks upon the in- 
 stitution of property merely as a barrier, $ a protection against 
 him and not also for him, he naturally feels less hesitancy in 
 overleaping it than when he has been accustomed from child- 
 hood to regard it as a means of self-defence. So poverty easily 
 becomes a school for theft, for which the pupil is prepared by 
 mendicancy and the tipping-system (JPrmhgelder). Beggary 
 robs a man of his economic honor, which depends upon his 
 economic independence, his ability to help himself by his own 
 efforts. The custom of accepting tips or fees is the first, ap- 
 parently quite innocent, form of beggary. That it, too, lessens 
 a man's economic honor may be seen from the fact that the 
 offer of a tip may under certain circumstances be a gross 
 insult. 1 
 
 The possession of moderate means secures the individual 
 against temptations in either direction. It saves him from 
 
 1 On the effects of the habitual acceptance of tips see the interesting essay 
 of R. v. Jhering UI)er das Trinkgeld. The relation between theft and poverty- 
 is shown by criminal statistics. H. v. Valentini (Das Verbrecherthum im Preuss. 
 Staat, 1869) constantly refers to it. He gives a table (p. 22), in which the 
 Prussian provinces are arranged according to tbe frequency of grand larceny 
 (during the sixties) as follows : For every 100,000 inhabitants there were sen- 
 tenced to the penitentiary for grand larceny : in the Rhineland, 5.59 ; in West- 
 phalia, 9.21; in Saxony, 18.33; in Pomerania, 20.57; in Prussia, 24.69; in 
 Brandenburg, 26.27 ; in Posen, 32.89 ; in Silesia, 36.94. On page 56 we find a 
 table showing the distribution of landed property : a small piece of land (as 
 much as 30 acres) is owned by 4 inhabitants in the Rhineland ; by 8 in West- 
 phalia; 11 in Saxony; 14 in Silesia; 22 in Brandenburg and Pomerania; 25 
 in Posen ; 30 in Prussia. Theft, as we see, follows large landownership like its 
 shadow. It is unfortunate that the German capital has received and still receives 
 most of its increase to the lower classes of population from the Eastern provinces. 
 
542 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 the slavery which is the companion of poverty ; it gives him 
 the free choice of a profession, without tempting him not to 
 follow any calling whatever. It develops in him a desire for 
 possession, as opposed to the proletarian supineness of poverty ; 
 it arouses a pleasure in ownership, as opposed to the arrogance 
 of satiety, which follows upon superabundance. It is plain, 
 the conditions in this regard are not favorable in our age. 
 The marvellous growth of industry and commerce during the 
 nineteenth century, the concomitant development of specula- 
 tion and the stock exchange system, have enabled particular 
 individuals to accumulate enormous wealth, not infrequently 
 without any merit of their own, which now seeks in vain for 
 rational employment. The consequence is senseless extrav- 
 agance, a great greed for gain, and an insane mania for gamb- 
 ling. Universal poverty and proletarian misery form the 
 obverse of the picture. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE » 
 
 1. By culture we mean the perfect development of spiritual 
 life. It consists in the capacity, acquired by instruction and 
 practice, to take an active part in the spiritual life, first ol 
 a people, and ultimately of humanity. 
 
 We note as the two essential phases in the spiritual life 
 of a people, knowledge and the creative fancy, philosophy 
 and science, art and poetry. Culture, therefore, means for 
 the individual the development of the intellect to the end 
 that he may know the truth, and of the senses and the 
 imagination, that he may comprehend and enjoy the beauti- 
 ful. — The detailed treatment of this subject belongs to peda- 
 gogy. I shall merely give the outlines, and consider knowledge 
 first. 
 
 Knowledge has a double function. The intellect is, first, 
 the organ of the will ; its function is to adjust the latter to 
 its environment. As was indicated before, the feeling of 
 pleasure and pain may be regarded as the most primitive 
 form of knowledge. The senses, which are developed from 
 the general animal sensibility, enable the animal to under- 
 stand its more remote surroundings and to adapt itself 
 to what is useful or harmful. Sensibility develops into intel- 
 ligence, which may be defined, in a general way, as the 
 faculty to know from what is given that which is not given. 
 
 1 [Porter, Part II., ch. IV. ; Hoffdiag, pp. 313-354 ; also XXI. ; Spencer, 
 Ethics of Individual Life, ch. VI.; Runze, §§ 44 f. ; Smyth, Part II., ch. II., pp. 
 356-371; Wundt, Part IV., ch. 1, 4; Seth, Part II., ch. I. (II.); Oettingen, 
 Moralstatistik, Part II., ch. II. — Tr.] 
 
544 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 It employs the data of sense-perception as signs, and inferg 
 from these that which is not yet perceived, especially the 
 future, the remote in time. 
 
 The intellect, which already plays an important role in 
 the higher animals, reaches its highest perfection in man 
 in conceptual knowledge. The latter differs from sensuous 
 knowledge in that it is based upon the analysis of percepts. 
 The animal combines percepts by association, and so makes 
 a kind of inference from certain perception-complexes to 
 future occurrences. But the animal does not, so far as we 
 may conjecture, succeed in resolving the percepts into their 
 particular elements ; it does not distinguish, in fire, between 
 the wood and the process of combustion, in a moving object 
 between the persistent body and the temporary movement. 
 Man, however, does this, and so, on the basis of analysis, 
 forms the synthetic judgments : the body moves, the wood 
 burns. The animal ""oes not distinguish the direction and 
 the velocity of the movement, nor the size and the weight 
 of the body. By making such an analysis, man succeeds 
 in discovering the ultimate and constant relations between 
 the simple components ; these are expressed in the for- 
 mulae which we call laws of nature. The knowledge of them 
 gives him theoretical and practical control of the nature of 
 things : he is able not only to foresee the complex processes, 
 which the animal too, may, in a certain measure, foresee, but 
 also to explain them, that is, to deduce them from their 
 causes, and, in so far as the causes are in his power, to 
 produce them. — Thus, the intellect has become the powerful 
 instrument by which man has made the earth his servant. 
 He has tamed the animals or exterminated them, he has 
 selected and formed the plants which cover the earth, he has 
 compelled the forces of nature to do his bidding. Knowledge 
 is power. 1 
 
 i [Compare with this James's admirable chapter on Reasoning (Psychology 
 Vol. II.). — Tr.] 
 
SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE 545 
 
 But knowledge also has another, an immediate value. In 
 the animal it is absolutely subservient to practical needs, in 
 man it becomes free ; he takes a disinterested interest in con- 
 templation, so to speak. This holds even of sense-perception. 
 The eye finds pleasure in forms and colors, the ear, in notes 
 and their rhythmical musical succession ; hence arise music 
 and painting. From the same pleasure in the contemplation 
 of things springs philosophy. Philosophy is purely contem- 
 plative knowledge. This is the original meaning of the word 
 among the Greeks ; the Socratic school, in which it was first 
 used as a technical term, distinguishes philosophy, as purely 
 theoretical knowledge, from technical knowledge, to which 
 also Sophistic dialectics and rhetoric belong. In this most gen- 
 eral sense philosophy is a universal human function ; mythology 
 is its most primitive form ; it universally arises as an attempt 
 to comprehend the whole of things into one conception ; and to 
 interpret the meaning of the universe and especially of life. 1 
 
 This estimate of knowledge will furnish us with a stan- 
 dard by which to measure the value of •particular forms of 
 cognition. We shall say that a particular truth has value 
 in so far as it tends to increase our practical power, and our 
 theoretical insight into the nature of things in general. 
 Knowledge which has no value in either sense, which accom- 
 plishes nothing for our technics or for our philosophy, has 
 no value whatever. The proposition : All knowledge has 
 absolute value as such, or : Everything that is, is worthy of 
 being known, is not infrequently proclaimed in our age as 
 the highest principle of scientific research. I cannot help 
 regarding this as a meaningless assertion — one, however, 
 that is accepted by many as a convenient means of silencing 
 the question concerning the value of particular investigations. 
 Apparently, however, the true scientist does not adhere to 
 this principle. In spite of the assertion that everything that 
 
 1 The reader will find an elaborate account of these topics in my Introduction 
 t9 Philosophy, 5th ed. 1898. [Thilly's tr.] 
 
546 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 exists deserves to be known, no historian has ever undertaken 
 to ascertain what such and such a celebrity or " obscurity " 
 has had for breakfast or dinner every day of his life, and no 
 one has yet volunteered to attack the problem once suggested 
 by Jean Paul — the history and system of typographical 
 errors since the invention of printing. Nor has any scientist 
 ever attempted to count the grains of sand on the seashore, 
 and to describe the forms of the separate grains. Why not ? 
 Surely because healthy common-sense, if not scientific insight, 
 instinctively recognizes the uselessness of such a task. — It 
 must be added, however, that we cannot always tell in 
 advance whether an investigation will yield results which 
 may have some bearing on knowledge in either form or not. 
 In no case, perhaps, has healthy common-sense betrayed 
 such shortsightedness as in its repudiation of scientific 
 research as useless trifling or curiosity. Bacon ridiculed a 
 contemporary for thinking it worth while to experiment 
 with magnetic phenomena. Socrates rejected all physical 
 investigations as idle speculation : to know oneself he con- 
 sidered the most essential, worthy, and possible task. No one 
 any longer holds these views in physics ; everybody knows 
 that physics has achieved the greatest results for our philoso- 
 phical conceptions of the universe as well as for practice, in 
 consequence of its maxim that regards nothing as too trivial. 
 Healthy common-sense may perhaps feel more inclined at 
 present to find fault with philological, historical, and psycho- 
 logical investigations ; and, indeed, who can help thinking 
 that, beside the grain, a great deal of chaff is being gath- 
 ered in these fields as a precious harvest ? Still, we must 
 not forget that a fragment of knowledge which seemed rather 
 insignificant at first has often gained, later on, an impor- 
 tance not dreamed of. The first attempts in comparative lan- 
 guage may perhaps have seemed more like useless trifles than 
 serious work ; and yet what an extraordinary influence they 
 have had upon our modern historical world-view ! Hence, it is 
 
SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE 547 
 
 by no means necessary that every investigation should justify 
 its utility in advance ; the principle holds nevertheless : that 
 knowledge has value only in so far as it increases and pro- 
 motes our practical power over things or our philosophical 
 knowledge of the world. 
 
 2. The same principle applies when it comes co judging 
 the value of knowledge for the individual. Cognitions have 
 no absolute value for the individual, they have value in so far 
 as they do something for him, either by solving his practical 
 life-problems, or by assisting him in his philosophical reflec- 
 tions, or, in other words, in so far as they make him wiser and 
 more prudent. Knowledge which does neither one nor the 
 other, which does not make him either more efficient in his 
 calling or more skilful in contemplation, has no value for him 
 whatever. If we call the knowledge upon which professional 
 efficiency is based professional or technical education, and that 
 upon which rests the ability to contemplate, to participate in 
 philosophy, literature, and art, general culture, we may 
 say : Only such knowledge is valuable to the individual as 
 either serves to give him professional culture, or intensifies 
 his general culture, or does both. 
 
 And this would give us a principle for the guidance of 
 instruction: Everybody ought to acquire such knowledge as 
 will assist him, on the one hand, in following his special call- 
 ing to the best possible advantage, and, on the other, in 
 understanding the world from his position in life. It is ob- 
 vious that the first demand, the demand for professional 
 culture, has a different meaning for different individuals. 
 Nor does the second demand mean the same for all. Speaking 
 abstractly, it is true, all have the same end in view : general 
 culture or the faculty to participate in the active spiritual life 
 of the people ; and this will ultimately depend upon the same 
 two things : upon the knowledge of nature, or cosmology, and 
 the knowledge of history or spiritual life ; for the former gives 
 us an idea of the general form of reality, while the latter sup- 
 
548 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 plies us with the ultimate and universal content by which to 
 interpret the meaning of reality. But the ways and means by 
 which individuals obtain these and the form in which they 
 possess them, differ according to the capacities and inclina- 
 tions of the individuals themselves as well as according to 
 their external conditions and opportunities in life. 
 
 These differences make necessary different schools and 
 courses of study. Three fundamental forms appear : the 
 primary school (Vblksschule), the secondary school (Mittelschule), 
 and the university {Hochschule). The object of the primary 
 school is to educate the great masses of the population in a 
 manner suitable to their needs. The curriculum must keep 
 in view the fact that, owing to the economic conditions of 
 their parents, the pupils must complete the course at the age 
 of fourteen, and are destined to enter callings which chiefly 
 require manual labor. The course of study therefore should 
 consist mainly in the acquisition of the elementary branches, 
 reading, writing, drawing, and arithmetic, and also in attain- 
 ing a general notion of the natural and historical surroundings. 
 The purpose of the secondary or intermediate school is to 
 educate those pupils the economic condition of whose parents 
 permits a somewhat longer attendance, and whose prospective 
 position in life will require work of a higher character, pre- 
 supposing greater knowledge and skill, and affording more 
 leisure and greater opportunities for free action. To the sub- 
 jects taught in the primary grades, which are, of course, in- 
 tensified and elaborated here, are added especially foreign 
 languages and mathematics, the latter the instrument of the 
 natural sciences and technics, the former the medium of inter- 
 national intercourse, commercial as well as spiritual, and of 
 an intensified humanistic-historical culture. The university, 
 finally, has as its aim the extension of general scientific and 
 philosophical knowledge, and also, particularly, the acquisition 
 of scientific-technical education, which is the precondition of 
 professional activitv. 
 
SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE 549 
 
 That school will be the best for the individual which, on 
 the one hand, is suited to his individual talents and tastes, 
 and, on the other, to his future calling and position in life. 
 By no means can we admit that the more elaborate and ad- 
 vanced instruction is desirable for all, and that it is only from 
 necessity that pupils content themselves with the elementary 
 form. There are people who, in their zeal for equality, are 
 inclined to demand the same schools and the same education 
 for everybody. We may say to such : It is not wise to 
 give a man advanced scientific instruction whose future call- 
 ing will make it necessary for him to do manual labor, even 
 though he possess intellectual talents, provided he cannot at 
 the same time enter a learned profession. Nor is it wise to 
 whip the son of a banker or privy councillor through the 
 gymnasium and the examinations, regardless of the protests 
 of his nature, which unfortunately is a much more common 
 case than the other. The principle holds absolutely : 
 Knowledge which the individual cannot utilize, either on 
 account of natural incapacity, or in consequence of his exter- 
 nal position, is of absolutely no value to him. 
 
 Yes, we may go further and say it is an evil. This be- 
 comes self-evident when the individual is lacking in talent. 
 To know too much for his capacity makes a man not wiser, 
 but more stupid. We must discriminate between stupidity 
 and ignorance. Ignorance is a lack of knowledge, stupidity 
 is a lack of judgment, and may go with great learning, nay, it 
 may, under certain circumstances, be due to this. A good 
 anecdote is told of the Duke of Wellington. A young man once 
 applied to him for an office. After conversing with him for 
 a while, the Duke refused his application, adding : " Sir, you 
 have received too much eduo^Jon for your brains." I fear 
 that if the Duke of Wellington could attend our examinations, 
 he would not infrequently make the same discovery. Nowa- 
 days offices depend upon examinations, and state examina- 
 tions naturally take account only of the information which 
 
550 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 an applicant possesses. Knowledge has thus acquired a 
 purely accidental and external value for the possessor as a 
 social being — a value which is entirely independent of its real 
 value to him as a rational being. Hence it happens that 
 many learn many things which do not fit in with their natural 
 capacities and inclinations. The result is, not only does the 
 acquisition of such knowledge become a torture to both teach- 
 ers and pupils, but injury is done to what natural intelligence 
 the latter may possess. The judgment is confused and over- 
 burdened by such undigested knowledge. It very often hap- 
 pens in an examination that a question addressed to the 
 intellect is answered by the memory ; instead of a judgment 
 we are offered a memorized formula or fact. It is often im- 
 possible to induce the candidate to use his intellect ; it has 
 become rudimentary in consequence of constant study. It is 
 to be feared that such a person will act precisely in the 
 same way when he enters the practical world ; the case de- 
 mands that he observe and understand a fact, that he con- 
 sider what is possible and necessary ; instead of opening his 
 eyes and using his intellect, our learned friend soon begins to 
 ransack his memory for formulae and facts, which he has for- 
 merly learned off by heart ; he involuntarily falls into the ex- 
 amination habit for which he has been trained, — he does not 
 know what else to do with his intellect. Bluntschli expresses 
 the opinion, somewhere in his Autobiography, that this not 
 infrequently happens to our jurists : by constantly memoriz- 
 ing and reciting formulas they entirely lose their ability to 
 look at things in a natural way. That is most likely what 
 the German proverb means which calls the learned the per- 
 verted {die Gelehrten die Verhehrten). And Huxley means 
 the same thing when he says in one of his Addresses: 1 " In 
 my belief, stupidity, in nine cases out of ten, fit non nascitur, 
 and is developed by a long process of parental and pedagogic 
 repression of the natural intellectual appetites, accompanied 
 
 J [Science and Education, p. 128.] 
 
SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE 551 
 
 by a persistent attempt to create artificial ones for food which 
 is not only tasteless, but essentially indigestible." And be- 
 side the stupidity thus acquired, another quality is acquired, 
 and that is pride, haughtiness. Over-education not only dwarfs 
 the head but also the heart. Knowledge puffeth up, says the 
 apostle ; this is particularly true of knowledge of which the 
 possessor can make no legitimate use. Not useful, but use- 
 less things are employed for show. The useful finds satis- 
 faction in being put to its right use, while superfluous pomp 
 invariably strives to make a display of itself. The same 
 may be said of useless learning : the possessor endeavors to 
 parade it, so that he may at least get something out of it. 
 The educated young lady or her governess cannot rest until 
 she has " shown off" her French, so that people may praise 
 her culture ; the Untersekundaner who has fretted long over 
 his Latin exercises until he finally gets his Uinjahrigen- 
 schein, 1 is now not infrequently plagued with the Latin-pride 
 for the rest of his life. 
 
 But also where there is a conflict between his education and 
 position in life, where his calling and social rank prevent him 
 from utilizing his school education, the possessor of the knowl- 
 edge is placed in a false position, and his learning is not a 
 blessing. He makes claims upon life which cannot be satis- 
 fied, he cannot find pleasure in the work which his calling re- 
 quires of him, he does not feel at ease in his surroundings. 
 The " Latin peasant " (der lateinische Bauer) is a well-known 
 character ; in his own sphere he is regarded with a mixture of 
 awe and contempt, and his attitude toward the world is one of 
 discontent ; he feels out of place. Such moods are quite com- 
 mon in our day. We meet persons who have been " de- 
 classed " by their education, — among men as well as among 
 women. They are all alike in that they consider what life 
 
 1 [The " one-year-certificate," which entitles the holder to serve in the German 
 army for one year as a volunteer, instead of as a conscript, who must serve three 
 years. — Tr.] 
 
552 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 demands of them beneath their dignity, and therefore suffer 
 from habitual ill-temper. In our higher schools a certain num- 
 ber of scholarships are regularly awarded, and in the larger 
 cities they are often given to poor and talented boys from the 
 Volksschulen. The object is doubtless a commendable one; 
 but it is not so certain that the results are beneficial to the 
 boys. Even in the school itself they often feel out of place ; 
 they do not find the necessary quiet and sympathy at home, 
 they do not receive the assistance which they occasion- 
 ally need, they must do without school books, and many 
 of them are soon compelled, perhaps after having obtained 
 the Mnjdhrigenschein, to leave school for good. I fear 
 the education thus acquired and the Einjahrigenschein often 
 prove to be possessions of negative value. Others endeavor 
 to fight their way through, to graduate from the school 
 and university — unusual bodily and mental powers of resist- 
 ance are nowadays required to overcome the countless pri- 
 vations and obstacles • — and after all the examinations have 
 been passed and the ship seems to be safe in the harbor, it 
 frequently happens that the struggler is shipwrecked after all. 
 Would it not have been wiser to relinquish the proffered place 
 in the gymnasium ? To be sure, it pains a man of unusual 
 talent to find himself handicapped in his attempt to get an edu- 
 cation and forced to do mechanical labor for life. And it is a 
 loss to the nation as well, in several respects : talents are 
 wasted, which nature does not too freely bestow, and entire 
 spheres of society are cut off from the spiritual culture of the 
 people, nay become hostile to it when it becomes utterly unat- 
 tainable. It would be to the interest of the individual as 
 well as of society to return to the old practice of the six- 
 teenth century, and to educate men of pronounced ability at 
 public expense and for the public service. 
 
 These thoughts are summed up in a remark of Goethe's : 
 u Man is born for limited surroundings ; he is capable of 
 grasping simple, near, and definite ends, and he accustoms 
 
SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE 553 
 
 himself to employ the means close at hand. So soon, how- 
 ever, as it comes to more remote ends, he neither knows what 
 he wants nor what he ought to do. It is always a misfortune 
 for him when he is induced to strive after something with which 
 he cannot come into active relations" And the words of Faust, 
 who groans beneath the load of scholastic learning, ought to 
 be inscribed above the doors of our schoolhouses, to serve as 
 a warning to our parents when they bring their children to 
 school : " Was man nicht nutzt ist eine schwere Last." 
 
 For there has hardly been an age in the history of our 
 people when the evil of over-education prevailed to such an 
 extent as at present. The reasons are plain enough ; there 
 never was a time when education was held in such high 
 esteem as now. Formerly men were divided into clergy and 
 laymen, believers and unbelievers, nobles and citizens ; now 
 we classify them as educated and uneducated. When we 
 desire to recommend a young man, we say he has a fine and 
 many-sided education ; when we wish to express our low 
 opinion of a woman, we sum it all up in the statement that she 
 is a thoroughly uncultured person, whereupon everybody knows 
 what to think of her. No wonder, therefore, that the whole 
 world is running after culture, that our fathers and mothers 
 desire nothing more earnestly than to enable their sons and 
 daughters to get an education : with an education they can 
 become everything, without an education they are nothing. 
 The demand for education creates the supply of the means 
 and institutions of education, which is so characteristic of our 
 age. Illustrated and non-illustrated text-books of education, 
 of scientific and historical education, large and small educa- 
 tional dictionaries and lexicons, institutes of all kinds for 
 the higher education of daughters and sons, intermediate 
 schools and gymnasia, humanistic and realistic, — all these 
 enterprises have for the last fifty years increased with remark- 
 able rapidity, and still have been unable to satisfy the grow- 
 ing demand : indeed, the institutions in which culture, male 
 
554 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 and female, is manufactured, are usually so overcrowded that 
 applications for admission must be made years in advance. 
 No wonder, then, that in this mad race, not a few obtain an 
 education which is not adapted to their personal and social 
 conditions, and makes them unhappy. The educated female 
 has long been the domestic affliction of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury. Of recent years, we have also had thrust upon us the 
 man with a high school and university education, who cannot 
 earn his bread and butter, because of this very education. 
 In acquiring it he has neglected to learn some honest trade, 
 and even if he still had the power and the desire to make up 
 for lost time, his education would not permit it, for by using 
 his hands to work he would necessarily forfeit his honor as an 
 educated man. 
 
 Will there be a natural reaction for the cure of this disease? 
 We might suppose so. Many signs seem to indicate that edu- 
 cation is about to fall in value. It strikes me that the word 
 is beginning to take on a suspicious flavor, similar to that of 
 the word enlightenment (Aufkldrung) at the opening of the 
 century. This invariably happens when a thing becomes 
 too common. We are reminded of the barber's appren- 
 tice who did not believe in God, even if he was only a 
 barber's apprentice. " Culture " (Bildung) has, as it were, 
 come to take the place of u enlightenment." The word first 
 came into vogue toward the close of the last century, in the 
 neo-humanistic circles that gathered around Herder and 
 Goethe. The full term was: Bildung zur Humanitat; it sig- 
 nified the fashioning of the inner man after the Hellenic 
 pattern, as distinguished from the model of the French cour- 
 tier on the one hand, and that of orthodoxy and pietism on 
 the other ; compared with these, the Hellenic ideal of culture 
 seemed to represent the free and natural education of the human 
 being. How the word has degenerated since those days ! 
 What is meant at present when the word culture (Bildung) is 
 mentioned in a conversation ? If I can trust my philological 
 
SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE 555 
 
 Instincts, I should define it about as follows : He is cultured 
 or educated who can talk upon all topics in which society is 
 interested, about Goethe and Schiller, Raphael and Michael 
 Angelo, Plato and Kant. It makes no difference whether he 
 feels what these men felt or understands their thoughts, 
 whether he has caught a breath of their spirit or not, so 
 long as he can talk about them. But in case he is unfamiliar 
 with these names, as was the honest Hermann with Tamino 
 and Pamina, then, whatever else he may be and have, feel and 
 think, he is lacking in culture. And there is still another 
 way by which we can tell whether a man is educated, at 
 least in Germany ; namely, by his ability to use foreign terms. 
 Foreign terms are borrowed from foreign languages, and so 
 by using them we give people to understand that we do not 
 belong to the rabble who speak only the common vernacular, 
 but to the privileged classes, who could also speak Latin or 
 French if they chose. 
 
 We often hear complaints of the prevalence of semi-refine- 
 ment or half -culture (Ralbbildung) , and lay the blame on the 
 Realschule or the Einj 'dhrigenschein, or what not. I should 
 say that semi-education was precisely what we popularly mean 
 by culture : the foreign terms, a smattering of everything, 
 and the ability to talk on any subject. Semi-education means 
 the possession of all sorts of knowledge which has not been 
 digested and converted into a living force. The etymology of 
 the word seems to suggest the same thought : Bildung signifies 
 a process of organic formation, a process in which substances 
 are taken up and assimilated through the inner formal prin- 
 ciple. Halbbildung would then mean Bildung which has not 
 been completed ; in which substances have been received, but 
 have not been assimilated and converted into organic forces, 
 and thus lie in memory as undigested masses, and as foreign 
 bodies overburden organic life. Hence half-education may be 
 acquired in gymnasia and universities as well as in the Realr 
 Bchulen and young ladies' seminaries. And the reverse may 
 
556 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 also happen : a plain man who has never gone further than 
 the Volksschule may have a complete and thorough education ; 
 if his inner life is consistently and harmoniously developed, if 
 he has digested and, as it were, converted into organic sub- 
 stance and living force whatever opinions and experiences 
 he has acquired at school and in the world, he is a well- 
 educated man. Not the mass of material, but the inner form 
 is what makes education. Matter without form produces 
 semi-education, over-education, pseudo-education, or whatever 
 we may call this degeneration of the soul. 
 
 3. Art, like philosophy, is also based, partially at least, on 
 pure contemplation. If play is, in distinction from work, the 
 free exercise of powers, and not a means to an external end, 
 while in work an external effect, or product, is desired, art, as 
 well as philosophy, belongs in the category of play. All occu- 
 pation with the fine arts is playful or purposeless exercise of 
 sensuous -spiritual powers. When we contemplate a statue or 
 a painting, ': is not our purpose to learn anything, as is the 
 case when we study a drawing in a physical or technological 
 text-book. We desire nothing but to exercise our perceptive 
 and presentative faculties without having an end in view. 
 When we listen to a song or hear some one " play " an instru- 
 ment, we simply desire to follow the movement of the notes : 
 when we are reading a poem or seeing a " play," we abandon 
 ourselves to the " play " of the imagination which the poet 
 sets a-going. 
 
 The production of works of art is nowadays, it is true, 
 not regarded as play but as work, and it is apt to be so in the 
 sense that the aim is to make an economic use of the product. 
 In their origin, however, art and play are closely connected 
 All peoples, even the most savage, decorate their utensils, 
 pots, weapons, and clothes are covered with all kinds of orna- 
 mental lines, marks, and drawings; it is the same play in- 
 stinct that impels the child to cover its slate and the walls with 
 figures. Song and music were originally connected with the 
 
SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE 557 
 
 dance and festival plays. The same impulse to play created 
 the first poems, the epic narratives: a motley crowd of charac- 
 ters and events passing before the inner eye of the singer and 
 hearer. The original epic was actually sung. An epic has 
 become known in our century which was transmitted by 
 word of mouth, the Finnish epic. In the long night of the 
 polar zone, the Finns passed the time by reciting rhythmical 
 stories of the gods and heroes in dialogue form • each in- 
 dividual could repeat them or invent new ones himself. 
 Hence the peculiar variations in the transmission of the epic. 
 Among us the fairy-tale (Marcheri) has been handed down in 
 the same way ; the infant mind, which is itself full of plaj 
 and poetry, preserves this fragment of living poetry even 
 for adults ; or did preserve it, for now that these stories are 
 printed and a dozen new, artificially- made books of fairy- 
 tales are produced every Christmas, this last survival oi 
 living poetry, whose obscurity was its salvation, is dying out. 
 When the printed fairy-tales reach the last mountain-hut, 
 the poetical narrative as a living function ot the people will 
 be a thing of the past. 
 
 Art is also partially rooted in feeling and willing. Every 
 strong emotion is accompanied by the desire to express and 
 communicate itself. The joys and pangs of love, martial cour- 
 age and sadness, yearning and reverence, seek and find relief 
 in poetry and song. By the rhythmical-melodious arrange- 
 ment of words and notes, the feelings themselves are aroused. 
 And so the will and the mood of a people and an age are 
 expressed and objectified in the great creations of epic and 
 dramatic poetry as well as in the creations of the plastic arts 
 and architecture. Gothic art manifests the mood of tower* 
 ing supernaturalism, which contemns and repels the earthly 
 sensuous world, — corporeality with its pleasure and heavi- 
 ness. In the Renaissance the opposite mood asserts itself ; 
 its architecture and fine arts, its costumes and house-fur- 
 nishings, its poetry and music, all of them express the 
 
558 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 determination of the age to abandon itself, with the enthu* 
 siasm and exuberance of youth, to the contemplation and 
 enjoyment of everything charming and agreeable, till it seems 
 as though the age felt the need of making up for lost 
 time. 
 
 It is the highest function of art to shape and express the 
 ideals which the spiritual life of a nation creates. The ideal 
 world reaches its highest expression in a supramundane- 
 superhuman world, in which perfection has absolute reality 
 for faith. Thus art becomes the organ of religion. Its high- 
 est function is to realize the innermost cravings of a people, 
 to contemplate its ideas ot perfection in concrete forms. So 
 the plastic arts produced concrete representations of the 
 Greek gods, — glorious figures in which the Greek's ideals 
 of human culture were made visible to him. Similarly Greek 
 poetry gave to the people in its epics and its dramas living pic- 
 tures of divine and human excellences, such as courage, loyalty, 
 devotion, magnanimity, prudence, wisdom, piety. — Christian 
 art, too, has performed the same necessary function of convert- 
 ing the realm of faith into a world of concrete intuitions. The 
 entire mediaeval art, architecture, sculpture, painting, music, 
 and poetry, had for its sole object the presentation of the 
 world of Christian faith, in the form which this had assumed 
 in the Germanic mind, to the senses and the entire man. 1 
 
 We may therefore describe tke effect of art upon the soul as 
 
 1 A. Diirer so conceives the function of art : " The art of painting is employed 
 in the service of the church, and so manifests the passion of Christ and many other 
 good examples, also preserves the forms of men after their death." (See Thans- 
 ing, A. Diirer.) Milton has the same conception of the art of poetry : " Poetical 
 powers are the inspired gift of God rarely bestowed ... in every nation, and are 
 of power, beside the office of a pulpit, to imbreed and cherish in a great people 
 the seeds of virtue and public civility, to allay the perturbation of the mind, and 
 set the affections in right tune ; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the 
 throne and equipage of God's almightiness, and what he works and what he 
 suffers to be wrought with high providence in his church ; to sing victorious 
 agonies of martyrs and saints v the deeds and triumphs of just and pious nations, 
 doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of Christ; to deplore the gen- 
 eral relapses of kingdoms and states from justice and God's true worship." 
 
SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE 559 
 
 follows : (1) It exercises our sensuous-spiritual powers and so 
 fills our leisure moments with the purest and most beautiful 
 recreation and pleasure. (2) It satisfies and quiets the crav- 
 ings of the emotions to express themselves, by providing them 
 with the necessary stimulus and affording relief. (3) It raises 
 the soul above the world of work and need, struggle and 
 misery, to a world of freedom and ideals, and purifies it from 
 the dust of base feelings and passions with which the affairs 
 of daily life cover it. The inner uniformity and harmony 
 which constitutes the essence of all art also brings uniformity 
 and harmony into the soul. Finally, (4) it binds together 
 and unites the members of the nation, nay, all the members 
 of a sphere of civilization ; all those who have the same faith 
 and the same ideals. Opinions and interests differ and pro- 
 duce discord ; art presents in sensuous symbols the ideals 
 which are cherished by all, and so arouses the feeling that all 
 are, in the last analysis, of the same mind, that all recognize 
 and adore the same ultimate and highest things. Hence the 
 union of art with the public festival. In the festival the 
 inner unity of the members of a people seeks to reveal itself : 
 art is appealed to to satisfy this craving of the popular con- 
 sciousness. Art fills all hearts with the same feelings, and 
 makes the popular soul conscious of its unity. Whatever else 
 may divide the people is for the moment forgotten, and the 
 identity of the innermost sentiments becomes a source of 
 pure joy. 
 
 4. If this is a correct description of the nature and effect 
 of art, it follows that it is a universally human function. 
 Art is not something peculiar to a few nations and to a 
 few individuals among them, but all nations have an art to 
 express their emotions, as they have a language to express 
 their ideas. And just as all the members of a people partici- 
 pate in its language, though not equally, so all of them, in 
 a measure, participate in its art. 
 
 When we compare this conception of art, which seems ad- 
 
560 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 equately to express its real function in the life of a people, with 
 its present position in our national life, we readily observe a 
 discrepancy between the definition and the facts. When we 
 speak of art in our days, we are not apt to mean by it some- 
 thing that is intended for all, or that has an essential bearing 
 on one's life. Art is mostly regarded as a kind of luxury, 
 which only the few can enjoy whom fortune has given more 
 freedom and leisure ; the masses, the uneducated, must work 
 and content themselves with an occasional solid pleasure. 
 That is the tacitly assumed and often also openly expressed 
 opinion of many educated persons. 
 
 This view, it must be confessed, is not very far from ex- 
 pressing the actual status of art in our civilization. The 
 sculptures and paintings which we exhibit in our galleries and 
 museums, in our art exhibitions and salons, are, of course, not 
 intended for the masses ; indeed, the people do not visit them, 
 and when they chance to do so, they feel out of place, as their 
 embarrassed movements and looks indicate. Nay, it not in- 
 frequently happens that a person reared in simple surround- 
 ings and removed from the influences of culture, suffers from 
 another kind of embarrassment in the presence of such works 
 of art, the embarrassment of shame. He sees all kinds 
 of naked forms around him, classical nakedness, Renaissance 
 nakedness, and modern nakedness, so that the unaccustomed 
 eye wanders about seeking for a place upon which to rest. 
 So, too, the great masses of people have only a modest share 
 in what we call our national literature. Song and music 
 are most enjoyed by the multitude, by which I do not, of 
 course, mean arias and symphonies. Moreover, a closer in- 
 vestigation would, I believe, show that art does not even con- 
 stitute a very essential element in the lives of many of our 
 educated men. It is largely merely a matter of show ; a few 
 paintings and engravings, the usual gilt-edged editions in the 
 glass case, and the inevitable piano belong to the furniture 
 of a " refined " home ; similarly a smattering of the history 
 
SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE 561 
 
 of literature and art forms a part of the furniture of a 
 cultivated mind. 
 
 How shall we account for this discrepancy between the 
 reality and the ideal ? Some may, perhaps, feel inclined to 
 say : Well, this is the inevitable obverse of higher civiliza- 
 tion ; the number of persons capable of keeping pace with 
 progress will naturally diminish, the greater the demands 
 that are made. All progress depends upon the division of 
 labor and differentiation ; and the splitting up of the people 
 into the educated classes and the masses is a necessary 
 consequence. 
 
 I cannot convince myself of the truth of this assertion. It 
 is in a measure true of knowledge that the more it grows, 
 the further it becomes removed from the masses ; the pro- 
 ducts of science are by their very nature accessible only to 
 the few persons who have the time and strength for difficult 
 and protracted preparation. It seems to be different, how- 
 ever, in the case of art. Science speaks to the intellect in 
 concepts, art appeals to the sensibility through percepts ; the 
 capacity to be impressed by its products seems to be more a 
 matter of natural aptitude than a specific accomplishment to 
 be acquired by practice, although this aptitude may be de- 
 veloped and intensified by exercise. If art expresses the sum 
 total of the emotions of a people, it must surely have some- 
 thing to say to every child of the people. Not everybody can 
 be a creative artist nor an expert art critic, but all, we should 
 imagine, ought to be capable of enjoying art, although in 
 different degrees. 
 
 Historical facts also seem to bear out this view. Greek art, 
 at its climax, was, as everybody knows, by no means inferior 
 to the art of the present, either in content or in form. Never- 
 theless, it was not intended for a small circle of educated 
 persons : iEschylus and Sophocles did not compose their 
 dramas, and Demosthenes did not write his orations, for 
 college graduates, but for the entire community. So, too, 
 
562 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 the Athenian citizens must have understood and appreciated the 
 value of the works of architecture and sculpture which adorned 
 the city in the fifth century ; indeed, these could not have arisen 
 had not the citizens first convinced themselves of their value. 
 And if reference be made to the slaves who enabled the 
 citizens to enjoy leisure and culture, I call attention to 
 mediaeval art. It, too, possessed a large degree of creative 
 power and sense of form, wealth and depth of content. It, 
 too, did not work for a small circle of educated persons, but 
 for the entire people. Mediaeval art served the church ; it 
 was the essential object of architecture and sculpture, paint- 
 ing and music, to make the service solemn and dignified. 
 The church and the divine worship, the sacraments and the ser- 
 mon, were intended for all ; likewise the arts which labored for 
 them. Who would have built the countless houses of worship 
 which filled the mediaeval cities, had not their value been 
 universally recognized ? They were not built by the state 
 with the money of the tax-payers, as the result of an 
 abstract consideration that something ought to be done for the 
 church or for art, but by corporations and citizens, for the 
 glory of God, for their own pleasure and edification, and as 
 a monument to their artistic and self-sacrificing piety. 
 Where should we find the courage and the means to con- 
 struct such buildings to-day ? Why, for decades and decades 
 we have been taking up collection after collection throughout 
 the length and breadth of the land, and have been appealing 
 to the gambling instinct, which has been deprived of other 
 forms of satisfaction, and yet we hardly succeed in raking 
 together the sums necessary to complete the structures which 
 a single city or corporation undertook to build in those days. 
 So, too, the countless paintings and sculptures which adorned 
 the interior of the churches appealed to all. Each one saw 
 before him artistic representations of the sacred stories and 
 personages that lived in every heart, and was inspired by 
 them to joyful veneration. 
 
SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE 563 
 
 Is this not an artistic effect ? I believe it is the high- 
 est, for ultimately the artist must care more for reverent 
 contemplation than for hasty criticism. True, it was not the 
 artistic form, the coloring and drawing, which constituted the 
 chief source of enjoyment, but the thing represented. But, 
 perhaps the artist himself believed that the painting existed 
 for the sake of its content and not for the purpose of showing 
 his technical skill. The latter is not an end in itself, as the 
 oft quoted maxim " art for art's sake " would have it, but an 
 instrument in the service of an idea. Would a mediaeval 
 painter have been willing to exchange those who looked at his 
 pictures for those who visit our art galleries ? It is doubtful ; 
 what sensible artist would not prefer to have, instead of pro- 
 fessional and non-professional art critics, who gabble about 
 coloring and the art of handling the pencil, about subject and 
 composition, people who simply enjoy first what the pictures 
 represent and then their truth and beauty. 
 
 I do not therefore believe that the discrepancy between art 
 and our actual life is due to the high state of perfection which 
 our civilization and art have reached. It is due, rather, to a 
 peculiar defect in our spiritual life : we are lacking in national 
 feeling ( Volkstumlichkeif). 
 
 The reason for this is that our literature and art are not, 
 like those of the Greeks, the product of a steady national 
 growth. Twice has our inner life been seriously interrupted 
 in its development, first by our conversion to Christianity, then 
 by our conversion to antiquity ; the former marks the begin- 
 ing of the Middle Ages, the latter of the modern times. In 
 each case we consciously repudiated our past, we experienced 
 a spiritual regeneration, so to speak. At first our people 
 adopted the religion and civilization of Christianized an- 
 tiquity. The religion and civilization which the church 
 brought were undoubtedly vastly superior to what we had our- 
 selves. Still, the conversion at the same time produced a 
 great convulsion : a nation cannot change its religion as it 
 
664 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 changes its clothes. Religion is the soul, the inner life of a 
 people, it permeates everything, its language, its poetry, its 
 customs, its institutions, its ideals. It is well known with 
 what jealous zeal the new religion persecuted and exterminated 
 the old beliefs, the old sacred customs, the old poetry, the 
 old ideals. 
 
 The new religion took root among the people ; it was 
 grafted upon the old trunk and produced vigorous offshoots : 
 the knighthood, with its curious mixture of martial courage 
 and Christian mercy, the monastic orders with their equally 
 remarkable union of culture and asceticism, the scholastic 
 philosophy with its combination of childlike faith and mascu- 
 line thought, mediaeval art with its union of supernatural 
 content and sensuous form. But then came the second great 
 interruption, which we are in the habit of calling the Renais- 
 sance. Here, again, we notice the same sudden break with 
 the past as before. After our conversion to Christianity, the 
 past was repudiated as paganism, and regarded with abhor- 
 rence ; then the Middle Ages were condemned as filthy Gothic 
 barbarism. The Humanists could not find terms enough to 
 express their contempt for the Middle Ages : their language, 
 their worship, their art, was nothing but detestable barbarism. 
 Nay, even their religion was not Christianity, but an idolatrous 
 scandal ; so judged the Reformation, and joined forces with 
 Humanism to destroy the old forms of church life. The fear 
 of idolatry led to the destruction of the entire sensuous element 
 in religion, both on the mental side and in its outward man 
 ifestation ; and with the decline of the worship of the saints, 
 art lost its true object. 
 
 Though four centuries have passed since this second inter- 
 ruption of our historical life, its effects have not been overcome 
 as were those of the first, during the Middle Ages. Our na- 
 tional life has not assimilated classical antiquity, as it for- 
 merly assimilated Christian antiquity ; we have not received 
 it into our flesh and blood ; all our people do not share in it 
 
SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE 565 
 
 Indeed it is doubtful whether this can ever happen, and 
 whether it would be desirable. The civilization of the Re- 
 naissance has taken hold of only a small fraction of our pop- 
 ulation, of that part, namely, which receives a classical edu- 
 cation in our humanistic gymnasia; an important fraction, 
 it is true, the destined leaders and teachers of our people 
 in all the spheres of life. But this group does not whollj 
 stand within the pale of our popular life, it constitutes a 
 special stratum by the side of it, or, if we choose, above it : 
 the learned class which is sharply separated from the people 
 by its so-called classical education. This chasm between the 
 learned and unlearned did not exist until the Renaissance. 
 During the Middle Ages a distinction was made between the 
 clergy and laymen ; this was a difference in education, but it 
 was not great ; the clergy knew Latin, the language of the 
 church, but their conception of life and the world did not 
 differ from that of the knight and the peasant. Besides, ow- 
 ing to celibacy, these differences in education did not become 
 hereditary. Not until the sixteenth century was the line 
 sharply drawn between the people and the cultured classes. 
 Not only do the latter differ from the former in scientific or 
 technical knowledge, but their entire conceptions of life differ 
 from those of our people, and they are proud of it. They 
 turn to classical antiquity for what they cannot find at home : 
 the perfect development of man, an ideal which is realized 
 only in a more or less crippled form outside of the ancient 
 world. The worship of antiquity has become something of a 
 second religion with scholars, a more aristocratic religion 
 in which the masses do not, of course, participate. This 
 worship reached its climax in the second Renaissance, the 
 continuation in the eighteenth century of the first Renais- 
 sance, which had been interrupted by the great religious 
 movement of the sixteenth century. Our gymnasia were re- 
 established at the beginning of this century as temples of thii 
 ** religion of the educated, " Homer being their sacred book* 
 
566 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 What we call our national literature and art is largely the 
 possession of this group of the classically educated. It is not 
 rooted in our popular life, but in the classical schools ; hence 
 its general classical character. Our so-called classical litera- 
 ture, it is true, no longer employs the ancient languages, like 
 the neo-Latin and neo-Greek poetry of the sixteenth century ; 
 still it loves to follow the old classical models in form and 
 content. Indeed, every day we hear the assertion calmly 
 made that to understand our classic authors the classical educa- 
 tion which the gymnasium gives is a necessary prerequisite. 
 The statement is perhaps somewhat exaggerated, owing to a 
 desire of its defenders to justify the gymnasium, but who will 
 deny that there is a germ of truth in it ? 
 
 The other arts also betray classical traits. Take architect- 
 ure, not to mention sculpture, which is a purely exotic growth, 
 except in so far as it produces portrait statues. Architecture 
 is not a product of the handicraft, but is learned in academies ; 
 it is not rooted in our needs and in our life-conditions, but in 
 learned traditions. We arbitrarily choose a certain style, and 
 then do the best we can to adapt the form to the conditions. 
 Thus arise those curious formations which may be seen in our 
 streets, — pillars of brick topped with tin to give them the ap- 
 pearance of Corinthian columns ; plaster-of-paris consoles 
 glued to wooden cornices apparently to support them, — until 
 they drop off; buildings which want to look like Grecian 
 temples and to that end surround themselves with columns, 
 but remembering that they are intended for picture galleries 
 insert walls and windows between their columns so that one half 
 of the column projects from the masonry — a miserable sight. 
 Painting is more indigenous to the soil ; music, most of all ; 
 is it because music had to develop independently, owing to 
 the fact that Greek music — one is tempted to say, for- 
 tunately — was not preserved ? 
 
 I do not wish to be fault-finding or to criticise history : far 
 from it. This would be a presumptuous and futile undertak* 
 
 • 
 
SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE 567 
 
 ing. Things are what they are, historical things among the 
 rest. It was doubtless impossible for the German people 
 to pursue their course in isolation, and I am also willing to 
 believe that they chose the best of all possible courses. But 
 our modesty cannot hinder us from confessing that our culture, 
 such as it is, though it be the product of the historical condi- 
 tions of our people, does not satisfy all, that art, especially, 
 does not do for us what it could do for a nation. It will not 
 hinder us from confessing that this is not a pleasing state of 
 affairs. One fact, particularly, is plain, that the life of the 
 masses is impoverished and stunted by the lack of beautiful 
 and elevating pleasures. Their enjoyments are vulgar. In 
 their work they are respectable, perhaps also in their priva- 
 tions and sufferings, but their pleasures strike more refined 
 natures as repulsive and common. — But art itself deteriorates 
 when it is not deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. 
 When only the higher strata of society cultivate it, it easily 
 degenerates into mere finery, into an object of luxury and 
 show, or sinks to a still lower level, and becomes a pliable 
 means of sensuous pleasure or love of diversion, and the crav- 
 ing for sensation. Everybody knows from what miry depths the 
 models for pictures and novels are occasionally taken in our age. 
 
 Will our people ever again possess a great art, an art that 
 is deeply rooted in its nature ? Will it, with creative power, 
 evolve from its innermost essence new forms and new objects 
 of artistic expression ? Will it succeed in appropriating such 
 foreign ingredients as can be assimilated, and reject the rest ? 
 No one can tell. One thing alone we can perhaps say : if the 
 Germans and their neighbors are destined for a long life — a 
 matter not of knowledge but of faith — they will again possess 
 a world of universally recognized ideals, without which no 
 nation can permanently exist ; and this world of ideals will 
 again seek for sensuous expression in works of art. 
 
 What form this art of the future will take — it is not to be 
 subservient to erudition — historical prophecy cannot foretell. 
 
568 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 One thing, however, is certain : the narrowness of intellectual 
 life, which is so favorable to the development of the creative 
 fancy, is gone; mythology and legend, whose ideal figures 
 furnished the art of the past with its material, will not return. 
 Nor will the new art thrive upon the soil of luxury. Goethe 
 knew what he was saying when he made the remark which 
 I find quoted somewhere : " I hate luxury, it destroys the 
 fancy." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 HONOR AND LOVE OF HONOR » 
 
 1. The love of honor may be regarded as a peculiar modi 
 fication of the impulse of self-preservation ; it aims at the pres- 
 ervation of the self in consciousness, in our own consciousness 
 as well as in that of others. We may call it the impulse of 
 ideal self-preservation. 
 
 By honor in the objective sense we mean the opinion which 
 our surroundings have of us. By his character and his 
 acts, every man arouses sentiments in his fellows which 
 represent judgments of value : respect and disrespect, admir- 
 ation and contempt, reverence and aversion. These feelings 
 express themselves in judgments and are influenced, intensi- 
 fied, and harmonized by other feelings, and thus arises some- 
 thing like a general estimate of the value of the particular 
 individual in society : this is his objective honor. — The 
 phenomenon is lacking in animals ; only in man does intel- 
 lectual and social life reach such a state of perfection and 
 stability as to make possible this permanent reflection of the 
 individual in the consciousness of the whole. 
 
 There are as many different kinds of honor as there are 
 groups or sets to which a man belongs. As the member of 
 a political community he has a political honor ; it measures 
 his value as a citizen. The different estates or orders repre- 
 
 i [Aristotle, Ethics, Bk. II., ch. VII., Bk. IV., chs. VII.-X. ; Schopenhauer, 
 Parerga, vol. I., Von dcm was einer vorstellt ; Jhering, pp. 480 ff. ; Porter, Part 
 I., ch. XV. ; Hoffding, XI. c; Wundt, I., ch. III., 3. (c)-(e) ; James, Psychology, 
 ch. X. ; Fowler and Wilson, Part II., ch. IV. ; Dorner, pp. 384-395 ; Runze, §§ 
 67. ff. — Tr.] 
 
670 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 sent so many attempts at a systematic graduation of this 
 form of honor. It is to be noticed, however, that the lowest 
 class, that of the citizen as such (Staatsbiirger), is not re- 
 garded as a real class. But that it exists, that it too has its 
 political honor, is shown by the fact that penalties are in- 
 flicted for breaches of it which deprive a man of his civil 
 honorary rights (bilrgerliche JEhrenrechte) : he forfeits all 
 offices, positions of trust, titles, decorations, and the right to 
 serve as a soldier, voter, juror, witness, and guardian. The 
 political un worthiness of the individual is thereby proclaimed. 
 
 Besides the political honor, there is a special social honor. 
 Everybody is a member of society ; his value as such is 
 measured by his social honor. Social rank is essentially 
 determined by birth, wealth, economic and mental achieve- 
 ments. Social honor invariably seeks to convert itself into 
 political honor, or, rather, to obtain the sanction of the state. 
 The state satisfies this desire by the bestowal of titles and 
 decorations. It makes the rich merchant a Komrnerzienrat, 
 the successful physician a Sanitdtsrat, the celebrated scholar 
 and professor a G-eheimer Regierungsrat. No office goes with 
 these titles, they carry no duties with them ; the professor 
 has no governing to do, nor is his advice ever sought, either 
 in public or private matters. In the title the state simply 
 recognizes and brings to public notice the social significance 
 or social rank of the recipient. Decorations serve essentially 
 the same purpose, that is, they proclaim the social and pol- 
 itical rank of the possessor. — The title system is a product 
 of the modern state, while the nobility is an older develop- 
 ment. The latter too is based upon social distinction, which 
 in turn depends upon wealth, birth, and personal achieve- 
 ments. The state recognizes this by the bestowal of political 
 privileges. 
 
 Within these comprehensive groups there are narrower 
 circles, each having its particular form of honor : we speak 
 of the honor of a merchant, the honor of an artist, the honor 
 
HONOR AND LOVE OF HONOR 571 
 
 of an officer, the honor of a student, etc. Its possession 
 signifies that the individual satisfies the special demands 
 which are made upon him by the particular set to which he 
 belongs. 
 
 Collective bodies, too, like individuals have their honor : a 
 family has its family honor among other families, a class 
 among other classes, a profession among other professions, 
 a nation among other nations. The individuals have a share 
 in this collective honor ; let an Englishman's honor be what 
 it may among Englishmen ; among foreigners he has the 
 honor of an Englishman in general. This collective honor 
 is a highly important factor in all collective life ; it firmly 
 cements the members of a community together. The family 
 honor holds the members of a family together, even after 
 they have lost their love and respect for each other ; all of 
 them would have to suffer the disgrace of a single member. 
 
 2. The significance of honor for human conduct is obvious. 
 Since increase of honor produces pleasure, and decrease, pain, 
 the love of honor tends to determine the will to seek for 
 things which increase honor, and to shrink from things which 
 diminish it. As a rule, honor is increased by everything 
 that increases the power and influence of an individual, or, in 
 other words, increases his capacity to help or harm others. 
 We may mention such qualities as strength, skill, courage, 
 military skill ; these are the qualities which are pre-eminently 
 honorable in primitive society : the fearfulness of a man as 
 an enemy and his value as a friend depend especially upon 
 these. Then come wealth, which too means social power; 
 birth and rank, which give power, namely through family con- 
 nections ; and finally, prudence, knowledge of the law, and 
 eloquence, qualities which, with the progress of political 
 development, enable their possessors to attain to higher 
 positions, either as leaders of the people or as officers of the 
 state. The types depicted in the Greek epic are the simplest 
 examples of these different forms of fame and distinction. 
 
572 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 Achilles stands for strength and courage ; Agamemnon for 
 rank and wealth ; Ulysses and Nestor for prudence and elo- 
 quence. Finally, the moral excellences also belong, in a cer- 
 tain sense, to the qualities which bring honor and which the 
 love of honor impels us to acquire. Intemperance, dissipa- 
 tion, and extravagance bring disgrace, at least after they have 
 ruined the person addicted to them, for then the friends who 
 once applauded him forsake him. The opposite modes of be- 
 havior, on the other hand, preserve wealth and strength, and 
 so, ultimately at least, lead to honor. Falsehood, on account of 
 its kinship with cowardice, if for no other reason, brings dis- 
 grace ; likewise deceit and dishonesty. Veracity, trustworthi- 
 ness, and uprightness, on the contrary, give one a good name. 
 Thus honor becomes the guardian of morality ; the love of 
 honor tends to determine the will to develop, first of all, the 
 self-regarding virtues, and then also to acquire the social 
 virtues, or at least to avoid injustice, falsehood, and crime. 
 
 No detailed account is needed to show the importance of this 
 impulse for the moral education of the race. The development 
 of the human virtues in the species — courage, magnanimity, 
 justice, veracity — the development of higher capacities, 
 economic as well as mental, is hardly conceivable without 
 this constantly active impulse. The regard for honor and the 
 fear of disgrace produce a few good results even in the most 
 unpromising cases : the sluggish nature is goaded to action 
 by the fear of the disgrace of poverty ; the timid temper- 
 ament is urged to make a stand for fear of being accused of 
 cowardice ; the defiant and stubborn disposition is brought to 
 terms by the fear of punishment and dishonor. Nor can we 
 imagine the performance of great deeds without a strong love 
 of honor. Fame, honor in its highest degree, was the most 
 powerful motive in most of the men who brought about the 
 great turning-points in history, — in Alexander, Caesar, 
 Frederick, Napoleon. And great mental and artistic achieve* 
 ments too would be inconceivable if there were no prospect of 
 
HONOR AND LOVE OF HONOR 573 
 
 distinction, fame, and immortality in the memory of man. 
 The love of fame, it is true, does not create the productive 
 impulse, but without it the latter would not be apt to develop. 
 Even among the great saints the prospect of fame was not 
 without its influence : though they despised the fame of men, 
 it was because they hoped to achieve a higher fame with God. 
 
 The counter proof is furnished by cases where absolutely 
 no regard is had for honor and disgrace. Persons who no 
 longer have any fear of dishonor because they have no honor 
 to lose, have reached the lowest depths of degradation. Such 
 a group of outcasts exists in every metropolis ; professional 
 criminals and prostitutes form its complementary halves : 
 they are persons who have no more honor to lose and no hope 
 to redeem it. In the work of Av^-Lallemant on the German 
 criminal class * we find a detailed description of a kind of 
 counter society,, formed by these " dishonorables," which has 
 its own language, its own customs and usages, nay its own 
 honor, the honor of thieves ; so impossible is it for men to do 
 utterly without distinction and honor. Its language is a mix- 
 ture of the dregs of all languages ; the language of one people 
 particularly having contributed to it, a people which has lost 
 its honor among the nations, the Jews. Its morality is a 
 disgusting immorality ; the criminal honor, the degree of dis- 
 grace which each one brings as his pledge, so to speak ; the 
 more disgraced his name is in honorable society, the more 
 distinguished he is in the counter society. 
 
 3. The proper attitude of the individual towards honor, 
 the virtue into which the impulse of honor is fashioned, we call 
 the love of honor. We may define it as that habit of the will 
 and mode of conduct which seeks to gain the recognition of 
 the virtuous and good by means of honest and virtuous actions. 
 Perhaps we may characterize it suitably, from two points of 
 view, as proper pride and proper humility. 
 
 Pride (which is not to be confused with haughtiness) is the 
 
 I 4 vols., 1858 ff. 
 
574 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 antithesis of two degenerate forms of the impulse of honor : 
 vanity and ambition. We call a man vain who is greatly 
 pleased with himself and his achievements, and displays them 
 •wherever he can, for the sake of receiving admiration and 
 praise or at least flattery. The vainglorious man is not 
 very particular in the choice of his admirers, or in the choice 
 of the things for which he is distinguished. His constant 
 aim is to be conspicuous and to make a show ; he is not 
 satisfied unless he can attract attention to himself. A man is 
 ambitious who makes honor the unconditional goal of his 
 striving, that is, craves for honor and fame at the price of all 
 other goods, even at the price of happiness and life, self- 
 respect and a good conscience. Ambition especially strives 
 for political reputation ; it craves for power, rank, and posi- 
 tion. Vanity seeks to arouse admiration by personal qualities, 
 by beauty and elegance, by brilliancy and wit, by long nails 
 and stylish clothes. On the whole, we may call vanity the 
 feminine, ambition the masculine, form of the degenerate 
 impulse of honor. Women strive to please by all kinds of 
 outward show, pretty figures and dainty faces, superfluous 
 finery and tinsel culture. To please a man is as yet almost 
 their only way of achieving outward distinction. The man's 
 impulse of honor is usually determined by his birth and 
 calling ; it aims at objective reputation : the honor of the mer- 
 chant is wealth ; that of the prince, power ; that of the 
 peasant, the size and productivity of his fields. Ambition 
 based upon rank and family traditions, is more quiet, constant, 
 and masculine in character, while that which aims at personal 
 distinction, through literary, artistic, and scientific achieve- 
 ments, approaches the feminine form of ambition, vanity. It 
 is more self-conceited and excitable, self-consciousness is 
 more vacillating, evidently because we are here concerned 
 with personal accomplishments and achievements, and be- 
 cause an objective standard of the value of such performances 
 is not possible. We can measure the rank of a general, or 
 
HONOR AND LOVE OF HONOR 575 
 
 the possessions of a merchant, but who can determine the 
 poetical value of a poem, or the artistic value of a painting in 
 comparison with others ? Here there is great room for illu- 
 sions, and on illusion vanity chiefly feeds. It is evidently due 
 to the prevalence of vanity in artistic and scholastic circles 
 that envy, spite, hatred, calumny, and what else may be the 
 effects of injured pride, are nowhere so common — unless it 
 be among women afflicted with vanity — - as among the genus 
 irritabile vatum, the irritable and irascible tribe of poets and 
 authors, actors and artists. 
 
 Und wenn du schiltst und wenn du tobst, 
 Ich will es geduldig leiden. 
 Dock wenn du meine Verse nicht lobst, 
 Dann lass ich mich von dir scheiden. 1 
 
 They need not be verses ; even a difference of opinion as to 
 the age of two manuscripts or the second marriages of clergy 
 men may constitute a ground for divorce, as we know from 
 the history of the Vicar of Wakefield. 
 
 The antithesis of vanity is pride. The vainglorious man 
 is especially anxious to be considered somebody, and to rep- 
 resent something, and then, if possible, to be somebody. The 
 proud man, however, desires, above all, to be something, and 
 then, if possible, to be considered somebody. But he is select 
 in the means which he employs to gain a reputation ; he 
 refuses to seek for fame in trivial and indifferent or, what 
 is still worse, in absurd and disgraceful things, which the 
 fashion of the day makes the centre of attraction for a fickle 
 public. Indeed he despises the applause of the rabble 
 altogether, it puts him to shame, he shrinks from it. He 
 cares for the opinion of the best, their applause alone seems 
 worthy of his efforts and fills him with happiness. But he 
 consoles himself when he does not get it, for one thing no 
 one can take from him : the cause itself to which he is de- 
 
 1 [I will patiently bear your scoldings and ravings, but if you refuse to praiae 
 my verses, I 'II get a divorce from you.] 
 
576 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 voting his strength, the consciousness of doing honest and 
 efficient work, and the hope that the future will honor his 
 sincere endeavors. At all events he refuses to have recourse 
 to flattery and camaraderie in order to be admired in return. 
 He does not allow the fear of displeasing persons in power 
 to hamper him in his thoughts or actions. Kepler thus con- 
 cludes the preface of his Weltharmonik : " Your forgiveness 
 will please me, your anger I will endure ; here I cast the die, 
 and write a book to be read, whether by contemporaries or by 
 posterity, I care not : it can wait for readers thousands of 
 years, seeing that God himself waited six thousand years for 
 some one to contemplate his work." 1 These are proud words, 
 and a proud man it was that uttered them. Compare with 
 Kepler's proud demeanor the behavior of our modern scholars 
 who unblushingly permit their pupils and colleagues to sing 
 their praises to their very faces at all kinds of jubilees. 
 Would not a little pride be more becoming ? It would, at 
 least, make the profession more respected ; the people have a 
 keen sense of propriety in such things ; fifty years ago the 
 German scholar was held in higher esteem by the public 
 than at present, perhaps, to some extent, because the use of 
 incense among the living was much more limited than now. 
 Nor is it to be regretted that titles and decorations were 
 rarer, and that he was more often censured and ignored by 
 his superiors than at present. Since then the calling has 
 become considerably more aristocratic outwardly, but its inner 
 worth and real fame have hardly increased in proportion. 
 
 4. The other antithesis of the love of honor is proper 
 humility. Pride manifests itself in the proper acceptance of 
 honor, humility in the proper bestowal of honor. 
 
 Humility is the opposite of haughtiness. The haughty man 
 despises others, he treats them condescendingly. By refus- 
 ing to show them proper respect, he endeavors to keep it for 
 himself, as it were, and so to have an advantage over them. 
 
 1 Reuschle, Kepler, p. 127. 
 
HONOR AND LOVE OF HONOR 577 
 
 He does not seek converse with men, indeed he actually 
 shuns it, because he finds that his expectations with respect to 
 honor are not realized, and because he is not willing to satisfy 
 the claims of others. It is evidently for this reason that 
 haughtiness and pride are so easily confused. Haughtiness 
 is, moreover, very commonly connected with servility. The 
 man who treats those whom he regards as his inferiors with 
 brutal haughtiness, crouches before the mighty. He uses 
 all the arts of subservient flattery towards those who are 
 unquestionably richer, more aristocratic, powerful, and influ- 
 ential than he, in order thus to rise on the ladder of rank ; 
 he revenges himself on those below him, and it affords him 
 special satisfaction to kick his patron as soon as he has out- 
 stripped him. In this way he gets back his capital with 
 interest. 
 
 Humility, on the other hand, gives every one the honor 
 which is his due. It rejoices at the merit of others, and is 
 ever ready to recognize ability, to admire excellence, and to 
 reverence goodness. Genuine humility — this is its true sign 
 — and genuine free-mindedness go together. The humble, 
 free-minded man bows before what is truly honorable, even 
 when it appears in menial form, and refuses to mere external 
 power what belongs to the venerable alone. It is with pride 
 that he sides with those who are outraged for the sake of 
 truth and justice, and he considers it an honor to suffer dis- 
 grace and persecution with them. The word of the judge on 
 the judgment day applies to him : " I was in prison and ye 
 came unto me." 
 
 These are two well-known types : the servile-minded, full 
 of haughtiness and baseness, and the free-minded, full of 
 noble pride and reverence and deep humility. We Germans 
 have an example of a man of the latter type in Freiherr von 
 Stein. " Humble before God, highminded, magnanimous 
 towards men, a foe of falsehood and injustice," so his epi- 
 taph characterizes him. And Luther once said of himself in 
 
 37 
 
578 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 commenting upon the fifty -first Psalm : " When I bow down 
 and humble myself before God, I am scornful of the devil 
 and the world, defiant and haughty in the Lord, and I despise 
 all their dangers, strategy, and violence." We often find, upon 
 the old German passion pictures, the two types painted side 
 by side. The first type is represented by the soldiers and their 
 voluntary assistants, who revile and maltreat Him who was 
 forsaken by God and man ; they have no eye for His ador- 
 able soul, or if they do obtain a glimpse of the sublime char- 
 acter of the noble sufferer, their bitter hate becomes all the 
 more intense ; nothing affords the base-born so much genuine 
 pleasure as to be allowed, by those in authority, to spit at 
 and to trample upon the pure and innocent. The other type 
 is represented by the women under the cross. With fearless 
 loyalty their tears acknowledge the outcast of men ; their 
 hearts do not cease revering Him. The man who listens to 
 his intellect is seduced by it to forsake and to deny Him : His 
 cause is lost ; can it be the just cause when all in authority 
 and all competent judges decide against it ? The sacred 
 story shows its profound and eternal significance even in such 
 features as these. The sins that women have committed 
 through vanity, women have again atoned by their faithful 
 and unswerving devotion and adoration. Nothing in this 
 world is stronger than the heart of a humble and free- 
 minded woman. There is no higher praise for women than 
 that which they found beneath the cross. 
 
 5. With true pride and true humility, true self-esteem 
 finally is joined. The proper estimate of oneself may be 
 defined as a mean between pusillanimity and supercilious- 
 ness. Pusillanimity is habitual faint-heartedness in regard 
 to the problems which life sets before us ; it weakens our 
 capacity to act and to suffer. Superciliousness springs from 
 underestimating our tasks and overestimating our powers ; it 
 regards exertion as superfluous, and so is no less produc- 
 tive of failure than faintheartedness : superciliousness goeth 
 
HONOR AND LOVE OF HONOR 579 
 
 before destruction. When this attitude is assumed towards 
 others, it becomes haughtiness, and if it is not flattered, ends 
 by abusing them, conduct which the Greeks aptly characterize 
 by the word vftpis. True self-esteem, on the contrary, which 
 marks the efficient man, gives him confidence in his own will 
 and powers, and upon the latter depend security in decision 
 and firmness in execution. But the great conception which he 
 has of his task guards him against arrogantly overestimating 
 his ability. He is not easily satisfied with himself ; it is no 
 consolation to him to see others behind him; he keeps the 
 great and excellent men before his eyes. When it comes to 
 dividing the common work, he is always ready to assume the 
 more difficult tasks, but when honors and gifts are distributed, 
 he does not insist upon obtaining an equal share. Whenever 
 life places him in a position to solve great public problems, 
 we have the type of the highminded man (fMeyaXo-xfrv^o 1 ;), a 
 man who esteems himself capable of great things and is 
 worthy of them. 
 
 The proper estimate of one's own worth, of one's own 
 powers and achievements, knowledge of self, constitutes a 
 particularly difficult problem of self-culture. Ever since the 
 Delphic inscription, Know thyself, first attracted the atten- 
 tion of the Greeks, the question concerning the importance 
 and possibility of self-knowledge has been much discussed. 
 The opinions of Greek thinkers and poets are found in 
 Schmidt's Ethih der Qriechen} Reference is also made in 
 that work to Goethe's words in his /Sprilche in Prosa : " How 
 can we learn to know ourselves ? Never by contemplation, 
 but always by action. Try to do your duty, and you will 
 know at once what is in you." It is impossible to gain a 
 knowledge of oneself as an object in a theoretical way, by re- 
 flection ; by living, suffering, and acting we reach a direct 
 knowledge of what we may expect of ourselves, so that we 
 shall not overstep our limits in choosing our tasks and our 
 
 1 H., 394 ff. 
 
580 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 attitude in certain positions and towards certain persons, but 
 will choose and ■ do the proper thing with sure tact. There is 
 no other form of self-knowledge than this instinctive knowl- 
 edge ; an abstract psychological self-knowledge based upon 
 analysis and comparison is not possible. This is Schopen- 
 hauer's view also ; he calls attention to the fact that we 
 cannot, in spite of all looking-glasses, even picture to our- 
 selves our own bodily physiognomy, like that of others, because 
 we cannot cast upon ourselves the " look of estrangement " 
 which is the condition of the objectivity of perception. 1 We 
 do not see ourselves acting, any more than we see ourselves 
 in motion; the agent cannot observe himself while acting, 
 for which reason too, as Goethe says, he has no conscience 
 as an agent. His attention is fixed solely upon the ex- 
 ternal goal. 
 
 Yes, we may say, the inclination to reflect upon oneself is a 
 symptom of a morbid condition ; it springs from a lack of self- 
 reliance. And reflection is by no means able to remove the 
 defect, — it merely intensifies it ; self-reflection resembles the 
 conduct of the gardener who digs up the roots of his trees 
 to see whether they are sound. This, too, is Goethe's idea. 
 In a conversation with Eckermann he rejects the demand, 
 " Know thyself," as a curious demand which no one has 
 ever satisfied, and which no one really ought to satisfy. 
 "Man is bound by all his thoughts and strivings to the 
 external, to the world around him, and he is kept busy in 
 understanding this world and in making it serviceable to him- 
 self, so far as his purposes require. Of his own self he becomes 
 aware only when he enjoys and suffers, and so too his sorrows 
 and joys alone teach him what to seek and what to avoid. In 
 other respects, however, man is an obscure being ; he knows 
 not whence he came nor whither he goes ; he knows little 
 of the world and less of himself. I do not know myself, 
 and may God preserve me from it." Here, again, Schopen- 
 
 1 Parerga, II., § 343. 
 
HONOR AND LOVE OF HONOR 581 
 
 hauer offers himself as an interpreter of Goethe. The 
 "obscure being" is the will, which only gradually manifests 
 itself, as Schopenhauer shows in the instructive nineteenth 
 chapter of the second volume of the World as Will and 
 Idea. 
 
 6. Modesty may be denned as the outward form of the love 
 of honor. The modest man shows by his entire behavior 
 that he does not despise the opinion of others, but that he 
 desires to make an effort to gain their esteem. The opposite 
 demeanor is that of the overhearing man ; his acts proclaim 
 that he does not care what others may think of him. When 
 such conduct is displayed toward especially venerable persons, 
 we call it insolence and impudence, the sign of a low and 
 servile disposition. 
 
 Modesty is the natural habit of youth. The young have 
 no independent opinions of what is good and proper, but are 
 governed by the opinions of others. Hence it behooves the 
 young man to respect the opinions of others ; modesty (pudor) 
 is, as it were, the down of a youthful soul, not yet touched by 
 the hands of the world. Forwardness or even insolence, on 
 the other hand, is a sign of uncouthness. It is easily pro- 
 duced by the awkward ignorance of teachers ; it is particularly 
 encouraged by training the child to flattery and ostentation. 
 The opening scene in King Lear is a grand picture al fresco 
 of false education. Imagine that which is here condensed 
 into the few lines of a scene as the outgrowth of a long-con- 
 tinued abuse of the child-soul by paternal vanity, and you 
 have a faithful picture of an educational method which is not 
 infrequent either in homes or in schools, or wherever education 
 is carried on. How often may not the foolish old man have 
 asked his daughters whether they loved him, and how much 
 they loved him ? His constant questionings have already 
 destroyed all love and reverence in his older daughters ; they 
 despise the old fool and flatter him. Cordelia, the youngest, 
 has just left the care of a faithful nurse, so we may assume; 
 
582 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 she does not yet know how to flatter, and, fortunately, receives 
 no more lessons in the art. 
 
 Besides, modesty is becoming to every age, particularly to 
 all those who appear before the public. It was usual for the 
 authors of the last century to appeal to the " gentle reader," 
 a more commendable custom than the one which came into 
 vogue during the age of Romanticism and Speculative Phil- 
 osophy, that, namely, of giving the reader to understand, first 
 in the preface and afterwards on every possible occasion, 
 between the lines and in the lines, that he was a very inferior 
 creature, who would not, of course, succeed in fathoming all 
 the profound thoughts there set forth. If, however, in spite 
 of this, he still insisted on reading the book, he was told not 
 to be discouraged in case the expected should happen, that we 
 could not all be philosophers, and to remember also that due 
 warning had been given him. It is very remarkable that the 
 German public actually allowed itself to be bullied in this 
 fashion, and for a long time was accustomed to admire as 
 profound what it did not understand. Hence writers are not 
 wanting to this day who speak in such a strain; insolence 
 still continues to impress the average German. The spirit of 
 English scientific intercourse forms a highly pleasing contrast 
 to the German habit. Take such writers as Mill and Darwin : 
 they speak to the reader as though he did them a favor by 
 listening to them, and whenever they enter upon controversy, 
 they do it in a manner which expresses respect and a desire 
 for mutual understanding. The German scholar believes that 
 it will detract from the respect due him if he does not 
 assume a tone of condescension or overbearing censure. 
 Examine the first scientific journal you may happen to pick 
 up : even the smallest anonymous announcement breathes 
 the air of infinite superiority, even the most friendly 
 recognition is accompanied by the tacit or explicit assurance 
 that the " reviewer," of course, understands the subject better, 
 and that it is therefore really a pity that it did not fall into 
 
HONOR AND LOVE OF HONOR 583 
 
 better hands. In case the " reviewer" differs from the 
 writer, he does not rest satisfied until he has proved to his 
 credulous readers that his opponent is a worthless and mali- 
 cious fool. The philologists, especially, are tried and acknowl- 
 edged masters in this field. Is it the occupation with the 
 infinitely little that makes them so irascible and intolerant ? 
 
 The foreign observer might, I fear, be easily led to believe 
 that overbearing impudence was at present regarded as a 
 specially estimable quality in Germany. When we examine a 
 book of historical portraits like that published by E. von 
 Seidlitz and look at the pictures of the last century or of the 
 first half of the present century, we cannot help feeling that a 
 great change has taken place in the physiognomies since that 
 time : the " smart " (schneidig) face is the type affected by 
 the modern generation. Think of the beards and their sym- 
 bolical-physiognomical significance, which is expressed in the 
 saying: Haare auf den Zahnen haben ; oderint dum metuant 
 would be an appropriate motto for them. Or look at the por- 
 traits in our so-called art exhibitions : each person repre- 
 sented seems anxious to show his contempt for the observer 
 in some way or other. The hand in his breeches-pocket, the 
 tired, scarcely elevated, uninterested eye, the eye-glass in his 
 extended left hand, the cigar stump from which the ashes 
 have just been knocked off, — they all seem to say : What do 
 I care for the rabble that is crowding around to see me ! 
 And then let your gaze rest on the " smart " female who 
 turns her back upon the spectator and grants him only a 
 quarter view, or lets her big dog stare at him. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 SUICIDE i 
 
 1. Suicide is a phenomenon peculiar to man. Its possi- 
 bility, in a certain sense, depends upon the power of the will 
 to emancipate itself from the natural control of the impulses. 
 Animals do not reflect upon life as a whole, hence they have 
 no freedom of choice. Freedom of choice and consequently 
 the possibility of suicide depend upon the development of 
 man's intelligence ; upon it also depends the possibility of 
 insanity, a phenomenon which is likewise peculiar to human 
 life, and which is closely connected with suicide. The animal 
 intelligence is subservient to the will and therefore proof 
 against such aberrations. 
 
 Suicide is rendered possible by the growth of the intelli- 
 gence, and its frequency seems to increase with the progress 
 of civilization. From the large collection of statistical facts 
 which the Italian H. Morselli has examined in his work on 
 suicide, it may be seen beyond a doubt that there has been a 
 constant and uniform increase in the number of suicides dur- 
 
 1 [Statistical: Oettingen, Moralstatistih, § 59, pp. 737-785; Morselli, Suicide 
 (abridged and revised translation in International Science Series) ; Masaryk, Der 
 Selbstmord als soziale Massenerscheinung der modernen Civilisation. Ancient and 
 Christian ideas of suicide: Lecky, I., 212-222, 331; II, 43-61. Philosophical 
 views of suicide : justifying it : Hume, On Suicide ; Hartmann, Phenomenologie des 
 sittlichen Bewusstseins, pp. 860 ff . ; Mainlander, Phil, der Erlosung, pp. 349 ff. ; con- 
 demning it: Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten, vol. VII., pp.277 ff. (Harten stein's 
 edition); Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, First Section (Abbott, p. 13); 
 Schopenhauer, Welt als Wille, vol. I., § 69 ; Paley, Bk. IV., 3 ; Hoffding, XI., 
 4 ; Diihring, Der Werth des Lebens, VI., 6 ; Porter, § 175 ; Runze, § 12. See also 
 StKudlin, Geschichte der Vorstellungen vom Selbstmord, 1824. — Tk.] 
 
SUICIDE 585 
 
 ing the nineteenth century in most of the European countries. 1 
 In France, for example, the average number of suicides a year 
 has risen from 54 to 154 per million inhabitants, during 
 fifty years from 1826 to 1875 ; in Prussia, from 70.2 to 173.5, 
 between 1816 and 1877. The increase is still greater in Ger- 
 man Austria. There are countries, it is true, where the con- 
 ditions are more favorable ; in England, for instance, the in- 
 crease in the last fifty years seems to be scarcely noticeable, 
 the average numbers oscillate around 65 per million inhabi- 
 tants. In Norway the figures have even fallen from 80 to 70. 
 The local distribution likewise shows the dependence of 
 suicide upon the intensity of civilization. As a rule, suicides 
 are the more frequent in European countries the more civil- 
 ized the latter are. Here, too, however, the English form a 
 conspicuous exception. The maximum figures (200-300) ap- 
 pear in central Europe ; as we come nearer to the boundaries 
 they diminish greatly, falling below 25 in Southern Italy, 
 Spain, and Ireland, below 50 in Northern Italy, Scotland, 
 Northern Sweden, and Russia, below 75 in Hungary, Poland, 
 and Southern Sweden. The metropolitan and industrial local- 
 ities give the largest averages. Saxony and Thuringia head 
 the list with about 300 in Germany ; then come Brandenburg, 
 including Berlin, 204, Schleswig-Holstein, including Ham- 
 burg, 250 ; in Austria, Lower Austria with Vienna comes 
 first, 254, followed by Bohemia, 158 ; in France, Paris forms 
 the centre of irradiation from which the influence extends to 
 an entire group of adjoining provinces, Seine, Marne, Oise, 
 about 400 ; then comes the industrial North of France. The 
 same law may be observed in the three capitals of the Scan- 
 dinavian countries. A striking exception is formed by West- 
 phalia and the Rhineland, Belgium and Holland, in which 
 the average figures fall below 75, thus following the English 
 group. 
 
 1 Compare also Th. Masaryk, Der Selbstmord ah soziale Mcusenerscheinung dtf 
 nodernen Civiiitation. 1881. 
 
586 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 It is further noticeable that within the separate countries, 
 suicide seems to be more prevalent among the educated 
 classes. Morselli gives the following data for Italy : x the 
 group, letters and science, heads the list, with 614 per million 
 male individuals belonging to this group ; then come de- 
 fenders of the country, 404 ; instruction, education, 355 ; 
 public administration, 324 ; commerce, 277 ; jurisprudence, 
 218 ; medical professions, 201 ; industrial productions, 80 ; 
 production of raw materials, 27. For France the following 
 figures are given. 2 The number of suicides per million in- 
 habitants is : domestic service, 83 ; commerce and transport, 
 98; production of raw materials, 111 ; industry, 159; liberal 
 professions, 510. Other statisticians reach different results, 
 but they do not contradict the law that suicide is least 
 common under the simplest conditions of life, and that it 
 becomes more frequent as the conditions become more com- 
 plex. — No one will seek the cause for this in higher educa- 
 tion as such ; it is due to a number of concomitant phenomena. 
 Such are deviations from the original and natural conditions 
 of life and forms of labor ; one-sided exercise of the brain, 
 especially when caused by premature mental labor ; ex- 
 haustive and subtle forms of enjoyment ; violent desires and 
 breathless pursuit of fortune, connected with great disappoint- 
 ments and catastrophes. All these causes come together in 
 the great centres of modern life, and here they are especially 
 potent among the higher strata of the population. 
 
 2. How is suicide to be judged morally ? 
 
 Our natural feeling in reference to it is one of dread. Our 
 horror of death is intensified by intentional homicide in every 
 form, such as murder and execution. Nothing seems more un- 
 natural and terrible than when an individual takes his own life. 
 The church obeyed the common instinct when it regarded 
 the suicide as an outcast, even refusing to allow him to be 
 
 l P. 244. 
 « P. 251. 
 
SUICIDE 587 
 
 buried in hallowed ground. Among the old Greeks suicides 
 were deprived of honors to the dead ; the act was looked 
 upon as a violation of the sense of awe with which the an- 
 cients regarded all violent interference with the natural order 
 of things. 1 
 
 In this respect, again, philosophy runs counter to popu- 
 lar opinion. Among the Greek schools, the Stoics and Epicu- 
 reans, particularly, strongly defend the moral possibility of 
 suicide. They praise as a prerogative of man the freedom 
 to leave life when it has no further value. 2 And a great 
 number of men, prominent in public life and literature, made 
 use of their freedom. The liberal philosophy of modern 
 times shows the same general tendency. In his essay on 
 suicide, Hume states the grounds on which suicide may some- 
 times be justified. He shows that suicide is not necessarily a 
 transgression of our duty to God, our neighbor, or ourselves. 
 Not to God, for " were the disposal of human life so much 
 reserved as the peculiar province of the Almighty that it 
 were an encroachment of his right for men to dispose of 
 their own lives, it would be equally criminal to act for the 
 preservation of life as for its destruction. If I turn aside 
 a stone which is falling upon my head, I disturb the course 
 of nature " as much as if I turn a few ounces of blood from 
 their natural channel. But if it be said that the natural 
 impulse tends to self-preservation, the suicide may reply : I 
 do not experience this impulse and may conclude therefrom 
 that I am recalled from my station. Nor is suicide neces- 
 sarily a breach of our duty to our neighbor or to ourselves. 
 A man who is not able to do good to others but is a burden 
 to them, who does not value his life but endures it as a 
 torture, who can cut short his miseries without wounding 
 anybody in the world, does no wrong by laying down the 
 burden. On the contrary, he might say, " it is the only way 
 
 1 Schmidt, Eihik der Griechen, II. 441 ; [Lecky, 212-214.— Tr.]. 
 
 2 [See Seneca, Letters, 26, 70.— Tr.] 
 
588 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 that I can be useful to society, by setting an example of how 
 every one has the power of freeing himself from misery.'' * 
 
 Indeed, I do not believe that we must necessarily regard 
 self-preservation as a duty, and voluntary death as a violation 
 of duty. It is said that Frederick the Great carried a little 
 bottle of poison on his person during the Seven Years' War, 
 and that he intended to commit suicide in case he was made 
 a prisoner, so that his country might not incur the danger of 
 sacrificing its interests in order to ransom its ruler. It is 
 obvious that such an act could not have been judged other- 
 wise than the act of a captain who blows up himself and his 
 ship to save it from falling into the hands of the enemy, or 
 that of a pioneer who sacrifices his life in order to make a way 
 for his family. Or take the case of Themistocles : banished 
 by the Athenians, pursued by the Lacedaemonians, he finally, 
 after many wanderings, finds a refuge with the Great King. 
 When the Persian asks him to show his gratitude by promot- 
 ing his plans against the Greeks, he puts an end to his life. 
 Who will dare to reproach him for this, or who can tell him 
 what else he ought to have done ? — But even when a man 
 commits suicide in order to leave a life that has become 
 intolerable, I have not the courage absolutely to condemn the 
 act. When a man who has met with reverses or has been 
 disappointed gives up like a coward, leaving his family in 
 misery and want, we have a right to judge him harshly. 
 But when a man can no longer endure a hopeless and pain- 
 
 1 [See Hume's Essays, Green & Grose's edition, vol. II., pp. 405 ff .] It is said 
 that when any one among the Massilians desired to drink the poison hemlock, he 
 could obtain the sanction of the Council of the Six Hundred by giving his reasons 
 for voluntarily departing from life. Those afflicted with incurable and painful dis- 
 eases in Thomas More's Utopia are exhorted by priests and magistrates to do what 
 is the best under the circumstances: no longer to nourish the torturing pain, but to 
 die courageously. Such as are wrought on by these persuasions starve themselves 
 of their own accord, or take opium, and by that means die without pain. Suicide 
 without authority, on the other hand, is regarded as reprehensible. Carlyle, 
 too, once expressed the opinion that there was no justice in depriving a man of 
 the freedom to escape from unbearable tortures by voluntary death, as is done in 
 England by laws and the pressure of public opinion. 
 
SUICIDE 589 
 
 fill malady, when he feels that everybody is tired of him 
 and would be materially benefited by his going, the impar- 
 tial judge will view the case differently. True, we say: it 
 is grand and ennobling for a person to bear great suffer- 
 ings in patience ; we admire the hero in his suffering as 
 much as the hero in battle. But — heroism is not a duty, 
 it is meritorious to be a hero, but it is human not to be one. 
 We cannot withhold our sympathy from one who sinks be- 
 neath his load, or forget the word of charity : " He that is 
 without sin let him first cast a stone." If a man says, 
 Suicide is suicide, and as such reprehensible, we cannot 
 argue with him ; his own feelings will contradict him in the 
 given case. 
 
 It is usually said that suicide is the result of cowardice. 
 Cases undoubtedly occur in which this is so. A man without 
 the power to act and to suffer meets with a misfortune ; he 
 loses his head and sees no other escape but the rope, while a 
 brave and energetic man would have overcome the difficulty 
 with patience, and would have begun life anew. A banker 
 squanders the money of his customers and then shoots him- 
 self in the head : certainly this is cowardly and base. But the 
 conditions are not always like these. A man who, like Them- 
 istocles, after careful deliberation, makes up his mind, and 
 then does what he thinks necessary, that he may not suffer 
 or do anything unworthy of himself, will most likely regard 
 the charge of cowardice as a rather pedantic jest. — And he 
 will scarcely be affected by statements such as are found in 
 Schopenhauer or the Neo-Platonists, that flight from life is 
 flight from suffering ; that suffering, however, is the necessary 
 means of deliverance from the will-to-live. He will perhaps 
 answer : I am so free from the will-to-live that I am about to 
 leave life, without feeling the slightest desire to renew it. 
 The metaphysician may, if he chooses, worry over the question 
 whether death will realize that purpose. I am not troubled 
 about that, and I have no desire to enter upon these sophia- 
 
590 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 tical, rather than profound, discussions, in which the meta- 
 physician tries to prove that voluntary death puts an end to 
 life as a phenomenon but not to the will as a thing in itself. 
 
 3. Nevertheless, I do not think that the condemnation of 
 suicide is utterly groundless. If we consider, not the excep- 
 tions but the rule, we must regard suicide as an act by which 
 the suicide himself condemns his entire life : it is, as a rule, the 
 ignoble end of an ignoble life. The wages of sin is death ; the 
 words of the apostle are surely applicable to self-destruction. 
 There are exceptions, perhaps numerous exceptions, but they 
 do not disprove the rule. The popular judgment is the result 
 of experience: Suicide is the natural conclusion of a sinful 
 life. 
 
 Here, again, we may refer to statistics. Difficult though 
 it is to obtain definite answers to the question concern- 
 ing the causes of suicide, we may ascertain certain general 
 facts from the material at hand. In Morselli's table 1 in- 
 sanity appears as the most frequent motive, embracing 
 about one-third of all the cases for which a motive can 
 be given. Then come physical diseases, weariness of life, 
 vices (drunkenness and dissipation), afflictions (especially 
 domestic troubles), misery and financial disorders, re- 
 morse, shame, fear of condemnation. The figures are differ- 
 ent for different countries, but they nearly agree in that 
 each motive embraces one-tenth of all the cases. The small 
 remainder of about one-twentieth is divided among the pas- 
 sions, love, jealousy, and anger. We observe that suicide, as 
 a rule, marks the end of a mentally, bodily, morally, econom- 
 ically, or socially deranged life. Only in a relatively small 
 number of cases are vices given as the direct cause. If we 
 were to investigate the other motives, we should without 
 doubt very frequently discover as their primary causes : per- 
 verse desires and bad habits of life, either in the individuals 
 themselves or in their parents and ancestors. Alcohol, es- 
 
 1 P. 278. 
 
SUICIDE 591 
 
 pecially, would be found to be the chief destroyer of the vital 
 powers : it ruins the brain and creates an hereditary tendency 
 to mental as well as bodily diseases and weariness of life ; it 
 destroys economic welfare, it causes domestic troubles, it leads 
 to criminal acts, which are expiated with remorse and disgrace. 
 Thus suicide is a symptom and criterion of morally-diseased 
 conditions. But we must be careful here. We should not 
 regard a classification of nations and classes according to the 
 frequency of suicide as a classification according to their 
 moral worth. We should not forget that indolence is the 
 best preventive of suicide. Nor should we lose sight of these 
 facts in judging particular cases. Suicide is the confession 
 of a guilty life, not a healthy confession, it is true, one that 
 mark3 the beginning of a new life, but the desperate confes- 
 sion of the complete inability to begin a new life. But in so 
 far as it is a confession of the suicide's unwillingness to 
 continue his old life, it is likewise a sign that not every spark 
 of good has been extinguished in his soul. It is not the abso- 
 lutely debased who take their lives, but those who do not 
 possess the moral power to resist the pernicious impulses of 
 their own natures and the unfavorable influences of their 
 outward surroundings, and yet retain a sufficient sense of the 
 better to be unwilling to endure their unworthy lives and 
 evil deeds. The suicide of Judas Iscariot, it seems to me, 
 in a certain measure disarms our judgment of him. That 
 he was able to despair of what he had done, shows that he 
 was not an utterly wicked man. Otherwise he would have 
 behaved differently : he would have squandered his money in 
 merry-making, or he would have put it to usury, and have 
 achieved further distinction along the same lines. Instead of 
 that, he pronounced judgment upon himself, finding it impos- 
 sible to make atonement by submitting to earthly justice. 
 Although it may not have been the proper atonement, it was 
 nevertheless a kind of expiation. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 COMPASSION AND BENEVOLENCE 1 
 
 1. The sympathetic feelings and impulses form the natural 
 basis of the social virtues. Such will-impulses are called 
 sympathetic — in distinction from idiopathic impulses, which 
 originate directly in the individual — as are aroused in us by 
 transference from others, by a kind of contagion. All feel- 
 ings have the tendency, though in different degrees, to spread 
 by sympathy, as for example, pleasure and pain, fear and 
 hope, love and hate, contempt and admiration, cheerful ex- 
 uberance and earnest solemnity. The passions aroused by a 
 speech in a large popular gathering are much more intense 
 than those which arise when the same persons read or hear 
 the same speech separately ; it seems as though the feelings 
 were reflected from every feeling-centre in the meeting to 
 every other one, and the rays concentrated in each individual 
 as in a burning-glass. 
 
 Not only is the human heart sensitive to sympathetic ex- 
 citement, it likewise yearns deeply to have its feelings com- 
 municated to and reflected from other hearts. When we 
 are happy or in pain, we crave for human beings to reflect our 
 joy or sorrow ; when we love or hate, admire or contemn, we 
 strive to diffuse our feelings, and' are pained when our sur- 
 roundings remain indifferent to us. Every strong emotion 
 
 1 [Sidgwick, Bk. III., ch. IV. ; Stephen, ch. VI. ; Porter, Part II., ch. VII. ; 
 Wundt, Part I., ch. III., 4 d, 5 ; Fowler and Wilson, Part II., ch. II. ; Spencer. 
 Inductions, chs. VII., VIII. ; Ethics of Social Life, Part V., ch. I. ; Seth, Part II., 
 ch. II. ; Runze, § 64. See also chapterg on Sympathy in the standard psycho* 
 logies. — TrJ 
 
COMPASSION AND BENEVOLENCE 593 
 
 impels us to utterance ; " out of the abundance of the heart 
 the mouth speaketh." 
 
 Blood-relationship is the natural starting-point of the 
 sympathetic feelings. They manifest themselves most in- 
 tensely and directly in the relation between mother and child. 
 Originally one being, they, in a certain sense, continue to live 
 one life, though with a separate physical economy. From 
 this point sympathy extends to the members of the family, 
 tribe, people, humanity, — to all living creatures. Sounds and 
 gestures at first serve as a means of communication ; the more 
 complicated and characteristic feelings and moods are trans- 
 mitted by language and the symbols of art. 
 
 Of all feelings pain seems most capable of arousing sym- 
 pathy. Language shows this: we have a term for sympa- 
 thetic pain only, in compassion (MitleitT). No terms have 
 been coined to designate sympathetic pleasure or fear : (Mit- 
 freude, Mitfurcht, etc.). — It is doubtless true that joy is not 
 so easily transferred by sympathy. This may perhaps be ex- 
 plained as follows. Pleasure and pain have not only the 
 tendency to arouse sympathy, but also a tendency to arouse 
 antipathy : happiness produces in the surroundings that 
 peculiar form of pain which is called envy ; unhappiness, on 
 the contrary, produces malicious pleasure {Schadenfreude). 
 Everybody compares himself and his condition with that of 
 others ; and since there is no absolute standard, we measure 
 our powers, reputation, and possessions by those of our 
 fellows. In case the comparison results in our favor, we 
 experience pleasure, otherwise pain. The happiness of others, 
 therefore, has a depressing effect, their unhappiness an 
 elevating effect upon our self-esteem. 
 
 These are well-known phenomena : they are never entirely 
 wanting in man. The pessimistic philosophers love to 
 dwell upon this truly partie honteuse of human nature. In 
 the troubles of our good friends, says La Rochefoucauld, there 
 is always something that does not displease us. And with 
 
594 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 still greater justice may we assert that there is always some- 
 thing in the good fortune of our friends that does not entirely 
 please us. A man wins the first prize in a lottery ; his 
 friends congratulate him with mingled feelings of pleasure and 
 pain, especially those who have drawn the blanks. A second 
 one passes a brilliant examination ; he should beware of men- 
 tioning it, especially to his less fortunate competitors. On 
 the other hand, if he has met with a misfortune, if he has 
 fallen from his horse, or has been hooted as a speaker, or 
 has speculated and lost on the exchange, he need not let the 
 fear of paining his good friends hinder him from telling it. 
 He will have no difficulty in finding persons to pity him, 
 but — well, everybody knows how little we care for the pity 
 of our friends on such occasions. I do not mean to say that 
 intense sorrow cannot be aroused by such misfortunes, and 
 that genuine sympathy is not felt as an assuaging balsam, 
 but the balsam is too apt to be mingled with the corroding 
 poison which is called malicious joy {Schadenfreude). The 
 only satisfactory mode of expressing sympathy would perhaps 
 be to give a laughing spectator a blow in the face. We see, 
 sympathetic pleasure and envy, compassion and malicious 
 joy, are produced by the same causes. Compassion is accom- 
 panied in consciousness by an intensification of our self- 
 esteem ; it flatters our self-love. Sympathetic pleasure arises 
 in conjunction with a diminution of the self-feeling, or, 
 rather, it ought so to arise : for envy extinguishes the pleasure. 
 Compassion, on the other hand, may exist together with an 
 intensification of the feeling of power, or self-love. Genuine 
 malice of course also extinguishes pity, but a feeling of true 
 pity may easily arise in connection with the feeling of per- 
 sonal security and superiority. Hence real sympathetic pleas- 
 ure (Mitfreude) is rare, while compassion (Mitleid) is not 
 at all rare. And for this very reason the ability to sym- 
 pathize with another's joys is a much surer sign of a pure 
 and unselfish nature than any other. Goethe, who was not in 
 
COMPASSION AND BENEVOLENCE 595 
 
 the habit of praising himself, thus boasted of his lack of envy, 
 when accused of egoism : 
 
 Ich Egoist 1 — Wenn ich's nicht besser wiisste I 
 
 Der Neid, das ist der Egoiste. 
 
 Und was ich auch fur Wege geloffen, 
 
 Auf ' m Neidpfad habt ihr mich nie betroffen. 1 
 
 And to the compassionate souls who, even to this day, find 
 fault with him for not having cared enough for the sorrows 
 of others, he dedicates the following xenion : 
 
 Auf das empfindsame Volk hab' ich nie was gehalten ; es werden, 
 Kommt die Gelegenheit nur, schlechte Gesellen daraus. 2 
 
 Indeed, pity may go with all the seven sins against the 
 Holy Ghost. The Pharisee probably silently or openly added 
 to his prayer — God I thank thee that I am not as other 
 men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this pub- 
 lican, — the word of pity : Of course, I am sorry for the poor 
 devil over there ; it is his own fault, no doubt, but how easy 
 it is to make the first misstep, when one is not eternally on 
 one's guard ! All gossip is carried on in a tone of pity and 
 listened to with an attitude of pity. Many a sentimental 
 woman who has too much pity to tread upon a caterpillar, 
 will, without compunction, wound a neighbor to the quick 
 by her calumnies, or poison her husband's life with her con- 
 stant bickerings and baseness. 
 
 2. The sympathetic feelings, and especially compassion, 
 
 1 QI an egoist? I know that I am not one. Envy is an egoist. And on what- 
 ever ways I may have strayed, you have never found me on the path of envy .J 
 
 2 [I have never had any respect for the sentimentalists ; they always turn out 
 to be wicked knaves when the opportunity offers.] — In order to appreciate Goethe 
 as a man, compare his reception by the older celebrities in German literature, 
 e. g., Lessing or Klopstock, with his attitude towards the younger poets, e. q. t 
 towards Schiller, when the latter appeared upon the scene. (See Victor Hehn, 
 Gedanken uber Goethe, in the essay : Goethe und das Publikum.) Goethe was not 
 a saint, and they are not doing him a kindness who insist on making an angel 
 of him, they simply provoke the advocatus diaboli, such a one as has appeared 
 against him in the person of Father Baumgartner. In spite of all, Goethe 
 waa a good and great man. 
 
596 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 evidently have the same significance for conduct that all 
 feelings have : their object is to guide the will in the business 
 of self-preservation. Just as idiopathic pain impels the indi- 
 vidual to remove the evil or the disturbance which threatens 
 his own life, so compassion tends to determine the will to 
 remove the causes of pain from the lives of others. In com- 
 passion the solidarity of collective bodies manifests itself : the 
 collective body feels the disturbance which first attacks a 
 member as a menace to itself, and is thereby impelled to 
 react in a manner conducive to its own self-preservation. 
 
 In human life, however, feeling-impulses are never adequate 
 guides of action, but require the regulative control of reason. 
 We say of love and anger that they are blind. This is also 
 true of pity. Therefore this impulse, no less than the selfish 
 impulses, must, in order to promote welfare, be educated by 
 reason, guided by wisdom. The virtue which thus arises, the 
 general fundamental form of the social virtues, may be called 
 benevolence and defined as that habit of the will and mode 
 of conduct which tends to promote the welfare of the sur- 
 roundings by hindering disturbances and producing favorable 
 conditions of life. 
 
 In benevolence, compassion (Mit-leiden) is overshadowed 
 by well-doing, beneficence (Wohl-thun). The benevolent and 
 beneficent man prevents or alleviates the sufferings of others 
 without always having to feel compassion himself. Nay, a 
 certain power of resistance is as much a part of benevolence as 
 it is a part of courage to be able to resist idiopathic pain, or a 
 part of temperance to be able to resist the temptations of sense. 
 We do not expect a physician to suffer with the patient all 
 the pains which he witnesses or perhaps causes himself. On 
 the contrary, a certain obduracy on his part is the condition 
 of beneficent action ; his compassion would obscure the clear- 
 ness of his judgment and interfere with the steadiness of 
 his movements. It is well known that physicians do not 
 like to treat their nearest relatives because their pity in- 
 
COMPASSION AND BENEVOLENCE 597 
 
 terferes with their skill. — But not only is freedom from 
 pity needed to give the physician greater security in the prac- 
 tice of his art; it also has a directly beneficial influence. 
 The physician enters the sick-room and makes his examina- 
 tion and gives his orders with business-like serenity ; he does 
 not pity nor lament. His calmness has the most wholesome 
 effect ; some of it is communicated to the relatives and the 
 patient ; we feel as if we were in the presence of a power 
 against which the evil is powerless. On the other hand 
 consider the influence of visits from relatives and friends ! 
 Frightened by the appearance of the patient and overwhelmed 
 with pity, they break out into tears and complaints, and so 
 increase his sufferings by their compassion and excitement. 
 
 The same thing happens in other cases. A tender mother 
 doubly suffers the pains which her child feels. If the child 
 falls and hurts himself, she is overcome with pity. The 
 result is that the child now really begins to feel the pain ; he 
 does not cry out until he has been pitied, when he regards him- 
 self as an object of pity. And the permanent effect of such 
 treatment is a sort of whining nature ( Wehleidigkeit), which 
 is not a pleasant endowment for life. Another mother, who 
 loves her child just as much, bandages the wound if neces- 
 sary, diverts the child's attention from the accident ; and lo ! 
 the pain actually disappears when it is resisted. As a 
 permanent consequence, the child, in a measure, becomes 
 hardened to such things, and so receives the best possible 
 equipment for life that education can give. To love one's 
 children is natural, and neither a virtue nor an art, but to 
 educate children is a great and difficult art, which demands, 
 first of all, the ability to control one's natural tender im- 
 pulses. We must not let our children know how much we 
 love them, says an old wise maxim, which, however, does not 
 suit the sentimentalism and vanity of modern mothers. 
 
 Indeed, the same is true of every form of assistance that 
 human beings can render each other. The sure and steady 
 
598 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 hand that helps and guides always presupposes that the per- 
 son behind it lending aid is not overwhelmed by the sufferings 
 of others. In charity work, for example, blind compassion 
 results in evil : we spoil the recipients of our charity, and en- 
 courage them to make demands, and when we can no longer, 
 or are no longer willing, to satisfy these claims, we break out 
 into complaints of ingratitude. 
 
 We may therefore say : Compassion is the natural basis of 
 the social virtue of active benevolence, but it is by no means 
 a virtue itself, nor even, as Schopenhauer asserts, the absolute 
 standard of the moral worth of a man. Like every phase of 
 impulsive life, it must be educated and disciplined by reason ; 
 in the rational will it is both realized and limited, — realized in 
 so far as it attains to its end, the furtherance of human wel- 
 fare, limited in so far as it is prevented from doing harm. 
 And hence we may accept what Spinoza, agreeing with the 
 Stoics, says, that the wise man will strive to rid himself of 
 compassion, and, as far as human nature permits, to do well 
 and to rejoice (bene agere et laetari)} 
 
 Perhaps such wisdom is more common among women than 
 among men. Courage in suffering, patience, a specifically 
 feminine virtue, enables one calmly to bear first one's own 
 and then the sufferings of others. The capable woman is not 
 overwhelmed by her own pains, nor will she permit herself to 
 be overcome by the pains of others. Calmly and deliberately, 
 energetically and helpfully, she attacks the evil and conquers it. 
 
 l Ethics, IV., 50. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 JUSTICE i 
 
 We distinguished between two phases of benevolence: a 
 negative phase — not to retard welfare ; and a positive phase 
 — to promote welfare. These two phases, regarded as special 
 virtues, give us the virtues of justice and love of neighbor. 
 
 Justice, as a moral habit, is that tendency of the will and 
 mode of conduct which refrains from disturbing the lives and 
 interests of others, and, as far as possible, hinders such in- 
 terference on the part of others. This virtue springs from the 
 individual's respect for his fellows as ends in themselves and 
 as his coequals. The different spheres of interests may be 
 roughly classified as follows : body and life ; the family, or 
 the extended individual life ; property, or the totality of the 
 instruments of action ; honor, or the ideal existence ; and 
 finally freedom, or the possibility of fashioning one's life as an 
 end in itself. The law defends these different spheres, thus 
 giving rise to a corresponding number of spheres of rights, each 
 being protected by a prohibition : Thou shalt not kill, commit 
 adultery, steal, bear false witness against the honor of thy 
 neighbor, and interfere with his liberty. To violate the rights, 
 
 1 [Aristotle, Ethics, Bk. V. ; Paley, Bk. II., chs. IX. ff .; Bk. III. ; Mill, Utilita- 
 rianism, ch. V. ; Sidgwiek, Bk. III., chs. V., VI. ; Spencer, Inductions, chs. III.— 
 VI. ; Justice ; Stephen, ch. V. (V.) ; Jhering, vol. L, ch. VIII. ; Porter, Part 
 II., chs. VIII., IX., XV. ; Holland, Jurisprudence, chs. VII. ff. ; Wundt, Part I., 
 ch. III., 4, Part III., ch. IV., 5 ; Bowne, chs. VIII., X. ; Fowler and Wilson, Part 
 II., ch. III. ; Hyslop, ch. X. ; Smyth, Part II., ch. III. ; Mackenzie, ch. X. ; 
 Seth, Part II., ch. II. ; Dorner, pp. 382-395 ; Taylor, The Individual and the 
 State; Ritchie, Natural Rights; Tounies, Gemeinschaji und Ge&ellschaft, Bk. 
 III.; Runze, § 64. — Tk.] 
 
600 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 to interfere with the interests of others, is injustice. All in- 
 justice is ultimately directed against the life of the neighbor ; 
 it is an open avowal that the latter is not an end in itself, 
 having the same value as the individual's own life. The 
 general formula of the duty of justice may therefore be 
 stated as follows : Do no wrong yourself, and permit no 
 wrong to be done, so far as lies in your power ; or, expressed 
 positively : Respect and protect the right. 
 
 Let us now examine the first part of this dual formula : 
 Refrain from doing wrong — and the virtue of rectitude or 
 probity to which it gives rise and which is often regarded as 
 the whole of justice. Not to do injustice is usually considered 
 the least that morality demands. But justice, in this sense, is 
 by no means the easiest among the virtues, nay, perhaps it is 
 one of the most difficult, because it is the most humble, and 
 does not flatter our vanity by its grandeur and splendor, like 
 magnanimity, liberality, or courage. Justice enjoins limita- 
 tion of self by submission to a general rule. Man is by nature, 
 like all animals, intent upon self-preservation and self-asser- 
 tion. Every creature naturally acts according to the maxim 
 that he is the centre of the universe, that all things are means 
 for him and his purposes. This principle governs the attitude 
 of animals towards each other ; it also governs our attitude 
 towards them. We draw the final consequence of this prin- 
 ciple when we kill and devour them, thereby declaring in 
 unmistakable terms that we are the end and they the means. 
 
 The natural man's attitude towards his fellows does not dif- 
 fer from this. The child is, at the beginning of its life, naively 
 inconsiderate. It has regard only for itself, it does what 
 pleases it, without being seriously concerned about the effect 
 of its behavior upon others. Only gradually does it come to 
 understand that its action has consequences not only for 
 itself but for others. Its attention is drawn to this fact by 
 the reaction caused by its acts in others. It deprives another 
 child of its plaything ; that child becomes angry and reacts 
 
JUSTICE 601 
 
 accordingly. We may note a look of surprise on the face of 
 the first child ; only gradually, after experiencing similar 
 treatment from others, does it begin to understand the mean- 
 ing of this surprise. Its teachers, too, help it to interpret the 
 facts. So the individual gradually acquires the habit of con- 
 sidering the influence of his own conduct upon the interests of 
 others. Where the necessary experience is wanting or in- 
 adequate, we frequently find a trace of this primitive incon- 
 siderateness. An only child is in danger of remaining 
 inconsiderate, obstinate, and dogmatic for the rest of its 
 life ; it does not receive the effective training in justice which 
 brothers and sisters impart to each other. The danger is still 
 greater in the case of persons who grow up as privileged favor- 
 ites, persons who are always right. It is most difficult for 
 the children of princes and great lords to learn the lesson of 
 justice. Even after reaching the period of mature manhood, 
 they often show that they have not had the experiences in 
 their youth necessary to teach them justice in the elementary 
 form : their encroachments upon the rights of others and 
 their ill-humor have never been opposed, and so they fail to 
 discover the existence of other wills beside their own. 
 
 The real test of a just disposition is a person's attitude 
 towards enemies and opponents, personal or collective. We 
 are naturally inclined to look upon everything as right that 
 is done against an enemy ; enemies may be despised, dis- 
 graced, hated, and abused. And it is almost still more diffi- 
 cult to be just to collective enemies, party opponents, etc., 
 than to personal enemies. Injustice here assumes the form 
 of fidelity to principle, loyalty to colleagues and friends ; the 
 good cause demands that we subscribe to it unconditionally, 
 and that we prove our sincerity by inflicting all possible in- 
 jury upon our opponents. The attempt to judge without 
 prejudice and to recognize the good in the other side is cried 
 down by partisans as the beginning of apostasy. Hence 
 partisanship is the deadly foe of justice ; we find this truth 
 
602 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 corroborated in every field, in political, ecclesiastical, and 
 social, as well as in literary and scientific partisanship. For 
 this reason men of finer sensibilities are not fitted for parti- 
 sanship, and shun it like the plague. 
 
 This is one side of justice ; he is a just man who limits his 
 acts so that their consequences will not interfere with the 
 interests of others ; he is unjust who does not do so, or 
 consciously does the opposite. 
 
 The other, active, side of justice is the non-sufferance, the 
 warding off of injustice, first, of the injustice done to others, 
 then also of that done to self. Language characterizes this 
 phase of justice as the sense of justice. In a certain measure, 
 it is the easier duty. To suffer wrong inflames us ; not only 
 does the wrong which I myself suffer call forth anger and the 
 impulse to revenge, but the wrong which is inflicted upon a 
 third person also arouses in the disinterested spectator a vio- 
 lent emotion, indignation, which may be defined as disinter- 
 ested anger at the injustice suffered by another, and which 
 impels us to take the part of the injured person, and to punish 
 the evil-doer for the wrong. In the impulse of retaliation we 
 have the instinctive basis of public punishment. In the latter 
 the sympathy of the disinterested party for the victim as 
 against the offender, is systematized and made effective. In 
 punishment the community reacts against the attack made 
 upon one of its members, and defeats it. 
 
 2. The significance of justice for human conduct is shown 
 by the effects of injustice. The immediate effect of injustice 
 is that it disturbs or destroys the welfare of the person against 
 whom it is done. There are also indirect and secondary 
 effects. Injustice creates strife. The injured person seeks to 
 re-establish his interests at the expense of his opponent, and 
 to revenge himself for the injury suffered. The aggressor in 
 turn defends himself, and so a state of war arises, which has 
 the tendency to spread to all those who are related either to 
 the victim or to the aggressor by ties of friendship or common 
 
\ 
 
 JUSTICE 603 
 
 interests. — Another effect inseparable from injustice is that it 
 produces a feeling of insecurity, not only in the person who 
 suffers it, but in all those who witness it. What has happened 
 once may happen again, at any time ; what has happened to 
 one may happen to all — this is the instinctive inference forced 
 upon all by injustice and violence. Injustice therefore tends 
 to destroy the state of peace and security, and to substitute for 
 it the state of war and insecurity. 
 
 This explains the perniciousness of injustice. A condition 
 of insecurity paralyzes life and action, wherever it extends. 
 Human conduct differs from that of animals, the conduct of 
 civilized men from that of savages, in that it is connected and 
 systematic ; the animal lives in the present, man reckons 
 with the future. But arbitrary interferences on the part of 
 others render all calculations of the future illusory. Injustice 
 as a lawless element prevents all systematic activity and de- 
 liberate planning. If it can break in upon us at any moment, 
 it will be advisable to confine our actions to the present, and 
 not to sacrifice certainty to uncertainty. Injustice, therefore, 
 tends to undermine the foundations of truly human life. A 
 state of war has the same effect : it is necessarily a state of 
 insecurity for all those who actively or passively participate 
 in it. It has the further effect of consuming and paralyzing 
 the powers of the participants, and consequently to that 
 extent, hinders them from solving the problems of individual 
 and social life. 
 
 Justice is, therefore, good because it has the tendency to 
 establish and maintain a state of security, the precondition of 
 systematized, *. e., human, activity, and peace, the precondition 
 of social life. Injustice is bad, as a mode of conduct and 
 habit of the will, because it tends to destroy these foundations 
 of human welfare. 
 
 3. We can now demonstrate the teleological necessity of 
 positive right. Positive right has its place in the state. The 
 state represents, first of all, the united power of a nation. By 
 
604 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 placing itself under the protection of might, the right becomes 
 a power in the world. In law the state formulates the right 
 as the expression of its will, and invests it with its power 
 to overcome the resistance of individuals. The positive right 
 may be defined as a system of rules by which the interests 
 and functions of the individual members of the state are differ- 
 entiated from each other, and the spheres thus limited are 
 placed under the protection of the power of the state. The 
 penal right defines the limits of the spheres from the negative 
 side ; it determines which acts shall be regarded as encroach- 
 ments or violations, and therefore punished. The private right 
 determines them from the positive side ; it defines the spheres 
 — in family-rights and property-rights — within which the 
 individual may move and still enjoy the protection of the 
 state. 
 
 The object and effect of the positive right and the protection 
 of the same by compulsion and punishment is the prevention 
 of wrong, hence the establishment of a state of peace and 
 security for all the members of the community. It is the 
 business of the system of rights, on the one hand, to assist 
 the individual in regulating his conduct with respect to others' 
 spheres of action ; it saves him the trouble, or at least facil- 
 itates the process, of making difficult and complicated com- 
 putations as to what he may do without injuring the just 
 rights of others. It likewise checks his inclination to do 
 wrong, by threatening evil consequences, and so gives a cer- 
 tain steadfastness to his conduct and hinders him from in- 
 fringing upon the rights of others. On the other hand, it 
 also protects him, within his restricted sphere, against 
 encroachments on the part of others. The system of rights, 
 therefore, brings a certain degree of objective justice or 
 legality into the life and conduct of the members of the 
 legal community, and maintains it. 
 
 But why is compulsion exercised here while so many 
 objectionable and pernicious modes of conduct, like intern- 
 
JUSTICE 605 
 
 perance, dissipation, ingratitude, mendacity, do not occa- 
 sion any interference on the part of the community with the 
 individual ? This is due to the specific nature of injustice. 
 The pernicious effects of injustice directly affect the com- 
 munity and its conditions of life. Injustice, as has been 
 pointed out, has the tendency to produce a state of war 
 among the members of society. Internal war, however, is 
 the specific disease which destroys communities ; it has the 
 same effect, to use an old illustration, as the revolt of the 
 members of an organic body against each other would have. 
 A tribe or a people that suffers from this disease is, to that 
 extent, less capable of life. Other things being equal, a 
 second tribe or people is precisely so much superior to it 
 in the struggle for existence as it is less exposed to internal 
 friction, or as its arrangements for preserving internal peace 
 are more perfect and effective. This is the teleological ne- 
 cessity which has impelled every nation to develop a legal 
 order and the technical means for administering the same, 
 and which encourages it constantly to improve the system. 
 All other offences and vices are dealt with by custom, educa- 
 tion, spiritual ministration, and the personal insight of the 
 individual. By opposing injustice a nation defeats attacks 
 upon the conditions of its own existence. 
 
 The history of positive right universally follows this plan. 
 Every right is a form of protection against injustice, the 
 destroyer of peace and social life, and as such adapted to the 
 actual state, intelligence, and good will of the society pro- 
 ducing it. Blood revenge was the primitive form of resisting 
 encroachments ; the clan reacted against injury as a unit, 
 by holding the clan of the aggressor, as a unit, responsible 
 for the acts of every member thereof. This form of right 
 gradually yielded to a higher form of tribal and national 
 right. The family-feud, which grows out of blood revenge, 
 was against the interests of the people, it weakened them 
 against the external foe and disturbed peaceful intercourse 
 within. Hence it was at first regulated by "fines" 
 
606 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 [Wehrgeld] — a system in which an officer of the law as 
 the representative of the king, who is the guardian of order, 
 co-operated — and at last self-help and personal revenge 
 were entirely done away with. 
 
 4. This also explains the right of the community to com- 
 pel lawful behavior on the part of the individual by force 
 and punishment. It has a right to compel and punish 
 because it has a right to preserve itself. And this right is 
 at the same time a duty, because self-preservation is the 
 first and almost only duty of the community. 
 
 The explanation of the penal right forms the subject of 
 endless debate. 1 Here as everywhere in practical philosophy 
 we have the two opposing views which we have termed the 
 teleological and intuitional-formalistic. The latter attempts 
 to justify punishment as the immediately necessary, ethical- 
 logical consequence of the crime ; the former explains it by 
 its effects upon human welfare. 
 
 Here, too, Kant is responsible for the reaction against the 
 teleological conception. " The penal law," he says," is a cate- 
 gorical imperative." " Judicial punishment can never be in- 
 flicted merely as a means of promoting another good for the 
 criminal himself or for civil society, but must always be im- 
 posed because he has broken a law ; " — and he cries " woe " 
 upon all such as go through the serpentine windings of the 
 eudaemonistic theory. 2 And Hegel adopts the same view, 
 adding the usual statements concerning the superficiality 
 and triviality of those who employ their " understanding " 
 in these matters, which is inadequate, because the " con- 
 cept" is what we are after. He deduces punishment as 
 the logical abrogation of the violation of right: "The 
 violation of right as right is, indeed, a positive, external 
 
 1 [See in addition to the works already mentioned : Spinoza, Preface to Part 
 IV. ; Bentham, chs. XIII.-XVII. ; Maine, Ancient Law, ch. II. ; Hoffding, 
 XXXIX. ; Bowne, ch. X. ; Wundt, Part III., ch. III., 5 ; Nietzsche, Genealogie, 
 70 ff. ; Rnnze , §§ 76 ff . ; Proal, Le crime et la peine ; Criminal Statistics in 
 Oettingen, §§ 37, 38, 39, 57.— Tk.] 
 
 2 Rechtslehre, § 49. 
 
JUSTICE 607 
 
 affair, but it is naught in itself. The manifestation of its 
 nullity is the annihilation of that violation, which likewise 
 appears in external form. This brings out the reality of 
 right; its form of necessity is mediated by the abrogation 
 of its violation." Offering violence to the criminal will is 
 " the annulling of the crime, which otherwise would main- 
 tain its own validity, and the restoration of the right. " 2 
 
 It is one of the strangest psychological riddles that the 
 turbid profundity of such reflections should have been mis- 
 taken by many of Hegel's contemporaries as the solution 
 of the problem ; as though plays upon words and ambiguities, 
 like nullity and abrogation, were thoughts ! For can we affect 
 the past and make naught what has been done ? And if ab- 
 rogation and negation cannot mean this, what do they mean ? 
 That even if a thing did happen, it ought not to have 
 happened ? And are criminals being hung and beheaded, im- 
 prisoned and deported, simply in order to bring this out? — 
 But here, too, the intuitional-formalistic theory receives support 
 from common-sense. The latter, too, will answer the ques- 
 tion, Why is the criminal punished? by saying: Well, of 
 course, because it is right, and because he deserves punish- 
 ment ; what is there so remarkable in that ? So say also Kant 
 and Hegel : There is nothing remarkable in this ; punishment 
 is demanded by the categorical imperative ; punishment is the 
 logically-necessary consequence of wrong ! 
 
 It would be futile to attempt to dissuade philosophers who 
 are in love with their formula from believing that it contains 
 the answer to all the problems of the universe and of life. 
 But it will perhaps be possible to convince healthy common- 
 sense that this answer does not entirely settle the matter. 
 So the criminal is punished because he deserves punishment ? 
 Admirable, and undoubtedly true ! But would there be pun- 
 ishment if it had absolutely no effect and could have none in 
 
 1 Naturrecht, §§ 90 ff. [Translated in part by J. M. Sterrett, The Ethics of 
 
 Hegel, 1893, pp. 94 ff. — Tr.] 
 
608 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 the very nature of things ? Would thieves be lodged in jails 
 and penitentiaries if that did not prevent them from stealing, 
 either during their imprisonment or afterwards, or at least, 
 if no one else were thereby deterred from theft ? That is 
 hardly probable ; society would scarcely undertake to build 
 prisons and penitentiaries if the existence of such institu- 
 tions had absolutely no influence upon the annual number of 
 robberies and burglaries. The victim of the criminal might, 
 perhaps, still desire punishment to be inflicted, provided he 
 considered confinement in the penitentiary as an evil ; other- 
 wise, he would ha^e no interest in the matter ; the mere 
 "manifestation and abrogation of the wrong" would not 
 relieve his anger. 
 
 The " retrospective " theory of punishment, then, seems to 
 be inadequate. Punishment is inflicted because a crime has 
 been committed (quia peccatum est) ; very true, but this 
 because is not really the ground, but only the occasion of the 
 punishment. The ground is to be sought in the effect, and 
 the effect is not in the past but in the future : punishment 
 is an evil which is inflicted upon the criminal by the authori- 
 ties of the state in order that crime may not be committed 
 in the future (ne peccetur). People cover up a well because a 
 child has fallen into it, and in order that it may not happen 
 again ; they build dams because the river inundates the fields, 
 and in order that it may not happen again. If it were not for 
 the in order that, the because would not determine them to act 
 in the manner indicated. If there were no future, there would 
 be absolutely no effects and no acts ; although it may be con- 
 ceded that a tendency to do afterwards what ought to have 
 been done before, even though it can do no more good, occa- 
 sionally expresses itself in attempts at action. When the 
 maid has broken the dish, she puts the pieces together again, 
 and says, This is the way it was ! 
 
 It is encouraging to note that the science of criminal juris- 
 prudence is beginning to abandon the purely formalistic con- 
 
JUSTICE 609 
 
 ception of Speculative Philosophy, and is turning to the teleo- 
 logical view. It seems to me that the influence of Hegel with 
 his contempt for the "intelligible," i.e., the causal-teleological 
 view, was particularly bad in this field. It led to a total 
 neglect of the question concerning the effect of punishment ; 
 science, it was held, had solely to determine the right. The 
 main thing was to ascertain the number of years and days in 
 jail or prison which ought to be imposed for each particular 
 delict. No one ever inquired whether these punishments were 
 suitable means for preventing crimes. The legislator fixed 
 certain general penalties, the judge applied them to the 
 particular cases, and this settled the matter, justice was 
 satisfied, the crime expiated. The criminal was then turned 
 over to the authorities whose business it was to execute the 
 sentence. And from this quarter came the opposition to the 
 theory. It could not escape the notice of sharpsighted and 
 conscientious men that especially the short terms of imprison- 
 ment — though they might satisfy " the idea of the right " 
 and serve to " make manifest " the wrong — were by no 
 means particularly fitted to hinder crime, nay, were wholly 
 ineffective in many cases; that they did the very opposite. 
 Short terms of imprisonment, without special physical priva- 
 tions or inconveniences, hardly deter the habitual criminal, who 
 has no social position to lose; nay, he frequently seeks tem- 
 porary refuge in the penitentiary. For the accidental crimi- 
 nal, on the other hand, who violates the law in consequence of 
 poverty, opportunity, temptation, or ignorance of the law, the 
 prison often becomes a school for crime. Here, in the com- 
 pany of old and experienced criminals, he loses his reverence 
 for custom and law, he forms acquaintances who afterwards 
 cling to him and initiate him into all kinds of crimes; he 
 loses his self-respect, his civil honor, and his ability to make 
 an honest living. In this way his ability to resist crime is 
 weakened on all sides ; he begins to develop into an habitual 
 criminal 
 
610 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 The teleological theory, which was applied to the entire 
 field of jurisprudence by Jhering in his work, Der Zweck im 
 Hecht, 1 and particularly to the penal law by F. von Liszt in 
 his Lehrbuch des Strafrechts, 2 calls attention to the causes 
 of crime on the one hand, and to the efficacy of punishment 
 on the other, and will, it is to be hoped, prove more success- 
 ful in coping with crime. For we surely all agree that our 
 system of criminal jurisprudence by no means satisfies all 
 just demands. A system that enables thousands of profes- 
 sional criminals to commit the same crimes over and over 
 again, which, with the assistance of an army of police offi- 
 cers, captures them each time, grants them long and tedious 
 trials, convicting them after endless sessions and at great 
 expense, and finally imprisons them for a few months or 
 years, only to release them again at the expiration of their 
 terms, for a few months, permitting them to take up their 
 calling where they left it off, and to propagate their kind — 
 such a system, I say, can hardly be designated as a satisfac- 
 tory institution for the protection of society against crime. 3 
 And it is equally hard to understand the calmness with 
 which our criminal authorities contemplate the fact that four 
 hundred thousand persons are sentenced to prison in Prussia 
 annually ; that is, that one out of every seventy has been in 
 prison I How many of the population are not punished ? 
 
 1 The Teleology of Law. 
 
 2 Handbook of Criminal Law, 3d edition, 1888. 
 
 3 In the Feuilleton of a Berlin paper I once read the following : " A comical 
 scene may frequently be witnessed in the streets during these Christmas holidays. 
 The pickpocket is now diligently engaged in shadowing his victims, who gather 
 around the show-windows of the stores. But we may regularly notice, not far 
 from him, a man of the law, who keeps a sharp watch upon him, and catches him 
 by the collar as soon as he puts his hands into people's pockets." The writer 
 evidently intended to remind the citizen of Berlin how well his pocket was being 
 guarded : behind every pickpocket stands the detective, who is simply watching 
 his chance ! — Would the burgomaster or the aldermen of a mediaeval town have 
 regarded this scene as so comical ? Would they not rather have declared with 
 an angry oath: Such a system of having one thousand policemen watch one 
 thousand professional thieves seems to be the most flagrant madness, even 
 though there is method in it ! 
 
JUSTICE 611 
 
 Half of those who are old enough to serve time ? And what 
 influence have these conditions upon the sentiments of the 
 masses in reference to their relation to the state ? 
 
 Punishment is efficacious in many ways: it may reform 
 the criminal by bringing him to his senses and reconciling 
 him with the injured person and society ; it acts as a deter- 
 rent, — in extreme cases by eliminating the criminal, that 
 is, by killing or deporting him ; it also deters all others who 
 may show an inclination to similar crimes, for offences com- 
 mitted with impunity invite imitation, and everybody would 
 feel that he had been cheated if he did not follow suit. All 
 this is perfectly self-evident. It would be awkward, of 
 course, to regard these things as separate, independent ends 
 of punishment ; the purpose of punishment is one : to pre- 
 serve peace and security, the condition of human life. The 
 reform of the convict by education is not included in the 
 purpose of punishment as such. It can easily be combined 
 with the execution of a certain kind of punishment, namely, 
 with incarceration; it is not, however, one of the real 
 effects of punishment, but one of the effects of benevolence 
 connected with it. The care of discharged criminals be- 
 longs in the same category. 
 
 Capital punishment is a subject of especial controversy. 
 Some thinkers, following Beccaria's 1 example, have denied 
 to the state the right to deprive any one of the right to life, 
 because it cannot be assumed that any one would have con- 
 sented, upon making the state contract, to be deprived of that 
 right. And Schleiermacher holds that society should not 
 inflict upon the individual any punishment that he would not 
 inflict upon himself. 2 Kant rejects Beccaria's argument as 
 sophistry and as a perversion of justice ; he says it springs 
 from the sympathetic sentimentalism of an affected hu« 
 
 1 [De delitti e dette pene, 1764. — Te.] 
 
 2 [ Christliche Sittenlehre, p. 248. Victor Hugo is a violent opponent of capital 
 punishment. See his Le dernier jour d'un condamne'. — Tr.] 
 
612 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 manisrn. 1 Indeed, we might ask with Justus Moeser whethei 
 the state has any right to permit the professional murderer 
 to live, first, in view of the relatives of the victim, whom the 
 state has deprived of the possibility of revenge; secondly, in 
 view of those who are compelled to provide for the main- 
 tenance of the prisoner ; thirdly, in view of the future pos- 
 sible victims of his criminal impulse. Let us suppose that 
 a man makes a regular business of abducting, robbing, and 
 murdering servant girls in search of employment : there can 
 be no doubt that the people's sense of justice will be sat- 
 isfied with nothing less than the death of such a monster ; 
 they would simply regard it as an absurd outrage to keep 
 and to support him for life at public expense. I confess, 
 the fact that the Liberal party regards the abolition of capital 
 punishment as one of its chief political aims, has always 
 seemed to me to prove how little it understands the real 
 sentiments of our people. And I further confess that I do 
 not deem it impossible that the future will again make a 
 more extended use of the process of extermination. That 
 modern nations, which have for so many centuries relent- 
 lessly exterminated worthless individuals, have for a few 
 generations succeeded in discarding these methods does not 
 at all prove that such a thing is permanently possible. 
 There can hardly be a doubt that the fear of crime, which 
 was formerly kept alive in the popular consciousness by so 
 many death-sentences, is not so great to-day as it was one 
 hundred years ago. 
 
 I also call attention to the fact that compulsion is not con- 
 fined to the criminal law. We find it in civil law as well; 
 especially where the state compels the discharge of obliga- 
 tions based upon contract. Here, too, the reason for coer- 
 cion is apparently a teleological one. Two persons make a 
 contract calling for a particular service or a specific payment. 
 The obligation is not met. Why does the law compel the 
 
 1 [Rechtslehre, Hartenstein'a edition, 149 ff.j 
 
JUSTICE 613 
 
 individual to keep his contract ? Why does it not say : That 
 is a bargain which does not concern me ; why were you so 
 reckless as to trust that man or to lend him money ? — Evi- 
 dently, because it is not immaterial to the state; because it 
 has a very essential interest, not in this particular case as 
 such, it is true, but in the keeping of contracts in general. 
 Without a guarantee that contracts will be kept, there could 
 be no intercourse except in the form of exchange or cash 
 barter, and no personal service except in the form of slavery. 
 If, then, higher civilization is made possible only by a de- 
 veloped system of intercourse, the perfection of legal forms 
 and legal protection becomes a teleological necessity for 
 intercourse. 
 
 5. From this standpoint we can also understand the duty 
 of the individual to co-operate in supporting the positive 
 right and in battling against injustice. He is in duty bound 
 to resist breaches of the law, even when they do not directly 
 affect him. This duty is recognized by the state : I am com- 
 pelled to resist attacks upon the right by serving as a wit- 
 ness, juror, soldier, or official. But the individual is also 
 morally bound to protect against injustice the injured right 
 in general, even when it is not protected by the law. It is 
 the virtue of the chivalrous man to defeat by personal inter- 
 vention, or to call to account before the courts, every possible 
 form of injustice that interferes with the right, especially 
 the rights of the defenceless, either by violence, strategy, 
 or temptation. We must, of course, exercise due care in 
 this regard : for injustice and self -caused misery are fond of 
 giving themselves the air of injured innoceuce. 
 
 The absence of this virtue forms one of the most painful 
 omissions in the morality of the New Testament. To work 
 and suffer for others it recognizes as a virtue, but of the 
 battle against injustice and violence for the protection of 
 others it says almost nothing. What ought the Samaritan 
 to have done had he reached the spot a quarter of an hour 
 
614 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 earlier and had found the robbers still at work, and had 
 he seen only one way of rescuing their victim, that is, by 
 attacking and killing them ? I confess, I do not know how 
 to answer this question in the spirit of the Gospel. Moses, 
 who strangled the Egyptian, gave us an unambiguous answer 
 by his example ; does the New Testament give us the same 
 answer? It does not seem so: Peter's experience with the 
 servant Malchus seems to point to a different solution ; the 
 moral to be drawn from it is evidently this, Resist ye not 
 evil, neither that which is done to yourselves, nor that 
 which is done to others. So, too, the old Christian com- 
 munities present us with many examples of heroic suffer- 
 ing, but not with examples of chivalrous battles against the 
 oppressors and persecutors of innocence. Such a type of 
 conduct was first developed by mediaeval Christianity. 
 
 No one in our times will doubt that it is a duty to resist 
 and battle against the injustice done to others. But how 
 about the wrong inflicted upon myself? Is it a duty to offer 
 resistance to this also, and even to oppose it with force, should 
 occasion demand ? Or is the defence of one's own rights 
 merely a matter of inclination, and not a commandment of 
 justice ? The ethics of the Gospel favors the latter view ; it 
 nowhere insists that we assert our own rights, while it often 
 admonishes us not to judge, not to go to law, not to take re- 
 venge, but to forgive transgressions and to love our enemies. 
 
 There has perhaps never been a time when a community 
 calling itself Christian strictly obeyed such a command. It 
 is to be assumed that Christians have always — at least in 
 extreme cases —though perhaps with some misgivings, ap- 
 pealed to the law for protection and for the punishment of 
 evil. We know that Paul appealed to his Roman citizenship 
 for protection against violence and injustice. Now, espe- 
 cially, that Christian states have been established, the evan- 
 gelical injunction, "Love and forgive your enemy," does not 
 hinder any one from going to law and causing punishment 
 
JUSTICE 615 
 
 to be inflicted by due legal process. Is this merely a human 
 weakness, which cannot resist one of the strongest impulses, 
 the love of revenge, or does the command not hold, at least 
 not without limitation ? 
 
 There is no doubt in my mind that the latter is the case. 
 If the public measures which are taken to hinder injustice 
 are necessary for the establishment of order and security, 
 and hence make for welfare, then it will be the duty of the 
 individual to do all in his power to support them and to 
 carry them out. Whoever permits his rights to be inter- 
 fered with without making legal resistance, to that extent 
 weakens the barriers erected against injustice. Every act of 
 injustice is directed not only against me, but against the 
 entire legal system, and, if allowed to go unpunished, dimin- 
 ishes the latter's power of resistance. Good-natured or 
 cowardly compliance invites repetition and imitation; it 
 also tempts those to do wrong who would otherwise be de- 
 terred by fear ; and thereby endangers the rights of others. 
 A legal community resembles a dike-union. Duty towards 
 the community demands that even the smallest break in the 
 dike be taken notice of and stopped up. So, too, it is the 
 duty of every member to see to it that no breaches are 
 made in that part of the universal defence against the tur- 
 bulent floods of injustice which is placed under his charge, 
 that is, in his own rights. 
 
 R. von Jhering ably develops this view in his thoughtful 
 little treatise: Der Kampf urns Recht. 1 The right, he says, 
 is acquired and kept alive by struggle. To flee in this battle 
 is to abandon one's moral dignity as a legal subject, and 
 at the same time to injure one's fellow soldiers by making 
 a breach in the ranks for the enemy to enter. The strength 
 of the public legal system depends upon each individual's 
 willingness to insist upon his rights as representing the 
 universal right, and upon the universal right as represent- 
 
 1 [The Struggle for the Right.') 
 
616 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 ing his own rights, and, if need be, to fight for them. An 
 English traveller, says Jhering, remains in a town for days 
 and days to resist the exorbitant demands of a hotel-keeper 
 or coachman, and spends ten times the sum involved in the 
 dispute, in order, so it appears, to defend the rights of old 
 England. "The people laugh at him, and do not know what 
 it all means — • it would be better for them if they understood 
 him. For in the few guldens for which the man is here 
 fighting, there is, indeed, a piece of old England; at home 
 in his own country everybody understands him, and hence 
 takes good care not to overcharge him. Imagine an Austrian 
 of the same social rank and wealth in a similar situation, 
 how would he act ? If I may trust my own experiences, not 
 ten out of one hundred would follow the example of the 
 Englishman. They would dread the inconvenience arising 
 from the trouble, the notoriety, the danger of being misun- 
 derstood, which an Englishman in England need not fear 
 and which he calmly accepts abroad, — in short, they would 
 pay. But there is more in the gulden which the Englishman 
 refuses to pay, and which the Austrian pays, than we are 
 apt to believe; there is a piece of England in it, and a 
 piece of Austria, and it represents centuries of their re- 
 spective political evolution and social life." * 
 
 Yery true; the energy with which each individual in a 
 nation resists wrong, and the amount of wrong committed, 
 stand exactly in inverse proportion to each other. In free 
 nations this active side of justice, the sense of right, de- 
 velops. In nations that are not free, the individual expects 
 leniency, privileges, favors, mercy; here mendicancy, the 
 tipping-system, bribery, and corruption thrive. 
 
 6. The jurist properly emphasizes the duty to respect and 
 protect others' as well as our own rights by lawful means, 
 and even by violent means if necessary. The moralist, on 
 the other hand, will insist, with equal propriety, that this 
 
 1 §44. 
 
JUSTICE 617 
 
 duty is not absolute, that the duty to respect and protect the 
 right must be limited and supplemented by the demands 
 of equity and magnanimity. 
 
 Equity demands that we voluntarily resign claims and acts 
 to which we have an undoubted formal right, so that our own 
 interests may not be advanced at relatively greater damage to 
 those of others. This is a demand, not of the law, but of 
 morality, which, it must not be forgotten, is rooted in the 
 very nature of justice: my regard for others and their inter- 
 ests, which are just as important as my own, will hinder 
 me from exacting from others all that the law allows. To 
 insist rigorously on one's rights would be violating the very 
 spirit of justice, for justice really demands that the different 
 interests be fairly apportioned, but it cannot, on account of 
 its mechanical nature, wholly adapt itself to the individual 
 cases, and hence can realize its end only imperfectly. It 
 appeals to the fair-mindedness of the interested parties for 
 help, and now and then expressly authorizes the judge to 
 make revisions in the interests of equity. 
 
 Magnanimity is the virtue which does not requite personal 
 injuries, but overlooks them, and does not embrace the 
 opportunity for revenge, even though it present itself. 
 Christianity goes so far as to demand love of enemies : Love 
 him who sins against you, as a brother, and not only bear 
 him no grudge, but forgive him with all your heart, and 
 return good for evil. 
 
 The command of the Gospel seems difficult and almost 
 unnatural. The natural man deems it right and proper to 
 love his friends and to hate his enemies. Would it not be 
 unjust to the former if we should treat the latter in the same 
 way ? What would there be left for my friends if I were to 
 treat my enemies with pure benevolence and beneficence ? 
 And shall I endure every injury, every attack against myself 
 and my interests without exception, and do nothing but good 
 in return ? Would that not be encouraging and provoking 
 
618 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 wickedness ? Has not nature herself taught all living crea- 
 tures to resist attacks so that they may defend themselves 
 and have peace ? Certainly, we must admit it ; and resist- 
 ance and resentment, both private and public, are justifiable 
 in their proper place. But they are not in every case the 
 proper means of establishing and ensuring peace, and hence 
 the command, Resist every infraction of the law by all law- 
 ful means, cannot have absolute validity. A neighbor in- 
 sults me with a frivolous remark, or treats me unkindly. 
 Shall I summon him before court ? Shall I obtain satisfac- 
 tion by private means ? The opportunity will surely pre- 
 sent itself, owing to the closeness of our relations. What 
 would be the effect ? Would he be more careful in future ? 
 Perhaps. But another effect would surely follow: my 
 retaliation would leave a sting in him; he would consider 
 himself the affronted party : For such a trifle, on account of 
 a mere word ! he would say. He would make up his mind 
 to pay me back at the next opportunity, and to show me at 
 the same time that he was not afraid of me. The moment 
 arrives when he can play me a trick or do me a favor, protect 
 me against damage. He makes use of his chance by scorn- 
 fully reminding me of my former conduct. And now it is 
 my turn again. I simply defended my good rights before ; his 
 present treatment of me is an intentional injury: this I shall 
 not forget. And so we move our revenge back and forth, 
 intensifying it as we go, making our enmity deeper each 
 time. Here the " struggle for the right " did not bring 
 peace, as it should have done, but the bitterest, most per- 
 nicious war, sapping the strength of both of us. How differ- 
 ent it would have been, had the first act of revenge been 
 omitted, had the first act of injustice been met with com- 
 plete, free forgiveness ! Perhaps the insulting remark, 
 which inaugurated the war of revenge, might have formed 
 the starting-point of a lasting friendship. An opportunity 
 was afforded for requiting the wrong ; I did not embrace it, 
 
JUSTICE 619 
 
 but was sincere and kind, polite and obliging. He was sur- 
 prised and perplexed; he felt as though 1 were heaping 
 coals of fire upon his head, and resolved to wipe out the 
 remembrance of that first occurrence. The first act of injury 
 and forgiveness became the basis for a firm friendship be- 
 tween us; my forgiveness and his acceptance of the same 
 are guarantees of our mutual good will. Thus, to speak 
 with the Apostle, evil has been overcome with good. There is 
 no grander and more beautiful art than this; Jesus does 
 not forget it in the beatitudes : Blessed are the peacemakers. 
 
 Spinoza furnishes us with the psychological formula for 
 it: "Hatred is increased by hatred, and can, on the other 
 hand, be destroyed by love. Hatred which is completely 
 vanquished by love passes into love; and love is then 
 greater than if hatred had not preceded it. " 5 Hence " the 
 wise man (qui ex ductu rationis vivit) endeavors, so far as 
 he can, to render back love or kindness for other men's 
 hatred, anger, and contempt." And with a warmth not 
 usual to him the mathematical judge of human affairs adds : 
 " He who chooses to avenge wrongs with hatred is assuredly 
 wretched. But he who strives to conquer hatred with love, 
 fights his battle in joy and confidence ; he withstands many 
 as easily as one, and has very little need of fortune's aid. 
 Those whom he vanquishes yield joyfully, not through fail- 
 ure, but through increase of their powers. " 2 
 
 If, then, both modes of conduct are justifiable, the ques- 
 tion arises: How are we to limit the command of forgiveness 
 and the command of retaliation ? When is the former, when 
 the latter, in place ? It will not be hard to give a general 
 answer: That form of conduct is always appropriate and duti- 
 ful which in each case tends to realize the ultimate end, the 
 avoidance of further injustice and lasting peace. If to forget 
 and to forgive were the means of hindering theft and of 
 preserving the institution of property, we should undoubt- 
 
 1 Ethics, III., 43, 44. 2 Ethics, IV., 46. 
 
620 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 edly make exclusive use of this means. If retaliation and 
 punishment were the sole and surest means of making him 
 peaceful and kind who treats us impolitely, unkindly, and 
 uncivilly, we should also know what to do. The trouble is, 
 different cases require different treatment, and it will often 
 be impossible to determine with certainty what is the most 
 effective, and, hence, most appropriate, method of procedure 
 in a particular instance. It certainly cannot be indicated by 
 moral philosophy in universal propositions or categorical 
 imperatives. Only experienced moral tact, which takes into 
 account all the concrete circumstances, can discover the 
 proper course to pursue in each particular case, which, how- 
 ever, does not exclude the possibility of error. Moral phi- 
 losophy can perhaps merely indicate the general points of 
 view from which each case must be considered. We may 
 mention the following : — 
 
 (1) Forgiveness is possible when the offence is directed 
 against a particular person ; punishment is necessary when 
 the offence is directed not so much against a particular per- 
 son as against custom and law in general. Theft, for ex- 
 ample, is not a crime against the particular person as such, 
 but against the owner as such, hence, against the institution 
 of property. To overlook it is therefore less possible than to 
 overlook an insult which is aimed solely at myself, and does 
 not show a general tendency to such offences. The case is 
 different when it comes to insulting an official in the exercise 
 of his duties, — for which reason retaliation is more in place 
 here. The criminal law takes account of these facts in so far 
 as it distinguishes between delicts which are prosecuted ex 
 officio and such as are prosecuted solely upon complaint. 
 
 (2) It is a fact that we are apt to be reconciled and in- 
 clined to forgiveness by remorse. And justly so. Remorse is 
 a sign that the offence was not the expression of the offender's 
 permanent will, that it was the result of error, accident, 
 haste, or carelessness. If no attention is paid to his re* 
 
JUSTICE 621 
 
 morse, if we react by punishing him or taking revenge, a 
 revulsion of feeling is likely to ensue. His remorse vanishes, 
 he has expiated his wrong, nay, he is apt to feel that he has 
 more than expiated it, and he now has, instead of a debt to 
 pay, a claim which he will take up as soon as opportunity 
 offers. Punishment may, of course, be appropriate even in 
 cases of genuine remorse, as, for example, in education; the 
 punishment may prove the remorse, and genuine remorse may 
 even demand punishment as an expiation, in order, however, 
 at the same time to obtain forgiveness thereby. And if the 
 remorse is not deep, punishment may be necessary to 
 strengthen the memory of the will : punishment is then a 
 reminder, an admonition. — When, however, remorse is lack- 
 ing, when a conscious and stubborn will, when impudent 
 malice, commits the wrong and boasts of it and rejoices 
 in its iniquity, punishment is necessary to terrify and to 
 break the wicked will ; perhaps the nature of the will 
 may even be transformed in this way, for it is an undoubted 
 fact that there have been genuine conversions among crim- 
 inals sentenced to death. — The criminal authorities too, 
 endeavor to take these things into account, but they cannot, 
 in the very nature of things, easily adjust themselves to the 
 particular circumstances, and to this is due the inadequacy of 
 public punishment as compared with that employed in educa- 
 tion. It necessarily somewhat resembles the mechanical 
 process of nature, which does not consider the intention, but 
 merely the objective facts. Then, again, the judge, as a rule, 
 has no means of testing the genuineness of remorse. If this 
 factor were taken into consideration, the criminals would, of 
 course, all simulate remorse* as universally happens in pen- 
 itentiaries and other places where a remorseful demeanor is 
 regarded as a sign of good behavior. Nevertheless, the judge 
 is induced by a remorseful confession to assume extenuating 
 circumstances. 
 
 (3) The third item is the following : Wherever persons live 
 
622 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 together in permanent relations, as husband and wife, brother 
 and sister, inmates of the same house, relatives, neighbors, 
 etc,, the command of Jesus, not to forgive your brother 
 seven times, but seventy times seven, will be especially in 
 place. Slight collisions are always inevitable where persons 
 live close together. Whoever insists upon his rights in every 
 instance, makes life intolerable for himself and his surround- 
 ings. A certain measure of toleration is an absolute precon- 
 dition of peaceful intercourse. " Be not righteous overmuch," 
 the word of the Preacher, applies here ; that is, be careful 
 to give everyone his just dues, but do not always rigorously 
 insist upon your own rights. And also remember the ninth 
 commandment and the interpretation put upon it : Speak well 
 of thy neighbor and turn all things to good ! To good ! This 
 is excellent advice. Your brother is close and rather fond of 
 money, — say he is economical and a good manager ; he has 
 a tendency to express his views somewhat strongly and with- 
 out regard for the feelings of others, — say he is sincere and 
 loves the truth ; he is fonder of enjoyment and social pleasures 
 than you deem necessary, — say he is cheerful and light- 
 hearted. The man who cannot see the good in things, who 
 always looks at them from the worst side, who is constantly 
 finding fault, cannot live with men, and will do well to avoid 
 contact with them as much as possible. Schopenhauer un- 
 questionably acted wisely when he withdrew from the world 
 and absolutely refused to enter into close personal relations 
 with his fellows, such as, marriage, friendship, society. In 
 his exclusiveness he enjoyed a tolerable peace, which other- 
 wise would have been impossible. Dogmatic, distrustful, and 
 revengeful as he was, he would have embittered his own life 
 and that of others had he mingled with the world. 
 
 Where, however, no permanent relations exist, where men 
 come in contact with each other occasionally only, as is the 
 case in business, it will be much less objectionable for one to 
 insist upon his rights. To overlook acts of injustice and to 
 
JUSTICE 623 
 
 let them go unpunished would be apt to be misunderstood. 
 It might he regarded as a sign of ignorance or indolence, fear 
 or cowardice, and would invite repetition, perhaps on a larger 
 scale. It is well known that persons who are ashamed of 
 insisting on their rights, especially in little things, encourage 
 that tendency to fraud which is found wherever great lords 
 and rich people are in the habit of squandering their money. 
 The same may happen in social intercourse. It is at times 
 as meritorious sharply to call to account inquisitive impu- 
 dence, insolent arrogance which boasts of despising morals, as 
 it is to bring thieves and scoundrels to justice. 
 
 But we cannot regard it as a universally binding duty to 
 bring such offences to justice in every case. It is evidently 
 not only right but even necessary for one to consider his 
 own interests in such instances. The behavior of the English- 
 man mentioned above may be the result of a praiseworthy 
 habit, but this does not make it rational and dutiful in each 
 particular case. A man goes to Russia ; he is cheated by a 
 high or a low official. Is it his duty to prosecute the offender, 
 at the risk of being compelled to carry on a hopeless and 
 expensive law-suit, and of finally being sent to Siberia with- 
 out any trial whatever ? It seems to me he might well con- 
 tend that it was not his business to improve the morals of 
 the Russian officials, at least not at such a cost. The case 
 may be different for a Russian. And so it can not be my 
 duty to avenge every insult to which I am subjected. A street 
 Arab makes faces at me, or throws mud at me ; surely I may 
 pass along without turning around, and say with Epictetus, 
 That is none of my business. A reviewer says all sorts of 
 evil things against me, all of them being lies ; it is surely 
 my privilege to decide whether I shall call him to account or 
 shall console myself with Solomon's wise saying: Noli re- 
 spondere imprudenti ad imprudentiam ejus, ne similis illi 
 fias. For, indeed, the only possible answer which one can 
 give is often simply to pay no attention to the matter. At 
 
624 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 times, of course, it may be highly meritorious to inflict ex- 
 emplary punishment upon a literary highwayman, that is, in 
 so far as this will tend to protect other wayfarers, and help 
 to develop a public conscience along these lines. 
 
 7. The Principle of Rights. Right in the subjective sense 
 was characterized above as that sphere of interests which 
 a person can justly command others to respect ; wrong, as 
 an offensive encroachment upon this field. The question now 
 arises : According to what principle is the line to be drawn 
 which separates the spheres of the different members of a 
 legal community from each other ? If the actions of in- 
 dividuals were perfectly independent and did not conflict 
 with each other, if their interests were absolutely isolated 
 from each other, it would be the function of the right simply 
 to protect this relation against arbitrariness and violence. 
 But the case is different. The actions of each individual 
 cross those of others, their spheres of interests intersect. We 
 might say, with Hobbes : Originally, in a fictitious natural 
 state, every man had and insisted on his right to have every- 
 thing and to do anything he liked. Hence arose a collision 
 of interests and actions, which led to " the condition of war 
 of every one against every one." The system of rights pre- 
 vents such a state ; it limits the activity or the liberty of each 
 individual to a particular sphere, and at the same time de- 
 fends him in this against the encroachments of others. Or, 
 with Hobbes : The legal order consists in each individual's 
 resigning his right to everything (Jus in omnia), and receiv- 
 ing in return a limited and protected sphere. According to 
 what principle shall the lines be drawn between the conflict- 
 ing rights and interests ? 
 
 The principle of equality seems to suggest itself as the most 
 immediate and natural principle : Each man shall count for 
 one ; the interests of each man are as important as those of 
 every other one. This is the principle with which the advo- 
 cates of natural rights antagonized the positive and historical 
 
JUSTICE 625 
 
 system of law prevailing in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries. Starting from the hypothesis of the natural equality 
 of individuals, they demanded equal rights for all. The con- 
 clusion would be correct if the premises were true. Equality 
 of natural capacities and powers demands equality of rights 
 in perfecting and exercising them, as well as equal rights to 
 the means of their realization. 
 
 Positive law has, however, never acknowledged this prin- 
 ciple of the absolute equality of all individuals ; and even the 
 upholders of natural rights have always accepted certain 
 restrictions as self-evident. There never has been equality of 
 rights between adults and children, and it has never been de- 
 manded. Children, it is true, are recognized as having rights, 
 e. g., property-rights, but they are hindered from exercising 
 them, and so, too, their personal freedom is subjected to the 
 most decided limitations. The positive law universally shows 
 the same differences between the rights of the sexes : women 
 are restricted in the exercise of certain rights, at least married 
 women, while they are almost entirely devoid of other rights, 
 like public rights. It is true, some of the most modern 
 advocates of natural rights demand the abolition of the legal 
 inequalities between the sexes : equal rights in public and 
 private law are claimed for women. And we may undoubt- 
 edly say that our previous development has been tending 
 towards equalization. Yet the majority of persons to-day, 
 women as well as men, do not regard it as probable or desir- 
 able that the rights of men and women be made absolutely 
 equal. — Why not ? Is the vis inertice of institutions the only 
 reason ? Hardly. Nay, the inequality of rights corresponds 
 to an inequality of natural powers and natural spheres of action, 
 and so long as this exists, the inequality of rights seems to be 
 natural and necessary. To the military and political functions 
 of the man — and here we are not to think chiefly of speech- 
 making and voting — correspond certain political rights; to 
 his economic position corresponds his right to be the exter- 
 
626 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 nal economic representative of the household. Woman's most 
 important function, on the other hand, still is — however 
 great the changes of these latter days may have been — the 
 management of the home, and it will continue to be so, as 
 long as the life-conditions of man himself remain essentially 
 what they are. The rights of woman are determined by this 
 relation : it is her privilege to rule the home, a right which 
 is vouchsafed her not only by custom, but by law. 
 
 Beside the legal differences based on age and sex, the his- 
 torical legal systems always show other differences which 
 rest upon class distinctions. Freemen and slaves or serfs, 
 nobles and citizens, property holders and the propertyless 
 always had different rights. This now was the point against 
 which the upholders of natural rights directed their real 
 attacks, and here they were essentially successful in enforc- 
 ing their claim of equal rights. Ever since the great revolu- 
 tion, on the eve of the nineteenth century, which affected all 
 relations of right, there have been no real class rights in the 
 European states ; these have entirely disappeared from private 
 law, and are being gradually eliminated from public law ; a 
 few remnants, e. #., in the form of a property qualification 
 for voters or of privileges conceded to certain classes with 
 regard to certain offices, are all that is left of the old system. 
 — Why has the equality of rights prevailed here ? Surely 
 because the differences in capacity and the corresponding 
 differences of function and duty have gradually disappeared : 
 the classes themselves have been gradually dissolved and 
 with them the legal class-distinctions. Natural differences 
 still exist between men, differences in mental and moral 
 endowment and education, differences in inclination and skill, 
 but they are no longer incorporated in classes, as was largely 
 the case in former times. 
 
 This, then, would be the principle which seems, on the 
 whole, to have governed the development of positive right: 
 the spheres of rights of the different members of the legal 
 
justicp: 627 
 
 community are staked off according to the spheres of action 
 corresponding to their natures and powers. Equality of 
 rights extends as far as there is general natural equality ; 
 corresponding to the great and essential differences inherent 
 in the nature of things, we have differences in rights. 
 
 Perhaps the upholders of the theory of natural rights can 
 also adopt this principle. The most desirable thing would 
 be for each individual to exercise, with absolute freedom 
 and an unlimited control of all the means, all the functions 
 of life which lead to and are included in the perfection of 
 his natural capacities. This ideal of individual perfection 
 would at the same time be the ideal fulfilment of duty towards 
 the community : the richer and more varied the individual 
 life, the richer would be the collective life. But since such 
 absolute freedom and such unlimited rights are impossible 
 where many live together, and since it becomes necessary 
 to limit the liberty of each individual conformably with the 
 freedom of all the rest, such restrictions must be made for 
 the general good that the greatest possible amount of power 
 and action may be realized in the community. This will 
 be the case when the spheres of right are marked out 
 according to the powers and capacities of the individuals. 
 And such an arrangement could not, as it seems, be opposed 
 from the standpoint of the individual ; the apportionment 
 would be equitable. Or, if we consider the functions of the in- 
 dividuals from the standpoint of the community, as duties, we 
 can say that rights are to be apportioned according to duties. 
 
 8. Incongruity between Law and Morals. 1 If the fullest and 
 freest development and exercise of human powers and cap- 
 acities is the highest good of human life, the legal order may, 
 according to the above, be defined as a mechanism in the 
 service of the good, whose function it is to harmonize many 
 individual forces, with the least expenditure of energy, or to 
 balance many partially crossing spheres of interest, with the 
 
 1 [See also Hoffuing, XXXVII. — Tr.] 
 
628 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 least injury to those interests. The more perfectly a posi- 
 tive legal order accomplishes this result, the more closely it 
 realizes the purpose of the law, or what ethics demands and 
 expects of the law. 
 
 But the legal system can never absolutely realize this end. 
 It lies in the nature of a mechanism to act mechanically, that 
 is, according to general laws, and not according to the re- 
 quirements of a particular case. The legal system acts in 
 the same way : individual cases are decided according to 
 general rules. We may conceive of a system deciding indi- 
 vidual cases only ; we may conceive of a legal community 
 which, either as a collective body, or through some organs 
 or other, without binding itself or its judicial organs in any 
 way, finds and determines the right from case to case, by 
 free deliberation. There is in reality no such law ; every- 
 where the law has the form of universal rules ; the right of 
 the individual case is ascertained by subsuming it under one 
 of these rules. The reason for this is obvious : only when 
 there are general rules or laws, can the individual know and 
 do the right with certainty and ease, and only in this way, 
 too, can the law be protected against the arbitrariness of 
 those administering it. If the right were ascertained from 
 particular decisions only, then the individual who is in doubt 
 about the limits of his own rights and those of others, would 
 have to judge according to analogous cases — an uncertain 
 method — while the subjective notions and inclinations of 
 the judge would furnish boundless opportunities for error and 
 partiality. The safety of the law depends upon its uni- 
 formity. The legal order here resembles the natural order •, 
 a nature without uniformity, in which all events occurred 
 without rule, say according to absolute caprice, would be 
 unknowable, and practical adaptation to its workings would 
 be impossible. The uniformity of the process of nature is 
 teleologically necessary for us as acting and knowing beings ; 
 and the uniformity of law is necessary for the same reason. 
 
JUSTICE 629 
 
 But this very uniformity of nature is fatal to our purposes 
 in particular instances. All our movements presuppose 
 that there are no exceptions to the law of gravitation, and 
 their certainty depends upon the fact that our body univer- 
 sally obeys it, like everything else. At times, however, it 
 causes injury and death. Precisely the same may be said of 
 the legal order: as a rule it tends to preserve and produce 
 what is by nature right, but cases occur in which, owing to 
 its necessary mechanical operation, the moral law is violated 
 and broken by the positive law. The particular cases 
 exhibit countless individual differences, while the law it- 
 self is general, conceptual, schematic. The transition from 
 childhood to maturity is, as a matter of fact, a continuous 
 process of development, which differs for different individ- 
 uals. The law, however, determines in a rigid formula, that 
 a person is not of age until he is twenty-one years old. Even 
 if on the day before he reaches his majority the guardians, 
 against the will of the ward, take the most serious and 
 ruinous measures affecting his rights, these will have legal 
 force and will be upheld by the courts. The law protects 
 contracts which were made in legitimate business, without 
 regard to whether their provisions still conform to justice 
 or not. Owing to unforeseen circumstances, things may so 
 have changed as to cause the ruin of one of the contracting 
 parties should the contract now be carried out, perhaps with- 
 out substantially benefiting the other party. The law is not 
 concerned about that. It pitilessly orders the eviction of 
 a tenant who has unsuspectingly signed a ruinous con- 
 tract, or the eviction of a debtor who has been robbed of his 
 patrimony by a usurer who has remained within the pale 
 of the law. It proceeds on the assumption that everybody 
 always acts with a complete knowledge of the law and with 
 a full understanding of his interests, an indispensable hypoth- 
 esis which, however, as we all know, is false. 
 
 The same is true of criminal law. It embraces under 
 
630 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 the same formula two acts which are, subjectively or morally 
 considered, infinitely different from each other. Murder is 
 the intentional killing of a man with malice aforethought, and 
 is punishable with death. This definition includes the open 
 and honest killing of a dishonorable and base scoundrel who 
 has ruined the honor and happiness of my family through 
 some dastardly act, without having rendered himself amenable 
 to the criminal law^ as well as the most heinous deed of the 
 poisoner and assassin. It is true, the criminal law attempts 
 to make itself more elastic where the discrepancy is greatest, 
 in order to adapt itself to the individual case : the discre- 
 tionary powers of the judge in reference to the punishment to 
 be inflicted, the consideration of extenuating circumstances, 
 and the possibility of pardon are means to this end. But it is 
 clear that these safeguards are not sufficient to counteract 
 the errors caused by the mechanical operation of the law. 
 
 Hence it happens that the positive law at times demands 
 and does what contradicts the idea of justice in a particular 
 case : summum jus summa injuria, — an inevitable conse- 
 quence of the universality and uniformity of the law. 
 Absolute adaptation of the law to the particular instance is 
 possible only when the law appears in the form of a personal 
 will, as is the case in home education. 
 
 From this it follows that it may, under certain circum- 
 stances, be morally possible for a person to do what the law 
 does not allow. It is legally wrong for a man to dispose of a 
 thing entrusted to his care, to the detriment of the owner ; 
 such an act is punishable as a breach of faith. And yet 
 it may be morally right. In case he can avert a great 
 calamity from himself and others only by appropriating the 
 thing entrusted to him, he may perhaps do so without com- 
 punction. He may be guilty and punishable before the law, 
 but before the tribunal of conscience and morality he is with- 
 out blame. 
 
 jit is worthy of note that the law itself, in a certain sense, 
 
JUSTICE 631 
 
 recognizes the possibility of such cases, in that it exempts 
 from punishment criminal acts " when the act was committed 
 in consequence of a condition of necessity , for which the agent 
 was not responsible, and which could not have been averted in 
 any other way, and in order to save the body or life of the 
 agent or one of his family from an imminent danger." 1 
 Hence, when a man on the verge of starvation appropriates 
 and consumes what belongs to another, or when he is in 
 danger of freezing to death, and burns his neighbor's fence, 
 he is exempt from punishment. In practically defeating 
 itself the law evidently aims to avoid a conflict with morality 
 or the idea of justice. And this is right, for it would simply 
 destroy the faith in its own justice and necessity if it were to 
 treat such cases according to the formula: Whoever ap- 
 propriates anything belonging to another in violation of the 
 law, will be punished with imprisonment for theft. 
 
 Berner 2 considers the definition of the term condition of 
 necessity (^NotstanoV) in the Imperial Criminal Code too narrow. 
 He is right. If a man in serious danger of losing his entire for- 
 tune slightly encroaches upon the rights of another, say by 
 tearing down his neighbor's fence or by entering a dwelling or 
 garden against the will of the owner, in order to save his house 
 from fire or flood, it is evidently not possible to punish him for 
 destruction of property or trespass. Or let us suppose a man 
 compels an unwilling third party, by threats or force, to do 
 or leave undone a trifling act in order to save a total stranger's 
 life. It is not morally possible to condemn him for interfering 
 with the personal liberty of another. Berner thinks it would 
 be wise not to define the concept of necessity at all, but to 
 leave the matter entirely to the discretion of the judge. In 
 this respect, too, I agree with him. In order to have sufficient 
 universality the definition could hardly read otherwise than 
 as follows: In case it is possible to preserve my own or 
 
 1 Reicksstra/gesetzbuch, Imperial Criminal Code of Germany, § 54, 
 
 2 Strafrecht, § 57. 
 
632 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 others' vital interests only by doing less damage to the rights 
 of others, a condition of necessity exists, which renders the 
 infringement of others' rights exempt from punishment. It is 
 obvious that no legislature could enact such a law. Its indefi- 
 niteness would make all other laws uncertain : for how shall 
 we define a vital interest ? What a field such a definition 
 would open to the artifices of the lawyer ! If we leave the 
 matter to the judge, without tying him to a definition or con- 
 fusing him with a vague principle, we may, I believe, assume 
 that he will hit upon the right with the tact peculiar to 
 a healthy common-sense that has been sharpened by judicial 
 experience. 
 
 On the other hand, I cannot agree with Berner when he de- 
 fends the notion of an actual JVotrecht (right of necessity), 
 which the Imperial Criminal Code avoids. It may be morally 
 justifiable to do what is contrary to the juridical right, but 
 this cannot, as it seems to me, be defined juridically as right. 
 That would mean a right to violate the right. The law can 
 grant exemption from punishment only under certain circum- 
 stances. Perhaps it would be better to speak of a Notunrecht 
 (necessary unright or wrong) in analogy with the Notluge (lie 
 of necessity), a wrong which, objectively considered, is un- 
 doubtedly a wrong, but which cannot be judged and treated as a 
 wrong under the existing objective and subjective conditions. 
 
 Hence, the law itself recognizes in the notion of necessity 
 and its influence upon the legal estimate of an act, that it 
 may, owing to its logical-mechanical character, actually 
 result in doing wrong, that is, decide contrary to the idea of 
 justice. The idea of justice demands that equal interests be 
 treated as equal, unequal interests" as unequal. As a rule, 
 the law takes no account of the relative value of conflict- 
 ing interests: it simply decides according to general formal 
 rules, and is obliged to do so. But under totally abnormal 
 circumstances it goes back even to the very source of the 
 decision : wherever there is an absolute discrepancy between 
 
JUSTICE 633 
 
 tne interests involved, the larger ones take precedence over 
 the smaller ones, without regard to the formal law. Inasmuch 
 as such corrections are, and can be, made only in extreme 
 cases, it follows that the enforcement of the law must in 
 many instances result in decisions which do not satisfy the 
 idea of justice. 
 
 9. This is one incongruity between law and morality : it 
 may be morally possible to do what is legally impossible. 
 More frequent and more important is the other case : it may 
 be legally possible to do what is morally impossible ; a man 
 may be guilty of the most serious violations of the moral duty 
 of justice and yet remain strictly within the limits of the law. 
 
 The positive law defines, we may say, only a part of the 
 actual right. The mechanical nature of the legal order makes 
 such a limitation necessary. A legal system attempting 
 to enforce the complete realization of the idea of justice in the 
 acts of men would, as may readily be seen, necessarily lead 
 to a most intolerable state of insecurity and tyranny. Hence 
 the legal order confines itself to enforcing that minimum of 
 righteous acts without which human social life would not be 
 possible. It thereby, of course, leaves a wide margin for 
 injuries and the unjust assertion of individual interests at the 
 expense of those of others. It does not enforce the payment 
 of a just wage, but simply of the stipulated one ; it does not 
 punish the delivery of goods inferior to those which the con- 
 tract calls fo^, but only fraud ; it does not compel a man to 
 give to every one the honor which is due him, but merely pun- 
 ishes affronts. A general survey of all the spheres of rights 
 will bring out this discrepancy between the demands of the 
 law and the demands of morality. 
 
 The legal spheres, as we noticed before, correspond to the 
 great spheres of action or the circles of interests, for the pro- 
 tection of which the legal order exists. The first and narrow- 
 est sphere of interests is that which we may embrace under 
 the heading, body and life. Encroachments upon this domain 
 
634 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 are made by homicide, isfi urement, assault and battery, and 
 all attacks upon life and health. Protection against such 
 crimes forms an important part of all law ; in the oldest 
 legal systems it occupies the most conspicuous place. The 
 laws of the ancient Germanic races, for example, consist 
 largely in the determination of the amount of blood-money to 
 be paid for every kind of injury against body and life. If we 
 mean by encroachments upon this domain only physical 
 assaults, then the law seems to leave no room for infractions. 
 In fact, however, every hurt is directed against body and life, 
 and so boundless opportunity is offered for unpunishable 
 offences against others : such as causing them annoyance, 
 arousing their anger or grief, exploiting and defrauding them. 
 This is what the Gospel has to say in the matter : " Whoso- 
 ever hateth his brother is a murderer." 
 
 A second sphere of interests is bounded by the family, the 
 expanded individual life. Encroachments upon this domain 
 are made by adultery, abduction, substitution of children, 
 seduction, and similar crimes. The more pronounced and 
 tangible forms of such offences are reached by the criminal 
 law; the more subtle forms of disturbing the peace of the 
 home and the family, tale-bearing, intriguing, by which hus- 
 bands are estranged from their wives and parents from their 
 children, do not come within the reach of the law ; think of 
 Othello's friend, Iago ! 
 
 A third sphere of interests is defined by property, which 
 includes the sum-total of external means of self-preservation 
 and voluntary action. Encroachments upon this field are made 
 by robbery, theft, blackmail, fraud, forgery, embezzlement, 
 usury, and all such offences as come under the head of crimes 
 against property. Here again the criminal law cannot reach 
 the more subtle methods by which property is illegitimately 
 acquired at others' expense. In spite of the efforts of the 
 law to punish the offenders, the inventive genius of the 
 lower and higher criminal classes always outwits the law. 
 
JUSTICE 635 
 
 As a fourth sphere of interests may be mentioned honor, 
 or ideal self-preservation. Encroachments upon this domain 
 are made by insults, false reports, slander. In these cases, 
 much more than in the preceding ones, the criminal law can 
 reach only the more flagrant and careless, but not the more 
 subtle and shrewd violations, which are not the less injurious. 
 There are a thousand anonymous, indirect, undiscoverable 
 ways of blasting a man's reputation for which a penal formula 
 never can be found. 
 
 The fifth sphere of interests is the free exercise of volition. 
 Attacks upon the liberty of others are made by kidnapping, 
 illegal arrest, compulsion, threats. Breaches of domestic peace 
 may also be placed in this list. In the primitive legal codes 
 protection was afforded against this class of offences by 
 threatening with punishment every one who made a slave of a 
 fellow, contrary to the law. Legal slavery and serfdom no 
 longer exist among us. Yet even in our day forms of depend- 
 ence are not wanting which closely resemble actual slavery. 
 We may regard the laws which have been enacted for the pro- 
 tection of labor during the last half century as a continuation 
 of the legislation in defense of individual liberty against new 
 forms of slavery. No one enjoys freedom in the full sense of 
 the term whose life and strength are utilized merely as means 
 to others' ends. Hence, whoever uses men in this way, or 
 attempts to reduce them to such a state or to keep them in it, 
 acts contrary to the law of justice, which demands that the 
 freedom of others be respected. 
 
 Finally, we may also add a sixth sphere of interests, which is 
 closely connected with the fourth and fifth, the spiritual life, 
 which expresses itself in convictions, views, beliefs, religion, 
 morality, and habits of life. Persecutions, aspersions, open or 
 concealed signs of contempt, scornful neglect, importunate 
 attempts at conversion, are some of the forms of interfer- 
 ence with this field. The inner state which tends to such 
 forms of injustice, we are in the habit of calling intolerance. 
 
636 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 It has its natural roots partly in man's dependence and need 
 of society, the gregarious instinct, partly in his arrogance 
 and the conceited belief in his own infallibility. The majority 
 of men are sure of their ground only when their fellows 
 are going in the same direction, thinking the same thoughts. 
 Hence, they demand that everybody accommodate himself to 
 them. Deviations from the common rule are regarded as 
 disturbances and give offence, and hence all means are em- 
 ployed that seem suited either to bring the dissenter into har- 
 mony with his fellows or to remove him from view, and to 
 deter others from imitating his example. Arrogance has the 
 same effect upon the leaders of the masses. They regard it 
 as an intolerable presumption on the part of an individual to 
 refuse to follow their leadership, for does he not thereby 
 tacitly accuse the appointed authorities of error ? What would 
 happen if everybody were to dare such a thing ? An example 
 must therefore be made. The opposite habit of mind is called 
 toleration ; liberality of mind would perhaps be a more appro- 
 priate term. A liberal education shows itself in the ability 
 to understand and to recognize what is strange and different. 
 It is acquired only by frequent contact with the extraordi- 
 nary, be it personal, literary, or historical. In narrow 
 spheres the mind remains narrow ; nations, classes, scholas- 
 tic sects, religious communities, which live for themselves and 
 scarcely come in contact with the customs and opinions of 
 others, are universally conspicuous for their intolerance. 
 
 This is a field in which the law is most powerless. It can 
 reach violations only when they can be construed as libels, 
 which is not always the case. And yet such offences may 
 cause serious injury ; even mere intrusive attempts at conver- 
 sion ultimately become unbearable. The law is powerless 
 against them. Nevertheless, toleration is not a favor, but a 
 right : morally, every one has the right to demand that we do 
 not interfere with his habits, hi3 convictions, and his thoughts 
 if he is determined to adhere to them ; and it is a duty to 
 
JUSTICE 687 
 
 respect this right, provided, of course, the individual's be- 
 havior does not violate the rights of others. I have the right 
 to win over others to my ways of thinking and acting, only by 
 example and by means of persuasion, and in the latter case I 
 must respect the rights of others to their own opinions. — The 
 difficulty arises with the question : To what extent have tastes, 
 habits, assertions, opinions, of which we cannot morally 
 approve, a claim to toleration, that is, to what extent shall 
 we concede to them equal rights ? It is obvious that I have 
 not the right to censure or to express my contempt for every 
 statement which cannot be justified morally, or which does 
 violence to my moral sense or taste. And it is equally obvious 
 that I am not bound in duty to allow everything to pass with- 
 out contradiction : it may be in the highest measure justifi- 
 able to express my contempt openly. Here again no formula 
 can be given which will enable us to decide each particular 
 case. We must leave it to tact to discover what is proper 
 under these circumstances. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 LOVE OF NEIGHBOR i 
 
 1. Beside justice, the negative side of benevolence, we have 
 love of neighbor, the complementary, positive side. We may 
 define it as that habit of the will and mode of conduct 
 which assists those in want, and strives to promote the wel- 
 fare of others by active sympathy. — t is the great command- 
 ment of Christianity. In the last judgment man's worth will be 
 measured by this standard. " Then shall the King say unto 
 them on his right hand, — I was an hungred, and ye gave me 
 meat : I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink : I was a stranger, 
 and ye took me in : naked, ar> " ye clothed me : I was sick, 
 and ye visited me : I was in prison, and ye came unto me." 
 Three times more these works of mercy are enumerated, — 
 a sermon powerful in its grand simplicity. 
 
 The commandment is so simple and clear that no doubt 
 can arise as to its meaning. I meet a hungry man ; what shall 
 I do ? — Give him what you have. — Very well. Ten and a 
 hundred others come; shall I give to each ? Shall I give until 
 I have nothing left for myself ? And shall I not await their 
 coming — shall I seek them out ? I hear that my neighbor 
 is sick and in want ; I visit him, I help and console him, as 
 
 1 [Paley, Bk. III., Part II. ; Sidgwick, Bk. in., ch. IV. ; Spencer, Inductions, 
 chs. VII., VIII; Ethics of Social Life, Pts. V. VI; Porter, Part IL, chs. VII., 
 XI.-XIII. ; Hoffding, XII. a, XXXIV., XXXV. ; Wundt, Part III., ch. II., 3, 4 ; 
 ch. IV., 3, 4 ; Dorner, pp. 395-403, 605-624 ; Runze, § 79, § 60 ; Statistics, 
 Oettingen, § 36. — See also Lecky, History of European Morals, II., 85-101, and 
 references under ch. VIII. supra. — Tr.1 
 
LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 639 
 
 well as I can. Shall I go farther ? Shall I hunt up the sick 
 and the needy everywhere ? I am sure that there are always 
 hundreds of them in this city, and that they need help and 
 consolation ; shall I always be on the road from one to the 
 other ? And what is to become of my own affairs in the 
 meanwhile ? Shall I calmly neglect them and always look 
 out for others ? There are hundreds of families in the land 
 whom I might assist, by word and by deed, in bettering their 
 conditions: shall I visit all of them, shall I look for them, 
 advise them and help them ? Is this the meaning of the 
 commandment of love of neighbor? 
 
 It is easy to see that in that case I should have neither 
 time nor strength left for myself and my own business. 
 The commandment would defeat itself. If it were a duty, 
 always and under all circumstances, first to look after the 
 affairs of others, before attending to one's own, the perfect 
 fulfilment of the law by all would lead to a complete confu- 
 sion of all human things, to an absurd interchange of duties. 
 If every one would follow Jesus's advice to the rich young 
 man and " sell whatsoever he hath and give to the poor," the 
 result would be a ceaseless circulation of commodities, or 
 rather there would be no one left to buy and receive them. 
 The law taken universally destroys itself. It presupposes 
 that there are others who desire to buy and receive, regard- 
 less of the law. 
 
 This commandment must, therefore, be somewhat re- 
 stricted, or more narrowly denned, if it is to hold as a uni- 
 versal moral law. We may perhaps consider the matter from 
 the following points of view. 
 
 (1) The duty to care for the welfare of others is limited, 
 first, by the duties which grow out of ones own life. The 
 individual's first duty is to develop and exercise the capacities 
 and powers which are given him, and to make his own life 
 beautiful and good. His own individual life is the field which 
 it is his special mission to cultivate. For this work he is 
 
640 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 especially fitted by natural inclination and insight. In the 
 
 last analysis, every man knows what is good for him better 
 
 than anybody else. Care for the welfare of others should 
 
 therefore not prevent the performance of this most immediate 
 
 duty. 
 
 This principle undoubtedly governs our actual behavior and 
 
 judgment. If a rich and talented young man, alarmed by the 
 
 command of the Gospel, were to sell his small inheritance 
 
 and give to the poor, if he were to abandon his studies and 
 
 nurse the sick in their homes or in the hospitals, without 
 
 being specially qualified for such work, we should not 
 
 approve of his course. We should praise his self-sacrifice 
 
 and humility, but we should not applaud his conduct and set 
 
 it up as an example for others to follow, nay, we should 
 
 even say that he could and ought to have put his talents to 
 
 better use. Had he quietly continued his studies, had he 
 
 become an able physician, preacher, or teacher, his own life 
 
 would have been richer and more beautiful, and he could 
 
 have done more for others. And so we shall be obliged to 
 
 say : Each person does the most for himself and others when 
 
 he makes the most of himself. Raphael and Goethe benefited 
 
 humanity simply by unfolding the inborn capacities of their 
 
 natures. 
 
 Wenn die Rose selbst sich schmuckt, 
 Schmiickt sie auch den Garten. 
 
 We cannot question the validity of the universal propose 
 tion. The difficulty lies in its application to concrete condi- 
 tions. Is a particular act which I do for others compatible 
 with my own duties ? My friend is sick, I devote my entire 
 time to his cure, without hesitation. But he remains an 
 invalid ; the physicians send him to a different climate ; 
 shall I, can I, accompany him, sacrifice my education, my 
 life for him ? This cannot be decided by the general for- 
 mula of duty, but only by a consideration of the concrete cir- 
 cumstances ; it will ultimately be decided not by the reason 
 
LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 641 
 
 but by the heart. And, as a rule, we shall feel inclined to 
 applaud the man who obeys his heart more than his reason in 
 these things. We admire the heroism of a woman who 
 resolves to follow her husband into solitude, into exile, or into 
 imprisonment. We respect the sister of charity who sacri- 
 fices her life and gives up everything to nurse strangers upon 
 their sick-beds during the long weary days and nights. We 
 say it is altogether possible that such a nature develops and 
 exercises the gifts with which it is endowed, a warm heart, 
 a skilful and tender hand, a consoling courage, most perfectly 
 in such a calling, and so realizes the fullest and most beau- 
 tiful form of life possible. But — what is good for one is not 
 good for all. 
 
 (2) The duty of caring for the welfare of my neighbor must 
 be limited in another way ; I must guard against destroying 
 his independence. My act must not weaken his indepen- 
 dence ; otherwise it ceases to be beneficent, nay, it may become 
 an evil, for self-reliance is a general precondition of a 
 healthy and normal life. The object of all help is, after all, 
 to make help superfluous. The matter is self-evident when 
 it comes to systematic and permanent aid. In education we 
 have an example of the most comprehensive and deliberate 
 care for others. It is governed solely by the consideration 
 that we must train the pupil so that he can take care of 
 himself. We call a mother irrational who cannot resist her 
 child's entreaties to prepare his lessons for him, we cannot 
 praise a father who constantly undertakes to solve the prob- 
 lems for his young son which life is beginning to put to him. 
 Not to solve problems, but to put the proper problems, that 
 is the real function of the educator. In no human relation 
 has true beneficence a different function, —-it realizes its end 
 only when it succeeds in making the person self-sustaining. 
 This is especially true of all economic assistance : the 
 problem is to remove the need for help. 
 
 (3) There is finally a third restriction, or, rather, narrower 
 
 41 
 
642 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 determination, of the universal duty of love of neighbor : that 
 made necessary by our special duties toward special neighbors. 
 Every man is related to persons who have special claims 
 upon his benevolence and active sympathy, — to children and 
 parents, relatives and friends, servants and laborers, neighbors 
 and inmates of the same house. His strength and possessions 
 belong to these first of all. If any one were to give away 
 his fortune to strangers and beggars or to all kinds of chari- 
 table enterprises, and were to let the members of his own 
 household suffer want, or if a mother were to accept the 
 presidency of seven benevolent associations, and shamefully to 
 neglect her own children, we should not be very lenient in our 
 judgment of them. We should say : first duty, then the super- 
 erogatory ; first perform your particular duties and then 
 search for further problems to solve. By these special con- 
 ditions the virtue of charity or love of neighbor is confined to 
 a fixed channel, as it were, through which it flows as a per- 
 manent stream and fructifies its banks. Here, too, everybody 
 knows with some degree of certainty what is good for those 
 nearest to him, but it is much more difficult and often impos- 
 sible to tell how to help strangers. And here, too, we must 
 think of the collective bodies to which the individual belongs. 
 The community and the nation have legitimate claims upon 
 him, and their permanent charitable institutions supply him 
 with a safe channel in which to exercise his sympathy with 
 others' welfare. 
 
 The formula of the love of neighbor, Care for the welfare 
 of others, must therefore be limited and supplemented as 
 follows : In so far as this can be done without neglecting the 
 problems of your own life, without violating the special duties 
 which arise from your special relations to individuals and 
 collective bodies, and finally, without weakening the self- 
 reliance of others. 
 
 2. Common-sense, by beneficence, means above all so-called 
 almsgiving, and popular opinion is to this day somewhat in- 
 
LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 643 
 
 clined to regard almsgiving as absolutely meritorious ; hence 
 a word about it will not be out of place. 
 
 Moral philosophy cannot subscribe to this view, except to a 
 very limited extent. Promiscuous almsgiving perhaps results 
 in more evil than good. It is particularly apt to violate the 
 second of the above mentioned provisions : it has neither the 
 intention nor the effect of making the recipient economically 
 independent; only too often does it educate parasites, who 
 are a pleasure neither to themselves nor to others. We give a 
 beggar an alms. The direct effect is that the man's hunger is 
 satisfied. But another effect necessarily follows : the recip- 
 ient is taught to expect that the next time he is hungry some 
 one will feed him again. The gift will therefore encourage 
 him to believe that there is another, perhaps more successful 
 and at any rate more convenient, means of gaining a liveli- 
 hood than labor, that is, begging. If a beggar's life is not 
 a good life, then almsgiving, which promotes beggary, is not 
 beneficence. — We frequently hear people complaining of the 
 impudence of mendicants : Here comes the same young beg- 
 gar who was here yesterday ; but won't I give him a piece of 
 my mind ! — It seems to me the beggar might say : I see 
 nothing impudent in my behavior ; I was hungry yesterday and 
 you gave me money to satisfy my hunger ; conditions are pre- 
 cisely what they were yesterday ; why do you want to behave 
 differently to-day ? I am not impudent, but you are incon- 
 sistent. I trusted in your tacit declaration that you would 
 support me in case of need ; consequently I have come back, 
 and now you want to abuse me ? — I do not see what answer 
 the almsgiver could make, except this : I did not clearly see 
 what I was doing yesterday, and therefore beg your pardon 
 for having raised expectations which I cannot or will not 
 fulfil. And perhaps he might, to be thoroughly honest, say 
 to himself: When I gave the alms, nothing was really further 
 from my thoughts than the welfare of the stranger ; it was 
 simply a way of getting rid of him. Habit, convenience, or 
 
644 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 perhaps the fear of a wicked face, prompted me to put my 
 hand into my pocket. 
 
 Indeed, true charity acts differently. It tries, first of all, 
 to find out what is the cause of the trouble ; without a 
 knowledge of the causes of the distress it is absolutely impos- 
 sible to render assistance. Promiscuous almsgiving is like 
 quackery, which, without investigating the disease, prescribes 
 a cure-all. If the trouble is due to an unhappy accident, 
 causing temporary embarrassment, the philanthropist will 
 help to overcome it by word and by deed. If it is due to 
 permanent disability, he will endeavor to assist the person 
 in obtaining permanent support. If aversion to work is the 
 reason for mendicancy, he will refuse to recognize and foster 
 this branch of industry by alms. Of course, it is much easier 
 to give the beggar a nickel and to dismiss him than to take 
 an interest in him, which latter indeed may not always be 
 possible, owing to the " anonymousness " of metropolitan life. 
 But whoever cannot or will not help has no right to dabble 
 in the affairs of a fellow-man. Of late years, the authorities 
 have repeatedly prohibited the giving of alms to mendicant 
 vagabonds ; a measure which is justifiable in principle. Care- 
 less beneficence is really maleficence, a crime against the 
 beggar, whom it encourages, as well as against others, who 
 are tempted by the example to follow the same life, and 
 finally also against those who are overrun by the army of 
 tramps which owes its existence to such negligence. If the 
 flooding of a country with beggars is a plague, it is evidently 
 an offence against the welfare of the country to encourage 
 the thing. To be sure, the prohibition of mendicancy and 
 almsgiving ought simply to be the other side of organized 
 public charity, which finds work for the unemployed and 
 helps those in need. 
 
 Moreover, we must not imagine that almsgiving to beggars 
 and tramps is the only form of careless charity. There are, 
 beside these vulgar forms, also elegant forms of begging. 
 
LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 645 
 
 which are no less dangerous to welfare. How many a great 
 house scatters the germs of ruin among its clients in the 
 shape of presents, gifts, and favors! They are pampered, 
 made covetous, shameless, beggarly, envious, mendacious, thiev- 
 ish, and the consequence is their benefactors usually grow tired 
 of them, and, if possible, get rid of them by referring them 
 to some public charity. In such houses much is said of the 
 wickedness and ingratitude of the human race. The story is 
 told that Max Joseph, the first King of Bavaria, received from 
 the general treasurer one thousand guldens every morning for 
 " charity." When this sum was spent — and it did not last 
 very long, for beggars and needy persons of every rank and 
 station crowded around him as soon as he made his appear- 
 ance, — " he gave orders upon the bankers, the sinking-fund, 
 the lottery-fund, the war-economy-treasury. His mania for 
 giving was carefully nourished by those who benefited by it, 
 and he grew indignant at every measure of economy, regard- 
 ing it as an encroachment upon his rights. While money 
 was wanting for the most urgent needs, and the officials 
 had to wait for their salaries for months, the beggars lived 
 in luxury." x 
 
 This form of " charity " was evidently a perversion of the 
 duties of the royal office, a crime against the subjects from 
 whose pockets the money was taken, and against the parasites 
 whom it raised. It is a proof of the multitude's weakness 
 for show, that kings and lords of this kind enjoy their favor 
 and are loved and praised for their " goodness." There is a 
 good Italian proverb : Si buon che vol niente, so good that he 
 is good for nothing. 
 
 It can hardly be denied that Christianity has fostered this 
 kind of beneficence. Passages are not wanting in the New 
 Testament which suggest such a confusion of love of neigh- 
 bor with almsgiving, and at the same time seem to recom- 
 
 1 Perthes, Polit. Personen und Zustande zur 2kit der franzo'sischen Revolution, 
 t 3 2, 44S. 
 
646 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 mend almsgiving as promising future retribution. A passage 
 from Chrysostom, which I quote from Uhihorn's work, Die 
 Liebesthatigkeit in der alten Itirche, 1 shows this perversion 
 in a marked degree. He praises charity : " She is the queen 
 among the virtues, who swiftly raises man into the heavens, 
 and is the best mediator. Charity has mighty wings ; she 
 pierces the air, lifts herself beyond the moon, rises above the 
 beaming sun, and extends to the heights of heaven. But she 
 does not rest there; she penetrates the heavens, hastens 
 through the hosts of angels and the choir of the archangels 
 and all the higher hosts, and places herself before the throne 
 of the King himself. Learn this from the Holy Scripture, 
 which says : 6 Cornelius, thy prayer is heard, and thine alms 
 are had in remembrance in the sight of God.' This means : 
 Though you have many sins, if you have alms for your inter- 
 cessor, fear not ; they call for the payment of the debt and 
 bear the signature in their hands." In another place he com- 
 pares almsgiving to the prices at the fair : " Here we buy 
 justice cheaply, for a piece of bread, a worn-out coat, a drink 
 of cold water. So long as the fair lasts let us buy our sal- 
 vation with alms." It is plain, here the object is no longer 
 the welfare of others, but one's own good — whether in this 
 world or in the world to come is immaterial. And there can 
 be no doubt that the welfare of others cannot be promoted by 
 such charity, which is solely intent upon purchasing rewards 
 or exemption from punishment. Still, I am far from believ- 
 ing that the charity practised by the Christian church always 
 exhibited this trait of calculating speculation. Though the 
 hope of reward was apt to be mingled with it, it was not 
 often the only effective motive. And perhaps Christianity 
 did more good, on the whole, in its educative influence, than 
 harm. 
 
 A particularly deplorable form of almsgiving has been 
 developed of recent years : the charity-craze. Misfortune, 
 
 i P. 272. 
 
LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 647 
 
 poverty, and misery are made the pretexts for entertainments 
 
 of all kinds, such as concerts, theatrical performances, balls, 
 
 bazaars at which elegant and beautiful ladies bargain, play, 
 
 and flirt with elegant and rich gentlemen, all for sweet 
 
 charity's sake. We smoke, we breakfast, we gamble, we dance, 
 
 all for charity ; new-fashioned mendicant orders are founded, 
 
 with priors, decorations, and honors, — all for the sake of the 
 
 poor, of course, but at the same time we enjoy the thought of 
 
 how kind-hearted we are, which is no more than right, and 
 
 get a little pleasure for ourselves, according to the formula 
 
 in the second part of Faust : 
 
 Hoch ist der Doppelgewinn zu sch'atzen : 
 Barmherzig sein und sich zugleich ergetzen. 1 
 
 © © © 
 
 I must confess that this union of amusement and " charity " 
 seems to me an extremely sad sign of the times. This play- 
 ing with distress shows how insensitive certain social classes 
 have become to the seriousness and wretchedness of life. 
 We may say the same of many of the associations which 
 make a specialty of collecting alms. A committee is ap- 
 pointed to feed poor children ; the ladies X, Y, Z, have 
 warm hearts, and it is so interesting to belong to a com- 
 mittee, to hold meetings, and to read one's name in the news- 
 papers. A circular is issued, collectors are employed and 
 equipped with receipt-books, for much money is needed for 
 charity. And now the charity begins. Three collectors work 
 four hours each day, for the great families who are visited 
 are late risers and, besides, they do not like to be disturbed at 
 their meals. At the end of the year the books are balanced : 
 five thousand marks have been contributed by three thousand 
 subscribers ; from this sum subtract three thousand marks 
 for the collectors, printing of the report, and advertisements, 
 and you have a sum-total of two thousand marks for charity. 
 — The collectors proved a veritable plague to those who were 
 
 I 1 Lo, now ! what double gains your deed requite ! 
 Tcu show compassion, and you take delight.] 
 
648 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 appealed to. Have the poor children been benefited ? I have 
 not much faith. The sympathy of one individual for another 
 is really helpful, and the systematic help of the community 
 can at least keep the wolf from the door. On the other hand, 
 I am afraid that such collection-charity, which expects others 
 to do the contributing, like the charity-craze, never yields 
 blessings, but simply rears greedy beggars. It may serve as 
 an excuse that the metropolis destroys all other personal re- 
 lations between the rich and the poor, and yet the rich desire 
 to ease their consciences by doing something for those in 
 want, so they help in the manner indicated. 
 
 However, I am not of the opinion that societies for the 
 organized distribution of charity are not good and useful. 
 An association which combines freedom of movement with 
 order and permanency is undoubtedly an entirely suitable 
 form of charitable activity. And there are doubtless excel- 
 lent and helpful societies. Nor can we altogether disapprove 
 of the method of inducing larger circles to make financial 
 contributions. But instead of angrily and moodily throwing 
 a few nickels at every collector who presents himself, the 
 givers should make up their minds to become active mem- 
 bers of some organization, of whose usefulness they have 
 convinced themselves. If they could only take an active in- 
 terest in these enterprises, their sympathy would be really 
 helpful, and their own lives would be enriched thereby. 
 
 3. The opposite of love of neighbor is heartless selfishness, 
 which seeks its own advantage, regardless of others or even 
 at the expense of others. The intensification of it is malice, 
 which takes pleasure in the distress and sufferings of others 
 even without advantage to self. As cruelty it causes physical 
 or mental sufferings, simply in order to feed upon them. 
 
 This habit does not commonly express itself in those brutal 
 attacks upon the persons and interests of others which the 
 criminal law pursues, but in the thousand little inconsiderate, 
 malicious acts which are observed in our dailv intercourse 
 
LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 649 
 
 with men. Four or five persons are sitting in a railroad 
 coupe* ; a new traveller enters, they all stare at him with 
 angry and hateful looks, each one seeming to say : Don't 
 come near me ! No one dreams of offering him a seat, or of 
 removing his baggage ; we merely wait until the intruder 
 threatens to sit upon our things, then we grumblingly shove 
 them aside, or begin to quarrel with the man. And so these 
 people will sit together, side by side, in the narrow com- 
 partment making themselves as disagreeable to each other 
 as possible, in the meanwhile boiling over with rage. If, 
 instead, one of the passengers had politely made room for 
 the new-comer, a pleasant feeling would have been aroused 
 at once, and perhaps a friendly conversation might have been 
 begun, bringing into the tiresome railroad journey sociability 
 and good cheer. These are little things, but life is made up 
 of little things, and our moods are determined much more 
 by such countless daily trifles than by the great and unusual 
 occurrences. There are persons who are always waiting for 
 an opportunity to perform some great and heroic act of 
 charity, who even believe that they would be ready to sacri- 
 fice themselves if need be ; and in the meantime they are 
 wearing away their own lives and those of their fellowmen 
 with their petty troubles and malicious remarks. 
 
 Besides, it can hardly be doubted that the plain people 
 treat each other with much more consideration than the 
 members of so-called good society. Among the latter an 
 accidental collision soon leads to a bitter discussion ; while 
 the matter is at once passed off with a jest among the former. 
 The general inclination to take life easy is manifested in 
 intercourse by the tendency to make the life of others easy 
 and cheerful. Among the so-called educated the fear of 
 lowering one's dignity is always alive. Politeness and civility 
 are regarded as a sign of self-debasement, as a lowering of 
 one's dignity. A repellent nature says to others : Come on, 
 I am not afraid of you ! There is a kind of starched-lineu 
 
650 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 haughtiness which is always on the look-out lest some one 
 should become too familiar or presume to be somebody. Per- 
 sons may even be found, who will, with a kind of secret 
 pleasure, observe others doing what they can interpret as 
 offences against their own persons, so that they may after- 
 wards have the satisfaction of becoming angry and of holding 
 it up to them. Yes, if you ask them beforehand whether they 
 approve of a certain course or not, they will lead you astray, 
 simply that they may afterwards grumblingly and ill-humoredly 
 complain of the suffered wrong. It is arrogance which in- 
 spires such conduct ; we do not like to appear in the r6le of 
 needing considerate treatment and of asking for it ; it looks 
 more lordly and more elegant first to act indifferently and to 
 become angry afterwards. And hence haughtiness does not 
 deserve the last place among the plagues of humanity. The 
 church is right in reckoning it among the seven deadly sins. 
 
 A field in which cold-heartedness and malice are particu- 
 larly common, deserves mention here : the habit, namely, of 
 sitting in judgment upon one's neighbor. Everything that the 
 latter says or does is misconstrued and spitefully exposed to 
 the ridicule and ill-will of his fellows. An evil or a base 
 motive is always imputed to him, his prosperity is attributed to 
 evil means, his misfortune is regarded as his own doing. He 
 belongs to the Liberal party : of course he receives Jewish 
 money. He votes the Conservative ticket : why, to be sure, he 
 is fawning upon his superiors. He is successful in business, he 
 becomes rich : he is certainly a swindler, and owes his suc- 
 cess to crooked methods. He meets with literary success : all 
 those who are not so fortunate at once agree that it is because 
 he appeals to people who have no judgment ; why, of course, 
 if we desired to cater to the vulgar tastes of the public, or 
 to flatter the intellectual indolence and superficiality of the 
 reader, we could be famous too, — if we were not above such 
 things ! A girl makes a good match ; all those who were 
 striving for the same good fortune at once begin to tell how 
 
LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 651 
 
 •he encouraged the man, what means she employed to catch 
 him. — As a rule, it is envy that pronounces judgment upon 
 our dear brother and then with lynx eyes discovers the rea- 
 sons for his fault. But pure malice also suffices ; nothing in 
 this world affords the malicious man greater pleasure than 
 the sight of the stains upon the honor of his fellow. 
 
 It is this base tendency in human nature which the Gospel 
 attacks with such zeal. Even if your opinion is correct, it is 
 not your mission to sit in judgment upon your neighbor. He 
 is not accountable to you but to God, and in His sight you are 
 no less guilty than he. Hence, " Judge not that ye be not 
 judged, condemn not that ye be not condemned." 
 
 The opposite of unfeelingness is love, as Paul describes it : 
 " It suffereth long and is kind, envieth not and vaunteth not 
 itself, is not puffed up, it doth not behave itself unseemly, 
 seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, 
 rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth ; beareth 
 all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all 
 things." 
 
 The thirteenth chapter of Corinthians has been called the 
 Song of Love Qiohe Lied der Liebe). Perhaps we may more 
 properly call it the simplest description of love in its most 
 modest form, of the little workaday, homespun love of neigh- 
 bor, the love which does not vaunt itself, which does nothing 
 extraordinary and grand and sensational, which does not give 
 its body to be burned, or give its possessions to the poor, but 
 simply consists in taking and bearing the neighbor as he is, 
 which does not court favors from him but meets him every 
 day with the same and greater kindness. This is the real, 
 true love of neighbor, and when it enters a house it brings 
 happiness, not the great happiness of which people speak, 
 but the little workaday happiness, the true happiness. And 
 this love and happiness as gladly abides in modest homes as 
 in proud palaces, or much rather ; at any rate it desires to 
 dwell in modest hearts alone, not in haughty and covetous souls 
 
t>02 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 4. The significance of love of neighbor for human conduct 
 hardly needs further comment after all we have said : it 
 diminishes suffering and want, it increases welfare and 
 happiness, it unites hearts in affection and trust. 
 
 The immediate effect of active benevolence is that it 
 lightens, elevates, and promotes the life of him upon whom 
 it is bestowed. It also inspires him with courage and confi- 
 dence for the future. It at the same time fills him with 
 kindly feelings, not only towards the benefactor but towards 
 the whole world ; charity wants to be passed along, to go 
 from hand to hand, without end. Even when the helping 
 hand does not succeed in removing the misery, the bitterness 
 of the pain is assuaged by sympathy and condolence. The 
 heart that would pine away and famish in solitude and neg- 
 lect again revives, patience and hope or resignation enter the 
 soul, and make life bearable. When, on the other hand, the 
 unfortunate one is repelled and meets with harshness, it fills 
 his heart with the bitterest feelings, it ultimately hardens it, 
 making it misanthropic and wicked. 
 
 How many a criminal may trace the beginning of his 
 career to unkind, repellent treatment in misfortune ! If a 
 helping hand had been extended at the right moment, it 
 might have saved a human soul from destruction. It was not 
 offered, the first step upon the wrong path was taken and 
 drew all the others after it, until the road ended in the peni- 
 tentiary. Want and bitterness over their helplessness, in the 
 opinion of an experienced official in the criminal service, brings 
 one half of all criminals to the penitentiary. 1 " From the 
 cradle to the grave, the sun of life does not smile upon them, 
 they see only the rough side of life; So long as they can 
 remember, they have suffered this undeserved lot ; they, the 
 serfs of misery and neglect, look with envy upon their unde- 
 servedly happier fellows. And to their envy are joined feelings 
 
 1 H. von Valentini, Das Verbrechertum im Preussischen Staate 'I ^9 ) , a book 
 which contains many suggestive facts. 
 
LOYE OF NEIGHBOR 658 
 
 of hatred on account of the harshness and pride of the latter, a 
 hatred which is quite natural in view of the superciliousness 
 with which these regard them, — as though their respective 
 stations in life were the result of individual merit or individual 
 demerit." It is made easy for those reared in love on " the 
 sunny side of life " to believe in eternal love, but how shall 
 these children of the night attain to faith, hope, and love? 
 There is only one way, charitable love. Harshness will not 
 avail : it simply hardens them and makes them morose. But 
 even love cannot heal with tenderness and softness : it must 
 wield the strong rod of discipline. 
 
 Active benevolence, however, also enriches and blesses the 
 life of him who practises it. We are not made poorer by 
 giving, says an old proverb ; 1 certainly not, we are made 
 richer, if not in outward, at least in inner blessings. There is 
 no purer, no more beautiful and lasting joy than that acquired 
 by beneficence. The poorest little favor or service which you 
 unselfishly offer the stranger whom you meet upon the street, 
 has the power to yield you lasting pleasure in memory. And 
 the pleasure is the intenser and the more lasting, the more you 
 suppress your sensuous selfish inclinations in doing the deed. 
 The triumph of our selfish inclinations, on the contrary, over 
 the wishes and purposes of others always leaves a bitter 
 after-taste, the bitterer, the greater the sacrifice of others' 
 welfare at which it was bought. It has therefore been said, 
 not unjustly, that the straight way to one's own happiness is to 
 work for the happiness of others. A benevolent heart that is 
 free from envy is the best endowment even so far as one's in- 
 dividual happiness is concerned. The pleasure which it arouses 
 in its surroundings is reflected back upon it, and calls forth 
 sympathetic emotions. Perhaps, the only time you share in 
 the happiness of others, wholly without envy, is when you have 
 
 1 [Compare the verse in Proverbs, XL, 24: "There is that scattereth and yet 
 increaseth ; and there is that withholdeth more than ia meet, bnt it tendeth to 
 "overtv." " The liberal #oul shall be made fat." — T*.1 
 
654 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIEb 
 
 helped to make it. Benevolence wins confidence and affec- 
 tion ; there is no commodity which bears greater interest and 
 makes one so happy as this, and it may be acquired anew 
 every day. And do not believe that you must be a rich man 
 or a great lord in order to do good. No one is too poor or too 
 weak to do good ; the kind word, the little favor, is a hun- 
 dred times more desirable and not rarely infinitely more 
 valuable than great favors or rich gifts. No man need be 
 deprived of the blessing and pleasure of doing good. When 
 you feel utterly miserable and in desperate straits, I once 
 heard a preacher say, ask yourself whether there is not a 
 single person in the world whom you can make happy. 
 
 And the reverse is also true. There is no surer way to 
 unhappiness than a selfish heart. Intent solely upon his 
 own happiness or what his momentary desires picture to him 
 as such, the egoist sees nothing but rivals around him who 
 are making for the same goal and endeavoring to outstrip 
 him. In his breathless haste he is constantly goaded by 
 fear and hatred to exert his utmost efforts. And notwith- 
 standing all this, some one outstrips him, and now envy 
 is tearing his vitals, the bitterest of all feelings, the grief 
 aroused by the success of others, poisoned by the pain of 
 his own defeat. Contentment can never find a place in 
 a man of pronounced selfishness : envy, hatred, and fear 
 constantly harrow his soul and never give him peace or 
 let him enjoy what he has achieved. — In addition to this, 
 selfishness arouses distrust and aversion in the surround- 
 ings, feelings which manifest themselves in unkind deeds 
 and malicious joy. Let the tyrant attempt to deceive him- 
 self with the saying, I care not whether they hate me so 
 long as they fear me : — the day will come when the hatred 
 will triumph in spite of the fear. 
 
 Therefore : benevolence brings peace and joy ; selfishness 
 arouses enmity and unhappiness; love is life; selfishness, 
 death. 
 
LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 655 
 
 5. Let me say a word about gratitude. Thankfulness is 
 the feeling aroused in a healthy soul by benevolence and 
 beneficence ; the permanent state is devotion or piety. Grati- 
 tude naturally tends to encourage benevolence, while in- 
 gratitude discourages it : it is the declaration, so to speak, 
 that assistance and good will have been wasted upon the 
 recipient, for otherwise how could he fail joyfully and grate- 
 fully to acknowledge the kindness ? Wasted also so far as 
 the benefactor is concerned : frequent disappointments of this 
 kind can change a philanthropist into a misanthrope. 
 
 The complaint of the ingratitude of man is a common 
 theme of pessimistic eloquence. And we shall have to con- 
 fess that human nature, in general, has a better memory 
 for injuries than for benefits. The psychological explana- 
 tion is that gratitude does not flatter our vanity like re- 
 venge. Gratitude seems to express inferiority ; revenge, on 
 the contrary, is so sweet because it is connected with an 
 intensification of self-love. I was down when he wounded me 
 and defeated me ; now I have shown him what I can do. 
 When gratitude has the same effect, when it can show itself 
 by retaliation, we may count upon it much more readily than 
 when it can be expressed only by devotion. But this re- 
 lation is often obscured by feigned gratitude, which is ready 
 with words, but not with deeds. La Rochefoucauld's remark 
 applies to feigned gratitude : " Gratitude is mostly nothing 
 but the declaration of a man's willingness to accept further 
 benefits." 
 
 Besides, we might also offer as a defense of human nature 
 against the charge of ingratitude the fact that pure and un- 
 selfish benevolence, benevolence which is rational and really 
 beneficent, is not very common either. Perhaps ingratitude 
 is just as common as selfish and irrational " beneficence." 
 When the apish love of sentimental mothers reaps ingrati- 
 tude, it is a just retribution for spoiling the child ; they 
 deserve no other reward, for what they sought was the satis- 
 
656 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 faction of their own impulses. If an extravagant and importu- 
 nate patron is forsaken as soon as he has nothing more to 
 give, what else does he deserve ? He has as much right to 
 complain of ingratitude, as Rousseau delicately puts it, as a 
 fisherman has of accusing the fish of ingratitude for hav- 
 ing devoured the bait and not having swallowed the hook. 
 For this reason, too, it is always absurd for nations to accuse 
 each other of ingratitude. 
 
 Perhaps, then, we may say that sincere gratitude is just 
 as common as genuine benevolence. Truly unselfish benevo- 
 lence, which is not working for gratitude, will readily receive 
 gratitude. This is particularly apparent in all permanent 
 relations that are founded upon benevolence : the immediate 
 natural effect of true and rational beneficence is affectionate 
 piety. Parents who have trained their children to be honest, 
 able, and upright men, will have no reason to complain of 
 ingratitude. Teachers who faithfully fulfil their mission to 
 develop human souls will not fail to arouse affectionate 
 reverence in their pupils. A government that remains true 
 to its high mission to administer justice upon earth may 
 count upon the obedience and the loyalty of its subjects. 
 
 6. Benevolence is chiefly concerned with the relation of 
 the individual to the individual. It appears in a new form 
 in affection for and devotion to collective bodies. Let me add 
 a few remarks in reference to this phase of it. 
 
 Feelings of good will (evvoia) for collective bodies are mani- 
 fested in three fundamental forms — aside from the family 
 union, where the feeling of affection is still essentially an 
 individual affair, — as love of home, love of country, and love 
 of humanity. 
 
 The tie that binds us to these collective bodies is woven 
 of many threads. We discover in it, first, feelings of affec- 
 tion and piety for particular persons ; these are transferred 
 from the individuals to the communities of which the latter 
 are members and representatives. Our parents and ances- 
 
LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 657 
 
 tors, our brothers and sisters and playmates, our friends and 
 our neighbors, attach us in gratitude and love to our homes 
 and the home-folks. The memories of our joys and sorrows, 
 of the games and dreams of our childhood, the hopes and 
 longings of our youth, are interwoven with the native heath 
 and the native skies ; the home customs are inseparable from 
 the home-country. Thus the heart is bound with a thousand 
 threads to the home ; the farther away it is in space and 
 time, the nearer it is to the heart, the more longingly our 
 thoughts turn back to it. Through the home we are united 
 with the people and the fatherland ; the community of spirit- 
 ual life, as it is immediately expressed in language, the com- 
 munity of historical life, the common reverence of the heroes 
 and leaders of the people in war and victory as well as in 
 the works of peace, bind us together in common feelings, 
 thoughts, and beliefs. The life of the people is the soil on 
 which the individual life grows ; from it the latter absorbs 
 whatever of life and strength, mental and moral excellence 
 it possesses. Hence the individual is bound to his country 
 by ties of gratitude, reverence, love and affection. To these 
 are added pride ; a common honor binds the individual to his 
 home and his people; it even continues where the bond of 
 love has been severed. The exile who leaves his home full 
 of anger and hatred discovers in strange lands that his heart 
 cannot forget his native heath. In foreign parts he learns 
 to appreciate the value of his home, which forms an inalien- 
 able endowment of his soul. The respect for his own people 
 comes back to him, and prepares the soil for new feelings 
 of attachment and love. The home and the people, finally, 
 also unite the individual to humanity. The nation with 
 its historical life appropriates the great spiritual goods of 
 humanity, assimilating them in its own peculiar way, and 
 each member of the people participates in the life of human- 
 ity, and thankfully acknowledges his membership in the great 
 kingdom of spirits and of God upon earth. 
 
658 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 We are accustomed to regard our relations to our own peo- 
 ple as the most important of these relations, and this is most 
 likely the truth. We call the subjective relation of the 
 individual to his people patriotism, and this is at present 
 reckoned among the highest virtues of man. The word is 
 not jet old, and it is worthy of note that it is of foreign 
 extraction. It was borrowed from the French during the last 
 century, a sign that the thing itself is not old and not of 
 native origin. If I am not mistaken, the word patriot did not 
 come into general use until the French revolution. The 
 Jacobins called themselves patriots in distinction from the 
 Royalists. A patriot was one who endeavored to make 
 the state an affair of the " people " or to make the people the 
 subjects of the state, in distinction from those who regarded 
 the state as belonging to the dynasty. The word patriotism, 
 therefore, to this day, has especial reference to the state. It 
 is used to characterize the proper attitude of the individual 
 not so much to the people as to the state. Political ortho- 
 doxy is always prone to claim patriotism for itself alone and 
 to deny it to its opponents. The Jacobins monopolized the 
 name patriot in revolutionary France, as did the advocates of 
 absolutism in Prussia during the fifties. 
 
 It is plain that the relation of the individual to his people 
 is somewhat one-sidedly defined by this term, not to speak 
 of its misuse by parties. A man may be deeply attached to 
 his people, he may love it and live for it without exactly 
 living for the state. Nay, a certain indifference to and even 
 estrangement from the state and politics may go together 
 with a deep feeling of affection for the people and all that 
 concerns it. Goethe was certainly a sincere child of his 
 people, and was devotedly attached to everything German ; 
 and Luther was a thorough German. Nevertheless, we should 
 hardly call these men patriots : it was not the state for which 
 they lived, which they loved, but the people. Indeed, we are 
 forced to say : We cannot love the state as such, we can only 
 
LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 659 
 
 love a being ; the state, however, is not a being, but an institu- 
 tion, a function. A people is a being that we can love ; the 
 state we may esteem, respect, be proud of, but we cannot 
 love it. 
 
 This one-sided accentuation of the individual's relation 
 to the state, moreover, apparently depends upon the con- 
 dition of our times. The life of the European nations is 
 governed by the ideal of nationality, that is, the desire to 
 construct national states. For three generations passionate 
 attempts have been made to realize this ideal. I am cer- 
 tainly far from wishing to deny or to lessen the value of 
 these aspirations. The state is the natural form of a 
 nation's existence. Without the state it is in danger of 
 losing even its nationality, and hence no individual should 
 be indifferent to the state as such. But the one-sided 
 conception of the relation of the individual to his people 
 prepares the way for certain abuses which were hardly 
 known to former ages. Patriotism is now frequently used 
 both as an advertisement for party fanaticism and as a cloak 
 for chauvinism. National arrogance and hatred of foreigners 
 hide behind its name, and abuse every one who does not 
 agree with them. When it comes to French or Bohemian 
 patriotism we have no trouble in recognizing the ugliness 
 and absurdity of the thing ; but it is no more becoming to us 
 Germans than to other nations. If patriotism continues to 
 develop in this direction, it will become a morbid degenera- 
 tion and a serious menace to the life of the European nations. 
 If the instincts of those nations whose history and geographi- 
 cal position make it advisable for them to live together in 
 peace, continue, instead, in the direction of hatred and de- 
 struction, they will, to speak with the Apostle, devour one 
 another. Do not say that it is a necessity for the particular 
 nation to cherish such " patriotic " feelings in view of its 
 hostile neighbors. Are national pride, hatred, and contempt 
 for neighboring nations, if not virtues, at least useful quali* 
 
660 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 ties in the struggle for existence ? I think not. Hate impels 
 men to seek quarrels, and pride turns their heads. But pride 
 goes before the fall: this is as true of nations as of indi- 
 viduals. Now, whoever does not believe that it is desirable 
 for a nation to hate and be hostile to its neighbors, cannot 
 regard such a disposition as a desirable endowment. A 
 people must have a feeling of self-respect ; it cannot live with- 
 out it. But there is a calm and firm self-reliance, which 
 understands and respects what is foreign and yet is wholly 
 conscious of its own value, which desires to be and to remain 
 what it is, and does not bow down before the foreign either 
 in imitation or in consequence of force. Such a healthy 
 feeling of self-respect is wholly compatible with respect for 
 and justice to foreigners, in the case of individuals as well 
 as nations. Nay, arrogance and hatred are really always 
 the signs of an irritable, diseased self-consciousness ; that 
 is, one that has no confidence in itself. 
 
 The Germans used to pride themselves on their readiness to 
 recognize and their ability to understand the spiritual life of 
 foreigners. We have often and justly boasted that no nation 
 has equalled us in assimilating the literature and poetry of 
 other nations, and that none therefore has participated in 
 the history of the past centuries in so universal a spirit as 
 we. Freedom from selfish, arrogant, vain, and narrow-minded 
 self-conceit, which the flatterers of popular passion call pa- 
 triotism, has enabled the German people to do this. Have 
 we still the right to boast of such freedom ? One thing we 
 may say : Thus far the German people, or at least their 
 political leaders, have borne the honors of their new position 
 of power among the European nations with great and unusual 
 modesty. But perhaps there is ground for adding-. The 
 German nation has reason to be on its guard, that it may 
 not forfeit this mental freedom. 
 
 The question concerning the function of education and par- 
 ticularly of the school, in arousing patriotism, has been much 
 
LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 661 
 
 discussed. The main thing, in my opinion, is to guard love 
 of country against degenerating into a false patriotism. Love 
 and affection for one's own people and its great leaders in war 
 and peace is a natural feeling, which arises spontaneously in 
 the healthy mind reared under healthy conditions. Why 
 should not a person borne and reared by a German mother, 
 taught by German teachers, nurtured by German poets, be 
 German in his feelings and thoughts ? And why should he 
 not lovingly and faithfully cling to his people ? And why 
 should he not be proud of its virtues and achievements ? 
 But respect for and justice to the foreign do not arise of their 
 own accord. On the contrary, contempt and hatred are the 
 natural feelings here. To suffer and understand the foreign 
 is culture. It is a beautiful mission for our higher schools to 
 offer such culture. The masses of the people hardly see beyond 
 the boundaries of their own nation ; in war only do they come 
 into closer contact with the foreign. The gymnasium in its 
 old and in its new form makes the acquisition of foreign lan- 
 guages the chief factor in its instruction. This is to enable the 
 future governors and leaders of the people to understand and 
 to preserve the historical connections of their own race. Such 
 instruction assumes that the spiritual life of our people is not 
 isolated and cannot thrive in isolation, — that our people is a 
 member of the European family of nations, which contains 
 other members of equal worth, by which its own life is sup- 
 plemented and enriched. The ultimate goal of a humanistic 
 education would be to enable the individual to participate 
 more freely in the spiritual life of his own people, by teaching 
 him to understand human life in its historical unity. That 
 would be humanistic education in the highest sense of the 
 term ; in it the love of country and appreciation of humanity 
 would be fused. 
 
 If the propagation of such humanistic culture were to 
 weaken the feelings of enmity pervading the leading classes 
 among the European nations, if it would in a measure prepare 
 
662 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 the way for the " eternal peace " which the eighteenth century 
 foretold, and which seems to be so infinitely remote to the 
 nineteenth century, it would be no small gain. The European 
 nations will have to accustom themselves to the thought that, 
 inasmuch as providence has decreed that they must live to- 
 gether, it will be best for them to settle their differences 
 otherwise than by war. The spirit of brotherly love already 
 prevails among them to such an extent that none of the great 
 civilized nations would be willing to see any of the others 
 annihilated, or to bring about such a result itself. Wars of 
 extermination are no longer carried on among them ; quarrels 
 are settled by forcible means at present, merely because a 
 new and different method has not yet been discovered. 
 
 It is to be hoped that the future will bring back enough of 
 the humane cosmopolitanism of earlier times to restrict and 
 supplement patriotism. It is also to be hoped that it will 
 give back to us some of our old love of home. This, too, has 
 been somewhat stifled by the present evolution of state and 
 national patriotism. " Local patriotism," like cosmopolitan- 
 ism, has for a long time been an object of contempt and 
 abuse. We can understand why this is so. Germany was 
 formerly split up into a lot of little states, until the establish- 
 ment of a German united state became a necessity in order to 
 enable the German people to act as a political subject among 
 other nations, after having for centuries been nothing but a 
 political object. But now that our legitimate and passionate 
 yearning for political unity has been satisfied, let us hope that 
 our people's deeply rooted love of home will again assert itself. 
 It is evidently not desirable that we interest ourselves and 
 participate solely in the public affairs of the Empire, or, what 
 is worse, that we waste our efforts in political discussions and 
 patriotic manifestations. The sphere of political life, in which 
 the individual can find regular and fruitful employment, is 
 for most persons circumscribed by the communities in which 
 they live. The community is the proper place for the most 
 
LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 663 
 
 essential functions of collective life ; the school, the church, 
 charitable institutions, public enterprises of all kinds, offer 
 the public-spirited man ample opportunity for exercising his 
 capacities. Here even the plain man of the people can labor 
 freely and fruitfully for the public weal, whereas in the natu- 
 ral course of events he can hardly do anything for the state 
 at large except what he m commanded to do. 
 
CHAPTER XT 
 
 VERACITY l 
 
 1. Veracity may be regarded as a form of benevolence ; 
 it is benevolence manifested in the communication of 
 thoughts. 
 
 We may, as in the case of benevolence, distinguish two 
 phases of veracity : a negative side and a positive side. The 
 former, corresponding to justice, is expressed by the formula 
 of duty : Thou shalt not lie ; the latter, corresponding to love 
 of neighbor, is expressed by the formula of duty : Serve thy 
 neighbor with the truth. 
 
 Let us first discuss the negative side. 
 
 To lie, as we are accustomed to define it, means willingly 
 and wittingly to tell an untruth in order to deceive others. 
 Perhaps it will not be unnecessary to make the definition a 
 little narrower by taking account of the fact that falsehood 
 sometimes shelters itself behind formal excuses. In the first 
 place, of course, words, be they spoken or written, are not 
 essential to falsehood. We can lie without words, by acts 
 and gestures, or even by keeping silent. An absent one is 
 slandered in your presence ; you know that what is said is not 
 true, but you have not the courage to contradict it ; it might 
 cause you to be disliked or to be evilly spoken of, so you are 
 
 1 [Sidgwick, Bk. III., ch. VII. ; Stephen, ch.V. (IV.); Jhering, II., pp. 578 
 ff. ; Porter, Part II., ch. X.; Hoffding, XII. b; Spencer, Inductions, ch. IX.; Smyth, 
 Part II., ch. III.; Dorner, 387-393 ; Runze, §§ 69 ff. — Kant, fiber ein vermeinU 
 liches Recht aus Menschenliebe zu liigen, 1797; Metaphysik der Sitten (Harten- 
 stein), VII., 234-241 ; Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und BOse ; Nordan, Convert 
 tional Lies ; J. Morley, On Compromise. — Tr.1 
 
VERACITY 665 
 
 silent, or smile knowingly. That is lying. Or you wish an 
 evil report concerning a third party to be circulated, but you 
 are not willing to shoulder the responsibility, and so you 
 begin : " Have you heard what is being said of So-and-so ? " 
 The newspapers, as well as gossiping women, are in the habit 
 of lying in this way : " It is said . . . ; " "In circles which 
 are usually well informed it is rumored. . . ." To be sure ; 
 how many things are there not rumored ? 
 
 Equivocation is another favorite trick of the liar. L. 
 Schmidt a gives a few examples from Greek life. The 
 Locrians made a compact with the Siculians, and swore that 
 they would keep it so long as they trod the same earth and 
 carried their heads upon their shoulders. Previously, how- 
 ever, they had put earth into their shoes, and had placed 
 garlic heads upon their shoulders under their garments. 
 
 Another favorite method of procedure, developed to an art 
 by politicians and historians, is to let the facts themselves 
 lie. In discussing one side of a question, an historian 
 chooses the most venomous speeches and deeds of its ex- 
 treme supporters, and the criticisms and self-reproaches of 
 the moderate wing ; in presenting the other side he selects 
 the most satisfactory tenets, the most commendable or 
 tolerable acts of its friends. Thus by skilfully selecting 
 and arranging we can make anything out of everything. 
 This, too, is the method of the reviewer who does not like a 
 book ; he tears out a handful of phrases or sentences, sur- 
 rounds them abundantly with quotation marks, occasionally 
 inserts a word or two, and places the stuffed monster before 
 the eyes of the reader, thereby arousing his righteous in- 
 dignation. There is no absurdity that cannot be drawn from 
 a book in this way. A particularly favorite trick of recent 
 years is to lie by arranging the figures. Figures never lie, it 
 is said. This is not true ; they will prove whatever is expected 
 of them. A series of figures is given : " Since the year 1872, 
 
 1 Etkik der Griechen, II., 5. 
 
566 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 when such and such an official took charge of the school 
 system, the number of youthful criminals has increased in the 
 
 following progression . These figures are suggestive ! " 
 
 Of course, says the harmless reader to himself, who is not 
 trained in the art of rhetoric, and for him alone leading 
 articles are written, this is the result of such a mode of 
 government. 
 
 All these things then come under the head of falsehood : To 
 lie means to influence others to accept views which you do 
 not regard as true yourself, by means of speech or silence, 
 by simulation or dissimulation, and by the selection and 
 arrangement of facts. 
 
 2. Why is lying wrong ? Intuitional ethics answers with 
 common sense : Because it is inherently wrong and disgrace- 
 ful. Kant reckons veracity among the duties to self; he 
 regards falsehood as the abandonment of one's dignity as 
 a man, and places it on a level with suicide : as the latter 
 destroys the physical life, so the former destroys moral life. 
 
 This view is well fitted for the practical-rhetorical treat- 
 ment of the subject. Indeed, Kant is often an admirable 
 moral preacher. But it is the business of moral philosophy 
 to discover the objective ground of morality, and this we 
 shall again have to seek in the effects which falsehood natur- 
 ally tends to have upon the conduct of human life. They are 
 not hard to find. Falsehood directly injures the deceived 
 party in so far as false ideas lead to false acts. As a rule, 
 this is the purpose of the lie : the deceiver, the flatterer, the 
 slanderer, wishes to gain some advantage over another by 
 deception. Thus falsehood is a means* of injustice, and there- 
 fore shares in the judgment pronounced upon the latter. 
 But falsehood has a specific effect besides. So far as it can, 
 it destroys faith and confidence among men, and consequently 
 undermines human social life, the foundation of all real human, 
 of all mental-historical life. And this explains its particular 
 reprehensibleness. We may illustrate the influence of false- 
 
VERACITY 667 
 
 hood by counterfeiting. The counterfeiter damages not only 
 the individual upon whom he palms off the spurious coin and 
 who cannot pass it; he also injures society, by destroying 
 public confidence in all money : the existence of spurious coin 
 brings the good money into disrepute. Should spurious coins 
 become so numerous as to make it necessary to test every 
 piece before accepting it, this would be equivalent to the 
 abolition of money as such, for its purpose is to relieve the 
 individual of the necessity of testing its value. Lying has the 
 same effect. It falsifies the intellectual medium of exchange, 
 so to speak. Lies invalidate the truth, and the outcome is 
 universal distrust and isolation. The parties immediately 
 concerned are directly affected. The deceived person first 
 becomes distrustful of the liar, and, in case he has been 
 deceived by many, of all human beings in general, and sep- 
 arates himself from them. The liar fares similarly. He is 
 isolated from his surroundings, first, owing to the distrust of 
 those whom he deceives, which hardly ever fails to appear ; 
 for one lie may pass undiscovered, but habitual falsehood can- 
 not remain concealed, if for no other reason than that it lies 
 in the very nature of untruths to contradict each other, 
 whereas consistency is peculiar to truth. When the liar 
 loses the confidence of others, he also loses confidence in 
 them : it is psychologically necessary for the man who lies 
 to expect others to do the same. There can be no doubt that 
 this dual distrust is not a favorable condition of life : like a 
 poisoned stratum of air it envelops a life and excludes it from 
 fellowship with human beings ; the honest and sincere men, 
 especially, are repelled, for they cannot breathe an atmosphere 
 of falsehood and distrust. 
 
 The corroding and poisonous character of falsehood becomes 
 most apparent when it invades permanent social relations, 
 family-life, friendship, education. A pupil lies to his teacher. 
 Some misdemeanor has been committed in the class, the 
 guilty party lies out of it, as the saying is. The result is 
 
668 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 mutual distrust. The teacher begins to hold himself alool 
 from his pupils, the frank relations between him and them are 
 at an end, he begins to observe them stealthily, to spy upon 
 them. The pupils notice it ; they begin to make concealment ; 
 confidence and openness, the conditions of a happy relation 
 between teacher and student, are gone. When occurrences of 
 this kind become frequent, something of the prison atmosphere 
 pervades the school, which chokes the good and the pure. 
 Hence, nothing is more important than to preserve the spirit 
 of truth and confidence within its walls. This, however, can 
 be kept alive only where the spirit of freedom dwells. 
 
 Hence it follows from the very nature of falsehood that it 
 poisons speech, undermines confidence, destroys collective life, 
 and so attacks the very fibres of human existence. I cannot 
 deny myself the pleasure of quoting a beautiful passage from 
 Luther's commentary on the Psalms which I find in Herder's 
 Letters for the Promotion of Humanity : " It seems to me 
 that there is no more pernicious vice on earth than falsehood 
 and faithlessness, which divide all human societies. For 
 falsehood and faithlessness first divide hearts; when hearts 
 are divided, hands also separate, and when hands separate, 
 what can we do or accomplish ? We Germans still have a 
 spark — may God keep it alive and strengthen it — of the old 
 virtue : we are still a little ashamed of ourselves and do not 
 like to be called liars ; we do not laugh about it as do the 
 French and the Greeks, or make a jest of it. And although 
 French and Greek vices are making inroads among us, 
 nevertheless we have retained so much of the old spirit that 
 no one can utter or hear a more severe and abusive epithet 
 than that of liar." 
 
 Another factor helps to make the lie still more reprehen- 
 sible ; it is a sign of cowardice. It steals upon its victim, 
 instead of vanquishing him in open battle. A brave man 
 will not lie. The accusation of falsehood always carries 
 with it the charge of cowardice, hence it wounds a man 
 
VERACITY 669 
 
 more deeply than almost any other charge. You lie, means 
 at the same time : You are a cowardly knave. 
 
 3. Everything that makes the lie despicable and base is 
 included in calumny. We might rhetorically define it as the 
 murderous attack of the assassin upon the ideal self of an- 
 other. In Othello, Shakespeare portrays the natural history 
 of calumny with awful faithfulness and cruelty. Iago stran- 
 gles the innocent wife with the hands of her husband. Had 
 Iago killed Desdemona with his own hand and robbed her as 
 a pirate, he would have been an honest man beside the real 
 Iago. The fact that he cannot even be called to account be- 
 fore a human judge makes the matter all the worse — for 
 what did he do but act in good faith in calling Othello's 
 attention to the dangers threatening his honor; well who 
 never made a mistake ? 
 
 Moreover, we must not forget that two persons are always 
 necessary to make a slander possible. Just as the thief needs 
 the receiver of stolen goods, the calumniator needs a person 
 to accept his words and to put them in circulation. And 
 just as stealing would be impossible on the large scale with- 
 out receivers of stolen goods, the business of calumny would 
 be impossible if there were not so many to delight in it and 
 encourage it. In a letter written during the period of his 
 banishment (1811) Freiherr von Stein bitterly reproaches 
 this base tendency of human nature. " When once a man is 
 marked as the victim of slander, his past life, his established 
 character, the probability of the truth of the accusation, are 
 not taken into account; the question simply is whether 
 the charge will answer the intended purpose. In a short 
 time the calumny is circulated everywhere; it triumphs, 
 the enemies of the victim are active, the great multitude 
 maliciously credulous, his friends pretending to be impartial 
 are base ; they are silent, where they ought to take a firm 
 stand. Finally one after the other goes over to the opposite 
 party from pure love of virtue, from a sense of duty, and 
 
670 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 delicacy of feeling. All passions which he has insulted, all 
 presumptuousness which he has wounded, now revive; all 
 wish to celebrate the day of revenge and to feast on the fat 
 of the victim. " 2 
 
 Another modified form of the lie is flattery. It is so re- 
 pulsive because it creeps in under the guise of friendship to 
 defraud its victim. However, here again two people are 
 necessary : one to do the flattering and one who allows him- 
 self to be flattered. As a plaster draws blisters, so self- 
 conceit provokes flattery. Hypocrisy is a form of flattery. 
 Religious hypocrisy used to be common: we may define it as 
 an attempt by the exact fulfilment of the ceremonies of the 
 church to insinuate oneself into the good graces of God and 
 to draw His attention from less agreeable phases of one's life. 
 Religious hypocrisy has well-nigh died out in our world, at 
 least among the Protestants ; nowadays it appears solely as a 
 part of political hypocrisy, which tries to insinuate itself 
 into the graces of earthly rulers. With shrewd zeal the 
 hypocrite enters into the views, inclinations, and tastes of 
 great or little lords, particularly into their ecclesiastical and 
 religious opinions, and seeks and gains favor thereby. 
 Nothing flatters a human being more than to be an authority ; 
 authority, however, must be acknowledged by imitation. 
 
 The effect of hypocrisy is the same as that of all lying: as 
 forgery makes us suspect the genuine, hypocrisy brings re- 
 ligion into hatred and contempt. Hence all truly religious 
 natures hate hypocrisy, and all sincere persons hate assumed 
 " orthodoxy " like death. 
 
 Falsehood raised to the highest power is perjury. It is the 
 lie accompanied by the formal and solemn assurance that it 
 is the truth. Perjury has everywhere and always been re- 
 garded as one of the greatest crimes, as a sign of extreme 
 viciousness and baseness. We can defend ourselves against 
 violence by violence, strategy we meet with strategy : these 
 
 1 Pertz, Stein's Leben, I., 449. 
 
VERACITY 671 
 
 are the means of war, which may be followed by an honor- 
 able peace after the matter has been fought out. But perjury 
 cuts off all possibility of a return of friendship. There is 
 no defence, no weapon against perjury ; helplessly and with 
 a feeling of horror man appeals to the gods, when he has been 
 deceived by perjury, to punish such an enormous crime. L. 
 Schmidt 1 calls our attention to the fact that the Iliad, con- 
 trary to its leading ideas, does not regard death as the final 
 punishment of perjury ; fidelity to oaths is universally looked 
 upon by the Greeks as the most essential and, in a measure, 
 most elementary part of justice, perjury as the most heinous 
 crime. 
 
 The necessity of absolutely proving evidence before court 
 has led to the preservation of the oath in our judicial prac- 
 tice. The legal prosecution of organized bands of perjurers 
 every now and then shows beyond a doubt that with the 
 weakening of the transcendent sanction the oath has lost 
 some of its efficacy and has become a dreadfully dangerous 
 weapon in the hands of unscrupulous men. This state of 
 affairs evidently suggests the advisability of abolishing the 
 oath from legal practice, a useless survival. At all events, 
 it demands that the greatest care be taken in employing it. 
 We must particularly restrict the right of doubtful char- 
 acters to make oath by imposing severe punishments for its 
 violation. And can we justify the practice of forcing the 
 oath ? 2 
 
 1 Ethih der Griechen, II., 3 ff. 
 
 2 An able judge, von Valentini, Das Verbrechertum in Preussen, p. 112, ex- 
 presses the opinion that the administration of the oath by the courts, its employ- 
 ment as a " technical requisite," greatly encourages perjury. Indeed, how, in 
 view of the fact that forty to fifty oaths are administered at a single session of a 
 sheriff's court, mostly in farcical and trivial cases, can the oath preserve its es- 
 pecially sacred character ? The ceremony with which the thing is surrounded 
 almost makes matters worse. Besides this, the judges are by no means obliged 
 to regard the sworn testimony as worthy of belief, and do not regard it as such : 
 it really makes an extremely painful impression upon one, when the judge, after 
 having just sworn a witness, straightway admonishes him, not always in the 
 gentlest manner, to keep to the truth. We are similarly impressed by the attitude 
 
672 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 4. The Lie of Necessity. A problem that has given the 
 moralists the greatest trouble is the lie of necessity. Is 
 deception under all circumstances morally wrong, or can 
 conditions arise under which it is permissible or even 
 morally necessary ? 
 
 In our actual judgments and actions we experience no diffi- 
 culty in answering this question; everybody acknowledges 
 the possibility of the " necessary lie. " There is not a phy- 
 sician in the whole world who does not at times give decep- 
 tive answers to the questions of his patients, who does not 
 arouse hopes which he does not share. He does not reproach 
 himself for doing so, neither do others blame him. Indeed, 
 everybody does the same thing under similar circumstances. 
 Suppose that, without knowing it, a man should be in an 
 extremely dangerous position and that his rescue depended 
 upon his being deceived for a minute, would any one in the 
 slightest hesitate to encourage him in his delusion ? The 
 newspapers recently reported a case analogous to this. Fire 
 broke out during a performance in a theatre at Zurich. 
 When the stage manager discovered it, he appeared before 
 
 of the tax-officials with respect to the " self-assessment " : after the person has 
 made his returns, certifying that they are true, " according to his best knowl- 
 edge and belief," he is informed that the authorities are inclined not to believe his 
 statements, but merely regard them as valuable material for further investigations. 
 If this is not an invitation to withhold returns, not to say to ignore the " to the 
 best knowledge and belief " clause in the assessment-blank, I know nothing of 
 psychology. Is not what the authorities presuppose permissible? — Many of 
 the so-called promissory oaths also tend to make persons careless in swearing 
 oaths. Think of the academic oaths. The medical doctor's oath, which is cus- 
 tomary in Berlin, begins : " I, John Doe, swear that I will not practise medicine 
 for the sake of personal gain, but for the glory of God, for the welfare of man, 
 and for the promotion of scientific knowledge" etc. But this is evidently a 
 survival protected by the Latin language : the thing would be impossible in Ger- 
 man. — Is it not possible that the prohibition against swearing in the Gospel is 
 chiefly aimed at promissory oaths ? The reasons given seem to indicate it : You 
 are not master of things, and of the future, you cannot make one hair white or 
 black ; and yet you will sell your soul by an oath and bind yourself to do certain 
 things. With what ease the church evades this explicit prohibition against 
 swearing, and how tenaciously she adheres to the law of the Sabbath, in spite of 
 Its abolition ! 
 
VERACITY 673 
 
 the scenes and announced that, owing to the sudden illness 
 of an actor, the performance would have to be suspended. 
 The theatre was emptied without any trouble, and then 
 burned to the ground. Will any one dare to condemn this 
 happy idea as a lie ? And it is not even necessary that the 
 deception be in the interest of the person deceived. It may 
 also be practised in one's own interest, without the slightest 
 hesitation, and meet with universal approval. An old woman 
 is at home alone ; a couple of tramps break into her house ; 
 she has presence of mind enough to call out the name of 
 her husband, thereby deceiving the burglars. She will not 
 herself suffer remorse for her behavior, nor will any one 
 else reproach her for it. Nay, even the tramps themselves 
 would not be so rigoristic as to blame her. The story is told 
 that Columbus entered a smaller number of miles in the 
 log-book during his first voyage of discovery than he actually 
 traversed each day, in order to make the distance from home 
 seem shorter to his timid crew. Will any one condemn the 
 brave sailor's strategy as a moral fault ? 
 
 Only among moral philosophers do we still find persons 
 who regard the matter as serious. Kant declares: False- 
 hood, that is, intentional untruthfulness, is under all cir- 
 cumstances, "by its mere form, a crime of man against his 
 own person, and a baseness which must make a man despi- 
 cable in his own eyes." 1 When a man misdirects a mur- 
 derer in search of his victim, and dexterously turns him 
 into the hands of the police, we cannot excuse him: he has 
 told a lie, and has therefore forfeited his dignity as a man. 
 And Fichte once said, with his usual rhetorical fanaticism, 
 "I would not break my word even to save humanity." 2 
 Let us apply this principle in practice. Suppose that I had 
 promised some one to call for him at five o'clock for a 
 walk, and that on my way to his house I saw a child fall 
 [nto the river. If I followed Fichte, I should say to myself: 
 
 1 Tugendlehre, § 9. a Life, IL, 57. 
 
674 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 " If you pull it out, you will have to go home and change your 
 clothes, which will make it impossible for you to keep your 
 engagement; hence you must hurry on, sorry though you 
 may be. " Or would it be right for me to assume that my 
 friend would give his consent in such a case, and, acting on 
 this belief, to break my engagement ? But suppose I could 
 not assume that he would consent. I have made a promise; 
 now I see what I could not have known before, or what is 
 simply the result of new conditions; a third party, or I 
 myself, might be seriously damaged by fulfilling the prom- 
 ise. I beg to be released from my word, I am willing to 
 pay any amount of indemnity; in vain. May I break my 
 word ? Under no circumstances. I should have to say, 
 according to Fichte's view: Let the world perish, that is 
 not my concern; but it is my concern not to destroy my 
 moral dignity as a human being by a lie! — Other moralists 
 are somewhat more yielding, or have not the courage to 
 draw the consequences of their views. Thus Martensen 
 holds in his Theological Ethics : l Lies of necessity are, 
 under certain circumstances, permitted on account of the 
 weakness of human nature; but it must be confessed that 
 " there is some sin in every such falsehood ; " a conclusion 
 which surely is not in accord with the words of the Gospel; 
 "Let your communication be yea, yea, nay, nay." 
 
 Practice not only contradicts the theory here, but is even 
 theoretically correct in its opposition to these theorists. It 
 may be that the lie of necessity does not fit into the system of 
 a moralist, but that merely proves the inability of his system 
 to comprehend moral things. A teleological ethics finds no 
 difficulty in explaining the phenomenon in question. 
 
 Intentional deception is objectively reprehensible, as was 
 shown above, because it tends to destroy confidence, and thus 
 to lead to the disintegration of the social organism. In 
 cases where this effect cannot possibly occur, owing to the 
 
 l II, 264. 
 
VERACITY 675 
 
 very nature of things, it is not reprehensible. Let us take 
 an example. No relation of confidence can be destroyed by 
 deceiving a burglar, because absolutely none exists, neither 
 a special relation, nor a universally-human one. In so far 
 and so long as such lawbreakers follow their calling, they 
 stand outside of the pale of confidence, and thereby forfeit 
 all claims to the truth, nor will they expect to receive it. 
 
 The case is somewhat similar in war. No soldier has ever 
 scrupled against deceiving the enemy as to his own plans, 
 tactics, or numbers. Strategy is one of the arts of war; it 
 would be absurd to show your hand in war. It is said that 
 the most honest man cheats in a horse-trade ; it is one of the 
 rules of the game to keep your eyes open. The etymological 
 relation between the words tausehen (to exchange) and 
 tdusehen (to deceive) seems to indicate that these rules are 
 also applied to other branches of commerce. Well, decep- 
 tion is likewise one of the rules of war : everybody practises 
 it and expects the enemy to do the same. The rules, how- 
 ever, apply only to the game. Whenever in war an individ- 
 ual comes in contact with another individual not as a foe 
 but as a human being, then the universal rule of human in- 
 tercourse again demands its rights. The same is true when- 
 ever the game of war is temporarily suspended by mutual 
 agreement : to break an armistice, to ambush the bearer of 
 a flag of truce, is disgraceful and dishonorable. 
 
 The case is peculiar in diplomacy. In a certain sense 
 the rules of war seem to hold here : Keep your eyes open J 
 No one shows his hand, and everybody will, to say the least, 
 regard it as legitimate not to " disillusionize " a fellow- 
 player under certain circumstances, nay, perhaps even to 
 encourage him a little in his false belief. This is apparently 
 because it is tacitly assumed in international intercourse 
 that every state will be solely and unconditionally guided in 
 its dealings with others by the regard for its own vital in- 
 terests; that it will, so far as it can safely do so, assert 
 
676 DOCTRTNE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 these even at the expense of other nations. There is no law 
 governing the intercourse of states which can secure them 
 against encroachments; there is no power which can medi- 
 ate between them or call the breaker of the peace to account. 
 Hence a constant potential state of war exists between states. 
 The rules of diplomatic intercourse show that in so far as 
 war, in which force and strategy are absolutely permitted, 
 is possible at any moment, the parties are reticent and 
 distrustful of each other; they conceal their measures and 
 agreements, their plans and intentions. But in so far as 
 the real object of diplomacy is to maintain peace, to settle 
 by negotiations what would otherwise have to be settled by 
 the arbitrament of war, a certain measure of mutual confi- 
 dence is required. If diplomats needed language merely to 
 conceal their thoughts, it would evidently be wiser for 
 nations not to speak to each other at all. — Besides, there 
 seems to be the same tendency here as in commerce. At- 
 tempts are being made in the latter field gradually to stamp 
 out fraud, at least the coarser phases of it, as an unsuitable 
 form of intercourse. So, too, in the diplomatic intercourse 
 of nations : the closer they are drawing to each other, the 
 more intimate their relations are becoming, the more the 
 conviction seems to be growing that the straight course is 
 better than the crooked course in the long run. And per- 
 haps we may see in this an evidence that the European 
 nations are approaching a condition of permanent peace, 
 remote though it may seem at present. For evidently 
 the probability of war and the measure of openness in 
 diplomatic intercourse are in inverse proportion to each 
 other. 
 
 Hence, the fewer the relations t of trust which can be dis- 
 turbed, the more of its dangerous and objectionable character 
 intentional deception loses, and the more openly it is actually 
 practised, until it ultimately appears as an altogether legiti- 
 mate means of warfare in the actual state of war. Where 
 
VERACITY 677 
 
 all ties are broken, where even the killing of others is de- 
 sired, it can do no more harm; things are so bad that decep- 
 tion will not make them worse. 
 
 Another case which may make intentional deception per- 
 missible or necessary is the inability of the other party to 
 understand or to bear the truth. It may, for example, under 
 circumstances, have a quieting effect upon insane persons to 
 enter into their delusions. It is also necessary to accom- 
 modate oneself to the weakminded. This is true of old 
 people who have grown weak-minded; they have lost the 
 faculty of seeing and judging things in their true relations, 
 but not the faculty of becoming excited by occasionally mis- 
 interpreting them. We are compelled, for example, to make 
 certain arrangements, contrary to the wishes of our old 
 parents. Is it right to conceal our plans, or to deny them ? 
 It is a hard thing to do ; it seems like a breach of old confi- 
 dential relations. And yet every one will at times decide 
 to pursue such a course, and justly so, for what good would 
 it do to tell them ? We could not make them see the neces- 
 sity of our action; the information would therefore simply 
 grieve them, while the deception, if not detected, would be 
 harmless. The case is different in our intercourse with 
 children ; and here we are often too ready to have recourse to 
 the most convenient form of deception that happens to pres- 
 ent itself. The deception persists in memory; when the 
 intelligence develops and recognizes it as such, it may after- 
 wards seriously undermine the child's faith. Besides, an- 
 other means of escape is always at hand ; we can refuse to 
 answer the child's questions by saying, " You do not under- 
 stand these things yet," or, " They do not concern you." It 
 would, however, be wholly impossible to treat old people in 
 this way, even if it were proper. Here, then, we must 
 make use of language, as the physician occasionally pre- 
 scribes a pretended remedy, simply in order to quiet the 
 patient. 
 
678 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 But, some one might ask in troubled tones, Where, then, 
 shall we draw the line ? The transition to childish old age 
 is a gradual one. Where may one begin to deceive ? And 
 if I may deceive a weak-minded person, then why not a stupid 
 blockhead ? And where shall this end ? And who is to 
 decide how to classify the individuals in question ? Only 
 one answer can be made to such questions. Suoh fixed 
 boundaries do not exist in morals. The law draws hard and 
 fast, and therefore arbitrary, lines, while morality has every- 
 where to do with gradual transitions. The particular case 
 must necessarily be decided by the individual's own insight 
 and conscience, and with a view to the concrete conditions. 
 Morality cannot give him a scheme which shall enable him 
 to settle the matter with mechanical certainty. It can 
 merely indicate the general points of view from which the 
 decision is to be rendered. 
 
 The case is not essentially different for the physician in 
 his intercourse with patients. Here, too, we have a rela- 
 tion of trust, and deception is not without its dangers. 
 Perhaps we are all a little incredulous in reference to what 
 the physician says, both when he tries to quiet us and 
 when he warns us. He does it, we believe, simply for 
 effect. Nevertheless, we cannot expect absolute openness 
 from the physician in every case. If, in order to assist his 
 art, he skilfully and quietly deceives the patient and his 
 friends as to the magnitude of the danger, he does not de- 
 serve blame but praise. It is a part of his art to keep up 
 courage and hope ; to that end he also makes use of speech, 
 even at the risk of subsequently disappointing the patient 
 and of weakening the latter's faith in his word as well as in 
 the word of physicians in general. It was shown above 2 that 
 the violation of formal right is under all circumstances an 
 evil, but that it may become permissible or necessary in 
 order to ward off a greater evil from oneself or others. The 
 
 1 Pp. 630 ff . 
 
VERACITY 679 
 
 same is true here. The lie of necessity, like the law of 
 necessity, may become a moral duty, — a duty which even 
 the most truthful man cannot always evade, however wil- 
 ling he may be to forfeit his right to deceive. Confidence 
 in human speech is a great good, but it is not the only good 
 thing in the world. 
 
 Everybody meets with similar cases in life. A man has 
 had some trouble ; he has been undeservedly abused ; a crisis 
 threatens to overtake his business. He comes home, deter- 
 mined not to say anything about the matter. But he looks 
 pale ; his family ask him, what has happened ? Is it right 
 to say, " Nothing, it is warm, I have a headache ? " I believe 
 the conditions may be such that no one would hesitate to 
 practise deception here. The man in our example does not 
 like to tell the truth, he does not wish his friends at home 
 to hear anything about the matter ; why should they worry 
 over it ? To evade their questions may be worse than to tell 
 the truth. — Here, too, relations of confidence exist, and 
 deception is not without danger. In case they should hear 
 of his troubles from others who will not spare their feelings, 
 they may not only be more greatly disturbed, but their con- 
 fidence may receive a serious shock. And yet a man 
 may make up his mind to add dissimulation to intentional 
 deception. 
 
 Or, is dissimulation absolutely wrong, according to these 
 " rigorous " moralists ? That it belongs to the category of 
 deception cannot be denied. When a man with his heart 
 full of care and bitterness seems cheerful and calm in the 
 circle of his family, so that no one notices it, he has cer- 
 tainly deceived them in the most complete manner possible. 
 Is that not allowed either ? Has he no right to look cheerful 
 when he is inwardly sad, or calm when he is in trouble ? Is 
 this, too, an abandonment of his dignity as a man ? These 
 moral philosophers should have made clear to themselves the 
 consequences of their assertion. Or is it possible only to 
 
680 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 deceive by means of the tongue and not with the eyes and 
 face ? Or ought we always to show everything we feel ? 
 Ought I then to tell a friend who has an unfortunate leaning 
 to art, when he presents me with a picture as a birthday 
 gift : " My dear friend, your intentions are undoubtedly good, 
 but I wish you would spare me ? " Or shall I declare, when 
 he expects me to say something about the present : " Unfortu- 
 nately, I cannot tell you anything, for if I told you the truth, 
 you would be angry, but if I didn't tell the truth, this would 
 be contrary to the moral law ? " Of course, it may be my duty 
 to say to my friend frankly and distinctly, in case his hobby 
 is making him ridiculous, or is causing him to neglect his 
 duties : " Stop it, you will never accomplish anything, and you 
 are simply hurting yourself." The good-natured praise of 
 questionable achievements may grow into base flattery. But 
 all this will not shake any one but an extremist in the belief 
 that it may, under circumstances, be right and proper to tell 
 a man what will give him harmless pleasure, even though 
 this does not express one's real opinion, instead of telling 
 him things which it will neither please him nor benefit him 
 to hear. 
 
 To the same category belong the conventional half-truths 
 and untruths of social intercourse. We welcome a visitor 
 who comes at an inopportune time; at the end of a letter 
 we assure a man whom we do not know, or whom we look 
 upon as a thorough villain, of our high esteem. The neces- 
 sity and justification for this lies in the fact that smooth 
 and peaceful intercourse is not possible among men as they 
 are constituted, without the exercise of some constraint. 
 The customary politeness is the oil which prevents, so far as 
 possible, the creaking and pulling of the machine. The 
 angels in heaven do not need it. Where there are no inner 
 discords and outer obstacles, perfect openness is possible; 
 human beings as they are constituted cannot endure it. It 
 is for this reason that Goethe delicately and truthfully says; 
 
VERACITY 681 
 
 Fragst du nach der Kunst zu leben ? 
 Lern* mit Narr und Bosem leben. 
 Mit den Weisen, mit den Guten, 
 Wird es sich von selbst ergeben. 1 
 
 Of course, where is the boundary between necessary polite- 
 ness and repulsive flattery and falsehood ? No system of 
 morals can draw the line: moral tact alone must decide. 
 And the thing is not without its dangers. A person who 
 lives much in society easily forms the habit of lying, his 
 conscience gradually becomes seared, it becomes a second 
 nature and finally a necessity for him to lie. We are there- 
 fore ready to suspect a man who exhibits great skill in the art 
 of polite speech. We are more apt to trust one who is somewhat 
 awkward and backward in speaking conventional untruths. 
 
 Hence our conclusion would be : Be truthful ; this holds 
 unconditionally; but Speak the truth does not hold uncon- 
 ditionally. 
 
 5. How shall we account for this strange " rigorism " of 
 the moralists, which is everywhere contradicted by life ? 
 Are they perhaps influenced by the curious notion that the 
 "stricter" their systems, the better it will be for the moral- 
 ity of mankind ? It almost seems so. If our moral systems, 
 they seem to think, leave the smallest loophole for falsehood, 
 man's inclination to lie will gradually enlarge it, and he 
 will always find an excuse for not speaking the truth. In 
 case, however, these systems absolutely prohibit falsehood, 
 and threaten it with the most awful punishments, — loss of 
 human dignity and self-respect, — then he will be on his 
 guard. As though men always first referred to a handbook 
 of morals before opening their mouths ! 
 
 1 These lines, by the way, might be taken as the translation of a passage in 
 the Imitation of Christ : " It is no great matter to associate with the good and 
 gentle; for this is naturally pleasing to all, and every one willingly enjoyeth 
 peace, and loveth those best that agree with him. But to be able to live peace- 
 ably with hard and perverse persons, or with the disorderly, or with such as go 
 contrary to us, is a great grace, and a most commendable and manly thing.* 
 
 in, 3.) 
 
682 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 But perhaps this rigorism has still another ground. Jt is 
 surprising that we do not find it among the Greek moral 
 philosophers. Intentional deception is not only permitted 
 by them under certain circumstances, but even demanded. 
 According to Plato, the authorities in the ideal State must 
 employ deception as a means of the welfare of the gov- 
 erned. Socrates and the Stoics are of the same opinion. Is 
 our sense of truth more finely developed than theirs? Are 
 we so much superior to them in veracity ? In my opinion, 
 the matter might be explained differently. I have repeat- 
 edly referred to the fact that; we, to quote Lessing, speak 
 most of the virtues which we least possess, and also, that 
 we condemn those vices most to which we are most inclined. 
 The Greek philosophers — Schopenhauer is right in this — 
 exhibit a measure of openness and straightforwardness in the 
 presentation of their thoughts which we seldom find in the 
 philosophical literature of modern times. Among the mod- 
 erns there is a tendency to compromise and extemporize, to 
 accommodation, to weaken the logical consequences of views, 
 to embellishment, to ambiguity, to intentional obscurity, 
 which contrasts unfavorably with the openness and transpar- 
 ency of the ancients. Kant once confessed that though he 
 would never say anything he did not believe, he believed 
 many things which he would never say. A Greek might 
 have replied to him : In that case I do not care very much 
 for what you have to say, for I desire to know not what 
 you are allowed to think with the consent of the high author- 
 ities, but what you actually think yourself ! 
 
 We can hardly doubt that church affairs have something 
 to do with this attitude. Intellectual veracity, sincerity in 
 matters of thought and faith, consistency in thinking, is not 
 one of the virtues encouraged by the church. Primitive 
 Christianity had nothing whatever in common with theoreti- 
 cal knowledge ; although it practically demanded veracity of 
 the highest kind, that is, martyrdom. When the church 
 
VERACITY 683 
 
 became triumphant, and it was no longer the confession of 
 the creed but non-conformity to it that entailed martyrdom, 
 and when the faith was reduced to a kind of scientific sys- 
 tem in theology, the spirit of humility and obedience, which 
 the church and Christianity both fostered, stifled the theoret- 
 ical love of truth : the spirit of obedience which the individual 
 manifested towards the church and the authorities in his whole 
 mode of life characterized his entire philosophy. L. Wiese 
 states in his Autobiography that he has frequently observed 
 a certain lack of openness in his intercourse with educated 
 Catholics, even among persons who are otherwise honest and 
 upright. This lack of openness may be found not only among 
 Catholics, but also among Protestants, although the fact that 
 the individual is freer in his relations to the church and the 
 doctrines of the church may perhaps lessen the fault in the 
 latter case. It is an historically necessary effect of church 
 life as such, in so far as the demand that we submit to the 
 church law and the creed follows inevitably from the nature 
 of the church. So long as authoritative doctrines concerning 
 all things in heaven and earth are formed and adhered to 
 on the one side, and scientific and historical research con- 
 tinue to develop new conceptions of things on the other, the 
 conflict will be inevitable. Under such conditions the aver- 
 age nature strives, for the most part, to move on the diagonal 
 between the creed and knowledge. Historical faith and new 
 insight simultaneously influence the mind and urge it, in 
 accordance with the law of the parallelogram of forces, in 
 the median direction. Examine the commentaries on the 
 Gospels or the Lives of Christ: the impulse to save what 
 can be saved of the old time-honored conceptions and inter- 
 pretations, and, on the other hand, to concede as much to 
 scientific research as must be conceded in order that one 
 may be regarded as an enlightened and progressive man, 
 determines their content. Or think of the attempts which 
 have been made to read into Genesis the conceptions of mod- 
 
684 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 era geology. It is to be presumed that Darwinism will be 
 discovered there before very long. 
 
 This perversion of the intellect is not necessarily accom- 
 panied by a perversion of the will ; a frank and honest heart 
 may exist side by side with these diagonal tendencies of the 
 intellect. A man may hesitate to depart from the faith of 
 the church, without being necessarily inspired by the fear of 
 man and the desire to get along in the world. Still it cannot 
 be denied that the lack of a theoretical love of truth, the 
 tendency to accommodation, is often connected with quite 
 worldly considerations and intentions. When Kepler lost 
 his position and his income at Prague, after the downfall 
 of Rudolph's Empire, there was a prospect of his being 
 called to a professorship in his home university at Tubingen. 
 The place was in all respects a desirable one; but he 
 felt himself obliged, as an honest man, first to inform the 
 Duke that his views on the doctrine of transubstantiation 
 were not quite orthodox, that he had not been able to con- 
 vince himself of the ubiquity of the body of Christ. Well, 
 Kepler was not called. His biographer Reuschle adds, in 
 reporting this episode, that Kepler belonged to that class of 
 honest men, to be one of whom, as Hamlet says, is to be one 
 man picked out of ten thousand. Indeed, no one will claim 
 that Kepler represents the modern type of scholar in this 
 respect Leibniz would be a more fitting example. He was 
 never in want of a system of thought to show the similarity 
 between his thinking and that of some other person, were it 
 an atheistic philosopher or a church believer, a Protestant 
 or a Jesuit, an advocate of imperial unity or of the sover- 
 eignty of the princes in Germany. 
 
 With this status of affairs, it seems to me, the inclination to 
 inveigh against falsehood and to stigmatize deception as 
 absolutely reprehensible and disgraceful, has something to do. 
 We feel the need, in the face of our constant danger, of em- 
 phasizing to ourselves and to others, often in the strongest 
 
VERACITY 685 
 
 terms, the value of truthfulness and the disgrace of lying and 
 of trifling with the truth. The Greek philosophers did not 
 feel this need so much, because they were less exposed to 
 temptation. Schopenhauer, whose proud, harsh, and incon- 
 siderate temperament protected him against the tendency to 
 accommodation, occasionally accuses Kant of affectation on 
 account of his violent repudiation of every form of deception. 
 Others are of different opinion ; they admire Kant's system 
 precisely because of the harsh rigor of its formulae of duty, 
 which exclude all exceptions. They also praise Luther as a 
 hero of truth, and heap all kinds of abuse upon Erasmus on 
 account of his tendency to accommodation and conciliation. 
 Will the initiated conclude from this that the tribe of 
 Erasmus has died out, and that our theologians and histori- 
 ans are all little Luthers ? 
 
 6. We now turn to the positive side of veracity. It corre- 
 sponds to love of neighbor, and is expressed in the formula 
 of duty : Serve thy neighbor with the truth. Since the con- 
 duct of man is, to a considerable extent, dependent upon 
 ideas, true ideas are of prime importance to his welfare. 
 The universal duty of love of neighbor, therefore, include*: 
 the duty to assist one's neighbor in ridding himself of false 
 ideas and of acquiring true ones. 
 
 This phase of the question has been too much neglected by 
 moralists, a fact which accounts for their meagre treatment 
 of veracity and also explains their inability to do justice to 
 the lie of necessity. Whoever lives a life of truth in the 
 main, will have no trouble in settling the question of decep- 
 tion, whenever it may become necessary or expedient. But 
 the person whose truthfulness consists solely in refraining 
 from telling lies, will be afraid of totally destroying his repu- 
 tation in case he should ever happen to say what is not true. 
 Such purely negative veracity is, of course, a rather paltry 
 thing; it easily degenerates into the mere art of avoiding 
 direct falsehood. Had the disciples of Christ, after the 
 
686 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 death of the Master, merely refused to deny Him directly, 
 had they returned to their former callings, and, obeying the 
 commands of the authorities and the dictates of prudence, 
 locked up the memories of the past in their own hearts, had 
 they in pursuance of the maxim that it is not our duty to say 
 everything we believe, carefully evaded every discussion of 
 their experiences, they certainly could have escaped the re- 
 proach of falsehood, but they would surely never have become 
 what they now are : witnesses of the truth, whose testimony 
 is shaping the destiny of the centuries. 
 
 Positive veracity, which first gives to negative veracity 
 its real meaning and value, manifests itself, first, in the 
 personal intercourse with individuals, where it assumes the 
 form of advice, instruction, admonition, and correction ; sec- 
 ondly, in the public communication of the truth, where it takes 
 the form of research, teaching, and preaching. 
 
 According to the first form, it is my duty to help the indi- 
 vidual whom I find in search of the right path, or following 
 the wrong path, according to my better lights. This duty, 
 too, must be qualified. Just as the duty of love of neighbor 
 cannot mean that every one is constantly to offer his aid to 
 everybody he meets, the duty of veracity cannot mean that 
 we are at all times obliged to instruct and advise people, to 
 admonish and set them right. In addition to the limitations 
 placed upon this duty by the same considerations which were 
 indicated above in respect to love of neighbor in general, we 
 must take into account other special features depending upon 
 the special nature of this kind of charity. 
 
 The duty to instruct and set right presupposes two things : 
 first, that I am myself sure of the right path ; secondly, that 
 the interested party is inclined to profit by my advice. We 
 are essentially governed by these considerations in our ac- 
 tual practice. I see a stranger in the mountains turning 
 into a road that leads nowhere; I do not hesitate to call to 
 him and to direct him. When, on the other hand, 1 find 
 
VERACITY 687 
 
 a person on the point of embarking upon a mercantile or 
 literary venture, which I regard as sure to fail, I seriously 
 deliberate before advising him. If the man is a stranger to 
 me, I let him alone. I do not know enough of his situation, 
 his powers, his resources, to know what he can do; nor can 
 I assume that he has confidence enough in my judgment to 
 accept my advice : perhaps it would simply confuse him or 
 anger him. I therefore, at least, wait until I am asked, 
 and even then it will often be doubtful whether 1 ought 
 to give the desired information. There are people who ask 
 others' advice and then do as they please, simply in order 
 to shift the blame upon them in case of failure, whether 
 they have advised for or against the project. Whenever 
 these difficulties are not in the way I shall be more inclined 
 to communicate my views of the matter. The better 1 know 
 the person and the circumstances, and the more interest I 
 take in his welfare because of my particular relations to 
 him, the more willing I shall be to advise him. 
 
 The ability to judge where and when it is proper to aid 
 others with advice and instruction, may be called discre- 
 tion. The opposite, indiscretion, the inability to keep from 
 advising and instructing people, is a quality that will make 
 a person disliked by his fellows sooner than anything else, 
 especially when it appears in young men. It is particularly 
 necessary for one to be on one's guard when it comes to rep- 
 rimanding or blaming people. Uncalled-for blame angers a 
 man and strengthens him in his perverseness. The habit of 
 finding fault and speaking evil is a real vice. Here the pur- 
 pose is not to serve the neighbor with the truth, but to flat- 
 ter one's self-love and vanity. The Gospel does not warn 
 us so earnestly against fault-finding for nothing. Insinuat- 
 ing itself into our hearts in the guise of sincerity and love of 
 truth, this habit becomes a soul-destroying vice. It extin- 
 guishes brotherly love : we naturally hate a man whom we 
 have wronged, even though it be in secret. It leads to 
 
688 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 flattery and falsehood : we try to make the interested person 
 believe that we will not pronounce a similar judgment upon 
 him when his back is turned. It prevents us from being 
 true to ourselves: the man who is always beholding the 
 mote that is in his brother's eye, at last cannot see the beam 
 that is in his own eye. Hence the rule is: Speak of evil 
 only when the good is promoted thereby; and, for the rest, 
 turn all things to good. 1 
 
 7. The other phase of the problem, the public communica- 
 tion of the truth, demands a somewhat more elaborate 
 treatment. 
 
 To know the truth as a whole, as contained in philosophy 
 and science, is not a function of the individual mind as such ; 
 a people, or, in the last analysis, humanity, is the bearer of 
 the truth, the individual shares in it as the member of a 
 people. The little fraction which he possesses, he possesses 
 as the heir of the past; he thinks with the logical and 
 metaphysical categories which the popular mind has devel- 
 oped in the course of thousands of years, and has incor- 
 porated into grammatical forms. He sees things through 
 the ideas and notions which his age places at his dis- 
 posal, he labors upon the solution of the problems which it 
 suggests to him. On the other hand, it is no less true that 
 
 1 In Wackernagel's Treasury of German Poetry/ and Wisdom (Edelsteine 
 deutscher Dichtung und Weisheit), vol. XIII., is found a sermon of Brother 
 David of Augsburg, which offers a piece of advice which we ought to take to 
 heart : " Ziuch din gemiiete von allem, das dich niht anget. Laz einen jeglichen 
 sin dine ahten unde sinen siten halten unde schaf du mit gote din dine. Swes 
 aber dfi. maht gebezzert werden, des nim alleine war; das ander laz hin gen. 
 Bekiimber din herze niht mit urteile, wan du niht wizzen kanst, umbbe welhe 
 Sache oder in welhem sinne daz geschiht, daz dii urteilst ; wan als wir Hzen ofte 
 missesehen einez fur daz ander, also misseraten wir ofte ein guotez fur ein 
 boesez, als der schelhe, der zwei siht fiir einez und ist daran betrogen. Maht 
 duz aber niht zu guote keren, dennoch bekiimber dich niht da mite. Ez ist vil 
 unverrihtunge in der kristenheit, der dft aller niht verrihten maht. Lid einez 
 mit dem andern. Des du niht truwest gebezzern, da iiebe din gedult an. Swa 
 aber von dinem swigen iht ungevelliges wahsen mohte, daz von diner rede mac 
 gebezzert werden, da sprich zuo, senfteclichen, ernstliche, ane strit, daz du dick 
 da mite unschuldigest, daz duz iht teilhaftic stst, des man dich anspreche." 
 
VERACITY 689 
 
 the collective mind exercises the functions only through 
 individual minds as its organs. 
 
 Here a notable difference may be observed: individuals 
 do not all stand in the same relation to this function. The 
 masses always participate in the truth in a rather receptive, 
 passive manner, while nature chooses only a few distin- 
 guished minds as bearers and increasers of knowledge. If 
 we designate the latter with the old term of clergy (clems), 
 which includes all spiritual leaders of the people, its inves- 
 tigators and teachers, its thinkers and poets, we may say: 
 The public communication of the truth is the true life-calling 
 of the clerus, and veracity is the specific duty, as it were the 
 professional virtue of the clericus. 
 
 But we may again distinguish two phases in this virtue : 
 we may call them sincerity and the love of truth. The 
 former is the universal and elementary virtue of the clericus : 
 it consists in this, that he simply and clearly, conscien- 
 tiously and faithfully, employs the truth in teaching and 
 preaching, in theory and in practice. It is the fundamental 
 precondition of his power to do good in so far as the latter 
 depends upon the confidence which the laymen have in him. 
 But confidence is gained only by simplicity and sincerity of 
 heart and intellect. Inquisitive love of truth, on the other 
 hand, is the special duty of the true investigator and path- 
 finder ; it is the passionate impulse which incites the historical 
 or natural-scientific investigator to discover new facts and to 
 penetrate more deeply into their relations. It is the im- 
 pulse which, urging the thinker constantly to test the estab- 
 lished views and theories, is forever on its guard against 
 error even in the form of established opinions. It is the love 
 of truth which inspires the poet and thinker who seeks to 
 comprehend and express the secret meaning of life and the 
 universe in new thoughts and symbols. It is the love of truth, 
 finally, which impels the great leaders of mankind, the 
 
 prophets and reformers, to discover new, untrodden paths of 
 
 44 
 
690 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 life. Plus ultra, that is the watchword of these pathfinders 
 of the future, who are laboring for the civilization of hu- 
 manity. They are restrained by no authority, by no preju- 
 dice, be it ever so sacred ; they follow the light which 
 burns in their hearts. 
 
 The love of truth finds its highest expression in martyr- 
 dom. We should expect the nations to turn to their great 
 leaders and pathfinders in thankful admiration. And so they 
 do, but it is only after their death that mortal men are reck- 
 oned among the gods. Martyrdom is the great purifier by 
 which humanity tests the genuineness of new truths; it is 
 the narrow portal through which heroes pass into immor- 
 tality. This has been the method of humanity from times 
 immemorial, and it is not hard to see the historical necessity 
 of this fact, which is so surprising at first sight. 
 
 8. Let me first try to show the psychological necessity. 
 
 The conceptions and truths of a people become — and that 
 is their true function — the ideal basis of its institutions, of 
 the state and the law, of the church and the school. All 
 kinds of arts and practices depend upon our views and ideas 
 of the nature of things and of men, their relations to each 
 other and to the universe. Originally the entire life of every 
 nation and all its institutions were based upon religion. 
 Every religion, however, contains a philosophy of history 
 and a metaphysic, — the precipitate of all the experiences 
 of a people with the world and its relations to the world. 
 Hence it follows that every attempt at a radical change of 
 views is regarded as a menace to the entire life ; the weaken- 
 ing of the theoretical foundations will result in the shatter- 
 ing of all the institutions founded upon them. And this is 
 not an illusion. All great revolutions in the world of institu- 
 tions had as their starting-point revolutions in the world of 
 thoughts. Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in the 
 most recent events of European history. The long series of 
 revolutions which fill the pages of modern history are the 
 
VERACITY 691 
 
 after-effects of the changes in the world of ideas which, after 
 the fifteenth century, undermined the mediaeval conception of 
 the universe which had been systematized in the dogmas of 
 the church. The great historical and geographical, cosmical 
 and physical discoveries, which were made in surprising 
 numbers in the neighborhood of the sixteenth century, first 
 made possible the ecclesiastical revolutions, then the eco- 
 nomic and political revolutions, which since then have 
 shaken Germany, England, and France, and which have not 
 yet come to an end. Wherever, however, the world of 
 thought remains stable, as was the case in China, the world 
 of institutions persists in its old forms. 
 
 It is for this reason that the institutions resist every at- 
 tempt that may be made to change the conceptions. They 
 defend tradition as the basis of their existence. We might 
 imagine them arguing as follows : The welfare of a people 
 depends upon the stability and trustworthiness of its in- 
 stitutions. A revolution that affects any important part 
 of its institutions is always a serious, nay, . a dangerous 
 crisis. The stability of these, however, depends upon their 
 authority, hence it cannot be permitted to question their 
 theoretical foundations. Every criticism against the funda- 
 mental conceptions upon which the institutions rest, under- 
 mines the ground upon which the security and welfare, nay, 
 the very life, of the people depend. Criticism must there- 
 fore stop short of the principles which underlie the church, 
 the state, and society. — Though this applies to all, it applies 
 particularly to the clerus. For their function is to serve so- 
 ciety by preserving and defending the truth. Things would 
 be in a bad shape if any one could at any time set up his 
 own notions and private opinions, and sit in judgment upon 
 these fundamental truths. 
 
 The institutions themselves are supported by the private 
 interests which are intertwined with them. Institutions do 
 not exist in the abstract, but in human beings, who have 
 
692 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 adapted their entire lives to them. In the stability of the 
 educational institutions, the military institutions, the polit- 
 ical and ecclesiastical systems, those are particularly and 
 directly interested who are employed as teachers and officers, 
 as state and church officials. I mean interested not merely 
 in the vulgar sense that they and their families depend for 
 their support upon the permanence of the institutions — 
 which is often no longer the case in consequence of our pres- 
 ent pension system — but interested especially in the ideal 
 sense, for whoever denies the necessity or the value of these 
 institutions, deprives these persons of the ideal basis of their 
 existence ; he seems, by demanding a change of system, to 
 declare that their functions and their lives are futile. A 
 schoolmaster of the eighteenth century, who had reached an 
 honorable old age in the practice of his profession, instructing 
 the young in Latin composition, could not but have regarded 
 the reforms of the innovators who repudiated these things as 
 exploded errors and desired to introduce others — mathe- 
 matics and natural science, German and French — as an 
 abandonment of something that had been tried by experience, 
 of something hallowed by tradition. Should that which he 
 and his father and his grandfather had learned and practised 
 and admired as a masterpiece of human culture and erudition, 
 be now set aside ? And should things be put in its place which 
 he did not possess and did not need, — quite unnecessary 
 things, no doubt; for had he not been educated and learned, 
 respected and happy without them ? Impossible ; only crim- 
 inal carelessness and ignorance of the true value of things can 
 lead to such perverse thoughts ! In the same way, the clergy- 
 man will meet all attempts to change the church institutions or 
 the creed ; the general, attacks upon the military organization 
 or the army-ration; the privy councillor, changes in the 
 state constitution and administrative practice. All of them 
 will feel inclined to look upon the demanded changes at 
 least as quite unnecessary innovations, usually, however, as 
 
VERACITY 693 
 
 the beginnings of an obnoxious and ruinous revolution. 
 Should they really be introduced, the ruin of the country, 
 the destruction of the army, the overthrow of religion, would 
 be the inevitable result. Thus our learned school authorities 
 have for the last three hundred years prophesied the return 
 of the barbarism of the Middle Ages every time they were 
 disturbed in their obsolete pedantry. In order to guard 
 against all such calamities from the very outset, all author- 
 ities are agreed that the best and safest, and therefore most 
 advisable thing to do is to deal rigorously with the unbridled 
 criticism to which youthful, inexperienced, or malicious 
 heads are unfortunately always inclined. 
 
 The opposition of the authorities finds support in the in- 
 stinctive aversion of all privileged and propertied classes to 
 changes, and in the inertia of the masses. The propertied 
 classes are always conservative; they are " saturated, " and 
 therefore intent upon preservation and peace. Happy and 
 contented are those in possession — thus we might translate 
 the old maxim of the jurists ; they do not crave for the new, 
 but fear it. But the masses, too, are conservative by nature. 
 The established order is the habitual order ; we have adapted 
 ourselves to it; the new is, under all circumstances, strange 
 and inconvenient, apt to be ridiculous and forbidding. How 
 many sighs may not have been caused during the seventies 
 by the new weights and measures and the new coins ! Things 
 did n't fit, the litre did n't suit the pot nor the metre the body. 
 We feel uncomfortable in a new house; nothing is in its 
 place, no cozy nook reminds us of pleasant hours. New 
 institutions affect a nation in the same way, and therefore it 
 shuns change. And for the same reason the masses have an 
 instinctive fear of all criticism; they, too, feel that this 
 undermines the ground upon which the institutions rest 
 which have become endeared to them or endurable through 
 habit. Bitter experiences or strong pressure are required to 
 arouse in them a strong desire for change. 
 
694 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 We might at last also speak of the inertia of the old concept 
 tions themselves. When the Copernican theory of the celes- 
 tial motions was first advanced, it was regarded by the 
 authorities as an unfruitful or absurd hypothesis, which did 
 not deserve serious consideration, except, perhaps, to be 
 refuted so that the devil might not play his tricks with it 
 and use it to deride the word of God. They did not find the 
 new view in any way suited to explain the phenomena; the 
 old geocentric idea explained things so naturally that, in 
 comparison with it, the new one seemed awkward, nay, 
 absurd and nonsensical. For, do we not feel that the earth 
 is fixed, do we observe even the slightest evidence of this 
 fabulous motion which is falsely ascribed to it ? The new 
 theory was developed by Kepler and Galileo, and the age of 
 ridicule was followed by the age of refutation and persecu- 
 tion. The old ideas really began to appreciate their peril, 
 which was not yet the case in the sixteenth century. Now 
 they reacted with all the means at their command; what 
 these were we may learn from the biographies of Kepler and 
 Galileo. The discovery of the circulation of the blood by 
 Harvey met with a similar fate. The physicians who had 
 for so many centuries looked at things and treated men 
 according to the Galenian theory could not see what advan- 
 tages were to be derived from the new hypothesis, either 
 theoretically or practically. And how unreasonable to de- 
 mand that one should repudiate one's own past, and over- 
 throw the authorities of the centuries on account of this 
 queer-headed fellow ! In the same way the authorities re- 
 jected Darwin's biological theories and Strauss's researches 
 in evangelical history, in a later century, as untrue, useless, 
 and dangerous. 
 
 Thus the old truths are protected by a mighty dam of con- 
 servative interests against the flood of new thoughts. No 
 new truths shall come into the world ; in this the authorities 
 and the masses, the established order and the prevailing 
 
VERACITY 695 
 
 truths, are agreed. That is, no important and great truths, 
 no new ideas and fundamental conceptions ; expositions and 
 elaborations, supplementations and corrections, applications 
 and adaptations of the recognized theories and opinions, — 
 these are permitted, and not only permitted, but welcomed and 
 publicly rewarded. Perhaps there never was a time which 
 was so liberal in rewarding such work as the present. And 
 this is perfectly proper and commendable : the great truths 
 would have made their way even without the rewards. Al- 
 though Truth is, to quote Bacon, a bride without a dowry, she 
 has never wanted for suitors. Petty and laborious tasks, on 
 the other hand, the investigation of manuscripts and the 
 description of fungi and bugs, the entire work of scientific 
 registration, which, too, is necessary, possibly lack inner 
 attractiveness, and it is therefore right that the efficient 
 performance of such duties should be publicly rewarded. 
 
 The consequence of the opposition of the combined con- 
 servative interests is, then, that new ideas are invariably 
 presented to the world by martyrs. A peculiar custom is 
 ascribed to the Locrians : whoever introduced a measure for 
 altering the existing laws, was compelled to appear in the 
 popular meeting in which he argued for it with a rope 
 around his neck, by which he was hung up if he did not 
 succeed in convincing his fellow-citizens. An ingenious 
 custom ! History acts in the same way, with the difference, 
 however, that she first uses the rope and convinces herself 
 afterwards. 
 
 9. Thus the attitude of mankind to new truths is psycho- 
 logically necessary. But it is also teleologically necessary. 
 
 Historical life is evidently not possible without fixed and 
 permanent institutions ; they are the means by which collec- 
 tive reason determines and governs the life of the individual. 
 The many, we might say, somewhat modifying a remark of 
 Heraclitus, although they believe they are living according 
 to their own insight, are in reality governed by the common 
 
696 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 reason. Now institutions could not acquire stability, if new 
 ideas were to rush through the heads of men, meeting with 
 no resistance, like the wind over a stubble-field. Permanent 
 conceptions are the preconditions of permanent institutions. 
 Hence, in order that historical life may be possible, it is 
 necessary that the thoughts become fixed and take firm root 
 in the minds of men, and offer resistance to new thoughts 
 which seek to push them out. Perhaps they cannot be estab- 
 lished firmly enough, at first, without a transcendent sanc- 
 tion. This would explain the teleological necessity of a 
 religious metaphysic, which we actually find everywhere, 
 as the original foundation of the faith and the life of a 
 people, of its morals and laws, and which usually offers 
 such great resistance to the introduction of new truths. 
 Nay, we can manifestly form no conception whatever of a 
 mental-historical life in which we should not have to battle 
 for the truth against error and prejudice; of what would it 
 consist ? Without friction no motion. 
 
 Nor need we expect these pathfinders and martyrs of truth 
 to quarrel with fate on this account. Lessing's words re- 
 garding the possession and pursuit of truth are well known. 
 He surely would not have desired that truths be acquired 
 otherwise than by struggle. Not all of those who have 
 battled for the truth were as fond of struggle as Lessing. 
 Yet it is doubtful whether any one among them would have 
 been willing to change the order of nature, had it been in 
 his power to do so. That constitutes the special glory of a 
 witness of the truth, an inner voice might have whispered to 
 him, in case the tempter had approached him, to be slan- 
 dered and persecuted by the present. If, instead of this, 
 the discoverers and pioneers of new truths were honored 
 during their lives, as they are honored by posterity, these 
 honors, too, would be taken away from them by the skilful 
 and the ambitious. Then the vain and self-conceited would 
 be eternally pushing themselves to the front with new opin- 
 
VERACITY 697 
 
 ions. Owing to this beneficent arrangement, the spiritual 
 leadership of humanity is finally reserved for men of great, 
 earnest, and unselfish hearts. That would be impossible if 
 the truth flattered their contemporaries. And, therefore, 
 this inner voice may have concluded, it is good that the 
 stones intended as corner-stones of the future should be 
 rejected by the builders of the present. 
 
 Wenn das Gute wiirde vergolten, 
 So ware es keine Kunst es zu thun ; 
 Aber Verdienst ist es nun 
 Zu thun, wofiir du wirst gescholten. 
 
 Thus all those may console themselves with Riickert who 
 are abused for truth and justice' sake, — if, indeed, they need 
 any consolation. For it is worthy of note that the great 
 martyrs of truth did not leave the world with hatred and 
 bitterness. Jesus prayed upon the cross for his persecutors : 
 "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." 
 They did not intend to persecute the truth, but error, — 
 destructive error. Nay, they themselves had to serve the 
 truth as unconscious organs. "Must not the Son of man 
 suffer and die in order that all things might be fulfilled ? " 
 How could the victory be won without the last battle ? 
 
 A paradoxically-inclined person might even reason as fol- 
 lows : It is really to be deplored that so little zeal is shown 
 in persecuting new truths in our times. The result is that 
 great characters are no longer formed, as of old, when wit- 
 nesses of the truth and pioneers of thought were crucified and 
 burned. Take the life of Carlyle. Beyond doubt, he was by 
 nature and temperament made of the stuff of witnesses of the 
 truth, prophets, and martyrs: what might he not have be- 
 come if he had lived three centuries earlier ! In this weak 
 nineteenth century he was partially overwhelmed by paltry 
 troubles, — troubles with reviewers and publishers of period- 
 icals, troubles with his neighbors' cocks and dogs. These 
 were his battles, battles of no very elevating nature, how- 
 
698 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 ever honestly and valiantly he may have fought them. This 
 state of affairs, too, makes it hard for men to recognize what 
 is truly great and enduring. Whether a man is thoroughly 
 in earnest with a cause will be perfectly evident only in case 
 he is willing to offer his life for it. 
 
 However, I do not deem it superfluous to add a remark to 
 these entire reflections. Universal affirmative propositions 
 cannot, as is known, be converted simply. From the propo- 
 sition, All great new truths were persecuted and rejected as 
 heresies at their first appearance, it does not follow that all 
 heresies and paradoxes are great new truths. Writers who 
 are despised and repudiated by their contemporaries are in 
 the habit of reasoning thus, and of appealing from the pres- 
 ent to posterity. But posterity does not accept all such 
 appeals. Not all those who are called are chosen; there 
 are false prophets and even false martyrs. Great and 
 extraordinary powers are needed to bear the overthrow of 
 recognized truths. When common natures are driven by 
 accident and circumstances to battle against recognized 
 truths and established authorities, they become empty 
 blatherskites. Are these more common in our age than 
 formerly ? If so, we may perhaps attribute it to the fact 
 that serious persecutions no longer occur in our times; 
 minds were winnowed by martyrdom. 
 
 10. I shall close this entire discussion with a considera- 
 tion of the question : Does the duty of communicating truth 
 universally demand the destruction of error wherever and in 
 whatever form it may appear ? It is one of the great con- 
 troversies which have always moved mankind. We may de- 
 fine it as the controversy "between the will and the intellect^ 
 between the practical and speculative sides of human nature. 
 The will, turned towards self-preservation, demands, as was 
 shown above, stability of institutions, and therefore also 
 of the conceptions upon which they are grounded. The 
 spiritual and temporal authorities, which we may term the 
 
VERACITY 699 
 
 representatives of the will in history, therefore always 
 incline to the demand that certain things be fixed once and 
 for all, which criticism should not be permitted to disturb. 
 The intellect, on the contrary, refuses to close the debate; 
 to hinder the continuation of the investigation means for it 
 the perpetuation of error. The end of all research is the 
 absolute accommodation of knowledge to reality. But this 
 goal is infinitely remote, and hence the attempt better to 
 adapt the conceptual system to reality must be constantly 
 renewed. Nor are the fundamental principles excepted; 
 they, too, must be subjected to progressive changes, if only 
 for the reason that the constant extension and intensification 
 of particular knowledge ultimately demands a rearrange- 
 ment of the facts. 
 
 The antagonism between these two tendencies, formulated 
 as a conflict of principles, turns upon the question: Is truth 
 under all circumstances good and error harmful? Or may the 
 preservation of error at times be necessary, and its destruc- 
 tion harmful ? The politicians, if we may designate the rep- 
 resentatives of the will by this term, affirm the latter, the 
 philosophers, the representatives of the intellect, the former 
 question. 
 
 If the question is asked absolutely and universally, it will 
 be impossible to answer it otherwise than with the philoso- 
 phers : Truth is good, error harmful. Since things do not 
 govern themselves according to our opinions, we must 
 govern our opinions according to things. Things, says 
 Bishop Butler, are what they are, and their effects will be 
 what they are ; why should we wish to deceive ourselves ? 
 A negro attempts to make rain or to cure diseases by magic. 
 He is doubly harmed; he wastes his energies, while disease 
 and drouth remain. 
 
 On the other hand, it seems to be impossible to deny that 
 the destruction of an erroneous idea does not, under all cir- 
 cumstances, promote the welfare of him who harbors it 
 
700 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 Hence an inadequate idea may be better than none at all; 
 and the conditions may be such as to make it possible to 
 undermine the false conception without establishing the true 
 one. It may be possible to deprive a negro of his faith in 
 the fetich, without at the same time giving him true ideas 
 of the natural connection of things. Would he then be bene- 
 fited by being freed from error ? Fetiches are employed by 
 negroes for the protection of property; the thief fears the 
 magic, and it frequently happens that stolen goods are re- 
 turned in consequence. It may be a very imperfect police 
 force, but it is perhaps better than none at all. A wooden 
 leg, says Schopenhauer, is better than none at all, and any 
 religion better than none. 
 
 We must remember that truths are not ready-made things, 
 which pass from hand to hand like coins ; truths are living 
 functions, and do not exist in any other form. Hence they 
 cannot really be communicated. A person may assist me in 
 creating thoughts, but he cannot transfer his thoughts to me ; 
 I can only think the thoughts which I myself produce. And 
 the assistance which he renders me herein does not always 
 consist in his repeating to me the thoughts with which he is 
 familiar. The straightest path is by no means always the 
 shortest in history. At the beginning of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury the Middle Ages became acquainted with the natural- 
 scientific writings of Aristotle. Our natural scientists will 
 hardly see in them anything but a more or less subtle web of 
 errors. And yet these books were undoubtedly of great value 
 to the thirteenth century, perhaps of much greater value 
 than the most perfect text-books of the present could have 
 been to it. If the best handbooks of physics, chemistry, 
 and astronomy, which the nineteenth century has brought 
 forth, had fallen from the skies, in the thirteenth century, 
 they would most likely have been thrown aside, after a brief 
 examination, as utterly unintelligible and useless things. 
 The thinkers of those days would not have known what to do 
 
VERACITY 701 
 
 with them, any more than we know what to do with books 
 full of cabalistic symbols and formulae. Hence, if any one 
 in his zeal for the truth, if, for instance, that omnipotent 
 being of Descartes, had interfered, not in order to deceive, 
 but to prevent deception, and had destroyed the Aristotelian 
 books and sent the others down from heaven, what would 
 have been the result ? Evidently the development of natural 
 science among the Western nations would have been, if not 
 prevented, at least retarded for several centuries. Without 
 the assistance of a teacher adapted to their needs, these 
 nations would have had to enter upon the long road to 
 knowledge alone, and who knows whether they ever would 
 have found it ? Had the solution of the riddle — if we are 
 bold enough to regard the text-books of the present as such — 
 been communicated to them, it would scarcely have helped 
 them. It is well known that investigators for centuries tried 
 to find the philosopher's stone, which was supposed to be 
 able to turn everything it touched into gold. They did not 
 find the stone, but the science of chemistry. The stone was 
 a fiction, but the fiction led to the truth after all: for does 
 not chemistry turn everything into gold ? 
 
 Now the different stages of development are not only suc- 
 cessive, but also simultaneous. The electrical arc light and 
 the tallow candle exist side by side ; and each may be appro- 
 priate in its place. So, too, different physical and meta- 
 physical conceptions and fundamental principles exist side 
 by side ; the investigator and thinker and the little mother 
 in the remote mountain nook, cannot think the world 
 with the same thoughts. Truth is one, the conception of 
 things projected upon the perfect intellect ; but the real in- 
 tellects are more or less imperfect, and therefore require 
 different methods of conceiving things. 
 
 From this point of view the controversy between the poli- 
 ticians and the philosophers, it seems to me, may be settled. 
 
 The philosophers are right in this : no limits are to be set 
 
702 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 to research. Whatever new thoughts a nation produces, will 
 be suitable and good for it. We may cherish the belief that 
 nature, here as everywhere, brings forth at the proper time 
 what is appropriate and necessary. Every advance in knowl- 
 edge, viewed from the standpoint of the total development 
 of a popular life, is a genuine advance. The investigator as 
 such can therefore be concerned with no other question than 
 this : What is true ? But since there can be no research with- 
 out communication, we must say further that no limit shall 
 be set to the communication of knowledge. The scientific 
 writer has but one concern : How shall I most clearly and 
 definitely present the things as I see them ? Whoever allows 
 himself to be governed by considerations and purposes of a 
 different kind, whoever is thinking, first and last, how he 
 may please this man and avoid displeasing that one, does not 
 serve the truth, and therefore the truth also despises him. 
 Truth gives herself only to him who seeks for her alone. 
 The inconsiderate and " unintentional " books are the endur- 
 ing books. The author ought not even to think of the good 
 of the reader but only of the subject itself; the more he is 
 wrapped up in this, the better he will write. " With philosoph- 
 ical systems," the old Wandsbecker Bote once said, "which 
 are invented by their authors for others, and are constructed 
 as fig leaves or for the sake of controversy or for show, 
 sensible people will have nothing to do. But in philoso- 
 phers who seek for light and truth to satisfy their own needs, 
 and to remove the load of untruth oppressing their hearts, 
 other people have the deepest interest. " 
 
 So far the philosophers are right. The politicians, on the 
 other hand, are right in this, that when it comes to imparting 
 knowledge by instruction, which is designed for particular 
 persons, we must be guided not only by a regard for the sub- 
 ject but by a regard for the person. This consideration — we 
 may call it the pedagogical consideration — may prevent the 
 teacher from saying everything he thinks, and from saying 
 
VERACITY 703 
 
 what he thinks just as he thinks it in his own mind. We 
 do not tell the simplest experience to two different persons 
 in the same way; we take into account the person, and 
 govern our narrative and voice, the selection and arrange- 
 ment of the facts, accordingly. How could we speak of 
 greater things, how could we speak of God and the world, to 
 persons of different age, education, inclinations, and views 
 in the same words ? It is the same history of mankind which 
 is taught in the Volksschule, in the gymnasium, and the 
 university; and yet how different must be the method of 
 treatment in order that it may be good, instructive, and 
 edifying in each place. The same also applies to ultimate 
 principles: the world is one and the same, and so is the 
 truth; but it cannot reflect the same countenance in every 
 mirror. 
 
 What is true of the teacher in the school is true also of the 
 preacher in the pulpit. To him, too, the pedagogical law is 
 applicable : Discuss the truth in such a way that these par- 
 ticular hearers before you may be instructed and edified 
 thereby. Let us suppose that his congregation lives in an 
 out-of-the-way village on the moor, to which not even the 
 faintest rumor of the things which have occurred in theology 
 and literature during the last hundred years has penetrated, 
 where the names of Strauss and Renan are as little known 
 as those of Kant and Schleiermacher. Here the Bible is 
 still accepted in the literal sense as the word of God, which 
 has been transmitted to us by the holy men to whom it was 
 entrusted. Our clergyman, however, has been convinced by 
 higher criticism that the Sacred Scriptures were made in a 
 very human way, like other writings, that different concep- 
 tions, contradictions, and even errors are contained in them, 
 not to speak of the uncertainties of tradition. Ought this to 
 keep him from speaking to his congregation of the Bible as 
 the word of God ? Or ought he, for example, to lecture on 
 the results of higher criticism, in order to free them of their 
 
704 DOCTRINE OF VIRTCES AND DUTIES 
 
 time-honored prejudices and errors ? What would he accom- 
 plish by that ? If he succeeded in taking from the peasants 
 their old faith, what could he give them in return ? Strauss's 
 Life of Christ or Kant's Religion within the Bounds of Mere 
 Reason ? By that, he would simply succeed in bringing into 
 contempt the only book which hitherto served them as a guide 
 and a light, as a poetical pleasure in life and a consolation 
 in death. For they would surely be apt to say, in case they 
 believed him : So, then, we have been deceived by this book ; 
 we thought it was God's word, and now we see it is the 
 word of man, and hence we had better cast it aside and rea£ 
 what the wise men of to-day write. That is what educated 
 people do : they accept the conclusion of criticism that the 
 Bible is not God's word, and therefore cease reading it. 
 Hence if our preacher does not wish that to happen, if he 
 desires, as in fact he does, the Bible to be the first, the 
 most important, nay, perhaps the only book needed by his 
 moor-peasants, and perhaps also by other human beings, 
 which it will do them more good to read every day than the 
 most widely-circulated daily newspaper with its three edi- 
 tions a day, and the most cultured weekly and monthly jour- 
 nal besides : if he believes this, he will without scruple and 
 hesitation speak of the book in the language in which the 
 peasants on the moor are accustomed to hear it spoken of. 
 Is he telling them the untruth ? What does it mean to say 
 that the Bible is God's word ? Is it a falsehood ? Is it a 
 literary -historical notice like the statement that Gutzkow is 
 the author of the Magician of Rome? No, it is a metaphor 
 which expresses a judgment of value in the most emphatic 
 form. It means that its contents are so grand and true that 
 it is a divine book, and comes from God. The same preacher 
 might, if he were transferred to different surroundings and 
 now had to speak to readers of Strauss and Kant, change his 
 language without changing his view, and without proving 
 false to the truth in either case. He would, entering into 
 
VERACITY 705 
 
 their conceptions, say to them : All that you have read or 
 heard or even written about these books is certainly highly 
 interesting, and some of it perhaps also true. But now for- 
 get all that for a moment, and consider with me what is said 
 in these books, which originated in such and such a way. 
 Very serious things are said, it seems to me, — things which 
 are often told with wonderful and unique simplicity and 
 power ; so that I am in a certain sense brought back to the 
 view that this book, like no other book in the world, con- 
 tains divine words and a revelation of God, — a view which 
 Goethe and Herder held, whom my hearers will perhaps be 
 more inclined to believe in these matters than a modern the- 
 ologian. — If to build up (olfcoSo/ielv) and not to tear down is 
 the real business of the preacher as well as of the teacher, he 
 must, it seems to me, take this position. This would be, as 
 the Apostle says, speaking the truth in love and not in anger 
 (dXTjOeveiv iv a^airrj). 1 
 
 The same preacher might, finally, if, as a scholar, he pub- 
 lished philological-historical investigations of the sacred 
 Scriptures, also speak in still another strain. Here he would 
 again, in order to fulfil the duty of veracity, avoid the very 
 thing that he cannot and should not avoid as a preacher, 
 that is, accommodation to the thoughts and language of 
 others. And he would likewise avoid the attempts at concil- 
 iation, the makeshifts, and the weak excuses, employed to 
 save a theory, the squinting at orthodoxy, the haggling for 
 the truth, the circumvention of the confession that a thou- 
 sand things remain riddles to him, in fact everything that 
 makes many commentaries on the Gospels so unbearable to 
 every truthful man. Here, indeed, we need a new Luther 
 who will make short work of the commentaries and 
 controversies. 2 
 
 1 Ephesians, IV., 15. 
 
 2 Objections have been raised against this view. A sincere and truthful nature, 
 fe is contended, cannot do this. I confess the difficulty without controversy, 
 but I believe it U aot due to the thing itself but to the conditions in which our 
 
706 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 From this point of view the duties of a church and school 
 administration are to be determined. No man should be in- 
 terfered with in his calling as a teacher on account of his 
 dissenting opinions, but only on the ground of pedagogical 
 blunders. The preacher and the teacher is not employed as 
 a hireling to present " correct " views, it is his business to 
 express his faith, his convictions, and his soul. In case he 
 exhibits a lack of skill, he should receive advice from the 
 more experienced; but if he does not wish to accept it or 
 cannot understand it, he must choose another calling; not 
 everybody is called to preach or to teach. Nor is everybody 
 qualified to criticise another's method of teaching, surely not 
 one whose chief claim to distinction is " correctness of thought" 
 and an ability to write official documents. Harsh attempts 
 
 clergymen find themselves placed at present. If the village were, as was assumed, 
 absolutely isolated, if it contained only the peasants with their faith and the 
 clergyman with his faith and his knowledge, one difficulty would still remain : 
 how are people to understand each other who do not think the same thoughts 1 
 But the moral difficulty would not exist. The latter is due to the fact that the 
 preacher lives in an environment in which positions and promotions are open to the 
 professors of the creed, whatever may be their real attitude to it ; a proud and 
 upright nature may find it impossible to tolerate even the appearance of being in- 
 fluenced by such considerations. And besides, where shall we find a village into 
 which the disconnected elements of the new ideas have not been carried, say by a 
 soldier returning home from the capital or by a social-democratic pamphlet ? 
 Under such circumstances I can easily understand the painfulness of the situa- 
 tion, and I am far from blaming a man who cannot endure it any longer. I 
 simply say : A man can assume a different attitude without deserving to be 
 accused of insincerity. — The case is different so soon as he is asked by the 
 people : Do you really believe that God is the author of the Bible 1 The question 
 suggests doubt, and doubt is an indication of a desire for knowledge, obscure 
 though it may be ; and this calls for instruction, instruction in the real history 
 of the origin of the Bible, in which case it will perhaps be discovered that this is 
 a difficult problem, probably much more difficult than the inquirers surmised. 
 And to the over-curious he may reply : My dear friend, if you would keep the 
 word, you would find out whether it was of God or not. On the other hand, tc 
 repel an honest doubter would be to prove false to the truth. And the so wide- 
 spread distrust of the clergy and their sincerity is a mortifying proof that this 
 has often been done. Nor will the distrust disappear so long as the conditions 
 continue to which it owes its origin : that is, so long as the good positions are 
 given to those who know how to profess and to be sileji* The 2jar f yrs had v 
 difficulty in convincing men of the genuineness of their faH*. 
 
VERACITY 707 
 
 at levelling make men bitter and dull. This office more 
 than any other requires wisdom and self-control, acuteness 
 of vision and leniency of judgment, and, above all, a wealth 
 of knowledge and experience with respect to the things upon 
 which mental power depends, to enable us not only to judge 
 but also to give help. Lichtenberg's advice is admirable, 
 and all those who belong to the spiritual regime should take 
 it to heart every day : " Train your mind to doubt and your 
 heart to toleration. " And a word of Goethe ought also to 
 be borne in mind : " If older persons were only willing to 
 adopt true pedagogical methods, they would not prohibit a 
 young man from doing what gives him pleasure, whatever it 
 may be, nor set him against it, unless they could at the same 
 time give him something in place of it. " 
 
 Besides, I do not wish to hide the fact that we have, in 
 my opinion, magnified the difficulties existing in this field 
 in a manner not warranted by the nature of the case. In a 
 certain measure public instruction will always be behind the 
 times. The school will, in the main, always be concerned 
 with transmitting the stock of recognized truths. Now new 
 truths never make their appearance in the world as recog- 
 nized truths, but as heterodox ones. They cannot, even for 
 this reason, gain admission to the schools. Then, again, the 
 teachers have, for the most part, been educated by the older 
 generation. This made it impossible for the Copernican 
 theory to become a branch in the curriculum of the sixteenth 
 century; nor can the Darwinian theory gain entrance into 
 the schools of the nineteenth century ; — although I am not of 
 the opinion that the teacher who desires to speak of it and 
 can do it intelligently and tactfully should be prohibited from 
 doing so. On the contrary, it is much wiser that a learned 
 and reliable man should point out the significance and bear- 
 ing of the new conception, which has spread so rapidly and 
 has had such great influence upon our times, than that we 
 should leave the matter to the accidental and perhaps very 
 
708 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 inadequate treatment of the first penny-a-liner who happens 
 along. 
 
 But be this as it may, it will at some future time seem very 
 strange that our age has so placidly adhered to a system of 
 religious instruction which arose many centuries ago under 
 entirely different conditions of intellectual life, and which 
 is, in so many respects, decidedly opposed to the facts and 
 ideas which are regarded as firmly established outside of the 
 school and church. It is a secret to no one, not even to the 
 pupils of our gymnasia, that much of what our present 
 religious instruction obliges teachers and pupils to accept as 
 literal truth — think of the Old Testament — is not regarded 
 in that light anywhere in the world, not even by our school 
 directors or ministerial councillors, who in their role of 
 supervisors insist upon the " correctness " of the teaching. 
 Our philological -historical and natural-scientific investigators 
 are so utterly out of line with the dogmatic doctrine of our 
 creed that they pay absolutely no attention to it, that they 
 do not even take the trouble to contradict it. And everybody 
 knows how little the great poets and thinkers of the epoch 
 which we teach our pupils to regard as the classic age of our 
 spiritual life, cared for the teachings of the church, nay, in 
 part, also for the Christian religion. 
 
 I cannot help thinking that religious instruction which 
 overlooks this fact, or simply mentions it in order to deplore 
 it and to accuse these men of infidelity and perhaps also of 
 frivolousness, cannot, as a rule, produce the effects which 
 we expect and desire: appreciation of Christianity as an 
 historical phenomenon and reverence for its founder. If 
 the instruction is imparted by a one-sided young theologian, 
 who has great faith in the correctness of his dogmatic views, 
 and combines with this little capacity for guiding souls, the 
 opposite effect is apt to ensue : distrust and aversion, feelings 
 which spread from their source to everything connected 
 with it. 
 
VERACITY 709 
 
 A book recently fell into my hands which I was unable to 
 read without some reluctance: Max Nordau's Conventional 
 Lies. 1 This book is conspicuous neither for its literary merit 
 nor for the depth of its views ; it is not even amusing. It 
 contains nothing but the assurance, a hundred times repeated, 
 that our entire life is one great falsehood; religion and the 
 church, the monarchy and the parliament, liberalism and con- 
 servatism, marriage and the family, sociableness and society, 
 — everything is a lie, particularly religion. We pretend to 
 regard it as the most sacred and certain thing, while in 
 reality it is the most indifferent thing to us in the world. 
 This book has passed through sixteen editions in the course 
 of a few years, and must therefore have been bought and 
 read. I asked a bookseller, Who reads the book ? and re- 
 ceived the answer, Why, everybody. That means, of course, 
 everybody who goes to the book-store ; that is, all educated 
 people, all those who have attended the gymnasium and the 
 university. 
 
 We may think what we choose of the judgment shown by 
 these readers; it remains a highly significant fact that 
 such a book has met with such success. What makes the 
 work so attractive ? I can discover no reason for it except 
 this, that it declares openly and forcibly what a great many 
 of its readers think and feel. An age is characterized more 
 by the books which it reads than by those which it writes. 
 
 And this book of Lies does not stand alone ; there is an 
 entire literature which deals with the same theme. What 
 attracted the readers of Strauss's Old and Nieiv Faith 2 or 
 Biichner's Force and Matter, 3 if not the openness with which 
 these writers repudiated the old faith ? What is it that in- 
 spires Diihring and Nietzsche but the desire to unmask false- 
 hood. What impels the modern novel writers and dramatists 
 
 1 Die konventionellen Liigen der Kulturmenschheit. 
 8 Der alte und neue Glaube, translated by M. Blind. 
 8 Translated by Collingswood. 
 
710 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 but the desire to analyze the falseness and the inner rottenness 
 of the times, and to expose them to the microscopic gaze of the 
 reader ? An entire literature which makes a business of un~ 
 masking falsehood, — this, beyond doubt, is the trait which the 
 history of literature of a later age will regard as highly charac- 
 teristic of the spirit of the dying nineteenth century. That the 
 conflict between what we really think and believe, and what 
 we teach our youth to say or to believe in our church and 
 school instruction, is partially to blame for this, no one who 
 has eyes to see will deny. In almost every life this reaction 
 appears sooner or later, with more or less violence; and 
 since it usually happens at an age which other conditions 
 also help to make critical, it often leads to a serious crisis 
 in which many a young man receives permanent injury, and 
 many a one is ruined for life. With the church faith, moral- 
 ity becomes an object of suspicion, and the enlightenment 
 leads to an ostensible repudiation of morality. When indo- 
 lence, regard for others, or cowardice keeps others from 
 professing their thoughts, or from confessing their doubts 
 to themselves, hypocrisy or inner falsehood utterly destroys 
 the moral life. 1 
 
 I see but one way out of this difficulty. During the for- 
 ties and the fifties many indulged in the hope that the conflict 
 might be overcome by a more rigorous use of authority in 
 favor of the old orthodoxy. Even governments, in a large 
 measure, followed the advice that science be forced to a 
 
 1 Fr. Jodl admirably points out the danger in a thoughtful lecture on the 
 Nature and Aims of the Ethical Movement in Germany (1893) [Wesen und 
 Ziele der ethischen Bewegung in Deutschland] : u Year after year the highest and 
 most sacred things, ethical convictions and ideals, are imparted to the younger 
 generation, mixed with dogmatic propositions, which absolutely contradict the 
 mental tendency which all other forces in life and education aim to develop 
 And thus a double evil is eternally produced which like a cancer eats away our 
 spiritual life: inwardly the ethical principles and ideals break down with the 
 weak supports to which they have been artificially attached, outwardly they are 
 adhered to, often with conscious hypocrisy, on account of the attitude of the 
 state. Religion becomes the state dress for our Byzantinism, behind which inter- 
 nal shallowness, nay, rottenness, with difficulty conceals itself." 
 
VERACITY 711 
 
 change of front, or at least that instruction be governed, so 
 far as possible, by the old formulas. The result is apparent: 
 they have thereby created these readers of the literature men- 
 tioned above. Hence only one way is left: to accommodate 
 the church dogma to the theoretical thoughts and conceptions 
 which are possible to our time. In this way Christianity 
 would not be given up as a practical life-principle, but freed 
 from bonds which impede its progress. What robs the Gos- 
 pel of its efficacy in our times is its amalgamation with the 
 old church dogma. If it were offered us as something purely 
 human and historical, it would even now move the hearts of 
 men. The formulae of the longer and shorter catechisms 
 stifle and kill it. 
 
 It looks as if this view were making some headway within 
 theological circles, at least upon Protestant soil. If the 
 movement were to lead to a real and permanent peace be- 
 tween religion and science, I should regard it as a blessing 
 for the European nations. Nations cannot live without re- 
 ligion; religion, however, cannot live permanently if it is 
 in conflict with philosophy and science. But the possibility 
 of the peace lies in the direction in which Kant sought it 
 and believed himself to have found it a hundred years ago. 
 Let scientific research proceed as far as possible upon her 
 course, regardless of the objections of the dogma ; the entire 
 historical and natural realm is absolutely open to her investi- 
 gations. But the relation of the human mind to reality is 
 not exhausted by scientific knowledge. It cannot help con- 
 structing thoughts concerning the meaning of the whole; 
 these thoughts, however, are not a matter of demonstration, 
 like physical theories or historical facts; they are based 
 upon the soul's participation in things, upon the selective 
 judgment of value ; they rest upon the volitional side of man's 
 nature. In their unity they make up the faith of the human 
 soul. There will therefore be unity of faith between all 
 those tvTio recognize the same highest good. But the dogma, 
 
712 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 
 
 as the formula of the faith, would be an expression of the 
 conception of reality from the point of view of the highest 
 good. A dogma in this sense could never come in conflict 
 with science, because it would never make any assertions 
 concerning that aspect of things which is accessible to 
 science. It would bind the will, but not the understanding. 
 
INDEX 
 
 [The letter n. stands for note, 
 ant places.] 
 
 Asterisks are inserted to assist the reader in finding import 
 
 Abbott, 194 n. 2, 222 n. 1, 224 n. 1, 321 
 
 n. 1, 584 n. 1. 
 
 Advice, 686. 
 
 ^Eschylus, 411. 
 
 ^Esthetics, 19. 
 
 Albee, 185 n. 2, n. 3. 
 
 Alexander, S., 193. 
 
 Almsgiving, 642 ff. 
 
 Altruism and egoism, 379 * ff. ; now 
 judged morally, 391 ff. 
 
 Ambition, 574 ff. 
 
 Ambrose, 76, 170* f. 
 
 Amor Dei, Spinoza's, 183. 
 
 Anaxagoras, 59. 
 
 Angelus Silesius, 441. 
 
 Anselm, 120 f. 
 
 Anthropology, 2. 
 
 Antiquitv contrasted with Middle Ages, 
 119 ff." 
 
 Anzengruber, 375 n. 1. 
 
 Apocalypse, 105. 
 
 A priori method in ethics, 6 ff. 
 
 Aristotle, 39 n. 1, 60, 224, 251 n. 1, 257, 
 273 ff., 374, 407 n. 1, 426, 430 f., 454 n. 2, 
 475 n. 1, 478, 483 n. 1, 495, 534, 536 n. 1, 
 569 n. 1, 599 n. 1; his definition of 
 ethics, 1; his ethical system, 48* ff. ; 
 his conception of ethics as a practical 
 science, 25 ; his conception of highest 
 good, 36 f. ; and Spinoza, 52 ; his con- 
 ception of the tragedy, 263 f. 
 
 Arnold, M., 288. 
 
 Art, 283, 432, 556 * ff. ; affectation of, 560 
 f.; its effects on human soul, 558 f. ; and 
 life, 559 ff.; in Middle Ages, 125, 5G2; 
 modern, 563 ff.; foreign elements in 
 modern, 563 ff. 
 
 Asceticism, 488 *ff.; in Greek and Chris- 
 tian ethics, 167 ff.; Jesus's attitude 
 Awards, 93 ff. ; in Middle Ages, 119 f., 
 171 f. ; in Plato, 47 f. ; and Reformation. 
 132 f. 
 
 Atheism, 425, 430. 
 
 Athletics, 519 ff., 526. 
 
 Atomism and religion, 423 ff. 
 
 Auerbach, B., 306. 
 
 Aufklarung, 28, 40, 1-10 f. 
 
 Augustine, 32, 321 n. 1, 454 n. 3,487; his 
 
 ethical system, 171*; his conception of 
 
 evil, 332; his conception of virtues, 69; 
 
 and Luther, 131. 
 Authoritativeness of conscience, 342 ff., 
 
 363 ff. 
 Avarice, 536 ff. 
 
 Bacon, 379 n. 1, 695; on atheism, 430; 
 
 on causality, 6 f . ; his modern ideals, 
 
 137 * ff. 
 Bad, 321* ff.; definition of the, 248 f.; 
 
 good and, 222 ff. 
 Baer, 507 n. 1. 
 Bain, 192 * n. 1, 251 n. 1, 253 n. 1, 340 
 
 n. 1, 346 n. 1, 379 n. 1. 
 Baldwin, 253 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 341 n. 1, 343 
 
 n. 1, 405 n. 1, 452 n. 1. 
 Barbarian conception of life, 37 ff. ; con- 
 trasted with Greek and Christian ideals, 
 
 167 ff. 
 Barratt, 192 * n. 1, 251 n. 1. 
 Baumann, 215 n. 1, 452 n. 1. 
 Baumgartner, 592 n. 2. 
 Baur, 65 n. 1, 98 n. 1. 
 Bayle, 327 n. 1. 
 Beccaria, his theory of capital punishment, 
 
 611. 
 Beneficence, 596 ff. 
 
 Benevolence, 592* ff., 599, 638* ff., 664. 
 Bentham, 190 *, 223, 251 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 
 
 354, 380 n. 4, 382, 606 n. 1. 
 Berner, 610, 631 f. 
 Bestmann, 65 n. 1. 
 Bias of Priene, 336. 
 Bildung, 554 f. 
 Bismarck, 531. 
 
714 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Blackie, 483 n. 2. 
 
 Blind, 90 n. 5, 709 n. 2. 
 
 Bluntschli, 262 n. 1, 550. 
 
 Bodily life, 505 ff. 
 
 Bowne, 193 *n. 1, 415 n. 1, 599 n. 1, 606 n. 1. 
 
 Bowring, 190 n. 1. 
 
 Bradley, 193 * n. 1, 227 n. 1, 251 n. 1. 350 
 
 n. 1. 
 Brentano, 340 n. 1. 
 Brillat-Savarin, 506 n. 1. 
 Brinckmann, 324 n. 1. 
 Biichner, 709. 
 Buckle, 136 f. 
 Buddha, 114 f. 
 
 Buddhism and Christianity, 114 f. 
 Buhle, 147 n. 1. 
 
 Burckhardt, 111, 127 n. 1, 128, 372. 
 Butler, 340 n. 1, 379 n. 1, 699. 
 Byron, 303, 444 n. 1. 
 
 Calderwood, 35 n. 1, 192* n. 4, 340 n. 1. 
 
 Calling, 530 ff. 
 
 Calumny, 669 f . 
 
 Calvin, 454 n. 4; on free-will, 455. 
 
 Campe, 484 n. 2. 
 
 Capital, 533 ff. 
 
 Capital punishment, 611 f. 
 
 Cardinal virtues, 45. 
 
 Carlyle, 375, 697 ; his conception of highest 
 
 good, 263 ; his conception of evil, 331 n. 
 
 1 ; his estimate of suicide, 588 n. 1. 
 Carriere, 127 n. 1, 215 n. 1. 
 Carus, P., 114 n. 1. 
 Cassian, 85 f. 
 Catholic ethics, 169 ff. 
 Catholicism, 125 n. 1, 136, 160 f., 169 ff. 
 Cathrein, 215 n. 1. 
 Causality and free-will, 460 n. 1. 
 Celsus, his criticism of Christianity, 98 f . 
 Certainty of moral law, 356 ff. 
 Chamfort, 523. 
 Chamisso, 413. 
 Character, influence of prosperity upon, 
 
 407 ff. 
 Charity, 638 ff . ; Christian, 83 f., 157 n. 1. ; 
 
 in Middle Ages, 124. 
 Charity-craze, 646 ff. 
 Charlemagne, 118. 
 Christianity, 157 ff., 402, 613 ff., 638 ff. ; 
 
 and Buddhism, 114 f.; and charity, 83 
 
 f. ; and courage, 69 ff. ; and earthly 
 
 goods, 87 ff.; and family-life, 84 ff.'; 
 
 and honor, 78 f. ; and humility, 79 ; and 
 
 immortality, 444 f. ; and justice, 613 ff. ; 
 
 and knowledge, 67 f . ; and liberality, 82 ; 
 
 and miracles, 435 ff. ; and the modern 
 
 spirit, 155 ff . ; its moral ideal, 65 ff. ; 
 
 contrasted with barbarian ideal, 167, ff., 
 
 with Buddhism, 114 f., with Greek ideal 
 65 ff ., with other ideals, 33 ff . ; Nietz- 
 sche's criticism of, 150 ff. ; and pessi- 
 mism, 405 f.; and pity, 81 f . ; and 
 pleasure, 74 f . ; and Romans, 98 ff. ; and 
 self-esteem, 81 f. ; and silence, 76; and the 
 state, 72 ff. ; its triumph, 112 ff. ; and the 
 ire'^ji \irtues, 67 ff.; and wealth, 77 f. 
 
 Chrysostom, 646. 
 
 Church, 116 ff., 123 ff., 126, 131 f., 409, 
 436, 682 ff., 706 ff. 
 
 Christianization of antiquity, 98 ff.; of the 
 Germans, 117 ff. 
 
 Cicero, 47, 53 n. 1, 56 n. 1. 
 
 Civilization, and art, 559 ff. ; Christianity 
 and, 91 ff. ; and morality, 314 ff.; and 
 success, 314 ff . ; and wars, 395 ff. 
 
 Clarke, 192* 340 n. 1. 
 
 Classical education and patriotism, 661 f. 
 
 Clement of Alexandria, 77. 
 
 Clergy, 119 f., 132, 689. 
 
 Clothing, 517 ff. 
 
 Cohen, 194 n. 1. 
 
 Coit, 415 n. 1, 447 n. 1. 
 
 Collingwood, 709 n. 3. 
 
 Columbus, 673. 
 
 Comenius, 95. 
 
 Compassion, 592* ff. ; Christian, 81 f. 
 
 Compulsion in law, 604 ff. 
 
 Comte, 48 n. 1, 191; and altruism, 379 f. 
 
 Confidence, 666 f. 
 
 Conscience, 340* ff . ; authority of, 363 ff . ; 
 individualization of, 368 ff . ; infallibility 
 of, 357 ff. ; origin of, 340 ff. ; its tran- 
 scendent sanction, 366 f . ; Kant's theory 
 of, 350 ff . ; Shaftesbury's view of, 186 ff."; 
 Socrates and, 371 n. 1. ; utility of, 232 f . 
 
 Conservatism and liberalism, 690 ff. 
 
 Conversion, of Germans to Christianity and 
 antiquity, 563 ff.; of Old World to 
 Christianity 98 ff. 
 
 Coulanges, Fustel de, 416 n. 1. 
 
 Courage, 484 f., 495* ff. ; Greek and Chris- 
 tian estimates of, contrasted, 69 ff.; 
 Plato's conception of, 45. 
 
 Cowardice, 495 ff . ; 668 f . 
 
 Creed, religion and, 434 ff. 
 
 Crime, charity and, 652 ff . ; poverty and, 
 541 n.'l. 
 
 Criminal characters, 371 ff. 
 
 Crispin, 228 f. 
 
 Criticism, higher, 703 ff. 
 
 Cruelty, 648 ff. 
 
 Cudworth, 192* 340 n. 1. 
 
 Culture, 543 ff. 
 
 Culture-religions and religions of redemp* 
 tion, 163 ff. 
 
 Cumberland, 185* 379 n. 1. 
 
INDEX 
 
 715 
 
 Cupidity, 491 ff. 
 
 Custom and duty, 343* ff.; and instinct, 8 
 
 f. ; law, morality, and religion, 415 ff. ; 
 
 and will, 343 ff. 
 Cynics, 109. 
 Cyrenaics, 251 n. 1. 
 
 Dante, 48 n 1. 
 
 Darwin, 251 n. 1, 274 f., 340 n. 1, 344 n. 
 2, 379 n. 1, 433; his ethical theory, 
 192 * f . ; his theory of conscience, 341 f . 
 
 David of Augsburg, 688 n. 1. 
 
 Death, 335 * ff. ; Epicurus's attitude to- 
 wards, 57 f. ; Greek and Christian con- 
 ceptions of, 67. 
 
 Deception, 664 ff. 
 
 Democritus, 56 n. 2, 251 n. 1. 
 
 Descartes and the modern spirit, 140 ff. 
 
 Desire, impulse, and will, 220 f. 
 
 Determinism, 452 ff. 
 
 Dewey, 193 * n. 1. 
 
 Diogenes Laertius, 53 f., 56 n. 1, 277 n. 2, 
 337 n. 1. 
 
 Diplomacy, 675 ff. 
 
 Discretion, 687. 
 
 Dishonor, 573. 
 
 Disposition of agent and worth of act, 
 224 ff. 
 
 Distrust, 666 ff. 
 
 Doring, 215 n. 1. 
 
 Dorner, A., 29 n. 1, 122 n. 1, 215 n. 1, 
 475 n. 1, 483 n. 1, 505 n. 1, 529 n. 1, 
 569 n. 1, 599 n. 1, 638 n. 1, 664 n. 1. 
 
 Dorner, I. A., 179. 
 
 Dostoievski, 375 n. 1. 
 
 Dress, 517 ff. 
 
 Drobisch, 464 n. 1. 
 
 Drunkenness, 479, 507 * ff., 590. 
 
 Duhr, 239 n. 1. 
 
 Duhring, 215 n. 1, 584 n. 1. 
 
 Duncker, 114 n. 1. 
 
 Duns Scotus, 454 n. 4. 
 
 Diirer, his conception of art, 558 n. 1. 
 
 Duties, 475 ff. 
 
 Duty and Conscience, 340 * ff. ; and cus- 
 tom, 343 f . ; and inclination, 346 ff. ; and 
 merit, 377 f. 
 
 Dwelling, 515 ff. 
 
 ECKERMANN, 431, 580. 
 
 Economic life, 529 ff. ; virtues, 536 ff. 
 
 Education, 543 ff.; bodily, 505 ff. ; intel- 
 lectual, 543 ff.; moral, 476 ff., 483 ff., 
 498 ; religious, 708 ff. 
 
 Effects of acts and disposition of agent, 
 224 ff. 
 
 Egoism, criticism of, 244 ff. 
 
 Egoism and altruism, 244 ff., 379 * ff. ; how 
 
 judged morally, 391 ff. ; in Hobbes and 
 Spinoza, 380 ; in Shaftesbury and 
 Hutcheson, 186. 
 
 Einjahrigenschein, 551 f. 
 
 Eliot, George, 90 n. 5, 305. 
 
 Emerson, 522. 
 
 Empiricism and rationalism in ethics, 6 if. 
 
 End justifies the means, 233 ff. 
 
 Ends and means, 253 ff., 275 ff. 
 
 Enemy, love of, 616 ff. 
 
 Energism, 223 f., 251 * ff., 270 ff. 
 
 Enlightenment, 28, 40, 146 f., 336, 554; 
 ethical conceptions of, 201 f. 
 
 Ennui, 532. 
 
 Epictetus, 55, 62, 106 * f., 493, 501, 624. 
 
 Epicureans, 587. 
 
 Epicurus, 56 * ff., 251 n. 1 ; his concept!®?* 
 of philosophy, 61. 
 
 Equality, 624 ff. 
 
 Equanimity, 500 ff. 
 
 Equity, 616 ff. 
 
 Equivocation, 665. 
 
 Erasmus and Luther, 131. 
 
 Erdmann, J. E., 35 n. 1, 519 n. 1. 
 
 Error, harmfulness of, 699 f. 
 
 Essenes, 109. 
 
 Ethics, aesthetics and, 19 ; Aristotle's con- 
 ception of, 1; Christian, 33 f., 167 r 
 169 ff.; definition of, 1 ff.; function of, 
 4 ff . ; Greek, 33 ff. ; Greek conception of, 
 1; history of, 33 ff . ; intuitional and 
 teleological, 222 ff.; mediaeval, 169 ff.; 
 metaphysics and, 44 f.; method of, 6 ff. ; 
 modern, 179 ff.; natural science and, 
 6 ff. ; nature of, 1 ff.; as a practical 
 science, 1 ff . ; practical value of, 25 ff. ; 
 relation of, to psychology and anthro- 
 pology, 2 ; rationalistic and empirical, 
 6 ff. ; theological, 169 ff . 
 
 Ethical societies, 483 n. 2. 
 
 Ethical virtues, Greek and Christian con- 
 ceptions of, contrasted, 68 f. 
 
 Eudaemonia, 36 ff.; Aristotle's conception 
 of, 49; Stoic conception of, 54. 
 
 Eudaemonism, 194 ff., 251 ff. 
 
 Eucken, 17 n. 1, 35 n. 1. 
 
 Eutuchia and eudaemonia, 407 ff. 
 
 Everett, 475 n. 1. 
 
 Evil, 321 * ff. ; physical and moral, 322 ff.; 
 responsibility and, 461 f. 
 
 Evolution, 278 ; egoism, altruism and, 
 394 ff. ; ethics and, 214 f. 
 
 Evolutional ethics, 192 f. 
 
 Evolutionistic view of conscience, 364 f. 
 
 Examinations, 549 f. 
 
 Exercise, 519 ff. 
 
 Expediency and truth, 672 ff. 
 
 Extravagance, 536 ff. 
 
7lt) 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Faith and creed, 434 ff.; and life, 421 ff. 
 
 Falsehood, 664 ff. 
 
 Fame, 569 ff. 
 
 Family-life and primitive Christianity, 
 
 84 ff. 
 Family-rights, 634. 
 Fashion, 518 f. 
 Faultfinding, 650 f., 687. 
 Faust, 408 f . ; and conscience, 372. 
 Fechner, 339 n. 1, 427. 
 Feeling, as source of moral knowledge, 
 
 11 f . ; and will, 221. 
 Fetichism, 417 f. 
 Feuchtersleben, 483 n. 2. 
 Fichte, J. G., 340 n. 1, 353, 483 n. 1; his 
 
 altruism, 380 n. 2 ; and the lie of neces- 
 sity, 673 f . 
 Fichte, J. H., 179 n. 3. 
 Fischer, K., 127 n. 1, 179 n. 3. 
 Fisher, 65 n. 1, 98 n. 1. 
 Flattery, 670, 681. 
 Forgiveness, 616 ff. 
 Formal and material judgments of acts, 
 
 227 ff. 
 Forster, 194 n. 1. 
 Fouiltee, 179 n. 3, 452 n. 1. 
 Fowler, 185 n. 2; and Wilson, 192 n. 1, 
 
 251 n. 1, 452 n. 1, 475 n. 1, 483 n. 1, 
 
 505 n. 1, 529 n. 1, 569 n. 1, 592 n. 1, 
 
 599 n. 1. 
 Francke, A. H., 80, 305. 
 Franklin, 484 n. 2. 
 Frederick the Great, 588; his pessimism, 
 
 300. 
 Freedom and causality, 460 n. 1.; of 
 
 teaching, 706 f. ; of thought, 698 ff.; of 
 
 the will, 452 ff. 
 Free-mindedness, 577 f. 
 Free-will, 452 ff. 
 Freytag, 306. 
 
 Friedlander, 98 n. 1, 101 ff., 523. 
 Frugality, 536 ff. 
 Fullerton, 181 n. 2. 
 
 Galileo and Hobbes, 179 f. 
 Galitzin, Princess, 82. 
 Gallwitz, 215 n. 1, 222 n. 1. 
 Gass, 65 n. 1, 74 n. 2, 171 n. 1, 340 n. 1. 
 Geiger, 127 n. 1. 
 Geldart, 90 n. 3. 
 Gellert, 199. 
 Gellius, 252 n. 1. 
 General culture, 547 ff. 
 Gerhardt, Paul, 161. 
 German ethics, 193 ff. 
 Gilman, N. P., 475 n. 1. 
 Gizycki, 179 n. 3, 185 n. 2, 189, 251 n. 1, 
 415 n. 1 ; his criticism of Paulsen's ener- 
 
 gism, 283 ff.; his criticism of Paulsen's 
 conception of religion and morality, 
 446 ff. 
 
 Gladiators at Rome, 103 ff. 
 
 Gliickseligkeit, 37 ff. 
 
 Gluttony, 506 f. 
 
 God, 43, 160 f., 219, 282, 428 ff., 436, 442 f . ; 
 as the highest good, 282 f . ; Kingdom of, 
 280, 318. 
 
 Goethe, 308, 320, 333, 335, 355, 371 n. 1, 
 402, 410, 425, 430 ff., 483 n. 2, 552, 554, 
 568 ? 579 f., 594 f., 658, 680, 705,707; and 
 Christianity, 164; his conception of evil, 
 328 ff. ; his ideal, 201 f . ; his optimism, 
 301 f. 
 
 Good, and bad, 222* ff . ; definition of, 
 248 f. ; the highest, 251 ff. 
 
 Goods, doctrine of, 4. 
 
 Gordon, C. G., 503 n. 1. 
 
 Gothenburg system, 512. 
 
 Gotthelf, J., 302. 
 
 Gracchus, Caius, 103. 
 
 Gratitude, 655 f . 
 
 Greek art, 561 f. ; Greek, barbarian, ana 
 Christian conceptions contrasted, 167 ff. * 
 Greek and Christian conceptions con- 
 trasted, 65 ff . ; Greek and Christian spirit, 
 163 ff. ; Greek civilization and Middle 
 Ages, 121; Greek ethics, 33 ff.; Greek 
 ethics, summary of, 58 ff. 
 
 Green, T. H., 189 n. 3, 193 *, 251 n. 1, 
 452 n. 1. 
 
 Gregory of Tours, 142 f . 
 
 Guhrauer, 145 n. 1. 
 
 Gurv, his theological system of ethics, 
 17*3 ff. 
 
 Guyau, 179 n. 3, 364 n. 2. 
 
 Gwinner, 210 n. 1. 
 
 Gymnastics, 519 ff. 
 
 Habit, ethical importance of, 241 f. 
 
 Habitation, 515 ff. 
 
 Haldane and Kemp, 209 n. 1. 
 
 Hamann, 164. 
 
 Hamerling, 326. 
 
 Hamlet, his pessimism, 307 n.-l, 335. 
 
 Happiness, 270* ff.; Aristotle's conception 
 of, 49. ff. ; Greek and Christian concep- 
 tions of, 169 f. ; its influence on char- 
 acter, 407 *ff. ; Spinoza's conception of, 
 183 f.; Stoics' conception of, 54 f.; vir. 
 tueand, 400 * ff. 
 
 Harnack, 65 n. 1, 488 n. 1.; his estimate 
 of Catholicism, 125 n. 1. 
 
 Harris, 394 n. 1. 
 
 Hartley, 380 n. 4. 
 
 Hartmann, 215 n. 1, 288 n. 2, 584 n 1. 
 
 Hasbach, 327 n. 1. 
 
INDEX 
 
 717 
 
 Hase, 68 n. 1; his conception of the char- 
 acter of Jesus, 89 ff. 
 
 Hatch, 185 n. 4. 
 
 Haureau, 169 n. 1. 
 
 Health, 383, 506 ff. 
 
 Heartlessness, 648 ff. 
 
 Hedonism, 251 * ff . ; criticism of, 251 ff. ; 
 and energism, 223. 
 
 Hedonistic pessimism, 289 ff. 
 
 Hedonists, 251 n. 1. 
 
 Hegel, 204 f., 274, 426 ; his theory of pun- 
 ishment, 606 f. 
 
 Hegesias, 257 n. 1. 
 
 Hehn, V., 514 n.l, 595 n. 2. 
 
 Heliand, 119. 
 
 Helvetius, 380 n. 4. 
 
 Herbart, 232, 259, 340 n. 1; his ethics, 
 208* f. 
 
 Herder, 189, 554, 668, 705. 
 
 Herodotus, 1, 37 ff. 
 
 Hesiod, his pessimism, 309, 404 f. 
 
 Hettner, 147 n. 1. 
 
 Highest good, 17 ff ., 270 * ff . ; how known, 
 10 ff. 
 
 High-mindedness, 579. 
 
 Hiltv, 483 n. 2. 
 
 Hippocrates, 366. 
 
 Hirscher, 178. 
 
 History, optimistic view of, 329 ff . ; pessi- 
 mistic view of, 318 ff. ; philosophy of, 
 18, 281, 308 ff., 318 ff. 
 
 Hobbes, 185, 244, 274, 340 n. 1, 401, 624; 
 his determinism, 455 f. ; his egoism, 380; 
 his ethical system, 179 * ff . ; and Galileo, 
 179 f . ; his pessimism, 298 ; his political 
 system, 143* f., 180 f.; and Shaftesbury, 
 188. 
 
 Hodgson, 192 n. 1. 
 
 Hbffding, 29 n. 1, 215 n. 1, 222 n. 1, 253 
 n. 1, 275 n. 3, 321 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 341 n. 1, 
 343 n. 1, 379 n. 1, 415 n. 1, 505 n. 1, 
 569 n. 1, 543 n. 1, 584 n. 1, 606 n. 1, 
 627 n. 1, 638 n. 1, 664 n. 1. 
 
 Holbach, 380 n. 4. 
 
 Holland, 599 n. 1. 
 
 Honor, 569* ff., 635; Greek and Christian 
 estimates of, 78 f . ; and love of honor, 
 569 ff. ; its teleology, 571 ff. 
 
 Hufeland, 506. 
 
 Hugo, V., 611 n. 2. 
 
 Humanists and Luther, 130 f. 
 
 Humanity, idea of, 280 ff . ; love of, 656 ff. 
 
 Humboldt, W. von, 164, 413 f. 
 
 Hume, 251 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 379 n. 1, 402, 
 426, 460 n. 1.; his ethics, 189 f . ; on 
 suicide, 584 n. 1, 587 f. 
 
 Humility, 573 * ff. ; Greek and Christian 
 estimate of, 79. 
 
 Hutcheson, 186, 199, 228 n. 1, 251 n. 1, 
 
 340 n. 1, 379 n. 1. 
 Huxley, 192 n. 4, 394 n. 1, 556. 
 Hyde, 475 n. 1. 
 Hypocrisy, 670. 
 Hyslop, 29 n. 1, 35 n. 1, 189 n. 3, 251 n. 1, 
 
 340 n. 1, 415 n. 1, 452 n. 1, 599 n. 1. 
 
 Ideal, in conscience, 368 ff. ; of life, 270 ff. 
 
 Idealism and materialism, 422 ff. 
 
 Ideals, Greek and Christian contrasted, 
 
 87 ff. ; history of, 273 ff. 
 Idleness, 530 ff. 
 
 Ignorance, stupidity and, 549 ff. 
 Ihering, see Jhering. 
 Ill-humor, 500 ff. 
 Imitation, 242 f. 
 Immortality, belief in, 419 f. ; ethics and, 
 
 439 * ff . 
 Impudence, 581. 
 
 Impulse, 343 ff. ; desire and will, 220 f. 
 Impulses and virtues, 475 ff. 
 Inclination, 346 ff. ; and duty, 340 ff. } 
 
 criticism of Kantian view of, 350 ff. 
 Independence of character, 498. 
 Indifferent goods, 55. 
 Indiscretion, 687. 
 Individualism, 134 f., 368 ff.; during the 
 
 Renaissance, 129 ; and Universalism, 
 
 243 ff. 
 Individualization of conscience, 368 ff. 
 Infallibility of conscience, 357 ff. 
 Infidelity and morality, 421 ff. 
 Ingratitude, 655 f. 
 Injustice, 602 ff. 
 Innovations, 690 ff. 
 Insanity, moral, 376 n. 1. 
 Insolence, 581. 
 
 Instinct and custom, 8 f., 343 ff. 
 Instruction, 547 ff. 
 Intellect, 58 ff., 67 ff., 266 ff., 543 ff. 
 Intellectual activity in Middle Ages, 120 f. 
 Intellectual life. 278 f. 
 Intelligence, relation of, to feelings, 266 ff . 
 Intemperance, 485 ff. 
 Intentional deception, 672 ff. 
 Intolerance, 635 ff. 
 Intoxication, 507 ff. 
 Intuitionalism, 192 ; criticism of, 350 * ff . ; 
 
 and utilitarianism, 222 ff. 
 
 Jacobins, 658. 
 
 Jahn, 525. 
 
 James, 253 n. 1, 343 n. 1, 379 n. 1, 452 n. 1, 
 
 544 n. 1, 569 n. 1. 
 Janet, 35 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 350 n. 1, 415 n. 1. 
 Jesuits, 169 ff., 233 ff., 269. 
 Jesus, 326, 330, 334, 410, 420, 619, 697; and 
 
718 
 
 INDEX 
 
 asceticism, 93 ff. ; and Buddha, 115 ; and 
 conscience, 370 f. ; different conceptions 
 of his character, 89 f . ; his love of nature, 
 165. 
 
 Jewish-Greek philosophy, 109. 
 
 Jhering, 71, 215 n. 1, 222 n. 1, 275 n. 3, 
 340 n. 1, 380 n. 1, 517 n. 3, 529 n. 1, 
 541 n. 1, 569 n. 1, 599 n. 1, 610, 615 f., 
 664 n. 1. 
 
 Job, 410. 
 
 Jodl, 35 n. 1, 179 n. 3, 204, 253 n. 1, 341 
 n. 1, 452 n. 1, 710 n. 1. 
 
 John the Baptist, 66. 
 
 Jonas, 205 n. 2. 
 
 Jowett, 41 n. 1, 531 n. 1. 
 
 Judas, 77 ; moral estimate of his suicide, 
 591. 
 
 Julian, 82, 159. 
 
 Justice, 599* ff. ; Greek and Christian 
 opinion of, 71 f . ; in Middle Ages, 123 f . ; 
 negative side of, 599 ff. ; in New Testa- 
 ment, 613 ff. ; Plato's conception of, 45 f . ; 
 positive side of, 602 ff. ; teleology of, 
 602 ff. 
 
 Kant, 222 n. 1, 223, 227 n. 1, 251 n. 1, 
 259, 274, 320 n. 1, 321 n. 1, 325, 328, 
 340 n. 1, 420, 426, 431, 456, 584 n. 1, 
 600 f., 664 n. 1; criticism of, 350 ff. ; and 
 English ethics, 194; his ethics, 194 * ff.; 
 his estimate of falsehood, 666 ; his con- 
 ception of immortality, 440 ff . ; and the 
 lie of necessity, 673; his pessimism, 298; 
 his theory of punishment, 606, of capital 
 punishment, 611 ; his rigorism, 23 f . ; and 
 Rousseau, 198 ff.; and utilitarianism, 
 198 ff. 
 
 Keim, 98 ; his conception of the character 
 of Jesus, 90. 
 
 Keller, 122 n. 1. 
 
 Kempis, Thomas a, 177, 681 n. 1. 
 
 Kepler, 576, 684. 
 
 Kern, 337 n. 1. 
 
 Kidd, 394 n. 1. 
 
 Kierkegaard, 122 n. 1. 
 
 Knowledge, 543 * ff . ; and conduct, 61 f . ; 
 development of, 543 f . ; Greek and Chris- 
 tian estimate of, 67 f.; of self, 579 ff.; 
 value of, 545 ff. 
 
 Kostlin, 35 n. 1, 56 n. 2. 
 
 Krafft-Ebing, 376 n. 1, 508 n. 1. 
 
 Kreibig, 373 n. 1. 
 
 Kuelpe, 452 n. 1. 
 
 Laas, 42 n. 1, 215 n. 1. 
 
 Labor, 529; Greek estimate of, 62 n. 1. 
 
 La Bruyere, 380 n. 4. 
 
 Ladd, 253 n. 1, 341 n. 1, 343 n. 1, 452 n. 1. 
 
 Lagarde, P., 155, 483 n. 2. 
 
 Lamettrie, 380 n. 4. 
 
 Lange, F. A., his view of Christianity, 
 162 f. 
 
 Laotsee, 474. 
 
 La Rochefoucauld, 380 n. 4, 593, 655; his 
 pessimism, 298. 
 
 Laspeyres, 517 n. 1. 
 
 Law, morality and, 627 ff. ; morality, reli- 
 gion, and, 415 ff. 
 
 Law-suit, Christian conception of the, 72. 
 
 Lear, 581. 
 
 Lecky, 65 n. 1, 85 f., 98 n. 1, 109, 179 n. 3, 
 251 n. 1, 222 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 488 n. 1, 584 
 n. 1, 587 n. 1, 638 n. 1. 
 
 Lehrfreiheit, 706 ff. 
 
 Leibniz, 274, 321 n. 1, 401, 426, 456, 460 
 n. 1, 684; his conception of evil, 332; 
 and the modern spirit, 144 f. 
 
 Leo X., 129. 
 
 Leopardi, his pessimism, 287. 
 
 Lessing, 320 n. 1, 483 n. 2, 696. 
 
 Lex divina and lex naturae, 172 f., 178. 
 
 Liberalism and conservatism, 690 ff. 
 
 Liberality, Greek and Christian estimates 
 of, contrasted, 82 ff. 
 
 Lichtenberg, 707. 
 
 Lie of necessity, 672 * ff . ; Greek view of, 
 682 f. ; modern view of, 682 ff. 
 
 Lies, 664 ff. 
 
 Life, an end in itself, 294 ff. 
 
 Liszt, Fr., 630, 
 
 Locke, 251 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 486, 533. 
 
 Locrians, 665, 695. 
 
 Lombroso, 446, 481 n. 1. 
 
 Long, 55 n. 1. 
 
 Lotze, 193 n. 1, 233, 426, 460 n. 1 ; his 
 criticism of Schleiermacher, 208. 
 
 Louis XIV., 272. 
 
 Love, 638 * ff . ; of country, 656 ff . ; of ene- 
 mv, 616 ff. ; of home, 656 ff . ; of humanity, 
 656 ff . ; of neighbor, 599, 638 * ff. ; tele- 
 ology of, 652 ff. ; of truth, 689 f. 
 
 Lubbock, 523. 
 
 Lucian, 62 n. 1. 
 
 Lucretius, 56 n. 1, 57 f. 
 
 Luthardt, 35 n. 1, 65 n. 1. 
 
 Luther, 121, 129 ff., 420, 577, 658, 668; oa 
 free-will, 455. 
 
 Luxuries, 538 ff. 
 
 Lying, 664 * ff . ; why wrong, 666 ff . 
 
 Mackenzie, 29 n. 1, 193 * 251 n. 1, 320 
 n. 1, 350 n. 1, 379 n. 1, 415 n. 1, 452 n. 1« 
 599 n. 1. 
 
 Mackintosh, 179 n. 3. 
 Magnanimity, 616 ff. 
 Magnificence, 83. 
 
INDEX 
 
 719 
 
 Mainlander, 288 a. 2, 584 n. 1. 
 
 Malice, 648 ff. 
 
 Mandeville, 189, 327 n. 1, 380 n. 4. 
 
 Manichaeans, 332. 
 
 Manual training, 526 f. 
 
 Manzoni, 490. 
 
 Marcus Aurelius, 106, 107 ff., 218, 411; his 
 estimate of Christianity, 100. 
 
 Marion, 29 n. 1. 
 
 Marriage, Christian view of, 86 f. 
 
 Martensen, 179, 437, 674. 
 
 Martineau, 35 n. 1, 192 n. 4, 222 n. 1, 224 
 n. 1, 227 n. 1, 251 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 342 n. 2, 
 452 n. 1. 
 
 Martius, 510 n. 1. 
 
 Martyrdom, 690 ff . ; necessity of, in history, 
 695 f. 
 
 Masaryk, 584 n. 1. 
 
 Materialism and idealism, 422 ff. 
 
 Maxwell, 185 n. 3. 
 
 Meal, 506. 
 
 Means and ends, 275 ff. 
 
 Mediaeval conception of life, 116 ff. ; eth- 
 ics, 169 ff. 
 
 Menander, 410. 
 
 Menoikeus, 56. 
 
 Menzies, 65 n. 1. 
 
 Mephistopheles and evil, 328 ff. 
 
 Merit and duty, 377 ff. 
 
 Metaphysics, morality and, 421 ff. ; Paul- 
 sen's, 219 ff. 
 
 Metropolis, influence of, on mode of life, 
 491, 519 ff. 
 
 Meyr, M., 290. 
 
 Middle Ages, 21 f. ; their conception of life, 
 116 * ff . ; ethical systems of, 169 * ff. 
 
 Middleman, 127 n. f. 
 
 Mill, James, 190 * f., 251 n. 1, 340 n. 1; on 
 pleasure and desire, 254 f. 
 
 Mill, J. S., 191 * f., 222 n. 1, 223, 251 n. 1, 
 275, 340 n. 1, 354, 379 n. 1, 427, 599 n. 1; 
 his optimism, 316 f. 
 
 Milton, his conception of art, 558 n. 1. 
 
 Miracles, religion and, 435 ff. ; science and, 
 435 ff. 
 
 Modern ethics, 179 ff. 
 
 Modesty, 491 ff., 581 ff. 
 
 Moeser, 612. 
 
 Monasticism, 85, 100, 116 f., 119 ff., 133, 
 168, 488 ff. 
 
 Monotheism, 418 f. 
 
 Moral evil and physical evil, 322 * ff.; 
 moral insanity, 376 n. 1, 481; moral in- 
 struction, 25 ff., 40 f., 476 ff., 483 ff., 
 498; moral law and natural law, 13 ff., 
 225 f., 348 f., 362 f., 376, 448 f.; moral 
 laws not strictly universal, 19 ff., 233 ff., 
 357 ft'.; nihilism, 373 ff.; moral preach- j 
 
 ing, 23 f., 47, 55, 478 ff., 489 f.; moral 
 
 training, 476 ff. ; moral philosophy, see 
 
 Ethics. 
 Moralistic pessimism, 297 ff. 
 Morality, law and, 627 ff . ; metaphysics 
 
 and, 421 ff. ; religion and, 415 ff. ; of 
 
 Rome, 101 ff. 
 More, Thomas, his Utopia, 588 n. 1. 
 Morley, J., 664 n. 1. 
 Morselli, 584 ff. 
 Moses, 614. 
 Motives, egoistic and altruistic, 381 ff . ; and 
 
 morality of acts, 227 ff. 
 Muirhead, 29 n. 1, 193 * n. 1, 251 n. 1, 321 
 
 n. 1, 350 n. 1. 
 Munro, 56 n. 1. 
 
 Miinsterberg, 29 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 452 n. 1. 
 Murray, 251 n. 1. 
 
 Nationalism in Middle Ages, 124. 
 
 Natural law and moral law, 13 ff. 
 
 Natural rights, 624 ff . 
 
 Naturalism and supernaturalism, 165 f. 
 
 Necessity, lie of, 672 ff . ; law of, 631 f. 
 
 Neo-Platonists, 589 ; precursors of, 109. 
 
 Neo-Pythagoreans, 109. 
 
 Nero, 100. 
 
 Neumann, 17 n. 1. 
 
 New truths, reception of, 690 ff. 
 
 Nibelungenlied and Iliad, 119. 
 
 Nietzsche, 28, 47, 65, 371 n. 1, 606 n. 1, 
 664 n. 1; and Christianity, 150 ff. ; his 
 egoism, 380; his immoralism, 150 ff. ; his 
 influence on young, 153 ff. 
 
 Nihilism, moral, 373 ff. ; theoretical, 424. 
 
 Noack, 474. 
 
 Nordau, 373 n. 1, 664 n. 1, 709. 
 
 Notrecht, 632 f. 
 
 Nova Atlantis, Bacon's, 137 ff. 
 
 Nutrition, 506 ff. 
 
 Oaths, 671. 
 
 Objective and subjective morality, 370 ff. 
 
 CEdipus, 411. 
 
 Oettingen, 215 n. 1, 515 n. 1, 529 n. 1, 
 543 n. 1, 584 n. 1, 606 n. 1, 638 n. 1. 
 
 Old age, 113 f., 296 f., 335, 443; and pes- 
 simism, 309. 
 
 Oldenberg, 114 n. 1. 
 
 Optimism, 182, 301* ff., 321 * ff., 400 ff.; 
 in age of enlightenment, 146 f. 
 
 Orderliness, 499. 
 
 Oriental religions in Rome, 111 f. 
 
 Orthodoxy, 670. 
 
 Overbeck, 124 n. 1. 
 
 Over-education, 549 ff. 
 
 Pain, as motive, 257 ff. ; function ot, 
 264 f. ; and pleasure, 291 ff . 
 
720 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Paley, 192* n. 1, 251 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 380 n. 
 4, 483 n. 1, 529 n. 1, 584 n. 1, 599 n. 1, 
 638 n. 1. 
 
 Partisanship, 239, 601 f. 
 
 Patience, 499 f. 
 
 Patriotism, 656 ff . ; in education, 660 ff. 
 
 Paul, 614 ; and justice, 72; his conception of 
 life, 66 f. ; his doctrine of love, 651; his 
 opinion of marriage, 86 f . ; his pessimism, 
 405 ; and the pursuit of pleasure, 75. 
 
 Paulsen, 321 n. 1, 415 n. 2, 460 n. 1, 545 
 n. 1. 
 
 Peck, 106 n. 1. 
 
 Penal right, 604. 
 
 Penzig, 453 n. 1. 
 
 Perfection, 4, 10 ff., 17 ff., 201 f., 223 f., 
 251 ff., 270 * ff., Stoic idea of, 54. " 
 
 Perjury, 670 f. 
 
 Perseverance, 498 f . 
 
 Personal liberty, 635; and drunkenness, 
 507 ff. 
 
 Personality, 468. 
 
 Perthes, 645 n. 1. 
 
 Pertz, 670 n. 1. 
 
 Peschel, 127 n. 1. 
 
 Pessimism, 210, 246 f., 287* ff., 402 ff.; 
 criticism of, 148 ff. ; in nineteenth cen- 
 tury, 147 ff. 
 
 Pestalozzi, 240. 
 
 Petrarch, his character, 213 f. 
 
 Petronius, 102. 
 
 Pfaffentum, 122. 
 
 Philo, 109. 
 
 Philosophy, 369, 542 ff., 545; and ethics 
 among the Greeks, 58 ff. ; of history, 
 pessimistic view of, 308 ff. ; in Roman 
 Empire, 109 f. 
 
 Physical culture, 505 ff. 
 
 Pity, 592* ff.; Christian, 81 f. 
 
 Plato, 39 n. 1, 251 n. 1, 273, 279, 371 f., 
 373 n. 1, 426, 531 f ., 682 ; and asceticism, 
 47 f.; his ethics, 41* ff.; his politics, 46 
 ff. ; and schoolmen, 43; and Sophists, 
 42 f. 
 
 Play, 487, 519 ff., 556 ff. 
 
 Pleasure, as end of life, 251 * ff . ; as un- 
 conscious end of action, 255 ff. ; Chris- 
 tian conception of, 75 f. ; Epicurus's con- 
 ception of, 56 ff. ; as freedom from pain, 
 291 ff. ; function and significance of, 
 265 f. ; our judgment of, as absolute end, 
 268 ff. ; Luther's conception of, 130; 
 Paul's conception of, 75; Plato's con- 
 ception of, 47 f . ; Stoic conception of, 
 54. 
 
 Pleasure-theory, 251 ff. 
 
 Plotinus, 109, 321 n. 1. 
 
 Pliimanher, 287 n. 1. 
 
 Poetry, in Middle Ages, 118 f. 
 
 Politeness, 648 ff., 680 f. 
 
 Political life and Greek ethics, 62 ff. 
 
 Politics, 143 f. 
 
 Pollock, 415 n. 1. 
 
 Poly crates, 412. 
 
 Polytheism, 418. 
 
 Pontius Pilate, 300. 
 
 Porter, 192* n. 4, 194 n. 1, 475 n. 1, 483 
 n. 3, 505 u. 1, 529 n. 1, 543 n. 1, 569 n. 1, 
 584 n. 1, 592 n. 1, 599 n. 1, 638 n. 1, 
 664 n. 1. 
 
 Positive right, 603 ff.j teleological neces- 
 sity of, 603 ff. 
 
 Positivism and religion, 446 ff. 
 
 Poverty, crime and, 541 n. 1; and the 
 economic virtues, 540 ff. 
 
 Practical knowledge, 543 f. 
 
 Practical value of ethics, 25 ff. 
 
 Practice and theory, 1 ff . 
 
 Preaching the truth, 702 ff. 
 
 Predestination, 455. 
 
 Pride, 573 f. ; Greek and Christian estimates 
 of, 79 f. 
 
 Primary school, 548. 
 
 Primitive Christianity and mediaeval Chris- 
 tianity, 121 ff. 
 
 Private right, 604. 
 
 Procrastination, 499. 
 
 Prodigality, 536 ff. 
 
 Profession, 530 ff. 
 
 Professional education, 547 ff. 
 
 Proletarianism, 530. 
 
 Property rights, 634 f. 
 
 Prosperity and virtue, 400 f. 
 
 Protagoras, 40. 
 
 Protestant ethics, 178 f. 
 
 Prudence and virtue, 40 f . 
 
 Pudor, 581. 
 
 Punishment, 606 * ff . ; intuitionalistic view 
 of, 606 f. ; and responsibility, 460 ff . ; 
 teleological view of, 607 ff. 
 
 Pusillanimity, 578 ff. 
 
 Quietism, 332 ff. 
 
 Ransom, 90 n. 3. 
 
 Rationalism, empiricism and, in ethics, 
 
 6 ff.; and the Reformation, 134 f. 
 Rationalistic view of conscience, 445 ff. 
 Realism in literature, 303 ff. 
 Reason, 181 ff., 277 f., 468 ff. ; as source of 
 
 moral knowledge, 11 f.; and impulse, 
 
 476 ff. 
 Recreation, 527 f. 
 R6e, 215 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 364. 
 Reformation, 126* ft'.; and church life, 
 
 131 ff. ; and civilization, 130 ft.; and 
 
INDEX 
 
 721 
 
 rationalism, 134 f.; and Renaissance, 
 
 difference between, 130 ff. 
 Regulus, 247. 
 Religion, 60 ff., 113 ff.; and art, 429, 558; 
 
 and miracles, 435 ff. ; and morality, 161, 
 
 345 f., 415* ff., 492; nature of, 417 ff., 
 
 431 ff., and science, 431 ff. 
 Religious instruction, 126 ff., 708 ff. 
 Remorse, 240, 340, 620 f. 
 Renaissance, 126 * ff., 558, 563 ff. 
 Renan, 178 ; his conception of the character 
 
 of Jesus, 90 f. 
 Responsibility, 460 ff. 
 Rest, 527 f. 
 
 Retaliation, 242 f., 616 ff. 
 Reuschle, 576 n. 1, 684. 
 Reuter, Fritz, his optimism, 302 f. 
 Revenge, impulse of, 619 f. 
 Reverence, 431 ff. 
 Reviewers, 582 f., 623 f., 665. 
 Revolution, 690 f. 
 Richter, 303. 
 Riehl, 452 n. 1. 
 Rights, 599, 603 * ff . ; natural, 624 ff. ; the 
 
 principle of, 624 ff.; the different spheres 
 
 of, 633 ff. 
 Ritchie, 599 n. 1. 
 Rolph, 257 n. 1. 
 Roman Empire, 523 f.; conversion of, to 
 
 Christianity, 100 ff. 
 Roman morals, 101 ff. 
 Romans, 483 n. 3. 
 Romanticism, 310. 
 Rothe, 178. 
 Rousseau, 202, 340 n. I, 480, 505 n. 1, 
 
 656; Kant and, 198 ff.; his practice 
 
 and his preaching, 214; his pessimism, 
 
 148, 314 ff.; his philosophy of history, 
 
 309. 
 Rousselot, 169 n. 1. 
 Riickert, 313 n. 1, 355, 481, 696. 
 Runze, 29 n. 1, 215 n. 1, 321 n. 1, 415 n. 1, 
 
 475 n. 1, 480 n. 1, 483 n. 1, 505 n. 1, 
 
 519 n. 1, 529 n. 1, 540 n. 1, 543 n. 1, 
 
 569 n. 1, 584 n. 1, 592 n. 1, 599 n. 1, 606 
 
 n. 1, 638 n. 1, 664 n. 1. 
 Rupprecht, 517 n. 1. 
 Russia, 523. 
 
 Sacraments, 66 f. 
 
 Sacrifice, 388 f . ; Christian, 159 f . 
 
 gical explanation of, 247 f . 
 Sailer, 178. 
 Saints, 85, 166, 178. 
 Salter, 483 n. 2. 
 Sand, 230. 
 
 Santayana, 251 n. 1, 519 n. 1. 
 Sardanapalus, 39, 375. 
 
 teleolo- 
 
 Satiety of life, 171, 376. 
 
 Savonarola, 84; Villari's Life of, 97 n. 1. 
 
 Schadenfreude, 593 f. 
 
 Schelling, 310. 
 
 Schiller, 355; his relation to Kant, 202 f.; 
 his ridicule of Kant's rigorism, 351 ff. 
 
 Schleiermacher, 178, 274; his ethical sys- 
 tem, 205 * ff. ; his view of capital punish- 
 ment, 611; his conception of moral law 
 as natural law, 17 n. 1. 
 
 Schmidt L., 35 n. 1, 58, 371 n. 1, 400, 496, 
 579, 587 n. 1, 665, 671. 
 
 Scholasticism, 120 f., 454 f. 
 
 School, function of, 547 ff. 
 
 Schoolmen and Plato, 43. 
 
 Schopenhauer, 209 * ff., 257 n. 1, 426, 478, 
 569 n. 1, 580, 584 n. 1. 589, 682, 700; 
 his altruism, 379 ff. ; and Buddhism, 115; 
 hie character, 211 ff. ; and Christianity, 
 164; on compassion, 598; on egoism, 246 
 f . ; on free-will, 453 ; his pessimism, 
 147 ff., 287 ff. ; his practice and his 
 preaching, 210 ff . ; on the practical value 
 of ethics, 25 f. 
 
 Schremph, 122 n. 1. 
 
 Schuppe, 215 n. 1. 
 
 Schurman, 29 n. 1, 192 n. 5, 194 n. 1, 342 
 n. 1, 415 n. 1. 
 
 Schwarz, 340 n. 1. 
 
 Schweinichen, 510. 
 
 Schweitzer, 205 n. 2. 
 
 Science, Bacon and, 137 ff . ; Christian and 
 modern estimates of, 136 ff.; function 
 of, 543 ff. ; religion and, 431 ff. ; theism 
 and, 425 ff. ; classified as theoretical and 
 practical, 1 ff. 
 
 Secondary school, 548. 
 
 Secularization of Christianity, 121 ff. 
 
 Seidlitz, 583. 
 
 Selby-Bigge, 189 n. 3. 
 
 Self-conceit, see "Vanity. 
 
 Self-control, 483 * ff. ; Greek admiration 
 of, 483 n. 2; Plato's conception of, 
 45. 
 
 Self-education, 468 f., 477 f. 
 
 Selfishness, 648 ff. 
 
 Self-knowledge, 579 ff. 
 
 Self-preservation, 179 ff., 185, 248, 271, 
 380, 388, 569. 
 
 Self-sacrifice, 247 f., 338 f. 
 
 Seneca, 100, 106 *, 523, 587 n. 2. 
 
 Semi-refinement, semi-culture, 549 ff. 
 
 Sense of justice, 602. 
 
 Sense-perception, 266 f., 543 f. 
 
 Servile-mindedness, 577 f . 
 
 Seth, J., 29 n. 1, 35 n. 1, 193 * n. 1, 251 
 n. 1, 415 n. 1, 452 n. 1, 485 n. 1, 543 a 
 1, 592 n. 1, 599 n. 1. 
 
722 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Shaftesbury, 274, 340 n. 1; 379 n. 1, 402. 
 
 Shakespeare, 307 n. 1, 669. 
 
 Shamanism, 417 f. 
 
 Sidgwick, 29 n. 1, 35 n. 1, 193 *, 222 n. 1, 
 251 n. 1, 256 n. 1, 379 n. 1, 452 n. 1, 459 
 n. 1, 475 n. 1, 483 n. 1, 592 n. 1, 599 n. 1, 
 638 n. 1, 664 n. 1 ; on conscience, 368. 
 
 Sigwart, 215 n. 1, 452 n. 1. 
 
 Silence, Christian injunction of, 76. 
 
 Simmel, 29 n. 1, 215 n. 1, 251 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 
 379 n. 1. 
 
 Sin, Christian conception of, 158 f. 
 
 Sincerity, 689 ff., 705 n. 2. 
 
 Sitte, 343 ff. 
 
 Slander, 669 f. 
 
 Slavery, in Middle Ages, 124. 
 
 Smyth, 179 * n. 2, 340 n. 1, 379 n. 1, 415 
 n. 1, 483 n. 1, 543 n. 1, 599 n. 1, 664 n. 1. 
 
 Sneath, 179 n. 4. 
 
 Social virtues, 278 f . ; and evolution, 394 ff. 
 
 Socrates, 51 f., 326, 411, 682; his con- 
 science, 371 n. 1; his ethics, 39* ff. ; 
 and Sophists, 40. 
 
 Soldan, 142. 
 
 Solon and Croesus, 37 ff. 
 
 Sommer, 287 n. 1. 
 
 Sophists, 40 ff., 373 n. 1; and Plato, 42 f. ; 
 and Socrates, 40. 
 
 c-ax^pocrvVTj, 483 ff. 
 
 Specialism, religion and, 434. 
 
 Speculative Philosophy, 204 ff., 429. 
 
 Speech, Christian estimate of, 76. 
 
 Spencer, 1, 71 n. 1, 193 * 249 n. 1, 507 n. 
 2, 340 n. 1, 346 n. 1, 379 n. 1, 427, 483 n. 
 1, 485 n. 1, 506 n. 1, 519 n. 1, 529 n. 
 1, 543 n. 1, 592 n. 1, 599 n. 1, 638 n. 1, 
 664 n. 1 ; on egoism and altruism, 395 ff. 
 
 Spener, 420. 
 
 Spinoza, 274, 307, 354, 384, 401, 406, 426, 
 428, 598, 606 n. 1, 619 ; and Aristotle, 
 52; his egoism, 380; his ethical system, 
 181 * ff. ; his conception of evil, 332 ; 
 on free-will, 456. 
 
 Spiritual life and culture, 543 ff. 
 
 State, church and, in Middle Ages, 120 ; 
 Greek and Christian estimates of, 72 ff. ; 
 modern theory of, 143 f. 
 
 Statius, 104. 
 
 Staudlin, 584 n. 1. 
 
 Stein, Freiherr von, 577, 669. 
 
 Steiner, 371 n. 1. 
 
 Steinthal, 215 n. 1, 259, 415 n. 1, 452 n. 1. 
 
 Stephen, 29 n. 1, 179 n. 3, 193 * 222 n. 1, 
 233 n. 1, 275 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 379 n. 1, 
 452 n. 1, 485 n. 1, 495 n. 1, 592 n. 1, 599 
 n. 1, 664 n. 1. 
 
 Sterrett, 205 n. 1,607 n. 1. 
 
 Stiruer, 373 n. 1. 
 
 Stockl, 169 n. 1. 
 
 Stoics, 273, 321 n. 1, 492 ff., 587, 598, 682; 
 their ethical system, 53 * ff . ; their con- 
 ception of goods, 277; Roman, 106 ff. 
 
 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 483 n. 2. 
 
 Strauss, 709 ; his conception of character 
 of Jesus, 90 n. 5, 91 f. ; his opinion of 
 Christianity, 156. 
 
 Stnimpell, 481 n. 1. 
 
 Stupidity, ignorance and, 549 ff. 
 
 Subjective and objective judgments of 
 acts, 227 ff. 
 
 Subjective morality, 370 ff. 
 
 Success and virtue, 400 ff. 
 
 Suffering, 163 f., 259 ff., 321 ff., 410 ff. ; 
 Christian notion of, 157 f. 
 
 Suicide, 584 * ff. ; causes of, 590 ff.; civili- 
 zation and, 584 ff . ; how judged morallv, 
 586 ff. 
 
 Sully, 287 n. 1, 341 n. 1, 343 n. 1, 452 n. 1. 
 
 Sulzer, 300. 
 
 Superciliousness, 578 ff. 
 
 Supernaturalism and naturalism, 165 f. 
 
 Superstition, 435. 
 
 Symonds, 127 n. 1. 
 
 Svmpathetic pain and pleasure, 593 ff. 
 
 Sympathy, 248, 278, 592 * ff., 638 ff. 
 
 Taine, 299. 
 
 Taylor, B., 328 n. 1, 329 n. 1, n. 2, n. 3. 
 
 Taylor, T., 599 n. 1. 
 
 Tedium, 532. 
 
 Teleological and intuitionalistic ethics, 
 
 222 ff. 
 Temperance, 484* ff. ; Greek and Christian 
 
 conceptions of, contrasted, 74 ff. 
 Tenement-houses, 516 f . 
 Tertullian, 117, 121; his estimate of eour« 
 
 age ; 70 ; on temporal power, 74. 
 Thackeray, 304. 
 Theatre in Rome, 105 f. 
 Theism, 422 f . 
 
 Themistocles, his suicide, 588 ff. 
 Theodicy, 321 *ff. 
 Theognis, 407 n. 1. 
 Theological ethics, 169 ff. 
 Theology and free-will, 454 f . 
 Theoretical knowledge, 545 ff. 
 Theories of life, 33 ff. 
 Theorv and pi-actice, 1 ff. 
 Thilly", 35 n. 1, 219 n. 1, 415 n. 2, 452 n. 1. 
 Thomas Aquinas, 273 f., 431, 454 n. 3. 
 Thomas a Kempis, 490 n. 1, 681 n. 1. 
 Thucydides, 154 n. 1. 
 Tille, 151 n. 1. 
 Tipping, 541. 
 Tobacco, 513 ff. 
 Tonnies, 179 n. 4, 215 n. 1, 599 n. 1. 
 
INDEX 
 
 723 
 
 Toleration, 635 ff. 
 
 Tolstoi, 122 n. 1, 514 f., 524 f. 
 
 Trajan, 97, 104. 
 
 Tranquilitas anirni. Spinoza's, 183. 
 
 Transcendent, 161 ff., 447 f. 
 
 Truth, 664* ff. ; and expediency, 672 ff. 
 
 Truthfulness, 664 ff. 
 
 Turgenev, 373 n. 1. 
 
 Twesten, 205 n. 2. 
 
 v£p t s, 407 f., 411, 579. 
 Uebermensch, 152 f. 
 Ueberweg, 35 n. 1, 162 f. 
 Uhlhorn, 74 n. 2, 103, 157 n. 1, 646. 
 Uniform, 518. 
 Universal morality, 19 ff. 
 University, 548. 
 Unpretendingness, 491 ff. 
 Utilitarianism, 191 f., 222 ff. 
 Utopias, 137 ff., 143 f. 
 
 Valentini, 541 n. 1, 652 n. 1, 671 n. 1. 
 
 Vanity, 574 ff. 
 
 Vegetarianism, 515. 
 
 Veitch, 142 n. 1. 
 
 Veracity, 664* ff . ; among the Greeks, 
 682; among the moderns, 682 f. ; nega- 
 tive, 664 ff . ; positive, 685 ff. 
 
 Villari, 97 n. 1. 
 
 Vilmar, 371 n. 1. 
 
 Virtue, Aristotle's definition of, 52; and 
 happiness or success, 400 ff. ; can it be 
 taught ? 40 f., 478 ff. ; and vice, 249. 
 
 Virtues, 475 * ff. ; classification of, 481 f . ; 
 Greek and Christian estimate of, 68 f. ; 
 and vices, 475 fF. 
 
 Voight, 127 n. 1, 213 f. 
 
 Volksschule, 548. 
 
 Voltaire, 376. 
 
 Vorlander, 179 n. 3. 
 
 Wackernagel, 686 n. 1. 
 Waitz, 416. 
 War, 395 ff., 675. 
 Ward, 454 n. 1. 
 Watson, 35 n. 1. 
 
 Wealth, Christian estimate of, 77 f.; and 
 the economic virtues, 540 ff. 
 
 Weariness of life, 171, 376. 
 
 Weber, A., 35 n. 1, 48 n. 1, 56 n. 1, 324 
 
 n. 1. 
 Weber, W., 114 n. 1. 
 Weiuholdt, 119. 
 
 Welfare, 4 f., 10 ff., 223 f., 251 ff. 
 Welldon, 36 n. 1. 
 Wellington, Duke of, 549. 
 Whewell, 179 n. 3, 192 *. 
 White, 181 n. 2. 
 Wieland, 261 ff. 
 Wiese, 475 n. 1, 683. 
 Will, custom and, 343 ff. ; education of, 
 
 483 ff. ; and feeling, 221; freedom of, 
 
 452 ff. ; impulse, and desire, 220 f . ; and 
 
 intellect, 220 f. ; Schopenhauer's theory 
 
 of, 292 f . 
 Williams, 179 n. 3, 275 n. 3, 320 n. 1, 
 
 379 n. 1. 
 Wilson, see Fowler and Wilson. 
 Windelband, 35 n. 1. 
 Wisdom, 45, 503 f. 
 Wolf, F. A., 438. 
 Wolff, Christian, 401, 456; his ethical 
 
 system, 193 * f . 
 Woman, disposition of, 499, 598; education 
 
 of, 522 ff . 
 Women's rights, 625 f. 
 Work, Greek estimate of, 62 ff . ; and play, 
 
 519 ff. 
 Wundt, 29 n. 1, 35 n. 1, 204, 215 n. 1, 
 
 222 n. 1, 275 n. 3, 340 n. 1, 344 n. 1, 
 
 415 n. 1, 416 n. 1, 452 n. 1, 505 n, 1, 
 
 506, 529 n. 1, 543 n. 1, 569 n. 1, 592 n. 1, 
 
 599 n. 1, 606 n. 1, 638 n. 1. 
 
 Xenophon, 37 n. 1. 
 
 Yonge, 56 n. 3. 
 York, General, 361 f. 
 
 Zeller, 35 n. 1, 109, 194 n. 1, 215 n. 1. 
 
 Ziegler, H., 98 n. 1. 
 
 Ziegler, T., 35 u. 1, 65 n. 1, 215 n. 1, 275 
 
 n. 3. 
 Zollner, 365 n. 1. 
 Zola, 508 n. 1. 
 
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