The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 3 of 3)

In truth, Judaism, with its παντα καλα λιαν, is not related to Christianity as regards its spirit and ethical tendency, but Brahmanism and Buddhism are. But the spirit and ethical tendency are what is essential in a religion, not the myths in which these are clothed. I therefore cannot give up the belief that the doctrines of Christianity can in some way be derived from these primitive religions. I have pointed out some traces of this in the second volume of the Parerga, § 179 (second edition, § 180). I have to add to these that Epiphanias (Hæretic. xviii.) relates that the first Jewish Christians of Jerusalem, who called themselves Nazarenes, refrained from all animal food. On account of this origin (or, at least, this agreement) Christianity belongs to the ancient, true and sublime faith of mankind, which is opposed to the false, shallow, and injurious optimism which exhibits itself in Greek paganism, Judaism, and Islamism. The Zend religion holds to a certain extent the mean, because it has opposed to Ormuzd a pessimistic counterpoise in Ahriman. From this Zend religion the Jewish religion proceeded, as J.G. Rhode has thoroughly proved in his book, “Die heilige Sage des Zendvolks;” from Ormuzd has come Jehovah, and from Ahriman, Satan, who, however, plays only a very subordinate rôle in Judaism, indeed almost entirely disappears, whereby then optimism gains the upper hand, and there only remains the myth of the fall as a pessimistic element, which certainly (as the fable of Meschia and Meschiane) is derived from the Zend-Avesta. Yet even this falls into oblivion, till it is again taken up by Christianity along with Satan. Ormuzd himself, however, is derived from Brahmanism, although from a lower region of it; he is no other than Indra, that subordinate god of the firmament and the atmosphere, who is represented as frequently in rivalry with men. This has been very clearly shown by J.J. Schmidt in his work on the relation of the Gnostic-theosophic doctrines to the religions of the East. This Indra-Ormuzd-Jehovah had afterwards to pass over into Christianity, because this religion arose in Judæa. But on account of the cosmopolitan character of Christianity he laid aside his own name to be denoted in the language of each converted nation by the appellation of the superhuman beings he supplanted, as, Δεος, Deus, which comes from the Sanscrit Deva (from which also devil comes), or among the Gothico-Germanic peoples by the word God, Gott, which comes from Odin, Wodan, Guodan, Godan. In the same way he assumed in Islamism, which also sprang from Judaism, the name of Allah, which also existed earlier in Arabia. Analogous to this, the gods of the Greek Olympus, when in prehistoric times they were transplanted to Italy, also assumed the names of the previously reigning gods: hence among the Romans Zeus is called Jupiter, Hera Juno, Hermes Mercury, &c. In China the first difficulty of the missionaries arose from the fact that the Chinese language has no appellation of the kind and also no word for creating; for the three religions of China know no gods either in the plural or in the singular.[52 - Cf. “Ueber den Willen in der Natur,” second edition, p. 124; third edition, p. 135.]

However the rest may be, that παντα καλα λιαν of the Old Testament is really foreign to true Christianity; for in the New Testament the world is always spoken of as something to which one does not belong, which one does not love, nay, whose lord is the devil.[53 - For example, John xii. 25, 31, xiv. 30, xv. 18, 19, xvi. 33; Col. ii. 20; Eph. ii. 1-3; I John ii. 15-17, iv. 4, 5. On this opportunity one may see how certain Protestant theologians, in their efforts to misinterpret the text of the New Testament in conformity with their rationalistic, optimistic, and unutterably shallow view of life, go so far that they actually falsify this text in their translations. Thus H. A. Schott, in his new version given with the Griesbach text of 1805, has translated the word κοσμος, John xv. 18, 19, by Judœi, 1 John iv. 4, by profani homines; and Col. ii. 20, στοιχεια του κοσμον by elementa Judaica; while Luther everywhere renders the word honestly and correctly by “Welt” (world).] This agrees with the ascetic spirit of the denial of one's self and the overcoming of the world which, just like the boundless love of one's neighbour, even of one's enemy, is the fundamental characteristic which Christianity has in common with Brahmanism and Buddhism, and which proves their relationship. There is nothing in which one has to distinguish the kernel so carefully from the shell as in Christianity. Just because I prize this kernel highly I sometimes treat the shell with little ceremony; it is, however, thicker than is generally supposed. Protestantism, since it has eliminated asceticism and its central point, the meritoriousness of celibacy, has already given up the inmost kernel of Christianity, and so far is to be regarded as a falling away from it. This has become apparent in our own day by the gradual transition of Protestantism into shallow rationalism, this modern Pelagianism, which ultimately degenerates into the doctrine of a loving father, who has made the world, in order that things may go on very pleasantly in it (in which case, then, he must certainly have failed), and who, if one only conforms to his will in certain respects, will also afterwards provide a still more beautiful world (with regard to which it is only a pity that it has such a fatal entrance). That may be a good religion for comfortable, married, and enlightened Protestant pastors; but it is no Christianity. Christianity is the doctrine of the deep guilt of the human race through its existence alone, and the longing of the heart for deliverance from it, which, however, can only be attained by the greatest sacrifices and by the denial of one's own self, thus by an entire reversal of human nature. Luther may have been perfectly right from the practical point of view, i. e., with reference to the Church scandal of his time, which he wished to remove, but not so from the theoretical point of view. The more sublime a doctrine is, the more it is exposed to abuse at the hands of human nature, which, on the whole, is of a low and evil disposition: hence the abuses of Catholicism are so much more numerous and so much greater than those of Protestantism. Thus, for example, monasticism, that methodical denial of the will practised in common for the sake of mutual encouragement, is an institution of a sublime description, which, however, for this very reason is for the most part untrue to its spirit. The shocking abuses of the Church excited in the honest mind of Luther a lofty indignation. But in consequence of this he was led to desire to limit as much as possible the claims of Christianity itself, and for this end he first confined it to the words of the Bible; but then, in his well-meant zeal, he went too far, for he attacked the very heart of Christianity in the ascetic principle. For after the withdrawal of the ascetic principle, the optimistic principle soon necessarily took its place. But in religions, as in philosophy, optimism is a fundamental error which obstructs the path of all truth. From all this it seems to me that Catholicism is a shamefully abused, but Protestantism a degenerate Christianity; thus, that Christianity in general has met the fate which befalls all that is noble, sublime, and great whenever it has to dwell among men.

However, even in the very lap of Protestantism, the essentially ascetic and encratistic spirit of Christianity has made way for itself; and in this case it has appeared in a phenomenon which perhaps has never before been equalled in magnitude and definiteness, the highly remarkable sect of the Shakers, in North America, founded by an Englishwoman, Anne Lee, in 1774. The adherents of this sect have already increased to 6000, who are divided into fifteen communities, and inhabit a number of villages in the states of New York and Kentucky, especially in the district of New Lebanon, near Nassau village. The fundamental characteristic of their religious rule of life is celibacy and entire abstention from all sexual satisfaction. It is unanimously admitted, even by the English and Americans who visit them, and who laugh and jeer at them in every other respect, that this rule is strictly and with perfect honesty observed; although brothers and sisters sometimes even occupy the same house, eat at the same table, nay, dance together in the religious services in church. For whoever has made that hardest of all sacrifices may dance before the Lord; he is a victor, he has overcome. Their singing in church consists in general of cheerful, and partly even of merry, songs. The church-dance, also, which follows the sermon is accompanied by the singing of the rest. It is a lively dance, performed in measured time, and concludes with a galop, which is carried on till the dancers are exhausted. Between each dance one of their teachers cries aloud, “Think, that ye rejoice before the Lord for having slain your flesh; for this is here the only use we make of our refractory limbs.” To celibacy most of the other conditions link themselves on of themselves. There are no families, and therefore there is no private property, but community of goods. All are clothed alike, in Quaker fashion, and with great neatness. They are industrious and diligent: idleness is not endured. They have also the enviable rule that they are to avoid all unnecessary noise, such as shouting, door-slamming, whip-cracking, loud knocking, &c. Their rule of life has been thus expressed by one of them: “Lead a life of innocence and purity, love your neighbours as yourself, live at peace with all men, and refrain from war, blood-shed, and all violence against others, as well as from all striving after worldly honour and distinction. Give to each his own, and follow after holiness, without which no man can see the Lord. Do good to all so far as your opportunity and your power extends.” They persuade no one to join them, but test those who present themselves by a novitiate of several years. Moreover, every one is free to leave them; very rarely is any one expelled for misconduct. Adopted children are carefully educated, and only when they are grown up do they voluntarily join the sect. It is said that in the controversies of their ministers with Anglican clergy the latter generally come off the worse, for the arguments consist of passages from the New Testament. Fuller accounts of them will be found particularly in Maxwell's “Run through the United States,” 1841; also in Benedict's “History of all Religions,” 1830; also in the Times, November 4, 1837, and in the German magazine Columbus, May number, 1831. A German sect in America, very similar to them, who also live in strict celibacy and continence, are the Rappists. An account of them is given in F. Loher's “Geschichte und Zustande der Deutschen in Amerika,” 1853. In Russia also the Raskolniks are a similar sect. The Gichtelians live also in strict chastity. But among the ancient Jews we already find a prototype of all these sects, the Essenes, of whom even Pliny gives an account (Hist. Nat., v. 15), and who resembled the Shakers very much, not only in celibacy, but also in other respects; for example, in dancing during divine service, which leads to the opinion that the founder of the Shakers took the Essenes as a pattern. In the presence of such facts as these how does Luther's assertion look: “Ubi natura, quemadmodum a Deo nobis insita est, fertur ac rapitur, fieri nullo modo potest, ut extra matrimonium caste vivatur”? (Catech. maj.)

Although Christianity, in essential respects, taught only what all Asia knew long before, and even better, yet for Europe it was a new and great revelation, in consequence of which the spiritual tendency of the European nations was therefore entirely transformed. For it disclosed to them the metaphysical significance of existence, and therefore taught them to look away from the narrow, paltry, ephemeral life of earth, and to regard it no longer as an end in itself, but as a condition of suffering, guilt, trial, conflict, and purification, out of which, by means of moral achievements, difficult renunciation, and denial of oneself, one may rise to a better existence, which is inconceivable by us. It taught the great truth of the assertion and denial of the will to live in the clothing of allegory by saying that through Adam's fall the curse has come upon all, sin has come into the world, and guilt is inherited by all; but that, on the other hand, through the sacrificial death of Jesus all are reconciled, the world saved, guilt abolished, and justice satisfied. In order, however, to understand the truth itself that is contained in this myth one must not regard men simply in time, as beings independent of each other, but must comprehend the (Platonic) Idea of man, which is related to the series of men, as eternity in itself is related to eternity drawn out as time; hence the eternal Idea man extended in time to the series of men through the connecting bond of generation appears again in time as a whole. If now we keep the Idea of man in view, we see that Adam's fall represents the finite, animal, sinful nature of man, in respect of which he is a finite being, exposed to sin, suffering, and death. On the other hand, the life, teaching, and death of Jesus Christ represent the eternal, supernatural side, the freedom, the salvation of man. Now every man, as such and potentiâ, is both Adam and Jesus, according as he comprehends himself, and his will thereupon determines him; in consequence of which he is then condemned and given over to death, or saved and attains to eternal life. Now these truths, both in their allegorical and in their real acceptation, were completely new as far as Greeks and Romans were concerned, who were still entirely absorbed in life, and did not seriously look beyond it. Let whoever doubts this see how Cicero (Pro Cluentio, c. 61) and Sallust (Catil., c. 47) speak of the state after death. The ancients, although far advanced in almost everything else, remained children with regard to the chief concern, and were surpassed in this even by the Druids, who at least taught metempsychosis. That one or two philosophers, like Pythagoras and Plato, thought otherwise alters nothing as regards the whole.

That great fundamental truth, then, which is contained in Christianity, as in Brahmanism and Buddhism, the need of deliverance from an existence which is given up to suffering and death, and the attainableness of this by the denial of the will, thus by a decided opposition to nature, is beyond all comparison the most important truth there can be; but, at the same time, it is entirely opposed to the natural tendency of the human race, and in its true grounds it is difficult to comprehend; as indeed all that can only be thought generally and in the abstract is inaccessible to the great majority of men. Therefore for these men there was everywhere required, in order to bring that great truth within the sphere of its practical application, a mythical vehicle for it, as it were a receptacle, without which it would be lost and dissipated. The truth had therefore everywhere to borrow the garb of the fable, and also constantly to endeavour to connect itself with what in each case was historically given, already familiar, and already revered. What sensu proprio remained inaccessible to the great mass of mankind of all ages and lands, with their low tone of mind, their intellectual stupidity and general brutality, had, for practical purposes, to be brought home to them sensu allegorico, in order to become their guiding star. So, then, the religions mentioned above are to be regarded as the sacred vessels in which the great truth, known and expressed for several thousand years, indeed perhaps since the beginning of the human race, which yet in itself, for the great mass of mankind always remains a mystery, is, according to the measure of their powers, made accessible to them, preserved and transmitted through the centuries. Yet, because all that does not through and through consist of the imperishable material of pure truth is subject to destruction, whenever this fate befalls such a vessel, through contact with a heterogeneous age, its sacred content must in some way be saved and preserved for mankind by another. But it is the task of philosophy, since it is one with pure truth, to present that content pure and unmixed, thus merely in abstract conceptions, and consequently without that vehicle, for those who are capable of thinking, who are always an exceedingly small number. It is therefore related to religions as a straight line to several curves running near it: for it expresses sensu proprio, thus reaches directly, what they show in veiled forms and reach by circuitous routes.

If now, in order to illustrate what has just been said by an example, and also to follow a philosophical fashion of my time, I should wish perhaps to attempt to solve the profoundest mystery of Christianity, that of the Trinity, in the fundamental conception of my philosophy, this could be done, with the licence permitted in such interpretations, in the following manner. The Holy Ghost is the distinct denial of the will to live: the man in whom this exhibits itself in concreto is the Son; He is identical with the will which asserts life, and thereby produces the phenomenon of this perceptible world, i. e., with the Father, because the assertion and denial are opposite acts of the same will whose capability for both is the only true freedom. However, this is to be regarded as a mere lusus ingenii.

Before I close this chapter I wish to adduce a few proofs in support of what in § 68 of the first volume I denoted by the expression Δευτυρος πλους, the bringing about of the denial of the will by one's own deeply felt suffering, thus not merely by the appropriation of the suffering of others, and the knowledge of the vanity and wretchedness of our existence introduced by this. We can arrive at a comprehension of what goes on in the heart of a man, in the case of an elevation of this kind and the accompanying purifying process, by considering what every emotional man experiences on beholding a tragedy, which is of kindred nature to this. In the third and fourth acts perhaps such a man is distressed and disturbed by the ever more clouded and threatened happiness of the hero; but when, in the fifth act, this happiness is entirely wrecked and shattered, he experiences a certain elevation of the soul, which affords him an infinitely higher kind of pleasure than the sight of the happiness of the hero, however great it might be, could ever have given. Now this is the same thing, in the weak water-colours of sympathy which is able to raise a well-known illusion, as that which takes place with the energy of reality in the feeling of our own fate when it is heavy misfortune that drives the man at last into the haven of entire resignation. Upon this occurrence depend all those conversions which completely transform men such as are described in the text. I may give here in a few words the story of the conversion of the Abbé Rancé, as it is strikingly similar to that of Raymond Lully, which is told in the text, and besides this is memorable on account of its result. His youth was devoted to enjoyment and pleasure; finally, he lived in a relation of passion with a Madame de Montbazon. One evening, when he visited her, he found her room empty, in disorder and darkness. He struck something with his foot; it was her head, which had been severed from the trunk, because after her sudden death her corpse could not otherwise be got into the lead coffin that stood beside it. After overcoming an immense sorrow, Rancé now became, in 1663, the reformer of the order of the Trappists, which at that time had entirely relaxed the strictness of its rules. He joined this order, and through him it was led back to that terrible degree of renunciation which is still maintained at the present day at La Trappe, and, as the methodically carried out denial of the will, aided by the severest renunciation and an incredibly hard and painful manner of life, fills the visitor with sacred awe, after he has been touched at his reception by the humility of these genuine monks, who, emaciated by fasting, by cold, by night watches, prayers and penances, kneel before him, the worldling and the sinner, to implore his blessing. Of all orders of monks, this one alone has maintained itself in perfection in France, through all changes; which is to be attributed to the profound earnestness which in it is unmistakable, and excludes all secondary ends. It has remained untouched even by the decline of religion, because its root lies deeper in human nature than any positive system of belief.

I have mentioned in the text that this great and rapid change of the inmost being of man which we are here considering, and which has hitherto been entirely neglected by philosophers, appears most frequently when, with full consciousness, he stands in the presence of a violent and certain death, thus in the case of executions. But, in order to bring this process much more distinctly before our eyes, I regard it as by no means unbecoming to the dignity of philosophy to quote what has been said by some criminals before their execution, even at the risk of incurring the sneer that I encourage gallows' sermons. I certainly rather believe that the gallows is a place of quite peculiar revelations, and a watch-tower from which the man who even then retains his presence of mind obtains a wider, clearer outlook into eternity than most philosophers over the paragraphs of their rational psychology and theology. The following speech on the gallows was made on the 15th April, 1837, at Gloucester, by a man called Bartlett, who had murdered his mother-in-law: “Englishmen and fellow countrymen, – I have a few words to say to you, and they shall be but very few. Yet let me entreat you, one and all, that these few words that I shall utter may strike deep into your hearts. Bear them in your mind, not only now while you are witnessing this sad scene, but take them to your homes, take them, and repeat them to your children and friends. I implore you as a dying man – one for whom the instrument of death is even now prepared – and these words are that you may loose yourselves from the love of this dying world and its vain pleasures. Think less of it and more of your God. Do this: repent, repent, for be assured that without deep and true repentance, without turning to your heavenly Father, you will never attain, nor can hold the slightest hope of ever reaching those bowers of bliss to which I trust I am now fast advancing” (Times, 18th April 1837).

Still more remarkable are the last words of the well-known murderer, Greenacre, who was executed in London on the 1st of May 1837. The English newspaper the Post gives the following account, which is also reprinted in Galignani's Messenger of the 6th of May 1837: “On the morning of his execution a gentleman advised him to put his trust in God, and pray for forgiveness through the mediation of Jesus Christ. Greenacre replied that forgiveness through the mediation of Christ was a matter of opinion; for his part, he believed that in the sight of the highest Being, a Mohammedan was as good as a Christian and had just as much claim to salvation. Since his imprisonment he had had his attention directed to theological subjects, and he had become convinced that the gallows is a passport to heaven.” The indifference displayed here towards positive religions is just what gives this utterance greater weight, for it shows that it is no fanatical delusion, but individual immediate knowledge that lies at its foundation. The following incident may also be mentioned which is given by Galignani's Messenger of the 15th August 1837, from the Limerick Chronicle: “Last Monday Maria Cooney was executed for the revolting murder of Mrs. Anderson. So deeply was this wretched woman impressed with the greatness of her crime that she kissed the rope which was put round her neck, while she humbly implored the mercy of God.” Lastly this: the Times, of the 29th April 1845 gives several letters which Hocker, who was condemned for the murder of Delarue, wrote the day before his execution. In one of these he says: “I am persuaded that unless the natural heart be broken, and renewed by divine mercy, however noble and amiable it may be deemed by the world, it can never think of eternity without inwardly shuddering.” These are the outlooks into eternity referred to above which are obtained from that watch-tower; and I have had the less hesitation in giving them here since Shakspeare also says —

“Out of these convertites

There is much matter to be heard and learned.”

    – As You Like it, last scene.

Strauss, in his “Life of Jesus,” has proved that Christianity also ascribes to suffering as such the purifying and sanctifying power here set forth (Leben Jesu, vol. i. ch. 6, §§ 72 and 74). He says that the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount have a different sense in Luke (vi. 21) from that which they have in Matt. (v. 3), for only the latter adds τῳ πνευματι to μακαριοι οἱ πτωχοι, and την δικαιοσυνην to πεινωντες. Thus by him alone are the simple-minded, the humble, &c., meant, while by Luke are meant the literally poor; so that here the contrast is that between present suffering and future happiness. With the Ebionites it is a capital principle that whoever takes his portion in this age gets nothing in the future, and conversely. Accordingly in Luke the blessings are followed by as many ουαι, woes, which are addressed to the rich, οἱ πλουσιοι, the full, οἱ εμπεπλησμενοι, and to them that laugh, οἱ γελωντες, in the Ebionite spirit. In the same spirit, he says, p. 604, is the parable (Luke xvi. 19) of the rich man and Lazarus given, which nowhere mentions any fault of the former or any merit of the latter, and takes as the standard of the future recompense, not the good done or the wickedness practised, but the evil suffered here and the good things enjoyed, in the Ebionite spirit. “A like estimation of outward poverty,” Strauss goes on, “is also attributed to Jesus by the other synoptists (Matt. xix. 16; Mark x. 17; Luke xviii. 18), in the story of the rich young man and the saying about the camel and the eye of a needle.”

If we go to the bottom of the matter we will recognise that even in the most famous passages of the Sermon on the Mount there is contained an indirect injunction to voluntary poverty, and thereby to the denial of the will to live. For the precept (Matt. v. 40 seq.) to consent unconditionally to all demands made upon us, to give our cloak also to him who will take away our coat, &c., similarly (Matt. vi. 25-34) the precept to cast aside all care for the future, even for the morrow, and so to live simply in the present, are rules of life the observance of which inevitably leads to absolute poverty, and which therefore just say in an indirect manner what Buddha directly commands his disciples and has confirmed by his own example: throw everything away and become bhikkhu, i. e., beggars. This appears still more decidedly in the passage Matt. x. 9-15, where all possessions, even shoes and a staff, are forbidden to the Apostles, and they are directed to beg. These commands afterwards became the foundation of the mendicant order of St. Francis (Bonaventuræ vita S. Francisci, c. 3). Hence, then, I say that the spirit of Christian ethics is identical with that of Brahmanism and Buddhism. In conformity with the whole view expounded here Meister Eckhard also says (Works, vol. i. p. 492): “The swiftest animal that bears thee to perfection is suffering.”

Chapter XLIX. The Way Of Salvation

There is only one inborn error, and that is, that we exist in order to be happy. It is inborn in us because it is one with our existence itself, and our whole being is only a paraphrase of it, nay, our body is its monogram. We are nothing more than will to live and the successive satisfaction of all our volitions is what we think in the conception of happiness.

As long as we persist in this inborn error, indeed even become rigidly fixed in it through optimistic dogmas, the world appears to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things as in small, we must experience that the world and life are by no means arranged with a view to containing a happy existence. While now by this the thoughtless man only finds himself tormented in reality, in the case of him who thinks there is added to his real pain the theoretical perplexity why a world and a life which exist in order that one may be happy in them answer their end so badly. First of all it finds expression in pious ejaculations, such as, “Ah! why are the tears on earth so many?” &c. &c. But in their train come disquieting doubts about the assumptions of those preconceived optimistic dogmas. One may try if one will to throw the blame of one's individual unhappiness now upon the circumstances, now upon other men, now upon one's own bad luck, or even upon one's own awkwardness, and may know well how all these have worked together to produce it; but this in no way alters the result that one has missed the real end of life, which consists indeed in being happy. The consideration of this is, then, often very depressing, especially if life is already on the wane; hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of that which in English is called disappointment. Besides this, however, hitherto every day of our life has taught us that joys and pleasures, even if attained, are in themselves delusive, do not perform what they promise, do not satisfy the heart, and finally their possession is at least embittered by the disagreeables that accompany them or spring from them; while, on the contrary, the pains and sorrows prove themselves very real, and often exceed all expectation. Thus certainly everything in life is calculated to recall us from that original error, and to convince us that the end of our existence is not to be happy. Indeed, if we regard it more closely and without prejudice, life rather presents itself as specially intended to be such that we shall not feel ourselves happy in it, for through its whole nature it bears the character of something for which we have no taste, which must be endured by us, and from which we have to return as from an error that our heart may be cured of the passionate desire of enjoyment, nay, of life, and turned away from the world. In this sense, it would be more correct to place the end of life in our woe than in our welfare. For the considerations at the conclusion of the preceding chapter have shown that the more one suffers the sooner one attains to the true end of life, and that the more happily one lives the longer this is delayed. The conclusion of the last letter of Seneca corresponds with this: bonum tunc habebis tuum, quum intelliges infelicissimos esse felices; which certainly seems to show the influence of Christianity. The peculiar effect of the tragic drama also ultimately depends upon the fact that it shakes that inborn error by vividly presenting in a great and striking example the vanity of human effort and the nothingness of this whole existence, and thus discloses the profound significance of life; hence it is recognised as the sublimest form of poetry. Whoever now has returned by one or other path from that error which dwells in us a priori, that πρωτου ψευδος of our existence, will soon see all in another light, and will now find the world in harmony with his insight, although not with his wishes. Misfortunes of every kind and magnitude, although they pain him, will no longer surprise him, for he has come to see that it is just pain and trouble that tend towards the true end of life, the turning away of the will from it. This will give him indeed a wonderful composedness in all that may happen, similar to that with which a sick person who undergoes a long and painful cure bears the pain of it as a sign of its efficacy. In the whole of human existence suffering expresses itself clearly enough as its true destiny. Life is deeply sunk in suffering, and cannot escape from it; our entrance into it takes place amid tears, its course is at bottom always tragic, and its end still more so. There is an unmistakable appearance of intention in this. As a rule man's destiny passes through his mind in a striking manner, at the very summit of his desires and efforts, and thus his life receives a tragic tendency by virtue of which it is fitted to free him from the passionate desire of which every individual existence is an example, and bring him into such a condition that he parts with life without retaining a single desire for it and its pleasures. Suffering is, in fact, the purifying process through which alone, in most cases, the man is sanctified, i. e., is led back from the path of error of the will to live. In accordance with this, the salutary nature of the cross and of suffering is so often explained in Christian books of edification, and in general the cross, an instrument of suffering, not of doing, is very suitably the symbol of the Christian religion. Nay, even the Preacher, who is still Jewish, but so very philosophical, rightly says: “Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better” (Eccles. vii. 3). Under the name of the δεντρος πλους I have presented suffering as to a certain extent a substitute for virtue and holiness; but here I must make the bold assertion that, taking everything into consideration, we have more to hope for our salvation and deliverance from what we suffer than from what we do. Precisely in this spirit Lamartine very beautifully says in his “Hymne à la douleur,” apostrophising pain: —

“Tu me traites sans doute en favori des cieux,
Car tu n'épargnes pas les larmes à mes yeux.
Eh bien! je les reçois comme tu les envoies,
Tes maux seront mes biens, et tes soupirs mes joies.
Je sens qu'il est en toi, sans avoir combattu,
Une vertu divine au lieu de ma vertu,
Que tu n'es pas la mort l'âme, mais sa vie,
Que ton bras, en frappant, guérit et vivifie.”

If, then, suffering itself has such a sanctifying power, this will belong in an even higher degree to death, which is more feared than any suffering. Answering to this, a certain awe, kindred to that which great suffering occasions us, is felt in the presence of every dead person, indeed every case of death presents itself to a certain extent as a kind of apotheosis or canonisation; therefore we cannot look upon the dead body of even the most insignificant man without awe, and indeed, extraordinary as the remark may sound in this place, in the presence of every corpse the watch goes under arms. Dying is certainly to be regarded as the real aim of life: in the moment of death all that is decided for which the whole course of life was only the preparation and introduction. Death is the result, the Résumé of life, or the added up sum which expresses at once the instruction which life gave in detail, and bit by bit; this, that the whole striving whose manifestation is life was a vain, idle, and self-contradictory effort, to have returned from which is a deliverance. As the whole, slow vegetation of the plant is related to the fruit, which now at a stroke achieves a hundredfold what the plant achieved gradually and bit by bit, so life, with its obstacles, deluded hopes, frustrated plans, and constant suffering, is related to death, which at one stroke destroys all, all that the man has willed, and so crowns the instruction which life gave him. The completed course of life upon which the dying man looks back has an effect upon the whole will that objectifies itself in this perishing individuality, analogous to that which a motive exercises upon the conduct of the man. It gives it a new direction, which accordingly is the moral and essential result of the life. Just because a sudden death makes this retrospect impossible, the Church regards such a death as a misfortune, and prays that it should be averted. Since this retrospect, like the distinct foreknowledge of death, as conditioned by the reason, is possible only in man, not in the brute, and accordingly man alone really drinks the cup of death, humanity is the only material in which the will can deny itself and entirely turn away from life. To the will that does not deny itself every birth imparts a new and different intellect, – till it has learned the true nature of life, and in consequence of this wills it no more.

In the natural course, in age the decay of the body coincides with that of the will. The desire for pleasures soon vanishes with the capacity to enjoy them. The occasion of the most vehement willing, the focus of the will, the sexual impulse, is first extinguished, whereby the man is placed in a position which resembles the state of innocence which existed before the development of the genital system. The illusions, which set up chimeras as exceedingly desirable benefits, vanish, and the knowledge of the vanity of all earthly blessings takes their place. Selfishness is repressed by the love of one's children, by means of which the man already begins to live more in the ego of others than in his own, which now will soon be no more. This course of life is at least the desirable one; it is the euthanasia of the will. In hope of this the Brahman is ordered, after he has passed the best years of his life, to forsake possessions and family, and lead the life of a hermit (Menu, B. 6), But if, conversely, the desire outlives the capacity for enjoyment, and we now regret particular pleasures in life which we miss, instead of seeing the emptiness and vanity of all; and if then gold, the abstract representative of the objects of desire for which the sense is dead, takes the place of all these objects themselves, and now excites the same vehement passions which were formerly more pardonably awakened by the objects of actual pleasure, and thus now with deadened senses a lifeless but indestructible object is desired with equally indestructible eagerness; or, also, if, in the same way, existence in the opinion of others takes the place of existence and action in the real world, and now kindles the same passions; – then the will has become sublimated and etherealised into avarice or ambition; but has thereby thrown itself into the last fortress, in which it can only now be besieged by death. The end of existence has been missed.

All these considerations afford us a fuller explanation of that purification, conversion of the will and deliverance, denoted in the preceding chapter by the expression δευτερος πλους which is brought about by the suffering of life, and without doubt is the most frequent. For it is the way of sinners such as we all are. The other way, which leads to the same goal, by means of mere knowledge and the consequent appropriation of the suffering of a whole world, is the narrow path of the elect, the saints, and therefore to be regarded as a rare exception. Therefore without that first way for most of us there would be no salvation to hope for. However, we struggle against entering upon it, and strive rather to procure for ourselves a safe and agreeable existence, whereby we chain our will ever more firmly to life. The conduct of the ascetics is the opposite of this. They make their life intentionally as poor, hard, and empty of pleasure as possible, because they have their true and ultimate welfare in view. But fate and the course of things care for us better than we ourselves, for they frustrate on all sides our arrangements for an utopian life, the folly of which is evident enough from its brevity, uncertainty, and emptiness, and its conclusion by bitter death; they strew thorns upon thorns in our path, and meet us everywhere with healing sorrow, the panacea of our misery. What really gives its wonderful and ambiguous character to our life is this, that two diametrically opposite aims constantly cross each other in it; that of the individual will directed to chimerical happiness in an ephemeral, dream-like, and delusive existence, in which, with reference to the past, happiness and unhappiness are a matter of indifference, and the present is every moment becoming the past; and that of fate visibly enough directed to the destruction of our happiness, and thereby to the mortification of our will and the abolition of the illusion that holds us chained in the bonds of this world.

The prevalent and peculiarly Protestant view that the end of life lies solely and immediately in the moral virtues, thus in the practice of justice and benevolence, betrays its insufficiency even in the fact that so miserably little real and pure morality is found among men. I am not speaking at all of lofty virtue, nobleness, magnanimity, and self-sacrifice, which one hardly finds anywhere but in plays and novels, but only of those virtues which are the duty of every one. Let whoever is old think of all those with whom he has had to do; how many persons will he have met who were merely really and truly honest? Were not by far the greater number, in spite of their shameless indignation at the slightest suspicion of dishonesty or even untruthfulness, in plain words, the precise opposite? Were not abject selfishness, boundless avarice, well-concealed knavery, and also poisonous envy and fiendish delight in the misfortunes of others so universally prevalent that the slightest exception was met with surprise? And benevolence, how very rarely it extends beyond a gift of what is so superfluous that one never misses it. And is the whole end of existence to lie in such exceedingly rare and weak traces of morality? If we place it, on the contrary, in the entire reversal of this nature of ours (which bears the evil fruits just mentioned) brought about by suffering, the matter gains an appearance of probability and is brought into agreement with what actually lies before us. Life presents itself then as a purifying process, of which the purifying lye is pain. If the process is carried out, it leaves behind it the previous immorality and wickedness as refuse, and there appears what the Veda says: “Finditur nodus cordis, dissolvuntur omnes dubitationes, ejusque opera evanescunt.” As agreeing with this view the fifteenth sermon of Meister Eckhard will be found very well worth reading.

Chapter L. Epiphilosophy

At the conclusion of my exposition a few reflections concerning my philosophy itself may find their place. My philosophy does not pretend to explain the existence of the world in its ultimate grounds: it rather sticks to the facts of external and internal experience as they are accessible to every one, and shows the true and deepest connection of them without really going beyond them to any extra-mundane things and their relations to the world. It therefore arrives at no conclusions as to what lies beyond all possible experience, but affords merely an exposition of what is given in the external world and in self-consciousness, thus contents itself with comprehending the nature of the world in its inner connection with itself. It is consequently immanent, in the Kantian sense of the word. But just on this account it leaves many questions untouched; for example, why what is proved as a fact is as it is and not otherwise, &c. All such questions, however, or rather the answers to them, are really transcendent, i. e., they cannot be thought by the forms and functions of our intellect, do not enter into these; it is therefore related to them as our sensibility is related to the possible properties of bodies for which we have no senses. After all my explanations one may still ask, for example, whence has sprung this will that is free to assert itself, the manifestation of which is the world, or to deny itself, the manifestation of which we do not know. What is the fatality lying beyond all experience which has placed it in the very doubtful dilemma of either appearing as a world in which suffering and death reign, or else denying its very being? – or again, what can have prevailed upon it to forsake the infinitely preferable peace of blessed nothingness? An individual will, one may add, can only turn to its own destruction through error in the choice, thus through the fault of knowledge; but the will in itself, before all manifestation, consequently still without knowledge, how could it go astray and fall into the ruin of its present condition? Whence in general is the great discord that permeates this world? It may, further, be asked how deep into the true being of the world the roots of individuality go; to which it may certainly be answered: they go as deep as the assertion of the will to live; where the denial of the will appears they cease, for they have arisen with the assertion. But one might indeed even put the question, “What would I be if I were not will to live?” and more of the same kind. To all such questions we would first have to reply that the expression of the most universal and general form of our intellect is the principle of sufficient reason; but that just on this account that principle finds application only to the phenomenon, not to the being in itself of things. Yet all whence and why depend upon that principle alone. As a result of the Kantian philosophy it is no longer an æterna veritas, but merely the form, i. e., the function, of our intellect, which is essentially cerebral, and originally a mere tool in the service of the will, which it therefore presupposes together with all its objectifications. But our whole knowing and conceiving is bound to its forms; accordingly we must conceive everything in time, consequently as a before and after, then as cause and effect, and also as above and below, whole and part, &c., and cannot by any means escape from this sphere in which all possibility of our knowledge lies. Now these forms are utterly unsuited to the problems raised here, nor are they fit or able to comprehend their solution even if it were given. Therefore with our intellect, this mere tool of the will, we are everywhere striking upon insoluble problems, as against the walls of our prison. But, besides this, it may at least be assumed as probable that not only for us is knowledge of all that has been asked about impossible, but no such knowledge is possible in general, thus never and in no way; that these relations are not only relatively but absolutely insusceptible of investigation; that not only does no one know them, but that they are in themselves unknowable, because they do not enter into the form of knowledge in general. (This corresponds to what Scotus Erigena says, de mirabili divina ignorantia, qua Deus non intelligit quid ipse sit. Lib. ii.) For knowableness in general, with its most essential, and therefore constantly necessary form of subject and object, belongs merely to the phenomenal appearance, not to the being in itself of things. Where knowledge, and consequently idea, is, there is also only phenomenon, and we stand there already in the province of the phenomenal; nay, knowledge in general is known to us only as a phenomenon of brain, and we are not only unjustified in conceiving it otherwise, but also incapable of doing so. What the world is as world may be understood: it is phenomenal manifestation; and we can know that which manifests itself in it, directly from ourselves, by means of a thorough analysis of self-consciousness. Then, however, by means of this key to the nature of the world, the whole phenomenal manifestation can be deciphered, as I believe I have succeeded in doing. But if we leave the world in order to answer the questions indicated above, we have also left the whole sphere in which, not only connection according to reason and consequent, but even knowledge itself is possible; then all is instabilis tellus, innabilis unda. The nature of things before or beyond the world, and consequently beyond the will, is open to no investigation; because knowledge in general is itself only a phenomenon, and therefore exists only in the world as the world exists only in it. The inner being in itself of things is nothing that knows, no intellect, but an unconscious; knowledge is only added as an accident, a means of assistance to the phenomenon of that inner being, and can therefore apprehend that being itself only in proportion to its own nature, which is designed with reference to quite different ends (those of the individual will), consequently very imperfectly. Here lies the reason why a perfect understanding of the existence, nature, and origin of the world, extending to its ultimate ground and satisfying all demands, is impossible. So much as to the limits of my philosophy, and indeed of all philosophy.

The ἑν και παν, i. e., that the inner nature in all things is absolutely one and the same, my age had already grasped and understood, after the Eleatics, Scotus Erigena, Giordano Bruno, and Spinoza had thoroughly taught, and Schelling had revived this doctrine. But what this one is, and how it is able to exhibit itself as the many, is a problem the solution of which is first found in my philosophy. Certainly from the most ancient times man had been called the microcosm. I have reversed the proposition, and shown the world as the macranthropos: because will and idea exhaust its nature as they do that of man. But it is clearly more correct to learn to understand the world from man than man from the world; for one has to explain what is indirectly given, thus external perception from what is directly given, thus self-consciousness – not conversely.

With the Pantheists, then, I have certainly that ἑν και παν in common, but not the παν θεος; because I do not go beyond experience (taken in its widest sense), and still less do I put myself in contradiction with the data which lie before me. Scotus Erigena, quite consistently with the spirit of Pantheism, explains every phenomenon as a theophany; but then this conception must also be applied to the most terrible and abominable phenomena. Fine theophanies! What further distinguishes me from Pantheism is principally the following. (1). That their θεος is an x, an unknown quantity; the will, on the other hand, is of all possible things the one that is known to us most exactly, the only thing given immediately, and therefore exclusively fitted for the explanation of the rest. For what is unknown must always be explained by what is better known; not conversely. (2). That their θεος manifests himself animi causa, to unfold his glory, or, indeed, to let himself be admired. Apart from the vanity here attributed to him, they are placed in the position of being obliged to sophisticate away the colossal evil of the world; but the world remains in glaring and terrible contradiction with that imagined excellence. With me, on the contrary, the will arrives through its objectification however this may occur, at self-knowledge, whereby its abolition, conversion, salvation becomes possible. And accordingly, with me alone ethics has a sure foundation and is completely worked out in agreement with the sublime and profound religions, Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Christianity, not merely with Judaism and Mohammedanism. The metaphysic of the beautiful also is first fully cleared up as a result of my fundamental truth, and no longer requires to take refuge behind empty words. With me alone is the evil of the world honestly confessed in its whole magnitude: this is rendered possible by the fact that the answer to the question as to its origin coincides with the answer to the question as to the origin of the world. On the other hand, in all other systems, since they are all optimistic, the question as to the origin of evil is the incurable disease, ever breaking out anew, with which they are affected, and in consequence of which they struggle along with palliatives and quack remedies. (3.) That I start from experience and the natural self-consciousness given to every one, and lead to the will as that which alone is metaphysical; thus I adopt the ascending, analytical method. The Pantheists, again, adopt the opposite method, the descending or synthetical. They start from their θεος, which they beg or take by force, although sometimes under the name substantia, or absolute, and this unknown is then supposed to explain everything that is better known. (4.) That with me the world does not fill the whole possibility of all being, but in this there still remains much room for that which we denote only negatively as the denial of the will to live. Pantheism, on the other hand, is essentially optimism: but if the world is what is best, then the matter may rest there. (5.) That to the Pantheists the perceptible world, thus the world of idea, is just the intentional manifestation of the God indwelling in it, which contains no real explanation of its appearance, but rather requires to be explained itself. With me, on the other hand, the world as idea appears merely per accidens, because the intellect, with its external perception, is primarily only the medium of motives for the more perfect phenomena of will, which gradually rises to that objectivity of perceptibility, in which the world exists. In this sense its origin, as an object of perception, is really accounted for, and not, as with the Pantheists, by means of untenable fictions.

Since, in consequence of the Kantian criticism of all speculative theology, the philosophisers of Germany almost all threw themselves back upon Spinoza, so that the whole series of futile attempts known by the name of the post-Kantian philosophy are simply Spinozism tastelessly dressed up, veiled in all kinds of unintelligible language, and otherwise distorted, I wish, now that I have explained the relation of my philosophy to Pantheism in general, to point out its relation to Spinozism in particular. It stands, then, to Spinozism as the New Testament stands to the Old. What the Old Testament has in common with the New is the same God-Creator. Analogous to this, the world exists, with me as with Spinoza, by its inner power and through itself. But with Spinoza his substantia æterna, the inner nature of the world, which he himself calls God, is also, as regards its moral character and worth, Jehovah, the God-Creator, who applauds His own creation, and finds that all is very good, παντα καλα λιαν. Spinoza has deprived Him of nothing but personality. Thus, according to him also, the world and all in it is wholly excellent and as it ought to be: therefore man has nothing more to do than vivere, agere, suum Esse conservare ex fundamento proprium utile quærendi (Eth., iv. pr. 67); he is even to rejoice in his life as long as it lasts; entirely in accordance with Ecclesiastes ix. 7-10. In short, it is optimism: therefore its ethical side is weak, as in the Old Testament; nay, it is even false, and in part revolting.[54 - Unusquisque tantum juris habet, quantum potentiâ valet (Tract. pol., c. 2 § 8). Fides alicui data tamdiu rata manet, quamdiu ejus, qui fidem dedit, non mutatur voluntas (Ibid., § 12). Uniuscujusque jus potentiâ ejus definetur (Eth. iv., pr. 37, schol. 1.) Especially chap. 16 of the Tractatus theologico-politicus is the true compendium of the immorality of Spinoza's philosophy.] With me, on the other hand, the will, or the inner nature of the world, is by no means Jehovah, it is rather, as it were, the crucified Saviour, or the crucified thief, according as it resolves. Therefore my ethical teaching agrees with that of Christianity, completely and in its highest tendencies, and not less with that of Brahmanism and Buddhism. Spinoza could not get rid of the Jews; quo semel est imbuta recens servabit odorem. His contempt for the brutes, which, as mere things for our use, he also declares to be without rights, is thoroughly Jewish, and, in union with Pantheism, is at the same time absurd and detestable (Eth., iv., appendix, c. 27). With all this Spinoza remains a very great man. But in order to estimate his work correctly we must keep in view his relation to Descartes. The latter had sharply divided nature into mind and matter, i. e., thinking and extended substance, and had also placed God and the world in complete opposition to each other; Spinoza also, so long as he was a Cartesian, taught all that in his “Cogitatis Metaphysicis,” c. 12, i. I., 1665. Only in his later years did he see the fundamental falseness of that double dualism; and accordingly his own philosophy principally consists of the indirect abolition of these two antitheses. Yet partly to avoid injuring his teacher, partly in order to be less offensive, he gave it a positive appearance by means of a strictly dogmatic form, although its content is chiefly negative. His identification of the world with God has also this negative significance alone. For to call the world God is not to explain it: it remains a riddle under the one name as under the other. But these two negative truths had value for their age, as for every age in which there still are conscious or unconscious Cartesians. He makes the mistake, common to all philosophers before Locke, of starting from conceptions, without having previously investigated their origin, such, for example, as substance, cause, &c., and in such a method of procedure these conceptions then receive a much too extensive validity. Those who in the most recent times refused to acknowledge the Neo-Spinozism which had appeared, for example, Jacobi, were principally deterred from doing so by the bugbear of fatalism. By this is to be understood every doctrine which refers the existence of the world, together with the critical position of mankind in it, to any absolute necessity, i. e., to a necessity that cannot be further explained. Those who feared fatalism, again, believed that all that was of importance was to deduce the world from the free act of will of a being existing outside it; as if it were antecedently certain which of the two was more correct, or even better merely in relation to us. What is, however, especially assumed here is the non datur tertium, and accordingly hitherto every philosophy has represented one or the other. I am the first to depart from this; for I have actually established the Tertium: the act of will from which the world arises is our own. It is free; for the principle of sufficient reason, from which alone all necessity derives its significance, is merely the form of its phenomenon. Just on this account this phenomenon, if it once exists, is absolutely necessary in its course; in consequence of this alone we can recognise in it the nature of the act of will, and accordingly eventualiter will otherwise.

Appendix

Abstract

Schopenhauer's Essay on the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (Fourth Edition, Edited by Frauenstädt. The First Edition appeared in 1813).

This essay is divided into eight chapters. The first is introductory. The second contains an historical review of previous philosophical doctrines on the subject. The third deals with the insufficiency of the previous treatment of the principle, and prescribes the lines of the new departure. The fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh treat of the four classes of objects for the subject, and the forms of the principle of sufficient reason which respectively characterise these classes. The eighth contains general remarks and results. It will be convenient to summarise these chapters severally.

Chapter I

Schopenhauer points out that Plato and Kant agree in recommending, as the method of all knowledge, obedience to two laws: – that of Homogeneity, and that of Specification. The former bids us, by attention to the points of resemblance and agreement in things, get at their kinds, and combine them into species, and these species again into genera, until we have arrived at the highest concept of all, that which embraces everything. This law being transcendental, or an essential in our faculty of reason, assumes that nature is in harmony with it, an assumption which is expressed in the old rule: Entia præter necessitatem non esse multiplicanda. The law of Specification, on the other hand, is stated by Kant in these words: Entium varietates non temere esse minuendas. That is to say, we must carefully distinguish the species which are united under a genus, and the lower kinds which in their turn are united under these species; taking care not to make a leap, and subsume the lower kinds and individuals under the concept of the genus, since this is always capable of division, but never descends to the object of pure perception. Plato and Kant agree that these laws are transcendental, and that they presuppose that things are in harmony with them.

The previous treatment of the principle of sufficient reason, even by Kant, has been a failure, owing to the neglect of the second of these laws. It may well be that we shall find that this principle is the common expression of more than one fundamental principle of knowledge, and that the necessity, to which it refers, is therefore of different kinds. It may be stated in these words: Nihil est sine ratione cur potius sit, quam non sit. This is the general expression for the different forms of the assumption which everywhere justifies that question “Why?” which is the mother of all science.

Chapter II

Schopenhauer in this chapter traces historically the forms in which the principle had been stated by his predecessors, and their influence. He points out that in Greek philosophy it appeared in two aspects – that of the necessity of a ground for a logical judgment, and that of a cause for every physical change – and that these two aspects were systematically confounded. The Aristotelian division, not of the forms of the principle itself, but of one of its aspects, the causal, exemplified a confusion which continued throughout the Scholastic period. Descartes succeeds no better. His proof of the existence of God that the immensity of His nature is a cause or reason beyond which no cause is needed for His existence, simply illustrates the gross confusion between cause and ground of knowledge which underlies every form of this ontological proof. “That a miserable fellow like Hegel, whose entire philosophy is nothing but a monstrous amplification of the ontological proof, should dare to defend this proof against Kant's criticism of it is an alliance of which the ontological proof itself, little as it knows of shame, might well feel ashamed. It is not to be expected I should speak respectfully of people who have brought philosophy into disrespect.” Spinoza made the same confusion when he laid it down that the cause of existence was either contained in the nature and definition of the thing as it existed, or was to be found outside that thing. It was through this confusion of the ground of knowledge with the efficient cause that he succeeded in identifying God with the world. The true picture of Spinoza's “Causa sui” is Baron Munchhausen encircling his horse with his legs, and raising himself and the horse upwards by means of his pigtail, with the inscription “Causa sui” written below. Leibnitz was the first to place the principle of sufficient reason in the position of a first principle, and to indicate the difference between its two meanings. But it was Wolff who first completely distinguished them, and divided the doctrine into three kinds: principium fiendi (cause), principium essendi (possibility), and principium cognoscendi. Baumgarten, Reimarus, Lambert, and Platner added nothing to the work of Wolff, and the next great step was Hume's question as to the validity of the principle. Kant's distinction of the logical or formal principle of knowledge – Every proposition must have its ground; from the transcendental or material principle, Every thing must have its ground – was followed out by his immediate successors. But when we come to Schelling we find the proposition that gravitation is the reason and light the cause of things, a proposition which is quoted simply as a curiosity, for such a piece of nonsense deserves no place among the opinions of earnest and honest inquirers. The chapter concludes by pointing out the futility of the attempts to prove the principle. Every proof is the exhibition of the ground of a judgment which has been expressed, and of which, just because that ground is exhibited, we predicate truth. The principle of sufficient reason is just this expression of the demand for such a ground, and he who seeks a proof, i. e., the exhibition of a ground for this principle itself, presupposes it as true, and so falls into the circle of seeking a proof of the justification of the demand for proof.

Chapter III

In the third chapter Schopenhauer points out that the two applications of the principle of sufficient reason distinguished by his predecessors, to judgments, which must have a ground, and to the changes of real objects, which must have a cause, are not exhaustive. The reason why the three sides of a certain triangle are equal is that the angles are equal, and this is neither a logical deduction nor a case of causation. With a view to stating exhaustively the various kinds into which the application of the principle falls it is necessary to determine the nature of the principle itself. All our ideas are objects of the subject, and all objects of the subject are our ideas. But our ideas stand to one another as a matter of fact in an orderly connection, which is always determinable a priori in point of form, and on account of which nothing that is in itself separate and wholly independent of other things can be the object of our consciousness. It is this connection which the principle of sufficient reason in its generality expresses. The relations which constitute it are what Schopenhauer calls its root, and they fall into four classes, which are discussed in the four following chapters.

Chapter IV

In the fourth chapter Schopenhauer deals with the first class of objects for the subject and the form of the principle of sufficient reason which obtains in it. This first class is that of those complete ideas of perception which form part of our experience, and which are referable to some sensation of our bodies. These ideas are capable of being perceived only under the forms of Space and Time. If time were the only form there would be no coexistence, and therefore no persistence. If space were their only form there would be no succession, and therefore no change. Time may therefore be defined as the possibility of mutually exclusive conditions of the same thing. But the union of these two forms of existence is the essential condition of reality, and this union is the work of the understanding (see “World as Will and Idea,” vol. i. § 4, and the table of predicables annexed to vol. ii., chap. 4). In this class of objects for the subject the principle of sufficient reason appears as the law of causality or the principle of sufficient reason of becoming, and it is through it that all objects which present themselves in perception are bound together through the changes of their states. When a new state of one or more objects makes its appearance it must have been preceded by another on which it regularly follows. This is causal sequence, and the first state is the cause, the second the effect. The law has thus to do exclusively with the changes of objects of external experience, and not with things themselves, a circumstance which is fatal to the validity of the cosmological proof of the existence of God. It follows also from the essential connection of causality with succession that the notion of reciprocity, with its contemporaneous existence of cause and effect, is a delusion. The chain of causes and effects does not affect either matter, which is that in which all changes take place, or the original forces of nature, through which causation becomes possible, and which exist apart from all change, and in this sense out of time, but which yet are everywhere present (e. g., chemical forces, see supra, vol. i., § 26). In nature causation assumes three different forms; that of cause in the narrow sense, of stimulus, and of motive, on which differences depend the true distinctions between inorganic bodies, plants, and animals. It is only of cause properly so called that Newton's third law of the equality of action and reaction is true, and only here do we find the degree of the effect proportionate to that of the cause. The absence of this feature characterises stimulation. Motive demands knowledge as its condition, and intelligence is therefore the true characteristic of the animal. The three forms are in principle identical, the difference being due to the degrees of receptivity in existence. What is called freedom of the will is therefore an absurdity, as is also Kant's “Practical Reason.” These results are followed by an examination of the nature of vision, which Schopenhauer sums up in these words: “I have examined all these visual processes in detail in order to show that the understanding is active in all of them, the understanding which, by apprehending every change as an effect and referring it to its cause, creates on the basis of the a priori and fundamental intuitions or perceptions of space and time, the objective world, that phenomenon of the brain, for which the sensations of the senses afford only certain data. And this task the understanding accomplishes only through its proper form, the law of causality, and accomplishes it directly without the aid of reflection, that is, of abstract knowledge through concepts and words, which are the material of secondary knowledge, of thought, thus of the Reason.” “What understanding knows aright is reality; what reason knows aright is truth, i. e., a judgment which has a ground; the opposite of the former being illusion (what is falsely perceived), of the latter error (what is falsely thought).” All understanding is an immediate apprehension of the causal relation, and this is the sole function of understanding, and not the complicated working of the twelve Kantian Categories, the theory of which is a mistaken one. A consequence of this conclusion is, that arithmetical processes do not belong to the understanding, concerned as they are with abstract conceptions. But it must not be forgotten that between volition and the apparently consequential action of the body there is no causal relation, for they are the same thing perceived in two different ways. Section 23 contains a detailed refutation of Kant's proof of the a priori nature of the causal relation in the “Second Analogy of Experience” of the Critique of Pure Reason, the gist of the objection being that the so-called subjective succession is as much objective in reality as what is called objective by Kant: “Phenomena may well follow one another, without following from one another.”

Chapter V

The fifth chapter commences with an examination of the distinction between man and the brutes. Man possesses reason, that is to say, he has a class of ideas of which the brutes are not capable, abstract ideas as distinguished from those ideas of perception from which the former kind are yet derived. The consequence is, that the brute neither speaks nor laughs, and lacks all those qualities which make human life great. The nature of motives, too, is different where abstract ideas are possible. No doubt the actions of men follow of necessity from their causes, not less than is the case with the brutes, but the kind of sequence through thought which renders choice, i. e., the conscious conflict of motives, possible is different. Our abstract ideas, being incapable of being objects of perception, would be outside consciousness, and the operations of thought would be impossible, were it not that they are fixed for sense by arbitrary signs called words, which therefore always indicate general conceptions. It is just because the brutes are incapable of general conceptions that they have no faculty of speech. But thought does not consist in the mere presence of abstract ideas in consciousness, but in the union and separation of two or more of them, subject to the manifold restrictions and modifications which logic deals with. Such a clearly expressed conceptual relation is a judgment. In relation to judgments the principle of sufficient reason is valid in a new form: that of the ground of knowing. In this form it asserts that if a judgment is to express knowledge it must have a ground; and it is just because it has a ground that it has ascribed to it the predicate true. The grounds on which a judgment may depend are divisible into four kinds. A judgment may have another judgment as its ground, in which case its truth is formal or logical. There is no truth except in the relation of a judgment to something outside it, and intrinsic truth, which is sometimes distinguished from extrinsic logical truth, is therefore an absurdity. A judgment may also have its ground in sense-perception, and its truth is then material truth. Again, those forms of knowledge which lie in the understanding and in pure sensibility, as the conditions of the possibility of experience, may be the ground of a judgment which is then synthetical a priori. Finally, those formal conditions of all thinking which lie in the reason may be the ground of a judgment, which may in that case be called metalogically true. Of these metalogical judgments there are four, and they were long ago discovered and called laws of thought. (1.) A subject is equal to the sum of its predicates. (2.) A subject cannot at once have a given predicate affirmed and denied of it. (3.) Of two contradictorily opposed predicates one must belong to every subject. (4.) Truth is the relation of a judgment to something outside it as its sufficient reason. Reason, it may be remarked, has no material but only formal truth.

Chapter VI

The third class of objects for the subject is constituted by the formal element in perception, the forms of outer and inner sense, space and time. This class of ideas, in which time and space appear as pure intuitions, is distinguished from that other class in which they are objects of perception by the presence of matter which has been shown to be the perceptibility of time and space in one aspect, and causality which has become objective, in another. Space and time have this property, that all their parts stand to one another in a relation in which each is determined and conditioned by another. This relation is peculiar, and is intelligible to us neither through understanding nor through reason, but solely through pure intuition or perception a priori. And the law according to which the parts of space and time thus determine one another is called the law of sufficient reason of being. In space every position is determined with reference to every other position, so that the first stands to the second in the relation of a consequence to its ground. In time every moment is conditioned by that which precedes it. The ground of being, in the form of the law of sequence, is here very simple owing to the circumstance that time has only one dimension. On the nexus of the position of the parts of space depends the entire science of geometry. Ground of knowledge produces conviction only, as distinguished from insight into the ground of being. Thus it is that the attempt, which even Euclid at times makes, to produce conviction, as distinguished from insight into the ground of being, in geometry, is a mistake, and induces aversions to mathematics in many an admirable mind.

Chapter VII

The remaining class of objects for the subject is a very peculiar and important one. It comprehends only one object, the immediate object of inner sense, the subject in volition which becomes an object of knowledge, but only in inner sense, and therefore always in time and never in space; and in time only under limitations. There can be no knowledge of knowledge, for that would imply that the subject had separated itself from knowledge, and yet knew knowledge, which is impossible. The subject is the condition of the existence of ideas, and can never itself become idea or object. It knows itself therefore never as knowing, but only as willing. Thus what we know in ourselves is never what knows, but what wills, the will. The identity of the subject of volition with the subject of knowledge, through which the word “I” includes both, is the insoluble problem. The identity of the knowing with the known is inexplicable, and yet is immediately present. The operation of a motive is not, like that of all other causes, known only from without, and therefore indirectly, but also from within. Motivation is, in fact, causality viewed from within.

Chapter VIII