The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer - Arthur Schopenhauer
THE ESSAYS
OF
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
TRANSLATED BY
T. BAILEY SAUNDERS, M.A.
ON HUMAN NATURE.
CONTENTS.
HUMAN NATURE
GOVERNMENT
FREE-WILL AND FATALISM
CHARACTER
MORAL INSTINCT
ETHICAL REFLECTIONS
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
The following essays are drawn from the chapters entitled _Zur Ethik_
and _Zur Rechtslehre und Politik_ which are to be found both in
Schopenhauer's _Parerga_ and in his posthumous writings. As in my
previous volumes, so also in this, I have omitted a few passages which
appeared to me to be either antiquated or no longer of any general
interest. For convenience' sake I have divided the original chapters
into sections, which I have had to name; and I have also had to invent
a title which should express their real scope. The reader will find
that it is not so much _Ethics_ and _Politics_ that are here treated,
as human nature itself in various aspects.
T.B.S.
HUMAN NATURE.
Truths of the physical order may possess much external significance,
but internal significance they have none. The latter is the privilege
of intellectual and moral truths, which are concerned with the
objectivation of the will in its highest stages, whereas physical
truths are concerned with it in its lowest.
For example, if we could establish the truth of what up till now is
only a conjecture, namely, that it is the action of the sun which
produces thermoelectricity at the equator; that this produces
terrestrial magnetism; and that this magnetism, again, is the cause of
the _aurora borealis_, these would be truths externally of great, but
internally of little, significance. On the other hand, examples
of internal significance are furnished by all great and true
philosophical systems; by the catastrophe of every good tragedy; nay,
even by the observation of human conduct in the extreme manifestations
of its morality and immorality, of its good and its evil character.
For all these are expressions of that reality which takes outward
shape as the world, and which, in the highest stages of its
objectivation, proclaims its innermost nature.
To say that the world has only a physical and not a moral significance
is the greatest and most pernicious of all errors, the fundamental
blunder, the real perversity of mind and temper; and, at bottom, it
is doubtless the tendency which faith personifies as Anti-Christ.
Nevertheless, in spite of all religions--and they are systems which
one and all maintain the opposite, and seek to establish it in their
mythical way--this fundamental error never becomes quite extinct, but
raises its head from time to time afresh, until universal indignation
compels it to hide itself once more.
Yet, however certain we may feel of the moral significance of life
and the world, to explain and illustrate it, and to resolve the
contradiction between this significance and the world as it is, form
a task of great difficulty; so great, indeed, as to make it possible
that it has remained for me to exhibit the true and only genuine
and sound basis of morality everywhere and at all times effective,
together with the results to which it leads. The actual facts of
morality are too much on my side for me to fear that my theory can
ever be replaced or upset by any other.
However, so long as even my ethical system continues to be ignored by
the professorial world, it is Kant's moral principle that prevails in
the universities. Among its various forms the one which is most in
favour at present is "the dignity of man." I have already exposed
the absurdity of this doctrine in my treatise on the _Foundation of
Morality_.[1] Therefore I will only say here that if the question were
asked on what the alleged dignity of man rests, it would not be long
before the answer was made that it rests upon his morality. In other
words, his morality rests upon his dignity, and his dignity rests upon
his morality.
[Footnote 1: Sec. 8.]
But apart from this circular argument it seems to me that the idea of
dignity can be applied only in an ironical sense to a being whose will
is so sinful, whose intellect is so limited, whose body is so weak and
perishable as man's. How shall a man be proud, when his conception
is a crime, his birth a penalty, his life a labour, and death a
necessity!--
_Quid superbit homo? cujus conceptio culpa,
Nasci poena, labor vita, necesse mori_!
Therefore, in opposition to the above-mentioned form of the Kantian
principle, I should be inclined to lay down the following rule: When
you come into contact with a man, no matter whom, do not attempt an
objective appreciation of him according to his worth and dignity. Do
not consider his bad will, or his narrow understanding and perverse
ideas; as the former may easily lead you to hate and the latter to
despise him; but fix your attention only upon his sufferings, his
needs, his anxieties, his pains. Then you will always feel your
kinship with him; you will sympathise with him; and instead of hatred
or contempt you will experience the commiseration that alone is the
peace to which the Gospel calls us. The way to keep down hatred and
contempt is certainly not to look for a man's alleged "dignity," but,
on the contrary, to regard him as an object of pity.
The Buddhists, as the result of the more profound views which they
entertain on ethical and metaphysical subjects, start from the
cardinal vices and not the cardinal virtues; since the virtues make
their appearance only as the contraries or negations of the vices.
According to Schmidt's _History of the Eastern Mongolians_ the
cardinal vices in the Buddhist scheme are four: Lust, Indolence,
Anger, and Avarice. But probably instead of Indolence, we should read
Pride; for so it stands in the _Lettres edifiantes et curieuses_,[1]
where Envy, or Hatred, is added as a fifth. I am confirmed in
correcting the statement of the excellent Schmidt by the fact that my
rendering agrees with the doctrine of the Sufis, who are certainly
under the influence of the Brahmins and Buddhists. The Sufis also
maintain that there are four cardinal vices, and they arrange them in
very striking pairs, so that Lust appears in connection with Avarice,
and Anger with Pride. The four cardinal virtues opposed to them would
be Chastity and Generosity, together with Gentleness and Humility.
[Footnote 1: Edit, of 1819, vol. vi., p. 372.]
When we compare these profound ideas of morality, as they are
entertained by oriental nations, with the celebrated cardinal virtues
of Plato, which have been recapitulated again and again--Justice,
Valour, Temperance, and Wisdom--it is plain that the latter are not
based on any clear, leading idea, but are chosen on grounds that are
superficial and, in part, obviously false. Virtues must be qualities
of the will, but Wisdom is chiefly an attribute of the Intellect.
[Greek: Sophrosynae], which Cicero translates _Temperantia_, is a very
indefinite and ambiguous word, and it admits, therefore, of a variety
of applications: it may mean discretion, or abstinence, or keeping a
level head. Courage is not a virtue at all; although sometimes it is a
servant or instrument of virtue; but it is just as ready to become
the servant of the greatest villainy. It is really a quality of
temperament. Even Geulinx (in the preface to this _Ethics_) condemned
the Platonic virtues and put the following in their place: Diligence,
Obedience, Justice and Humility; which are obviously bad. The Chinese
distinguish five cardinal virtues: Sympathy, Justice, Propriety,
Wisdom, and Sincerity. The virtues of Christianity are theological,
not cardinal: Faith, Love, and Hope.
Fundamental disposition towards others, assuming the character either
of Envy or of Sympathy, is the point at which the moral virtues and
vices of mankind first diverge. These two diametrically opposite
qualities exist in every man; for they spring from the inevitable
comparison which he draws between his own lot and that of others.
According as the result of this comparison affects his individual
character does the one or the other of these qualities become the
source and principle of all his action. Envy builds the wall between
_Thee_ and _Me_ thicker and stronger; Sympathy makes it slight and
transparent; nay, sometimes it pulls down the wall altogether; and
then the distinction between self and not-self vanishes.
Valour, which has been mentioned as a virtue, or rather the Courage
on which it is based (for valour is only courage in war), deserves a
closer examination. The ancients reckoned Courage among the virtues,
and cowardice among the vices; but there is no corresponding idea in
the Christian scheme, which makes for charity and patience, and in its
teaching forbids all enmity or even resistance. The result is that
with the moderns Courage is no longer a virtue. Nevertheless it must
be admitted that cowardice does not seem to be very compatible with
any nobility of character--if only for the reason that it betrays an
overgreat apprehension about one's own person.
Courage, however, may also be explained as a readiness to meet ills
that threaten at the moment, in order to avoid greater ills that
lie in the future; whereas cowardice does the contrary. But this
readiness is of the same quality as _patience_, for patience consists
in the clear consciousness that greater evils than those which are
present, and that any violent attempt to flee from or guard against
the ills we have may bring the others upon us. Courage, then, would
be a kind of patience; and since it is patience that enables us to
practise forbearance and self control, Courage is, through the medium
of patience, at least akin to virtue.
But perhaps Courage admits of being considered from a higher point of
view. The fear of death may in every case be traced to a deficiency
in that natural philosophy--natural, and therefore resting on mere
feeling--which gives a man the assurance that he exists in everything
outside him just as much as in his own person; so that the death of
his person can do him little harm. But it is just this very assurance
that would give a man heroic Courage; and therefore, as the reader
will recollect from my _Ethics_, Courage comes from the same source as
the virtues of Justice and Humanity. This is, I admit, to take a very
high view of the matter; but apart from it I cannot well explain why
cowardice seems contemptible, and personal courage a noble and sublime
thing; for no lower point of view enables me to see why a finite
individual who is everything to himself--nay, who is himself even
the very fundamental condition of the existence of the rest of the
world--should not put his own preservation above every other aim. It
is, then, an insufficient explanation of Courage to make it rest
only on utility, to give it an empirical and not a transcendental
character. It may have been for some such reason that Calderon once
uttered a sceptical but remarkable opinion in regard to Courage, nay,
actually denied its reality; and put his denial into the mouth of a
wise old minister, addressing his young sovereign. "Although," he
observed, "natural fear is operative in all alike, a man may be brave
in not letting it be seen; and it is this that constitutes Courage":
_Que aunque el natural temor
En todos obra igualmente,
No mostrarle es ser valiente
Y esto es lo que hace el valor_.[1]
[Footnote 1: _La Hija del Aire_, ii., 2.]
In regard to the difference which I have mentioned between the
ancients and the moderns in their estimate of Courage as a virtue,
it must be remembered that by Virtue, _virtus_, [Greek: aretae], the
ancients understood every excellence or quality that was praiseworthy
in itself, it might be moral or intellectual, or possibly only
physical. But when Christianity demonstrated that the fundamental
tendency of life was moral, it was moral superiority alone than
henceforth attached to the notion of Virtue. Meanwhile the earlier
usage still survived in the elder Latinists, and also in Italian
writers, as is proved by the well-known meaning of the word
_virtuoso_. The special attention of students should be drawn to this
wider range of the idea of Virtue amongst the ancients, as otherwise
it might easily be a source of secret perplexity. I may recommend two
passages preserved for us by Stobaeus, which will serve this purpose.
One of them is apparently from the Pythagorean philosopher Metopos, in
which the fitness of every bodily member is declared to be a virtue.
The other pronounces that the virtue of a shoemaker is to make good
shoes. This may also serve to explain why it is that in the ancient
scheme of ethics virtues and vices are mentioned which find no place
in ours.
As the place of Courage amongst the virtues is a matter of doubt,
so is that of Avarice amongst the vices. It must not, however, be
confounded with greed, which is the most immediate meaning of the
Latin word _avaritia_. Let us then draw up and examine the arguments
_pro et contra_ in regard to Avarice, and leave the final judgment to
be formed by every man for himself.
On the one hand it is argued that it is not Avarice which is a vice,
but extravagance, its opposite. Extravagance springs from a brutish
limitation to the present moment, in comparison with which the future,
existing as it does only in thought, is as nothing. It rests upon the
illusion that sensual pleasures possess a positive or real value.
Accordingly, future need and misery is the price at which the
spendthrift purchases pleasures that are empty, fleeting, and often no
more than imaginary; or else feeds his vain, stupid self-conceit on
the bows and scrapes of parasites who laugh at him in secret, or on
the gaze of the mob and those who envy his magnificence. We should,
therefore, shun the spendthrift as though he had the plague, and on
discovering his vice break with him betimes, in order that later on,
when the consequences of his extravagance ensue, we may neither have
to help to bear them, nor, on the other hand, have to play the part of
the friends of Timon of Athens.
At the same time it is not to be expected that he who foolishly
squanders his own fortune will leave another man's intact, if it
should chance to be committed to his keeping; nay, _sui profusus_ and
_alieni appetens_ are by Sallust very rightly conjoined. Hence it is
that extravagance leads not only to impoverishment but also to crime;
and crime amongst the moneyed classes is almost always the result of
extravagance. It is accordingly with justice that the _Koran_ declares
all spendthrifts to be "brothers of Satan."
But it is superfluity that Avarice brings in its train, and when was
superfluity ever unwelcome? That must be a good vice which has good
consequences. Avarice proceeds upon the principle that all pleasure is
only negative in its operation and that the happiness which consists
of a series of pleasures is a chimaera; that, on the contrary, it
is pains which are positive and extremely real. Accordingly, the
avaricious man foregoes the former in order that he may be the
better preserved from the latter, and thus it is that _bear and
forbear_--_sustine et abstine_--is his maxim. And because he knows,
further, how inexhaustible are the possibilities of misfortune,
and how innumerable the paths of danger, he increases the means of
avoiding them, in order, if possible, to surround himself with a
triple wall of protection. Who, then, can say where precaution against
disaster begins to be exaggerated? He alone who knows where the
malignity of fate reaches its limit. And even if precaution were
exaggerated it is an error which at the most would hurt the man who
took it, and not others. If he will never need the treasures which he
lays up for himself, they will one day benefit others whom nature
has made less careful. That until then he withdraws the money
from circulation is no misfortune; for money is not an article of
consumption: it only represents the good things which a man may
actually possess, and is not one itself. Coins are only counters;
their value is what they represent; and what they represent cannot be
withdrawn from circulation. Moreover, by holding back the money,
the value of the remainder which is in circulation is enhanced by
precisely the same amount. Even though it be the case, as is said,
that many a miser comes in the end to love money itself for its own
sake, it is equally certain that many a spendthrift, on the other
hand, loves spending and squandering for no better reason. Friendship
with a miser is not only without danger, but it is profitable, because
of the great advantages it can bring. For it is doubtless those who
are nearest and dearest to the miser who on his death will reap
the fruits of the self-control which he exercised; but even in his
lifetime, too, something may be expected of him in cases of great
need. At any rate one can always hope for more from him than from the
spendthrift, who has lost his all and is himself helpless and in debt.
_Mas da el duro que el desnudo_, says a Spanish proverb; the man who
has a hard heart will give more than the man who has an empty purse.
The upshot of all this is that Avarice is not a vice.
On the other side, it may be said that Avarice is the quintessence of
all vices. When physical pleasures seduce a man from the right path,
it is his sensual nature--the animal part of him--which is at fault.
He is carried away by its attractions, and, overcome by the impression
of the moment, he acts without thinking of the consequences. When,
on the other hand, he is brought by age or bodily weakness to the
condition in which the vices that he could never abandon end by
abandoning him, and his capacity for physical pleasure dies--if he
turns to Avarice, the intellectual desire survives the sensual. Money,
which represents all the good things of this world, and is these good
things in the abstract, now becomes the dry trunk overgrown with all
the dead lusts of the flesh, which are egoism in the abstract. They
come to life again in the love of the Mammon. The transient pleasure
of the senses has become a deliberate and calculated lust of money,
which, like that to which it is directed, is symbolical in its nature,
and, like it, indestructible.
This obstinate love of the pleasures of the world--a love which, as it
were, outlives itself; this utterly incorrigible sin, this refined
and sublimated desire of the flesh, is the abstract form in which all
lusts are concentrated, and to which it stands like a general idea to
individual particulars. Accordingly, Avarice is the vice of age, just
as extravagance is the vice of youth.
This _disputatio in utramque partem_--this debate for and against--is
certainly calculated to drive us into accepting the _juste milieu_
morality of Aristotle; a conclusion that is also supported by the
following consideration.
Every human perfection is allied to a defect into which it threatens
to pass; but it is also true that every defect is allied to a
perfection. Hence it is that if, as often happens, we make a mistake
about a man, it is because at the beginning of our acquaintance with
him we confound his defects with the kinds of perfection to which they
are allied. The cautious man seems to us a coward; the economical man,
a miser; the spendthrift seems liberal; the rude fellow, downright and
sincere; the foolhardy person looks as if he were going to work with a
noble self-confidence; and so on in many other cases.
* * * * *
No one can live among men without feeling drawn again and again to the
tempting supposition that moral baseness and intellectual incapacity
are closely connected, as though they both sprang direct from one
source. That that, however, is not so, I have shown in detail.[1] That
it seems to be so is merely due to the fact that both are so often
found together; and the circumstance is to be explained by the very
frequent occurrence of each of them, so that it may easily happen for
both to be compelled to live under one roof. At the same time it is
not to be denied that they play into each other's hands to their
mutual benefit; and it is this that produces the very unedifying
spectacle which only too many men exhibit, and that makes the world to
go as it goes. A man who is unintelligent is very likely to show his
perfidy, villainy and malice; whereas a clever man understands how
to conceal these qualities. And how often, on the other hand, does
a perversity of heart prevent a man from seeing truths which his
intelligence is quite capable of grasping!
[Footnote 1: In my chief work, vol. ii., ch. xix,]
Nevertheless, let no one boast. Just as every man, though he be the
greatest genius, has very definite limitations in some one sphere of
knowledge, and thus attests his common origin with the essentially
perverse and stupid mass of mankind, so also has every man something
in his nature which is positively evil. Even the best, nay the
noblest, character will sometimes surprise us by isolated traits of
depravity; as though it were to acknowledge his kinship with the human
race, in which villainy--nay, cruelty--is to be found in that degree.
For it was just in virtue of this evil in him, this bad principle,
that of necessity he became a man. And for the same reason the world
in general is what my clear mirror of it has shown it to be.
But in spite of all this the difference even between one man and
another is incalculably great, and many a one would be horrified to
see another as he really is. Oh, for some Asmodeus of morality, to
make not only roofs and walls transparent to his favourites, but
also to lift the veil of dissimulation, fraud, hypocrisy, pretence,
falsehood and deception, which is spread over all things! to show how
little true honesty there is in the world, and how often, even where
it is least to be expected, behind all the exterior outwork of virtue,
secretly and in the innermost recesses, unrighteousness sits at the
helm! It is just on this account that so many men of the better kind
have four-footed friends: for, to be sure, how is a man to get relief
from the endless dissimulation, falsity and malice of mankind, if
there were no dogs into whose honest faces he can look without
distrust?
For what is our civilised world but a big masquerade? where you meet
knights, priests, soldiers, men of learning, barristers, clergymen,
philosophers, and I don't know what all! But they are not what they
pretend to be; they are only masks, and, as a rule, behind the masks
you will find moneymakers. One man, I suppose, puts on the mask of
law, which he has borrowed for the purpose from a barrister, only in
order to be able to give another man a sound drubbing; a second has
chosen the mask of patriotism and the public welfare with a similar
intent; a third takes religion or purity of doctrine. For all sorts
of purposes men have often put on the mask of philosophy, and even
of philanthropy, and I know not what besides. Women have a smaller
choice. As a rule they avail themselves of the mask of morality,
modesty, domesticity, and humility. Then there are general masks,
without any particular character attaching to them like dominoes. They
may be met with everywhere; and of this sort is the strict rectitude,
the courtesy, the sincere sympathy, the smiling friendship, that
people profess. The whole of these masks as a rule are merely, as I
have said, a disguise for some industry, commerce, or speculation. It
is merchants alone who in this respect constitute any honest class.
They are the only people who give themselves out to be what they are;
and therefore they go about without any mask at all, and consequently
take a humble rank.
It is very necessary that a man should be apprised early in life that
it is a masquerade in which he finds himself. For otherwise there are
many things which he will fail to understand and put up with, nay, at
which he will be completely puzzled, and that man longest of all whose
heart is made of better clay--
_Et meliore luto finxit praecordia Titan.[1]_
[Footnote 1: Juvenal, _Sat_. 14, 34]
Such for instance is the favour that villainy finds; the neglect that
merit, even the rarest and the greatest, suffers at the hands of those
of the same profession; the hatred of truth and great capacity; the
ignorance of scholars in their own province; and the fact that true
wares are almost always despised and the merely specious ones in
request. Therefore let even the young be instructed betimes that in
this masquerade the apples are of wax, the flowers of silk, the fish
of pasteboard, and that all things--yes, all things--are toys and
trifles; and that of two men whom he may see earnestly engaged in
business, one is supplying spurious goods and the other paying for
them in false coin.
But there are more serious reflections to be made, and worse things to
be recorded. Man is at bottom a savage, horrible beast. We know it,
if only in the business of taming and restraining him which we call
civilisation. Hence it is that we are terrified if now and then his
nature breaks out. Wherever and whenever the locks and chains of law
and order fall off and give place to anarchy, he shows himself for
what he is. But it is unnecessary to wait for anarchy in order to gain
enlightenment on this subject. A hundred records, old and new, produce
the conviction that in his unrelenting cruelty man is in no way
inferior to the tiger and the hyaena. A forcible example is supplied
by a publication of the year 1841 entitled _Slavery and the Internal
Slave Trade in the United States of North America: being replies to
questions transmitted by the British Anti-slavery Society to the
American Anti-slavery Society_.[1] This book constitutes one of the
heaviest indictments against the human race. No one can put it down
with a feeling of horror, and few without tears. For whatever the
reader may have ever heard, or imagined, or dreamt, of the unhappy
condition of slavery, or indeed of human cruelty in general, it will
seem small to him when he reads of the way in which those devils
in human form, those bigoted, church-going, strictly Sabbatarian
rascals--and in particular the Anglican priests among them--treated
their innocent black brothers, who by wrong and violence had got into
their diabolical clutches.