On human nature; essays (partly posthumous) in ethics and politics

On Human Nmure

SCHOPENHAUER

BAILE\ LAUNDERS

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BOSTON
PUBLIC
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I. THE WISDOM OF LIFE : Being the First Part
of Arthur Schopenhauer's Aphorismen zur Leben-
stveisheit. Translated, with a Preface, by T.
Bailey Saunders, M.A. Eighth Edition.

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2. COUNSELS AND MAXIMS: Being the Second
Pan of Akthur Schopenhauer's Aphorismen zur
Lebensweisheit. Translated by T. Bailey Saunders,
M.A. Fifth Edition.

" li^ publishing these two little volumes INIr. Saunders has done
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metaphysical treatise. . . . Schopenhauer is commonly ranked
among the few philosophers, including our own Berkeley, who
possess a literary style. The aphorisms give an excellent sample
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hauer's characteristic manner — his directness, his momentum, his
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great and unfailing condition of human happiness."— y4//i{'n<2?MW.

3. RELIGION : a Dialogue, and other Essays.

By Arthur ScHorENHAUER. Selected and Translated
by T. Bailey Saunders, M.A. Fifth and Enlarged
Edition.

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4. THE ART OF LITERATURE. A Series of

Essays. By x\rthur Schopenhauer. Selected and
Translated by T. Bailey Saunders. Fourth Edition.

" Mr. Saunaers has fitly brought his Schopenhauer series to a
close with a group of essays on literature. The essays on author-
ship, style, criticism and genius are among the most attractive and
suggestive of his writing." — Athenaeum.

" This final instalment on the art of literature exhibits the sage
at his best. Mr. Saunders has evidently regarded his translation
as a labour of love, and has done full justice to it." — Liverpool Post.

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reputation in this country. Whatever else these pages do, they
provoke thought, and their bitterness is more often a tonic than an
irritant." — Inquirer.

S STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. A Series of
Essays. By Arthur Schopenhauer. Selected
and Translated by T. Bailey Saunders. Sixth
Edition.

"We have once more to thank Mr. Saunders for a series of
extracts, mostly from the Parerga. Like the former translations
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not too highly concentrated. The series of little books by which
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version is again admirable. He unites readable idiomatic English,
untainted by an infection of Teutonism that might easily have
weakened the style." — Scotsman,

6. THE ART OF CONTROVERSY, and other
Posthumous Papers. By Arthur Schopenhauer.
Selected and Translated by T. Bailey Saunders,
M.A.

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by selections from their works." — Educational Review.

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fluency and is equally successful in making an original system of
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7. ON HUMAN NATURE. Essays in Ethics
and Politics. Selected and Translated by T.
Bailey Saunders, M.A.

"The latest volume of the Schopenhauer series appears to main-
tain the standard reached by earlier volumes. Schopenhauer on
his lighter side, not as a philosopher, but as a man of the world
and moralist, is rapidly becoming popular with English readers, in
consequence of the care with which Mr. Saunders administers small
doses of the Parerga wid Paralipoyve.ia in the guise of most readable
essays. .AJways pregnant and thought-provoking, they are tonic,
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- A. Schopenhauer.

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ON HUMAN NATURE

Essays (partfu ipostfliimoUs) in
fitflics Sn<5 pofitics

■T

ARTHUE SCHOPENHAUER

SELECTED AND TRANSLATED

BY

THOMAS BAILEY SAUNDERS, M.A.

LONDON

SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., Lim.

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO,

1902

First Edition, February, 1897.
Second Edition, April, 1902,

851/?

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.

November, 1896.

CONTENTS.

PAQS

Human Naturb 3

Government 87

Fbbx-will and Fatalism 69

Character 91

Moral Instinct 105

Ethical Beflectione 115

HUMAN NATURE.

HUMAN NATURE.

Truths of the physical order may possess much ex-
ternal significance, but internal significance they have
none. The latter is the privilege of intellectual and
moral truths, which are concerned with the objectiva-
tion 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 thermo-electricity
at the equator ; that this produces terrestrial magnet-
ism ; and that this magnetism, again, is the cause
of the aurora horealis, these would be truths ex-
ternally 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 per-
Tiicious of all errors, the fundamental blunder, the

4 HUMAN NATURE.

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.

But 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 con-
tinues to be ignored by the professorial world, it is
Kant's moral principle that prevails in the uni-
versities. 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} There-
fore 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

HUMAN NATURE. 6

it rests upon his morality. In other words, his
morality rests upon his dignity, and his dignity rests
upon his morality.

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 lal)our, and death a necessity ! —

Quid swperhit homo ? cujiis conceptio culpa,
Nasci pceiia, 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 con-
tact 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. Tlien
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

6 HUMAN NATUEE.

views which they entertain on ethical and meta-
physical 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,'^ 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 certainlj^ 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.

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. HaycfipoavvTj, which Cicero translates Temper-

lEdit. of 1819, vol. vi., p. 372.

HUMAN NATURE. 7

antia, is a very indetinite 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 his Ethics) con-
demned 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 : Sympath}^, 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 man-
kind 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 allects 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 trans-
parent ; 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

8 HUMAN NATUKE.

only courage in war), deserves a closer examination.
The ancients reckoned Courage among the virtues, and
cowardice among the vices ; but there is no corres-
ponding 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 readi-
ness is of the same quality as patience, for patience
consists in the clear consciousness that there are 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

HUMAN NATURE. 9

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 " : —

Qae aunque el natural temor
En todos ohra igualmente,
No mostrarle esser valitnte
Y esto ^s lo que hace el valor .''^

In reofard 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, aper-q, the ancients understood every

^ La Hija del Aire, ii., 2.

10 HUMAN NATURE.

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 that 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 recom-
mend two passages preserved for us by Stobseus, which
will serve this pm-pose. 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 piv 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

HTJMAN NATtJBE. 11

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, there-
fore, 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 com-
mitted to his keeping; nay, sui profusus and alieni
appetens are by Sallust very rightly conjoined. Hence
it is that extravagance leads not only to impoverish-
ment, 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

12 HUMAN NATURE.

chimsera ; 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 hear and forbear — sustine et ahstine — is his
maxim. And because he knows, further, how in-
exhaustible 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 con-
sumption : 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 with-
drawn 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 mary a
spendthrift, on the other hand, loves spending and
squandering for no better reason. Friendship with a

HUMAN NATURE. 13

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 dcb el duro que el desmido, says a Spanish
proverb; the man who has a hard heait wll 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 Mammon. The transient pleasure of
the senses has become a deliberate and calculated
lust of money, which, like that to which it is

14 HUMAN NATURE.

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 disimtatio in lUramque partem — this debate
for and against — is certainly calculated to drive us
into accepting the juste milieu morality of Aristotle ; a
conclusion what 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 eco-
nomical 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 j 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

HUMAN NATUEE. 15

source. That that, however, is not so, I have shown
in detail.^ 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 tlieir mutual
benefit ; and it is this that produces the very un-
edifying 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 under-
stands better 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 !

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 v/ill some-
times 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 my chief work, vol. ii., ch. xix,

16 HUMAN NATURE.

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, un-
righteousness sits at the helm ! It is j ust 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 masquer-
ade ? 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 money-makers. 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

HUMAN NATURE. 1?

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 recti-
tude, 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 con-
sequently 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 Into finxit prcecordia TitaiO

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

1 Juvenal, Sat. 14, 34.

2

18 HUMAN NATURE.

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 when-
ever the locks and chains of law and order fall ofl" 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 hya3na. 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 : heing replies to questions transmitted
hy the British Anti-slavery Society to the American Anti-
slavery Society} This book constitutes one of the
heaviest indictments against the human race. No one
can put it down without a feeling of horror, and
few without tears. For whatever the reader may have

^ Translator's Note. If Schopenhauer were writing to-day, he
would with equal truth point to the miseries of the African trade.
I have slightly abridged this passage, as some of the evils against
which he protested no longer exist.

HUMAN NATURE. 19

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 amongst them —
treated their innocent black brothers, who by wrong
and violence had got into their diabolical clutches.

Other examples are furnished by Tschudi's Travels
in Peru, in the description which he gives of the treat-
ment of the Peruvian soldiers at the hands of their
officers; and by Macleod's Travels in Eastern Africa,
where the author tells of the cold-blooded and truly
devilish cruelty with which the Portuguese in Mozam-
bique treat their slaves. But we need not go for
examples to the New World, that obverse side of our
planet. In the year 1848 it was brought to light
that in England, not in one, but apparently in a
hundred cases within a brief period, a husband had
poisoned his wife or vice versa, or both had joined in
poisoning their children, or in torturing them slowly
to death by starving and ill-treating them, with no
other object than to get the money for burying them
which they had insured in the Burial Clubs against
their death. For this purpose a child was often in-
sured in several, even in as many as twenty clubs
at once.i

Details of this character belong, indeed, to the
blackest pages in the criminal records of humanity.
But, when all is said, it is the inward and innate

iCf. The Times, 20th, 22nd and 23rd Sept., 1848, and also 12tb
Dec, 1863.

20 HUMAN NATURE.

character of man, this god par excellence of the Pan-
theists, from which they and everything like them
proceed. In every man there dwells, first and fore-
most, a colossal egoism, which breaks the bounds of
right and justice with the greatest freedom, as every-
day life shows on a small scale, and as history on
every page of it on a large. Does not the recognised
need of a balance of power in Europe, with the
anxious way in which it is preserved, demonstrate
that man is a beast of prey, who no sooner sees a
weaker man near him than he falls upon him without
fail ? and does not the same hold good of the affairs
of ordinary life ?

But to the boundless egoism of our nature there is
joined more or less in every human breast a fund of
hatred, anger, envy, rancour and malice, accumulated
like the venom in a serpent's tooth, and waiting only
for an opportunity of venting itself, and then, like a
demon unchained, of storming and raging. If a man
has no great occasion for breaking out, he will end by
taking advantage of the smallest, and by working it
up into something great by the aid of his imagination ;
for, however small it may be, it is enough to rouse his
anger —

Quantulacunqne adeo est occasio, sufficit irae^ —

and then he will carry it as far as he can and may.
We see this in daily life, where such outbursts are
well known under the name of " venting one's gall on
something ". It will also have been observed that if
such outbursts meet with no opposition, the subject of

1 Juvenal, Bat. 13, 183.

HUMAN NATURE. 21

them feels decidedly the better for them afterwards.
That anger is not without its pleasure is a truth that
was recorded even by Aristotle^; and he quotes a
passage from Homer, who declares anger to be sweeter
than honey. But not in anger alone — in hatred too,
which stands to anger like a chronic to an acute disease,
a man may indulge with the greatest delight : —

Novj hatred is hy far the longest pleasure.
Men love in haste, hut they detest at leisure.^

Gobineau in his work Les Races Hiimaines has called
man Vanimal mediant par excellence. People take this
very ill, because they feel that it hits them ; but he is
quite right, for man is the only animal which causes
pain to others without any further purpose than just to
cause it. Other animals never do it except to satisfy
their hunger, or in the rage of combat. If it is said
against the tiger that he kills more than eats, he
strangles his prey only for the purpose of eating it ;
and if he cannot eat it, the only explanation is, as the
French phrase has it, that scs yeux sont plus grands
que son estomac. No animal ever torments another
for the mere purpose of tormenting, but man does it,
and it is this that constitutes that diabolical feature
in his character which is so much worse than the
merely animal. I have already spoken of the matter
in its broad aspect ; but it is manifest even in small
things, and every reader has a daily opportunity of
observing it. For instance, if two little dogs are
playing together — and what a genial and charming

^Rhet./\.,ll\u.,2.

2 Byron, Don Juan, c, xiii, 6,

22 HUMAN NATUEE.

sight it is — and a child of three or four years joins
them, it is ahnost inevitable for it to begin hitting
them with a whip or stick, and thereby show
itself, even at that age, V animal mtchant par excellence.
The love of teasing and playing tricks, which is
common enough, may be traced to the same source.
For instance, if a man has expressed his annoyance
at any interruption or other petty inconvenience, there
will be no lack of people who for that very reason
will bring it about : animal mechant par excellence !
This is so certain that a man should be careful not to
express any annoyance at small evils. On the other
hand he should also be careful not to express his pleasure
at any trifle, for, if he does so, men will act like the
gaoler who, when he found that his prisoner had
performed the laborious task of taming a spider, and
took a pleasure in watching it, immediately crushed
it under his foot : V animal mechant par excellence !
This is why all animals are instinctively afraid of the
sight, or even of the track of a man, that animal
mechant par excellence ! nor does their instinct play
them false ; for it is man alone who hunts game for
which he has no use and which does him no harm.

It is a fact, then, that in the heart of every man
there lies a wild beast which only waits for an oppor-
tunity to storm and rage, in its desire to inflict pain
on others, or, if they stand in his way, to kill them.
It is this which is the source of all the lust of war
and battle. In trying to tame and to some extent
hold it in check, the intelligence, its appointed
keeper, has always enough to do. People may, if they
please, call it the radical evil of human nature — a

HtJMAN NATURE. 23

name which will at least serve those with whom a
word stands for an explanation. I say, however, that
it is the will to live, which, more and more embittered
by the constant sufferings of existence, seeks to allevi-
ate its own torment by causing torment in others. But
in this way a man gradually develops in himself real
cruelty and malice. The observation may also be
added that as, according to Kant, matter subsists only
through the antagonism of the powers of expansion
and contraction, so human society subsists only by the
antagonism of hatred, or anger, and fear. For there
is a moment in the life of all of us when the malignity
of our nature might perhaps make us murderers, if it
were not accompanied by a due admixture of fear
to keep it within bounds ; and this fear, again, would
make a man the sport and laughing stock of every
boy, if anger were not lying ready in him, and
keeping watch.

But it is Schadenfreude, a mischievous delight in
the misfortunes of others, which remains the worst
trait in human nature. It is a feeling which is
closely akin to cruelty, and differs from it, to say the
truth, only as theory from practice. In general, it may
be said of it that it takes the place which pity ought
to take — pity which is its opposite, and the true
source of all real justice and charity.

Envy is also opposed to pity, but in another
sense ; envy, that is to say, is produced by a cause
directly antagonistic to that which produces the
delight in mischief. The opposition between pity
and envy on the one hand, and pity and the
delight in mischief on the other, rests, in the main,

24 HUMAN NATURE.

on the occasions which call them forth. In the
case of envy it is only as a direct effect of the cause
which excites it that we feel it at all. That is just
the reason why envy, although it is a reprehensible
feeling, still admits of some excuse, and is, in general,
a very human quality; whereas the delight in mischief
is diabolical, and its taunts are the laughter of
hell.

The delight in mischief, as I have said, takes
the place which pity ought to take. Envy, on
the conirarj', finds a place only when there is no
inducement to pity, or rather an inducement to its
opposite ; and it is just as this opposite that envy
arises in the human breast ; and so far, therefore, it
may still be reckoned a human sentiment. Nay, I
am afraid that no one will be found to be entirely
free from it. For that a man should feel his own
lack of things more bitterly at the sight of another's
delight in the enjoyment of them, is natural ; nay, it
is inevitable ; but this should not rouse his hatred of
the man who is happier than himself. It is just this
hatred, however, in which true envy consists. Least
of all should a man be envious, when it is a question,
not of the gifts of fortune, or chance, or an-
other's favour, but of the gifts of nature ; because
everything that is innate in a man rests on a meta-
physical basis, and possesses justification of a higher
kind ; it is, so to speak, given him by Divine grace.
But, unhappily, it is just in the case of personal
advantages that envy is most irreconcilable. Thus it
is that intelligence, or even genius, cannot get on in
the world without begging pardon for its existence,

HUMAN NATUEB. 25

wherever it is not in a position to be able, proudly
and boldly, to despise the world.

In other words, if envy is aroused only by wealth,
rank, or power, it is often kept down by egoism,
which perceives that, on occasion, assistance, enjoy-
ment, support, protection, advancement, and so on,
may be hoped for from the object of envy, or that at
least by intercourse with him a man may himself win
honour from the reflected light of his superiority ;
and here, too, there is the hope of one day attaining
all those advantages himself. On the other hand, in
the envy that is directed to natural gifts and personal
advantages, like beauty in women, or intelligence in
men, there is no consolation or hope of one kind or
the other ; so that nothing remains but to indulge a
bitter and irreconcilable hatred of the person who
possesses these privileges ; and hence the only re-
maining desire is to take vengeance on him.

But here the envious man finds himself in an un-
fortunate position ; for all his blows fall powerless as
soon as it is known that they come from him. Ac-
cordingly he hides his feelings as carefully as if they
were secret sins, and so becomes an inexhaustible
inventor of tricks and artifices and devices for con-
cealing and masking his procedure, in order that,
unperceived, he may wound the object of his envy.
For instance, with an air of the utmost unconcern
he will ignore the advantages which are eating his
heart out ; he will neither see them, nor know them,
nor have observed or even heard of them, and thus
make himself a master in the art of dissimulation.
With great cunning he will completely overlook the

26 HUMAN NATURE.

man whose brilliant qualities are gnawing at his heart,
and act as though he were quite an unimportant
person ; he will take no notice of him, and, on occa-
sion, will have even quite forgotten his existence. But
at the same time he will before all things endeavour by
secret machination carefully to deprive those advan-
tages of any opportunity of showing themselves and
becoming known. Then out of his dark corner he
will attack these qualities with censure, mockery,
ridicule and calumny, like the toad which spurts its
poison from a hole. No less will he enthusiastically
praise unimportant people, or even indifferent or bad
performances in the same sphere. In short, he will
become a Proteas in stratagem, in order to wound
others without showing himself. But what is the use
of it ? The trained eye recognises him in spite of it
all. He betrays himself, if by nothing else, by the
way in which he timidly avoids and flies from the
object of his envy, who stands the more completely
alone, the more brilliant he is ; and this is the reason
why pretty girls have no friends of their own sex.
He betrays himself, too, by the causeless hatred which
he shows — a hatred which finds vent in a violent ex-
plosion at any circumstance however trivial, though it
is often only the product of his imagination. How
many such men there are in the world may be re-
cognised by the universal praise of modesty, that is,
of a virtue invented on behalf of dull and common-
place people. Nevertheless, it is a virtue which, by
exhibiting the necessity for dealing considerately with
the wretched plight of these people, is just what calls
attention to it

HUMAN NATtJEE. 27

For our self-consciousness and our pride there can
be nothing more flattering than the sight of envy
lurking in its retreat and plotting its schemes ; but
never let a man forget that where there is envy there
is hatred, and let him be careful not to make a false
friend out of any envious person. Therefore it is
important to our safety to lay envy bare ; and a man
should study to discover its tricks, as it is everywhere
to be found and always goes about incog^iito ; or, as
I have said, like a venomous toad it lurks in dark
corners. It deserves neither quarter nor sympathy ;
but as we can never reconcile it, let our rule of conduct
be to scorn it with a good heart, and as our happiness
and glory is torture to it, we may rejoice in its
sufferings : —

Den Neid icird ninimer da versohnen;
So magst du ihn getrost verhohnen.
Dein Gliick, dein Ruhvi ist ihm cin Leiden :
Magst drum an seiner Quaal dich weiden.

We have been taking a look at the depravity of
man, and it is a sight which may well fill us with
horror. But now we must cast our eyes on the misery
of his existence ; and when we have done so, and
are horrified by that too, we must look back again
at his depravity. We shall then find that they
hold the balance to each other. We shall perceive
the eternal justice of things ; for we shall recognise
that the world is itself the Last Judgment on it,
and we shall begin to understand why it is that
everything that lives must pay the penalty of its
existence, first in living and then in dying. Thus the

28 HUMAN NATUEE.

evil of the penalty accords with the evil of the sin —
vialum pofMcc with malum culpcr. From the same point
of view we lose our indig-nation at that intellectual
incapacity of the great majority of mankind which in
life so often disgusts us. In this Samara, as the
Buddhists call it, human misery, human depravity and
human folly correspond with one another perfectly,
and they are of like magnitude. But if, on some
special inducement, we direct our gaze to one of them,
and survey it in particular, it seems to exceed the
other two. This, however, is an illusion, and merely
the effect of their colossal range.

All things proclaim this Sansara ; more than all
else, the world of mankind ; in which, from a moral
point of view, villainy and baseness, and from an
intellectual point of view, incapacity and stupidity,
prevail to a horrifying extent. Nevertheless, there
appear in it, although very spasmodically, and always
as a fresh surprise, manifestations of honesty, of good-
ness, nay, even of nobility ; and also of great intelli-
gence, of the thinking mind, of genius. They never
quite vanish, but like single points of light gleam upon
us out of the great dark mass. We must accept them
as a pledge that this Sansara contains a good and
redeeming principle, which is capable of breaking
through and of filling and freeing the whole of it.

The readers of my Ethics know that with me the
ultimate foundation of morality is the truth which
in the Vedas and the Veclanta receives its expression in
the established, mystical formula, Tat tvmm asi {This
is thyself), which is spoken with reference to every

HUMAN NATURE. 29

living thing, be it man or beast, and is called the
3fahavakya, the great word.

Actions which proceed in accordance with this
principle, such as those of the philanthropist, may
indeed be regarded as the beginning of mysticism.
Every benefit rendered with a pure intention pro-
claims that the man who exercises it acts in direct
conflict with the world of appearance ; for he recog-
nises himself as identical with another individual,
who exists in complete separation from him. Ac-
cordingly, all disinterested kindness is inexplicable; it is
a mystery ; and hence in order to explain it, a man
has to resort to all sorts of fictions. When Kant had
demolished all other arguments for theism, he admitted
one only, that it gave the best interpretation and solu-
tion of such mysterious actions, and of all others like
them. He therefore allowed it to stand as a presump-
tion unsusceptible indeed of theoretical proof, but valid
from a practical point of view. I. may, however, ex-
press my doubts whether he was quite serious about
it. For to make morality rest on theism is really to
reduce morality to egoism ; although the English, it is
true, as also the lowest classes of society with us, do
not perceive the possibility of any other foundation
for it.

The above-mentioned recognition of a man's own
true being in another individual objectively pre-
sented to him, is exhibited in a particularly beauti-
ful and clear way in the cases in which a man,
already destined to death be^^ond any hope of rescue,
gives himself up to the welfare of others with great
solicitude and zeal, and tries to save them. Of this

30 HUMAN NATURE.

kind is the well-known story of a servant who was
bitten in a courtyard at night by a mad dog. In the
belief that she was beyond hope, she seized the dog
and dragged it into a stable, which she then locked, so
that no one else might be bitten. Then again there
is the incident in Naples, which Tischbein has immor-
talised in one of his aquarelles. A son, fleeing from
the lava which is rapidly streaming towards the sea, is
carrying his aged father on his back. When there is
only a narrow strip of land left between the devouring
elements, the father bids the son put him down, so
that the son may save himself by flight, as otherwise
both will be lost. The son obeys, and as he goes casts
a glance of farewell on his father. This is the moment
depicted. The historical circumstance which Scott
represents in his masterly way in The Heart of Mid-
lothian, chap, ii., is of a precisely similar kind;
where of two delinquents condemned to death, the one
who by his awkwardness caused the capture of the
other, happily sets him free in the chapel by over-
powering the guard after the execution-sermon, with-
out at the same time making any attempt on his own
behalf. Nay, in the same category must also be
placed the scene which is represented in a common
engraving, which may perhaps be objectionable to
western readers — I mean the one in which a soldier,
kneeling to be shot, is trying by waving a cloth to
frighten away his dog who wants to come to him.

In all these cases we see an individual in the face of
his own immediate and certain destruction no longer
thinking of saving himself, so that he may direct
the whole of his eflbrts to saving some one else. How

HUMAN NATURE. 31

could there be a clearer expression of the consciousness
that what is being destroyed is only a phenomenon,
and that the destruction itself is only a phenomenon ;
that, on the other hand, the real being of the man
who meets his death is untouched by that event, and
lives on in the other man, in whom even now, as his
action betrays, he so clearly perceives it to exist ? For
if this were not so, and it was his real being which was
about to be annihilated, how could that being spend
its last efforts in showing such an ardent sympathy in
the welfare and continued existence of another ?

There are two different ways in which a man may
become conscious of his own existence. On the one
hand, he may have an empirical perception of it, as it
manifests itself externally — something so small that it
approaches vanishing point ; set in a world which, as
regards time and space, is infinite; one only of the
thousand millions of human creatures who run about
on this planet for a very brief period and are renewed
every thirty years. On the other hand, b}^ going down
into the depths of his own nature, a man may become
conscious that he is all in all ; that, in fact, he is the
only real being ; and that, in addition, this real being
perceives itself again in others, who present themselves
from without, as though they formed a mirror of him-
self.

Of these two ways in which a man may come to
know what he is, the first grasps the phenomenon alone,
the mere product of the pri7iciple of individuation ;
whereas the second makes a man immediately conscious
that he is the thing-in-itself. This is a doctrine in
which, as regards the first way, I have Kant, and

32 HUMAN NATURE.

as regards both, I have the Vedas, to support
me.

There is, it is true, a simple objection to the second
method. It may be said to assume that one and the
same being can exist in different places at the same
time, and yet be complete in each of them. Although,
from an empirical point of view, this is the most
palpable impossibility — na}^, absurdity — it is neverthe-
less perfectly true of the thing-in-itself. The impos-
sibility and the absurdity of it, empirically, are only
due to the forms which phenomena assume, in ac-
cordance with the principle of individuation. For
the thing-in-itself, the will to live, exists whole and
undivided in every being, even in the smallest, as
completely as in the sum-total of all things that ever
were or are or will be. This is why every being,
even the smallest, says to itself, So long as I am safe,
let the world perish — diun ego salvus sim^pereat mundus.
And, in truth, even if only one individual were left in
the world, and all the rest were to perish, the one
that remained would still possess the whole self -being
of the world, uninjured and undiminished, and would
lauo-h at the destruction of the world as an illusion. This
conoln&ion per im'possihile maybe balanced by the counter-
conclusion, which is on all fours with it, that if that last
individual were to be annihilated, in and with him the
whole world would be destroyed. It was in this sense
that the mystic Angelus Silesius ^ declared that God
could not live for a moment without him, and that if

^ Translator's Note. Angelus Silesius, see Counsels and Maxims,
p. 39, note.

HUMAN NATURE. 33

he were to be annihilated, God must of necessity give
up the ghost : —

Ich weiss class ohne mich Gott nicht ein Nu kann leben ;
Werd' ich zunicht, er muss von Xoth den Geist aufgehen.

But the empirical point of view also to some extent
enables us to perceive that it is true, or at least possible,
that our self can exist in other beings whose conscious-
ness is separated and different from our own. That
this is so is shown by the experience of somnambul-
ists. Although the identity of their ego is preserved
throughout, they know nothing, when they awake, of
all that a moment before they themselves said, did or
suffered. So entirely is the individual consciousness
a phenomenon that even in the same ego two con-
sciousnesses can arise of which the one knows nothing
of the other.

8

GOVERNMENT.

GOVERNMENT.

It is a characteristic failing of the Germans to look
in the clouds for what lies at their feet. An excellent
example of this is furnished by the treatment which
the idea of Natural Right has received at the hands of
professors of philosophy. When they are called upon
to explain those simple relations of human life which
make up the substance of this right, such as Right and
Wrong, Property, State, Punishment and so on, they
have recourse to the most extravagant, abstract, re-
mote and meaningless conceptions, and out of them
build a Tower of Babel reaching to the clouds, and
taking this or that form according to the special whim
of the professor for the time being. The clearest and
simplest relations of life, such as affect us directly, are
thus made quite unintelligible, to the great detriment
of the young people who are educated in such a school.
These relations themselves are perfectly simple and
easily understood — as the reader may convince
himself if he will turn to the account which I have
given of them in the Foundation of Morality, § 17, and
in my chief work, bk i., § 62. But at the sound of
certain words, like Right, Freedom, the Good, Being —
this nugatory infinitive of the copula — and many
others of the same sort, the German's head begins to
swim, and falling straightway into a kind of delirium

38 GOVERNMENT.

he launches forth into high-flown phrases which have
no meaning whatever. He takes the most remote and
empty conceptions, and strings them together arti-
ficially, instead of fixing his eyes on the facts, and
looking at things and relations as they really are. It
is these things and relations which supply the ideas
of Right and Freedom, and give them the only true
meaning that they possess.

The man who starts from the preconceived opinion
that the conception of Right must be a positive one,
and then attempts to define it, will fail ; for he is
trying to grasp a shadow, to pursue a spectre, to search
for what does not exist. The conception of Right is
a negative one, like the conception of Freedom ; its
content is mere negation. It is the conception of
Wrong which is positive ; Wrong has the same
significance as injury — Iccsio — in the widest sense of
the term. An injury may be done either to a man's
person or to his property or to his honour ; and
accordingl}^ a man's rights are easy to define : every
one has a right to do anything that injures no one
else.

To have a rioht to do or claim a thinor means no-
thing more than to be able to do or take or use it with-
out thereby injuring any one else. Si7nplex sigillum
veri. This definition shows how senseless many
questions are ; for instance, the question whether we
have the right to take our own life. As far as concerns
the personal claims which others may possibly have
upon us, they are subject to the condition that we are
alive, and fall to the ground when we die. To demand
of a man, who does not care to live any longer for

GOVERNMENT. 39

himself, that he should live on as a mere machine for
the advantage of others, is an extravagant pretension.

Although men's powers ditl'er, their rights are alike.
Their rights do not rest upon their powers, because
Right is of a moral complexion ; they rest on the fact
that the same will to live shows itself in every man
at the same stage of its manifestation. This, however,
only applies to that original and abstract Right, which
a man possesses as a man. The property, and also the
honour, which a man acquires for himself by the
exercise of his powers, depend on the measure and
kind of power which he possesses, and so lend his
Right a wider sphere of application. Here, then,
equality comes to an end. The man who is better
equipped, or more active, increases by adding to his
gains, not his Right, but the number of the things
to which it extends.

In my chief work ^ I have proved that the State in
its essence is merely an institution existing for the
purpose of protecting its members against outward
attack or inward dissension. It follows from this
that the ultimate ground on which the State is
necessary is the acknowledged lack of Right in the
human race. If Right were there, no one would think
of a State ; for no one would have any fear that his
rights would be impaired; and a mere union against
the attacks of wild beasts or the elements would have
very little analogy with what we mean by a State.
From this point of view it is easy to see how dull and
stupid are the philosophasters who in pompous phrases
represent that the State is the supreme end and flower
^Bk. ii., ch. xlvii.

40 GOVEENMENT.

of human existence. Such a view is the apotheosis
of Philistinism.

If it were Right that ruled in the world, a man
would have done enough in building his house, and
would need no other protection than the right of pos-
sessing it, which would be obvious. But since Wrong
is the order of the day, it is requisite that the man
who has built his house should also be able to protect
it. Otherwise his Right is de facto incomplete ; the
aggressor, that is to say, has the right of might —
Fatcstrecht ; and this is just the conception of Right
which Spinoza entertains. He recognises no other.
His words are : imusquisque tantum juris habet quantum
potentia valet ; ^ each man has as much right as he has
power. And again : uniuscujusque jus lootentia ejus
definitur ; each man's right is determined by his
power.2 Hobbes seems to have started this concep-
tion of Right,^ and he adds the strange comment
that the Right of the good Lord to all things rests
on nothing but His omnipotence.

Now this is a conception of Right which, both in
theory and in practice, no longer prevails in the civic
world ; but in the world in general, though abolished
in theory, it continues to apply in practice. The
consequences of neglecting it may be seen in the case
of China. Threatened by rebellion within and foes
without, this great empire is in a defenceless state,
and has to pay the penalty of having cultivated only
the arts of peace and ignored the arts of war.

1 Trad. Theol. Pol., ch. ii., § 8.

'^Ethics, IV., xxxvii., 1.

^ Particularly in a passage in the De Cive, 1, § 14.

GOVEENMENT. 41

There is a certain analogy between the operations
of nature and those of man which is of a peculiar but
not fortuitous character, and is based on the identity
of the will in both. When the herbivorous animals
had taken their place in the organic world, beasts of
prey made their appearance — necessarily a late ap-
pearance— in each species, and proceeded to live upon
them. Just in the same way, as soon as by honest
toil and in the sweat of their faces men have won
from the ground what is needed for the support of
their societies, a number of individuals are sure to arise
in some of these societies, who, instead of cultivating
the earth and living on its produce, prefer to take
their lives in their hands and risk health and freedom
by falling upon those who are in possession of what
they have honestly earned, and by appropriating the
fruits of their labour. These are the beasts of prey
in the human race ; they are the conquering peoples
whom we find everywhere in history, from the most
ancient to the most recent times. Their varying for-
tunes, as at one moment they succeed and at another
fail, make up the general elements of the history of
the world. Hence Voltaire was perfectly right when
he said that the aim of all war is robbery. That those
who engage in it are ashamed of their doings is clear
by the fact that governments loudly protest their
reluctance to appeal to arms except for purposes of
self-defence. Instead of trying to excuse themselves
by telling public and official lies, which are almost
more revolting than war itself, they should take their
stand, as bold as brass, on Macchiavelli's doctrine.
The gist of it may be stated to be this : that whereas

42 GOVEENMENT.

between one individual and another, and so far as
concerns the law and morality of their relations, the
principle, Don't do to others what you toouldnt like
done to yourself, certainly applies, it is the converse of
this principle which is appropriate in the case of
nations and in politics : What you tvoiddiit like done
to yourself, do to others. If you do not want to be put
under a foreign yoke, take time by the forelock, and
put your neighbour under it himself ; whenever, that
is to say, his weakness offers you the opportunity.
For if you let the opportunity pass, it will desert one
day to the enemy's camp and offer itself there. Then
your enemy will put you under his yoke ; and your
failure to grasp the opportunity may be paid for,
not by the generation which was guilty of it, but by
the next. This Macchiavellian principle is always a
much more decent cloak for the lust of robbery than
the rags of very obvious lies in a speech from the
head of the State ; lies, too, of a description which
recalls the well-known story of the rabbit attacking
the dog. Every Stale looks upon its neighbours as at
bottom a horde of robbers, who will fall upon it as
soon as they have the opportunity.

Between the serf, the farmer, the tensint, and the
mortgagee, the difference is rather one of form than
of substance. Whether the peasant belongs to me, or
the land on which he has to get a living; whether
the bird is mine, or its food, the tree or its fruit, is
a matter of little moment ; for, as Shakespeare makes

Shylock say : —

You take my life
When you do take the means wherehij I live.

GOVEENMENT. 43

The free peasant has, indeed, the advantage that
he can go off and seek his fortune in the wide world ;
whereas the serf who is attached to the soil, glelce
adscriph(s, has an advantage which is perhaps still
greater, that when failure of crops or illness, old age
or incapacity, render him helpless, his master must
look after him, and so he sleeps well at night ;
whereas, if the crops fail, his master tosses about on
his bed trying to think how he is to procure bread
for his men. As long ago as Menander it was
said that it is better to be the slave of a good master
than to live miserably as a freeman. Another ad-
vantage possessed by the free is, that if they have
any talents they can improve their position ; but the
same advantage is not wholly withheld from the
slave. If he proves himself useful to his master by
the exercise of any skill, he is treated accordingly ;
just as in ancient Rome, mechanics, foremen of work-
shops, architects, nay, even doctors, were generally
slaves.

Slavery and poverty, then, are only two forms, I
might almost say only two names, of the same thing,
the essence of which is that a man's physical powers
are employed,in the main, not for himself but for others;
and this leads partly to his being over-loaded with
work, and partly to his getting a scanty satisfaction
for his needs. For Nature has given a man only as
much physical power as will suffice, if he exerts it in
moderation, to gain a sustenance from the earth. No
great superfluity of power is his. If, then, a not incon-
siderable number of men are relieved from the common
burden of sustaining the existence of the human

44 GOVERNMENT.

race, the burden of the remainder is ciu^uieiited, and
they suffer. This is the chief source of the evil
which under the name of slavery, or under the name
of the proletariat, has always oppressed the great
majority of the human race.

But the more remote cause of it is luxury. In
order, it may be said, that some few persons may have
what is unnecessary, superfluous, and the product of
refinement — nay, in order that they may satisfy arti-
ficial needs — a great part of the existing powers of
mankind has to be devoted to this object, and
therefore withdrawn from the production of what is
necessary and indispensable. Instead of building
cottages for themselves, thousands of men build
mansions for a few. Instead of weaving coarse
materials for themselves and their families, they make
fine cloths, silk, or even lace, for the rich, and in
general manufacture a thousand objects of luxury
for their pleasure. A great part of the urban popu-
lation consists of workmen who make these articles of
luxury ; and for them and those who give them work
the peasants have to plough and sow and look after
the flocks as well as for themselves, and thus have
more labour than Nature originally imposed upon
them. Moreover, the urban population devotes a great
deal of physical strength, and a great deal of land, to
such things as wine, silk, tobacco, hops, asparagus and
so on, instead of to corn, potatoes and cattle-breeding.
Further, a number of men are withdrawn from agri-
culture and employed in ship-building and seafaring,
in order that sugar, coffee, tea and other goods may
be imported. In short, a large part of the powers of

GOVERNMENT. 45

the human race is taken away from the production of
what is necessary, in order to bring what is superfluous
and unnecessary within the reach of a few. As long
therefore as luxury exists, there must be a corre-
sponding amount of over- work and misery, whether
it takes the name of poverty or of slavery. The
fundamental difference between the two is that slavery
originates in violence, and poverty in craft. The
whole unnatural condition of society — the universal
struggle to escape from misery, the sea-trade attended
with so much loss of life, the complicated interests of
commerce, and finally the wars to which it all gives
rise — is due, only and alone, to luxury, which gives
no happiness even to those who enjoy it, nay, makes
them ill and bad-tempered. Accordingly it looks as
if the most effective way of alleviating human misery
would be to diminish luxury, or even abolish it
altogether.

There is unquestionably much truth in this train
of thought. But the conclusion at which it arrives is
refuted by an argument possessing this advantage
over it — that it is confirmed by the testimony of
experience. A certain amount of work is devoted to
purposes of luxury. What the human race loses in
this way in the muscular j)oujer which would otherwise
be available for the necessities of existence, is gradually
made up to it a thousandfold by the nervous poiver^
which, in a chemical sense, is thereby released. And
since the intelligence and sensibility which are thus
promoted are on a higher level than the muscular
irritability which they supplant, so the achievements
of mind exceed those of the body a thousandfold.

46 GOVERNMENT.

One wise counsel is worth the work of many
hands : —

'Q,s ev (T6(pov (SovXivixa ras ttoWmv xei/ms vikS..

A nation of nothing but peasants would do little
in the way of discovery and invention ; but idle hands
make active heads. Science and the Arts are them-
selves the children of luxury, and they discharge their
debt to it. The work which they do is to perfect
technology in all its branches, mechanical, chemical
and physical ; an art which in our days has brought
machinery to a pitch never dreamt of before, and in
particular has, by steam and electricity, accomplished
things, the like of which would, in earlier ages, have
been ascribed to the agency of the devil. In manu-
factures of all kinds, and to some extent in agriculture,
machines now do a thousand times more than could
ever have been done by the hands of all the well-to-do,
educated, and professional classes, and could ever have
been attained if all luxury had been abolished and
every one had returned to the life of a peasant. It is
by no means the rich alone, but all classes, who derive
benefit from these industries. Things which in former
days hardly any one could afford are now cheap and
abundant, and even the lowest classes are much better
off in point of comfort. In the Middle Ages a King
of England once borrowed a pair of silk stockings
from one of his lords, so that he might wear them in
giving an audience to the French ambassador. Even
Queen Elizabeth was greatly pleased and astonished
to receive a pair as a New Year's present ; to-day every
shopman has them. Fifty years ago ladies wore the

GOVERNMENT. 47

kind of calico gowns which servants wear now. If
mechanical science continues to progress at the same
rate for any length of time, it may end by saving
human labour almost entirely, just as horses are even
now being largely superseded by machines. For it is
possible to conceive that intellectual culture might in
some degree become general in the human race ; and
this would be impossible as long as bodily labour was
incumbent on any great part of it. Muscular irrita-
bility and nervous sensibility are always and every-
where, both generally and particularly, in antagonism ;
for the simple reason that it is one and the same vital
power which underlies both. Further, since the arts
have a softening effect on character, it is possible that
quarrels great and small, wars and duels, will vanish
from the world ; just as both have become much rarer
occurrences. However, it is not my object here to
write a Utopia.

But apart from all this, the arguments used above
in favour of the abolition of luxury and the uniform
distribution of all bodily labour are open to the ob-
jection that the great mass of mankind, always and
everywhere, cannot do without leaders, guides and
counsellors, in one shape or another, according to
the matter in question ; judges, governors, generals,
officials, priests, doctors, men of learning, philosophers,
and so on, are all a necessity. Their common task is
to lead the race, for the greater part so incapable
and perverse, through the labyrinth of life, of which
each of them according to his position and capacity
has obtained a general view, be his range wide or
narrow. That these guides of the race should be per-

48 GOVERNMENT.

manently relieved of all bodily labour as well as of all
vulgar need and discomfort ; nay, that in proportion
to their much greater achievements they should
necessarily own and enjoy more than the common
man, is natural and reasonable. Great merchants
should also be included in the same privileged class,
whenever they make far-sighted preparations for
national needs.

The question of the sovereignty of the people is at
bottom the same as the question whether any man can
have an original right to rule a people against its will.
How that proposition can be reasonably maintained,
I do not see. The people, it must be admitted, is
sovereign ; but it is a sovereign who is always a
minor. It must have permanent guardians, and it
can never exercise its rights itself, without creating
dangers of which no one can foresee the end; especially
as, like all minors, it is very apt to become the sport
of designing sharpers, in the shape of what are called
demagogues.

Voltaire remarks that the first man to become a
king was a successful soldier. It is certainly the
case that all princes were originally victorious leaders
of armies, and for a long time it was as such that
they bore sway. On the rise of standing armies,
princes began to regard their people as a means of
sustaining themselves and their soldiers ^ and treated
them, accordingly, as though they were a herd of
cattle, which had to be tended in order that it might
provide wool, milk, and meat. The why and where-
fore of all this, as I shall presently show in detail,

GOVERNMENT. 49

is the fact that originally it was not right, but might,
that ruled in the world. Might has the advantage
of having been first in the field. That is why it is
impossible to do away with it and abolish it altogether ;
it must always have its place; and all that a man
can wish or ask is that it should be found on the side
of right and associated with it. Accordingly says
the prince to his subjects: "I rule you in virtue of
the power which I possess. Bat, on the other hand,
it excludes that of any one else, and I shall suffer
none but my own, whether it comes from without,
or arises within by one of you trying to oppress
another. In this way, then, you are protected."
The arrangement was carried out ; and just because
it was carried out, the old idea of kingship de-
veloped with time and progress into quite a different
idea, and put the other one in the background, where
it may still be seen, now and then, flitting about like
a spectre. Its place has been taken by the idea of
the king as father of his people, as the firm and un-
shakable pillar which alone supports and maintains
the whole organisation of law and order, and conse-
quently the rights of every man.^ But a king can
accomplish this only by inborn prerogative which
reserves authority to him and to him alone — an
authority which is supreme, indubitable, and beyond
all attack, nay, to which every one renders instinctive
obedience. Hence the king is rightly said to rule " by

1 We read in Stobseus, Florilegium, ch. xliv., 41, of a Persian
custom, by which, whenever a king died, there was a five days'
anarchy, in order that people might perceive the advantage of
bavin? kiM«D and laws.

60 GOVEBNMENT.

the grace of God". He is always the most useful
person in the State, and his services are never too
dearly repaid by any Civil List, however heavy.

But even as late a writer as Macchiavelli was
so decidedly imbued with the earlier or mediaeval
conception of the position of a prince that he treats
it as a matter which is self-evident : he never dis-
cusses it, but tacitly takes it as the presupposi-
tion and basis of his advice. It may be said generally
that his book is merely the theoretical statement
and consistent and systematic exposition of the
practice prevailing in his time. It is the novel
statement of it in a complete theoretical form that
lends it such a poignant interest. The same thing, I
may remark in passing, applies to the immortal little
work of La Rochefaucauld, who, however, takes private
and not public life for his theme, and offers, not
advice, but observations. The title of this fine little
book is open, perhaps, to some objection: the contents
are not, as a rule, either ma:dms or reflections, but
apergus ; and that is what they should be called.
There is much, too, in AEacchiavelli that will be found
also to apply to private life.

Right in itself is powerless; in nature it is Might
that rules. To enlist might on the side of right, so
that by means of it right may rule, is the problem of
statesmanship. And it is indeed a hard problem, as
will be obvious if we remember that almost every
human breast is the seat of an egoism which has no
Limits, and is usually associated with an accumulated
store of hatred and malice ; so that at the very start

GOVERNMENT. 51

feelings of enmity largely prevail over those of
friendship. We have also to bear in mind that it is
many millions of individuals so constituted who have
to be kept in the bonds of law and order, peace and
tranquillity ; whereas originally every one had a right
to say to every one else : / am just as good as you are !
A consideration of all this must fill us with surprise
that on the whole the world pursues its way so
peacefully and quietly, and with so much law and
order, as we see to exist. It is the machinery of State
which alone accomplishes it. For it is phj^sical
power alone which has any direct action on men;
constituted as they generally are, it is for physical
power alone that they have any feeling or re-
spect.

If a man would convince himself by experience that
this is the case, he need do nothing but remove all
compulsion from his fellows, and try to govern them
by clearly and forcibly representing to them what
is reasonable, right, and fair, though at the same time
it may be contrary to their interests. He would be
laughed to scorn ; and as things go, that is the only
answer he would get. It would soon be obvious to
him that moral force alone is powerless. It is, then,
physical force alone which is capable of securing re-
spect. Now this force ultimately resides in the masses,
where it is associated with ignorance, stupidity and in-
justice. Accordingly the main aim of statesmanship in
these difficult circumstances is to put physical force in
subjection to mental force — to intellectual superiority,
and thus to make it serviceable. But if this aim is not
itself accompanied by justice and good intentions, the

52 GOVERNMENT.

result of the business, if it succeeds, is that the State
so erected consists of knaves and fools, the deceivers and
the deceived. That this is the case, is made gradually
evident by the progress of intelligence amongst the
masses, however much it may be repressed ; and
it leads to revolution. But if, contrarily, intelligence
is accompanied by justice and good intentions, there
arises a State as perfect as the character of human
affairs will allow. It is very much to the purpose
if justice and good intentions not only exist, but are
also demonstrable and openly exhibited, and can be
called to account publicly, and be subject to control.
Care must be taken, however, lest the resulting
participation of many persons in the work of govern-
ment should affect the unity of the State, and inflict
a loss of strength and concentration on the power
by which its home and foreign affairs have to be
administered. This is what almost always happens
in republics. To produce a constitution which should
satisfy all these demands would accordingly be the
highest aim of statesmanship. But, as a matter of
fact, statesmanship has to consider other things as
well. It has to reckon with the people as they exist,
and their national peculiarities. This is the raw
material on which it has to work, and the ingredients
of that material will always exercise a great effect on
the completed scheme.

Statesmanship will have achieved a good deal if it
so far attains its object as to reduce wrong and
injustice in the community to a minimum. To
banish them altogether, and to leave no trace of them,
is merely the ideal to be aimed at; and it is only

GOVERNMENT. 53

approximately that it can be reached. If they dis-
appear in one direction, they creep in again in another ;
for wrong and injustice lie deeply rooted in human
nature. Attempts have been made to attain the
desired aim by artificial constitutions and systematic
codes of law; but they are not in complete touch
with the facts — they remain an asymptote, for the
simple reason that hard and fast conceptions never
embrace all possible cases, and cannot be made
to meet individual instances. Such conceptions
resemble the stones of a mosaic rather than the delicate
shading in a picture. Nay, more : all experiments in
this matter are attended with danger; because the
material in question, namely, the human race, is the
most difficult of all material to handle. It is almost
as dangerous as an explosive.

No doubt it is true that in the machinery of the
State the freedom of the press performs the same
function as a safety-valve in other machinery ; for it
enables all discontent to find a voice ; nay, in doing so,
the discontent exhausts itself if it has not much
substance : and if it has, there is an advantage in
recognising it betimes and applying the remedy.
This is much better than to repress the discontent,
and let it simmer and ferment, and go on increasing
until it ends in an explosion. On the other hand,
the freedom of the press may be regarded as a per-
mission to sell poison — poison for the heart and the
mind. There is no idea so foolish but that it cannot
be put into the heads of the ignorant and incapable
multitude, especially if the idea holds out some
prospect of any gain or advantage. And when a

54 GOVERNMENT.

man has got hold of any such idea, what is there that
he will not do ? I am, therefore, very much afraid
that the danger of a free press outweighs its utility,
particularly where the law offers a way of redressing
wrongs. In any case, however, the freedom of
the press should be governed by a very strict pro-
hibition of all and every anonymity.

Generally, indeed, it may be maintained that
right is of a nature analogous to that of certain
chemical substances, which cannot be exhibited in a
pure and isolated condition, but at the most only
with a small admixture of some other substance,
which serves as a vehicle for them, or gives them the
necessary consistency ; such as fluorine, or even
alcohol, or prussic acid. Pursuing the analogy we may
say that right, if it is to gain a footing in the world and
really prevail, must of necessity be supplemented by
a small amount of arbitrary force, in order that,
notwithstanding its merely ideal and therefore
ethereal nature, it may be able to work and subsist in
the real and material world, and not evaporate and
vanish into the clouds, as it does in Hcsiod. Birth-
right of every description, all heritable privileges,
every form of national religion, and so on, may be
regarded as the necessary chemical base or alloy;
inasmuch as it is only when right has some such firm
and actual foundation that it can be enforced and
consistently vindicated. They form for right a sort of
09 fMoi irov (7TW — a fulcrum for supporting its lever.

Linnaeus adopted a vegetable system of an artificial
and arbitrary character. It cannot be replaced by a
natural one, no matter how reasonable the change

GOVERNMENT. 56

might be, or how often it has been attempted to
make it, because no other system could ever yield
the same certainty and stability of definition. Just
in the same way the artificial and arbitrary basis on
which, as has been shown, the constitution of a State
rests, can never be replaced by a purely natural basis.
A natural basis would aim at doing away with the
conditions that have been mentioned : in the place of
the privileges of birth it would put those of personal
merit ; in the place of the national religion, the results
of rationalistic inquiry, and so on. However agreeable
to reason this might all prove, the change could not
be made; because a natural basis would lack that
certainty and fixity of definition which alone secures
the stability of the commonwealth. A constitution
which embodied abstract right alone would be an
excellent thing for natures other than human ; but
since the great majority of men are extremely
egoistic, unjust, inconsiderate, deceitful, and some-
times even malicious; since in addition they are
endowed with very scanty intelligence, there arises
the necessity for a power that shall be concentrated
in one man, a power that shall be above all law and
right, and be completely irresponsible, nay, to which
everything shall yield, as to something that is re-
garded as a creature of a higher kind, a ruler by the
grace of God. It is only thus that men can be per-
manently held in check and governed.

The United States of North America exhibit the
attempt to proceed without any such arbitrary basis ;
that is to say, to allow abstract right to prevail pure
and unalloyed. But the result is not attractive. P^or

56 GOVERNMENT.

with all the material prosperity of the country what
do we find ? The prevailing sentiment is a base
Utilitarianism with its inevitable companion, ignorance;
and it is this that has paved the way for a union of
stupid Anglican bigotry, foolish prejudice, coarse
brutality, and a childish veneration of women. Even
worse things are the order of the day : most iniquitous
oppression of the black freedmen, lynch law, frequent
assassination often committed with entire impunity,
duels of a savai;- ny elsewhere unknown, now and then
open scorn of all law and justice, repudiation of public
debts, abominable political rascality towards a neigh-
bouring State, followed by a mercenary raid on its
rich territory, — afterwards sought to be excused, on the
part of the chief authority of the State, by lies which
every one in the country knew to be such and laughed
at — an ever-increasing ochlocracy, and finally all the
disastrous influence which this abnegation of justice
in high quarters must have exercised on private
morals. This specimen of a pure constitution on the
obverse side of the planet says very little for re-
publics in general, but still less for the imitations of
it in Mexico, Guatemala, Columbia and Peru.

A peculiar disadvantage attaching to republics —
and one that might not be looked for — is that in this
form of government it must be more difficult for men
of ability to attain high position and exercise direct
political influence than in the case of monarchies.
For always and everywhere and under all circum-
stances there is a conspiracy, or instinctive alliance^
against such men on the part of all the stupid, the
weak, and the commonplace; they look upon such

GOVEENMENT. 67

men as their natural enemies, and they are firmly
held together by a common fear of them. There is
always a numerous host of the stupid and the weak,
and in a republican constitution it is easy for them
to suppress and exclude the men of ability, so that
they may not be outflanked by them. They are fifty
to one ; and here all have equal rights at the start.

In a monarchy, on the other hand, this natural
and universal league of the stupid against those who
are possessed of intellectual advantages is a one-
sided affair; it exists only from below, for in a
monarchy talent and intelligence receive a natural
advocacy and support from above. In the first place,
the position of the monarch himself is much too high
and too firm for him to stand in fear of any sort of
competition. In the next place, he serves the State
more by his will than by his intelligence; for no
intelligence could ever be equal to all the demands
that would in his case be made upon it. He is there-
fore compelled to be always availing himself of other
men's intelligence. Seeing that his own interests are
securely bound up with those of his country ; that they
are inseparable from them and one with them, he will
naturally give the preference to the best men, because
they are his most serviceable instruments, and he will
bestow his favour upon them — as soon, that is, as he
can find them; which is not so difficult, if only an
honest search be made. Just in the same way even
ministers of State have too much advantasre over
rising politicians to need to regard them with jealousy ;
and accordingly for analogous reasons they are glad
to single out distinguished men and set them to work,

58 GOVERNMENT.

in order to make use of their powers for themselves.
It is in this way that intelligence has always under
amonarchical government a much better chance against
its irreconcilable and ever-present foe, stupidity; and
the advantage which it gains is very great.

In general, the monarchical form of government is
that which is natural to man ; just as it is natural to
bees and ants, to a flight of cranes, a herd of wander-
ing elephants, a pack of wolves seeking prey in com-
mon, and many other animals, all of which place one
of their number at the head of the business in hand.
Every business in which men engage, if it is attended
with danger — every campaign, every ship at sea — must
also be subject to the authority of one commander;
everywhere it is one will that must lead. Even the
animal oro;anism is constructed on a monarchical
principle : it is the brain alone which guides and
governs, and exercises the hegemony. Although heart,
lungs, and stomach contribute much more to the con-
tinued existence of the whole body, these philistines
cannot on that account be allowed to guide and lead.
That is a business which belongs solely to the brain ;
government must proceed from one central point.
Even the solar system is monarchical. On the other
hand, a republic is as unnatural as it is unfavourable
to the higher intellectual life and the arts and sciences.
Accordingly we find that everywhere in the world,
and at all times, nations, whether civilised or
savage, or occupying a position between the two, are
always under monarchical government. The rule of
many, as Homer said, is not a good thing : let there
be one ruler, one king : —

GOVERNMENT. 59

OvK dyad6v TToXvKOLpdvLrj • els Kolpavos earco
Els ^aa-LXevs.^

How would it be possible that, everywhere and at all
times, we should see many millions of people, nay,
even hundreds of millions, become the willing and
obedient subjects of one man, sometimes even one
woman, and provisionally, even, of a child, unless
there were a monarchical instinct in men which drove
them to it, as the form of government best suited to
them? This arrangement is not the product of re-
flection. Everywhere one man is king, and for the
most part his dignity is hereditary. He is, as it
were, the personification, the monogram, of the whole
people, which attains an individuality in him. In
this sense he can rightly say : rStat cest moi. It is
precisely for this reason that in Shakespeare^s histori-
cal plays the kings of England and France mutually
address each other as France and England, and the
Duke of Austria goes by the name of his country.
It is as though the kings regarded themselves as the
incarnation of their nationalities. It is all in accord-
ance with human nature; and for this very reason
the hereditary monarch cannot separate his own
welfare and that of his family from the welfare of
his country; as, on the other hand, mostly happens
when the monarch is elected, as, for instance, in the
States of the Church.^ The Chinese can conceive of
a monarchical government only ; what a republic is,

^ Iliad, W., 204.

2 Translator's Note. The reader will recollect that Schopenhauer
was writing long before the Papal territories were absorbed into the
kingdom of Italy.

60 GOVERNMENT.

they utterly fail to understand. When a Dutch
legation was in China in the year 1658, it was obliged
to represent that the Prince of Orange was their king,
as otherwise the Chinese would have been inclined to
take Holland for a nest of pirates living without any
lord or master.^ Stobeeus, in a chapter in his Flori-
legium, at the head of which he wrote That monarchy
is best, collected the best of the passages in which the
ancients explained the advantages of that form of
government. In a word, republics are unnatural and
artificial ; they are the product of reflection. Hence
it is that they occur only as rare exceptions in the
whole history of the world. There were the small
Greek republics, the Roman and the Carthaginian;
but they were all rendered possible by the fact that
five-sixths, perhaps even seven-eighths, of the popula-
tion consisted of slaves. In the year 1840, even in
the United States, there were three million slaves to
a population of sixteen millions. Then, again, the
duration of the republics of antiquity, compared with
that of monarchies, was very short. Republics are
very easy to found, and very difficult to maintain,
while with monarchies it is exactly the reverse. If
it is Utopian schemes that are wanted, I say this : the
only solution of the problem would be a despotism of
the wise and the noble, of the true aristocracy and the
genuine nobility, brought about by the method of
generation — that is, by the marriage of the noblest

^ See Jean Nieubofi, V Amhassade de la Comijognie Orieiitale des
Promnces Unies vers VEm])ereur de la Chine, tradiiit par Jean le
Charpentier a Leyde, 1665, cb. 45.

GOVEENMENT. 61

men with the cleverest and most intellectual women.
This is my Utopia, my Republic of Plato.

Constitutional kings are undoubtedly in much the
same position as the gods of Epicurus, who sit up on
high in undisturbed bliss and tranquillity, and do not
meddle with human affairs. Just now they are the
fashion. In every German duodecimo-principality a
parody of the English constitution is set up, quite
complete, from Upper and Lower Houses down to the
Habeas Corpus Act and trial by jury. These
institutions, which proceed from English character
and English circumstances, and presuppose both, are
natural and suitable to the English people. It is just
as natural to the German people to be split up into a
number of different stocks, under a similar number of
ruling Princes, with an Emperor over them all, who
maintains peace at home, and represents the unity of
the State abroad. It is an arrangement which has
proceeded from German character and German
circumstances. I am of opinion that if Germany is
not to meet with the same fate as Italy, it must
restore the imperial crown, which was done away
with by its arch-enemy, the first Napoleon ; and it
must restore it as effectively as possible. ^ For
German unity depends on it, and without the imperial
crown it will always be merely nominal, or precarious.
But as we no longer live in the days of Giinther of

1 Translator's Note. Here, again, it is hardly necessary to say that
Schopenhauer, who died in 1860, and wrote this passage at least
some years previously, cannot be referring to any of the events
which culminated in 1870. The whole passage forms a striking
illustration of his political sagacity.

62 GOVERNMENT.

Schwarzburg, when the choice of Emperor was a
serious business, the imperial crown ought to go
alternately to Prussia and to Austria, for the life of
the wearer. In any case, the absolute sovereignty of
the small States is illusory. Napoleon I. did for
Germany what Otto the Great did for Italy : he
divided it into small, independent States, on the
principle, divide et impera.

The English show their great intelligence, amongst
other ways, by clinging to their ancient institutions,
customs and usages, and by holding them sacred, even
at the risk of carrying this tenacity too far, and
making it ridiculous. They hold them sacred for
the simple reason that those institutions and customs
are not the invention of an idle head, but have grown
up gradually by the force of circumstance and the
wisdom of life itself, and are therefore suited to them
as a nation. On the other hand, the German
MicheP allows himself to be persuaded by his
schoolmaster that he must go about in an English
dress-coat, and that nothing else will do. Accordingly
he has bullied his father into giving it to him ; and
with his awkward manners this ungainly creature
presents in it a sufficiently ridiculous figure. But
the dress-coat will some day be too tight for him

^ Translator's Note. It may be well to explain that " ]N[ichel " is
sometimes used by the Germans as a nickname of their nation,
corresponding to " John Bull " as a nickname of the English. Fliigel
in his German-English Dictionary declares that der deutsche
Michel represents the German nation as an honest, blunt, unsus-
picious fellow, who easily allows himself to be imposed upon,
even, he adds, with a touch of patriotism, *' by those who are greatly
his inferiors in point of strength and real worth ".

GOVERNMENT. 63

and incommode him. It will not be very long
before he feels it in trial by jury. This institution
arose in the most barbarous period of the Middle
Ages — the times of Alfred the Great, when the
ability to read and write exempted a man from the
penalty of death. It is the worst of all criminal
procedures. Instead of judges, well versed in law
and of great experience, who have grown grey in
daily unravelling the tricks and wiles of thieves,
murderers and rascals of all sorts, and so are well able
to get at the bottom of things, it is gossiping tailors
and tanners who sit in judgment ; it is their coarse,
crude, unpractised, and awkward intelligence, in-
capable of any sustained attention, that is called upon
to find out the truth from a tissue of lies and deceit.
All the time, moreover, they are thinking of their
cloth and their leather, and longing to be at home ;
and they have absolutely no clear notion at all of
the distinction between probability and certainty. It
is with this sort of a calculus of probabilities in their
stupid heads that they confidently undertake to seal a
man's doom.

The same remark is applicable to them which Dr.
Johnson made of a court-martial in which he had little
confidence, summoned to decide a very important case.
He said that perhaps there was not a member of it who,
in the whole course of his life, had ever spent an
hour by himself in balancing probabilities.^ Can
any one imagine that the tailor and the tanner would
be impartial judges ? What ! the vicious multitude
impartial ! as if partiality were not ten times more to

^ Boswell's Johnson, 1780, set. 71.

04 GOVERNMENT.

be feared from men of the same class as the accused,
than from judges who knew nothing of him
personally, lived in another sphere altogether, were
irremovable, and conscious of the dignity of their
office. But to let a jury decide on crimes against the
State and its head, or on misdemeanours of the press,
is in a very real sense to set the fox to keep the geese.
Everywhere and at all times there has been much
discontent with governments, laws and public regula-
tions ; for the most part, however, because men are
always ready to make institutions responsible for the
misery inseparable from human existence itself ; which
is, to speak mythically, the curse that was laid on
Adam, and through him on the whole race. But
never has that delusion been proclaimed in a more
mendacious and impudent manner than by the dema-
gogues of the Jetztzeit — of the day we live in. As
enemies of Christianity, they are, of course, optimists :
to them the world is its own end and object, and
accordingly in itself, that is to say, in its own natural
constitution, it is arranged on the most excellent
principles, and forms a regular habitation of bliss.
The enormous and glaring evils of the world they
attribute wholly to governments : if governments,
they think, were to do their duty, there would be a
heaven upon earth ; in other words, all men could eat,
drink, propagate and die, free from trouble and want.
This is what they mean when they talk of the world
being "its own end and object"; this is the goal of
that " perpetual progress of the human race," and the
other fine things which they are never tired of pro-
claiminof.

GOVERNMENT. 65

Formerly it was faith which was the chief support
of the throne; nowadays it is credit. The Pope him-
self is scarcely more concerned to retain the confidence
of the faithful than to make his creditors believe in
his own good faith. If in times past it was the guilty
debt of the world which was lamented, now it is the
financial debts of the world which arouse dismay.
Formerly it was the Last Day which was prophesied ;
now it is the aecadxOeia, the great repudiation, the
universal bankruptcy of the nations, which will one
day happen ; although the prophet, in this as in the
other case, entertains a firm hope that he will not live
to see it himself.

From an ethical and a rational point of view, the
right of possession rests upon an incomparably better
foundation than the right of hirth ; nevertheless, the
right of possession is allied with the right of birth and
has come to be part and parcel of it, so that it would
hardly be possible to abolish the right of birth with-
out endangering the right of possession. The reason
of this is that most of what a man possesses he in-
herited, and therefore holds by a kind of right of
birth ; just as the old nobility bear the names only of
their hereditary estates, and by the use of those names
do no more than give expression to the fact that they
own the estates. Accordingly all owners of property
if, instead of being envious, they were wise, ought also
to support the maintenance of the rights of birth.

The existence of a nobility has, then, a double
advantage : it helps to maintain, on the one hand, the
rights of possession, and, on the other, the right of

5

66 GOVERNMENT.

birth belonging to the king. For the king is the first
nobleman in the country, and, as a general rule, he
treats the nobility as his humble relations, and regards
them quite otherwise than the commoners, however
trusty and well-beloved. It is quite natural, too, that he
should have more confidence in those whose ancestors
were mostly the first ministers, and always the im-
mediate associates, of his own. A nobleman, therefore,
appeals with reason to the name he bears, when, on
the occurrence of anything to rouse distrust, he repeats
his assurance of fidelity and service to the king. A
man's character, as my readers are aware, assuredly
comes to him from his father. It is a narrow-minded
and ridiculous thing not to consider whose son a man is.

FREE-WILL AND FATALISM.

FREE-WILL AND FATALISM.

No thoughtful man can have any doubt, after the
conclusions reached in my prize-essay on Moral Free-
dom, that such freedom is to be sought, not anywhere
in nature, but outside of it. The only freedom that
exists is of a metaph3^sical character. In the physical
world freedom is an impossibility. Accordingly, while
our several actions are in no wise free, every man's
individual character is to be regarded as a free act. He
is such and such a man, because once for all it is his
will to be that man. For the will itself, and in itself,
and also in so far as it is manifest in an individual, and
accordingly constitutes the original and fundamental
desires of that individual, is independent of all know-
ledge, because it is antecedent to such knowledge. All
that it receives from knowledge is the series of motives
by which it successively develops its nature and
makes itself cognisable or visible ; but the will itself,
as something that lies beyond time, and so long as it
exists at all, never changes. Therefore every man,
being what he is and placed in the circumstances which
for the moment obtain, but which on their part also
arise by strict necessity, can absolutely never do any-
thing else than just what at that moment he does
do. Accordingly, the whole course of a man's life, in

70 FREE-WILL AND FATALISM.

all its incidents great and small, is as necessarily pre-
determined as the course of a clock.

The main reason of this is that the kind of meta-
physical free act which I have described tends to be-
come a knowing consciousness — a perceptive intuition,
which is subject to the forms of space and time. By
means of those forms the unity and indivisibility of
the act are represented as drawn asunder into a series
of states and events, which are subject to the Principle
of Sufficient Reason in its four forms — and it is this
that is meant by necessity. But the result of it all
assumes ^ moral complexion. It amounts to this, that
by what we do we know what we are, and by what
we suffer we know what we deserve.

Further, it follows from this that a man's individua-
lity does not rest upon the principle of individuation
alone, and therefore is not altogether phenomenal in
its nature. On the contrary, it has its roots in the
thinor-in-itself, in the will which is the essence of each
individual. The character of this individual is itself
individual. But how deep the roots of individualitj'-
extend is one of the questions which I do not under-
take to answer.

In this connection it deserves to be mentioned that
even Plato, in his own way, represented the individua-
lity of a man as a free act.^ He represented him as
coming into the world with a given tendency, which
was the result of the feelings and character already
attaching to him in accordance with the doctrine of
metempsychosis. The Brahmin philosophers also ex-
press the unalterable fixity of innate character in a

'^Fhcbd/us and Laws, Ik. x.

FEEE-WILL AND FATALISM. 71

mystical fashion. They say that Brahma, when a man
is produced, engraves his doings and sufferings in
written characters on his skull, and that his life must
take shape in accordance therewith. They point to
the jagged edges in the sutures of the skull-bones as
evidence of this writing ; and the purport of it, they
say, depends on his previous life and actions. The
same view appears to underlie the Christian, or rather,
the Pauline, dogma of Predestination.

But this truth, which is universally confirmed by
experience, is attended with another result. All genuine
merit, moral as well as intellectual, is not merely
physical or empirical in its origin, but metaphysical ;
that is to say, it is given a priori and not a posteriori ;
in other words, it is innate and is not acquired, and
therefore its source is not a mere phenomenon, but
the thing-in-itself. Hence it is that every man
achieves only that which is irrevocably established in
his nature, or is born with him. Intellectual capacity
needs, it is true, to be developed, just as many natural
products need to be cultivated in order that we may
enjoy or use them ; but just as in the case of a natural
product no cultivation can take the place of original
material, neither can it do so in the case of intellect.
That is the reason why qualities which are merely
acquired, or learned, or enforced — that is, qualities
a 'posteriori, whether moral or intellectual — are not
real or genuine, but superficial only, and possessed of
no value. This is a conclusion of true metaphysics,
and experience teaches the same lesson to all who can
look below the surface. Nay, it is proved by the
great importance which we all attach to such

72 FEEE-WILL AND FATALISM.

innate characteristics as physiognomy and external
appearance, in the case of a man who is at all distin-
guished ; and that is why we are so curious to see him.
Superficial people, to be sure, — and, for very good
reasons, commonplace people too, — will be of the op-
posite opinion ; for if anything fails them they will
thus be enabled to console themselves by thinking
that it is still to come.

The world, then, is not merely a battlefield where
victory and defeat receive their due recompense in a
future state. No ! the world is itself the Last Judg-
ment on it. Every man carries with him the reward
and the disgrace that he deserves ; and this is no
other than the doctrine of the Brahmins and Buddhists
as it is taught in the theory of metempsychosis.

The question has been raised. What two men would
do, who lived a solitary life in the wilds and met each
other for the first time. Hobbes, Pufendorf, and
Rousseau have given different answers. Pufendorf
believed that they would approach each other as
friends ; Hobbes, on the contrary, as enemies ; Rousseau,
that they would pass each other by in silence. All
three are both right and wrong. This is just a case
in which the inccdculable dij/erence that there is in innate
moral disposition between one individual and another
would make its appearance. The difference is so
strong that the question here raised might be regarded
as the standard and measure of it. For there are
men in whom the sight of another man at once rouses
a feeling of enmity, since their inmost nature ex-
claims at once : That is not me ! There are others in
whom the sight awakens immediate sympathy ; their

FEEE-WILL AND FATALISM. 73

inmost nature says : That is me over again ! Between
the two there are countless degrees. That in this
most important matter we are so totally different is a
great problem, nay, a mystery.

In regard to this cb priori nature of moral character
there is matter for varied reflection in a work by
Bastholm, a Danish writer, entitled Historical Contribu-
tions to the Knoivledge of Man in the Savage State. He is
struck by the fact that intellectual culture and moral
excellence are shown to be entirely independent of
each other, inasmuch as one is often found without
the other. The reason of this, as we shall find, is
simply that moral excellence in no wise springs from
reflection, which is developed by intellectual culture,
but from the will itself, the constitution of which is
innate and not susceptible in itself of any improve-
ment by means of education. Bastholm represents
most nations as very vicious and immoral ; and on
the other hand he reports that excellent traits of
character are found amongst some savage peoples ; as,
for instance, amongst the Orotchyses, the inhabitants
of the island Savu, the Tunguses, and the Pelew
islanders. He thus attempts to solve the problem.
How it is that some tribes are so remarkably good,
when their neighbours are all bad.

It seems to me that the difficulty may be ex-
plained as follows : Moral qualities, as we know, are
heritable, and an isolated tribe, such as is described,
might take its rise in some one family, and ultimately
in a single ancestor who happened to be a good man,
and then maintain its purity. Is it not the case, for
instance, that on many unpleasant occasions, such as

74 FREE-WILL AND FATALISM,

repudiation of public debts, filibustering raids and so
on, the English have often reminded the North
Americans of their descent from English penal
colonists ? It is a reproach, however, which can apply
only to a small part of the population.

It is marvellous how every mans individuality (that
is to say, the union of a definite character with a
definite intellect) accurately determines all his actions
and thoughts down to the most unimportant details,
as though it were a dye which pervaded them ; and
how, in consequence, one man's whole course of life,
in other words, his inner and outer history, turns out
so absolutely different from another's. As a botanist
knows a plant in its entirety from a single leaf ; as
Cuvier from a single bone constructed the whole
animal, so an accurate knowledge of a man's whole
character may be attained from a single characteristic
act; that is to say, he himself may to some extent
be constructed from it, even though the act in
question is of very trifling consequence. Nay, that is
the most perfect test of all, for in a matter of im-
portance people are on their guard; in trifles they
follow their natural bent without much reflection.
That is why Seneca's remark, that even the smallest
things may be taken as evidence of character, is so
true : argumenta morum ex minimis quoque licet capere}
If a man shows by his absolutely unscrupulous and
selfish behaviour in small things that a sentiment of
justice is foreign to his disposition, he should not be
trusted with a penny unless on due security. For
who will believe that the man who every day shows

' Ep., 52.

FEEE-WILL AND FATALISM. 75

that he is unjust in all matters other than those which
concern property, and whose boundless selfishness
everywhere protrudes through the small affairs of
ordinary life which are subject to no scrutiny, like
a dirty shirt through the holes of a ragged jacket —
who, I ask, will believe that such a man will act
honourably in matters of meitm and tuum without any
other incentive but that of justice ? The man who
has no conscience in small thingrs will be a scoundrel
in big things. If we neglect small traits of character,
we have only ourselves to blame if we afterwards
learn to our disadvantage what this character is in
the great affairs of life. On the same principle,
we ought to break with so-called friends even in
matters of trifling moment, if they show a character
that is malicious or bad or vulgar, so that we may
avoid the bad turn which only waits for an oppor-
tunity of being done us. The same thing applies to
servants. Let it always be our maxim : Better alone
than amongst traitors.

or a truth the first and foremost step in all know-
ledge of mankind is the conviction that a man's
conduct, taken as a whole, and in all its essential
particulars, is not governed by his reason or by any
of the resolutions which he may make in virtue of
it. No man becomes this or that by wishing to be
it, however earnestly. His acts proceed from his
innate and unalterable cluiracter, and they are more
immediately and particularly determined by motives.
A man's conduct, therefore, is the necessary product
of both character and motive. It may be illustrated
by the course of a planet, which is the result of the

76 FREE-WILL AND FATALISM.

combined effect of the tangential energy with which
it is endowed, and the centripetal energy which
operates from the sun. In this simile the former
energy represents character, and the latter the
influence of motive. It is almost more than a mere
simile. The tangential energy which properly
speaking is the source of the planet's motion, whilst
on the other hand the motion is kept in check by
gravitation, is, from a metaphysical point of view,
the will manifesting itself in that body.

To grasp this fact is to see that we really never
form anything more than a conjecture of what we
shall do under circumstances which are still to happen ;
although we often take our conjecture for a resolve.
When, for instance, in pursuance of a proposal, a
man with the greatest sincerity, and even eagerness,
accepts an engagement to do this or that on the
occurrence of a certain future event, it is by no means
certain that he will fulfil the engagement ; unless he
is so constituted that the promise which he gives, in
itself and as such, is always and everywhere a motive
sufficient for him, by acting upon him, through con-
siderations of honour, like some external compulsion
But above and beyond this, what he will do on the
occurrence of that event may be foretold from true
and accurate knowledge of his character and the ex-
ternal circumstances under the influence of which he
will fall; and it may with complete certainty be
foretold from this alone. Nay, it is a very easy
prophecy if he has been already seen in a like posi-
tion ; for he will inevitably do the same thing a
second time, provided that on the first occasion he

FBEE-WILL AND FATALISM. 77

had a true and complete knowledge of the facts of
the case. For, as I have often remarked, a final
cause does not impel a man by being real, but by
being \inoyvn'. causa finalis non movet secu7idum suum
esse reale, sed secundum esse cognitum} Whatever he
failed to recognise or understand the first time could
have no influence upon his will; just as an electric
current stops when some isolating body hinders the
action of the conductor. This unalterable nature of
character, and the consequent necessity of our actions,
are made very clear to a man who has not, on any
given occasion, behaved as he ought to have done,
by showing a lack either of resolution or endurance
or courage, or some other quality demanded at the
moment. Afterwards he recognises what it is that
he ought to have done; and, sincerely repenting of
his incorrect behaviour, he thinks to himself, If the
opportimity ivere offered to me again, I shoidd act
differently. It is offered once more ; the same oc-
casion recurs : and to his great astonishment he does
precisely the same thing over again. ^

The best examples of the truth in question are in
every way furnished by Shakespeare's plays. It is
a truth with which he was thoroughly imbued, and
his intuitive wisdom expressed it in a concrete shape
on every page. I shall here, however, give an in-
stance of it in a case in which he makes it remark-
ably clear, without exhibiting any design or affectation
in the matter ; for he was a real artist and never set
out from general ideas. His method was obviously

^ Suarez, Disp. Metaph., xxiii., §§ 7 and 8.

•^Cf. World as Will, ii., pp. 251 &, sqq. (third edition).

78 FEEE-WILL AND FATALISM.

to work up to the psychological truth which he
grasped directly and intuitively, regardless of the
fact that few would notice or understand it, and
without the smallest idea that some dull and shallow
fellows in Germany would one day proclaim far and
wide that he wrote his works to illustrate moral com-
monplaces. I allude to the character of the Earl of
Northumberland, whom we find in three plays in suc-
cession, although he does not take a leading part in
any one of them ; nay, he appears only in a few
scenes distributed over fifteen acts. Consequently, if
the reader is not very attentive, a character exhibited
at such great intervals, and its moral identity, may
easily escape his notice, even though it has by no
means escaped the poet's. He makes the earl ap-
pear everywhere with a noble and knightly grace,
and talk in language suitable to it; nay, he some-
times puts very beautiful and even elevated passages
into his mouth. At the same time he is very far
from writing after the manner of Schiller, who
was fond of painting the devil black, and whose
moral approval or disapproval of the characters which
he represented could be heard in their own words.
With Shakespeare, and also with Goethe, every char-
acter, as long as he is on the stage and speaking, seems
to be absolutely in the right, even though it were the
devil himself. In this respect let the reader compare
Duke Alba as he appears in Goethe with the same
character in Schiller.

We make the acquaintance of the Earl of Northum-
berland in the play of Richard II., where he is the
first to hatch a plot against the King in favour of

FREE-WILL AND FATALISM. 79

BolingbroRe, afterwards Henry IV., to whom he even
offers some personal flattery (Act II., Sc. 3). In the
following act he suffers a reprimand because, in speak-
ing of the King he talks of him as " Richard," without
more ado, but protests that he did it only for brevity's
sake. A little later his insidious words induce the
King to surrender. In the following act, when the
King renounces the crown, Northumberland treats
him with such harshness and contempt that the un-
lucky monarch is quite broken, and losing all patience
once more exclaims to him : Fiend, thou tormcnfst me
ere I come to hell! At the close, Northumberland
announces to the new King that he has sent the heads
of the former King's adherents to London.

In the following tragedy, Henry IV., he hatches a
plot against the new King in just the same way. In
the fourth act we see the rebels united, making pre-
parations for the decisive battle on the morrow, and
only waiting impatiently for Northumberland and his
division. At last there arrives a letter from him,
saying that he is ill, and that he cannot entrust his
force to any one else ; but that nevertheless the others
should go forward with courage and make a brave
fight. They do so, but, greatly weakened by his
absence, they are completely defeated ; most of their
leaders are captured, and his own son, the valorous
Hotspur, falls by the hand of the Prince of Wales.

Again, in the following play, the Second Part of
Henry IV., wq see him reduced to a state of the fiercest
wrath by the death of his son, and maddened by the
thirst for revenge. Accordingly he kindles another
rebellion, and the heads of it assemble once more.

80 FREE-WILL AND FATALISM.

In the fourth act, just as they are about to give battle,
and are only waiting for him to join them, there comes
a letter saying that he cannot collect a proper force,
and will therefore seek safety for the present in Scot-
land ; that, nevertheless, he heartily wishes their heroic
undertaking the best success. Thereupon they sur-
render to the King under a treaty which is not kept,
and so perish.

So far is character from being the work of reasoned
choice and consideration, that in any action the intel-
lect has nothing to do but to present motives to the
will. Thereafter it looks on as a mere spectator and
witness at the course which life takes, in accordance
with the influence of motive on the given character.
All the incidents of life occur, strictly speaking, with
the same necessity as the movement of a clock. On
this point let me refer to my prize-essay on The Free-
dom of the Will. I have there explained the true
meaning and origin of the persistent illusion that the
will is entirely free in every single action ; and I have
indicated the cause to which it is due. I will only add
here the following teleological explanation of this
natural illusion.

Since every single action of a man's life seems to
possess the freedom and originality which in truth only
belong to his character as he apprehends it, and the mere
apprehension of it by his intellect is what constitutes
his career; and since what is original in every single
action seems to the empirical consciousness to be always
being performed anew, a man thus receives in the
course of his career the strongest possible moral lesson.
Then, and not before, he becomes thoroughly oonscious

FEEE-WILL AND FATALISM. 81

of all the bad sides of his character. Conscience ac-
companies every act with the comment : Vote could act
differently, although its true sense is : You could he other
than you are. As the result of this immutability of char-
acter on the one hand, and, on the other, of the strict
necessity which attends all the circumstances in which
character is successively placed, every man's course of
life is precisely determined from Alpha right through
to Omega. But, nevertheless, one man's course of life
turns out immeasurably happier, nobler and more
worthy than another's, whether it be regarded from a
subjective or an objective point of view; and unless
we are to exclude all ideas of justice, we are led to the
doctrine which is well accepted in Brahminism and
Buddhism, that the subjective conditions in which, as
well as the objective conditions under which, every
man is born, are the moral consequences of a previous
existence.

Macchiavelli, who seems to have taken no interest
whatever in philosophical speculations, is drawn by
the keen subtlety of his very unique understanding
into the following observation, which possesses a
really deep meaning. It shows that he had an in-
tuitive knowledge of the entire necessity with which,
characters and motives being given, all actions take
place. He makes it at the beginning of the prologue
to his comedy Clitia. If, he says, the same men were
to recur in the world, in the way that the same circum-
stances recur, a hundred years would never elapse without
our finding ourselves together once more, and doing the
same things as we are doing noiv — Se nel mondo tornassino i
medesimi uomini, como tornano i raedesimi casi, non

6

82 FREE-WILL AND FATALISM.

passarebbono mai cento anni che noi non ci trovassimo
un altrct volta insieme^ a fare le medesime cose die
hora. He seems however to have been drawn into
the remark by a reminiscence of what Augustine
says in his De Civitate Dei,\ik. xii., ch. xiii.

Again, Fate, or the eifiap^hr} of the ancients, is no-
thing but the conscious certainty that all that happens
is fast bound by a chain of causes, and therefore takes
place with a strict necessity : that the future is already
ordained with absolute certainty and can undergo as
little alteration as the past. In the fatalistic myths
of the ancients, all that can be regarded as fabulous
is the prediction of the future ; that is, if we refuse
to consider the possibility of magnetic clairvoyance
and second sight. Instead of trying to explain away
the fundamental truth of Fatalism by superficial
twaddle and foolish evasion, a man should attempt
to get a clear knowledge and comprehension of it ;
for it is demonstrably true, and it helps us in a very
important way to an understanding of the mysterious
riddle of our life. Predestination and Fatalism do
not difter in the main. They differ only in this, that
with Predestination the given character and external
determination of human action proceed from a
rational Being, and with Fatalism from an irrational
one. But in either case the result is the same : that
happens which must happen.

On the other hand the conception of Moral Freedom
is inseparable from that of Originality. A man may
be said, but he cannot be conceived, to be the work of
another, and at the same time be free in respect of
his desires and acts. He who called him into existence

FREE-WILL AND FATALISM. 83

out of nothing in the same process created and
determined his nature — in other words, the whole of
his qualities. For no one can create without creating
a something, that is to say, a being determined
throughout and in all its qualities. But all that a
man says and does necessarily proceeds from the
qualities so determined; for it is only the qualities
themselves set in motion. It is only some external
impulse that they require to make their appearance.
As a man is, so must he act; and praise or blame
attaches, not to his separate acts, but to his nature
and being.

That is the reason why Theism and the moral
responsibility of man are incompatible; because
responsibility always reverts to the creator of man and
it is there that it has its centre. Vain attempts have
been made to make a bridge from one of these
incompatibles to the other by means of the conception
of moral freedom ; but it always breaks down again.
What is free must also be original. If our will is /ree,
our will is also the original dement, and conversely.
Pre- Kantian dogmatism tried to separate these two
predicaments. It was thereby compelled to assume
two kinds of freedom, one cosmological, of the
first cause, and the other moral and theological, of
human will. These are represented in Kant by the
third as well as the fourth antinomy of freedom.

On the other hand, in my philosophy the plain
recognition of the strictly necessary character of all
action is in accordance with the doctrine that what
manifests itself even in the inorganic and irrational
world is will. If this were not so, the necessity under

84 FREE-WILL AND FATALISM.

which irrational beings obviously act would place their
action in conflict with will ; if, I mean, there were really
such a thing as the freedom of individual action, and this
were not as strictly necessitated as every other kind
of action. But, as I have just shown, it is this same
doctrine of the necessary character of all acts of will
which makes it needful to regard a man's existence
and being as itself the work of his freedom, and
consequently of his will. The will, therefore, must be
self-existent ; it must possess so-called a-se-ity. Under
the opposite supposition all responsibility, as I have
shown, would be at an end, and the moral, like the
physical, world would be a mere machine, set in motion
for the amusement of its manufacturer, placed some-
where outside of it. So it is that truths hang together,
and mutually advance and complete one another;
whereas error gets jostled at every corner.

What kind of influence it is that moral instruction
may exercise on conduct, and what are the limits of
that influence, are questions which I have sufficiently
examined in the twentieth section of my treatise on the
Foundatimi of Morality. In all essential particulars
an analogous influence is exercised by example, which,
however, has a more powerful effect than doctrine, and
therefore it deserves a brief analysis.

In the main, example works either by restraining a
man or by encouraging him. It has the former effect
when it determines him to leave undone what he
wanted to do. He sees, I mean, that other people do
not do it ; and from this he judges, in general, that it
is not expedient ; that it may endanger his person, or

FREE-WILL AND FATALISM. 85

his property, or his honour. He rests content, and
gladly finds himself relieved from examining into the
matter for himself. Or he may see that another man,
who has not refrained, has incurred evil consequences
from doing it ; this is example of the deterrent kind.
The example which encourages a man works in a two-
fold manner. It either induces him to do what he
would be glad to leave undone, if he were not afraid
lest the omission might in some way endanger him,
or injure him in others' opinion ; or else it encourages
him to do what he is glad to do, but has hitherto
refrained from doing from fear of danger or shame ;
this is example of the seductive kind. Finally,
example may bring a man to do what he would have
otherwise never thought of doing. It is obvious that
in this last case example works in the main only on
the intellect ; its effect on the will is secondary, and
if it has any such effect, it is by the interposition of
the man's own judgment, or by reliance on the person
who presented the example.

The whole influence of example, — and it is very
strong, — rests on the fact that a man has, as a rule, too
little judgment of his own, and often too little know-
ledge, to explore his own way for himself, and that he
is glad, therefore, to tread in the footsteps of some one
else. Accordingly, the more deficient he is in either of
these qualities, the more is he open to the influence of
example; and we find, in fact, that most men's
guiding star is the example of others; that their
whole course of life, in great things and in small,
comes in the end to be mere imitation ; and that not
even in the pettiest matters do they act according to

86 FREE-WILL AND FATALISM.

their own judgment. Imitation and custom are the
spring of almost all human action. The cause of it is
that men fight shy of all and any sort of reflection,
and very properly mistrust their own discernment.
At the same time this remarkably strong imitative
instinct in man is a proof of his kinship with apes.

But the kind of effect which example exercises
depends upon a man's character, and thus it is that
the same example may possibly seduce one man and
deter another. An easy opportunity of observing this
is afforded in the case of certain social impertinences
which come into vogue and gradually spread. The
first time that a man notices anything of the kind, he
may say to himself : For shame ! hoiv can he do it ! how
selfish and inconsiderate of him ! really^ I shall take care
never to do anything like that I But twenty others will
think : Aha ! if he does that, I may do it too.

As regards morality, example, like doctrine, may,
it is true, promote civil or legal amelioration, but not
that inward amendment which is, strictly speaking,
the only kind of moral amelioration. For example
always works as a personal motive alone, and assumes,
therefore, that a man is susceptible to this sort of
motive. But it is just the predominating sensitiveness
of a character to this or that sort of motive that
determines whether its morality is true and real ;
though, of whatever kind it is, it is always innate.
In general it may be said that example operates as a
means of promoting the good and the bad qualities of
a character, but it does not create them ; and so it is
that Seneca's maxim, velle no7i discitur — tuill cannot he
learned — also holds good here. But the innateness of all

FREE-WILL AND FATALISM. 87

truly moral qualities, of the good as of the bad, is a
doctrine that consorts better with the metempsychosis
of the Brahmins and Buddhists, according to which a
man's good and bad deeds follow him from one exist-
ence to another like his shadow, than with Judaism.
For Judaism requires a man to come into the world
as a moral blank, so that, in virtue of an inconceivable
free will, directed to objects which are neither to be
sought nor avoided — lihermn arbitrium incliffer entice —
and consequently as the result of reasoned considera-
tion, he may choose whether he is to be an angel or a
devil, or anything else that may lie between the
two. Though I am well aware what the Jewish
scheme is, I pay no attention to it ; for my standard is
truth. I am no professor of philosophy, and therefore
I do not find my vocation in establishing the funda-
mental ideas of Judaism at any cost, even though
they for ever bar the way to all and every kind
of philosophical knowledge. Liherum arbitrium in-
differ entice under the name of moral freedom is a
charming doll for professors of philosophy to dandle ;
and we must leave it to those intelligent, honourable
and upright gentlemen,

CHARACTER.

CHARACTER.

Men who aspire to a happy, a brilliant and a long life,
instead of to a virtuous one, are like foolish actors who
want to be always having the great parts, — the parts
that are marked by splendour and triumph. They
fail to see that the important thing is not what or
how much, but how they act.

Since a man does riot alter, and his moral character
remains absolutely the same all through his life;
since he must play out the part which he has received,
without the least deviation from the character ; since
neither experience, nor philosophy, nor religion can
effect any improvement in him, the question arises,
What is the meaning of life at all ? To what purpose
is it played, this farce in which everything that is
essential is irrevocably fixed and determined ?

It is played that a man may come to understand
himself, that he may see what it is that he seeks and
has sought to be ; what he wants, and what, therefore,
he is. This is a knowledge v:hich must he imparted to
him frorn without. Life is to man, in other words, to
will, what chemical re-agents are to the body; it is only
by life that a man reveals what he is, and it is only in
so far as he reveals himself that he exists at ail. Life
is the manifestation of character, of the something that
we underfttand by that word ; and it is not in life, but

92 CHARACTER.

outside of it, and outside time, that character undergoes
alteration, as a result of the self-knowledge which hfe
gives. Life is only the mirror into which a man gazes
not in order that he may get a reflection of himself,
but that he may come to understand himself by that
reflection ; that he may see v:hat it is that the mirror
shows. Life is the proofsheet, in w^hich the com-
positors' errors are brought to light. How they be-
come visible, and whether the type is large or small, are
matters of no consequence. Neither in the externals
of life nor in the course of history is there any signifi-
cance ; for as it is all one w^hether an error occurs in
the large type or in the small, so it is all one, as
regards the essence of the matter, whether an evil
disposition is mirrored as a conqueror of the world
or a common swindler or ill-natured egoist. In one
case he is seen of all men ; in the other, perhaps only
of himself ; but that he shouid see himself is what
signifies.

Therefore if egoism has a firm hold of a man and
masters him, whether it be in the form of joy, or
triumph, or lust, or hope, or frantic grief, or annoy-
ance, or anger, or fear, or suspicion, or passion of
any kind — he is in the devil's clutches, and how he
got into them does not matter. What is needful is
that he should make haste to get out of them : and
here, again, it does not matter how.

I have described character as theoretically an act of
will lying beyond time, of which life in time, or
character in action, is the development. For matters
of practical life we all possess the one as well as the
other: for we are constituted of them both. Character

CHARACTER. 93

modifies our life more than we think, and it is to
a certain extent true that every man is the architect
of his own fortune. No doubt it seems as if our lot
were assigned to us almost entirely from without, and
imparted to us in something of the same way in
which a melody outside us reaches the ear. But on
looking back over our past, we see at once that our
life consists of mere variations on one and the same
theme, namely, our character, and that the same
fundamental bass sounds through it all. This is an
experience which a man can and must make in and
by himself.

Not only a man's life, but his intellect too, may be
possessed of a clear and definite character, so far as
his intellect is applied to matters of theory. It is
not every man, however, who has an intellect of this
kind; for any such definite individuality as I mean
is genius — an original view of the world, which
presupposes an absolutely exceptional individuality,
which is the essence of genius. A man's intellectual
character is the theme on which all his works are
variations. In an essay which I wrote in Weimar
I called it the knack by which every genius produces
his works, however various. This intellectual character
determines the physiognomy of men of genius — what
I might call the theoretical physiognomy — and gives it
that distinguished expression which is chiefly seen
in the eyes and the forehead. In the case of ordinary
men the physiognomy presents no more than a weak
analogy with the physiognomy of genius. On the
other hand, all men possess the practical 'physiognomy,
the stamp of will, of practical character, of moral

94 CHARACTER.

disposition ; and it shows itself chiefly in the
mouth.

Since character, so far as we understand its nature,
is above and beyond time, it cannot undergo any
change under the influence of life. But although it
must necessarily remain the same always, it requires
time to unfold itself and show the very diverse aspects
which it may possess. For character consists of two
factors: one, the will-to-live itself, blind impulse,
so-called impetuosity ; the other, the restraint which
the will acquires when it comes to understand the
world ; and the world, again, is itself will. A
man may begin by following the cravings of desire,
until he comes to see how hollow and unreal a thing
is life, how deceitful are its pleasures, what horrible
aspects it possesses ; ond this it is that makes people
hermits, penitents, Magdalenes. Nevertheless it is
to be observed that no such change from a life of
gTcat indulgence in pleasure to one of resignation is
possible, except to the man who of his own accord
renounces pleasure. A really bad life cannot be
changed into a virtuous one. The most beautiful
soul, before it comes to know life from its horrible
side, may eagerly drink the sweets of life and remain
innocent. But it cannot commit a bad action ; it can-
not cause others suffering to do a pleasure to itself,
for in that case it would see clearly what it would be
doing ; and whatever be its youth and inexperience, it
perceives the sufferings of others as clearly as its own
pleasures. That is why one bad action is a guarantee
that numberless others will be committed as soon as
circumstances give occasion for them. Somebody once

CHAEACTEE. 95

remarked 'to me, with entire justice, that every man
had something very good and humane in his dis-
position, and also something very bad and malignant ;
and that according as he was moved, one or the other
of them made its appearance. The sight of others'
suffering arouses, not only in different men, but in
one and the same man, at one moment an inexhaustible
sympathy, at another a certain satisfaction ; and this
satisfaction may increase until it becomes the cruellest
delight in pain. I observe in myself that at one
moment I regard all mankind with heartfelt pity, at
another with the greatest indifference, on occasion,
with hatred, nay, with a positive enjoyment of their
pain.

All this shows very clearly that we are possessed of
two different, nay, absolutely contradictory, ways of
regarding the world : one according to the principle
of individuation, which exhibits all creatures as entire
strangers to us, as definitely not ourselves. We can
have no feelings for them but those of indifference,
envy, hatred, and delight that they suffer. The other
way of regarding the world is in accordance with
what I may call the Tat-tivain-asi — this-is-thyself
principle. All creatures are exhibited as identical
with ourselves ; and so it is pity and love which the
sight of them arouses.

The one method separates individuals by impassable
barriers ; the other removes the barrier and brings
the individuals together. The one makes us feel, in
regard to every man, that is what I am ; the other,
that is not %ohat I am. But it is remarkable that
while the sight of another's suffering makes us feel

96 CHAEACTEE.

our identity with him, and arouses our pity, this is
not so with the sight of another's happiness. Then
we almost always feel some envy ; and even though
we may have no such feeling in certain cases, — as, for
instance, when our friends are happy, — yet the interest
which we take in their happiness is of a weak descrip-
tion, and cannot compare with the sympathy which we
feel with their suffering. Is this because we recognise
all happiness to be a delusion, or an impediment to
true welfare ? No ! I am inclined to think that it is
because the sight of the pleasure, or the possessions,
which are denied to us, arouses envy ; that is to say,
the wish that we, and not the other, had that pleasure
or those possessions.

It is only the first way of looking at the world
which is founded on any demonstrable reason. The
other is, as it were, the gate out of this world ; it has
no attestation beyond itself, unless it be the very
abstract and difficult proof which my doctrine
supplies. Why the first way predominates in one man,
and the second in another — though perhaps it does
not exclusively predominate in any man; why the
oae or the other emerges according as the will is
moved — these are deep problems. The paths of
night and day are close together : —

'E'yyvy yap vvktos de Kcii ^fiaros etVi KtXevOoi.

It is a fact that there is a great and original
difierence between one empirical character and
another; and it is a difierence which, at bottom,
rests upon the relation of the individual's will to his
intellectual faculty. This relation is finally determined

CHARACTER. 97

by the degree of will in his father and of intellect in
his mother ; and the union of father and mother is for
the most part an affair of chance. This would all
mean a revolting injustice in the nature of the
world, if it were not that the difference between
parents and son is phenomenal only, and all chance
is, at bottom, necessity.

As regards the freedom of the will, if it were the
case that the will manifested itself in a single act
alone, it would be a free act. But the will manifests
itself in a course of life, that is to say, in a series
of acts. Every one of these acts, therefore, is deter-
mined as a part of a complete whole, and cannot
happen otherwise than it does happen. On the other
hand, the whole series is free; it is simply the
manifestation of an individualised will.

If a man feels inclined to commit a bad action
and refrains, he is kept back either (1) by fear of
punishment or vengeance; or (2) by superstition, in
other words, fear of punishment in a future life ; or
(3) by the feeling of sympathy, including general
charity; or (4) by the feeling of honour, in other
words, the fear of shame; or (5) by the feeling of
justice, that is, an objective attachment to fidelity and
good-faith, coupled with a resolve to hold them sacred,
because they are the foundation of all free intercourse
between man and man, and therefore often of
advantage to himself as well. This last thought, not
indeed as a thought, but as a mere feeling, influences
people very frequently. It is this that often compels
a man of honour, when some great but unjust
advantage is offered him, to reject it with contempt

7

98 CHARACTER.

and proudly exclaim : / am an honourable man I For
otherwise how should a poor man, confronted with
the property which chance or even some worse
agency has bestowed on the rich, whose very
existence it is that makes him poor, feel so much
sincere respect for this property, that he refuses
to touch it even in his need ; and although he has a
prospect of escaping punishment, what other thought
is it that can be at the bottom of such a man's
honesty ? He is resolved not to separate himself from
the great community of honourable people who have
the earth in possession, and whose laws are recognised
everywhere. He knows that a single dishonest act
will ostracise and proscribe him from that society for
ever. No ! a man will spend money on any soil that
yields him good fruit, and he will make sacrifices
for it.

With a good action, — that is, every action in which
a man's own advantage is ostensibly subordinated to
another's, — the motive is either (1) self-interest, kept
in the background ; or (2) superstition, in other words,
self-interest in the form of reward in another life ; or
(3) sympathy; or (4) the desire to lend a helping
hand, in other words, attachment to the maxim that
we should assist one another in need, and the wish
to maintain this maxim, in view of the presumption
that some day we ourselves may find it serve our
turn. For what Kant calls a good action done from
motives of duty and for the sake of duty, there is, as
will be seen, no room at all. Kant himself declares
it to be doubtful whether an action was ever deter-
mined by pure motives of duty alone. I affirm most

CHARACTER. 99

certainly that no action was ever so done ; it is mere
babble; there is nothing in it that could really act
as a motive to any man. When he shelters himself
behind verbiage of that sort, he is always actuated by
one of the four motives which I have described.
Among these it is obviously sympathy alone which is
quite genuine and sincere.

Good and had apply to character only a potiori ; that
is to say, we prefer the good to the bad; but,
absolutely, there is no such distinction. The difference
arises at the point which lies between subordinating
one's own advantage to that of another, and not
subordinating it. If a man keeps to the exact middle,
he is just. But most men go an inch in their regard
for others' welfare to twenty yards in regard for
their own.

The source of good and of had character, so far as
we have any real knowledge of it, lies in this, that
with the bad character the thought of the external
world, and especially of the living creatures in it, is
accompanied — all the more, the greater the resemblance
between them and the individual self — by a constant
feeling of not /, not /, not I.

Contrarily, with the good character (both being
assumed to exist in a high degree) the same thought
has for its accompaniment, like a fundamental bass,
a constant feeling of /, /, /. From this spring benevo-
lence and a 'isposition to help all men, and at the
same time a cheerful, confident and tranquil frame of
mind, the opposite of that which accompanies the bad
character.

Ths difFereftce^ however, is only phenomenal,

100 CHARACTER.

although it is a difference which is radical. But now
we come to the hardest of all problems : How is it that,
while the will, as the thing-in-itself, is identical, and
from a metaphysical point of view one and the same
in all its manifestations, there is nevertheless such
an enormous difference between one character and
another ? — the malicious, diabolical wickedness of the
one, and set off against it, the goodness of the other,
showing all the more conspicuously. How is it that
we get a Tiberius, a Caligula, a Caracalla, a Domitian,
a Nero : and on the other hand, the Antonines, Titus,
Hadrian, Nerva ? How is it that among the animals,
nay, in the higher species, in individual animals, there
is a like difference ? — the malignity of the cat most
strongly developed in the tiger; the spite of the
monkey; on the other hand, goodness, fidelity and
love in the dog and the elephant. It is obvious that
the principle of wickedness in the brute is the same
as in man.

We may to some extent modify the difficulty of
the problem by observing that the whole difference
is in tlie end only one of degree. In every living
creature, the fundamental propensities and instincts
all exist, but they exist in very different degrees and
proportions. This, however, is not enough to explain
the facts.

We must fall back upon the intellect and its re-
lation to the will ; it is the only explanation that
remains. A man's intellect, however, by no means
stands in any direct and obvious relation with the
goodness of his character. We may, it is true, dis-
criminate between two kinds of intellect : between

CHABACTER. 101

understanding, as the apprehension of relation in
accordance with the Principle of Sufficient Reason,
and cognition, a faculty akin to genius, which acts
more directly, is independent of this law, and passes
beyond the Principle of Individuation. The latter
is the faculty which apprehends Ideas, and it is
the faculty which has to do with morality. But even
this explanation leaves much to be desired. Fine
minds are seldom fine souls was the correct observa-
tion of Jean Paul ; although they are never the con-
trary. Lord Bacon, who, to be sure, was less a
fine soul than a fine mind, was a scoundrel.

I have declared space and time to be part of the
Principle of Individuation, as it is only space and
time that make the multiplicity of similar objects a
possibility. But multiplicity itself also admits of
variety ; multiplicity and diversity are not only
quantitative, but also qualitative. How is it that
there is such a thing as qualitative diversity, especi-
ally in ethical matters ? Or have I fallen into an
error the opposite of that into which Leibnitz fell
with his identitas indiscernihilium ?

The chief cause of intellectual diversity is to
be found in the brain and nervous system. This is a
fact which somewhat lessens the obscurity of the sub-
ject. With the brutes the intellect and the brain are
strictly adapted to their aims and needs. With man
alone there is now and then, by way of exception, a
superfluity, which, if it is abundant, may yield genius.
But ethical diversity, it seems, proceeds immediately
from the will. Otherwise ethical character would not
be above and beyond time, as it is only in the indi-

102 CHAEACTER.

vidual that intellect and will are united. The will is
above and beyond time, and eternal ; and character is
innate ; that is to say, it is sprung from the same
eternity, and therefore it does not admit of any but a
transcendental explanation.

Perhaps some one will come after me who will throw
light into this dark abyss.

MORAL INSTINCT.

MORAL INSTINCT.

An act done by instinct differs from every other
kind of act in that an understanding of its object does
not precede it but follows upon it. Instinct is there-
fore a rule of action given a priori. We may be un-
aware of the object to which it is directed, as no
understanding of it is necessary to its attainment.
On the other hand, if an act is done by an exercise of
reason or intelligence, it proceeds according to a rule
which the understanding has itself devised for the
purpose of carrying out a preconceived aim. Hence
it is that action according to rule may miss its aim,
while instinct is infallible.

On the a priori character of instinct we may com-
pare what Plato says in the PJdlebus. With Plato in-
stinct is a reminiscence of something which a man
has never actually experienced in his lifetime ; in the
same way as, in the Phcedo and elsewhere, everything
that a man learns is regarded as a reminiscence. He
has no other word to express the d 'priori element in
all experience.

There are, then, three things that are a priori : —

(1) Theoretical Reason, in other words, the condi-
tions which make all experience possible.

(2) Instinct, or the rule by which an object promot-
ing the life of the senses may, though unknown, be
attained.

106 MOEAL INSTINCT.

(3) The Moral Law, or the rule by which an action
takes place without any object.

Accordingly rational or intelligent action proceeds
by a rule laid down in accordance with the object as it
is understood. Instinctive action proceeds by a rule
without an understanding of the object of it. Moral
action proceeds by a rule without any object at all.

Theoretical Reason is the aggregate of rules in iiccord-
ance with which all my knowledge — that is to say,
the whole world of experience — necessarily proceeds.
In the same manner Instinct is the aggregate of rules
in accordance with which all my action necessarily
proceeds if it meets with no obstruction. Hence it
seems to me that Instinct may most appropriately be
called practical reason, for like theoretical reason it
determines the mnst of all experience.

The so-called moral law, on the other hand, is only
one aspect of the tetter consciousness, the aspect which
it presents from the point of view of instinct. This
better consciousness is something lying beyond all
experience, that is, beyond all reason, whether of the
theoretical or the practical kind, and has nothing to
do with it ; whilst it is in virtue of the mysterious
union of it and reason in the same individual that the
better consciousness comes into conflict with reason,
leaving the individual to choose between the two.

In any conflict between the better consciousness and
reason, if the individual decides for reason, should it be
theoretical reason, he becomes a narrow, pedantic
philistine ; should it be practical, a rascal.

If he decides for the better consciousness, we can
make no further positive affirmation about him, for

MORAL INSTINCT. 107

if we were to do so, we should find ourselves in the
realm of reason ; and as it is only what takes place
within this realm that we can speak of at all, it
follows that we cannot speak of the better con-
sciousness except in negative terms.

This shows us how it is that reason is hindered and
obstructed; that theoretical reason is suppressed in favour
of geniits, and practical reason in favour of virtue.
Now the better consciousness is neither theoretical nor
practical ; for these are distinctions that only apply to
reason. But if the individual is in the act of choosing,
the better consciousness appears to him in the aspect
which it assumes in vanquishing and overcoming the
practical reason (or instinct, to use the common word),
it appears to him as an imperative command, an ought
It so appears to him, I say ; in other words, that is
the shape which it takes for the theoretical reason,
which renders all things into objects and ideas. But
in so far as the better consciousness desires to van-
quish and overcome the theoretical reason, it takes no
shape at all; on the simple ground that, as it comes
into play, the theoretical reason is suppressed and be-
comes the mere servant of the better consciousness.
That is why genius can never give any account of its
own works.

In the morality of action, the legal principle that
both sides are to be heard must not be allowed to
apply ; in other words, the claims of self and the
senses must not be urged. Nay, on the contrary, as
soon as the pure will has found expression, the case is
closed ; nee audienda altera pars.

The lower animals are not endowed with moral

108 MORAL INSTINCT.

freedom. Probably this is not because they show no
trace of the better consciousness which in us is
manifested as morality, or nothing analogous to it;
for, if that were so, the lower animals, which are in so
many respects like ourselves in outward appearance
that we regard man as a species of animal, would
possess some raison d'etre entirely different from our
own, and actually be, in their essential and inmost
nature, something quite other than ourselves. This
is a contention which is obviously refuted by the
thoroughly malignant and inherently vicious char-
acter of certain animals, such as the crocodile, the
hygena, the scorpion, the snake, and the gentle,
affectionate and contented character of others, such as
the dog. Here, as in the case of men, the character,
as it is manifested, must rest upon something that is
above and beyond time. For, as Jacob Bohme says,^
there is a poiver in every animal which is indestructible ^
and the spirit of the world dravjs it into itself, against
the final separation at the Last Judgment. Therefore
we cannot call the lower animals free, and the reason
why we cannot do so is that they are wanting in a
faculty which is profoundly subordinate to the better
consciousness in its highest phase, I mean reason
Reason is the faculty of supreme comprehension, the
idea of totality. How reason manifests itself in the
theoretical sphere Kant has shown, and it does the
same in the practical : it makes us capable of
observing and surveying the whole of our life, thought,
and action, in continual connection, and therefore
of acting according to general maxims, whether those

^ Epistles^ 56.

MORAL INSTINCT. 109

maxims originate in the understanding as prudential
rules, or in the better consciousness as moral laws.

If any desire or passion is aroused in us, we, and in
the same way the lower animals, are for the moment
filled with this desire ; we are all anger, all lust, all
fear; and in such moments neither the better con-
sciousness can speak, nor the understanding consider
the consequences. But in our case reason allows us
even at that moment to see our actions and our life
as an unbroken chain, — a chain which connects our
earlier resolutions, or, it may be, the future conse-
quences of our action, with the moment of passion
which now fills our whole consciousness. It shows us
the identity of our person, even when that person
is exposed to influences of the most varied kind, and
thereby we are enabled to act according to maxims.
The lower animal is wanting in this faculty ; the
passion which seizes it completely dominates it, and
can be checked only by another passion — anger, for
instance, or lust, by fear ; even though the vision that
terrifies does not appeal to the senses, but is present
in the animal only as a dim memory and imagination.
Men, therefore, may be called irrational, if, like the
lower animals, they allow themselves to be determined
by the moment.

So far, however, is reason from being the source of
morality, that it is reason alone which makes us
capable of being rascals, which the lower animals cannot
be. It is reason which enables us to form an evil
resolution and to keep it when the provocation to evil
is removed ; it enables us, for example, to nurse
vengeance. Although at the moment that we have an

110 MORAL INSTINCT.

opportunity of fulfilling our resolution the better con-
sciousness may manifest itself as love or charity, it
is by force of reason, in pursuance of some evil maxim,
that we act against it. Thus Goethe says that a man
may use his reason only for the purpose of being more
bestial than any beast : —

Er hat Vernunft, dock braucht er sie allein
Um thierischer als jedes Thier zu sein.

For not only do we, like the beasts, satisfy the
desires of the moment, but we refine upon them and
stimulate them in order to prepare the desire for
the satisfaction.

Whenever we think that we perceive a trace of
reason in the lower animals, it fills us with surprise.
Now our surprise is not excited by the good and affec-
tionate disposition which some of them exhibit—
we recognise that as something other than reason —
but by some action in them which seems to be deter-
mined not by the impression of the moment, but by a
resolution previously made and kept. Elephants, for
instance, are reported to have taken premeditated
revenge for insults long after they were suffered ;
lions, to have requited benefits on an opportunity
tardily offered. The truth of such stories has, how-
ever, no bearing at all on the question. What do we
mean by reason ? But they enable us to decide whether
in the lower animals there is any trace of anything that
we can call reason.

Kant not only declares that all our moral sentiments
originate in reason, but he lays down that reason, in
my sense of the ivord, is a condition of moral action ; as

MORAL INSTINCT. Ill

he holds that for an action to be virtuous and meri-
torious it must be done in accordance with maxims,
and not spring from a resolve taken under some
momentary impression. But in both contentions he
is wrong. If I resolve to take vengeance on some
one, and when an opportunity offers, the better con-
sciousness in the form of love and humanity speaks
its word, and I am influenced by it rather than by
my evil resolution, this is a virtuous act, for it is a
manifestation of the better consciousness. It is
possible to conceive of a very virtuous man in whom
the better consciousness is so continuously active that
it is never silent, and never allows his passions to get
a complete hold of him. By such consciousness he is
subject to a direct control, instead of being guided
indirectly, through the medium of reason, by means
of maxims and moral principles. That is why a man
may have weak reasoning powers and a weak under-
standing, and yet have a high sense of morality and
be eminently good ; for the most important element
in a man depends as little on intellectual as it does on
physical strength. Jesus says, Blessed are the poor in
spirit. And Jacob Bohme has the excellent and noble
observation : Whoso lies qidetly in his oiun willy like a
child in the womh, and lets himself he led and guided hy
that inner principle from which he is sprung, is the nohlest
and richest on earth}

1 EiAslles, 37.

ETHICAL REFLECTIONS.

8

ETHICAL REFLECTIONS.

The philosophers of the ancient world united in a
single conception a great many things that had no
connection with one another. Of this every dialogue
of Plato's furnishes abundant examples. The greatest
and worst confusion of this kind is that between ethics
and politics. The State and the Kingdom of God, or
the Moral Law, are so entirely different in their char-
acter that the former is a parody of the latter, a
bitter mockery at the absence of it. Compared with
the Moral Law, the State is a crutch instead of a limb,
an automaton instead of a man.

The principle of lionour stands in close connection
with human freedom. It is, as it were, an abuse of
that freedom. Instead of using his freedom to fulfil
the moral law, a man employs his power of voluntarily
undergoing any feeling of pain, of overcoming any
momentary impression, in order that he may assert
his self-will, whatever be the object to which he
directs it. As he thereby shows that, unlike the
lower animals, he has thoughts which go beyond the
welfare of his body and whatever makes for that
welfare, it has come about that the principle of honour
is often confused with virtue. They are regarded as

116 ETHICAL REFLECTIONS.

if they were twins. But wrongly; for although the
principle of honour is something which distinguishes
man from the lower animals, it is not, in itself, any-
thing that raises him above them. Taken as an end
and aim, it is as dark a delusion as any other aim that
springs from self. Used as a means, or casually, it
may be productive of good ; but even that is a good
which is vain and frivolous. It is the misuse of
freedom, the employment of it as a weapon for
overcoming the world of feeling, that makes man so
infinitely more terrible than the lower animals ; for
they do only what momentary instinct bids them ;
while man acts by ideas, and his ideas may entail uni-
versal ruin before they are satisfied.

There is another circumstance which helps to pro-
mote the notion that honour and virtue are connected.
A man who can do what he wants to do shows that
he can also do it if what he wants to do is a virtuous
act. But that those of our actions which we are our-
selves obliged to regard with contempt are also
regarded with contempt by other people, serves more
than anything that I have here mentioned to establish
the connection. Thus it often happens that a man
who is not afraid of the one kind of contempt is
unwilling to undergo the other. But when we are
called upon to choose between our own approval and
the world's censure, as may occur in complicated and
mistaken circumstances, what becomes of the principle
of honour then ?

Two characteristic examples of the principle of
honour are to be found in Shakespeare's Henry VI.,
Part II., Act IV., Sc. 1. A pirate is anxious to murder

ETHICAL EEFLBCTIONS. 117

his captive instead of accepting, like others, a ransom
for him ; because in taking his captive he lost an eye,
and his own honour and that of his forefathers would
in his opinion be stained, if he were to allow his re-
venge to be bought off as though he were a mere trader.
The prisoner, on the other hand, who is the Duke of
Suffolk, prefers to have his head grace a pole than
to uncover it to such a low fellow as a pirate, by
approaching him to ask for mercy.

Just as civic honour— in other words, the opinion
that we deserve to be trusted— is the palladium of
those whose endeavour it is to make their way in the
world on the path of honourable business, so knightly
honour — in other words, the opinion that we are men
to be feared— is the palladium of those who aim at
going through life on the path of violence ; and so it
was that knightly honour arose among the robber-
knights and other knights of the Middle Ages.

A theoretical philosopher is one who can supply, in
the shape of ideas for the reason, a copy of the pre-
sentations of experience ; just as what the painter
sees he can reproduce on canvas; the sculptor, in
marble; the poet, in pictures for the imagination,
though they are pictures which he supplies only in
sowing the ideas from which they sprang.

A so-called practical philosopher, on the other hand,
is one who, contrarily, deduces his action from ideas.
The theoretical philosopher transforms life into ideas.
The practical philosopher transforms ideas into life ;
he acts, therefore, in a thoroughly reasonable manner ;

118 ETHICAL REFLECTIONS.

he is consistent, regular, deliberate ; he is never hasty
or passionate ; he never allows himself to be influenced
by the impression of the moment.

And indeed, when we find ourselves among those
full presentations of experience, or real objects, to
which the body belongs — since the body is only an
objectified will, the shape which the will assumes in
the material world — it is difficult to let our bodies be
guided not by those presentations, but by a mere
image of them, by cold, colourless ideas, which are
related to experience as the shadow of Orcus to life ;
and yet this is the only way in which we can avoid
doing things of which we may have to repent.

The theoretical philosopher enriches the domain of
reason by adding to it ; the practical philosopher
draws upon it, and makes it serve him.

According to Kant the truth of experience is only
a hypothetical truth. If the suppositions which
underlie all the intimations of experience — subject,
object, time, space and causality — were removed, none
of those intimations would contain a word of truth.
In other words, experience is only a phenomenon ; it
is not knowledge of the thing-in-itself.

If we find something in our own conduct at which
we are secretly pleased, although we cannot reconcile it
with experience, seeing that if we were to follow the
guidance of experience we should have to do precisely
the opposite, we must not allow this to put us out ;
otherwise we should be ascribing an authority to
experience which it does not deserve, for all that it

ETHICAL REFLECTIONS. 119

teaches rests upon a mere supposition. This is the
general tendency of the Kantian Ethics.

Innocence is in its very nature stupid. It is stupid
because the aim of life (I use the expression only
figuratively, and I could just as well speak of the
essence of life, or of the world) is to gain a knowledge
of our own bad will, so that our will may become an
object for us, and that we may undergo an inward
conversion. Our body is itself our will objectified ;
it is one of the first and foremost of objects, and the
deeds that we accomplish for the sake of the body
show us the evil inherent in our will. In the state of
innocence, where there is no evil because there is no
experience, man is, as it were, only an apparatus for
living, and the object for which the apparatus exists
is not yet disclosed. An empty form of life like this,
a stage untenanted, is in itself, like the so-called real
world, null and void ; and as it can attain a meaning
only by action, by error, by knowledge, by the con-
vulsions of the will, it wears a character of insipid
stupidity. A golden age of innocence, a fools' para-
dise, is a notion that is stupid and unmeaning, and for
that very reason in no way worthy of any respect. The
first criminal and murderer, Cain, who acquired a
knowledge of guilt, and through guilt acquired a know-
ledge of virtue by repentance, and so came to under-
stand the meaning of life, is a tragical figure more
significant, and almost more respectable, than all the
innocent fools in the world put together.

120 ETHICAL BEFLECTIONS.

If I had to write about modesty I should say : I
know the esteemed public for which I have the
honour to write far too well to dare to give utterance
to my opinion about this virtue. Personally I am
quite content to be modest and to apply myself
to this virtue with the utmost possible circumspection.
But one thing I shall never admit — that I have ever
required modesty of any man, and any statement to
that effect I repel as a slander.

The paltry character of most men compels the few
who have any merit or genius to behave as though
they did not know their own value, and consequently
did not know other people's want of value ; for it is
only on this condition that the mob acquiesces in
tolerating merit. A virtue has been made out of this
necessity, and it is called modesty. It is a piece of
hypocrisy, to be excused only because other people
are so paltry that they must be treated with in-
dulgence.

Human misery may affect us in two ways, and we
may be in one of two opposite moods in regard to it.

In one of them, this misery is immediately present
to us. We feel it in our own person, in our own will.
It is imbued with violent desires, and it is everywhere
broken, and this is the process which constitutes
suffering. The result is that the will increases in
violence, as is shown in all cases of passion and
emotion ; and this increasing violence comes to a stop
only when the will turns and gives way to complete
resignation, in other words, is redeemed. The man

ETHICAL EEFLECTIONS. 121

who is entirely dominated by this mood will regard
any prosperity which he may see in others with envy,
and any suffering with no sympathy.

In the opposite mood human misery is present to us
only as a fact of knowledge, that is to say, indirectly.
We are mainly engaged in looking at the sufferings
of others, and our attention is withdrawn from our
own. It is in their person that we become aware of
human misery ; we are filled with sympathy ; and the
result of this mood is general benevolence, philan-
thropy. All envy vanishes, and instead of feeling it,
we are rejoiced when we see one of our tormented
fellow-creatures experience any pleasure or relief.

After the same fashion we may be in one of two
opposite moods in regard to human baseness and
depravity. In the one we perceive this baseness
indirectly, in others. Out of this mood arise indigna-
tion, hatred, and contempt of mankind. In the other we
perceive it directly, in ourselves. Out of it there arises
humiliation, nay, contrition.

In order to judge the moral value of a man, it is
very important to observe which of these four moods
predominate in him. They go in pairs, one out of
each division. In very excellent characters the
second mood of each division will predominate.

The categorical imperative, or absolute command,
is a contradiction. Every command is conditional.
What is unconditional and necessary is a must, such as
is presented by the laws of nature.

It is quite true that the moral law is entirely

122 ETHICAL REFLECTIONS.

conditional. There is a world and a view of life in
which it has neither validity nor significance. That
world is, properly speaking, the real world in which,
as individuals, we live ; for every regard paid to
morality is a denial of that world and of our
individual life in it. It is a view of the world,
however, which does not go beyond the principle of
sufficient reason ; and the opposite view proceeds by
the intuition of Ideas.

If a man is under the influence of two opposite
but very strong motives, A and B, and I am greatly
concerned that he should choose A, but still more
that he should never be untrue to his choice, and
by changing his mind betray me, or the like, it will
not do for me to say anything that might hinder the
motive B from having its full effect upon him, and
only emphasise A ; for then I should never be able
to reckon on his decision. What I have to do is,
rather, to put both motives before him at the same
time, in as vivid and clear a way as possible, so that
they may work upon him with their whole force.
The choice that he then makes is the decision of his
inmost nature, and stands firm to all eternity. In
saying / ivill do this, he has said / must do this. I
have got at his will, and I can rely upon its working
as steadily as one of the forces of nature. It is as
certain as fire kindles and water wets that he will
act according to the motive which has proved to be
stronger for him. Insight and knowledge may be
attained and lost again ; they may be changed, or

ETHICAL REFLECTIONS. 123

improved, or destroyed ; but will cannot be changed.
That is why I apprehend^ 1 perceive, I see, is subject to
alteration and uncertainty ; / will, pronounced on a
right apprehension of motive, is as firm as nature
itself.

The difficulty, however, lies in getting at a right
apprehension. A man's apprehension of motive may
change, or be corrected or perverted ; and, on the
other hand, his circumstances may undergo an
alteration.

A man should exercise an almost boundless tolera-
tion and placability, because if he is capricious
enough to refuse to forgive a single individual for the
meanness or evil that lies at his door, it is doing the
rest of the world a quite unmerited honour.

But at the same time the man who is every one's
friend is no one's friend. It is quite obvious what
sort of friendship it is which we hold out to the
human race, and to which it is open to almost every
man to return, no matter what he may have done.

Witli the ancients friendship was one of the chief
elements in morality. But friendship is only limita-
tion and partiality ; it is the restriction to one
individual of what is the due of all mankind, namely,
the recognition that a man's own nature and that of
mankind are identical. At most it is a compromise
between this recognition and selfishness.

124 ETHICAL REFLECTIONS.

A lie always has its origin in the desire to extend
the dominion of one's own will over other individuals,
and to deny their will in order the better to affirm
one's own. Consequently a lie is in its very nature
the product of injustice, malevolence and villainy.
That is why truth, sincerity, candour and rectitude
are at once recognised and valued as praiseworthy
and noble qualities ; because we presume that the
man who exhibits them entertains no sentiments of
injustice or malice, and therefore stands in no need of
concealing such sentiments. He who is open cherishes
nothing that is bad.

There is a certain kind of courage which springs
from the same source as good-nature. What I mean
is that the good-natured man is almost as clearly
conscious that he exists in other individuals as in
himself. I have often shown how this feeling gives
rise to good-nature. It also gives rise to courage,' for
the simple reason that the man who possesses this
feeling cares less for his own individual existence, as
he lives almost as much in the general existence of all
creatures. Accordingly he is little concerned for his
own life and its belongings. This is by no means the
sole source of courage for it is a phenomenon due to
various causes. But it is the noblest kind of courage,
as is shown by the fact that in its origin it is associ-
ated with great gentleness and patience. Men of this
kind are usually irresistible to women.

All general rules and precepts fail, because they

ETHICAL REFLECTIONS. 126

proceed from the false assumption that men are con-
stituted wholly, or almost wholly, alike ; an assump-
tion which the philosophy of Helvetius expressly
makes. Whereas the truth is that the original
difference between individuals in intellect and morality
is immeasurable.

The question as to whether morality is something
real is the question whether a well-grounded counter-
principle to egoism actually exists.

As egoism restricts concern for welfare to a single
individual, m>., the man's own self, the counter-
principle would have to extend it to all other
individuals.

It is only because the will is above and beyond
time that the stings of conscience are ineradicable,
and do not, like other pains, gradually wear away.
No 1 an evil deed weighs on the conscience years
afterwards as heavily as if it had been freshly com-
mitted.

Character is innate, and conduct is merely its mani-
festation ; the occasion for great misdeeds comes
seldom ; strong counter-motives keep us back ; our
disposition is revealed to ourselves by our desires,
thoughts, emotions, when it remains unknown to
others. Reflecting on all this, we might suppose it
possible for a man to possess, in some sort, an innate

126 ETHICAL EEFLECTIONS.

evil conscience, without ever having done anything
very bad.

Do7iH do to others what you wouldn't like done to your-
self. This is, perhaps, one of those arguments that
prove, or rather ask, too much. For a prisoner might
address it to a judge.

Stupid people are generally malicious, for the very
same reason as the ugly and the deformed.

Similarly, genius and sanctity are akin. However
simple-minded a saint may be, he will nevertheless
have a dash of genius in him ; and however many
errors of temperament, or of actual character, a genius
may possess, he will still exhibit a certain nobility of
disposition, by which he shows his kinship with the
saint.

The great difference between Law without and Law
within, between the State and the Kingdom of God,
is very clear. It is the State's business to see that
every one should have justice done to him ; it regards
men as passive beings, and therefore takes no account
of anything but their actions. The Moral Law, on
the other hand, is concerned that every one should do
justice ; it regards men as active, and looks to the will
rather than the deed. To prove that this is the true
distinction let the reader consider what would happen
if he were to say, conversely, that it is the State's
business that every one should do justice, and

ETHICAL EEFLEOTIONS. 127

the business of the Moral Law that every one should
have justice done to him. The absurdity is obvious.

As an example of the distinction, let me take the
case of a debtor and a creditor disputing about a debt
which the former denies. A lawyer and a moralist
are present, and show a lively interest in the matter.
Both desire that the dispute should end in the same
way, although what they want is by no means the
same. The lawyer says, / want this man to get lack
what belongs to him; and the moralist, / want that
man to do his duty.

It is with the will alone that morality is concerned.
Whether external force hinders or fails to hinder the
will from working does not in the least matter. For
morality the external world is real only in so far as
it is able or unable to lead and influence the will. As
soon as the will is determined, that is, as soon as a
resolve is taken, the external world and its events are
of nofurther moment and practically do not exist.
For if the events of the world had any such reality —
that is to say, if they possessed a significance in them-
selves, or any other than that derived from the will
which is affected by them — what a grievance it would
be that all these events lie in the realm of chance
and error ! It is, however, just this which proves that
the important thing is not what happens, but what is
willed. Accordingly, let the incidents of life be left
to the play of chance and error, to demonstrate to
man that he is as chaff* before the wind.

The State concerns itself only with the incidents —
with what happens ; nothing else has any reality for
it. I may dwell upon thoughts of murder and poison

128 ETHICAL REFLECTIONS.

as much as I please : the State does not forbid me, so
long as the axe and rope control my will, and prevent
it from becoming action.

Ethics asks : What are the duties towards others
which justice imposes upon us ? in other words, What
must I render ? The Law of Nature asks : What need
I not submit to from others ? that is. What must I
suffer ? The question is put, not that I may do no
injustice, but that I may not do more than every man
must do if he is to safeguard his existence, and than
every man will approve being done, in order that he
may be treated in the same way himself ; and, further,
that I may not do more than society will permit me
to do. The same answer will serve for both questions,
just as the same straight line can be drawn from
either of two opposite directions, namely, by opposing
forces ; or, again, as the angle can give the sine, or
the sine the angle.

It has been said that the historian is an inverted
prophet. In the same way it may be said that a
teacher of laW is an inverted moralist {viz., a teacher
of the duties of justice), or that politics are inverted
ethics, if we exclude the thought that ethics also
teaches the duty of benevolence, magnanimity, love,
and so on. The State is the Gordian knot that is
cut instead of being untied; it is Columbus' egg
which is made to stand by being broken instead of
balanced, as though the business in question were to
make it stand rather than to balance it. In this
respect the State is like the man who thinks that he
can produce fine weather by making the barometer
go up.

ETHICAL EEFLECTIONS. 129

The pseudo-philosophers of our age tell us that it is
the object of the State to promote the moral aims of
mankind. This is not true ; it is rather the contrary
which is true. The aim for which mankind exists —
the expression is parabolic — is not that a man should
act in such and such a manner ; for all opera operata,
things that have actually been done, are in themselves
matters of indifference. No ! the aim is that the Will,
of which every man is a complete specimen — nay, is the
very Will itself — should turn whither it needs to turn ;
that the man himself (the union of Thought and Will)
should perceive what this will is, and what horrors
it contains ; that he should show the reflection of
himself in his own deeds, in the abomination of them.
The State, which is wholly concerned with the general
welfare, checks the manifestation of the bad will, but
in no wise checks the will itself ; the attempt would
be impossible. It is because the State checks the
manifestation of his will that a man very seldom sees
the whole abomination of his nature in the mirror of
his deeds. Or does the reader actually suppose that
there are no people in the world as bad as Robespierre,
Napoleon, or other murderers ? Does he fail to see
that there are many who would act like them if only
they could ?

Many a criminal dies more quietly on the scaffold
than many a non-criminal in the arms of his family.
The one has perceived what his will is and has dis-
carded it. The other has not been able to discard it,
because he has never been able to perceive what it is.
The aim of the State is to produce a fools' paradise,
and this is in direct conflict with the true aim of life,

9

130 ETHICAL REFLECTIONS.

namely, to attain a knowledge of what the will, in its
horrible nature, really is.

Napoleon was not really worse than many, not to
say most, men. He was possessed of the very ordinary
egoism that seeks its welfare at the expense of
others. What distinguished him was merely the
greater power he had of satisfying his will, and
greater intelligence, reason and courage; added to
which, chance gave him a favourable scope for his
operations. By means of all this, he did for his
egoism what a thousand other men would like to do
for theirs, but cannot. Every feeble lad who by little
acts of villainy gains a small advantage for himself by
putting others to some disadvantage, although it may
be equally small, is just as bad as Napoleon.

Those who fancy that retribution comes after death
would demand that Napoleon should by unutterable
torments pay the penalty for all the numberless
calamities that he caused. But he is no more culpable
than all those who possess the same will, unaccom-
panied by the same power.

The circumstance that in his case this extraordinary
power was added, allowed him to reveal the whole
wickedness of the human will ; and the sufferings of
his age, as the mercenary obverse of the medal,
reveal the misery, which is inextricably bound up
with this bad will. It is the general manipulation
of this will that constitutes the world. But it is
precisely that it should be understood how inex-
tricably the will to live is bound up with, and is

ETHICAL EEFLECTIONS. 131

really one and the same as, this unspeakable misery,
that is the world's aim and purpose ; and it is an aim
and purpose which the appearance of Napoleon did
much to assist. Not to be an unmeaning fools'
paradise, but a tragedy, in which the will to live
understands itself and yields — that is the object for
which the world exists. Napoleon is only a forcible
example of the will to live.

The difference between the man who causes suffering,
and the man who suffers it, is only phenomenal. It is
all a will to live, identical with great suffering ; and
it is only by understanding this that the will can
mend and end.

What chiefly distinguishes ancient from modern
times is that in ancient times, to use Napoleon's ex-
pression, it was affairs that reigned: les paroles aux
choses. In modern times this is not so. What I
mean is that in ancient times the character of public
life, of the State, and of Religion, as well as of
private life, was a strenuous affirmation of the
will to live. In modern times it is a denial of
this will, for such is the character of Christianity.
But now while on the one hand that denial has
suffered some abatement even in public opinion,
because it is too repugnant to human character, on
the other what is publicly denied is secretly affirmed.
Hence it is that we see half measures and falsehood
everywhere ; and that is why modern times look so
small beside antiquity.

132 ETHICAL REFLECTIONS.

The structure of human society is like a pendulum
swinging between two impulses, two evils in polar
opposition, despotism and anarchy. The further it
gets from the one, the nearer it approaches the other.
From this the reader might hit on the thought that if
it were exactly midway between the two, it would be
right. Far from it. For these two evils are by no
means equally bad and dangerous. The former is
incomparably less to be feared ; its ills exist in the
main only as possibilities, and if they come at all, it
is only one among millions that they touch. But
with anarchy, possibility and actuality are insepar-
able ; its blows fall on every man every day. There-
fore every constitution should be a nearer approach
to a despotism than to anarchy ; nay, it must contain
a small possibility of despotism.

' BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

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