We might perhaps regard the whole of our discussion (now concluded) of what I call the denial of the will as inconsistent with the previous explanation of necessity, that appertains just as much to motivation as to every other form of the principle of sufficient reason. As a result of that necessity, motives, like all causes, are only occasional causes on which the character unfolds its nature, and reveals it with the necessity of a natural law. For this reason we positively denied freedom as liberum arbitrium indifferentiae. Yet far from suppressing this here, I call it to mind. In truth, real freedom, in other words, independence of the principle of sufficient reason, belongs to the will as thing-in-itself, not to its phenomenon, whose essential form is everywhere this principle of sufficient reason, the element of necessity. But the only case where that freedom can become immediately visible in the phenomenon is the one where it makes an end of what appears, and because the mere phenomenon, in so far as it is a link in the chain of causes, namely the living body, still continues to exist in time that contains only phenomena, the will, manifesting itself through this phenomenon, is then in contradiction with it, since it denies what the phenomenon expresses. In such a case the genitals, for example, as the visibility of the sexual impulse, are there and in health; but yet in the innermost consciousness no sexual satisfaction is desired. The whole body is the visible expression of the will-to-live, yet the motives corresponding to this will no longer act; indeed the dissolution of the body, the end of the individual, and thus the greatest suppression of the natural will, is welcome and desired. Now the contradiction between our assertions, on the one hand, of the necessity of the will’s determinations through motives according to the character, and our assertions, on the other, of the possibilty of the whole suppression of the will, whereby motives become powerless, is only the repetition in the reflection of philosophy of this real contradiction that arises from the direct encroachment of the freedom of the will-in-itself, knowing no necessity, on the necessity of its phenomenon. But the key to the reconciliation of these contradictions lies in the fact that the state in which the character is withdrawn from the power of motives does not proceed directly from the will, but from a changed form of knowledge. Thus, so long as the knowledge is only that which is involved in the principium individuationis, and which positively follows the principle of sufficent reason, the power of the motives is irresistible. But when the principium individuationis is seen through, when the Ideas, and indeed the inner nature of the thing-in-itself, are immediately recognized as the same will in all, and the result of this knowledge is a universal quieter of willing, then the individual motives become ineffective, because the kind of knowledge that corresponds to them is obscured and pushed into the background by knowledge of quite a different kind. Therefore the character can never partially change, but must, with the consistency of a law of nature, realize in the particular individual the will whose phenomenon it is in general and as a whole. But this whole, the character itself, can be entirely eliminated by the above-mentioned change of knowledge. It is this elimination or suppression at which Asmus marvels, as said above, and which he describes as the “catholic, transcendental change.” It is also that which in the Christian Church is very appropriately called new birth or regeneration, and the knowledge from which it springs, the effect of divine grace. Therefore, it is not a question of a change, but of an entire suppression of the character; and so it happens that, however different the characters that arrived at that suppression were before it, they nevertheless show after it a great similarity in their mode of conduct, although each speaks very differently according to his concepts and dogmas.
Therefore, in this sense, the old philosophical argument about the freedom of the will, constantly contested and constantly maintained, is not without ground, and the Church dogma of the effect of grace and the new birth is also not without meaning and significance. But now we unexpectedly see both coincide into one, and can understand in what sense the admirable Malebranche could say: “La liberté est un mystère”;202 and he was right. For just what the Christian mystics call the effect of grace and the new birth, is for us the only direct expression of the freedom of the will. It appears only when the will, after arriving at the knowledge of its own inner nature, obtains from this a quieter, and is thus removed from the effect of motives which lies in the province of a different kind of knowledge, whose objects are only phenomena. The possibility of the freedom that thus manifests itself is man’s greatest prerogative, which is for ever wanting in the animal, because the condition for it is the deliberation of the faculty of reason, enabling him to survey the whole of life independently of the impression of the present moment. The animal is without any possibility of freedom, as indeed it is without the possibility of a real, and hence deliberate, elective decision after a previous complete conflict of motives, which for this purpose would have to be abstract representations. Therefore the hungry wolf buries its teeth in the flesh of the deer with the same necessity with which the stone falls to the ground, without the possibility of the knowledge that it is the mauled as well as the mauler. Necessity is the kingdom of nature; freedom is the kingdom of grace.
Now since, as we have seen, that self-suppression of the will comes from knowledge, but all knowledge and insight as such are independent of free choice, that denial of willing, that entrance into freedom, is not to be forcibly arrived at by intention or design, but comes from the innermost relation of knowing and willing in man; hence it comes suddenly, as if flying in from without. Therefore, the Church calls it the effect of grace; but just as she still represents it as depending on the acceptance of grace, so too the effect of the quieter is ultimately an act of the freedom of the will. In consequence of such an effect of grace, man’s whole inner nature is fundamentally changed and reversed, so that he no longer wills anything of all that he previously willed so intensely; thus a new man, so to speak, actually takes the place of the old. For this reason, the Church calls this consequence of the effect of grace new birth or regeneration. For what she calls the natural man, to whom she denies all capacity for good, is that very will-to-live that must be denied if salvation is to be attained from an existence like ours. Behind our existence lies something else that becomes accessible to us only by our shaking off the world.
Considering not the individuals according to the principle of sufficient reason, but the Idea of man in its unity, the Christian teaching symbolizes nature, the affirmation of the will-to-live, in Adam. His sin bequeathed to us, in other words, our unity with him in the Idea, which manifests itself in time through the bond of generation, causes us all to partake of suffering and eternal death. On the other hand, the Christian teaching symbolizes grace, the denial of the will, salvation, in the God become man. As he is free from all sinfulness, in other words, from all willing of life, he cannot, like us, have resulted from the most decided affirmation of the will; nor can he, like us, have a body that is through and through only concrete will, phenomenon of the will, but, born of a pure virgin, he has only a phantom body. This last is what was taught by the Docetae, certain Fathers of the Church, who in this respect are very consistent. It was taught especially by Apelles, against whom and his followers Tertullian revolted. But even Augustine comments on the passage, Rom. viii, 3, “God sending his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh,” and says: “Non enim caro peccati erat, quae non de carnali delecta-tione nata erat: sed tamen inerat ei similitudo carnis peccati, quia mortalis caro erat” (Liber 83 Quaestionum, qu. 66).203 He also teaches in his work entitled Opus Imperfectum, i, 47, that original sin is sin and punishment at the same time. It is already to be found in new-born children, but shows itself only when they grow up. Nevertheless the origin of this sin is to be inferred from the will of the sinner. This sinner was Adam, but we all existed in him; Adam became miserable, and in him we have all become miserable. The doctrine of original sin (affirmation of the will) and of salvation (denial of the will) is really the great truth which constitutes the kernel of Christianity, while the rest is in the main only clothing and covering, or something accessory. Accordingly, we should interpret Jesus Christ always in the universal, as the symbol or personification of the denial of the will-to-live, but not in the individual, whether according to his mythical history in the Gospels, or according to the probably true history lying at the root thereof. For neither the one nor the other will easily satisfy us entirely. It is merely the vehicle of that first interpretation for the people, who always demand something founded on fact. That Christianity has recently forgotten its true significance, and has degenerated into shallow optimism, does not concern us here.
It is further an original and evangelical doctrine of Christianity, which Augustine, with the consent of the heads of the Church, defended against the platitudes of the Pelagians; and to purify this of errors and re-establish it was the principal aim of Luther’s efforts, as is expressly declared in his book De Servo Arbitrio; namely the doctrine that the will is not free, but is originally subject to a propensity for evil. Therefore the works of the will are always sinful and imperfect, and can never satisfy justice; finally, these works can never save us, but faith alone can do this. Yet this faith itself does not originate from resolution and free will, but through the effect of grace without our participation, like something coming to us from outside. Not only the dogmas previously mentioned, but also this last genuinely evangelical dogma is among those that an ignorant and dull opinion at the present day rejects as absurd or conceals, since, in spite of Augustine and Luther, this opinion adheres to the Pelagian plain common sense, which is just what present-day rationalism is. It treats as antiquated precisely those profound dogmas that are peculiar and essential to Christianity in the narrowest sense. On the other hand, it clings to, and regards as the principal thing, only the dogma originating in and retained from Judaism, and connected with Christianity only in a historical way.204 We, however, recognize in the above-mentioned doctrine the truth that is in complete agreement with our own investigations. Thus we see that genuine virtue and saintliness of disposition have their first origin not in deliberate free choice (works), but in knowledge (faith), precisely as we developed it also from our principal idea. If it were works, springing from motives and deliberate intention, that led to the blissful state, then, however we may turn it, virtue would always be only a prudent, methodical, far-seeing egoism. But the faith to which the Christian Church promises salvation is this: that as through the fall of the first man we all partake of sin, and are subject to death and perdition, we are also all saved through grace and by the divine mediator taking upon himself our awful guilt, and this indeed entirely without any merit of our own (of the person). For what can result from the intentional (motive-determined) action of the person, namely works, can never justify us, by its very nature, just because it is intentional action brought about by motives, and hence opus operatum. Thus in this faith it is implied first of all that our state is originally and essentially an incurable one, and that we need deliverance from it; then that we ourselves belong essentially to evil, and are so firmly bound to it that our works according to law and precept, i.e., according to motives, can never satisfy justice or save us, but salvation is to be gained only through faith, in other words, through a changed way of knowledge. This faith can come only through grace, and hence as from without. This means that salvation is something quite foreign to our person, and points to a denial and surrender of this very person being necessary for salvation. Works, the observance of the law as such, can never justify, because they are always an action from motives. Luther requires (in his book De Libertate Christiana) that, after faith has made its appearance, good works shall result from it entirely of themselves, as its symptoms, its fruits; certainly not as something which in itself pretends to merit, justification, or reward, but occurs quite arbitrarily and gratuitously. We also represented, as resulting from an ever clearer discernment of the principium individuationis, first of all merely free justice, then affection extending to the complete surrender of egoism, and finally resignation or denial of the will.
Here I have introduced these dogmas of Christian theology, in themselves foreign to philosophy, merely in order to show that the ethics which results from the whole of our discussion, and is in complete agreement and connexion with all its parts, although possibly new and unprecedented according to the expression, is by no means so in essence. On the contrary, this system of ethics fully agrees with the Christian dogmas proper, and, according to its essentials, was contained and present even in these very dogmas. It is also just as much in agreement with the doctrines and ethical precepts of the sacred books of India, which again are presented in quite different forms. At the same time, the calling to mind of the dogmas of the Christian Church served to explain and elucidate the apparent contradiction between the necessity of all the manifestations of the character with the presentation of motives (kingdom of nature) on the one hand, and the freedom of the will-in-itself to deny itself and to abolish the character, on the other, together with all the necessity of the motives which is based on this character (kingdom of grace).