Cf. “East-West Fire . . . Schopenhauer’s Optimism and the Lankavatara Sutra,” C. A. Muses, 1955, passim.
“How many things are considered impossible until they are actually done!” [Tr.]
F. H. Jacobi.
The Hegelian philosophy.
“First motive.” [Tr.]
Fichte and Schelling.
Hegel.
“A short course in common sense.” [Tr.]
“First live, then philosophize.” [Tr.]
“Philosophy, thou goest poor and nude!” [Tr.]
“If anyone who wanders all day arrives towards evening, it is enough.” [Tr.]
On the Principle of Sufficient Reason, 2nd ed., § 22.
Only Kant has confused this conception of reason, and in this connexion I refer to the Appendix as well as to my Grundprobleme der Ethik, “Grundlage der Moral,” § 6, pp. 148-154 of the first edition (pp. 146-151 of the second).
Mira in quibusdam rebus verborum proprietas est, et consuetudo sermonis antiqui quaedam efficacissimis notis signat. Seneca, Epist. 81.
“The appropriateness of expression for many things is astonishing, and the usage of language, handed down from the ancients, expresses many things in the most effective manner.” [Tr.]
It is explained in the Appendix that matter and substance are one.
This shows the ground of the Kantian explanation of matter “that it is what is movable in space,” for motion consists only in the union of space and time.
Not, as Kant holds, from the knowledge of time, as is explained in the Appendix.
“Man is the dream of a shadow.” [Tr.]
“I see that we who are alive are nothing but deceptive forms and a fleeting shadow-picture.” [Tr.]
“Begging of the question.” [Tr.]
A word coined by Schopenhauer from two Greek words to express a contradiction or absurdity. [Tr.]
“Astonishment—a very philosophical emotion.” [Theaetetus, 155D. Tr.]
On this see The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, second edition, § 49.
To these first seven paragraphs belong the first four chapters of the first book of supplements.
[Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, no. 2, Tr.]
With this paragraph are to be compared §§ 26 and 27 of the second edition of the essay On the Principle of Sufficient Reason.
Cf. chaps. 5 and 6 of volume 2.
Cf. chaps. 9 and 10 of volume 2.
“From merely particular or negative premisses nothing follows.” “A conclusion from the consequent to the ground is not valid.” [Tr.]
“lying, veiled, horned [dilemma].” [Tr.]
Cf. chap. 11 of volume 2.
I am therefore of the opinion that the science of physiognomy cannot go any further with certainty than to lay down a few quite general rules. For example, intellectual qualities are in the forehead and the eye; ethical qualities, manifestations of the will, are to be read in the mouth and the lower half of the face. Forehead and eye elucidate each other; either of them seen without the other can be only half understood. Genius is never without a high, broad, finely arched brow, but such a brow is often without genius. Intellect may be inferred from a clever appearance the more certainly, the uglier the face is, and stupidity the more certainly from a stupid appearance, the more beautiful a face is, because beauty, as fitness and appropriateness to the type of humanity, carries in and by itself the expression of mental clearness; the opposite is the case with ugliness, and so on.
“No one can wear a mask for long.” “Dissimulation soon reverts to its own nature.” [Tr.]
Cf. chap. 7 of volume 2
Cf. chap. 8 of volume 2.
Suarez, Disputationes metaphysicae, disp. III, sect. 3, tit. 3.
Cf. chap. 12 of volume 2.
We must not think here of Kant’s misuse of these Greek expressions which is condemned in the Appendix.
“But more accurate and preferable to mere knowledge is that knowledge which not only says that something is, but also why it is so, and not that knowledge which teaches separately the That and the Why.” [Tr.]
Spinoza, who always boasts of proceeding more geometrico, has actually done so more than he himself knew. For what to him was certain and settled from an immediate perceptive apprehension of the nature of the world, he tries to demonstrate logically and independently of this knowledge. But of course he arrives at the intended result predetermined by him, only by taking as the starting-point concepts arbitrarily made by him (substantia, causa sui, and so on), and by allowing himself in the demonstration all the freedom of choice for which the nature of the wide concept-spheres affords convenient opportunity. Therefore, what is true and excellent in his doctrine is in his case, as in that of geometry, quite independent of the proofs. Cf. chap. 13 of volume 2.
Translator’s note: Dr Arthur Hübscher of the Schopenhauer Society of Germany is of the opinion that “not” should be deleted. In a letter he states that “im Text selbst habe ich das ‘nicht’ nicht gestrichen. Es steht in allen von Schopenhauer besorgten Ausgaben. Die Handschriƒt besitzen wir nicht. Ich nehme an, dass es sich um einen Flüchtigkeitsƒehler Schopenhauers handelt, wie sie öfter bei ihm vorkommen.... In diesem Falle scheint mir die Sache nicht ganz eindeutig entschieden zu sein, so dass ich in den Texibestand nicht eingreifen wollte.”
“That philosophy only is the true one which reproduces most faithfully the statements of nature, and is written down, as it were, from nature’s dictation, so that it is nothing but a copy and a reflection of nature, and adds nothing of its own, but is merely a repetition and echo.” [Tr.]
Cf. chap. 17 of volume 2.
“Truly hast thou a heart of iron!” [Tr.]
“We must procure either understanding or a rope (for hanging ourselves).”
“It is not poverty that pains, but strong desire.” [Tr.]
Omnes perturbationes judicio censent fieri et opinione. Cicero, Tusc., iv, 6. (“All dejected moods, so they teach, rest on judgement and opinion.” [Tr.]) (“All dejected moods, so they teach, rest on judgement and opinion.” [Tr.]) Tαράσσει τoὺs ἀνθρώπoυs oὐ τὰ πράγµατα, ἀλλὰ τὰ περì τω̃ν πραγµάτων δóγµατα (Perturbant homines non res ipsae, sed de rebus opiniones.) Epictetus, c. V. (“It is not things that disturb men, but opinions about things.” [Tr.])
“We must live according to the experience of what usually happens in nature.” [Tr.]
Toῦτo γάρ ἐστι τò αῐτιον τοĩς άνθρώποις πάντων τω̃ν κακω̄ν, τò τὰς προλήψεις τὰς κoινὰς µὴ δύνασθαι ἐφαρµóζειν ταīς ἐπì µέρους. (Haec est causa mortalibus omnium malorum, non posse communes notiones aptare singularibus.) Epictetus, Dissert. III, 26. (“For this is the cause of all evil for men, namely that they are not able to apply universal concepts to particular cases.” [Tr.])
“To live in harmony, i.e., according to one and the same principle and in harmony with oneself.” [Tr.]
“Virtue consists in the agreement of the soul with itself during the whole of life.” [Tr.]
“That thou mayest be able to spend thy life smoothly, Let not ever-pressing desire torment and vex thee, Or fear or hope for things of little worth.” [Tr.]
Cf. chap. 16 of volume 2.
“Unity of plan.” [Tr.]
“par excellence.” [Tr.]
Cf. chap. 18 of volume 2.
Thus we cannot in any way agree with Bacon when he (De Augmentis Scientiarum, 1. 4 in fine) thinks that all mechanical and physical movements of bodies ensue only after a preceding perception in these bodies, although a glimmering of truth gave birth even to this false proposition. This is also the case with Kepler’s statement, in his essay De Planeta Martis, that the planets must have knowledge in order to keep to their elliptical courses so accurately, and to regulate the velocity of their motion, so that the triangles of the plane of their course always remain proportional to the time in which they pass through their bases.
Cf. chap. 19 of volume 2.
“Just as everyone possesses the complex of flexible limbs, so does there dwell in men the mind in conformity with this. For everyone mind and complex of limbs are always the same; for intelligence is the criterion.” [Tr.]
Cf. chap. 20 of volume 2; also my work Über den Willen in der Natur, under the heads “Physiology” and “Comparative Anatomy,” where the subject, here merely alluded to, has received a full and thorough treatment.
This is specially dealt with in chap. 27 of volume 2.
This knowledge is fully established by my essay On the Freedom of the Will, in which therefore (pp. 30-44 of the Grundprobleme der Ethik, 2nd ed., pp. 29-41) the relation between cause, stimulus, and motive has been discussed in detail.
Cf. chap. 23 of volume 2, and also in my work Über den Willen in der Natur the chapter on “Physiology of Plants” and that on “Physical Astronomy,” which is of the greatest importance for the kernel of my metaphysics.
“If we were animals, we should love carnal life and what conforms to its meaning. For us this would be enough of a good, and accordingly we should demand nothing more, if all was well for us. Likewise, if we were trees, we should not feel or aspire to anything by movement, but yet we should seem to desire that by which we should be more fertile and bear more abundant fruits. If we were stones, or floods, or wind, or flame, or anything of the kind, without any consciousness and life, we should still not lack, so to speak, a certain longing for our position and order. For it is, so to speak, a desire that is decisive for the weight of bodies, whether by virtue of heaviness they tend downwards, or by virtue of lightness upwards. For the body is driven whither it is driven by its weight, precisely as the spirit is impelled by desire.” [Tr.]
“Plato teaches that the Ideas exist in nature, so to speak, as patterns or prototypes, and that the remainder of things only resemble them, and exist as their copies.” [Tr.]
Wenzel, De Structura Cerebri Hominis et Brutorum (1812), ch. 3; Cuvier, Leçons d’anatomie comparée, leçon 9, arts. 4 and 5; Vicq d’Azyr, Histoire de l’Académie des Sciences de Paris (1783), pp. 470 and 483.
On 16 September 1840, at a lecture on Egyptian Antiquities given at the Literary and Scientific Institute of London, Mr. Pettigrew exhibited some grains of wheat, found by Sir G. Wilkinson in a grave at Thebes, in which they must have been lying for three thousand years. They were found in a hermetically sealed vase. He had sown twelve grains, and from them had a plant which had grown to a height of five feet, whose seeds were now perfectly ripe. From The Times, 21 September 1840. In the same way, in 1830, Mr. Haulton produced at the Medical Botanical Society in London a bulbous root that had been found in the hand of an Egyptian mummy. It may have been put there from religious considerations, and was at least two thousand years old. He had planted it in a flower-pot, where it had at once grown up and was flourishing. This is quoted from the Medical Journal of 1830 in the Journal of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, October 1830, p. 196. “In the garden of Mr. Grimstone, of the Herbarium, Highgate, London, there is now a pea-plant, producing a full crop of peas, that came from a pea taken from a vase by Mr. Pettigrew and officials of the British Museum. This vase had been found in an Egyptian sarcophagus where it must have been lying for 2,844 years.” From The Times, 16 August 1844. Indeed, the living toads found in limestone lead to the assumption that even animal life is capable of such a suspension for thousands of years, if this is initiated during hibernation and maintained through special circumstances.
“Explanatory statements.” [Tr.]
“Heat and electric matter are wholly sufficient to make up this essential cause of life.” [Tr.]
“Unity of plan, uniformity of the anatomical element.” [Tr.]
“The serpent can become the dragon only by swallowing the serpent.” [Bacon, Sermones Fideles 38.—Tr.]
“For, as Empedocles says, if strife did not rule in things, then all would be a unity.” [Tr.]
“Man is a wolf for man.” [Plautus, Asinaria.—Tr.]
Cf. chap. 22 of volume 2, also my work Über den Willen in der Natur, pp. 54 seqq. and 70-79 of the first edition, or pp. 46 seqq. and 63-72 of the second.
The scholastics therefore said quite rightly: Causa finalis movet non secundum surun esse reale, sed secundum esse cognitum. See Suarez, Disp. Metaph., disp. XXIII, sect. 7 et 8. (“The final cause operates not according to its real being, but only according to its being as that is known.” [Tr.]
See Critique of Pure Reason, “Solution of the Cosmological Ideas of the Totality of the Deduction of World Events,” pp. 560-586 of the fifth edition, and pp. 532 seqq. of the first edition; and Critique of Practical Reason, fourth edition, pp. 169-179; Rosenkranz’s edition, pp. 224 seqq. Cf. my essay On the Principle of Sufficient Reason, § 43.
Cf. Über den Willen in der Natur, at the end of the section on “Comparative Anatomy.”
See Über den Willen in der Natur, the section on “Comparative Anatomy.”
Chatin, “Sur la Valisneria Spiralis,” in the Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences, No. 13, 1855.
Cf. chaps. 26 and 27 of volume 2.
Cf. chap. 28 of volume 2.
“Truly being.” [Tr.]
“A mere thinking by means of irrational sense perception.” [Tr.]
“In itself always in the same way.” [Tr.]
“Always being, and never either arising or passing away.” [Tr.]
F. H. Jacobi.
“Many are rod-bearers, yet few become Bacchantes.” [Tr.] “Philosophy has fallen into contempt, because people are not engaged in it to the extent that it merits; for not spurious, but genuine, philosophers should devote themselves to it.” [Tr.]
See, for example, Immanuel Kant, ein Denkmal, by Fr. Bouterweck, p. 49; and Buhle’s Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. 6, pp. 802-815, and 823.
“Persisting in the present.” [Tr.]
Cf. chap. 29 of volume 2.
“From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.” [Tr.]
“The mind is eternal in so far as it conceives things from the standpoint of eternity.” [Tr.]
I also recommend what he says ibid., 1. II, prop. 40, schol. 2, and 1. V, prop. 25-38, about the cognitio tertii generis, sive intuitiva, in illustration of the method of cognition we are here considering, and most particularly prop. 29, schol.; prop. 36, schol.; and prop. 38 demonstr. et schol.
[Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, III, lxxv.—Tr.]
“I am all this creation collectively, and besides me there exists no other being.” [Tr.] Cf. chap. 30 of volume 2.
This last sentence cannot be understood without some acquaintance with the following book.
Goethe’s Faust, Bayard Taylor’s translation. [Tr.]
The word used by Schopenhauer is “gemütlich.” [Tr.]
“What does all that prove?” [Tr.]
“There has been no great mind without an admixture of madness.” [Tr.]
“For Democritus asserts that there can be no great poet without madness; and Plato says the same thing.” [Tr.]
From Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel, I, 163; not from Pope as attributed by Schopenhauer. [Tr.]
Cf. chap. 31 of volume 2.
Cf. chap. 32 of volume 2.
Cf. chap. 33 of volume 2.
I am now all the more delighted and surprised, forty years after advancing this thought so timidly and hesitatingly, to discover that St. Augustine had already expressed it: Arbusta formas suas varias, quibus mundi hujus visibilis structura formosa est, sentiendas sensibus praebent; ut, pro eo quod NOSSE non possunt, quasi INNOTESCERE velle videantur. (De Civitate Dei, xi, 27.)
“The trees offer to the senses for perception the many different forms by which the structure of this visible world is adorned, so that, because they are unable to know, they may appear, as it were, to want to be known.” [Tr.]
“I am all this creation collectively, and besides me there exists no other being.” [Tr.]
“Plato taught that there are as many Ideas as there are natural things.” [Tr.]
“But they define Idea as a timeless prototype of natural things. For most of Plato’s followers do not admit that there are Ideas of products of art, e.g., of shields or lyres, or of things opposed to nature like fever or cholera, or even of individuals like Socrates and Plato, or even of trifling things like bits and chips, or of relations such as being greater or being taller; for the Ideas are the eternal thoughts of God which are in themselves complete.” [Tr.]
Cf. chap. 35 of volume 2.
Jacob Böhme in his book De Signatura Rerum, chap. 1, §§ 15, 16, 17, says: “And there is no thing in nature that does not reveal its inner form outwardly as well; for the internal continually works towards revelation . . . Each thing has its mouth for revelation. And this is the language of nature in which each thing speaks out of its own property, and always reveals and manifests itself ... For each thing reveals its mother, who therefore gives the essence and the will to the form.”
The last sentence is the translation of il n’y a que l’esprit qui sente l’esprit of Helvetius. There was no need to mention this in the first edition. But since then, the times have become so degraded and crude through the stupefying influence of Hegel’s sham wisdom, that many might well imagine here an allusion to the antithesis between “spirit and nature.” I am therefore compelled to guard myself expressly against the interpolation of such vulgar philosophemes.
“In accordance with nature.” [Tr.]
Virgil, Aeneid, xii, 868. [Tr.]
this episode has its supplement in chap. 36 of volume 2.
This passage presupposes for its comprehension the whole of the following book.
“Imitators, the slavish mob.” [Tr.]
Apparent rari, nantes in gurgite vasto. (“Singly they appear, swimming by in the vast waste of waves.” Virgil, Aeneid, i, 118. [Tr.])
Cf. chap. 34 of volume 2.
“Time discloses the truth.” [Tr.]
Cf. chap. 36 of volume 2.
“Into the ocean sank the sun’s glittering orb, drawing dark night over the bountiful earth.” Iliad, viii, 485-6 [Tr.]
It goes without saying that everywhere I speak exclusively of the great and genuine poet, who is so rare. I mean no one else; least of all that dull and shallow race of mediocre poets, rhymesters, and devisers of fables which flourishes so luxuriantly, especially in Germany at the present time; but we ought to shout incessantly in their ears from all sides:
Mediocribus esse poetis
Non homines, non Di, non concessere columnae.
[“Neither gods, nor men, nor even advertising pillars permit the poet to be a mediocrity.” Horace, Ars Poetica, 372-3. Tr.] It is worth serious consideration how great an amount of time—their own and other people’s—and of paper is wasted by this swarm of mediocre poets, and how injurious their influence is. For the public always seizes on what is new, and shows even more inclination to what is perverse and dull, as being akin to its own nature. These works of the mediocre, therefore, draw the public away and hold it back from genuine masterpieces, and from the education they afford. Thus they work directly against the benign influence of genius, ruin taste more and more, and so arrest the progress of the age. Therefore criticism and satire should scourge mediocre poets without pity or sympathy, until they are induced for their own good to apply their muse rather to read what is good than to write what is bad. For if the bungling of the meddlers put even the god of the Muses in such a rage that he could flay Marsyas, I do not see on what mediocre poetry would base its claims to tolerance.
From Goethe’s Faust, Bayard Taylor’s translation. [Tr.]
Cf. chap. 38 of volume 2.
“Par excellence.” [Tr.]
Cf. chap. 37 of volume 2.
Leibniz’ Letters, Kortholt’s edition, ep. 154. “An unconscious exercise in arithmetic in which the mind does not know it is counting.” [Tr.]
“Harmonics.” [Tr.]
“The movement of the melody which it imitates, when the soul is stirred by passions.” [Tr.]
“How is it that rhythms and melodies, although only sound, resemble states of the soul?” [Tr.]
“Music is an unconscious exercise in metaphysics in which the mind does not know it is philosophizing.” [Tr.]
“All things are similar to number.” [Tr.]
Cf. chap. 39 of volume 2.
Cf. Book i, p. 30. [Tr.]
“It is nothing but a mere negation, united with an obscure notion.” [Tr.]
From The Birds of Aristophanes. [Tr.]
“Nature is not grieved.” [Tr.]
The following remark can also help the person for whom it is not too subtle to understand clearly that the individual is only the phenomenon, not the thing-in-itself. On the one hand, every individual is the subject of knowing, in other words, the supplementary condition of the possibility of the whole objective world, and, on the other, a particular phenomenon of the will, of that will which objectifies itself in each thing. But this double character of our inner being does not rest on a self-existent unity, otherwise it would be possible for us to be conscious of ourselves in ourselves and independently of the objects of knowing and willing. Now we simply cannot do this, but as soon as we enter into ourselves in order to attempt it, and wish for once to know ourselves fully by directing our knowledge inwards, we lose ourselves in a bottomless void; we find ourselves like a hollow glass globe, from the emptiness of which a voice speaks. But the cause of this voice is not to be found in the globe, and since we want to comprehend ourselves, we grasp with a shudder nothing but a wavering and unstable phantom.
“What was? That which is. What will be? That which was.” [Tr.]
Scholastici docuerunt quod aeternitas non sit temporis sine fine aut principio successio, sed NUNC STANS; i.e. idem nobis NUNC esse, quod erat NUNC Adamo: i.e. inter NUNC et TUNC nullam esse differentiam. Hobbes, Leviathan [Latin ed., 1841], c. 46.
(“The scholastics taught that eternity is not a succession without beginning and end, but a permanent Now; in other words, that we possess the same Now which existed for Adam; that is to say, that there is no difference between the Now and the Then.” [Tr.])
In Eckermann’s Gespräche mit Goethe (second edition, Vol. I, p. 154), Goethe says: “Our spirit is a being of a quite indestructible nature; it acts continuously from eternity to eternity. It is similar to the sun which seems to set only to our earthly eyes, but which really never sets; it shines on incessantly.” Goethe took the simile from me, not I from him. He undoubtedly uses it in this conversation of 1824 in consequence of a (possibly unconscious) reminiscence of the above passage, for it appears in the first edition, p. 401, in the same words as here, and also occurs there again on p. 528, and here at the end of § 65. The first edition was sent to him in December 1818, and in March 1819 he sent me in Naples, where I then was, a letter of congratulation through my sister. He had enclosed a piece of paper on which he had noted the numbers of some pages that had specially pleased him. So he had read my book.
In the Veda this is expressed by saying that, when a man dies, his visual faculty becomes one with the sun, his smell with the earth, his taste with water, his hearing with the air, his speech with fire, and so on (Oupnek’hat, Vol. I, pp. 249 seqq.); as also by the fact that, in a special ceremony, the dying person entrusts his senses and all his faculties one by one to his son, in whom they are then supposed to continue to live. (Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 82 seqq.)
From Goethe’s Gränzen der Menschheit. [Tr.]
Cf. chaps. 41-44 of volume 2.
Critique of Pure Reason, first edition, pp. 532-558; fifth edition, pp. 560-586; and Critique of Practical Reason, fourth edition, pp. 169-179; Rosenkranz’s edition, pp. 224-231.
“The free decision of the will not influenced in any direction.” [Tr.]
“For the word ἦθoς (character) has its name from ἔθoς (custom); for ethics has its name from being customary.” [Tr.]
“The followers of Zeno declare figuratively that ethos is the source of life from which individual acts spring.” [Tr.]
“Willing cannot be taught.” [Epist. 81, 14. Tr.]
“Virtue can be taught.” [Diogenes Laërtius, VII, 91. Tr.]
“The final cause operates not according to its real being, but only according to its being as that is known.” [Tr.]
Descartes, Meditations, 4; Spinoza, Ethics, part II, props. 48 and 49, caet.
“It is not things that disturb men, but opinions about things.” [Tr.]
“There are more things that terrify us than there are that oppress us, and we suffer more often in opinion than in reality.” [The correct reference is to Seneca, Ep., 13, 4. Tr.]
“Indolent reason,” which is quietened by the fact that everything is necessarily predetermined. [Tr.]
“Curbing with restraint the grudge nurtured within the breast.” [Iliad, XVIII. 113. Tr.]
“He helps the mind best who once for all breaks the tormenting bonds that ensnare and entangle the heart.” [Remedia Amoris, 293. Tr.]
“He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” [Ecclesiastes, i, 18. Tr.]
“In what gloom of existence, in what great perils, this life is spent as long as it endures!” [Tr.]
“Peleus’ son was wailing and lamenting, looking up to the broad heaven.” [Iliad, xxi, 272. Tr.]
“I was the son of Zeus, of Kronos, and yet I endured unspeakable afflictions.” [Odyssey, xi, 620. Tr.]
“Remember always to preserve equanimity when in adversity, and guard against overweening joy when in luck,” [Odes II, iii, 1. Tr.]
“For so long as we lack what we desire, it seems to us to surpass everything in value; but when it is acquired, it at once appears like something different; and a similar longing always holds us fast, as we thirst and hanker after life.” [Tr.]
“It is a pleasure to stand on the seashore when the tempestuous winds whip up the sea, and to behold the great toils another is enduring. Not that it pleases us to watch another being tormented, but that it is a joy to us to observe evils from which we ourselves are free.” [De Rerum Natura, II. 1 seqq. —Tr.]
Hamlet, Act III, Sc. I. [Tr.]
Best of all possible worlds.” [Tr.]
Cf. chap. 46 of volume 2.
“Those who have castrated themselves from all sin for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, are blessed; they abstain from the world.” [Tr.]
“Zeus transformed himself into Eros, when he wished to create the world.” [Tr.]
Cf. chap. 45 of volume 2.
“War of all against all.” [Tr.]
Therefore the establishment of the natural right to property does not require the assumption of two grounds of right side by side with each other, namely that based on detention with that based on formation, but the latter is always sufficient. But the name formation is not really suitable, for the expenditure of effort on a thing need not always be a fashioning or shaping of it.
The further explanation of the doctrine of right here laid down will be found in my essay On the Basis of Morality, § 17, pp. 221-230 of the first edition (pp. 216-226 of the second).
“The object of the State is that men may live well, that is, pleasantly and happily.” [Tr.]
“Universal welfare must be the first law.” [Cicero, De Legibus, iii. Tr.]
“No sensible person punishes because a wrong has been done, but in order that a wrong may not be done.” [Tr.]
Cf. chap. 47 of volume 2.
“Do you think that crimes ascend to the gods on wings, and then someone has to record them there on the tablet of Jove, and that Jove looks at them and pronounces judgement on men? The whole of heaven would not be great enough to contain the sins of men, were Jove to record them all, nor would he to review them and assign to each his punishment. No! the punishment is already here, if only you will see it.” [Tr.]
Oupnek’hat, Vol. I, pp. 60 seqq.
“You will not again assume phenomenal existence.” [Tr.]
“That Spanish bishop, who in the last war simultaneously poisoned himself and the French generals at his table, is an instance of this; as also are various facts of that war. Examples are also found in Montaigne, Book 2, chap. 12.
Incidentally, it should be observed that what gives every positive religious doctrine its great strength, the essential point by which it takes firm possession of souls, is wholly its ethical side; though not directly as such, but as it appears firmly united and interwoven with the rest of the mythical dogma that is characteristic of every religious teaching, and as explicable only through this. So much is this the case that, although the ethical significance of actions cannot possibly be explained in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason, but every myth follows this principle, believers nevertheless consider the ethical significance of conduct and its myth to be quite inseparable, indeed as positively one, and regard every attack on the myth as an attack on right and virtue. This reaches such lengths that, in monotheistic nations, atheism or godlessness has become the synonym for absence of all morality. To priests such confusions of concepts are welcome, and only in consequence of them could that fearful monster, fanaticism, arise and govern not merely single individuals who are exceedingly perverse and wicked, but whole nations, and finally embody itself in the West as the Inquisition, a thing that, to the honour of mankind, has happened only once in its history. According to the latest and most authentic reports, in Madrid alone (whilst in the rest of Spain there were also many such ecclesiastical dens of murderers) the Inquisition in three hundred years put three hundred thousand human beings to a painful death at the stake, on account of matters of faith. All fanatics and zealots should be at once reminded of this whenever they want to make themselves heard.
“Something belonging to the relative.” [Tr.]
“Willing cannot be taught.” [Tr.]
The Church would say they are mere opera operata, that are of no avail unless grace gives the faith leading to regeneration; but of this later on.
Man’s right over the life and power of animals rests on the fact that, since with the enhanced clearness of consciousness suffering increases in like measure, the pain that the animal suffers through death or work is still not so great as that which man would suffer through merely being deprived of the animal’s flesh or strength. Therefore in the affirmation of his own existence, man can go so far as to deny the existence of the animal. In this way, the will-to-live as a whole endures less suffering than if the opposite course were adopted. At the same time, this determines the extent to which man may, without wrong, make use of the powers of animals. This limit, however, is often exceeded, especially in the case of beasts of burden, and of hounds used in hunting. The activities of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals are therefore directed especially against these. In my opinion, that right does not extend to vivisection, particularly of the higher animals. On the other hand, the insect does not suffer through its death as much as man suffers through its sting. The Hindus do not see this.
“Benevolence is nothing but a desire sprung from compassion.” [Tr.]
“As I wander deep in thought, so strong a sympathy with myself comes over me, that I must often weep aloud, a thing I am otherwise not accustomed to do.” [Tr.]
Cf. chap. 47 of volume 2. It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that the whole of the ethics given in outline in §§ 61-67 has received a more detailed and complete description in my essay On the Basis of Morality.
Matthew xix, 24. [Tr.]
The passage is taken from the Chandogya Upanishad, V, 24, 5, and in literal translation is: “Just as hungry children here sit round their mother, so do all beings sit round the agnihotram” (the fire-sacrifice offered by the knower of Brahman). [Tr.]
This idea is expressed by a fine simile in the ancient Sanskrit philosophical work Sankhya Karika: “Yet the soul remains for a time clothed with the body, just as the potter’s wheel continues to spin after the pot has been finished, in consequence of the impulse previously given to it. Only when the inspired soul separates itself from the body and nature ceases for it, does its complete salvation take place.” Colebrooke, “On the Philosophy of the Hindus”: Miscellaneous Essays, Vol. I, p. 259. Also in the Sankhya Carica by Horace Wilson, § 67, p. 184.
“For all that is excellent and eminent is as difficult as it is rare.” [Ethics, v, prop. 42 schol. Tr.]
“The worst is the abuse of the best.” [Tr.]
“Small and great mysteries” [the former celebrated by the Athenians in March, the latter in October. Tr.].
See, for example, Oupnek’hat, studio Anquetil du Perron, Vol. II. Nos. 138, 144, 145, 146; Mythologie des Indous, by Madame de Polier, Vol. II, chaps. 13, 14, 15, 16, 17; Asiatisches Magazin, by Klaproth, in the first volume; Ueber die Fo-Religion, also Bhaguat-Geeta oder Gesprüche zwischen Kreeshna und Arjoon; in the second volume, ‘Moha-Mudgava; then Institutes of Hindu Law, or the Ordinances of Manu, from the Sanskrit by Sir William Jones (German by Hüttner, 1797); especially the sixth and twelfth chapters. Finally, many passages in the Asiatic Researches. (In the last forty years Indian literature has grown so much in Europe, that if I now wished to complete this note to the first edition, it would fill several pages.)
At the procession of Jagganath in June 1840, eleven Hindus threw themselves under the car, and were instantly killed. (Letter from an East Indian landowner in The Times of 30 December, 1840.)
“Bring yourself to be reasonable!” [Tr.]
“The noonday of glory; a day no longer followed by night; a life that no longer fears death, even in death itself, because death has overcome death, and because whoever has suffered the first death will no longer feel the second.” [Tr.]
On δεύτερος πλοῦς cf. Stobaeus, Florilegium, Vol. II, p. 374. [Footnotes indicated by an asterisk represent additions made by Schopenhauer in his interleaved copy of the third edition of 1859. He died in 1860, and so there are very few of these. Tr.]
Brucker, Hist. Philos., Tom. IV, pars I, p. 10.
Henry VI, Part II, Act 3, Scene 3.
Cf. chap. 48 of volume 2.
“Freedom is a mystery.” [Tr.]
“For it was not a sinful flesh, as it was not born of carnal desire; but yet the form of sinful flesh was in it, because it was a mortal flesh.” [Tr.]
How much this is the case is seen from the fact that all the contradictions and inconceivable mysteries contained in the Christian dogmatics and consistently systematized by Augustine, which have led precisely to the opposite Pelagian insipidity, vanish, as soon as we abstract from the fundamental Jewish dogma, and recognize that man is not the work of another, but of his own will. Then all is at once clear and correct; then there is no need of a freedom in the operari, for it lies in the esse; and here also lies the sin as original sin. The effect of grace, however, is our own. With the present-day rationalistic view, on the other hand, many doctrines of the Augustinian dogmatics, established in the New Testament, appear absolutely untenable and even revolting, for example predestination. Accordingly, what is really Christian is then rejected, and a return is made to crude Judaism. But the miscalculation or primary defect of Christian dogmatics lies where it is never sought, namely in what is withdrawn from all investigation as settled and certain. Take this away, and the whole of dogmatics is rational; for that dogma ruins theology, as it does all the other sciences. Thus, if we study the Augustinian theology in the books De Civitate Dei (especially in the fourteenth book), we experience something analogous to the case when we try to make a body stand, whose centre of gravity falls outside it; however we may turn and place it, it always topples over again. So also here, in spite of all the efforts and sophisms of Augustine, the guilt of the world and its misery always fall back on God, who made everything and everything that is in everything, and who also knew how things would turn out. I have already shown in my essay On the Freedom of the Will (chap. 4, pp. 66-68 of the first edition) that Augustine himself was aware of the difficulty, and was puzzled by it. In the same way, the contradiction between the goodness of God and the misery of the world, as also that between the freedom of the will and the foreknowledge of God, is the inexhaustible theme of a controversy, lasting nearly a hundred years, between the Cartesians, Malebranche, Leibniz, Bayle, Clarke, Arnauld, and many others. The only dogma fixed for the disputants is the existence of God together with his attributes, and they all incessantly turn in a circle, since they try to bring these things into harmony, in other words, to solve an arithmetical sum which never comes right, but the remainder of which appears now in one place, now in another, after it has been concealed elsewhere. But it does not occur to anyone that the source of the dilemma is to be looked for in the fundamental assumption, although it palpably obtrudes itself. Bayle alone shows that he notices this.
“It is the nature of being different, of which we have demonstrated that it exists and is dispersed piecemeal over all being in mutual relationship, and since we opposed to being every single particle of this nature, we have ventured to assert that precisely this is in truth non-being.” [Tr.]
This is also the Prajna-Paramita of the Buddhists, the “beyond all knowledge,” in other words, the point where subject and object no longer exist. See I. J. Schmidt, Ueber das Mahajana und Pradschna-Paramita.
Translator’s Note: In this criticism of Kant’s philosophy, Schopenhauer frequently uses the words Vernunft and Grund. Vernunft means “reason” in the sense of the mental faculty, possessed by man alone, of forming concepts from individually perceived things, and thus of erecting the vast and intricate structure of language and logic. Grund means “reason” in the sense of a ground of explanation, as in the expressions “the principle of sufficient reason,” “the reason for this.” In the translation the German word is inserted in brackets where it is thought that the correct meaning of the word “reason” may not be obvious.
Here Bruno and Spinoza are to be entirely excepted. Each stands by himself and alone; and they do not belong either to their age or to their part of the globe, which rewarded the one with death, and the other with persecution and ignominy. Their miserable existence and death in this Western world are like that of a tropical plant in Europe. The banks of the sacred Ganges were their true spiritual home; there they would have led a peaceful and honoured life among men of like mind. In the following verses, with which Bruno opens his book Della Causa Principio ed Uno, for which he was brought to the stake, he expresses clearly and beautifully how lonely he felt in his day; and at the same time he reveals a presentiment of his fate which caused him to hesitate before stating his case, until that tendency prevailed to communicate what is known to be true, a tendency that is so strong in noble minds:
Ad partum properare tuum, mens aegra, quid obstat;
Seclo haec indigno sint tribuenda licet?
Umbrarum fluctu terras mergente, cacumen
Adtolle in clarum, noster Olympe, Jovem.
[“O my ailing mind, what prevents you from bringing forth;
Do you offer your work to this unworthy age?
Whenever shadows are borne over the lands,
Raise your summit, O my mount, high into the ether.” Tr.]
Whoever reads this principal work of his as well as the rest of his Italian works, formerly so rare but now accessible to everyone through a German edition, will find, as I did, that of all philosophers he alone somewhat approaches Plato as regards the strong blend of poetical force and tendency together with the philosophical, and this he also shows in a particularly dramatic way. Imagine the tender, spiritual, thoughtful being, as he appears to us in this work of his, in the hands of coarse and enraged priests as his judges and executioners, and thank Time that produced a brighter and gentler age, so that posterity, whose curse was to fall on those fiendish fanatics, is the present generation.
Faust, Bayard Taylor’s translation. [Tr.]
“Begging of the question.” [Tr.]
“It is right to go up to the boundary (if there is no path beyond).” [Tr.]
“For the better we understand a thing, the more are we resolved to express it in a unique way.” [Tr.]
“An example inducing one to imitate its defects.” [Tr.]
Faust, Bayard Taylor’s translation. [Tr.]
Here it must be noted that I everywhere quote the Critique of Pure Reason according to the pagination of the first edition, for in the Rosenkranz edition of the collected works this pagination is always given in addition. Moreover, I add the pagination of the fifth edition, preceded by a V. All the other editions from the second onwards are like the fifth, and so also is their pagination.
[Translator’s addition: Professor F. Max Müller’s English translation of the Critique of Pure Reason indicates in square brackets the original pagination of the first German edition.]
Para. 17. [Tr.]
Dated 24 August 1837. [Tr.]
Para. 14. [Tr.]
Para. 15. [Tr.]
See generally paras. 15-27. [Tr.]
See generally paras. 15-27. [Tr.]
Para. 22. [Tr.]
Para. 14. [Tr.]
“Whatever is affirmed (denied) of an entire class or kind may be affirmed (denied) of any part.” [Tr.]
“There are also things that are the cause of one another; thus, for example, gymnastics is the cause of good health, and vice versa; yet not in the same way, but the one as the end of the movement, the other as its beginning.” [Tr.]
See Christian Wolff’s Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, Welt, und Seele, §§ 577-579. It is strange that he declares to be contingent only what is necessary according to the principle of sufficient reason of becoming, i.e., what takes place from causes. On the other hand, he recognizes as necessary what is necessary according to the other forms of the principle of sufficient reason, e.g., what follows from the essentia (definition), hence analytical judgements, and further mathematical truths also. As the reason for this, he states that only the law of causality gives infinite series, but the other kinds of grounds give only finite series. This, however, is by no means the case with the forms of the principle of sufficient reason in pure space and time, but holds good only of the logical ground of knowledge. However, he regarded mathematical necessity as such a logical ground. Compare the essay On the Principle of Sufficient Reason, § 50.
“Contention over possibility.” [Tr.]
“If the term may be excused.” [Tr.]
“Imitators, slavish mob!” [Tr.]
“On the quality and quantity of the terms of the syllogism.” [Tr.]
The reader may like to compare my refutation of the Kantian proof with the earlier attacks on it by Feder, Ueber Zeit, Raum und Kausalität, § 28; and by G. E. Schulze, Kritik der theoretischen Philosophie, Vol. II, pp. 422-442.
See Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhoniae hypotyposes, Bk. i, ch. 13, νοούμενα φαινομένοις ἀντετίθη Ἀναξαγόρας (intelligibilia apparentibus opposuit Anaxagoras ). (“Anaxagoras opposed what is thought to what is perceived.”) [Tr.]
Princip der Vernunft is the German term. [Tr.]
In other words, with the object is posited the principle of sufficient reason, and vice versa. [Tr.]
“That which exists in itself and is conceived through itself.” [Tr.]
From Schiller’s Wallensteins Tod, II, 3. [Tr.]
“For what is Plato but a Moses speaking Attic?” [Tr.]
“I know your masters, although you would like to conceal them; you are directly indebted to the Hebrews for belief in God.” [Tr.]
Compare the Authorised Daily Prayer Book of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Empire, pp. 5-6. [Tr.]
“The salient point of the argument.” [Tr.]
“The just and the unjust cause.” [Aristophanes, Clouds, 889, 1104. Tr.]
That the assumption of a limit to the world in time is by no means a necessary idea of our faculty of reason can be demonstrated even historically, since the Hindus do not teach any such thing even in the religion of the people, not to mention in the Vedas. On the contrary, they try to express mythologically through a monstrous chronology the infinity of this world of appearance, of this unstable and unsubstantial web of Maya, since at the same time they bring out very ingeniously the relative nature of all periods of time in the following myth (Polier, Mythologie des Indous, Vol. II, p. 585). The four ages, in the last of which we live, together embrace 4,320,000 years. Each day of the creator Brahma has a thousand such periods of four ages, and his night again has a thousand such periods. His year has 365 days and as many nights. He lives a hundred of his years, always creating; and when he dies, a new Brahma is at once born, and so on from eternity to eternity. The same relativity of time is also expressed by the special myth that is quoted from the Puranas in Polier’s work, Vol. II, p. 594. In it a Raja, after a visit of a few moments to Vishnu in his heaven, finds on his return to earth that several million years have elapsed, and that a new age has appeared, since every day of Vishnu is equal to a hundred recurrences of the four ages.
“Metrodorus, the head of the Epicurean school, says it is absurd for there to spring into existence only one ear of corn in a large field, and only one world in infinite space.” [Tr.]
“That there exists in infinite space an infinite number of worlds.” [Tr.]
“Begging of the question.” [Tr.]
“Begging of the question.” [Tr.]
See Lichtenberg, Vermischte Schriften, vol. iii, p. 187, Göttingen, 1844. [Tr.]
“It is not possible for the infinite to exist in actuality; . . . but infinity existing in actuality is impossible.” [Tr.]
“For according to actuality there is no infinity (i.e., no infinitely small), but potentially there is in regard to division.” [Tr.]
P. 688 seq. of Prof. Max Müller’s English translation. [Tr.]
“A transition to another genus”; in other words, the logical mistake of jumping into another dimension, e.g., from the line to the surface, from the surface to the solid. [Tr.]
“We prove conclusively in natural theology the existence of the Supreme Being from cosmological principles. The contingent aspect of the universe and of the order of nature, simultaneously with the impossibility of a (pure) accident, are the steps on which we ascend from this visible world to God.” [Tr.]
“Without this great principle we should never be able to prove the existence of God.” [Tr.]
“I venture to say that, without this great principle, we could never obtain proof of the existence of God.” [Tr.]
“Existence in the case of any thing never belongs to its essence.” [Tr.]
“Fear was the first origin of the belief in Gods.” [Petronius, Fragm. 27 (Tr.)]
Kant said: “It is very absurd to expect enlightenment from reason (Vernunft ), and yet to prescribe to it beforehand on which side it must necessarily turn out.” (Critique of Pure Reason, p. 747; V, 775). On the other hand, the following naïvety is the utterance of a professor of philosophy in our own times: “If a philosophy denies the reality of the fundamental ideas of Christianity, it is either false, or, even if true, it is nevertheless useless . . .” that is to say, for professors of philosophy. It was the late Professor Bachmann who in the Jena’sche Litteraturzeitung of July 1840, No. 126, so indiscreetly blurted out the maxim of all his colleagues. Moreover, it is worth noting as a characteristic of university philosophy how, if truth will not accommodate and adapt herself, she is shown the door without ceremony, with the remark: “Get out! We cannot use you. Do we owe you anything? Do you pay us? Then get out!”
“And there was no third possibility.” [Tr.]
“The cognition of a being such as man existed before man made his appearance.” [Tr.]
“Teleology or scientific theology.” [Tr.]
“Illustrious colleagues.” [Tr.]
“German philosophy.” [Tr.]
“Reason is practical on the one hand, theoretical on the other.” [Tr.]
Incidentally, Machiavelli’s problem was the solution to the question how the prince could unconditionally keep himself on the throne, in spite of internal and external enemies. Thus his problem was by no means the ethical one whether a prince, as a man, should want to do so or not, but purely the political problem how to carry it out, if he wants to. He gives the solution to this, just as a person writes instructions for playing chess, in which it would be foolish to regret the failure to answer the question whether it is morally advisable to play chess at all. To reproach Machiavelli with the immorality of his work is just as much out of place as it would be to reproach a fencing master with not opening his instruction with a moral lecture against murder and manslaughter.
“Reason deceives us, but never conscience;—It is impossible to explain through the consequences of our nature the immediate principle of conscience that is independent of reason itself.—My natural feelings spoke in favour of the common interest, but my reason referred everything to myself.... We try in vain to base virtue on reason alone, but what solid foundation can we give it?” [Tr.]
“In all the difficult questions of morality I have always found it better to solve them through the dictates of conscience than by the light of reason.” [Tr.]
“About ethical virtue, they think that it concerns the irrational part of the soul, for as far as the present consideration is concerned, they assume that the soul consists of two parts, a rational and an irrational; and to the rational part belong magnanimity, prudence, sagacity, wisdom, docility, memory, and the like; to the irrational part, on the contrary, belong temperance, justice, fortitude, and the rest of the so-called ethical virtues.” [Tr.]
“I see and applaud what is better, but I follow what is worse.” [Ovid, Metamorphoses, vii, 20. Tr.]
“In the morning I make plans, and in the evening I commit absurdities.” [Tr.]
“Not to let oneself be disconcerted,” correctly explained by Schopenhauer, only that the concept is even wider, and needs to be superior not only to desire but also to fear. It is ἀταραξία, “unshakable serenity or peace of mind,” regarded by Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics as the highest goal, which they all in different ways attempted to reach. [Tr.]
“Nothing to excess.” [Tr.]
“The rational part of the soul.” [Tr.]
Contradiction of a subsidiary determination contrary to the concept to which it is united, as hot snow or cold fire. [Tr.]
“How thoughtlessly we establish an unjust law which argues against ourselves!” [Horace, Satires, I, 3, 67. Tr.]
“Do not to another what you do not wish should be done to you.” [Tr.]
Although the concept of law or right is really negative in contrast to that of wrong, which is the positive starting-point, the explanation of these concepts cannot be completely and entirely negative.
“[Democritus and Epicurus] fell into the error of imagining that everything that happens for the sake of an end or purpose can rest only on design and deliberation; and yet they observed that the productions of nature do not originate in this way.” [Tr.]