Schopenhauer by Thomas Whittaker

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PHILOSOPHIES ANCIENT AND MODERN

SCHOPENHAUER


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NOTEAs a consequence of the success of the series of ReligionsAncient and Modern, Messrs. CONSTABLE have decided to issuea set of similar primers, with brief introductions, lists of dates,and selected authorities, presenting to the wider public thesalient features of the Philosophies of Greece and Rome and ofthe Middle Ages, as well as of modern Europe. They willappear in the same handy Shilling volumes, with neat clothbindings and paper envelopes, which have proved so attractivein the case of the Religions. The writing in each case will beconfided to an eminent authority, and one who has alreadyproved himself capable of scholarly yet popular expositionwithin a small compass.Among the first volumes to appear will be :

Early Greek Philosophy. By A. W. BENN, author of The Philo-sophy of Greece, Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century.

Stoicism. By Professor ST. GEORGE STOCK, author of Deduc-tive Logic, editor of the Apology of Plato, etc.

Plato. By Professor A. E. TAYLOR, St. Andrews University,author of The Problem of Conduct.Scholasticism. By Father RICKABY, S.J.Hobbes. By Professor A. E. TAYLOR.Locke. By Professor ALEXANDER, of Owens College.Comte and Mill. By T. WHITTAKER, author of The

Neoplatonists, Apollonius of Tyana and other Essays.Herbert Spencer. By W. H. HUDSON, author of An Intro-

duction to Spencer's Philosophy.Schopenhauer. By T. WHITTAKER.Berkeley. By Professor CAMPBELL FRASER, D.C.L., LL.D.Bergsen. By Father TYRRELL.


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SCHOPENHAUER

ByTHOMAS WHITTAKER,1

AUTHOR OF * COMTE AND MILL,' ETC.

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LONDONARCHIBALD CONSTABLE fir CO LTD1909


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CONTENTSCHAP. PAGEi. LIFE AND WRITINGS, .... .1

ii. THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE, 15in. METAPHYSICS OF THE WILL, .... 29iv. ^ESTHETICS, 49

v. ETHICS, 65

vi. HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE, .... 86SELECTED WORKS, 93


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SCHOPENHAUERCHAPTEE I

LIFE AND WRITINGSARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER may be distinctivelydescribed as the greatest philosophic writer ofhis century. So evident is this that he hassometimes been regarded as having more import-ance in literature than in philosophy; but thisis an error. As a metaphysician he is second tono one since Kant. Others of his age have sur-passed him in system and in comprehensiveness ;but no one has had a firmer grasp of the essen-tial and fundamental problems of philosophy.On the theory of knowledge, the nature of reality,and the meaning of the beautiful and the good,he has solutions to offer that are all results of acharacteristic and original way of thinking.

In onerespect, as critics have noted, his spiritis different from that of European philosophy in

general. What preoccupies him in a special wayMs the question of evil in the world. Like theA I


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SCHOPENHAUERphilosophies of the East, emerging as they dowithout break from religion, Schopenhauer'sphilosophy is in its outcome a doctrine of redemp-tion from sin. The name of pessimism commonlyapplied to it is in some respects misleading,though it was his own term ; but it is correct ifunderstood as he explained it. As he was accus-tomed to insist, his final ethical doctrine coincideswith that of all the religions that aim, for their

% adepts or their elect, at deliverance from ' thisevil world/ But, as the ' world-fleeing ' religionshave their mitigations and accommodations, soalso has the philosophy of Schopenhauer. JUvarious points indeed it seems as if a mere_!_change of accent would turn it into optimism.

This preoccupation does not mean indifferenceto the theoretical problems of philosophy. Noone has insisted more strongly that the end ofphilosophy is pure truth, and that only the fewwho care about pure truth have any concern withit. But for Schopenhauer the desire for specula-tive truth does not by itself suffice to explainthe impulse of philosophical inquiries. On oneside of his complex character, he had moreresemblance to the men who turn from the worldto religion, like St. Augustine, than to the normaltype of European thinker, represented pre-emi-

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LIFE AND WRITINGSnently by Aristotle. He was a temperamentalpessimist, feeling from the first the trouble ofexistence ; and here he finds the deepest motive^^for the desire to become clear about it. He sawin the world, what he felt in himself, a vain effortLUT tuna vLmjot .turn* ..*=. .n .. /.j.^.

v after ever new objects of desire which give no^permanent satisfaction ;-and this view, becomingpredominant, determined, not indeed all the ideasof his philosophy, but its general complexion asa ' philosophy of redemption/With his pessimism, personal misfortunes hadnothing to do. He was, and always recognisedthat he was, among the most fortunately placedof mankind. He does not hesitate to speaksometimes of his own happiness in completefreedom from the need to apply himself to anycompulsory occupation. This freedom, as he hasput gratefully on record, he owed to his father,Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer, who was a richmerchant of Danzig, where the philosopher wasborn on the 22nd of February 1788. Both hisparents were of Dutch ancestry. His mother,Johanna Schopenhauer, won celebrity as a novel-ist; and his sister, Adele, also displayed someliterary talent. Generalising from his own case,Schopenhauer holds that men of intelligence'derive their character from their father and


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SCHOPENHAUERtheir intellect from their mother. With hismother, however, he was not on sympatheticterms, as may be read in the biographies. Hisfather intended him for a mercantile career, andwith this view began to prepare him from thefirst to be a cosmopolitan man of the world. Thename of Arthur was given to him because it isspelt alike in the leading European languages.He was taken early to France, where he residedfrom 1797 to 1799, learning French so well thaton his return he had almost forgotten his German.Portions of the years 1803 to 1804 were spentin England, France, Switzerland, and Austria. InEngland he was three months at a Wimbledonboarding-school kept by a clergyman. This ex-perience he found extremely irksome. He after-wards became highly proficient in English : wasalways pleased to be taken for an Englishman,and regarded both the English character andintelligence as on the whole the first in Europe ;but all the more deplorable did he find the oppres-sive pietism which was the special form taken inL Athe England of that period by the reaction againstthe French Revolution. He is never tired ofdenouncing that phase of ' cold superstition/the dominance of which lasted during his life-time ; for the publication of Mill's Liberty and of


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LIFE AND WRITINGSDarwin's Origin of Species, which may be con-sidered as marking the close of it, came only theyear before his death.The only real break in the conformity ofSchopenhauer's circumstances to his future careercame in 1805, when he was placed in a merchant'soffice at Hamburg, whither his father hadmigrated in disgust at the annexation of hisnative Danzig, then under a republican con-stitution of its own, by Prussia in 1793. Soonafterwards his father died ; but out of loyalty hetried for some time longer to reconcile himselfto commercial life. Finding this at length im-possible, he gained permission from his mother,in 1807, to leave the office for the gymnasium.At this time he seems to have begun his classicalstudies, his education having hitherto been ex-clusively modern. They were carried on first atGotha and then at Weimar. In 1809 he enteredthe university of Gottingen as a student ofmedicine. This, however, was with a view onlyto scientific studies, not to practice ; and he trans-ferred himself to the philosophical faculty in1810. Generally he was little regardful of* academical authority. His father's deliberatelyadopted plan of letting him mix early with the*"--iiri -ftvHtfrff 1. O vworld had given him a certain independence of

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SCHOPENHAUERjudgment. At Gottingen, however, he receivedan important influence from his teacher, G. E.Schulze (known by the revived scepticism ofhis JEnesidemiis), who advised him to study Platoand Kant before Aristotle and Spinoza. From1811 to 1813 he was at Berlin, where he heardFichte, but was not impressed. In 1813 thedegree of Doctor of Philosophy was conferred onhim at Jena for the dissertation On the FourfoldRoot of the Principle of Sufficient Reason( Ueber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zu-reichenden Grunde, 2nd ed., 1847). This was thefirst result of his Kantian studies. In the sameyear he began to be acquainted with Goethe atWeimar, where his mother and sister had goneto reside in 1806. A consequence of thisacquaintance was that he took up and furtherdeveloped Goethe's theory of colours. His dis-sertation Ueber das Sehen und die Farben waspublished in 1816. A second edition did notappear till 1854; but in the meantime he hadpublished a restatement of his doctrine in Latin,entitled Theoria Colorum Physiologica (1830).This, however, was an outlying part of his work.He had already been seized by the impulse toset forth the system of philosophy that tookshape in him, as he says, by some formative

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LIFE AND WRITINGSprocess of which he could give no consciousaccount. His great work, Die Welt als Willeund Vorstellung, was ready for publicationbefore the end of 1818, and was published with nthe date 1819. Thus he is one of the mostprecocious philosophers on record. For in thatsingle volume, written before he was thirty, theoutlines of his whole system are fixed. Thereis some development later, and there are endlessnew applications and essays towards confirma-tion from all sources. His mind never rested,and his literary power gained by exercise. Stillit has been said with truth, that there neverwas a greater illusion than when he thought thathe seldom repeated himself. In reality he didlittle but repeat his fundamental positions withinfinite variations in expression.

After completing his chief work, Schopen-hauer wrote some verses in which he predictedthat posterity would erect a monument to him.This prediction was fulfilled in 1895 ; but, for thetime, the work which he never doubted wouldbe his enduring title to fame seemed, like Hume'sTreatise, to have fallen ' deadborn from the press/This he attributed to the hostility of the academi-cal philosophers ; and, in his later works, attackson the university professors form a characteristic

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SCHOPENHAUERfeature. The official teachers of the Hegelianschool, he declared, were bent only on obtainingpositions for themselves by an appearance ofsupporting Christian dogma; and they re-sented openness on the part of any one else.Yet on one side he maintained that his ownpessimism was more truly Christian than theirj_ /optimism. The essential spirit of Christianity isthat of Brahrnanism and Buddhism, the greatreligions that sprang from India, the first homeof our race. He is even inclined to see in ittraces of Indian influence. What vitiates it inhis eyes is the Jewish element, which finds itsexpression in the flat modern ' Protestant-ration-alistic optimism.' As optimistic religions, hegroups together Judaism, Islam, and Graeco-Roman Polytheism. His antipathy, however,onlv extends to the two former. He was himself*in great part a child of Humanism and of theeighteenth century, rejoicing over the approach-ing downfall of all the faiths, and holding thata weak religion (entirely different from those headmires) is favourable to civilisation. Nothingcan exceed his scorn for nearly everything thatcharacterised the Middle Ages. With Catholi-cism as a political system he has no sympathywhatever; while on the religious side the Pro-

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LIFE AND WRITINGStestant are as sympathetic to him as the Catholicmystics. What is common to all priesthoods,he holds, is to exploit the metaphysical need ofmankind (in which he also believes) for the sakeof their own power. Clericalism, ' Pfaffenthum/whether Catholic or Protestant, is the object of' Vhis unvarying hatred and contempt. If he hadcared to appreciate Hegel, he would have foundon this point much community of spirit ; but ofcourse there was a real antithesis between thetwo as philosophers. No 'conspiracy' need beinvoked to explain the failure of Schopenhauerto win early recognition. Belief in the State andin progress was quite alien to him ; and Germanywas then full of political hopes, which foundnourishment in optimistic pantheism. What atlength gave his philosophy vogue was the collapseJL -L / J_of this enthusiasm on the failure of the revolu-tionary movement in 1848. Once known, itcontained enough of permanent value to secureit from again passing out of sight with the nextchange of fashion.The rest of Schopenhauer's life in its externalrelations may be briefly summed up. For a fewyears, it was diversified by travels in Italy andelsewhere, and by an unsuccessful attempt atacademical teaching in Berlin. In 1831 he

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SCHOPENHAUERmoved to Frankfort, where he finally settledin 1833. He lived unmarried there till his deathon the 21st of September 1860. The monument,already spoken of, was unveiled at Frankfort onthe 6th of June 1895.The almost unbroken silence with which his

great work was received, though it had a dis-tempering effect on the man, did not discouragethe thinker. The whole series of Schopenhauer'sworks, indeed, was completed before he attainedanything that could be called fame. Constantlyon the alert as he was to seize upon confirmationsof his system, he published in 1836 his short

v work On the Will in Nature, pointing out verifi-cations of his metaphysics by recent science. In1839 his prize essay, On the Freedom of the HumanWill (finished in 1837), was crowned by the RoyalScientific Society of Drontheim in Norway. Thisand another essay, On the Basis of Morality, notcrowned by the Royal Danish Society of Copen-hagen in 1840, he published in 1841, with theinclusive title, Die beiden Grundprobleme derEthik. In 1844 appeared the second edition ofhis principal work, to which there was added,in the form of a second volume, a series ofelucidations and extensions larger in bulk thanthe first, This new volume contains much of

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LIFE AND WRITINGShis best and most effective writing. His last

N work, Parerga und Paralipomena, which ap-peared in 1851 (2 vols.), is from the literary pointof view the most brilliant. It was only from thistime that he began to be well known among thegeneral public ; though the philosophic ' apos-tolate' of Julius Frauenstadt, who afterwardsedited his works, had begun in 1840. His activitywas henceforth confined to modifying and ex-tending his works for new editions; an employ-ment in which he was always assiduous. Inconsequence of this, all of them, as they stand,contain references from one to another

;but the

development of his thinking, so far as there wassuch a process after 1818, can be easily tracedwithout reference to the earlier editions. Thereis some growth ; but, as has been said, it does notaffect many of the chief points. A brief exposi-tion of his philosophy can on the whole take it assomething fixed. The heads under which it mustfall are those assigned to the original four booksof Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung.Although Schopenhauer discountenanced the

attempt to connect a philosopher's biographywith his work, something has to be said abouthis character, since this has been dwelt on to hisdisadvantage by opponents. There is abundant

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SCHOPENHAUERmaterial for a personal estimate in the corre-spondence and reminiscences published after hisdeath by his disciples Julius Frauenstadt andWilhelm Gwinner. The apparent contradictionis at once obvious between the ascetic consum-mation of his ethics and his unascetic life,carefully occupied in its latter part with rules forthe preservation of his naturally robust health.He was quite aware of this, but holds it absurdAto require that a moralist should commend onlythe virtues which he possesses. It is as if therequirement were set up that a sculptor is to behimself a model of beauty. A saint need not bea philosopher, nor a philosopher a saint. Thescience of morals is as theoretical as any otherbranch of philosophy. Fundamentally characteris unmodifiable, though knowledge, it is allowed,may change the mode of action within the limitsof the particular character. The passage to thestate of asceticism cannot be effected by moralphilosophy, but depends on a kind of 'grace.'After all, it might be replied, philosophers,whether they succeed or not, do usually makeat least an attempt to live in accordance withthe moral ideal they set up. The best apologyin Schopenhauer's case is that the fault mayhave been as much in his ideal as in his failure

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LIFE AND WRITINGSto conform to it. The eloquent pages he hasdevoted to the subject of holiness only makemanifest the inconsequence (which he admits)in the passage to it. For, as we shall see, thishas nothing in common with the essentiallyrational asceticism of the schools of later antiquity ;which was a rule of self-limitation in view of thephilosophic life. He did in a way of his ownpractise something of this ; and, on occasion, hesets forth the theory of it ; but he quite clearlysees the difference. His own ideal, which henever attempted to practise, is that of the self-torturing ascetics of the Christian Middle Age.Within the range of properly human virtue, hecan in many respects hold his own, not only asa philosopher but as a man. If his egoism andX i !, Ovanity are undeniable, he undoubtedly possessedthe virtues of rectitude and compassion. Whathe would have especially laid stress on was theconscientious devotion to his work. With completesingleness of purpose he used for a disinterestedend the leisure which he regarded as the most for-tunate of endowments. As he said near the closeof his life, his intellectual conscience was clear.Of Schopenhauer's expositions of his pessimism

it would be true to say, as Spinoza says of theBook of Job, that the matter, like the style, is not


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SCHOPENHAUERthat of a man sitting among the ashes, but of onemeditating in a library. This of course does notprove that they are not a genuine, if one-sided,rendering of human experience. All that can besaid is that they did not turn him away fromappreciation of the apparent goods of life. Hisown practical principle was furnished by what heregarded as a lower point of view ; and this givesits direction to the semi-popular philosophy ofthe Parerga. From what he takes to be thehigher point of view, the belief that happiness isattainable by man on earth is an illusion ; but heholds that, by keeping steadily in view a kind oft/ A */tempered happiness as the end, many mistakesmay be avoided in the conduct of life, providedthat each recognises at once the strength andweakness of his own character, and does notattempt things that, with the given limitations,are impossible. Of the highest truth, as he con-ceived it, he could therefore make no use. Onlyby means of a truth that he was bound to holdhalf-illusory could a working scheme be constructedfor himself and others. This result may give usguidance in seeking to learn what we can froma thinker who is in reality no representative of adecadence, but is fundamentally sane and rational,even in spite of himself,

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CHAPTER IITHEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

THE title of Schopenhauer's chief work is ren-dered in the English translation, The World asWill and Idea. Here the term ' idea ' is used inthe sense it had for Locke and Berkeley ; namely,/7 */ 'any object of mental activity. Thus it includesnot merely imagery, but also perception. SinceHume distinguished 'ideas' from 'impressions/it has tended to be specialised in the formersense. The German word, Vorstellung, which itis used to render, conveys the generalised mean-ing of the Lockian c idea/ now frequently expressedin English and French philosophical works by themore technical term ' presentation ' or ' represen-tation/ /By Schopenhauer himself the word' Idea ' was used exclusively in the sense of thePlatonic Idea, which, as we shall see, plays animportant part in his philosophy^ The distinc-tion is preserved in the translation by the use ofa capital when Idea has the latter meaning : but4- wJ '

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SCHOPENHAUERin a brief exposition it seems convenient to adopta more technical rendering of Vorstdlung ; and,from its common employment in psychologicaltext-books, I have selected ' presentation ' as themost suitable.The first proposition of Schopenhauer's philo-

sophical system is, /The world is my presentation.'*f V J.By this he means that it presents itself as appear-ange to the knowing subject. This appearance isin the forms of time, space and causality. Underthese forms every phenomenon necessarilyappears, because they are a priori forms of thesubject. The world as it presents itself consistsentirely of phenomena, that is, appearances,related according to these forms. The most fun-damental form of all is the relation between objectand subject, which is implied in all of them.Without a subject there can be no presentedobject.Schopenhauer is therefore an idealist in the

sense in which we call Berkeley's theory of theexternal world idealism ; though the expressionsused are to some extent different. The differenceproceeds from his following of Kant. His Kan-tianism consists in the recognition of a prioriforms by which the subject constructs for itself an' objective ' world of appearances. With Berkeley

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THEORY OF KNOWLEDGEhe agrees as against Kant in not admitting' M .. .-. -.-. .....,-: : ..... ,,./-._.,, . - - - ; ' 7?any residue whatever, in the object as such, that

. v --is not wholly appearance. But while he allowsthat Berkeley, as regards the general formulationof idealism, was more consistent than Kant, hefinds him, in working out the principle, altogetherinadequate. For the modern mind there is hence-forth no way in philosophy except through Kant,from whom dates the revolution by which scho-lastic dualism was finally overthrown. Kant'ssystematic construction, however, he in effectreduces to very little. His is a much simplified.' Apriorism.' While accepting the ' forms of sen-sible intuition/ that is, time and space, iust asf ' JL ' vKant sets them forth, he clears away nearly allthe superimposed mechanism. Kant's ' Transcen-dental Esthetic/ he says, was a real discovery inmetaphysics ; but on the basis of this he for themost part only gave free play to his architectonicimpulse. Of the twelve ' categories of the under-standing/ which he professed to derive from thelogical forms of judgment, all except causality aremere ' blind windows/ This alone, therefore,Schopenhauer adopts ; placing it, however, not ata higher level but side by side with time andspace, Kant's forms of intuition. These threeforms, according to Schopenhauer, make up the

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THEORY OF KNOWLEDGEwithout reference to antecedents. Still, it willalways be advisable for an expositor to follow hisdirections, at least to the extent of giving someshort account of the dissertation. This I proceedto give approximately in the place to which hehas assigned it in his system.The name of the principle (principiwn rationis

sufficientis) he took over from Leibniz and hissuccessor Wolff, but gave it a new amplitude.With him, it stands as an inclusive term for fourmodes of connection by which the thoroughgoingrelativity of phenomena to one another is con-stituted for our intelligence. The general state-ment adopted is,/' Nothing is without a reasonwhy it should be rather than not be/ Its fourjforms are the principles of becoming (fiendi), ofknowing (cognoscendi), of being (essendi), andof acting (agendi). * (1) Under the first headcome 'causes/ These are divided into 'causeproper/ for inorganic things; 'stimulus/ for thevegetative life both of plants and animals ; andO *.. A. *..-* motive/ for animals and men. The law of causa-tion is applicable only to changes; not to theforces of nature, to matter, or to the world as awhole, which are perdurable. Cause precedeseffect in time. Not one thing, but one state of athing, is the cause of another. From the law of

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SCHOPENHAUERcausation there results an infinite series a partefr^^^^r^af^'wante as well as a parte post. (2) The principle ofsufficient reason of knowing is applicable to con-c? A. 1-cepts, which are all derived from intuition, thatis, from percepts. The laws of logic, which comeunder this head, can yield nothing original, butcan only render explicit what was in the under-standing. (3) Under the third head come arith-metical and geometrical relations. These arepeculiar relations of presentations, distinct fromall others, and only intelligible in virtue of a purea priori intuition. For geometry this is space ;for arithmetic time, in which counting goes on.Scientifically, arithmetic is fundamental. (4) Asthe third form of causality was enumerated' motive ' for the will ; but in that classification itwas viewed from without, as belonging to theworld of objects. Through the direct knowledgewe have of our own will, we know also fromwithin this determination by the presentation we-^call a motive/' Hence emerges the fourth form ofthe principle of sufficient reason. This at a later*.- ! ''iia.m in i.^ni 1 1 mi-stage makes possible the transition from physicsto metaphysics.

All these forms alike are forms of necessarydetermination. Necessity has no clear and truesense but certainty of the consequence when the


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THEORY OF KNOWLEDGEground is posited. All necessity therefore is con-ditional. In accordance with the four expressionsof the principle of sufficient reason, it takes thefourfold shape of physical, logical, mathematical,and moral necessity.The sharp distinction between logical and

mathematical truth, with the assignment of theformer to conceptual and of the latter to intuitiverelations, comes to Schopenhauer directly fromKant. So also does his view that the necessaryform of causation is sequence; though here hispoints of contact with English thinkers, earlierand later, are very marked. Only in his state-ment of the ' law of motivation ' as ' causality seenfrom within ' does he hint at his own distinctivemetaphysical doctrine. Meanwhile, it is evidentthat he is to be numbered with the group ofmodern thinkers who have arrived in one way oranother at a complete scientific phenomenism.VExpositors have noted that in his earlier state-ments of this he tends to lay more stress on thecharacter of the visible and tangible world asmere appearance. The impermanence, therelativity, of all that exists in time and space,leads him to describe it, in a favourite termborrowed from Indian philosophy, as Maya, orillusion. Later, he dwells more on the relative

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SCHOPENHAUERreality of things as they appear. His position,however, does not essentially alter, but only findsvarying expression as he turns more to thescientific or to the metaphysical side. / FromHume's view on causation he differs not byopposing its pure phenomenism, but only byrecognising, as Kant does, an a priori element int-> O' * L - . . -. - TV.. ;- .the form of its law. German critics have seen inhis own formulation an anticipation of Mill, andthis is certainly striking as regards the generalconception of the causal order, although there isno anticipation of Mill's inductive logic. On thesame side there is a close agreement with Male-branche and the Occasionalists, pointed out bySchopenhauer himself. The causal explanationsof science, he is at one with them in insisting,give no ultimate account of anything. All itscauses are no more than ' occasional causes,'merely instances, as Mill expressed it afterwards,of * invariable and unconditional sequence.' FromMill of course he differs in holding its form to benecessary and a priori, not ultimately derivedfrom a summation of experiences; and, with theOccasionalists, he goes on to metaphysics in itssense of ontology, as Mill never did. The differ-ence here is that he does not clothe his meta-physics in a theological dress.

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THEORY OF KNOWLEDGEIn the later development of his thought,

Schopenhauer dealt more expressly with thequestion, how this kind of phenomenism isreconcilable with a scientific cosmogony. On one tjjfside the proposition, ' No object without subject/makes materialism for ever impossible; for theJL 'materialist tries to explain from relations amongOpresentations what is the condition of all pre-sentation. On the other side, we are all compelledto agree with the materialists that knowledge ofthe object comes late in a long series of materialevents. Inorganic things existed in time beforelife ; vegetative life before animal life ; and onlywith animal life does knowledge emerge.Reasoned knowledge of the whole series comesonly at the end of it in the human mind. Thisapparent contradiction he solves by leaving aplace for metaphysics. Our representation of theworld as it existed before the appearance of lifewas indeed non-existent at the time to which weassign it; but the real being of the world hada manifestation not imaginable by us. For this,we substitute a picture of a world such as weshould have been aware of had our ' subject,' withits a priori forms of time, space, and causality,been then present. What the reality is, is theproblem of the thing-in-itself (to use the Kantian

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SCHOPENHAUERterm). This problem remains over; but we knowthat the metaphysical reality cannot be matter;for matter, with all its qualities, is phenomenal.It exists only ' for understanding, through under-standing, in understanding/ These discrimina-tions made, Schopenhauer offers us a scientific//* cosmogony beginning with the nebular hypothesisand ending with an outline of organic evolution.This last differs from the Darwinian theory insupposing a production of species by definite stepsinstead of by accumulation of small individualvariations. At a certain time, a form that has allthe characters of a new species appears amongthe progeny of an existing species. Man is thelast and highest form to be evolved. FromSchopenhauer's metaphysics, 'as we shall see, itfollows that no higher form of life will everappear.A word may be said here on a materialistic-sounding phrase which is very prominent inSchopenhauer's later expositions, and has beenremarked on as paradoxical for an idealist. Theworld as presentation, he often says, is 'in thebrain.' This, it must be allowed, is not fullydefensible from his own point of view, exceptwith the aid of a later distinction. The brain aswe know it is of course only a part of the


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THEORY OF KNOWLEDGEphenomenon of the subject, a grouping ofpossible perceptions. How then, since it is itselfonly appearance, can it be the bearer of the wholeuniverse as appearance ? The answer is that1 X >Schopenhauer meant in reality ' the being of thebrain/ and not the brain as phenomenon. Hehad a growing sense of the importance ofphysiology for the investigation of mind; andhis predilection led him to adopt a not quitesatisfactory shorthand expression for the corre-spondence we know scientifically to exist betweenour mental processes and changes capable ofobjective investigation in the matter of thebrain.

In science his distinctive bent was to theborderland between psychology and physiology.Hence came the attraction exercised on him byGoethe's theory of colours. To his own theory,though, unlike his philosophical system, it hasalways failed to gain the attention he predictedfor it, the merit must be allowed of treating theproblem as essentially one of psychophysics.What he does is to attempt to ascertain theconditions in the sensibility of the retina thataccount for our actual colour-sensations. Thisproblem was untouched by the Newtoniantheory; but Schopenhauer followed Goethe in

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SCHOPENHAUERthe error of trying to overthrow this on its ownground. He had no aptitude for the specialinquiries of mathematics and physics, though hehad gained a clear insight into their generalnature as sciences. On the psycho-physical sidethere is to-day no fully authorised theory. Theproblem indeed has become ever more complex.Schopenhauer's attempt, by combination of sensi-bilities to ' light ' and ' darkness,' to explain thephenomena of complementary colours, deservesat least a record in the long series of essays ofwhich the best known are the ' Young-Helmholtztheory' and that of Hering. It marks an in-dubitable advance on Goethe in the clear distinc-tion drawn between the mixture, in the ordinarysense, that can only result in dilution to differentshades of grey, and the kinds of mixture fromwhich, in their view, true colours arise.A characteristic position in Schopenhauer'stheory of knowledge, and one that is constantlyfinding new expression in his writings, is thedistinction between abstract and intuitive know-ledge already touched on. /Intuitive knowledgetfof the kind that is common to men and animals,as we have seen, makes up, in his terminology,the 'understanding'; while 'reason' is the dis-tinctively human faculty of conceptsX When he%l v A.

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THEORY OF KNOWLEDGEdepreciates this, as he often does, in comparisonwith

'

intuition/ it must be remembered that he.does not limit thife term to perception of par-ticulars, but ascribes to what he calls the* Platonic Idea ' a certain kind of union betweenreason and ' phantasy/ which gives it an intuitivecharacter of its own. Thus intuition can stand,though not in every case for what is higher, yetalways for that which is wider and greater andmore immediate. Whatever may be done withreflective reason and its abstractions, everyeffectual process of thought must end, alike forknowledge and art and virtue, in some intuitivepresentation. ThgL importance of reason forpractice is due to its generality. Its function isX. O vsubordinate. It^ does not furnish the ground ofvirtuous action any more than aesthetic preceptscan enable any one to produce a work of art :I Lbut it can help to preserve constancy to certainmaxims, as also in art a reasoned plan is necessarybecause the inspiration of genius is not everymoment at command. Virtue and artistic geniusalike, however, depend ultimately on intuition :and so also does every true discovery in science..The nature of pedantry is to try to be guidedeverywhere by concepts, and to trust nothing toperception in the particular case. Philosophy

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SCHOPENHAUEKalso Schopenhauer regards as depending ulti-mately on a certain intuitive view ; but he allowsthat it has to translate this into abstractions.Its problem is to express the what of the worldin abstract form : science dealing only with thewhy of phenomena related within the world.This character of philosophy as a system ofabstract concepts deprives it of the immediateattractiveness of art ; so that, as he says in oneplace, it is more fortunate to be a poet than aphilosopher.

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CHAPTER IIIMETAPHYSICS OF THE WILL

WE have seen that scientific explanation doesnot go beyond presentations ordered in space andtime. This is just as true of the sciences ofcausation the ' setiological ' sciences as it is ofmathematical science. All that we learn fromMechanics, Physics, Chemistry and Physiology,is 'how, in accordance with an infallible rule, /one determinate state of matter necessarilyfollows another: how a determinate changenecessarily conditions and brings on anotherdeterminate change.' This knowledge does notsatisfy us. We wish to learn the significance ofphenomena; but we find that from outside, whilewe view them as presentations, their inner mean-ing is for ever inaccessible.The starting-point for the metaphysical know-^.^uaeoo^ O i. JL /ledge we seek is given us in our own body. The

animal body is 'the immediate object of thesubject': in it as presentation the 'effects' of

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SCHOPENHAUER( causes ' in the order of presentations externalto it are first recognised. Now in virtue of hisbody the investigator is not pure knowingsubject standing apart from that which he knows.In the case of the particular system of presenta-tions constituting his organism, he knows whatthese presentations signify, and that is his willin a certain modification. The subject appearsas individual through its identity with thebody, and this body is given to it in two differentways: on one side as object among objects, andsubjected to their laws; on the other side as thewill immediately known to each. The act ofwill and the movement of the body are not twodifferent states related as cause and effect: for3the relation of cause and effect belongs only tothe object, the phenomenon, the presentation.They are one and the same act given in differentmanners : the will, immediately to the subiect ;j tfthe movement, in sensible intuition for under-standing. The action of the body is the ob-jectified act of will. Called at first the im-mediate object of presentation, the body maynow, from the other side, be called

'

the objectivityof the will.'Thus, as was said, the ' law of motivation '

discloses the inner nature of causality. In3


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METAPHYSICS OF THE WILLcausality in general we know only relations ofphenomena;

but in the case of our own body weknow something else that those relations express ;namely, the act of will determined by motives.Now there are in the world as presentation othersystems like that which we call our body. Unlessall these are to be supposed mere phantoms with-out inner reality, we must infer by analogy, incorrespondence with like phenomena, other indi-vidual wills similar to that which we know in our-selves. This inference from analogy, universallyadmitted in the case of human and animal bodies,must be extended to the whole corporeal world.The failure to take this step is where the purelyintellectual forms of idealism have come short.Kant's ' thing-in-itself,' which is not subject tothe forms by which presentations become experi-ence, but which experience and its forms indicateas the reality, has been wrongly condemned byhis successors as alien to idealism. It is truethat Kant did in some respects fail to maintainthe idealistic position with the clearness ofBerkeley ; but his shortcoming was not in affirm-ing a thing-in-itself beyond phenomena. Here,in Schopenhauer's view, is the metaphysicalproblem that he left a place for but did not solve.The word of the riddle has now been pronounced.

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SCHOPENHAUERBeyond presentation, that is, in itself and accord-ing to its innermost essence, the world is thatwhich we find in ourselves immediately as will.By this it is not meant that a falling stone, forexample, acts from a motive ; knowledge and theconsequent action from motives belongs only tothe determinate form that the will has in animalsand men ; but the reality in the stone also is thesame in essence as that to which we apply thename of will in ourselves. He who possesses thiskey to the knowledge of nature's innermostbeing will interpret the forces of vegetation, ofcrystallisation, of magnetism, of chemical affinity,even of weight itself, as different only in pheno-menal manifestation but in essence the same ;namely, that which is better known to each thanall else, and where it emerges most clearly iscalled will. Only the will is thing-in-itself. It iswholly different from presentation, and is that ofwhich presentation is the phenomenon, the visi-bility, the objectivity. Differences affect only thedegree of the appearing, not the essence of thatwhich appears.While the reality everywhere present is notwill as specifically known in man, the mode

of indicating its essence by reference to this,Schopenhauer contends, is a gain in insight. The

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METAPHYSICS OF THE WILLthing-in-itself ought to receive its name fromthat among all its manifestations which is theclearest, the most perfect, the most immediatelyillumined by knowledge ; and this is man's will.When we say that every force in nature is to bethought of as Will, we are subsuming an unknownunder a known. For the conception of Force isabstracted from the realm of cause and effect,and indicates the limit of scientific explanation.Having arrived at the forces of nature on the oneside and the forms of the subject on the other,science can go no further. The conception ofWill can make known that which was so far con-cealed, because it proceeds from the most intimateconsciousness that each has of himself, where theknower and the known coincide.By this consciousness, in which subject and

object are not yet set apart, we reach somethinguniversal. In itself the Will is not individualised,but exists whole and undivided in every singlething in nature, as the Subject of contemplationexists whole and undivided in each cognitivebeing. It is entirely free from all forms of thephenomenon. What makes plurality possible issubjection to the forms of time and space, bywhich only the phenomenon is affected. Timeand space may therefore be called, in scholastic

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SCHOPENHAUERterminology, the ' principle of individuation.'While each of its phenomena is subject to thelaw of sufficient reason, which is the law ofappearance in these forms, there is for the Will asthing-in-itself no rational ground : it is ' grundlos.'It is free from all plurality, although its pheno-mena in space and time are innumerable. It isone, not with the unity of an object or of a con-cept, but as that which lies outside of space andtime, beyond the principium individuationis,that is, the possibility of plurality. The indi-vidual, the person, is not will as thing-in-itself,but phenomenon of the will, and as such deter-mined. The will is ' free ' because there isnothing beyond itself to determine it. Further,

\it is in itself mere activity without end, a blind, striving. Knowledge appears only as the accom-paniment of its ascending stages.Here we have arrived at the thought which, in

its various expressions, constitutes Schopen-hauer's metaphysics. That this cannot be scien-tifically deduced he admits ; but he regards it asfurnishing such explanation as is possible ofscience itself. For science there is in everythingan inexplicable element to which it runs back,and which is real, not merely phenomenal. Fromthis reality we are most remote in pure inathe-


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METAPHYSICS OF THE WILLmatics and in the pure a priori science of natureas it was formulated by Kant. These owe theirtransparent clearness precisely to their absence ofreal content, or to the slightness of this. Theattempt to reduce organic life to chemistry, thisagain to mechanism, and at last everything toarithmetic, could it succeed, would leave mereform behind, from which all the content of pheno-mena would have vanished. And the form wouldin the end be form of the subject. But the enter-prise is vain. * For in everything in nature thereis something of which no ground can ever begiven, of which no explanation is possible, nocause further is to be sought.' What for man ishis inexplicable character, presupposed in everyexplanation of his deeds from motives, that forevery inorganic body is its inexplicable quality,the manner of its acting.The basis of this too is will, and ' groundless/

inexplicable will; but evidently the conceptionhere is not identical with that of the Will that isone and all. How do we pass from the universalto that which has a particular character orquality ? For of the Will as thing-in-itself we aretold that there is not a greater portion in a manand a less in a stone. The relation of part andwhole belongs exclusively to space. The more

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SCHOPENHAUERand less touches only the phenomenon, that is,the visibility, the objectivation. A higher degreeof this is in the plant than in the stone, in theanimal than in the plant, and so forth ; but theWill that is the essence of all is untouched by/degree, as it is beyond plurality, space and time,and the relation of cause and effect.The answer to the question here raised is given

in Schopenhauer's interpretation of the PlatonicIdeas. These he regards as stages of objectiva-tion of the Will. They are, as Plato called them,eternal forms related to particular things asmodels. The lowest stage of objectivation of theWill is represented by the forces of inorganicnature. Some of these, such as weight and im-penetrability, appear in all matter. Some aredivided among its different kinds, as rigidity,fluidity, elasticity, electricity, magnetism, chemi-cal properties. They are not subject to therelation of cause and effect, but are presupposedby it. A force is neither cause of an effect noreffect of a cause. Philosophically, it is immedi-ate objectivity of the will; in aetiology, qualitasocculta. At the lowest stages of objectivation,there is no individuality. This does not appearin inorganic things, nor even in merely organicor vegetative life, but only as we ascend the scale

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METAPHYSICS OF THE WILLof animals. Even in the higher animals thespecific enormously predominates over the indi-vidual character. Only in man is the Ideaobjectified in the individual character as such.' The character of each individual man, so far asit is thoroughly individual and not entirely com-prehended in that of the species, may be regardedas a particular Idea, corresponding to a peculiaract of objectivation of the Will/Schopenhauer warns us against substituting

this philosophical explanation for scientific aetio-logy. The chain of causes and effects, he pointsout, is not broken by the differences of theoriginal, irreducible forces. The aetiology andthe philosophy of nature go side by side, regard-ing the same object from different points of view.Yet he also gives us in relation to his philosophymuch that is not unsuggestive scientifically.His doctrine is riot properly evolutionary, sincethe Ideas are eternal ; but he has guarded inci-dentally against our supposing that all thenatural kinds that manifest the Ideas phenome-nally must be always represented in every world.For our particular world, comprising the sun andplanets of the solar system, he sets forth in theParerga an account of the process by which itdevelops from the nebula to man. This was

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SCHOPENHAUERreferred to in the preceding chapter. In hisfundamental work he describes a struggle,present through the whole of nature, in whichthe phenomenal manifestations of the higherIdeas conquer and subjugate those of the lower,though they leave them still existent and everstriving to get loose. Here has been seen anadumbration of natural selection: he himselfadmits the difficulty he has in making it clear.We must remember that it is pre-Darwinian.Knowledge or intelligence he seeks to explain

as an aid to the individual organism in itsstruggle to subsist and to propagate its kind. Itfirst appears in animal life. It is represented bythe brain or a large ganglion, as every endeavourof the Will in its self-objectivation is representedby some organ; that is, displays itself for pre-sentation as such and such an appearance.Superinduced along with this contrivance foraid in the struggle, the world as presentation,with all its forms, subject and object, time, space,plurality and causality, is all at once there.' Hitherto only will, it is now at the same timepresentation, object of the knowing subject.'Then in man, as a higher power beyond merelyintuitive intelligence, appears reason as the powerof abstract conception. For the most part,


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METAPHYSICS OF THE WILLrational as well as intuitive knowledge, evolvedoriginally as a mere means to higher objectiva-tion of the Will, remains wholly in its service.How, in exceptional cases, intellect emancipatesitself, will be discussed under the heads of^Esthetics and Ethics.That this view implies a teleology Schopen-

hauer expressly recognises. Indeed he is a verydecided teleologist on lines of his own, and, inphysiology, takes sides strongly with ' vitalism 'as against pure mechanicism. True, the Will is' endless ' blind striving, and is essentially dividedagainst

itself. Everywhere in nature there isstrife, and this takes the most horrible forms.Yet somehow there is in each individual mani-festation of will a principle by which first theorganism with its vital processes, and then theportion of it called the brain, in which is repre-sented the intellect with its a priori forms, areevolved as aids in the strife. And, adapting allthe manifestations to one another, there is ateleology of the universe. The whole world, withall its phenomena, is the objectivity of the oneand indivisible Will; the Idea which is relatedto all other Ideas as the harmony to the singlevoices. The unity of the Will shows itself in theunison of all its phenomena as related to one

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SCHOPENHAUERanother. Man, its clearest and completest objec-tivation, is the summit of a pyramid, and couldnot exist without this. Inorganic and organicnature, then, were adapted to the future appear-ance of man, as man is adapted to the develop-ment that preceded him. But in thinking thereality, time is to be abstracted from. Theearlier, we are obliged to say, is fitted to thelater, as the later is fitted to the earlier ; but therelation of means to end, under which we cannothelp figuring the adaptation, is only appearancefor our manner of knowledge. And the harmonydescribed does not get rid of the conflict inherentin all will.

In this account of Schopenhauer's metaphysicaldoctrine, I have tried to make the exposition assmooth as possible ; but at two points the discon-tinuity can scarcely be concealed. First, therelation of the universal Will to the individualwill is not made clear ; and, secondly, the emer-gence of the world of presentation, with theknowledge in which it culminates, is left unin-telligible because the will is conceived as mereblind striving without an aim. As regards thefirst point, disciples and expositors have been ableto show that, by means of distinctions in his laterwritings, apparent contradictions are to some

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METAPHYSICS OF THE WILLextent cleared away; and, moreover, that hecame to recognise more reality in the individualwill. On the second point, I think it will benecessary to admit that his system as such breaksdown. But both points must be considered intheir connection.One of the most noteworthy features of

Schopenhauer's philosophy is, as he himselfthought, the acceptance from first to last of Kant'sdistinction between the ' empirical ' and the ' in-telligible ' character of the individual, Every actof will of every human being follows with neces-sity as phenomenon from its phenomenal causes ;so that all the events of each person's life aredetermined in accordance with scientific law.Nevertheless, the character empirically manifestedin the phenomenal world, while it is completelynecessitated, is the expression of something thatis free from necessitation. This 'intelligiblecharacter ' is out of time, and, itself undetermined,manifests itself through that which develops intime as a chain of necessary causes and effects.That this doctrine had been taken up, withoutany ambiguity as regards the determinism, bySchelling as well as by himself, he expresslyacknowledges; and he finds it, as he also findsmodern idealism, anticipated in various passages


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SCHOPENHAUERby the Neo-Platonists. His adaptation of it tohis doctrine of the Ideas is distinctly Neo-Platonicin so far as he recognises ' Ideas of individuals ' ;but of course to make Will the essence belongs tohis own system. 'The intelligible character/ hesays, ' coincides with the Idea, or, yet more pre-cisely,

with the original act of will that manifestsitself in it: in so far, not only is the empiricalcharacter of each man, but also of each animalspecies, nay, of each plant species, and even ofeach original force of inorganic nature, to be re-garded as phenomenon of an intelligible character,that is, of an indivisible act of will out of time.'This is what he called the ' aseitas ' of the will ;borrowing a scholastic term to indicate its de-rivation (if we may speak of it as derived) fromitself (a se), and not from a supposed creative act.Only if we adopt this view are we entitled toregard actions as worthy of moral approval ordisapproval. They are such not because they arenot necessitated, but because they necessarilyshow forth the nature of an essence the freedomof which consists in being what it is. Yet hecould not but find a difficulty in reconciling thiswith his position that the one universal Will isidentical in all things, and in each is ' individuated 'only by space and time. For the Ideas, like the


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METAPHYSICS OF THE WILLthing-in-itself, are eternal, that is, outside of timeas well as space ; and all the things now enumer-ated, forces of nature, plant and animal species,and individual characters of men, are declared tobe in themselves Ideas.He in part meets this difficulty by the subtlety

that time and space do not, strictly speaking,determine individuality, but arise along with it.The diremption of individualities becomes explicitin those forms. Yet he must have perceived thatthis is not a complete answer, and various modifi-cations can be seen going on. His first viewclearly was that the individual is wholly imper-manent, and at death simply disappears ; nothingis left but the one Will and the universal Subjectof contemplation identical in all. Metempsychosisis the best mythological rendering of what happens,but it is no more. Later, he puts forward the notvery clearly defined theory of a ' palingenesia ' bywhich a particular will, but not the intellect thatformerly accompanied it, may reappear in thephenomenal world. And the hospitality heshowed to stories of magic, clairvoyance, andghost-seeing, is scarcely compatible with the viewthat the individual will is no more than aphenomenal differentiation of the universal will.A speculation (not put forward as anything more)

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SCHOPENHAUERon the appearance of a special providence in thedestiny of the individual, points, as ProfessorVolkelt has noted, to the idea of a guidance, notfrom without, but by a kind of good daemon orgenius that is the ultimate reality of the person.On all this we must not lay too much stress ; butthere is certainly one passage that can only bedescribed as a definite concession that the indi-vidual is real in a sense not at first allowed.Individuality, it is said in so many words(Parerga, ii. 117), does not rest only on the' principle of individuation ' (time and space), andis therefore not through and through phenomenon,but is rooted in the thing-in-itself. 'How deepits roots go belongs to the questions which I donot undertake to answer/ l

This tends to modify considerably, but does notoverthrow, Schopenhauer's original system.

Invery general terms, he is in the number of the'pantheistic' thinkers; and it is remarkable, onexamination, how these, in Europe at least, havenearly always recognised in the end some per-manent reality in the individual. This is con-trary to first impressions: but the great namesmay be cited of Plotinus, John Scotus Erigena,Giordano Bruno, Spinoza (in Part v. of the Ethics),

1 Werke, ed. Frauenstadt, vol. vi. p. 243.


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METAPHYSICS OF THE WILLand finally of Schopenhauer's special aversion,Hegel, who has been supposed most unfavourableof all to any recognition of individuality as real.It is more true, Hegel maintains, that the indi-viduality determines its world than that it isdetermined by it; and there is no explanationwhy the determination should be such and suchexcept that the individuality was already what itis.1 And, if Schopenhauer's more imaginativespeculations seek countenance from the side ofempiricism, there is nothing in them quite soaudacious as a speculation of J. S. Mill on dis-embodied mind, thrown out during the time whenhe was writing his Logic?The association with pantheism Schopenhauer

accepts in principle, though the name is not con-genial to him. In his system the Will is one andall, like the ' Deus ' of Spinoza. The difference isthat, instead of ascribing perfection to the uni-verse that is its manifestation, he regards the

1 Phdnomenologie des Geistes, Jubilaumsausgabe, ed. G. Lasson,pp. 201-3.

2 Letter to Robert Barclay Fox, May 10, 1842. Printed inAppendix to Letters and Journals of Caroline Fox, third ed. ,vol. ii. pp. 331-2. ' To suppose that the eye is necessary tosight,' says Mill, ' seems to me the notion of one immersed inmatter. What we call our bodily sensations are all in themind, and would not necessarily or probably cease, because thebody perishes.'

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SCHOPENHAUEKproduction of a world as a lapse from whichredemption is to be sought. His doctrine hasbeen rightly described, in common with the pre-dominant philosophical doctrines of his period,as a resultant of the deepened subjective analysisbrought by Kant into modern philosophy on theone side, and of the return to Spinoza in thequest for unity of principle on the other. Why,then, it may be asked, are Fichte, Schelling, andHegel the constant objects of his attack ? Thetrue explanation is not the merely external one,that they were his successful rivals for publicfavour, but is to be found in a real antithesis ofthought. Within the limits of the idealism theyall hold in common, Schopenhauer is at theopposite pole. In spite of his attempt to in-corporate the Platonic Ideas, and in spite of hisfollowing of Kant, whose ' intelligible world ' wasin essence Platonic or neo-Platonic, he could findno place in his system for a rational order at thesummit. Now this order was precisely whatFichte and Hegel aimed at demonstrating. IfSchopenhauer is less unsympathetic in hisreferences to Schelling, that is because Schelling'sworld-soul appeared to him to prefigure his ownattempt to discover in nature the manifestationof a blindly striving will or feeling rather than


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METAPHYSICS OF THE WILLreason. Suspicious as lie shows himself ofpossible plagiarisms by others, the charge cannotbe retorted against himself. The supreme prin-ciple of Fichte, it has been pointed out, has anactively volitional character and was formulatedbefore Schopenhauer's : but then it is essentiallyrational. For Hegel, what is supreme is theworld-reason. Hence they are at one with Platoin holding that in some sense 'mind is king/For Schopenhauer, on the contrary, mind, orpure intellect, is an emancipated slave. Havingreached its highest point, and seen through thework of the will, it does not turn back andorganise it, but abolishes it as far as its insightextends.Yet to say merely this is to give a wrong im-

pression of Schopenhauer. Starting though hedoes with blind will, and ending with the flightof the ascetic from the suffering inherent in theworld that is the manifestation of such a will, henevertheless, in the intermediate stages, makesthe world a cosmos and not a chaos. And thePlatonists on their side have to admit that ' theworld of all of us ' does not present itself on thesurface as a manifestation of pure reason, andthat it is a serious task to ' rationalise ' it. Wherehe completely fails is where the Platonic systems

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SCHOPENHAUERalso fail, though from the opposite starting-point.His attempt to derive presentation, intellect,knowledge, from blind striving, is undoubtedlya failure. But so also is the attempt of thePlatonising thinkers to deduce a world of mixturefrom a principle of pure reason without aid fromanything else empirically assumed. Not that ineither case there is failure to give explanationsin detail ; but in both cases much is taken fromexperience without reduction to the principles ofthe system. What we may say by way of com-parison is this : that if Schopenhauer had in somany words recognised an immanent Reason aswell as Will in the reality of the universe, hewould have formally renounced his pessimism ;while it cannot be said that on the other side amore explicit empiricism in the account of theself-manifestation of Reason would necessarilydestroy the optimism.


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CHAPTER IV.ESTHETICS

A PORTION of Schopenhauer's system by whichits pessimism is considerably mitigated is histheory of the Beautiful and of Fine Art. Thecharacteristic of aesthetic contemplation is, hefinds, that intellect throws off the yoke andsubsists purely for itself as clear mirror of theworld, free from all subjection to practical pur-poses of the will. In this state of freedom,temporary painlessness is attained.The theory starts from his adaptation of the

Platonic Ideas. Regarded purely as an aesthetictheory, it departs from Plato, as he notes; for,with the later Platonists, who took up the defenceof poetic myths and of the imitative arts asagainst their master, he holds that Art penetratesto the general Idea through the particular, andhence that the work of art is no mere c copy of acopy/ The difference of the Idea from theConcept is that it is not merely abstract andD 49


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SCHOPENHAUERgeneral, but combines with generality the char-acters of an intuition.The Ideas, as we have seen, constitute thedeterminate stages of objectivation of the Will.The innumerable individuals of which the Ideasare the patterns are subject to the law of sufficientreason. They appear, that is to say, under theforms of time, space, and causality. The Idea isbeyond these forms, and therefore is clear ofplurality and change. Since the law of sufficientreason is the common form under which standsall the subject's knowledge so far as the subjectknows as individual, the Ideas lie outside thesphere of knowledge of the individual as such.If, therefore, the Ideas are to be the object ofknowledge, this can only be by annulling indi-viduality in the knowing subject.As thing-in-itself, the Will is exempt evenfrom the first of the forms of knowledge, the formof being ' object for a subject/ The PlatonicIdea, on the other hand, is necessarily an object,something known, a presentation. It has laidaside, or rather has not taken on, the subordinateforms; but it has retained the first and mostgeneral form. It is the immediate and mostadequate possible objectivity of the Will; whereasparticular things are an objectivation troubled by


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AESTHETICSthe forms of which the law of sufficient reason isthe common expression.When intellect breaks loose from the service ofthe will, for which it was originally destined inthe teleology of nature, then the subject ceasesto be merely individual and becomes pure will-lesssubject of knowledge. In this state the beholderno longer tracks out relations in accordance withthe principle of sufficient reason which is themode of scientific as well as of common knowledge

but rests in fixed contemplation of the givenobject apart from its connection with anythingelse. The contemplator thus 'lost' in the object,it is not the single thing as such that is known,but the Idea, the eternal form, the immediateobjectivity of the Will at this stage. The correlateof this object the pure Subject exempt from theprinciple of sufficient reason is eternal, like theIdea.The objectivation of the Will appears faintly in

inorganic things, clouds, water, crystals, morefully in the plant, yet more fully in the animal,most completely in man. Only the essential inthese stages of objectivation constitutes the Idea.Its development into manifold phenomena underthe forms of the principle of sufficient reason, isunessential, lies merely in the mode of knowledge

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SCHOPENHAUERfor the individual, and has reality only for this.It is not otherwise with the unfolding of thatIdea which is the completest objectivation of theWill. To the Idea of Man, the occurrences ofhuman history are as unessential as the shapesthey assume to the clouds, as the figures of itswhirlpools

and foam-drift to the stream, as itsfrost-flowers to the ice. The same underlyingpassions and dispositions everlastingly recur inthe same modes. It is idle to suppose that any-thing is gained. But also nothing is lost : so theEarth-spirit might reply to one who complainedof high endeavours frustrated, faculties wasted,promises of world-enlightenment brought tonought; for there is infinite time to dispose of,and ajl possibilities are for ever renewed.The kind of knowledge for which the Ideas arethe object of contemplation finds its expressionin Art, the work of genius. Art repeats in itsvarious media the Ideas grasped by pure contem-plation. Its only end is the communication ofthese. While Science, following the stream ofevents according to their determinate relations,never reaches an ultimate end, Art is always atthe end. ' It stops the wheel of time ; relationsvanish for it: only the essence, the Idea, is itsobject/ The characteristic of genius is a pre-


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AESTHETICSdominant capacity for thus contemplating thingsindependently of the principle of sufficient reason.Since this requires a forgetting of one's ownperson and the relations between it and things,the attitude of genius is simply the com pietest'objectivity.' The 'subjectivity' opposed to this,in Schopenhauer's phraseology, is preoccupationwith the interests of one's own will. It is, hesays, as if there fell to the share of genius ameasure of intelligence far beyond the needs ofthe individual will : and this makes possible thesetting aside of individual interests, the strippingoff of the particular personality, so that the subjectbecomes ' pure knowing subject/ ' clear world-eye/in a manner sufficiently sustained for that whichhas been grasped to be repeated in the work ofart. A necessary element in genius is thereforeImagination. For without imagination to repre-sent, in a shape not merely abstract, things thathave not come within personal experience, geniuswould remain limited to immediate intuition, andcould not make its vision apprehensible by others.Nor without imagination could the particularthings that express

the Idea be cleared of theimperfections by which their limited expressionof it falls short of what nature was aiming atin their production. * Inspiration ' is ascribed to

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SCHOPENHAUERgenius because its characteristic attitude is inter-mittent. The man of genius cannot always re-main on a height, but has to fall back to thelevel of the common man, who can scarcely at allregard things except as they affect his interests,have a relation to his will, direct or indirect.

This is the statement in its first outline of atheory that became one of Schopenhauer's mostfruitful topics. Many are the pages he has de-voted to the contrast between the man of geniusand ' the wholesale ware of nature, which sheturns out daily by thousands.' The genius is forhim primarily the artist. Scientific genius as adistinctive thing he does not fully recognise ; andhe regards men of action, and especially states-men^ rather as men of highly competent abilityendowed with an exceptionally good physicalconstitution than as men of genius in the propersense. Philosophers like himself, who, as hefrankly says, appear about once in a hundredyears, he classes in the end with the artists;Jflatnigh-this was left somewhat indeterminate inhis first exposition. The weakness of the man ofgenius in dealing with the ordinary circumstancesof life he allows, and even insists on. Genius,grasping the Idea in its perfection, fails to under-stand individuals. A poet may know man pro-


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AESTHETICSfoundly, and men very ill. /He admits theproximity of genius to madness on one side, andexplains it in this way. What marks the stageof actual madness, as distinguished from illusionor hallucination, is complete disruption of thememory of past life, of the history of the personalityas something continuous; so that the particularthing is viewed by itself, out of relation. Thisgives a kind of resemblance to the attitude ofgenius, for which present intuition excludes fromview the relations of things to each other. Or, aswe may perhaps sum up his thought in its mostgeneral form, 'alienation' or dissolution of per-sonality has the resemblance often noted betweenextremes to the impersonality, or, as he calls it,' objectivity/ that is super-personal.

In spite of his contempt for the crowd, he hasto admit, of course, that the capacity of geniusto recognise the Ideas of things and to becomemomentarily impersonal must in some measurebelong to all men ; otherwise, they could not evenenjoy a work of art when produced. Genius hasthe advantage only in the much higher degreeand the greater prolongation of the insight.Since, then, the actual achievement of the artistis to make us look into the world through hiseyes, the feelings for the beautiful and the sublime

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SCHOPENHAUERmay be treated irrespectively of the questionwhether they are aroused by nature and humanlife directly or by means of art.

^Esthetic pleasure in contemplation of thebeautiful proceeds partly from recognition of theindividual object not as one particular thing butas Platonic Idea, that is, as the enduring form ofthis whole kind of things ; partly from the con-sciousness the knower has of himself not asindividual, but as pure, will-less Subject of Know-ledge. All volition springs out of need, thereforeout of want, therefore out of suffering. No at-tained object of will can give permanent satis-faction. Thus, there can be no durable happinessor rest for us as long as we are subjects of will.' The Subject of Will lies continually on the turn-ing wheel of Ixion, draws ever in the sieve ofthe Danaides, is the eternally thirsting Tantalus.But in the moment of* pure objective contem-plation, free from all interest of the particularsubjectivity, we enter a painless state : the wheelof Ixion stands still. The Flemish paintersproduce this aesthetic effect by the sense ofdisinterested contemplation conveyed in theirtreatment of insignificant objects. There arecertain natural scenes that have power in them-selves, apart from artistic treatment, to put us in

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AESTHETICSthis state ; but the slightest obtrusion of individualinterest destroys the magic. Past and distantobjects, through their apparent detachment, havethe same power. The essential thing aesthetically,whether we contemplate the present or the past,the near or the distant, is that only the worldof presentation remains; the world as will hasvanished.The difference between the feelings of the

Beautiful and of the Sublime is this. In the feel-ing of the beautiful, pure intelligence gains thevictory without a struggle, leaving in conscious-ness only the pure subject of knowledge, so that Ino reminiscence of the will remains. In the feel-ing of the sublime, on the other hand, the stateof pure intelligence has to be won by a consciousbreaking loose from relations in the object thatsuggest something threatening to the will ; thoughthere must not be actual danger ; for in that casethe individual will itself would come into play,and aesthetic detachment would cease. Elevationabove the sense of terror has not only to be con-sciously won but consciously maintained, andinvolves a continuous reminiscence, not indeed ofany individual will, but of the will of man ingeneral, so far as it is expressed through its objec-tivity, the human body, confronted by forces

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SCHOPENHAUERhostile to it. Pre-eminently this feeling arisesfrom contrast between the immensities of spaceand time and the apparent insignificance of man.It means in the last resort that the beholder isupheld by the consciousness that as pure subjectof knowledge (not as individual subject) he him-self bears within him all the worlds and all theages ; and is eternal as the forces that vainly seemto threaten him with annihilation.On the objective side, and apart from the sub-

jective distinction just set forth, the sublime andthe beautiful are not essentially different. Inboth cases alike, the object of aesthetic contem-plation is not the single thing, but the Idea thatis striving towards manifestation in it. Whatever}s viewed aesthetically is viewed out of relation to;iime and space : ' along with the law of sufficienteason the

single thing and the knowing indi-idual are taken away, and nothing remains overbut the Idea and the pure Subject of Knowledge,which together make up the adequate objectivitybf the Will at this stage/ There is thus a sensein which everything is beautiful ; since the Willappears in everything at some stage of objectivity,and this means that it is the expression of someIdea. But one thing can be more beautiful thananother by facilitating aesthetic contemplation.


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ESTHETICSThis facilitation proceeds either from the greaterclearness and perfection with which the particularthing shows forth the Idea of its kind, or from thehigher stage of objectivation to which that Ideacorresponds. Man being the highest stage ofobjectivation of the Will, the revelation of hisessence is the highest aim of art. In aestheticcontemplation of inorganic nature and vegetativelife, whether in the reality or through the mediumof art, and in appreciation of architecture, thejective aspect, that is to say, the enjoyment of purewill-less knowledge, is predominant; the Ideasthemselves being here lower stages of objectivity.On the other hand, when animals and men arethe object of aesthetic contemplation or representa-tion, the enjoyment consists more in the objectiveapprehension of those Ideas in which the essenceof the Will is most clearly and fully manifested.Of all Schopenhauer's work, its aesthetic part

has met with the most general appreciation.Here especially he abounds in observations drawndirectly, in his own phrase, from intuition. Tomake a selection of these, however, is not appro-priate to a brief sketch like the present. I passon, therefore, to those portions of his theory ofArt by which he makes the transition, in terms ofhis system, to Morality.

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SCHOPENHAUERFrom Architecture onward the arts are obliged

to represent the Will as divided. Here, at thefirst stage, its division subsists only in a conflictof inorganic forces which have to be brought toequilibrium. The conflict between weight andrigidity is in truth the only aesthetic material ofarchitecture as a fine art. When we come toanimal and lastly to human life, which, in thePlastic Arts and in Poetry, as form, individualisedexpression, and action, is the highest object ofaesthetic representation, the vehemence of dividedwill is fully revealed; and here too is revealedthe essential identity of every will with our own.In the words of the Indian wisdom, 'Tat twamasi'; ' that thou art.' Under the head of Ethicsit will be shown expressly that by this insight,when it reacts on the will, the will can deny itself.For the temporary release from its striving, givenin aesthetic contemplation, is then substitutedpermanent release. To this 'resignation,' theinnermost essence of all virtue and holiness, andthe final redemption from the world, Art itself, atits highest stages, points the way.The summits of pictorial and poetic art Schopen-hauer finds in the great Italian painters so far as

they represent the ethical spirit of Christianity,and in the tragic poets, ancient and modern. It

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ESTHETICSis true that the poverty of their sacred history ormythology puts the Christian artists at a disad-vantage ; but events are merely the accidents oftheir art. Not in these, as related according tothe law of sufficient reason, is the essence, but inthe spirit we divine through the forms portrayed.In their

representationof men full of that spirit,

and especially in the eyes, we see mirrored theknowledge that has seized the whole essence ofthe . world and of life, and that has reacted onthe will, not so as to give it motives, but as a' quietive ' ; whence proceeds complete resignation,and with it the annulling of the will and of thewhole essence of this world. Of tragedy, thesubject-matter is the conflict of the will withitself at its highest stage of objectivity. Herealso the end is the resignation brought on bycomplete knowledge of the essence of the world.The hero, on whom at last this knowledge hasacted as a quietive, gives up, not merely life, butthe whole will to live. ' The true meaning oftragedy is the deeper insight, that what the heroexpiates is not his particular sins, but original sin,that is, the guilt of existence itself/ To illustratethis position Schopenhauer is fond of quoting apassage from Calderon which declares that thegreatest sin of man is to have been born.

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SCHOPENHAUERv

It seems strange that, after deriding as he doesthe popular notion of ' poetic justice/ so detached Ka thinker should imagine an at least equally one-sided view to receive its final confirmation fromthe Spanish dramatist's poetic phrasing of aChristian dogma. The great tragic poets, forSchopenhauer also, are ^Eschylus, Sophocles andShakespeare. Now it is safe to say that by noneof these was any such general doctrine held eitherin conceptual or in intuitive form. The wholeeffect of any kind of art, of course he wouldadmit, cannot be packed- into a formula; but ifwe seek one as an aid to understanding, someadaptation of his own theory of the sublime wouldprobably serve much better as applied to tragedythan his direct theory of the drama. In the caseof pictorial art, all that is proved by what he saysabout the representation of ascetic saintliness, isthat this, like many other things, can be sobrought within the scope of art as to make usmomentarily identify ourselves with its Idea inthe impersonal manner he has himself described.His purely aesthetic theory is quite adequate tothe case, without any assumption that this is therepresentation of what is best. Art, pictorial or^"^'^"""apoetic, can no more prove pessimism than bpti- ^mism. .We pick out expressions of one or the

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.ESTHETICSother for quotation according to our moods orsubjective preferences ; but, if we have the feelingfor art itself, our sense of actual aesthetic valueought to be independent of these.

Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory, however, doesnot end here. There follows the part of it bywhich he has had an influence on artists them-selves. For him, a position separate from all theother arts is held by music. While the restobjectify the Will mediately, that is to say, bymeans of the Ideas, Music is as immediate anobjectivation of the whole Will as the world itself,or as the Ideas, of which the pluralised pheno-menon constitutes the sum of particular things.The other arts speak of the shadow, music of thesubstance. There is indeed a parallelism, an ana-logy, between Music and the Ideas; yet Musicnever expresses the phenomenon in which these aremanifested, but only the inner essence behind theappearance, the Will itself. In a sense it rendersnot feeling in its particularity, but feeling inabstractor joy, sorrow, not a joy, a sorrow. Thephenomenal world and music are to be regardedas two different expressions of the same thing.The world might be called embodied Music aswell as embodied Will. ' Melodies are to a certainextent like general concepts, an abstract of reality.'

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SCHOPENHAUERA complete explanation of music, that is, a de-tailed repetition of it in concepts, were thispossible, would be a complete explanation of theworld (since both express the same thing) andtherefore a true and final philosophy. As musiconly reaches its perfection in the full harmony,' so the one Will out of time finds its perfect objec-tivation only in complete union of all the stageswhich in innumerable degrees of heightened dis-tinctness reveal its essence/ But here, too,Schopenhauer adds, the Will is felt, and canbe proved, to be a divided will ; and the deliverancewrought by this supreme art, as by all the others,is only temporary.


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CHAPTER VETHICS

PERMANENT redemption from the suffering of theworld is to be found only in the holiness of theascetic ; but to this there are many stages, con-stituting the generally accepted human virtues.Of these Schopenhauer has a rational accountto give in terms of his philosophy ; and if thelast stage does not seem to follow by logicalsequence from the others, this is only what is tobe expected ; for it is reached, in his view, by asort of miracle. To the highest kind of intuitiveCJ -^ j. .. - .- -~ - "-.knowledge, from which the ascetic denial of thewill proceeds, artistic contemplation ought toprepare the way ; and so also, on his principles,ought the practice of justice and goodness. Yethe is obliged to admit that few thus reach thegoal. Of those that do reach it, the most arrivethrough personal suffering, which may be deserved.A true miracle is often worked in the repentantcriminal, by which final deliverance is achieved.

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SCHOPENHAUERThough the ' intelligible character ' is unalterable,and the empirical character can only be the un-folding of this, as every great dramatist intuitivelyrecognises, yet the c convertites,' like DukeFrederick in As You Like It, are not to be regardedas hypocrites. The ' second voyage ' to the har-bour, that of the disappointed egoist, on conditionof this miracle, brings the passenger to it assurely as the first, that of the true saints, which isonly for the few. And in these equally a miracu-lous conversion of the will has to be finallyworked.At the entrance to his distinctive theory of

ethics, Schopenhauer places a restatement of hismetaphysics as the possible basis of a mode ofcontemplating life which, he admits, has somecommunity with an optimistic pantheism. TheWill, through the presentation and the accom-panying intelligence developed in its service,becomes conscious that that which it wills is pre-cisely the world, life as it is. To call it ' the willto live ' is therefore a pleonasm. ' Will ' and ' willto live ' are equivalent. For this will, life is ever-lastingly a certainty. ' Neither the will, the thing-in-itself in all phenomena, nor the subject ofknowledge, the spectator of all phenomena, is evertouched by birth and death.' It is true that the


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ETHICSindividual appears and disappears ; but individu-ality is illusory, Past and future exist only inconceptual thought. ' The form of life is a presentwithout end, howsoever the individuals, pheno-mena of the Idea, come into existence and vanishin time, like fugitive dreams/ Only as pheno-menon is each man different from the otherthings of the world : as thing-in-itself he is theWill, which appears in all, and death takes awaythe illusion that divides his consciousness fromthe rest. ' Death is a sleep in which the individu-ality is forgotten : everything else wakes again,or rather has remained awake/ It is, in the ex-pression adopted by Schopenhauer later, anawakening from the dream of life : though thisbears with it somewhat different implications ;and, as has been said, his theory of individualitybecame modified.With the doctrine of the eternal life of the

Will are connected Schopenhauer's theories, de-veloped later, of the immortality of the speciesand of individualised sexual love. The latter isby itself a remarkable achievement, and con-stitutes the one distinctly new developmentbrought to completion in his later years ; for themodifications in his theory of individuality areonly tentative. His theory of love has a deter-


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SCHOPENHAUERminate conclusion, of great value for science, andnot really compatible, it seems to me, with hispessimism. In its relation to ethics, on which heinsisted, it is rightly placed in the position itoccupies, between the generalised statement ofhis metaphysics just now set forth on the oneside, and his theory of human virtue on theother.The teleology that manifests itself in individual-

ised love is, in his view, not related in re

Schopenhauer by Thomas Whittaker

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Transcript of Schopenhauer by Thomas Whittaker