he need do nothing but remove all compulsion from his fellows, and try
to govern them by clearly and forcibly representing to them what
is reasonable, right, and fair, though at the same time it may be
contrary to their interests. He would be laughed to scorn; and as
things go that is the only answer he would get. It would soon be
obvious to him that moral force alone is powerless. It is, then,
physical force alone which is capable of securing respect. Now this
force ultimately resides in the masses, where it is associated with
ignorance, stupidity and injustice. Accordingly the main aim of
statesmanship in these difficult circumstances is to put physical
force in subjection to mental force--to intellectual superiority, and
thus to make it serviceable. But if this aim is not itself accompanied
by justice and good intentions the result of the business, if it
succeeds, is that the State so erected consists of knaves and fools,
the deceivers and the deceived. That this is the case is made
gradually evident by the progress of intelligence amongst the masses,
however much it may be repressed; and it leads to revolution. But
if, contrarily, intelligence is accompanied by justice and good
intentions, there arises a State as perfect as the character of human
affairs will allow. It is very much to the purpose if justice and
good intentions not only exist, but are also demonstrable and openly
exhibited, and can be called to account publicly, and be subject to
control. Care must be taken, however, lest the resulting participation
of many persons in the work of government should affect the unity of
the State, and inflict a loss of strength and concentration on the
power by which its home and foreign affairs have to be administered.
This is what almost always happens in republics. To produce a
constitution which should satisfy all these demands would accordingly
be the highest aim of statesmanship. But, as a matter of fact,
statesmanship has to consider other things as well. It has to reckon
with the people as they exist, and their national peculiarities. This
is the raw material on which it has to work, and the ingredients of
that material will always exercise a great effect on the completed
scheme.
Statesmanship will have achieved a good deal if it so far attains its
object as to reduce wrong and injustice in the community to a minimum.
To banish them altogether, and to leave no trace of them, is merely
the ideal to be aimed at; and it is only approximately that it can be
reached. If they disappear in one direction, they creep in again in
another; for wrong and injustice lie deeply rooted in human nature.
Attempts have been made to attain the desired aim by artificial
constitutions and systematic codes of law; but they are not in
complete touch with the facts--they remain an asymptote, for the
simple reason that hard and fast conceptions never embrace all
possible cases, and cannot be made to meet individual instances. Such
conceptions resemble the stones of a mosaic rather than the delicate
shading in a picture. Nay, more: all experiments in this matter are
attended with danger; because the material in question, namely, the
human race, is the most difficult of all material to handle. It is
almost as dangerous as an explosive.
No doubt it is true that in the machinery of the State the freedom
of the press performs the same function as a safety-valve in other
machinery; for it enables all discontent to find a voice; nay, in
doing so, the discontent exhausts itself if it has not much substance;
and if it has, there is an advantage in recognising it betimes
and applying the remedy. This is much better than to repress the
discontent, and let it simmer and ferment, and go on increasing until
it ends in an explosion. On the other hand, the freedom of the press
may be regarded as a permission to sell poison--poison for the heart
and the mind. There is no idea so foolish but that it cannot be put
into the heads of the ignorant and incapable multitude, especially if
the idea holds out some prospect of any gain or advantage. And when a
man has got hold of any such idea what is there that he will not do?
I am, therefore, very much afraid that the danger of a free press
outweighs its utility, particularly where the law offers a way of
redressing wrongs. In any case, however, the freedom of the press
should be governed by a very strict prohibition of all and every
anonymity.
Generally, indeed, it may be maintained that right is of a nature
analogous to that of certain chemical substances, which cannot be
exhibited in a pure and isolated condition, but at the most only with
a small admixture of some other substance, which serves as a vehicle
for them, or gives them the necessary consistency; such as fluorine,
or even alcohol, or prussic acid. Pursuing the analogy we may say that
right, if it is to gain a footing in the world and really prevail,
must of necessity be supplemented by a small amount of arbitrary
force, in order that, notwithstanding its merely ideal and therefore
ethereal nature, it may be able to work and subsist in the real and
material world, and not evaporate and vanish into the clouds, as
it does in Hesoid. Birth-right of every description, all heritable
privileges, every form of national religion, and so on, may be
regarded as the necessary chemical base or alloy; inasmuch as it is
only when right has some such firm and actual foundation that it can
be enforced and consistently vindicated. They form for right a sort of
[Greek: os moi pou sto]--a fulcrum for supporting its lever.
Linnaeus adopted a vegetable system of an artificial and arbitrary
character. It cannot be replaced by a natural one, no matter how
reasonable the change might be, or how often it has been attempted to
make it, because no other system could ever yield the same certainty
and stability of definition. Just in the same way the artificial and
arbitrary basis on which, as has been shown, the constitution of
a State rests, can never be replaced by a purely natural basis. A
natural basis would aim at doing away with the conditions that have
been mentioned: in the place of the privileges of birth it would put
those of personal merit; in the place of the national religion, the
results of rationalistic inquiry, and so on. However agreeable to
reason this might all prove, the change could not be made; because a
natural basis would lack that certainty and fixity of definition which
alone secures the stability of the commonwealth. A constitution which
embodied abstract right alone would be an excellent thing for natures
other than human, but since the great majority of men are extremely
egoistic, unjust, inconsiderate, deceitful, and sometimes even
malicious; since in addition they are endowed with very scanty
intelligence there arises the necessity for a power that shall be
concentrated in one man, a power that shall be above all law and
right, and be completely irresponsible, nay, to which everything shall
yield as to something that is regarded as a creature of a higher
kind, a ruler by the grace of God. It is only thus that men can be
permanently held in check and governed.
The United States of North America exhibit the attempt to proceed
without any such arbitrary basis; that is to say, to allow abstract
right to prevail pure and unalloyed. But the result is not attractive.
For with all the material prosperity of the country what do we find?
The prevailing sentiment is a base Utilitarianism with its inevitable
companion, ignorance; and it is this that has paved the way for a
union of stupid Anglican bigotry, foolish prejudice, coarse brutality,
and a childish veneration of women. Even worse things are the order of
the day: most iniquitous oppression of the black freemen, lynch law,
frequent assassination often committed with entire impunity, duels of
a savagery elsewhere unknown, now and then open scorn of all law and
justice, repudiation of public debts, abominable political rascality
towards a neighbouring State, followed by a mercenary raid on its rich
territory,--afterwards sought to be excused, on the part of the chief
authority of the State, by lies which every one in the country knew to
be such and laughed at--an ever-increasing ochlocracy, and finally
all the disastrous influence which this abnegation of justice in high
quarters must have exercised on private morals. This specimen of a
pure constitution on the obverse side of the planet says very little
for republics in general, but still less for the imitations of it in
Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia and Peru.
A peculiar disadvantage attaching to republics--and one that might
not be looked for--is that in this form of government it must be more
difficult for men of ability to attain high position and exercise
direct political influence than in the case of monarchies. For always
and everywhere and under all circumstances there is a conspiracy, or
instinctive alliance, against such men on the part of all the stupid,
the weak, and the commonplace; they look upon such men as their
natural enemies, and they are firmly held together by a common fear of
them. There is always a numerous host of the stupid and the weak,
and in a republican constitution it is easy for them to suppress and
exclude the men of ability, so that they may not be outflanked by
them. They are fifty to one; and here all have equal rights at the
start.
In a monarchy, on the other hand, this natural and universal league of
the stupid against those who are possessed of intellectual advantages
is a one-sided affair; it exists only from below, for in a monarchy
talent and intelligence receive a natural advocacy and support from
above. In the first place, the position of the monarch himself is
much too high and too firm for him to stand in fear of any sort of
competition. In the next place, he serves the State more by his will
than by his intelligence; for no intelligence could ever be equal
to all the demands that would in his case be made upon it. He is
therefore compelled to be always availing himself of other men's
intelligence. Seeing that his own interests are securely bound up with
those of his country; that they are inseparable from them and one with
them, he will naturally give the preference to the best men, because
they are his most serviceable instruments, and he will bestow his
favour upon them--as soon, that is, as he can find them; which is not
so difficult, if only an honest search be made. Just in the same
way even ministers of State have too much advantage over rising
politicians to need to regard them with jealousy; and accordingly for
analogous reasons they are glad to single out distinguished men and
set them to work, in order to make use of their powers for themselves.
It is in this way that intelligence has always under a monarchical
government a much better chance against its irreconcilable and
ever-present foe, stupidity; and the advantage which it gains is very
great.
In general, the monarchical form of government is that which is
natural to man; just as it is natural to bees and ants, to a flight of
cranes, a herd of wandering elephants, a pack of wolves seeking prey
in common, and many other animals, all of which place one of their
number at the head of the business in hand. Every business in which
men engage, if it is attended with danger--every campaign, every
ship at sea--must also be subject to the authority of one commander;
everywhere it is one will that must lead. Even the animal organism is
constructed on a monarchical principle: it is the brain alone which
guides and governs, and exercises the hegemony. Although heart, lungs,
and stomach contribute much more to the continued existence of the
whole body, these philistines cannot on that account be allowed to
guide and lead. That is a business which belongs solely to the brain;
government must proceed from one central point. Even the solar system
is monarchical. On the other hand, a republic is as unnatural as it
is unfavourable to the higher intellectual life and the arts and
sciences. Accordingly we find that everywhere in the world, and at all
times, nations, whether civilised or savage, or occupying a position
between the two, are always under monarchical government. The rule of
many as Homer said, is not a good thing: let there be one ruler, one
king;
[Greek: Ouk agathon polykoiraniae-eis koiranos esto
Eis basoleus.] [1]
[Footnote 1: _Iliad_, ii., 204.]
How would it be possible that, everywhere and at all times, we should
see many millions of people, nay, even hundreds of millions, become
the willing and obedient subjects of one man, sometimes even one
woman, and provisionally, even, of a child, unless there were a
monarchical instinct in men which drove them to it as the form of
government best suited to them? This arrangement is not the product
of reflection. Everywhere one man is king, and for the most part his
dignity is hereditary. He is, as it were, the personification, the
monogram, of the whole people, which attains an individuality in him.
In this sense he can rightly say: _l'etat c'est moi_. It is precisely
for this reason that in Shakespeare's historical plays the kings
of England and France mutually address each other as _France_ and
_England_, and the Duke of Austria goes by the name of his country. It
is as though the kings regarded themselves as the incarnation of their
nationalities. It is all in accordance with human nature; and for this
very reason the hereditary monarch cannot separate his own welfare and
that of his family from the welfare of his country; as, on the other
hand, mostly happens when the monarch is elected, as, for instance, in
the States of the Church.[1] The Chinese can conceive of a monarchical
government only; what a republic is they utterly fail to understand.
When a Dutch legation was in China in the year 1658, it was obliged to
represent that the Prince of Orange was their king, as otherwise the
Chinese would have been inclined to take Holland for a nest of pirates
living without any lord or master.[2] Stobaeus, in a chapter in his
_Florilegium_, at the head of which he wrote _That monarchy is best_,
collected the best of the passages in which the ancients explained
the advantages of that form of government. In a word, republics are
unnatural and artificial; they are the product of reflection. Hence it
is that they occur only as rare exceptions in the whole history of
the world. There were the small Greek republics, the Roman and the
Carthaginian; but they were all rendered possible by the fact that
five-sixths, perhaps even seven-eighths, of the population consisted
of slaves. In the year 1840, even in the United States, there were
three million slaves to a population of sixteen millions. Then, again,
the duration of the republics of antiquity, compared with that of
monarchies, was very short. Republics are very easy to found, and
very difficult to maintain, while with monarchies it is exactly the
reverse. If it is Utopian schemes that are wanted, I say this: the
only solution of the problem would be a despotism of the wise and the
noble, of the true aristocracy and the genuine nobility, brought about
by the method of generation--that is, by the marriage of the noblest
men with the cleverest and most intellectual women. This is my Utopia,
my Republic of Plato.
[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--The reader will recollect that
Schopenhauer was writing long before the Papal territories were
absorbed into the kingdom of Italy.]
[Footnote 2: See Jean Nieuhoff, _L'Ambassade de la Compagnie Orientale
des Provinces Unies vers L'Empereur de la Chine_, traduit par Jean le
Charpentier à Leyde, 1665; ch. 45.]
Constitutional kings are undoubtedly in much the same position as
the gods of Epicurus, who sit upon high in undisturbed bliss and
tranquillity, and do not meddle with human affairs. Just now they are
the fashion. In every German duodecimo-principality a parody of the
English constitution is set up, quite complete, from Upper and
Lower Houses down to the Habeas Corpus Act and trial by jury. These
institutions, which proceed from English character and English
circumstances, and presuppose both, are natural and suitable to the
English people. It is just as natural to the German people to be split
up into a number of different stocks, under a similar number of ruling
Princes, with an Emperor over them all, who maintains peace at home,
and represents the unity of the State board. It is an arrangement
which has proceeded from German character and German circumstances.
I am of opinion that if Germany is not to meet with the same fate as
Italy, it must restore the imperial crown, which was done away with
by its arch-enemy, the first Napoleon; and it must restore it as
effectively as possible. [1] For German unity depends on it, and
without the imperial crown it will always be merely nominal, or
precarious. But as we no longer live in the days of Günther of
Schwarzburg, when the choice of Emperor was a serious business, the
imperial crown ought to go alternately to Prussia and to Austria, for
the life of the wearer. In any case, the absolute sovereignty of the
small States is illusory. Napoleon I. did for Germany what Otto the
Great did for Italy: he divided it into small, independent States, on
the principle, _divide et impera_.
[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Here, again, it is hardly necessary
to say that Schopenhauer, who died in 1860, and wrote this passage at
least some years previously, cannot be referring to any of the
events which culminated in 1870. The whole passage forms a striking
illustration of his political sagacity.]
The English show their great intelligence, amongst other ways, by
clinging to their ancient institutions, customs and usages, and by
holding them sacred, even at the risk of carrying this tenacity too
far, and making it ridiculous. They hold them sacred for the simple
reason that those institutions and customs are not the invention of an
idle head, but have grown up gradually by the force of circumstance
and the wisdom of life itself, and are therefore suited to them as a
nation. On the other hand, the German Michel[1] allows himself to be
persuaded by his schoolmaster that he must go about in an English
dress-coat, and that nothing else will do. Accordingly he has bullied
his father into giving it to him; and with his awkward manners this
ungainly creature presents in it a sufficiently ridiculous figure. But
the dress-coat will some day be too tight for him and incommode him.
It will not be very long before he feels it in trial by jury. This
institution arose in the most barbarous period of the Middle Ages--the
times of Alfred the Great, when the ability to read and write exempted
a man from the penalty of death. It is the worst of all criminal
procedures. Instead of judges, well versed in law and of great
experience, who have grown grey in daily unravelling the tricks and
wiles of thieves, murderers and rascals of all sorts, and so are well
able to get at the bottom of things, it is gossiping tailors and
tanners who sit in judgment; it is their coarse, crude, unpractised,
and awkward intelligence, incapable of any sustained attention, that
is called upon to find out the truth from a tissue of lies and deceit.
All the time, moreover, they are thinking of their cloth and their
leather, and longing to be at home; and they have absolutely no clear
notion at all of the distinction between probability and certainty. It
is with this sort of a calculus of probabilities in their stupid heads
that they confidently undertake to seal a man's doom.
[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--It may be well to explain that
"Michel" is sometimes used by the Germans as a nickname of their
nation, corresponding to "John Bull" as a nickname of the English.
Flügel in his German-English Dictionary declares that _der deutsche
Michel_ represents the German nation as an honest, blunt, unsuspicious
fellow, who easily allows himself to be imposed upon, even, he adds,
with a touch of patriotism, "by those who are greatly his inferiors in
point of strength and real worth."]
The same remark is applicable to them which Dr. Johnson made of a
court-martial in which he had little confidence, summoned to decide a
very important case. He said that perhaps there was not a member of
it who, in the whole course of his life, had ever spent an hour by
himself in balancing probabilities.[1] Can any one imagine that the
tailor and the tanner would be impartial judges? What! the vicious
multitude impartial! as if partiality were not ten times more to be
feared from men of the same class as the accused than from judges who
knew nothing of him personally, lived in another sphere altogether,
were irremovable, and conscious of the dignity of their office. But
to let a jury decide on crimes against the State and its head, or on
misdemeanours of the press, is in a very real sense to set the fox to
keep the geese.
[Footnote 1: Boswell's _Johnson_, 1780, set. 71.]
Everywhere and at all times there has been much discontent with
governments, laws and public regulations; for the most part, however,
because men are always ready to make institutions responsible for the
misery inseparable from human existence itself; which is, to speak
mythically, the curse that was laid on Adam, and through him on the
whole race. But never has that delusion been proclaimed in a more
mendacious and impudent manner than by the demagogues of the
_Jetstzeit_--of the day we live in. As enemies of Christianity, they
are, of course, optimists: to them the world is its own end and
object, and accordingly in itself, that is to say, in its own natural
constitution, it is arranged on the most excellent principles, and
forms a regular habitation of bliss. The enormous and glaring evils of
the world they attribute wholly to governments: if governments, they
think, were to do their duty, there would be a heaven upon earth; in
other words, all men could eat, drink, propagate and die, free from
trouble and want. This is what they mean when they talk of the world
being "its own end and object"; this is the goal of that "perpetual
progress of the human race," and the other fine things which they are
never tired of proclaiming.
Formerly it was _faith_ which was the chief support of the throne;
nowadays it is _credit_. The Pope himself is scarcely more concerned
to retain the confidence of the faithful than to make his creditors
believe in his own good faith. If in times past it was the guilty debt
of the world which was lamented, now it is the financial debts of the
world which arouse dismay. Formerly it was the Last Day which was
prophesied; now it is the [Greek: seisachtheia] the great repudiation,
the universal bankruptcy of the nations, which will one day happen;
although the prophet, in this as in the other case, entertains a firm
hope that he will not live to see it himself.
From an ethical and a rational point of view, the _right of
possession_ rests upon an incomparably better foundation than the
_right of birth_; nevertheless, the right of possession is allied with
the right of birth and has come to be part and parcel of it, so that
it would hardly be possible to abolish the right of birth without
endangering the right of possession. The reason of this is that most
of what a man possesses he inherited, and therefore holds by a kind of
right of birth; just as the old nobility bear the names only of their
hereditary estates, and by the use of those names do no more than give
expression to the fact that they own the estates. Accordingly all
owners of property, if instead of being envious they were wise, ought
also to support the maintenance of the rights of birth.
The existence of a nobility has, then, a double advantage: it helps to
maintain on the one hand the rights of possession, and on the other
the right of birth belonging to the king. For the king is the first
nobleman in the country, and, as a general rule, he treats the
nobility as his humble relations, and regards them quite otherwise
than the commoners, however trusty and well-beloved. It is quite
natural, too, that he should have more confidence in those whose
ancestors were mostly the first ministers, and always the immediate
associates, of his own. A nobleman, therefore, appeals with reason
to the name he bears, when on the occurrence of anything to rouse
distrust he repeats his assurance of fidelity and service to the king.
A man's character, as my readers are aware, assuredly comes to him
from his father. It is a narrow-minded and ridiculous thing not to
consider whose son a man is.
FREE-WILL AND FATALISM.