THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE THING-IN-ITSELF
=Herbart and Schopenhauer.= The main line of development of the
critical Kantian movement was the idealism of Fichte, Schelling,
and Hegel. It was the most perfect expression of the period of German
philosophy. There were, however, so many distinct elements in the
Kantian doctrine, and these were so loosely tied together by Kant, that
one is not surprised to find many divergent lines of its subsequent
elaboration. It is difficult to classify all these later philosophers.
But most prominent in this group stood Herbart and Schopenhauer.
Herbart was a Realist, and Schopenhauer a voluntarist and pessimist.
They had a common ground and motive for their respective philosophies,
and may be placed together in the second group of the disciples of
Kant. They were allied (1) in their emphasis upon the importance of
the thing-in-itself and (2) in their strong opposition to the idealist
movement. While both published their principal writings before the
death of Hegel in 1831, both lived to the middle of the nineteenth
century and both represent the reaction against the period of idealism.
They speak more for the subsequent nineteenth century than for German
ideals and Romanticism. They represented a certain feeling of the
time that Kant’s doctrine had not received its due at the hands of
the Idealists.
Some philosophers had remained true to Kant, but they could not get
the public ear until they were reinforced by the positive science and
historical criticism of the second quarter of the nineteenth century.
Bands of men had gathered to study Kant even while Idealism was
dominant. These were not professional philosophers, but politicians
and others engaged in active service. Kant himself in his later years
protested against his “false disciples.” Fries and Herbart, even
though pupils of Fichte, were true to Kant; and turned attention away
from idealistic construction to an examination of the psychological
foundations upon which the Kantian criticism rested. Herbart was the
most prominent of the empirical psychologists and physicists who turned
away from the speculative tendency back to Kant. Schopenhauer was the
early spokesman for that mysticism and pessimism which characterized
the nineteenth century and appeared in the music of Wagner, the
literature of Ibsen, and the philosophy of Von Hartmann and Nietzsche.
What discredited Hegelianism in particular and philosophy in general in
the eyes of the nineteenth century was (1) the errors of Hegelianism as
to facts; (2) the patronizing tone of the Hegelians toward scientists
like Copernicus, Newton, and Lavoisier; and (3) the refusal of the
Hegelians to test hypotheses by facts. The opposition against Hegel
was against his principles, his method, and his conclusions. At
the downfall of Napoleon the age gave up the hope of reconstructing
the world either politically or philosophically. The new spirit was
scientific and positive. It tried to accept the world as it found it,
and to explain it mechanically so far as it could be done. Things are
not the creation of thought, and thought cannot change the reality of
things. We must observe and experiment, since we cannot construct. We
must restore the boundaries of Kant. Yet both Herbart and Schopenhauer
were true to the spirit that inspired German idealism, for they could
not develop their philosophy of education, psychology, or art except
upon a metaphysical background. Metaphysics was necessary. It was
as necessary a foundation to the Germans as ethics to the Greeks and
psychology to the English.
=Johann Friedrich Herbart.=[68] As “a Kantian of the year 1828”
Herbart claimed to have carried the Kantian doctrine a step further
by disclosing its psychological grounds. He insisted that analysis
was the only true method; and he contended against Fichte that it is
impossible to deduce the theory of the world from a single principle.
An all-inclusive principle may be the conclusion, but not the premise,
of a philosophy. Thus his thought moved in exactly the opposite
direction from the monism of the Idealists and Schleiermacher, with
which he was in constant hostility. Experience proved to Herbart the
existence of independent realities; and he could not reconcile himself
with the _a priori_ doctrine of the idealists, which begins by denying
the existence of the Thing-in-Itself. On the contrary, philosophy
to Herbart had the Thing-in-Itself as its chief concern. Herbart did
not see how paradoxical his position must be――how futile must be the
results of attempting to know the unknowable. He was impressed with the
depth of the problem of existence, and he felt that, if it was to be
explained at all, it must be along scientific lines, especially in the
fields of psychology and education. The scientific method of Herbart
was mechanics; his Realism was the result of his method.
Herbart’s programme at the beginning of his teaching at Göttingen
in 1802 was as follows: He defined philosophy in a general way by
simplifying the concepts that underlie the different sciences. Thus he
(1) reconstructed Realism, (2) restored the principle of contradiction,
and (3) established philosophy on the same basis as science. Of all the
philosophical schools in the nineteenth century the Herbartian school
was the most numerous and compact. Hegel’s attitude had driven many
thinkers into science, and the majority of them attached themselves
to Herbart for want of something better.
=The Life and Writings of Herbart= (1776–1841). Herbart was the
typical scholar. He was a man of quiet and conservative tastes, and
his life was never disturbed by dramatic situations arising out of
contradictions in his character or environment. His days were spent in
study, lecturing, and efforts for social education. The philosophical
influences upon his thought were Leibnitz, Kant, and negatively the
Idealists. In his early life he had read Leibnitz and Kant, and before
he was eighteen he had read enough of Fichte to be repelled by his
doctrine. In 1796 he was a student at Jena. From Jena he went as tutor
to Switzerland, where he met Pestalozzi and laid the foundation of his
own philosophy. In 1802 he was called to Göttingen, where he became
full professor in 1805. In 1806 he published _Principal Points in
Metaphysics_. In 1809 he was called to Königsberg, where he published
his chief works:――
1813 _Text-book of the Introduction to Philosophy_.
1816 _Text-book of Psychology_.
1822 _Possibility and Necessity of Applying Mathematics to
Psychology_.
1824–1825 _Psychology as a Science_.
1828–1829 _General Metaphysics_.
In 1830 he was called back to Göttingen, and he died in 1841.
=The Contradictions of Experience.= All the conceptions of practical
life are self-contradictory and are therefore vicious. This applies
not only to the conceptions of unreflecting minds, but also to those of
scientists and philosophers. To philosophize is nothing else than this:
to free our conceptions of their self-contradictions by simplifying
and revising them. We think of the world as consisting of things,
persons, relations, and laws; but such a view of the world is founded
upon the fallacy of thinking an object at the same time as one and
as many. This general fallacy takes four specific forms: inherence,
change, continuity, and selfhood. For example, it is contradictory to
think of a plant as one thing in which many qualities inhere; it is
contradictory to think of a plant as the same when it passes through
many changes; it is contradictory to think of space as continuous and
yet divided into parts; and it is contradictory to think of the self as
always the same and yet as a stream of conscious states.[69]
=The Argument for Realism.= This inherent contradiction in human
conceptions had been a matter of observation by philosophers for many
centuries, but it had led to many divergent conclusions. The Greek
Skeptics had long ago observed it, and had concluded therefore that
there is no such thing as reality. To them thought is discredited
because the contradictions of thought are insoluble. Truth does not
exist. On the other hand Hegel developed his great dialectic system
upon the basis of these contradictions. Is thought self-contradictory?
Yes. But is thought discredited because it is self-contradictory?
By no means. It is the nature of thought to be self-contradictory,
and the highest truth is the knowledge of this. So Hegel, instead of
rejecting the conception of reality because thought is contradictory,
incorporated contradictions into his conception of the Being of the
universe. Indeed, he made contradictions the “head of the corner” of
his system. Contradiction to Hegel is cosmic law. However, in such
a conception Hegel had to give up entirely the principle upon which
formal logic was founded. This was the principle that a thing cannot
be different from itself. To Hegel the highest truth was exactly the
opposite――everything is self-contradictory.
While Herbart agreed with the Skeptics and with Hegel that experience
is self-contradictory, he differed from them in the inference which he
drew from such contradictions. In acknowledging the contradictions of
experience Herbart did not find himself driven to either one of these
alternatives. Philosophy did not mean for him skepticism. On the other
hand he was repelled by the turn that Hegel had given to logic, and
he refused to accept reasoning as a self-contradictory process. He
returned to the demands of formal logic and restored the principle
of contradiction[70] to the place which it had occupied during the
Enlightenment. Herbart took as his _fundamental philosophical principle
that experiences are not actual when they are self-contradictory_.
The self-contradictoriness of experiences shows that they are
phenomena and not actualities. It also shows that they have reality
as their ground. Seeming things imply realities as the ground of their
qualities; seeming occurrences imply actual relations between the
reals. Seeming is just so much an indication of Being. Consistency lies
behind phenomena. The existence of appearances must be admitted, but
appearances are appearances of something. If nothing existed, nothing
would appear to exist; and yet things are not in reality what they
appear to be.
Herbart agreed with Kant that we can experience only phenomena. There
is also a similarity in the two theories as to the relationship between
phenomena and the thing-in-itself. The similarity is, however, only
superficial. Kant reasoned from the relativity of phenomena to the
synthetic unity of apperception, _i. e._ to consciousness in general,
while the ♦thing-in-itself was to Kant an unknowable and irreducible
remainder. To Kant phenomena pointed to consciousness rather than
to things-in-themselves. On the other hand, Herbart reasoned from
phenomena to the existence of things-in-themselves. Phenomena point
to an independent, objective reality rather than to a thinking subject.
While in Kant’s doctrine phenomena depend for their existence upon
the creative power of consciousness, to Herbart consciousness has no
creative power, but itself depends on the existence and independence
of a plurality of independent Reals. Even the categories and the forms
of space and time are not innate synthetic forms. All are the result of
the relationships among independent Reals, which are the spring of all
activity and existence. Herbart thus gave to the things-in-themselves
all the independent functions that Kant attributed to consciousness.
=The Many Reals and Nature Phenomena.= We must remove the
contradictions of experience, if we would get at a true conception of
Reality and the meaning of phenomena. The true way is (1) to posit a
plural number of Reals, and (2) to interpret the phenomena as derived
from the relation among these Reals.
In the first place, a multiplicity of Reals, and not a single Real,
is needed to explain the multiplicity of phenomena. Herbart’s doctrine
is therefore a pluralism. He conceives the many Reals to exist, not in
phenomenal, but in “intellectual space.” They are not subject to any
phenomenal limitations whatsoever; they may occupy one point of space
at the same time. Their nature cannot be known, but we can say that
they have “absolute position.” They cannot be limited nor negated, and
even their plurality does not mean that they limit one another.
In the second place, Herbart assumes a multiplicity of relations. Why
do the Reals appear as phenomena? Why should the Reals appear to be
the qualities that inhere in things, the continuities of things, and
the changes of things? Herbart is not altogether satisfactory in his
explanation of this problem. It is the problem of the unity of the
manifold, which Kant could explain as due to the synthetic power of
consciousness; but such an explanation was precluded from Herbart’s
Realism. Herbart speaks of two kinds of relations. There are the actual
relations among the Reals. Although the Reals are conceived by Herbart
as simple and unchangeable, he also thinks of them as “coming and going
in intelligible space.” We can never know what the nature of these
actual relations is. The actual relations between two Reals are not
essential to either Real, nor can such relations have their basis in
the Reals. All that we can know are the seeming relations among things.
These are the relations of phenomenal space――of inherence, continuity,
and change. Herbart calls these phenomenal relations “contingent views”
(_zufallige Ansichten_), and looks upon them as having a semi-existence.
That is to say, Herbart regards the world of experience as a world
of relations which are not the actual relations among Realities, but
merely the phenomenal relations, or relations as they appear to us.
=The Soul and Mental Phenomena.= Each Real has one single function,
viz., self-preservation; and inasmuch as the Reals “co-exist,” they
mutually disturb each other. The disturbances take the form of inner
reactions on the part of the Real in its effort at self-preservation.
Prominent among the Reals is the Soul-real. Like all the other
Reals, it is unknowable. We have, however, immediate knowledge of
its manifestations in its self-preservation among the other Reals.
Psychology is the science of the relations which the Soul-real bears
to other Reals. From the conflict of the Soul with other Reals,
mental phenomena take their rise. Consciousness is, therefore, not
the same as the Soul; it is the sum-total of the acts of the Soul in
self-preservation. Consciousness is the aggregate mental states, and is
not essential to the Soul. Nevertheless, isolated souls do not think;
they have no states of consciousness. Consciousness can arise only in
a community of Reals.
Our knowledge consists therefore of ideas, which are the results of
the disturbance of the Soul-real by other Reals. These ideas live
within the Soul, which is merely an indifference point where they are
held together. The ideas in turn disturb and inhibit one another, and
the description of our mental life is a description of the reciprocal
tension of ideas. The tension among the ideas modifies the intensity
of each, and consciousness of an idea is proportional to its intensity.
An idea is just on the threshold of consciousness when it has the
lowest degree of intensity, and is still actual. When it drops below
that threshold it is changed into an impulse. The primary ideas are
sensations. They are not the images of things, but the primary acts of
the Soul in its attempt at self-preservation. All other mental states,
like memory, imagination, feeling, and will, are to be described as
kinds of tension of the ideas. Feeling and will are kinds of inhibitive
tension. The coming of sensations and the interplay of sensations
can be reduced to a mechanical law. Therefore, according to Herbart,
psychology is the “statics and mechanics of ideas,” and must be treated
mathematically.
Herbart’s contribution to modern thought lies in his psychology. Modern
thought has not accepted his metaphysics, but it has been influenced
to a not inconsiderable degree by his psychology. Herbart gave the
death-blow to the old “faculty psychology,” and he placed psychology
upon the same basis as the natural sciences. The science of psychology
was not to Herbart a discussion of the nature of the soul, for that
is unknowable. It is the study of the aggregate of the contents
of consciousness. It is not a study of psychical faculties, but of
psychical elements. This reduces psychology to an atomism, like other
sciences, and thereby frees it from the influence of theology. Thus
was the so-called modern psychology made possible by Herbart. Herbart’s
theory was also of incalculable value to modern educational theory. The
conception of the influence of environment upon mental life, the theory
of the development of mental life, the natural method of “preparation,
presentation, association, systematization, and application” of an
educational subject, the theory of the correlation of subjects――all
are founded upon his psychology. Herbart’s attempt to apply mathematics
to the laws of psychological phenomena was not so fortunate. At one
time, during the nineteenth century, psychologists hoped much from
mathematics in their science; but the hope has been practically
abandoned. In recent years the demand for exactness has been met in
psycho-physics, which operates with mathematics in a different way.
=Arthur Schopenhauer[71] and his Philosophical Relations.= Schopenhauer
is grouped with Herbart because (1) both had an especial dislike
for the idealistic development that the Kantian movement took; and
(2) both built their theories upon interpretations of the Kantian
thing-in-itself. While Herbart was a Realist, Schopenhauer was a
Mystic; which only shows how theories, seemingly very different, can
have the same source. Herbart’s Realism was an interpretation of Kant’s
thing-in-itself as many realities; while Schopenhauer’s Mysticism
was an interpretation of it as one reality. In both theories the
consciousness, and with it the reason, were conceived as derivations
of the thing-in-itself.
The best approach to Schopenhauer’s doctrine can perhaps be made
by contrasting it with his pet aversion――the doctrine of Hegel.
Schopenhauer was to Idealism what Mephistopheles was to Faust――he
turned Romanticism into pessimism. The theory of empirical evolution,
which was to be highly developed in the nineteenth century, lay in
theoretical germ in the teaching of the immediate followers of Kant.
To Hegel the historical development of the cosmos is the struggle
of reason, which with all its essential contradictions is futilely
striving to come to itself. To Schopenhauer the history of the cosmos
is also an endless struggle, although a struggle in which all reason is
absent. Hegel could conceive the history of the cosmos as a development
worthy of investigation. Schopenhauer, on the contrary, took no
interest in history, because to him it could not be a development. To
Hegel, phenomena form an intimate part of the cosmic struggle, since
they are the content of the cosmic-reason; to Schopenhauer, phenomena
are the surface illusions of an ebullient, unreasoning Will.
As the first theoretical pessimist of Europe, Schopenhauer expressed
for the nineteenth century one of its most essential characteristics.
He got scant recognition during his lifetime on account of the vogue
of Hegel; but to-day it is Schopenhauer, rather than Hegel, who has
a popular influence, and is widely read. This is partly on account
of his masterly literary style and partly by reason of the content of
his doctrine. The nineteenth century was carried along upon a strong
current of pessimism because of (1) industrial problems, which involved
many ethical considerations, and because of (2) its breaking away
from traditional religious ties. So long as the unbounded optimism
of Idealism prevailed, the world had little room for Schopenhauer’s
teaching; but when Realism with its limitations took hold of the
nineteenth century, then did Schopenhauer’s day of recognition come.
The popular mind has found in Schopenhauer its best philosophical
expression, and representatives of his teaching have been numerous.
Among them are Richard Wagner (1813–1883) with his music dramas;
Von Hartmann (b. 1842) with his theory of the unconscious; Nietzsche
(1844–1900) with his extreme statement of egoism――that in view of
universal evil, the only hope is in the survival of the strongest and
in the virtue of selfishness.
=The Life and Writings of Schopenhauer= (1788–1860). Schopenhauer was
the kind of genius who is always an alien to the world of men. He lived
a long, lonely, isolated life, in which his inherited emotional and
brooding nature became more and more cynical and pessimistic. Even in
his paternal home he found himself a stranger. His father pushed him
into mercantile business, which he hated; and after the death of his
father his brilliant mother told him that he was welcome to her Weimar
home only as a visitor. The doors of all academic circles were closed
to him; and he, in commenting on it, said that he had failed to get an
academic hearing, because the German did not believe in a metaphysics
which was so expressed as to be understood. But the cause of his
isolation lay mainly in himself. He was neurasthenic and peculiar――the
subject of ill-temper, night-terrors, causeless depressions and dreads.
With the genealogy of Schopenhauer’s family on his father’s side before
us, who could wonder?――the grandmother insane, one uncle insane, one
uncle idiotic, one neurotic, and his father a suicide. Schopenhauer’s
own peculiarities were not pathological. He had a genius that blossomed
as early in his years as Hegel’s blossomed late. He wrote his two
important works before he was thirty.
1. _Period of Education_ (1788–1813). The parents of Schopenhauer were
wealthy, and in 1803 he traveled with them in England, France, and
Holland. In 1804 he entered business, which he gave up the next year
on the death of his father. In 1809 he was busy studying the classics,
philosophy, and Hindu learning in Weimar, Göttingen, and Berlin.
2. _Period of Literary Production_ (1813–1831). In 1813 he wrote
the _Four-fold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason_, in the
Thuringian forest, when other German young men were rallying to arms
against Napoleon. This was accepted as a doctorate thesis at Jena.
From 1814 to 1819 he lived in Dresden at work on _The World as Will
and Idea_, which is the complete exposition of his doctrine. The work
is divided into four parts: 1. Theory of Knowledge; 2. Description
of the Forms of the Will; 3. Art as a Deliverance from the Will;
4. Morality as a Deliverance from the Will. In 1820 he got a position
as Privat-docent in the University of Berlin. This was the only year
of his teaching and was an utter failure.
3. _Period of Retirement_ (1831–1860). In 1831 he went to
Frankfort-on-the-Main to live alone and in retirement. Slowly he became
known and gathered a little circle of disciples about him. He died in
1860.
=The Influences upon Schopenhauer’s Thought.= The principal influences
upon Schopenhauer’s thought were three: (1) Kant, from whom he got his
transcendental theory of knowledge (he always considered himself to
be Kant’s true heir); (2) Plato, from whom he got his formulation of
eternal Ideas as offering an escape from the Will; (3) the Hindus, from
whom he got his ethical-Mysticism and the confirmation of his pessimism.
Schopenhauer is unique among the philosophers of Europe, because he
denied all for which the Enlightenment stood. Even such reactionaries
against the Enlightenment as Rousseau were a part of its essential
spirit; for the presupposition of traditional theology and philosophy
has been that existence is essentially a harmony. Schopenhauer, however,
appealed to the discordances and the sorrow of existence, and drew the
inference that fundamentally existence is irrational. For the source
of Schopenhauer’s unique teaching we have to look, therefore, farther
than modern Europe. The preceding modern European philosophers whom
we have studied, developed their philosophies from purely Occidental
sources. Schopenhauer drew from the Orient as well as from the Occident.
The Romanticists had re-discovered Orientalism. The study of the
Hindus had been interesting European scholars since the beginning of
the nineteenth century. Schopenhauer, who was introduced to Indian
philosophy by Goethe’s friend, Fr. Mayer, read the Upanishads in a
Latin translation; and they contributed much to the development of the
theory which his own emotional and cynical nature had presaged. The
Hindus had long felt that the main problem of existence is moral and
physical evil. Schopenhauer found in this teaching the statement of his
own attitude.
He esteemed the principles of Christianity and Buddhism because their
central requirement was faith in a redeemer rather than a creator.
Christianity had no original metaphysics, but Buddhism on account of
its metaphysics had an especial importance in Schopenhauer’s eyes. It
was not only a pessimism, but a philosophy of pessimism. Our existence
is only a blind struggle for enlightenment and arises out of a flowing
chain of perennial re-births. Man needs to be freed from the illusion
of existence and released from re-birth.
=The World as Will and the World as Idea.= In _The Four-fold Root of
the Principle of Sufficient Reason_, Schopenhauer summarizes knowledge
as, “The world is my presentation,” which is Kant’s theory of knowledge.
A conscious subject vitalizes all things. But the presentations have
no corresponding reality in the outer world. They are created by my
own subjectivity from the “principle of sufficient reason.” This has
a fourfold root: logic, cause, mathematics, and will-activity. “The
world of phenomena is my idea,” and in _The World as Will and Idea_
Schopenhauer says, “This is a truth which holds good for everything
that lives and knows.” Man alone can reflect upon this truth. When man
comes to the realizing sense that the world is an ideal construction,
he begins to philosophize as to the nature of the reality behind
it. We remember that Herbart started from the same proposition.
However, Schopenhauer departs from Kant’s teaching in one important
respect: although he agrees with Kant that the thing-in-itself
cannot be understood by ideas or a chain of reasoning, he holds that
the thing-in-itself is knowable. The World as Idea is a world of
appearances, but we can know the thing-in-itself by intuition――by
“the look of genius.” The certainty of this first-hand or immediate
knowledge shows how poor our second-hand or mediate knowledge is. For
even reasoned or mediate knowledge in its most perfect form, viz.,
science, is under the law of cause and can therefore reveal nothing
absolute. Science never gets below phenomena.
If reason reveals only the World as Idea, what revelation does
intuition give of the thing-in-itself? Intuition reveals the
thing-in-itself to be Will. Man finds, first, the Will to be in himself.
He finds it objectified in his own body and in its members. All the
members of the body are structures of some function. Every part is the
visible expression of some desire. Hunger, speech, locomotion, have
their different instruments. Will is immediately known to us as the
reality in us. In spite of the exaltation of the reason by the modern
Enlightenment, is it not secondary to Will?
For behold! Let me look beyond myself. The revelation of the reality
within myself illuminates the reality of the outer world. My Will
meets resistance in other things. The everlasting striving of the
Will appears in all nature. It appears in the fall of a stone, the
crystallizing of the diamond――in all the mechanical movements of matter.
“The impulse with which waters hurry to the ocean,” the persistence
of the magnet for the pole, the perennial push of vegetation, the
motivation of animals, show by an analogy stronger than any proof
that the reality of the world is fundamentally Will. All nature is in
reality the “World as Will.” This Will is always one and the same. Only
in the “World as Idea” do differences appear. Will is common to all and
is the only reality. Differences are illusions, and the reason which
exists only in man is one of those differences.
The World as Will and the World as Idea do not stand in the relation
of cause and effect, but the World as Idea is the objectification of
the World as Will. Will is to phenomena what essence is to expression.
Will is the freedom that is within all things; and yet all things are
determined when they have the form of ideas. There is only one Will,
and so the world is in reality a unity. In essence all things are the
same――in appearance they are different. The Will has no content; it
wills to will――to live――to be actual. In the pantheism of the Will the
World as Idea is an illusion.
=The Will as Irrational Reality.= Before Schopenhauer’s time European
mysticism had been of one general type. However universal the character
of illusory appearances had been to the European mystics, there had
always been supposed behind the veil a rational reality. Indeed, the
illusions themselves had been proof of the existence elsewhere of a
governing reason. The mediæval churchman often preached a mysticism,
and his exhortation to turn away from illusions of “the world, the
flesh, and the Devil,” was based upon the compensation to be found in
Heaven and in God. The ineffable rest in the bosom of God was reason
enough for averting the eyes from the passing show of sensuous things.
Schopenhauer now presents to the Occident another type of mysticism,
and in this there is no refuge from illusions. This conception had
long been common enough in the Orient. The _Rubáiyát_ of Omar Khayyám,
written about 1100, represents fundamentally the attitude of the
Persians of his time. “He is said to have been especially hated by the
Sufis, whose practice he ridiculed, but whose faith amounts to little
more than his own when stripped of the mysticism and formal recognition
of Islamism.” (FitzGerald.) But in Europe Schopenhauer’s doctrine was
unique, and he arrived at its construction by stripping mysticism of
all its religious elements. Faith and belief are eliminated because
they have no reality as their object. Reason produces only a world
of illusory ideas; the Will is a reality, but it is a reality which
is only a blind urgency――an instinctive blind force. The essence of
things is undirected striving. Life is the expression of the absolute
unreason of the Will. It is a Will without an object. Nature is the
objectification of the Will that perpetually creates itself and is
forever unsatisfied, unresting, and unhappy.
“A Moment’s Halt――a momentary taste
Of Being from the Well amid the Waste――
And Lo! the phantom Caravan has reacht
The Nothing it set out from――Oh, make haste!”[72]
=The Misery of the World as Idea――Pessimism.= The fundamental
irrationality of the Will reveals the absolute misery of the World
as Idea. The despair of pessimism follows from the very nature of the
Will; for it must be remembered that Schopenhauer’s pessimism does not
merely mean that the appearances of life are illusory, but that reality
itself is irrational. The World as Idea is the objectification of such
misery. Willing has its source in want, and want arises from suffering.
Moreover the proportion of our wants that are satisfied is very small.
To one that is supplied there are many that are not. Furthermore, while
our desires last long, their satisfaction is short and scanty, “like
the alms thrown to a beggar that keeps him alive to-day that his misery
may be prolonged to-morrow.” Our ever-springing wants make lasting
peace impossible. The finite world is not adequate to the infinite
craving which it contains, and there is no equation between the cares
and the satisfactions of life. The greatest evil that can befall a
creature is to have been born; and this is a thousand-fold worse in
man than in any other. To live is to go from willing to attaining and
then to willing again. Attainment means new striving, and the Will
shows “the ache of the not-yet-satisfied.” After all is said and done,
satisfaction destroys not only the desire, but the satisfaction itself.
There is no meaning in life. Pain is positive; pleasure is negative,
and is merely the absence of or respite from pain.
=The Way of Deliverance.= The relief from misery that Schopenhauer
offers is tinged with the grim despair of life itself. It is an escape
that he finds, rather than a haven――an escape that consists in giving
up all that life means. Why not, then, give up life, since it is misery
and torment? But escape is not in suicide, for the act of taking one’s
own life is the performance of the greatest act of affirmation of the
Will; and in the Buddhistic doctrine the suicidal soul only passes by
re-birth (metempsychosis) into another form of Will. Schopenhauer uses
two phrases that have become classic in the description of the two
attitudes possible to man: (1) if man is merely a part of the World
as Idea he is “affirming the Will to life”; and (2) if he seeks a way
of deliverance he “is denying the Will to life.” Suicide is an act of
affirmation of the Will to life.
How may the Will be denied? and since we are in essence Will, the
question takes this form, How may the Will deny the Will? This question
presupposes a transcendental freedom which may be sought in two ways:
one in which the freedom is temporary and the other in which it is
permanent.
1. The temporary deliverance of the Will may be found in artistic
contemplation (Schiller’s disinterested contemplation). Art deals
not with particular forms, but eternal types (Platonic Ideas). Art
isolates an eternal object from out the stream of the world’s changes,
and places it beyond all relations of time, place, and cause. Art not
only removes its object from the World as Idea, but it removes the
contemplator as well. The contemplating subject and the contemplated
object thus become one, and the subject is temporarily saved, for he is
elevated above all desire and pain. This, however, is possible not to
the majority of men, but only to those few possessing æsthetic fancy,
and for them only at intervals. Music is ranked by Schopenhauer as
the highest form of art,――even above poetry,――and it is not surprising
therefore that among the Schopenhauerian worshipers have been many
prominent musicians.
2. But artistic ecstasy is too fleeting and restricted to offer lasting
deliverance from the affirmation of the Will to life and the World as
Idea. Another act of transcendental freedom will bring man into more
complete freedom; but _this act is a miracle and a mystery_, since
it is the complete transformation of our nature. This act must be
supernatural, and the church is right in calling it a new birth and
a work of grace. _Complete freedom from the Will comes through moral
deliverance._
This lasting escape from the Will is open to the man who appreciates
two facts: that all striving for happiness is vain; and that all men
are alike manifestations of the Will. To take this double view of life
involves the feeling of sympathy with others in their misery. Sympathy
is thus the only true moral motive and the fundamental ethical feeling.
The Will in us is moral if we feel another’s hurt as our own. But
sympathy is only a palliative, and it does not remove the cause of
disease. The misery still exists, and our sympathy has only changed its
form. Even though our sympathy goes out to the whole world, the endless
tragedy would still pass on.
In the moral deliverance sympathy can be made complete by absolute
denial, and this will come by asceticism, mortification, and complete
eradication of want and desire. The Hindu _sannyasi_ shows the way.
This is the mystery of the Will. But Schopenhauer is not quite sure
that extreme asceticism can be made effective, since we are full of
Will. At the close of his work he says that even if we could be
completely ascetic the result would be Nothingness. “In thy Nothing I
hope to find the ALL.” Schopenhauer despairs of deliverance for himself,
but does not count it unachievable by others. Absolute deliverance even
by asceticism seems impossible to him. The only hope is that through
art and science the Will may be some time overcome.