The most ordinary experience teaches that in generation the combined seed
of the parents not only propagates the peculiarities of the species, but
also those of the individual, as far as bodily (objective, external)
qualities are concerned, and this has also always been recognised—
“_Naturæ sequitur semina quisque suæ._”
—CATULL.
Now whether this also holds good of mental (subjective, internal)
qualities, so that these also are transmitted by the parents to the
children, is a question which has already often been raised, and almost
always answered in the affirmative. More difficult, however, is the
problem whether it is possible to distinguish what belongs to the father
and what to the mother, thus what is the mental inheritance which we
receive from each of our parents. If now we cast upon this problem the
light of our fundamental knowledge that the will is the true being, the
kernel, the radical element in man, and the intellect, on the other hand,
is what is secondary, adventitious, the accident of that substance; before
questioning experience we will assume it as at least probable that the
father, as _sexus potior_ and the procreative principle, imparts the
basis, the radical element, of the new life, thus the _will_, and the
mother, as _sexus sequior_ and merely conceiving principle, imparts the
secondary element, the _intellect_; that thus the man inherits his moral
nature, his character, his inclinations, his heart, from the father, and,
on the other hand, the grade, quality, and tendency of his intelligence
from the mother. Now this assumption actually finds its confirmation in
experience; only this cannot be decided by a physical experiment upon the
table, but results partly from the careful and acute observation of many
years, and partly from history.
One’s own experience has the advantage of complete certainty and the
greatest speciality, and this outweighs the disadvantage that arises from
it, that its sphere is limited and its examples not generally known.
Therefore, primarily, I refer every one to his own experience. First of
all let him consider himself, confess to himself his inclinations and
passions, his characteristic errors and weaknesses, his vices, and also
his excellences and virtues, if he has any. Then let him think of his
father, and he cannot fail to recognise all these characteristic traits in
him also. On the other hand, he will often find his mother of an entirely
different character, and a moral agreement with her will very seldom
occur, indeed only through the exceptional accident of a similarity of the
character of the two parents. Let him make this examination, for example,
with reference to quick temper or patience, avarice or prodigality,
inclination to sensuality, or to intemperance, or to gambling, hard‐
heartedness or kindliness, honesty or hypocrisy, pride or condescension,
courage or cowardice, peaceableness or quarrelsomeness, placability or
resentfulness, &c. Then let him make the same investigation with regard to
all those whose characters and whose parents he has accurately known. If
he proceeds attentively, with correct judgment, and candidly, the
confirmation of our principle will not be lacking. Thus, for example, he
will find the special tendency to lie, which belongs to many men, equally
present in two brothers, because they have inherited it from the father;
on this account also the comedy, “The Liar and his Son,” is
psychologically correct. However, two inevitable limitations must here be
borne in mind, which only open injustice could interpret as evasions.
First, _pater semper incertus_. Only a decided physical resemblance to the
father removes this limitation; a superficial resemblance, on the other
hand, is not sufficient to do so; for there is an after‐effect of earlier
impregnation by virtue of which the children of the second marriage have
sometimes still a slight resemblance to the first husband, and children
begotten in adultery to the legitimate father. Such an after‐effect has
been still more distinctly observed in the case of brutes. The second
limitation is, that in the son the moral character of the father certainly
appears, yet under the modification which it has received through another
and often very different _intellect_ (the inheritance from the mother),
and thus a correction of the observation becomes necessary. This
modification may be important or trifling in proportion to that
difference, but it can never be so great that the fundamental traits of
the paternal character do not always appear under it recognisably enough,
like a man who has disguised himself by an entirely different kind of
dress, wig, and beard. For example, if by inheritance from the mother a
man is pre‐eminently endowed with reason, thus with the power of
reflection and deliberation, the passions inherited from his father are
partly bridled by this, partly concealed, and accordingly only attain to a
methodical, systematic, or secret manifestation, and thus a very different
phenomenon from that of the father, who perhaps had only a very limited
mind, will then result; and in the same way the converse case may occur.
The inclinations and passions of the mother, on the other hand, do not
reappear at all in the children, often indeed their opposite.
Historical examples have the advantage over those of private life of being
universally known; but, on the other hand, they are of course impaired by
the uncertainty and frequent falsification of all tradition, and
especially also by the fact that as a rule they only contain the public,
not the private life, and consequently only the political actions, not the
finer manifestations of character. However, I wish to support the truth we
are speaking of by a few historical examples, to which those who have made
a special study of history can no doubt add a far larger number of equally
pertinent cases.
It is well known that P. Decius Mus sacrificed his life for his country
with heroic nobleness; for, solemnly committing himself and the enemy to
the infernal deities, with covered face he plunged into the army of the
Latins. About forty years later his son, of the same name, did exactly the
same thing in the war against the Gauls (Liv. viii. 6; x. 28). Thus a
thorough proof of the Horatian _fortes creantur fortibus et bonis_: the
converse of which is thus given by Shakspeare—
“Cowards father cowards, and base things sire base.”
—CYMBELINE, iv. 2.
Early Roman history presents to us whole families whose members in long
succession distinguished themselves by devoted patriotism and courage;
such were the _gens Fabia_ and the _gens Fabricia_. Again, Alexander the
Great was fond of power and conquest, like his father Philip. The pedigree
of Nero which, with a moral intention, Suetonius (c. 4 _et_ 5) gives at
the beginning of his sketch of this monster is very well worth
considering. It is the _gens Claudia_ he describes, which flourished in
Rome through six centuries, and produced not only capable, but arrogant
and cruel men. From it sprang Tiberius, Caligula, and finally Nero. In his
grandfather, and still more strongly in his father, all those atrocious
qualities show themselves, which could only attain their perfect
development in Nero, partly because his higher position afforded them
freer scope, partly because he had for his mother the irrational
Bacchante, Agrippina, who could impart to him no intellect to bridle his
passions. Quite in our sense, therefore, Suetonius relates that at his
birth _præsagio fuit etiam Domitii, patris, vox, inter gratulationes
amicorum, negantis, quidquam ex se __ et Agrippina, nisi detestabile et
malo publico nasci potuisse_. On the other hand, Cimon was the son of
Miltiades, and Hannibal of Hamilcar, and the Scipios make up a whole
family of heroes and noble defenders of their country. But the son of Pope
Alexander VI. was his hideous image, Cæsar Borgia. The son of the
notorious Duke of Alba was just as cruel and wicked a man as his father.
The malicious and unjust Philip IV. of France, who is specially known by
his cruel torture and execution of the knights templars, had for his
daughter Isabella, wife of Edward II. of England, who rebelled against her
husband, took him prisoner, and after he had signed his abdication, since
the attempt to kill him by ill‐usage was unsuccessful, caused him to be
put to death in prison in a manner which is too horrible for me to care to
relate. The blood‐thirsty tyrant and _defensor fidei_, Henry VIII. of
England had a daughter by his first marriage, Queen Mary, equally
distinguished for bigotry and cruelty, who from her numerous burnings of
heretics has won the name of Bloody Mary. His daughter by his second
marriage, Elizabeth, received an excellent understanding from her mother,
Anne Boleyn, which prevented bigotry and curbed the parental character in
her, yet did not do away with it; so that it still always shone through on
occasions, and distinctly appeared in her cruel treatment of Mary of
Scotland. Van Geuns(35) tells a story, after Marcus Donatus, of a Scotch
girl whose father had been burnt as a highway robber and a cannibal when
she was only one year old. Although she was brought up among quite
different people, there developed in her the same craving for human flesh,
and being caught in the act of satisfying it, she was buried alive. In the
_Freimüthigen_ of the 13th July 1821 we read that in the department of
Aube the police pursued a girl because she had murdered two children, whom
she ought to have taken to the foundling hospital, in order to keep the
little money given to the children. At last the police found the girl on
the road to Paris, near Romilly, drowned, and her own father gave himself
up as her murderer. Finally, let me mention a couple of cases which have
occurred recently, and have therefore only the newspapers as their
vouchers. In October 1836 a Count Belecznai was condemned to death in
Hungary because he had murdered an official and severely wounded his own
relations. His elder brother was executed earlier as a patricide, and his
father also had been a murderer (_Frankfurter Postzeitung_ of the 26th
October 1836). A year later the youngest brother of this Count, in the
same street where the latter had murdered the official, fired a pistol at
the steward of his estates, but missed him (_Frankfurter Journal_, 16th
September 1837). In the _Frankfurter Postzeitung_ of the 19th November
1857 a correspondent in Paris announces the condemnation to death of a
very dangerous highway robber, Lemaire, and his companions, and adds: “The
criminal tendency seems hereditary in his family and in those of his
confederates, as several of their race have died on the scaffold.” It
follows from a passage in the Laws of Plato that similar cases were
already known in Greece (_Stob. Flor._, vol. ii. p. 213). The annals of
crime will certainly have many similar pedigrees to show. The tendency to
suicide is specially hereditary.
On the other hand, when we see the excellent Marcus Aurelius have the
wicked Commodus for a son, this does not not lead us astray; for we know
that the _Diva Faustina_ was a _uxor infamis_. On the contrary, we mark
this case in order in analogous cases to presume an analogous reason; for
example, that Domitian was the full brother of Titus I can never believe,
but that Vespasian also was a deceived husband.
Now, as regards the second part of the principle set up thus the
inheritance of the intellect from the mother, this enjoys a far more
general acceptance than the first part, which in itself appeals to the
_liberum arbitrium indifferentiæ_, while its separate apprehension is
opposed by the doctrine of the simplicity and indivisibility of the soul.
Even the old and popular expression “mother‐wit” shows the early
recognition of this second truth, which depends upon the experience both
with regard to small and great intellectual endowments, that they are the
possession of those whose mothers proportionately distinguished themselves
by their intelligence. That, on the other hand, the intellectual qualities
of the father are not transmitted to the son is proved both by the fathers
and the sons of men distinguished by the most eminent faculties, for, as a
rule, they are quite ordinary men, without a trace of the paternal mental
gifts. But if now an isolated exception to this experience, so often
confirmed, should appear; such, for example, as is presented by Pitt and
his father, Lord Chatham, we are warranted in ascribing it to accident,
nay, obliged to do so, although, on account of the exceptional rarity of
great talents, it is certainly an accident of a most extraordinary kind.
Here, however, the rule holds good: it is improbable that the improbable
_never_ happens. Besides, great statesmen (as was already mentioned in
chapter 22) are so just as much through the qualities of their character,
thus through what is inherited from the father, as through the superiority
of their mind. On the other hand, among artists, poets, and philosophers,
to whose works alone _genius_ is properly ascribed, I know of no case
analogous to that. Raphael’s father was certainly a painter, but not a
great one; Mozart’s father, and also his son, were musicians, but not
great ones. However, it is indeed wonderful that the fate which had
destined a very short life to both of these men, each the greatest in his
own sphere, as it were by way of compensation, took care, by letting them
be born already in their workshop, that, without suffering the loss of
time in youth which for the most part occurs in the case of other men of
genius, they received even from childhood, through paternal example and
instruction, the necessary introduction into the art to which they were
exclusively destined. This secret and mysterious power which seems to
guide the individual life I have made the subject of special
investigations, which I have communicated in the essay, “_Ueber die
scheinbare Absichtlichkeit im Schicksale des Einzelnen_” (_Parerga_, vol.
i.). It is further to be observed here that there are certain scientific
occupations which certainly presuppose good native faculties, yet not
those which are really rare and extraordinary; while the principal
requirements are zealous efforts, diligence, patience, early instruction,
sustained study, and much practice. From this, and not from the
inheritance of the intellect of the father, the fact is to be explained
that, since the son always willingly follows the path that has been opened
up by the father, and almost all businesses are hereditary in certain
families, in some sciences also, which before everything demand diligence
and persistence, individual families can show a succession of men of
merit; such are the Scaligers, the Bernouillis, the Cassinis, the
Herschels.
The number of proofs of the actual inheritance of the intellect of the
mother would be much greater than it appears if it were not that the
character and disposition of the female sex is such that women rarely give
public proof of their mental faculties; and therefore these do not become
historical, and thus known to posterity. Besides, on account of the weaker
nature in general of the female sex, these faculties themselves can never
reach the grade in them to which they may afterwards rise in the son;
thus, with reference to themselves, we have to estimate their achievements
higher in this proportion. Accordingly, in the first instance, only the
following examples present themselves as proofs of our truth. Joseph II.
was the son of Maria Theresia. Cardanus says in the third chapter, “_De
vita propria_:” “_Mater mea fuit memoria et ingenio pollens_.” J. J.
Rousseau says in the first book of the “Confessions:” “_La beauté de ma
mère, son __ esprit, ses talents,—elle en avait de trop brillans pour son
état_,” &c., and then quotes some delightful lines of hers. D’Alembert was
the illegitimate son of Claudine de Tencin, a woman of superior mind, and
the author of several romances and similar works, which met with great
approbation in her day, and should even still be enjoyable (see her
biography in the “_Blätter für litterarische Unterhaltung_,” March 1845,
Nos. 71‐73). That Buffon’s mother was a remarkable woman is shown by the
following passage from the “_Voyage à Montbar, par Hérault de Sechelles_,”
which Flourens quotes in his “_Histoire des travaux de Buffon_,” p. 288:
“_Buffon avait ce principe qu’en général les enfants tenaient de leur mère
leurs qualités intellectuelles et morales: et lorsqu’il l’avait développé
dans la conversation, il en faisait sur‐le‐champ l’application à lui‐même,
en faisant un éloge pompeux de sa mère, qui avait en effet, beaucoup
d’esprit, des connaissances étandues, et une tête très bien organisée._”
That he includes the moral qualities is an error which is either committed
by the reporter, or depends upon the fact that his mother had accidentally
the same character as himself and his father. The contrary of this is
shown in innumerable cases in which the mother and the son have opposite
characters. Hence the greatest dramatists could present, in Orestes and
Hamlet, mother and son in hostile conflict, in which the son appears as
the moral representative and avenger of his father. On the other hand, the
converse case, that the son should appear as the moral representative and
avenger of the mother against the father, would be revolting and, at the
same time, almost absurd. This depends upon the fact that between father
and son there is actual identity of nature, which is the will, but between
mother and son there is merely identity of intellect, and even this only
in a conditioned manner. Between mother and son the greatest moral
opposition can exist, between father and son only an intellectual
opposition. From this point of view, also, one should recognise the
necessity of the Salic law: the woman cannot carry on the race. Hume says
in his short autobiography: “Our mother was a woman of singular merit.” It
is said of Kant’s mother in the most recent biography by F. W. Schubert:
“According to the judgment of her son himself, she was a woman of great
natural understanding. For that time, when there was so little opportunity
for the education of girls, she was exceptionally well instructed, and she
also continued later to care for her further education by herself. In the
course of walks she drew the attention of her son to all kinds of natural
phenomena, and tried to explain to him through them the power of God.”
What a remarkably able, clever, and superior woman Goethe’s mother was is
now universally known. How much she has been spoken of in literature!
while his father has not been spoken of at all; Goethe himself describes
him as a man of subordinate faculties. Schiller’s mother was susceptible
to poetry, and made verses herself, a fragment of which will be found in
his biography by Schwab. Bürger, that genuine poetic genius, to whom
perhaps the first place after Goethe among German poets belongs—for
compared with his ballads those of Schiller seem cold and laboured—has
given an account of his parents which for us is significant, and which his
friend and physician, Althof repeats in his biography which appeared in
1798, in these words: “Bürger’s father was certainly provided with a
variety of knowledge after the manner of study prevalent at the time, and
was also a good, honourable man; but he loved his quiet comfort and his
pipe of tobacco so much, that, as my friend used to say, he had always
first to pull himself together if he was going to apply himself for a
quarter of an hour or so to the instruction of his son. His wife was a
woman of extraordinary mental endowments, which, however, were so little
cultivated that she had scarcely learnt to write legibly. Bürger thought
that with proper culture his mother would have been the most famous of her
sex, although he several times expressed a strong disapproval of different
traits of her moral character. However, he believed that he inherited from
his mother some mental gifts, and from his father an agreement with his
moral character.” Walter Scott’s mother was a poetess, and was in
communication with the wits of her time, as we learn from the obituary
notice of Walter Scott in the _Globe_ of 24th September 1832. That poems
of hers appeared in print in 1789 I find from an article entitled “Mother‐
wit,” in the _Blätter für litterarische Unterhaltung_ of 4th October 1841,
published by Brockhaus, which gives a long list of clever mothers of
distinguished men, from which I shall only take two: “Bacon’s mother was a
distinguished linguist, wrote and translated several works, and in all of
them showed learning, acuteness, and taste. Boerhave’s mother
distinguished herself through medical knowledge.” On the other hand,
Haller has preserved for us a strong proof of the inheritance of the
mental weakness of the mother, for he says: “_E duabus patriciis
sororibus, ob divitias maritos nactis, quum tamen fatuis essent proximæ,
novimus in nobilissimas gentes nunc a seculo retro ejus morbi manasse
semina, ut etiam in quarta generatione, quintave, omnium posterorum aliqui
fatui supersint_” (_Elementa physiol._, Lib. xxix. § 8). Also, according
to Esquirol, madness is more frequently inherited from the mother than the
father. If, however, it is inherited from the father, I attribute this to
the disposition of the character whose influence occasions it.
It seems to follow from our principle that sons of the same mother have
equal mental capacity, and if one should be highly gifted the other must
be so also. Sometimes it is so. Examples of this are the Carracci, Joseph
and Michael Haydn, Bernard and Andreas Romberg, George and Frederic
Cuvier. I would also add the brothers Schlegel, if it were not that the
younger, Friedrich, made himself unworthy of the honour of being named
along with his excellent, blameless, and highly distinguished brother,
August Wilhelm, by the disgraceful obscurantism which in the last quarter
of his life he pursued along with Adam Müller. For obscurantism is a sin,
possibly not against the Holy Spirit, but yet against the human spirit,
which one ought therefore never to forgive, but always and everywhere
implacably to remember against whoever has been guilty of it, and take
every opportunity of showing contempt for him so long as he lives, nay,
after he is dead. But just as often the above result does not take place;
for example, Kant’s brother was quite an ordinary man. To explain this I
must remind the reader of what is said in the thirty‐first chapter on the
physiological conditions of genius. Not only an extraordinarily developed
and absolutely correctly formed brain (the share of the mother) is
required, but also a very energetic action of the heart to animate it,
_i.e._, subjectively a passionate will, a lively temperament: this is the
inheritance from the father. But this quality is at its height only during
the father’s strongest years; and the mother ages still more quickly.
Accordingly the highly gifted sons will, as a rule, be the eldest,
begotten in the full strength of both parents; thus Kant’s brother was
eleven years younger than him. Even in the case of two distinguished
brothers, as a rule, the elder will be the superior. But not only the age,
but every temporary ebb of the vital force or other disturbance of health
in the parents at the time when the child is begotten may interfere with
the part of one or other, and prevent the appearance of a man of eminent
talent, which is therefore so exceedingly rare a phenomenon. It may be
said, in passing, that in the case of twins the absence of all the
differences just mentioned is the cause of the quasi‐identity of their
nature.
If single cases should be found in which a highly gifted son had a mother
who was not mentally distinguished at all, this may be explained from the
fact that this mother herself had a phlegmatic father, and on this account
her more than ordinarily developed brain was not adequately excited by a
corresponding energy of the circulation—a necessary condition, as I have
explained above in chapter 31. Nevertheless, her highly perfected nervous
and cerebral system was transmitted to the son, in whose case a father
with a lively and passionate disposition and an energetic action of the
heart was added, and thus the other physical condition of great mental
power first appeared here. Perhaps this was Byron’s case, since we nowhere
find the mental advantages of his mother mentioned. The same explanation
is also to be applied to the case in which the mother of a son of genius
who was herself distinguished for mental gifts had a mother who was by no
means clever, for the father of the latter has been a man of a phlegmatic
disposition.
The inharmonious, disproportionate, ambiguous element in the character of
most men might perhaps be referred to the fact that the individual has not
a simple origin, but derives the will from the father and the intellect
from the mother. The more heterogeneous and ill‐adapted to each other the
two parents were, the greater will that want of harmony, that inner
variance, be. While some excel through their heart and others through
their head, there are still others whose excellence lies in a certain
harmony and unity of the whole nature, which arises from the fact that in
them heart and head are so thoroughly adapted that they mutually support
and advance each other; which leads us to assume that the parents were
peculiarly suited to each other, and agreed in an exceptional measure.
With reference to the physiological side of the theory set forth, I wish
now to mention that Burdach, who erroneously assumes that the same
psychical qualities may be inherited now from the father, now from the
mother, yet adds (_Physiologie als Erfahrungswissenschaft_, vol. i. §
306): “As a whole, the male element has more influence in determining the
irritable life, and the female element, on the other hand, has more
influence on the sensibility.” What Linné says in the “_Systema naturæ_,”
Tom. i. p. 8, is also in point here: “_Mater prolifera promit, ante
generationem, __ vivum compendium medullare novi animalis suique
simillimi, carinam Malpighianam dictum, tanquam plumulam vegetabilium: hoc
ex genitura Cor adsociat ramificandum in corpus. Punctum emin saliens ovi
incubantis avis ostendit primum cor micans, cerebrumque cum medulla:
corculum hoc, cessans a frigore, excitatur calido halitu, premitque bulla
aërea, sensim dilatata, liquores, secundum canales fluxiles. Punctum
vitalitatis itaque in viventibus est tanquam a prima creatione continuata
medullaris vitæ ramificatio, cum ovum sit gemma medullaris matris a
primordio viva, licet non sua ante proprium cor paternum._”
If we now connect the conviction we have gained here of the inheritance of
the character from the father and the intellect from the mother with our
earlier investigation of the wide gulf which nature has placed between man
and man in a moral as in an intellectual regard, and also with our
knowledge of the absolute unalterableness both of the character and of the
mental faculties, we shall be led to the view that a real and thorough
improvement of the human race might be attained to not so much from
without as from within, thus not so much by instruction and culture as
rather upon the path of generation. Plato had already something of the
kind in his mind when in the fifth book of his Republic he set forth his
wonderful plan for increasing and improving his class of warriors. If we
could castrate all scoundrels, and shut up all stupid geese in
monasteries, and give persons of noble character a whole harem, and
provide men, and indeed complete men, for all maidens of mind and
understanding, a generation would soon arise which would produce a better
age than that of Pericles. But, without entering into such utopian plans,
it might be taken into consideration that if, as, if I am not mistaken,
was actually the case among certain ancient nations, castration was the
severest punishment after death, the world would be delivered from whole
races of scoundrels, all the more certainly as it is well known that most
crimes are committed between the age of twenty and thirty.(36) In the same
way, it might be considered whether, as regards results, it would not be
more advantageous to give the public dowries which upon certain occasions
have to be distributed, not, as is now customary, to the girls who are
supposed to be the most virtuous, but to those who have most understanding
and are the cleverest; especially as it is very difficult to judge as to
virtue, for, as it is said, only God sees the heart. The opportunities for
displaying a noble character are rare, and a matter of chance; besides,
many a girl has a powerful support to her virtue in her plainness; on the
other hand, as regards understanding, those who themselves are gifted with
it can judge with great certainty after some examination. The following is
another practical application. In many countries, among others in South
Germany, the bad custom prevails of women carrying burdens, often very
considerable, upon the head. This must act disadvantageously upon the
brain, which must thereby gradually deteriorate in the female sex of the
nation; and since from that sex the male sex receives its brain, the whole
nation becomes ever more stupid; which in many cases is by no means
necessary. Accordingly by the abolition of this custom the quantum of
intelligence in the whole nation would be increased, which would
positively be the greatest increase of the national wealth.
But if now, leaving such practical applications to others, we return to
our special point of view, the ethico‐metaphysical standpoint—since we
connect the content of chapter 41 with that of the present chapter—the
following result will present itself to us, which, with all its
transcendence, has yet a direct empirical support. It is the same
character, thus the same individually determined will, that lives in all
the descendants of one stock, from the remote ancestor to the present
representative of the family. But in each of these a different intellect
is given with it, thus a different degree and a different kind of
knowledge. Thus in each of these life presents itself to it from another
side and in a different light: it receives a new fundamental view of it, a
new instruction. It is true that, since the intellect is extinguished with
the individual, that will cannot supplement the insight of one course of
life with that of another. But in consequence of each fundamentally new
view of life, such as only a renewed personality can impart to it, its
willing itself receives a different tendency, thus experiences a
modification from it, and what is the chief concern, the will, has, in
this new direction, either to assert life anew or deny it. In this way
does the arrangement of nature of an ever‐changing connection of a will
with an intellect, which arises from the necessity of two sexes for
reproduction, become the basis of a method of salvation. For by virtue of
this arrangement life unceasingly presents new sides to the will (whose
image and mirror it is), turns itself about, as it were, without
intermission before its sight, allows different and ever different modes
of perception to try their effect upon it, so that upon each of these it
must decide for assertion or denial, both of which constantly stand open
to it, only that, if once denial is chosen, the whole phenomenon ceases
for it with death. Now because, according to this, it is just the constant
renewal and complete alteration of the intellect for the same will which,
as imparting a new view of the world, holds open the path of salvation,
and because the intellect comes from the mother, the profound reason may
lie here on account of which all nations (with very few and doubtful
exceptions) abominate and forbid the marriage of brothers and sisters,
nay, even on account of which sexual love does not arise at all between
brothers and sisters, unless in very rare exceptions, which depend upon an
unnatural perversity of the instinct, if not upon the fact that one of the
two is illegitimate. For from a marriage of brothers and sisters nothing
could proceed but constantly ever the same will with the same intellect,
as both already exist united in both the parents, thus the hopeless
repetition of the phenomenon which has already been.
But if now, in the particular case and close at hand, we contemplate the
incredibly great and yet manifest difference of characters—find one so
good and philanthropic, another so wicked, nay, ferocious; again, behold
one just, honest, and upright, and another completely false, as a sneak, a
swindler, a traitor, an incorrigible scoundrel—there discloses itself to
us a chasm in our investigation, for in vain we ponder, reflecting on the
origin of such a difference. Hindus and Buddhists solve the problem by
saying, “It is the consequence of the deeds of the preceding courses of
life.” This solution is certainly the oldest, also the most
comprehensible, and has come from the wisest of mankind; but it only
pushes the question further back. Yet a more satisfactory answer will
hardly be found. From the point of view of my whole teaching, it remains
for me to say that here, where we are speaking of the will as thing in
itself, the principle of sufficient reason, as merely the form of the
phenomenon, is no longer applicable; with it, however, all why and whence
disappear. Absolute freedom just consists in this, that something is not
subject at all to the principle of sufficient reason, as the principle of
all necessity. Such freedom, therefore, only belongs to the thing in
itself. And this is just the will. Accordingly, in its phenomenal
manifestation, consequently in the _Operari_, it is subject to necessity;
but in the _Esse_, where it has determined itself as thing in itself, it
is free. Whenever, therefore, we come to this, as happens here, all
explanation by means of reasons and consequents ceases, and nothing
remains for us but to say that here manifests itself the true freedom of
the will, which belongs to it because it is the thing in itself, which,
however, just as such, is groundless, _i.e._, knows no why. But on this
account all understanding ceases for us here, because all our
understanding depends upon the principle of sufficient reason, for it
consists in the mere application of that principle.