Here is the great gap which occurs in these supplements, on account of the
circumstance that I have already dealt with moral philosophy in the
narrower sense in the two prize essays published under the title, “_Die
Grundprobleme der Ethik_,” an acquaintance with which is assumed, as I
have said, in order to avoid useless repetition. Therefore there only
remains for me here a small gleaning of isolated reflections which could
not be discussed in that work, the contents of which were, in the main,
prescribed by the Academies; least of all those reflections which demand a
higher point of view than that which is common to all, and which I was
there obliged to adhere to. Accordingly it will not surprise the reader to
find these reflections here in a very fragmentary collection. This
collection again has been continued in the eighth and ninth chapters of
the second volume of the Parerga.
That moral investigations are incomparably more difficult than physical,
and in general than any others, results from the fact that they are almost
immediately concerned with the thing in itself, namely, with that
manifestation of it in which, directly discovered by the light of
knowledge, it reveals its nature as _will_. Physical truths, on the other
hand, remain entirely in the province of the idea, _i.e._, of the
phenomenon, and merely show how the lowest manifestations of the will
present themselves in the idea in conformity to law. Further, the
consideration of the world from the _physical_ side, however far and
successfully it may be pursued, is in its results without any consolation
for us: on the _moral_ side alone is consolation to be found; for here the
depths of our own inner nature disclose themselves to the consideration.
But my philosophy is the only one which confers upon ethics its complete
and whole rights; for only if the true nature of man is his own _will_,
and consequently he is, in the strictest sense, his own work, are his
deeds really entirely his and to be ascribed to him. On the other hand,
whenever he has another origin, or is the work of a being different from
himself, all his guilt falls back upon this origin, or originator. For
_operari sequitur esse_.
To connect the force which produces the phenomenon of the world, and
consequently determines its nature, with the morality of the disposition
or character, and thus to establish a _moral_ order of the world as the
foundation of the _physical_,—this has been since Socrates the problem of
philosophy. Theism solved it in a childish manner, which could not satisfy
mature humanity. Therefore pantheism opposed itself to it whenever it
ventured to do so, and showed that nature bears in itself the power by
virtue of which it appears. With this, however, ethics had necessarily to
be given up. Spinoza, indeed, attempts here and there to preserve it by
means of sophistry, but for the most part gives it up altogether, and,
with a boldness which excites astonishment and repugnance, explains the
distinction between right and wrong, and in general between good and evil,
as merely conventional, thus in itself empty (for example, _Eth._ iv.,
prop. 37, schol. 2). After having met with unmerited neglect for more than
a hundred years, Spinoza has, in general, become too much esteemed in this
century through the reaction caused by the swing of the pendulum of
opinion. All pantheism must ultimately be overthrown by the inevitable
demands of ethics, and then by the evil and suffering of the world. If the
world is a theophany, then all that man, or even the brute, does is
equally divine and excellent; nothing can be censurable, and nothing more
praiseworthy than the rest: thus there is no ethics. Hence, in consequence
of the revived Spinozism of our own day, thus of pantheism, the treatment
of ethics has sunk so low and become so shallow that it has been made a
mere instruction as to the proper life of a citizen and a member of a
family, in which the ultimate end of human existence is supposed to
consist: thus in methodical, complete, smug, and comfortable philistinism.
Pantheism, indeed, has only led to such shallow vulgarisms through the
fact that (by a shameful misuse of the _e quovis ligno fit Mercurius_) a
common mind, Hegel, has, by the well‐known means, been falsely stamped as
a great philosopher, and a herd of his disciples, at first suborned,
afterwards only stupid, received his weighty words. Such outrages on the
human mind do not remain unpunished: the seed has sprouted. In the same
spirit it was then asserted that ethics should have for its material not
the conduct of individuals, but that of nations, that this alone was a
theme worthy of it. Nothing can be more perverse than this view, which
rests on the most vulgar realism. For in every individual appears the
whole undivided will to live, the thing in itself, and the microcosm is
like the macrocosm. The masses have no more content than each individual.
Ethics is concerned not with actions and their results, but with willing,
and willing itself takes place only in the individual. Not the fate of
nations, which exists only in the phenomenon, but that of the individual
is decided _morally_. Nations are really mere abstractions; individuals
alone actually exist. Thus, then, is pantheism related to ethics. But the
evil and misery of the world are not in accord even with theism; hence it
sought assistance from all kinds of evasions, theodicies, which yet were
irretrievably overthrown by the arguments of Hume and Voltaire. Pantheism,
however, is completely untenable in the presence of that bad side of the
world. Only when the world is regarded entirely from without and from the
_physical_ side alone, and nothing else is kept in view but the constant
restorative order, and the comparative imperishableness of the whole which
is thereby introduced, is it perhaps possible to explain it as a god, yet
always only symbolically. But if one enters within, thus considers also
the _subjective_ and _moral_ side, with its preponderance of want,
suffering, and misery, of dissension, wickedness, madness, and perversity,
then one soon becomes conscious with horror that the last thing imaginable
one has before one is a theophany. I, however, have shown, and especially
in my work “_Ueber den Willen in der Natur_” have proved, that the force
which works and acts in nature is identical with the will in us. Thereby
the moral order of the world is brought into direct connection with the
force which produces the phenomenon of the world. For the phenomenon of
the will must exactly correspond to its nature. Upon this depends the
exposition of eternal justice given in §§ 63 and 64 of the first volume,
and the world, although subsisting by its own power, receives throughout a
_moral_ tendency. Accordingly the problem which has been discussed from
the time of Socrates is now for the first time really solved, and the
demand of thinking reason directed to morality is satisfied. Yet I have
never professed to propound a philosophy which leaves no questions
unanswered. In this sense philosophy is really impossible: it would be the
science of omniscience. But _est quadam prodire tenus, si non datur
ultra_: there is a limit to which reflection can penetrate and can so far
lighten the night of our existence, although the horizon always remains
dark. My doctrine reaches this limit in the will to live, which in its own
manifestation asserts or denies itself. To wish, however, to go beyond
this is, in my eyes, like wishing to fly beyond the atmosphere. We must
stop there; even although new problems arise out of those which have been
solved. Besides this, however, we must refer to the fact that the validity
of the principle of sufficient reason is limited to the phenomenon; this
was the theme of my first essay on that principle, which was published as
early as 1813.
I now go on to supplement particular points, and shall begin by
supporting, with two passages from classical poetry, my explanation of
weeping given in § 67 of the first volume, that it springs from sympathy
the object of which is one’s own self. At the end of the eighth book of
the “Odyssey,” Ulysses, who in all his many sorrows is never represented
as weeping, bursts into tears, when, still unknown, he hears his early
heroic life and deeds sung by the bard Demodocus in the palace of the
Phæacian king, for this remembrance of the brilliant period of his life
contrasts with his present wretchedness. Thus not this itself directly,
but the objective consideration of it, the picture of his present summoned
up by his past, calls forth his tears; he feels sympathy with himself.
Euripides makes the innocently condemned Hypolytus, bemoaning his own
fate, express the same feeling:
“Φευ ειθ᾽ ην εμαυτον προσβλεπειν εναντιον
στανθ᾽, ὡς εδακρυς᾽, ὁια πασχομεν κακα” (1084).
(_Heu, si liceret mihi, me ipsum extrinsecus spectare, quantopere
deflerem mala, quæ patior._)
Finally, as a proof of my explanation, an anecdote may be given here which
I take from the English journal _The Herald_ of the 16th July 1836. A
client, when he had heard his case set forth by his counsel in court,
burst into a flood of tears, and cried, “I never knew I had suffered half
so much till I heard it here to‐day.”
I have shown in § 55 of the first volume how, notwithstanding the
unalterable nature of the character, _i.e._, of the special fundamental
will of a man, a real moral repentance is yet possible. I wish, however,
to add the following explanation, which I must preface by a few
definitions. _Inclination_ is every strong susceptibility of the will for
motives of a certain kind. _Passion_ is an inclination so strong that the
motives which excite it exercise a power over the will, which is stronger
than that of every possible motive that can oppose them; thus its mastery
over the will becomes absolute, and consequently with reference to it the
will is _passive_ or _suffering_. It must, however, be remarked here that
passions seldom reach the degree at which they fully answer to the
definition, but rather bear their name as mere approximations to it:
therefore there are then still counter‐motives which are able at least to
restrict their effect, if only they appear distinctly in consciousness.
The _emotion_ is just as irresistible, but yet only a passing excitement
of the will, by a motive which receives its power, not from a deeply
rooted inclination, but merely from the fact that, appearing suddenly, it
excludes for the moment the counter‐effect of all other motives, for it
consists of an idea, which completely obscures all others by its excessive
vividness, or, as it were, conceals them entirely by its too close
proximity, so that they cannot enter consciousness and act on the will,
whereby, therefore, the capacity for reflection, and with it _intellectual
freedom_, is to a certain extent abolished. Accordingly the emotion is
related to the passion as delirium to madness.
Moral repentance is now conditioned by the fact that before the act the
inclination to it did not leave the intellect free scope, because it did
not allow it to contemplate clearly and fully the counter‐motives, but
rather turned it ever anew to the motives in its own favour. But now,
after the act has been performed, these motives are, by this itself,
neutralised, and consequently have become ineffective. Now reality brings
before the intellect the counter‐motives as the consequences of the act
which have already appeared; and the intellect now knows that they would
have been the stronger if it had only adequately contemplated and weighed
them. Thus the man becomes conscious that he has done what was really not
in accordance with his will. This knowledge is repentance, for he has not
acted with full intellectual freedom; for all the motives did not attain
to efficiency. What excluded the motives opposed to the action was in the
case of the hasty action the emotion, and in the case of the deliberate
action the passion. It has also often depended upon the circumstance that
his reason certainly presented to him the counter‐motives in the abstract,
but was not supported by a sufficiently strong imagination to present to
him their whole content and true significance in images. Examples of what
has been said are the cases in which revenge, jealousy, or avarice have
led to murder. After it is committed they are extinguished, and now
justice, sympathy, the remembrance of former friendship, raise their
voices and say all that they would have said before if they had been
allowed to speak. Then enters the bitter repentance, which says, “If it
were not done it would never happen.” An incomparable representation of
this is afforded by the old Scottish ballad, which has also been
translated by Herder, “Edward, Edward.” In an analogous manner, the
neglect of one’s own good may occasion an egotistical repentance. For
example, when an otherwise unadvisable marriage is concluded in
consequence of passionate love, which now is extinguished just by the
marriage, and for the first time the counter‐motives of personal interest,
lost independence, &c., &c., come into consciousness, and speak as they
would have spoken before if they had been allowed utterance. All such
actions accordingly spring from a relative weakness of intellect, because
it lets itself be mastered by the will, just where its function as the
presenter of motives ought to have been inexorably fulfilled, without
allowing itself to be disturbed by the will. The vehemence of the will is
here only _indirectly_ the cause, in that it interferes with the
intellect, and thereby prepares for itself repentance. The
_reasonableness_ of the character σωφροσυνη, which is opposed to
passionateness, really consists in this, that the will never overpowers
the intellect to such an extent as to prevent it from correctly exercising
its function of the distinct, full, and clear exposition of the motives in
the abstract for the reason, in the concrete for the imagination. Now this
may just as well depend upon the moderation and mildness of the will as
upon the strength of the intellect. All that is required is that the
latter should be _relatively_ strong enough for the will that is present,
thus that the two should stand in a suitable relation to each other.
The following explanations have still to be added to the fundamental
characteristics of the philosophy of law expounded in § 62 of the first
volume, and also in my prize essay on the foundation of morals, § 17.
Those who, with Spinoza, deny that there is a right apart from the State,
confound the means for enforcing the right with the right itself.
Certainly the right is insured protection only in the State. But it itself
exists independently of the State. For by force it can only be suppressed,
never abolished. Accordingly the State is nothing more than an institution
for protection, which has become necessary through the manifold attacks to
which man is exposed, and which he would not be able to ward off alone,
but only in union with others. So, then, the aims of the State are—
(1.) First of all, outward protection, which may just as well become
needful against lifeless forces of nature or wild beasts as against men,
consequently against other nations; although this case is the most
frequent and important, for the worst enemy of man is man: _homo homini
lupus_. Since, in consequence of this aim, nations always set up the
principle, in words if not with deeds, that they wish to stand to each
other in a purely defensive, never in an aggressive relation, they
recognise _the law of nations_. This is at bottom nothing but natural law,
in the only sphere of its practical activity that remains to it, between
nation and nation, where it alone must reign, because its stronger son,
positive law, cannot assert itself, since it requires a judge and an
executive. Accordingly the law of nations consists of a certain degree of
morality in the dealings of nations with each other, the maintenance of
which is a question of honour for mankind. The bar at which cases based on
this law are tried is that of public opinion.
(2.) Protection within, thus protection of the members of a State against
each other, consequently security of private right, by means of the
maintenance of an honest state of things, which consists in this, that the
concentrated forces of all protect each individual, from which arises an
appearance as if all were honest, _i.e._, just, thus as if no one wished
to injure the others.
But, as is always the way in human affairs, the removal of one evil
generally opens the way for a new one; thus the granting of that double
protection introduces the need of a third, namely: (3.) Protection against
the protector, _i.e._, against him or those to whom the society has
transferred the management of the protection, thus the guarantee of public
right. This appears most completely attainable by dividing and separating
from each other the threefold unity of the protective power, thus the
legislature, the judicature, and the executive, so that each is managed by
others, and independently of the rest. The great value, indeed the
fundamental idea of the monarchy appears to me to lie in the fact that
because men remain men one must be placed so high, and so much power,
wealth, security, and absolute inviolability given him that there remains
nothing for him to desire, to hope, and to fear for himself; whereby the
egoism which dwells in him, as in every one, is annihilated, as it were,
by neutralisation, and he is now able, as if he were no longer a man, to
practise justice, and to keep in view no longer his own but only the
public good. This is the source of the seemingly superhuman nature that
everywhere accompanies royalty, and distinguishes it so infinitely from
the mere presidency. Therefore it must also be hereditary, not elective;
partly in order that no one may see his equal in the king; partly that the
king himself may only be able to provide for his successors by caring for
the welfare of the State, which is absolutely one with that of his family.
If other ends besides that of protection, here explained, are ascribed to
the State, this may easily endanger the true end.
According to my explanation, the right of property arises only through the
expenditure of labour upon things. This truth, which has already often
been expressed, finds a noteworthy confirmation in the fact that it is
asserted, even in a practical regard, in a declaration of the American ex‐
president, Quincey Adams, which is to be found in the _Quarterly Review_
of 1840, No. 130; and also in French, in the “_Bibliothèque universelle de
Genêve_,” July 1840, No. 55. I will give it here in German (English of
_Quarterly Review_): “There are moralists who have questioned the right of
the Europeans to intrude upon the possessions of the aboriginals in any
case, and under any limitations whatsoever; but have they maturely
considered the whole subject? The Indian right of possession itself
stands, with regard to the greatest part of the country, upon a
_questionable_ foundation. Their cultivated fields, their constructed
habitations, a space of ample sufficiency for their subsistence, and
whatever they had annexed of themselves by personal labour, was
undoubtedly by the laws of nature theirs. But what is the right of a
huntsman to the forest of a thousand miles over which he has accidentally
ranged in quest of prey?” &c. In the same way, those who in our own day
have seen occasion to combat communism with reasons (for example, the
Archbishop of Paris, in his pastoral of June 1851) have always brought
forward the argument that property is the result of work, as it were only
embodied work. This is further evidence that the right of property can
only be established by the application of work to things, for only in this
respect does it find free recognition and make itself morally valid.
An entirely different kind of proof of the same truth is afforded by the
moral fact that while the law punishes poaching just as severely as theft,
and in many countries more severely, yet civil honour, which is
irrevocably lost by the latter, is really not affected by the former; but
the poacher, if he has been guilty of nothing else, is certainly tainted
with a fault, but yet is not regarded, like the thief, as dishonourable
and shunned by all. For the principles of civil honour rest upon moral and
not upon mere positive law; but game is not an object upon which labour is
bestowed, and thus also is not an object of a morally valid possession:
the right to it is therefore entirely a positive one, and is not morally
recognised.
According to my view, the principle ought to lie at the basis of criminal
law that it is not really the man but only the deed which is punished, in
order that it may not recur. The criminal is merely the subject in whom
the deed is punished, in order that the law in consequence of which the
punishment is inflicted may retain its deterrent power. This is the
meaning of the expression, “He is forfeited to the law.” According to
Kant’s explanation, which amounts to a _jus talionis_, it is not the deed
but the man that is punished. The penitentiary system also seeks not so
much to punish the deed as the man, in order to reform him. It thereby
sets aside the real aim of punishment, determent from the deed, in order
to attain the very problematic end of reformation. But it is always a
doubtful thing to attempt to attain two different ends by _one_ means: how
much more so if the two are in any sense opposite ends. Education is a
benefit, punishment ought to be an evil; the penitentiary prison is
supposed to accomplish both at once. Moreover, however large a share
untutored ignorance, combined with outward distress, may have in many
crimes, yet we dare not regard these as their principal cause, for
innumerable persons living in the same ignorance and under absolutely
similar circumstances commit no crimes. Thus the substance of the matter
falls back upon the personal, moral character; but this, as I have shown
in my prize essay on the freedom of the will, is absolutely unalterable.
Therefore moral reformation is really not possible, but only determent
from the deed through fear. At the same time, the correction of knowledge
and the awakening of the desire to work can certainly be attained; it will
appear what effect this can produce. Besides this, it appears to me, from
the aim of punishment set forth in the text, that, when possible, the
apparent severity of the punishment should exceed the actual: but solitary
confinement achieves the reverse. Its great severity has no witnesses, and
is by no means anticipated by any one who has not experienced it; thus it
does not deter. It threatens him who is tempted to crime by want and
misery with the opposite pole of human suffering, ennui: but, as Goethe
rightly observes—
“When real affliction is our lot,
Then do we long for ennui.”
The contemplation of it will deter him just as little as the sight of the
palatial prisons which are built by honest men for rogues. If, however, it
is desired that these penitentiary prisons should be regarded as
educational institutions, then it is to be regretted that the entrance to
them is only obtained by crimes, instead of which it ought to have
preceded them.
That punishment, as Beccaria has taught, ought to bear a proper proportion
to the crime does not depend upon the fact that it would be an expiation
of it, but rather on the fact that the pledge ought to be proportionate to
the value of that for which it answers. Therefore every one is justified
in demanding the pledge of the life of another as a guarantee for the
security of his own life, but not for the security of his property, for
which the freedom, and so forth, of another is sufficient pledge. For the
security of the life of the citizens capital punishment is therefore
absolutely necessary. Those who wish to abolish it should be answered,
“First remove murder from the world, and then capital punishment ought to
follow.” It ought also to be inflicted for the clear attempt to murder
just as for murder itself; for the law desires to punish the deed, not to
revenge its consequences. In general the injury to be guarded against
affords the right measure for the punishment which is to be threatened,
but it does not give the moral baseness of the forbidden action. Therefore
the law may rightly impose the punishment of imprisonment for allowing a
flower‐pot to fall from a window, or impose hard labour for smoking in the
woods during the summer, and yet permit it in the winter. But to impose
the punishment of death, as in Poland, for shooting an ure‐ox is too much,
for the maintenance of the species of ure‐oxen may not be purchased with
human life. In determining the measure of the punishment, along with the
magnitude of the injury to be guarded against, we have to consider the
strength of the motives which impel to the forbidden action. Quite a
different standard of punishment would be established if expiation,
retribution, _jus talionis_, were its true ground. But the criminal code
ought to be nothing but a register of counter‐motives for possible
criminal actions: therefore each of these motives must decidedly outweigh
the motives which lead to these actions, and indeed so much the more the
greater the evil is which would arise from the action to be guarded
against, the stronger the temptation to it, and the more difficult the
conviction of the criminal;—always under the correct assumption that the
will is not free, but determinable by motives;—apart from this it could
not be got at at all. So much for the philosophy of law.
In my prize essay on the freedom of the will (p. 50 _seq._) I have proved
the originality and unalterableness of the inborn character, from which
the moral content of the course of life proceeds. It is established as a
fact. But in order to understand problems in their full extent it is
sometimes necessary to oppose opposites sharply to each other. In this
case, then, let one recall how incredibly great is the inborn difference
between man and man, in a moral and in an intellectual regard. Here
nobleness and wisdom; there wickedness and stupidity. In one the goodness
of the heart shines out of the eyes, or the stamp of genius is enthroned
in his countenance. The base physiognomy of another is the impression of
moral worthlessness and intellectual dulness, imprinted by the hands of
nature itself, unmistakable and ineradicable; he looks as if he must be
ashamed of existence. But to this outward appearance the inner being
really corresponds. We cannot possibly assume that such differences, which
transform the whole being of the man, and which nothing can abolish,
which, further, in conflict with his circumstances, determine his course
of life, could exist without guilt or merit on the part of those affected
by them, and be merely the work of chance. Even from this it is evident
that the man must be in a certain sense his own work. But now, on the
other hand, we can show the source of these differences empirically in the
nature of the parents; and besides this, the meeting and connection of
these parents has clearly been the work of the most accidental
circumstances. By such considerations, then, we are forcibly directed to
the distinction between the phenomenon and the true being of things, which
alone can contain the solution of that problem. The thing in itself only
reveals itself by means of the forms of the phenomenon; therefore what
proceeds from the thing in itself must yet appear in those forms, thus
also in the bonds of causality. Accordingly it will present itself to us
here as a mysterious and incomprehensible guidance of things, of which the
external empirical connection would be the mere tool. Yet all that happens
appears in this empirical connection introduced by causes, thus
necessarily and determined from without, while its true ground lies in the
inner nature of what thus manifests itself. Certainly we can here see the
solution of the problem only from afar, and when we reflect upon it we
fall into an abyss of thought—as Hamlet very truly says, “thoughts beyond
the reaches of our souls.” In my essay in the first volume of the Parerga
“On the Appearance of Intention in the Fate of Individuals” I have set
forth my thoughts upon this mysterious guidance of things, a guidance
which indeed can only be conceived symbolically.
In § 14 of my prize essay on the foundation of morals there will be found
an exposition of egoism, as regards its nature; and the following attempt
to discover its root may be looked upon as supplementary to that
paragraph. Nature itself contradicts itself directly, according as it
speaks from the individual or the universal, from within or from without,
from the centre or the periphery. It has its centre in every individual;
for each individual is the whole will to live. Therefore, even if this
individual is only an insect or a worm, nature itself speaks out of it
thus: “I alone am all in all: in my maintenance everything is involved;
the rest may perish, it is really nothing.” So speaks nature from the
_particular_ standpoint, thus from the point of view of self‐
consciousness, and upon this depends the egoism of every living thing. On
the other hand, from the _universal_ point of view,—which is that of the
_consciousness of other things_, that of objective knowledge, which for
the moment looks away from the individual with whom the knowledge is
connected,—from without then, from the periphery nature speaks thus: “The
individual is nothing, and less than nothing. I destroy millions of
individuals every day, for sport and pastime: I abandon their fate to the
most capricious and wilful of my children, chance, who harasses them at
pleasure. I produce millions of new individuals every day, without any
diminution of my productive power; just as little as the power of a mirror
is exhausted by the number of reflections of the sun, which it casts on
the wall one after another. The individual is nothing.” Only he who knows
how to really reconcile and eliminate this patent contradiction of nature
has a true answer to the question as to the perishableness and
imperishableness of his own self. I believe I have given, in the first
four chapters of this fourth book of the supplements, an adequate
introduction to such knowledge. What is said above may further be
illustrated in the following manner. Every individual, when he looks
within, recognises in his nature, which is his will, the thing in itself,
therefore that which everywhere alone is real. Accordingly he conceives
himself as the kernel and centre of the world, and regards himself as of
infinite importance. If, on the other hand, he looks without, then he is
in the province of the idea the mere phenomenon, where he sees himself as
an individual among an infinite number of other individuals, accordingly
as something very insignificant, nay, vanishing altogether. Consequently
every individual, even the most insignificant, every I, when regarded from
within, is all in all; regarded from without, on the other hand, he is
nothing, or at least as good as nothing. Hence upon this depends the great
difference between what each one necessarily is in his own eyes and what
he is in the eyes of others, consequently the egoism with which every one
reproaches every one else.
In consequence of this egoism our fundamental error of all is this, that
with reference to each other we are reciprocally not I. On the other hand,
to be just, noble, and benevolent is nothing else than to translate my
metaphysics into actions. To say that time and space are mere forms of our
knowledge, not conditions of things in themselves, is the same as to say
that the doctrine of metempsychosis, “Thou shalt one day be born as him
whom thou now injurest, and in thy turn shalt suffer like injury,” is
identical with the formula of the Brahmans, which has frequently been
mentioned, _Tat twam asi_, “This thou art.” All true virtue proceeds from
the immediate and intuitive knowledge of the metaphysical identity of all
beings, which I have frequently shown, especially in § 22 of my prize
essay on the foundation of morals. But just on this account it is not the
result of a special pre‐eminence of intellect; on the contrary, even the
weakest intellect is sufficient to see through the _principium
individuationis_, which is what is required in this matter. Accordingly we
may find the most excellent character even in the case of a very weak
understanding. And further, the excitement of our sympathy is accompanied
by no exertion of our intellect. It rather appears that the requisite
penetration of the _principium individuationis_ would be present in every
one if it were not that the _will_ opposes this, and by virtue of its
immediate mysterious and despotic influence upon the intellect generally
prevents it from arising; so that ultimately all guilt falls back upon the
_will_, as indeed is in conformity with the fact.
The doctrine of metempsychosis, touched on above, deviates from the truth
merely through the circumstance that it transfers to the future what
already is now. It makes my true inner nature exist in others only after
my death, while, according to the truth, it already lives in them now, and
death merely removes the illusion on account of which I am not aware of
this; just as an innumerable host of stars constantly shine above our
heads, but only become visible to us when the one sun near the earth has
set. From this point of view my individual existence, however much, like
that sun, it may outshine everything, appears ultimately only as a
hindrance which stands between me and the knowledge of the true extent of
my being. And because every individual, in his knowledge, is subject to
this hindrance, it is just individuation that keeps the will to live in
error as to its own nature; it is the Mâyâ of Brahmanism. Death is a
refutation of this error, and abolishes it. I believe that at the moment
of death we become conscious that it is a mere illusion that has limited
our existence to our person. Indeed empirical traces of this may be found
in several states which are related to death by the abolition of the
concentration of consciousness in the brain, among which the magnetic
sleep is the most prominent; for in it, if it reaches a high degree, our
existence shows itself through various symptoms, beyond our persons and in
other beings, most strikingly by direct participation in the thoughts of
another individual, and ultimately even by the power of knowing the
absent, the distant, and even the future, thus by a kind of omnipresence.
Upon this metaphysical identity of the will, as the thing in itself, in
the infinite multiplicity of its phenomena, three principal phenomena
depend, which may be included under the common name of sympathies: (1)
_sympathy proper_, which, as I have shown, is the basis of justice and
benevolence, _caritas_; (2) _sexual love_, with capricious selection,
_amor_, which is the life of the species, that asserts its precedence over
that of the individual; (3) _magic_, to which animal magnetism and
sympathetic cures also belong. Accordingly _sympathy_ may be defined as
the empirical appearance of the metaphysical identity of the will, through
the physical multiplicity of its phenomena, whereby a connection shows
itself which is entirely different from that brought about by means of the
forms of the phenomenon which we comprehend under the principle of
sufficient reason.