binds together the _malum culpæ_ with the _malum pœnæ_, demands the
complete transcending of individuality and the principle of its
possibility. Therefore it will always remain unattainable to the majority
of men, as will also be the case with the pure and distinct knowledge of
the nature of all virtue, which is akin to it, and which we are about to
explain. Accordingly the wise ancestors of the Hindu people have directly
expressed it in the Vedas, which are only allowed to the three regenerate
castes, or in their esoteric teaching, so far at any rate as conception
and language comprehend it, and their method of exposition, which always
remains pictorial and even rhapsodical, admits; but in the religion of the
people, or exoteric teaching, they only communicate it by means of myths.
The direct exposition we find in the Vedas, the fruit of the highest human
knowledge and wisdom, the kernel of which has at last reached us in the
Upanishads as the greatest gift of this century. It is expressed in
various ways, but especially by making all the beings in the world, living
and lifeless, pass successively before the view of the student, and
pronouncing over every one of them that word which has become a formula,
and as such has been called the Mahavakya: Tatoumes,—more correctly, Tat
twam asi,—which means, “This thou art.”(77) But for the people, that great
truth, so far as in their limited condition they could comprehend it, was
translated into the form of knowledge which follows the principle of
sufficient reason. This form of knowledge is indeed, from its nature,
quite incapable of apprehending that truth pure and in itself, and even
stands in contradiction to it, yet in the form of a myth it received a
substitute for it which was sufficient as a guide for conduct. For the
myth enables the method of knowledge, in accordance with the principle of
sufficient reason, to comprehend by figurative representation the ethical
significance of conduct, which itself is ever foreign to it. This is the
aim of all systems of religion, for as a whole they are the mythical
clothing of the truth which is unattainable to the uncultured human
intellect. In this sense this myth might, in Kant’s language, be called a
postulate of the practical reason; but regarded as such, it has the great
advantage that it contains absolutely no elements but such as lie before
our eyes in the course of actual experience, and can therefore support all
its conceptions with perceptions. What is here referred to is the myth of
the transmigration of souls. It teaches that all sufferings which in life
one inflicts upon other beings must be expiated in a subsequent life in
this world, through precisely the same sufferings; and this extends so
far, that he who only kills a brute must, some time in endless time, be
born as the same kind of brute and suffer the same death. It teaches that
wicked conduct involves a future life in this world in suffering and
despised creatures, and, accordingly, that one will then be born again in
lower castes, or as a woman, or as a brute, as Pariah or Tschandala, as a
leper, or as a crocodile, and so forth. All the pains which the myth
threatens it supports with perceptions from actual life, through suffering
creatures which do not know how they have merited their misery, and it
does not require to call in the assistance of any other hell. As a reward,
on the other hand, it promises re-birth in better, nobler forms, as
Brahmans, wise men, or saints. The highest reward, which awaits the
noblest deeds and the completest resignation, which is also given to the
woman who in seven successive lives has voluntarily died on the funeral
pile of her husband, and not less to the man whose pure mouth has never
uttered a single lie,—this reward the myth can only express negatively in
the language of this world by the promise, which is so often repeated,
that they shall never be born again, _Non adsumes iterum existentiam
apparentem_; or, as the Buddhists, who recognise neither Vedas nor castes,
express it, “Thou shalt attain to Nirvâna,” _i.e._, to a state in which
four things no longer exist—birth, age, sickness, and death.
Never has a myth entered, and never will one enter, more closely into the
philosophical truth which is attainable to so few than this primitive
doctrine of the noblest and most ancient nation. Broken up as this nation
now is into many parts, this myth yet reigns as the universal belief of
the people, and has the most decided influence upon life to-day, as four
thousand years ago. Therefore Pythagoras and Plato have seized with
admiration on that _ne plus ultra_ of mythical representation, received it
from India or Egypt, honoured it, made use of it, and, we know not how
far, even believed it. We, on the contrary, now send the Brahmans English
clergymen and evangelical linen-weavers to set them right out of sympathy,
and to show them that they are created out of nothing, and ought
thankfully to rejoice in the fact. But it is just the same as if we fired
a bullet against a cliff. In India our religions will never take root. The
ancient wisdom of the human race will not be displaced by what happened in
Galilee. On the contrary, Indian philosophy streams back to Europe, and
will produce a fundamental change in our knowledge and thought.
§ 64. From our exposition of eternal justice, which is not mythical but
philosophical, we will now proceed to the kindred investigation of the
ethical significance of conduct and of conscience, which is the merely
felt knowledge of that significance. But first I wish at this point to
draw attention to two peculiarities of human nature, that might help to
make clear how the nature of that eternal justice, and the unity and
identity of the will in all its phenomena upon which it rests, is known to
every one, at least as an obscure feeling.
When a bad deed has been done, it affords satisfaction not only to the
sufferer, who for the most part feels the desire of revenge, but also to
the perfectly indifferent spectator, to see that he who caused another
pain suffers himself a like measure of pain; and this quite independently
of the end which we have shown the state has in view in punishment, and
which is the foundation of penal law. It seems to me that what expresses
itself here is nothing but the consciousness of that eternal justice,
which is, nevertheless, at once misunderstood and falsified by the
unenlightened mind, for, involved in the _principium individuationis_, it
produces an amphiboly of the concepts and demands from the phenomenon what
only belongs to the thing in itself. It does not see how far in themselves
the offender and the offended are one, and that it is the same being
which, not recognising itself in its own manifestation, bears both the
pain and the guilt, but it desires rather to see the pain also in the
particular individual to whom the guilt belongs. Therefore, most persons
would demand that a man who had a very high degree of wickedness which
might yet occur in many others, only not matched with other qualities such
as are found in him, a man who also far surpassed others by extraordinary
intellectual powers, and who inflicted unspeakable sufferings upon
millions of others—for example, as a conqueror,—most persons, I say, would
demand that such a man should at some time and in some place expiate all
these sufferings by a like amount of pain; for they do not recognise how
in themselves the inflicter of suffering and the sufferers are one, and
that it is the same will through which the latter exist and live which
also appears in the former, and just through him attains to a distinct
revelation of its nature, and which likewise suffers both in the oppressed
and the oppressor; and indeed in the latter in a greater measure, as the
consciousness has attained a higher degree of clearness and distinctness
and the will has greater vehemence. But that the deeper knowledge, which
is no longer involved in the _principium individuationis_, from which all
virtue and nobleness proceed, no longer retains the disposition which
demands requital, is shown by the Christian ethics, which absolutely
forbids all requital of evil with evil, and allows eternal justice to
proceed in the sphere of the thing-in-itself, which is different from that
of the phenomenon. (“Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the
Lord,”—Rom. xii. 19.)
A much more striking, but also a much rarer, characteristic of human
nature, which expresses that desire to draw eternal justice into the
province of experience, _i.e._, of individuality, and at the same time
indicates a felt consciousness that, as I have expressed it above, the
will to live conducts at its own cost the great tragedy and comedy, and
that the same one will lives in all manifestations,—such a characteristic,
I say, is the following. We sometimes see a man so deeply moved by a great
injury which he has experienced, or, it may be, only witnessed, that he
deliberately and irretrievably stakes his own life in order to take
vengeance on the perpetrator of that wrong. We see him seek for some
mighty oppressor through long years, murder him at last, and then himself
die on the scaffold, as he had foreseen, and often, it may be, did not
seek to avoid, for his life had value for him only as a means of
vengeance. We find examples of this especially among the Spaniards.(78)
If, now, we consider the spirit of that desire for retribution carefully,
we find that it is very different from common revenge, which seeks to
mitigate the suffering, endured by the sight of the suffering inflicted;
indeed, we find that what it aims at deserves to be called, not so much
revenge as punishment. For in it there really lies the intention of an
effect upon the future through the example, and that without any selfish
aim, either for the avenging person, for it costs him his life, or for a
society which secures its own safety by laws. For that punishment is
carried out by individuals, not by the state, nor is it in fulfilment of a
law, but, on the contrary, always concerns a deed which the state either
would not or could not punish, and the punishment of which it condemns. It
seems to me that the indignation which carries such a man so far beyond
the limits of all self-love springs from the deepest consciousness that he
himself is the whole will to live, which appears in all beings through all
time, and that therefore the most distant future belongs to him just as
the present, and cannot be indifferent to him. Asserting this will, he yet
desires that in the drama which represents its nature no such fearful
wrong shall ever appear again, and wishes to frighten ever future
wrong-doer by the example of a vengeance against which there is no means
of defence, since the avenger is not deterred by the fear of death. The
will to live, though still asserting itself, does not here depend any
longer upon the particular phenomenon, the individual, but comprehends the
Idea of man, and wishes to keep its manifestation pure from such a fearful
and shocking wrong. It is a rare, very significant, and even sublime trait
of character through which the individual sacrifices himself by striving
to make himself the arm of eternal justice, of the true nature of which he
is yet ignorant.
§ 65. In all the preceding investigations of human action, we have been
leading up to the final investigation, and have to a considerable extent
lightened the task of raising to abstract and philosophical clearness, and
exhibiting as a branch of our central thought that special ethical
significance of action which in life is with perfect understanding denoted
by the words _good_ and _bad_.
First, however, I wish to trace back to their real meaning those
conceptions of _good_ and _bad_ which have been treated by the
philosophical writers of the day, very extraordinarily, as simple
conceptions, and thus incapable of analysis; so that the reader may not
remain involved in the senseless delusion that they contain more than is
actually the case, and express in and for themselves all that is here
necessary. I am in a position to do this because in ethics I am no more
disposed to take refuge behind the word _good_ than formerly behind the
words _beautiful_ and _true_, in order that by the adding a “ness,” which
at the present day is supposed to have a special σεμνοτης, and therefore
to be of assistance in various cases, and by assuming an air of solemnity,
I might induce the belief that by uttering three such words I had done
more than denote three very wide and abstract, and consequently empty
conceptions, of very different origin and significance. Who is there,
indeed, who has made himself acquainted with the books of our own day to
whom these three words, admirable as are the things to which they
originally refer, have not become an aversion after he has seen for the
thousandth time how those who are least capable of thinking believe that
they have only to utter these three words with open mouth and the air of
an intelligent sheep, in order to have spoken the greatest wisdom?
The explanation of the concept _true_ has already been given in the essay
on the principle of sufficient reason, chap. v. § 29 _et seq._ The content
of the concept _beautiful_ found for the first time its proper explanation
through the whole of the Third Book of the present work. We now wish to
discover the significance of the concept _good_, which can be done with
very little trouble. This concept is essentially relative, and signifies
_the conformity of an object to any definite effort of the will_.
Accordingly everything that corresponds to the will in any of its
expressions and fulfils its end is thought through the concept _good_,
however different such things may be in other respects. Thus we speak of
good eating, good roads, good weather, good weapons, good omens, and so
on; in short, we call everything good that is just as we wish it to be;
and therefore that may be good in the eyes of one man which is just the
reverse in those of another. The conception of the good divides itself
into two sub-species—that of the direct and present satisfaction of any
volition, and that of its indirect satisfaction which has reference to the
future, _i.e._, the agreeable and the useful. The conception of the
opposite, so long as we are speaking of unconscious existence, is
expressed by the word _bad_, more rarely and abstractly by the word
_evil_, which thus denotes everything that does not correspond to any
effort of the will. Like all other things that can come into relation to
the will, men who are favourable to the ends which happen to be desired,
who further and befriend them, are called good, in the same sense, and
always with that relative limitation, which shows itself, for example, in
the expression, “I find this good, but you don’t.” Those, however, who are
naturally disposed not to hinder the endeavours of others, but rather to
assist them, and who are thus consistently helpful, benevolent, friendly,
and charitable, are called _good_ men, on account of this relation of
their conduct to the will of others in general. In the case of conscious
beings (brutes and men) the contrary conception is denoted in German, and,
within the last hundred years or so, in French also, by a different word
from that which is used in speaking of unconscious existence; in German,
_böse_; in French, _méchant_; while in almost all other languages this
distinction does not exist; and κακος, _malus_, _cattivo_, _bad_, are used
of men, as of lifeless things, which are opposed to the ends of a definite
individual will. Thus, having started entirely from the passive element in
the good, the inquiry could only proceed later to the active element, and
investigate the conduct of the man who is called good, no longer with
reference to others, but to himself; specially setting itself the task of
explaining both the purely objective respect which such conduct produces
in others, and the peculiar contentment with himself which it clearly
produces in the man himself, since he purchases it with sacrifices of
another kind; and also, on the other hand, the inner pain which
accompanies the bad disposition, whatever outward advantages it brings to
him who entertains it. It was from this source that the ethical systems,
both the philosophical and those which are supported by systems of
religion, took their rise. Both seek constantly in some way or other to
connect happiness with virtue, the former either by means of the principle
of contradiction or that of sufficient reason, and thus to make happiness
either identical with or the consequence of virtue, always sophistically;
the latter, by asserting the existence of other worlds than that which
alone can be known to experience.(79) In our system, on the contrary,
virtue will show itself, not as a striving after happiness, that is,
well-being and life, but as an effort in quite an opposite direction.
It follows from what has been said above, that the _good_ is, according to
its concept, των πρως τι; thus every good is essentially relative, for its
being consists in its relation to a desiring will. _Absolute good_ is,
therefore, a contradiction in terms; highest good, _summum bonum_, really
signifies the same thing—a final satisfaction of the will, after which no
new desire could arise,—a last motive, the attainment of which would
afford enduring satisfaction of the will. But, according to the
investigations which have already been conducted in this Fourth Book, such
a consummation is not even thinkable. The will can just as little cease
from willing altogether on account of some particular satisfaction, as
time can end or begin; for it there is no such thing as a permanent
fulfilment which shall completely and for ever satisfy its craving. It is
the vessel of the Danaides; for it there is no highest good, no absolute
good, but always a merely temporary good. If, however, we wish to give an
honorary position, as it were emeritus, to an old expression, which from
custom we do not like to discard altogether, we may, metaphorically and
figuratively, call the complete self-effacement and denial of the will,
the true absence of will, which alone for ever stills and silences its
struggle, alone gives that contentment which can never again be disturbed,
alone redeems the world, and which we shall now soon consider at the close
of our whole investigation—the absolute good, the _summum bonum_—and
regard it as the only radical cure of the disease of which all other means
are only palliations or anodynes. In this sense the Greek τελος and also
_finis bonorum_ correspond to the thing still better. So much for the
words _good_ and _bad_; now for the thing itself.
If a man is always disposed to do _wrong_ whenever the opportunity
presents itself, and there is no external power to restrain him, we call
him _bad_. According to our doctrine of wrong, this means that such a man
does not merely assert the will to live as it appears in his own body, but
in this assertion goes so far that he denies the will which appears in
other individuals. This is shown by the fact that he desires their powers
for the service of his own will, and seeks to destroy their existence when
they stand in the way of its efforts. The ultimate source of this is a
high degree of egoism, the nature of which has been already explained. Two
things are here apparent. In the first place, that in such a man an
excessively vehement will to live expresses itself, extending far beyond
the assertion of his own body; and, in the second place, that his
knowledge, entirely given up to the principle of sufficient reason and
involved in the _principium individuationis_, cannot get beyond the
difference which this latter principle establishes between his own person
and every one else. Therefore he seeks his own well-being alone,
completely indifferent to that of all others, whose existence is to him
altogether foreign and divided from his own by a wide gulf, and who are
indeed regarded by him as mere masks with no reality behind them. And
these two qualities are the constituent elements of the bad character.
This great intensity of will is in itself and directly a constant source
of suffering. In the first place, because all volition as such arises from
want; that is, suffering. (Therefore, as will be remembered, from the
Third Book, the momentary cessation of all volition, which takes place
whenever we give ourselves up to æsthetic contemplation, as pure will-less
subject of knowledge, the correlative of the Idea, is one of the principal
elements in our pleasure in the beautiful.) Secondly, because, through the
causal connection of things, most of our desires must remain unfulfilled,
and the will is oftener crossed than satisfied, and therefore much intense
volition carries with it much intense suffering. For all suffering is
simply unfulfilled and crossed volition; and even the pain of the body
when it is injured or destroyed is as such only possible through the fact
that the body is nothing but the will itself become object. Now on this
account, because much intense suffering is inseparable from much intense
volition, very bad men bear the stamp of inward suffering in the very
expression of the countenance; even when they have attained every external
happiness, they always look unhappy so long as they are not transported by
some momentary ecstasy and are not dissembling. From this inward torment,
which is absolutely and directly essential to them, there finally proceeds
that delight in the suffering of others which does not spring from mere
egoism, but is disinterested, and which constitutes _wickedness_ proper,
rising to the pitch of _cruelty_. For this the suffering of others is not
a means for the attainment of the ends of its own will, but an end in
itself. The more definite explanation of this phenomenon is as
follows:—Since man is a manifestation of will illuminated by the clearest
knowledge, he is always contrasting the actual and felt satisfaction of
his will with the merely possible satisfaction of it which knowledge
presents to him. Hence arises envy: every privation is infinitely
increased by the enjoyment of others, and relieved by the knowledge that
others also suffer the same privation. Those ills which are common to all
and inseparable from human life trouble us little, just as those which
belong to the climate, to the whole country. The recollection of greater
sufferings than our own stills our pain; the sight of the sufferings of
others soothes our own. If, now, a man is filled with an exceptionally
intense pressure of will,—if with burning eagerness he seeks to accumulate
everything to slake the thirst of his egoism, and thus experiences, as he
inevitably must, that all satisfaction is merely apparent, that the
attained end never fulfils the promise of the desired object, the final
appeasing of the fierce pressure of will, but that when fulfilled the wish
only changes its form, and now torments him in a new one; and indeed that
if at last all wishes are exhausted, the pressure of will itself remains
without any conscious motive, and makes itself known to him with fearful
pain as a feeling of terrible desolation and emptiness; if from all this,
which in the case of the ordinary degrees of volition is only felt in a
small measure, and only produces the ordinary degree of melancholy, in the
case of him who is a manifestation of will reaching the point of
extraordinary wickedness, there necessarily springs an excessive inward
misery, an eternal unrest, an incurable pain; he seeks indirectly the
alleviation which directly is denied him,—seeks to mitigate his own
suffering by the sight of the suffering of others, which at the same time
he recognises as an expression of his power. The suffering of others now
becomes for him an end in itself, and is a spectacle in which he delights;
and thus arises the phenomenon of pure cruelty, blood-thirstiness, which
history exhibits so often in the Neros and Domitians, in the African Deis,
in Robespierre, and the like.