common kind, though its occurrence has perhaps not yet been fully
established. It is starvation, voluntarily chosen on the ground of extreme
asceticism. All instances of it, however, have been accompanied and
obscured by much religious fanaticism, and even superstition. Yet it seems
that the absolute denial of will may reach the point at which the will
shall be wanting to take the necessary nourishment for the support of the
natural life. This kind of suicide is so far from being the result of the
will to live, that such a completely resigned ascetic only ceases to live
because he has already altogether ceased to will. No other death than that
by starvation is in this case conceivable (unless it were the result of
some special superstition); for the intention to cut short the torment
would itself be a stage in the assertion of will. The dogmas which satisfy
the reason of such a penitent delude him with the idea that a being of a
higher nature has inculcated the fasting to which his own inner tendency
drives him. Old examples of this may be found in the “Breslauer Sammlung
von Natur- und Medicin-Geschichten,” September 1799, p. 363; in Bayle’s
“Nouvelles de la République des Lettres,” February 1685, p. 189; in
Zimmermann, “Ueber die Einsamkeit,” vol. i. p. 182; in the “Histoire de
l’Académie des Sciences” for 1764, an account by Houttuyn, which is quoted
in the “Sammlung für praktische Aerzte,” vol. i. p. 69. More recent
accounts may be found in Hufeland’s “Journal für praktische Heilkunde,”
vol. x. p. 181, and vol. xlviii. p. 95; also in Nasse’s “Zeitschrift für
psychische Aerzte,” 1819, part iii. p. 460; and in the “Edinburgh Medical
and Surgical Journal,” 1809, vol. v. p. 319. In the year 1833 all the
papers announced that the English historian, Dr. Lingard, had died in
January at Dover of voluntary starvation; according to later accounts, it
was not he himself, but a relation of his who died. Still in these
accounts the persons were generally described as insane, and it is no
longer possible to find out how far this was the case. But I will give
here a more recent case of this kind, if it were only to ensure the
preservation of one of the rare instances of this striking and
extraordinary phenomenon of human nature, which, to all appearance at any
rate, belongs to the category to which I wish to assign it and could
hardly be explained in any other way. This case is reported in the
“Nürnberger Correspondenten” of the 29th July 1813, in these words:—“We
hear from Bern that in a thick wood near Thurnen a hut has been discovered
in which was lying the body of a man who had been dead about a month. His
clothes gave little or no clue to his social position. Two very fine
shirts lay beside him. The most important article, however, was a Bible
interleaved with white paper, part of which had been written upon by the
deceased. In this writing he gives the date of his departure from home
(but does not mention where his home was). He then says that he was driven
by the Spirit of God into the wilderness to pray and fast. During his
journey he had fasted seven days and then he had again taken food. After
this he had begun again to fast, and continued to do so for the same
number of days as before. From this point we find each day marked with a
stroke, and of these there are five, at the expiration of which the
pilgrim presumably died. There was further found a letter to a clergyman
about a sermon which the deceased heard him preach, but the letter was not
addressed.” Between this voluntary death arising from extreme asceticism
and the common suicide resulting from despair there may be various
intermediate species and combinations, though this is hard to find out.
But human nature has depths, obscurities, and perplexities, the analysis
and elucidation of which is a matter of the very greatest difficulty.
§ 70. It might be supposed that the entire exposition (now terminated) of
that which I call the denial of the will is irreconcilable with the
earlier explanation of necessity, which belongs just as much to motivation
as to every other form of the principle of sufficient reason, and
according to which, motives, like all causes, are only occasional causes,
upon which the character unfolds its nature and reveals it with the
necessity of a natural law, on account of which we absolutely denied
freedom as _liberum arbitrium indifferentiæ_. But far from suppressing
this here, I would call it to mind. In truth, real freedom, _i.e._,
independence of the principle of sufficient reason, belongs to the will
only as a thing-in-itself, not to its manifestation, whose essential form
is everywhere the principle of sufficient reason, the element or sphere of
necessity. But the one case in which that freedom can become directly
visible in the manifestation is that in which it makes an end of what
manifests itself, and because the mere manifestation, as a link in the
chain of causes, the living body in time, which contains only phenomena,
still continues to exist, the will which manifests itself through this
phenomenon then stands in contradiction to it, for it denies what the
phenomenon expresses. In such a case the organs of generation, for
example, as the visible form of the sexual impulse, are there and in
health; but yet, in the inmost consciousness, no sensual gratification is
desired; and although the whole body is only the visible expression of the
will to live, yet the motives which correspond to this will no longer act;
indeed, the dissolution of the body, the end of the individual, and in
this way the greatest check to the natural will, is welcome and desired.
Now, the contradiction between our assertions of the necessity of the
determination of the will by motives, in accordance with the character, on
the one hand, and of the possibility of the entire suppression of the will
whereby the motives become powerless, on the other hand, is only the
repetition in the reflection of philosophy of this _real_ contradiction
which arises from the direct encroachment of the freedom of the
will-in-itself, which knows no necessity, into the sphere of the necessity
of its manifestation. But the key to the solution of these contradictions
lies in the fact that the state in which the character is withdrawn from
the power of motives does not proceed directly from the will, but from a
changed form of knowledge. So long as the knowledge is merely that which
is involved in the _principium individuationis_ and exclusively follows
the principle of sufficient reason, the strength of the motives is
irresistible. But when the _principium individuationis_ is seen through,
when the Ideas, and indeed the inner nature of the thing-in-itself, as the
same will in all, are directly recognised, and from this knowledge an
universal quieter of volition arises, then the particular motives become
ineffective, because the kind of knowledge which corresponds to them is
obscured and thrown into the background by quite another kind. Therefore
the character can never partially change, but must, with the consistency
of a law of Nature, carry out in the particular the will which it
manifests as a whole. But this whole, the character itself, may be
completely suppressed or abolished through the change of knowledge
referred to above. It is this suppression or abolition which Asmus, as
quoted above, marvels at and denotes the “catholic, transcendental
change;” and in the Christian Church it has very aptly been called the
_new birth_, and the knowledge from which it springs, the _work of grace_.
Therefore it is not a question of a change, but of an entire suppression
of the character; and hence it arises that, however different the
characters which experience the suppression may have been before it, after
it they show a great similarity in their conduct, though every one still
speaks very differently according to his conceptions and dogmas.
In this sense, then, the old philosophical doctrine of the freedom of the
will, which has constantly been contested and constantly maintained, is
not without ground, and the dogma of the Church of the work of grace and
the new birth is not without meaning and significance. But we now
unexpectedly see both united in one, and we can also now understand in
what sense the excellent Malebranche could say, “_La liberté est un
mystère_,” and was right. For precisely what the Christian mystics call
_the work of grace_ and _the new birth_, is for us the single direct
expression of _the freedom of the will_. It only appears if the will,
having attained to a knowledge of its own real nature, receives from this
a _quieter_, by means of which the motives are deprived of their effect,
which belongs to the province of another kind of knowledge, the objects of
which are merely phenomena. The possibility of the freedom which thus
expresses itself is the greatest prerogative of man, which is for ever
wanting to the brute, because the condition of it is the deliberation of
reason, which enables him to survey the whole of life independent of the
impression of the present. The brute is entirely without the possibility
of freedom, as, indeed, it is without the possibility of a proper or
deliberate choice following upon a completed conflict of motives, which
for this purpose would have to be abstract ideas. Therefore with the same
necessity with which the stone falls to the earth, the hungry wolf buries
its fangs in the flesh of its prey, without the possibility of the
knowledge that it is itself the destroyed as well as the destroyer.
_Necessity is the kingdom of nature; freedom is the kingdom of grace._
Now because, as we have seen, that _self-suppression of the will_ proceeds
from knowledge, and all knowledge is involuntary, that denial of will
also, that entrance into freedom, cannot be forcibly attained to by
intention or design, but proceeds from the inmost relation of knowing and
volition in the man, and therefore comes suddenly, as if spontaneously
from without. This is why the Church has called it _the work of grace_;
and that it still regards it as independent of the acceptance of grace
corresponds to the fact that the effect of the quieter is finally a free
act of will. And because, in consequence of such a work of grace, the
whole nature of man is changed and reversed from its foundation, so that
he no longer wills anything of all that he previously willed so intensely,
so that it is as if a new man actually took the place of the old, the
Church has called this consequence of the work of grace the _new birth_.
For what it calls the _natural man_, to which it denies all capacity for
good, is just the will to live, which must be denied if deliverance from
an existence such as ours is to be attained. Behind our existence lies
something else, which is only accessible to us if we have shaken off this
world.
Having regard, not to the individuals according to the principle of
sufficient reason, but to the Idea of man in its unity, Christian theology
symbolises _nature_, the _assertion of the will to live_ in Adam, whose
sin, inherited by us, _i.e._, our unity with him in the Idea, which is
represented in time by the bond of procreation, makes us all partakers of
suffering and eternal death. On the other hand, it symbolises _grace_, the
_denial of the will_, _salvation_, in the incarnate God, who, as free from
all sin, that is, from all willing of life, cannot, like us, have
proceeded from the most pronounced assertion of the will, nor can he, like
us, have a body which is through and through simply concrete will,
manifestation of the will; but born of a pure virgin, he has only a
phantom body. This last is the doctrine of the Docetæ, _i.e._, certain
Church Fathers, who in this respect are very consistent. It is especially
taught by Apelles, against whom and his followers Tertullian wrote. But
even Augustine comments thus on the passage, Rom. viii. 3, “God sent his
Son in the likeness of sinful flesh:” “_Non enim caro peccati erat, quæ
non de carnali delectatione nata erat: sed tamen inerat ei similitudo
carnis peccati, quia mortalis caro erat_” (Liber 83, _quæst. qu._ 66). He
also teaches in his work entitled “_Opus Imperfectum_,” i. 47, that
inherited sin is both sin and punishment at once. It is already present in
new-born children, but only shows itself if they grow up. Yet the origin
of this sin is to be referred to the will of the sinner. This sinner was
Adam, but we all existed in him; Adam became miserable, and in him we have
all become miserable. Certainly the doctrine of original sin (assertion of
the will) and of salvation (denial of the will) is the great truth which
constitutes the essence of Christianity, while most of what remains is
only the clothing of it, the husk or accessories. Therefore Jesus Christ
ought always to be conceived in the universal, as the symbol or
personification of the denial of the will to live, but never as an
individual, whether according to his mythical history given in the
Gospels, or according to the probably true history which lies at the
foundation of this. For neither the one nor the other will easily satisfy
us entirely. It is merely the vehicle of that conception for the people,
who always demand something actual. That in recent times Christianity has
forgotten its true significance, and degenerated into dull optimism, does
not concern us here.
It is further an original and evangelical doctrine of Christianity—which
Augustine, with the consent of the leaders of the Church, defended against
the platitudes of the Pelagians, and which it was the principal aim of
Luther’s endeavour to purify from error and re-establish, as he expressly
declares in his book, “_De Servo Arbitrio_,”—the doctrine that _the will
is not free_, but originally subject to the inclination to evil. Therefore
according to this doctrine the deeds of the will are always sinful and
imperfect, and can never fully satisfy justice; and, finally, these works
can never save us, but faith alone, a faith which itself does not spring
from resolution and free will, but from the work of grace, without our
co-operation, comes to us as from without.
Not only the dogmas referred to before, but also this last genuine
evangelical dogma belongs to those which at the present day an ignorant
and dull opinion rejects as absurd or hides. For, in spite of Augustine
and Luther, it adheres to the vulgar Pelagianism, which the rationalism of
the day really is, and treats as antiquated those deeply significant
dogmas which are peculiar and essential to Christianity in the strictest
sense; while, on the other hand, it holds fast and regards as the
principal matter only the dogma that originates in Judaism, and has been
retained from it, and is merely historically connected with
Christianity.(91) We, however, recognise in the doctrine referred to above
the truth completely agreeing with the result of our own investigations.
We see that true virtue and holiness of disposition have their origin not
in deliberate choice (works), but in knowledge (faith); just as we have in
like manner developed it from our leading thought. If it were works, which
spring from motives and deliberate intention, that led to salvation, then,
however one may turn it, virtue would always be a prudent, methodical,
far-seeing egoism. But the faith to which the Christian Church promises
salvation is this: that as through the fall of the first man we are all
partakers of sin and subject to death and perdition, through the divine
substitute, through grace and the taking upon himself of our fearful
guilt, we are all saved, without any merit of our own (of the person);
since that which can proceed from the intentional (determined by motives)
action of the person, works, can never justify us, from its very nature,
just because it is _intentional_, action induced by motives, _opus
operatum_. Thus in this faith there is implied, first of all, that our
condition is originally and essentially an incurable one, from which we
need _salvation_; then, that we ourselves essentially belong to evil, and
are so firmly bound to it that our works according to law and precept,
_i.e._, according to motives, can never satisfy justice nor save us; but
salvation is only obtained through faith, _i.e._, through a changed mode
of knowing, and this faith can only come through grace, thus as from
without. This means that the salvation is one which is quite foreign to
our person, and points to a denial and surrender of this person necessary
to salvation. Works, the result of the law as such, can never justify,
because they are always action following upon motives. Luther demands (in
his book “_De Libertate Christiana_”) that after the entrance of faith the
good works shall proceed from it entirely of themselves, as symptoms, as
fruits of it; yet by no means as constituting in themselves a claim to
merit, justification, or reward, but taking place quite voluntarily and
gratuitously. So we also hold that from the ever-clearer penetration of
the _principium individuationis_ proceeds, first, merely free justice,
then love, extending to the complete abolition of egoism, and finally
resignation or denial of the will.
I have here introduced these dogmas of Christian theology, which in
themselves are foreign to philosophy, merely for the purpose of showing
that the ethical doctrine which proceeds from our whole investigation, and
is in complete agreement and connection with all its parts, although new
and unprecedented in its expression, is by no means so in its real nature,
but fully agrees with the Christian dogmas properly so called, and indeed,
as regards its essence, was contained and present in them. It also agrees
quite as accurately with the doctrines and ethical teachings of the sacred
books of India, which in their turn are presented in quite different
forms. At the same time the calling to mind of the dogmas of the Christian
Church serves to explain and illustrate the apparent contradiction between
the necessity of all expressions of character when motives are presented
(the kingdom of Nature) on the one hand, and the freedom of the will in
itself, to deny itself, and abolish the character with all the necessity
of the motives based upon it (the kingdom of grace) on the other hand.
§ 71. I now end the general account of ethics, and with it the whole
development of that one thought which it has been my object to impart; and
I by no means desire to conceal here an objection which concerns this last
part of my exposition, but rather to point out that it lies in the nature
of the question, and that it is quite impossible to remove it. It is this,
that after our investigation has brought us to the point at which we have
before our eyes perfect holiness, the denial and surrender of all
volition, and thus the deliverance from a world whose whole existence we
have found to be suffering, this appears to us as a passing away into
empty nothingness.
On this I must first remark, that the conception of nothing is essentially
relative, and always refers to a definite something which it negatives.
This quality has been attributed (by Kant) merely to the _nihil
privativum_, which is indicated by - as opposed to +, which -, from an
opposite point of view, might become +, and in opposition to this _nihil
privativum_ the _nihil negativum_ has been set up, which would in every
reference be nothing, and as an example of this the logical contradiction
which does away with itself has been given. But more closely considered,
no absolute nothing, no proper _nihil negativum_ is even thinkable; but
everything of this kind, when considered from a higher standpoint or
subsumed under a wider concept, is always merely a _nihil privativum_.
Every nothing is thought as such only in relation to something, and
presupposes this relation, and thus also this something. Even a logical
contradiction is only a relative nothing. It is no thought of the reason,
but it is not on that account an absolute nothing; for it is a combination
of words; it is an example of the unthinkable, which is necessary in logic
in order to prove the laws of thought. Therefore if for this end such an
example is sought, we will stick to the nonsense as the positive which we
are in search of, and pass over the sense as the negative. Thus every
_nihil negativum_, if subordinated to a higher concept, will appear as a
mere _nihil privativum_ or relative nothing, which can, moreover, always
exchange signs with what it negatives, so that that would then be thought
as negation, and it itself as assertion. This also agrees with the result
of the difficult dialectical investigation of the meaning of nothing which
Plato gives in the “Sophist” (pp. 277-287): Την του ἑτερου φυσιν
αποδειξαντες ουσαν τε, και κατακεκερματισμενην επι παντα τα οντα προς
αλληλα, το προς το ον ἑκαστου μοριου αυτης αντιτιθεμενον, ετολμησαμεν
ειπειν, ὡς αυτο τουτο εστιν οντως το μη ον (_Cum enim ostenderemus,
alterius ipsius naturam esse perque omnia entia divisam atque dispersam in
vicem; tunc partem ejus oppositam ei, quod cujusque ens est, esse ipsum
revera non ens asseruimus_).
That which is generally received as positive, which we call the real, and
the negation of which the concept nothing in its most general significance
expresses, is just the world as idea, which I have shown to be the
objectivity and mirror of the will. Moreover, we ourselves are just this
will and this world, and to them belongs the idea in general, as one
aspect of them. The form of the idea is space and time, therefore for this
point of view all that is real must be in some place and at some time.
Denial, abolition, conversion of the will, is also the abolition and the
vanishing of the world, its mirror. If we no longer perceive it in this
mirror, we ask in vain where it has gone, and then, because it has no
longer any where and when, complain that it has vanished into nothing.
A reversed point of view, if it were possible for us, would reverse the
signs and show the real for us as nothing, and that nothing as the real.
But as long as we ourselves are the will to live, this last—nothing as the
real—can only be known and signified by us negatively, because the old
saying of Empedocles, that like can only be known by like, deprives us
here of all knowledge, as, conversely, upon it finally rests the
possibility of all our actual knowledge, _i.e._, the world as idea; for
the world is the self-knowledge of the will.
If, however, it should be absolutely insisted upon that in some way or
other a positive knowledge should be attained of that which philosophy can
only express negatively as the denial of the will, there would be nothing
for it but to refer to that state which all those who have attained to
complete denial of the will have experienced, and which has been variously
denoted by the names ecstasy, rapture, illumination, union with God, and
so forth; a state, however, which cannot properly be called knowledge,
because it has not the form of subject and object, and is, moreover, only
attainable in one’s own experience and cannot be further communicated.
We, however, who consistently occupy the standpoint of philosophy, must be
satisfied here with negative knowledge, content to have reached the utmost
limit of the positive. We have recognised the inmost nature of the world
as will, and all its phenomena as only the objectivity of will; and we
have followed this objectivity from the unconscious working of obscure
forces of Nature up to the completely conscious action of man. Therefore
we shall by no means evade the consequence, that with the free denial, the
surrender of the will, all those phenomena are also abolished; that
constant strain and effort without end and without rest at all the grades
of objectivity, in which and through which the world consists; the
multifarious forms succeeding each other in gradation; the whole
manifestation of the will; and, finally, also the universal forms of this
manifestation, time and space, and also its last fundamental form, subject
and object; all are abolished. No will: no idea, no world.
Before us there is certainly only nothingness. But that which resists this
passing into nothing, our nature, is indeed just the will to live, which
we ourselves are as it is our world. That we abhor annihilation so
greatly, is simply another expression of the fact that we so strenuously
will life, and are nothing but this will, and know nothing besides it. But
if we turn our glance from our own needy and embarrassed condition to
those who have overcome the world, in whom the will, having attained to
perfect self-knowledge, found itself again in all, and then freely denied
itself, and who then merely wait to see the last trace of it vanish with
the body which it animates; then, instead of the restless striving and
effort, instead of the constant transition from wish to fruition, and from
joy to sorrow, instead of the never-satisfied and never-dying hope which
constitutes the life of the man who wills, we shall see that peace which
is above all reason, that perfect calm of the spirit, that deep rest, that
inviolable confidence and serenity, the mere reflection of which in the
countenance, as Raphael and Correggio have represented it, is an entire
and certain gospel; only knowledge remains, the will has vanished. We look
with deep and painful longing upon this state, beside which the misery and
wretchedness of our own is brought out clearly by the contrast. Yet this
is the only consideration which can afford us lasting consolation, when,
on the one hand, we have recognised incurable suffering and endless misery
as essential to the manifestation of will, the world; and, on the other
hand, see the world pass away with the abolition of will, and retain
before us only empty nothingness. Thus, in this way, by contemplation of
the life and conduct of saints, whom it is certainly rarely granted us to
meet with in our own experience, but who are brought before our eyes by
their written history, and, with the stamp of inner truth, by art, we must
banish the dark impression of that nothingness which we discern behind all
virtue and holiness as their final goal, and which we fear as children
fear the dark; we must not even evade it like the Indians, through myths
and meaningless words, such as reabsorption in Brahma or the Nirvana of
the Buddhists. Rather do we freely acknowledge that what remains after the
entire abolition of will is for all those who are still full of will
certainly nothing; but, conversely, to those in whom the will has turned
and has denied itself, this our world, which is so real, with all its suns
and milky-ways—is nothing.(92)
FOOTNOTES
1 F. H. Jacobi.