3 Fichte and Schelling.
4 Hegel.
5 Kant is the only writer who has confused this idea of reason, and in
this connection I refer the reader to the Appendix, and also to my
“Grundprobleme der Ethik”: Grundl. dd. Moral. § 6, pp. 148-154,
first and second editions.
6 Mira in quibusdam rebus verborum proprietas est, et consuetudo
sermonis antiqui quædam efficacissimis notis signat. _Seneca_,
epist. 81.
7 It is shown in the Appendix that matter and substance are one.
8 This shows the ground of the Kantian explanation of matter, that it
is “that which is movable in space,” for motion consists simply in
the union of space and time.
9 Not, as Kant holds, from the knowledge of time, as will be explained
in the Appendix.
10 On this see “The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient
Reason,” § 49.
11 The first four chapters of the first of the supplementary books
belong to these seven paragraphs.
12 Compare with this paragraph §§ 26 and 27 of the third edition of the
essay on the principle of sufficient reason.
13 Cf. Ch. 5 and 6 of the Supplement.
14 Cf. Ch. 9 and 10 of the Supplement.
15 Cf. Ch. 11 of Supplement.
16 I am therefore of opinion that a science of physiognomy cannot, with
certainty, go further than to lay down a few quite general rules.
For example, the intellectual qualities are to be read in the
forehead and the eyes; the moral qualities, the expression of will,
in the mouth and lower part of the face. The forehead and the eyes
interpret each other; either of them seen alone can only be half
understood. Genius is never without a high, broad, finely-arched
brow; but such a brow often occurs where there is no genius. A
clever-looking person may the more certainly be judged to be so the
uglier the face is; and a stupid-looking person may the more
certainly be judged to be stupid the more beautiful the face is; for
beauty, as the approximation to the type of humanity, carries in and
for itself the expression of mental clearness; the opposite is the
case with ugliness, and so forth.
17 Cf. Ch. 7 of the Supplement.
18 Cf. Ch. 8 of Supplement.
19 Suarez, Disput. Metaphysicæ, disp. iii. sect. 3, tit. 3.
20 Cf. Ch. 12 of Supplement.
21 The reader must not think here of Kant’s misuse of these Greek
terms, which is condemned in the Appendix.
22 Spinoza, who always boasts that he proceeds _more geometrico_, has
actually done so more than he himself was aware. For what he knew
with certainty and decision from the immediate, perceptive
apprehension of the nature of the world, he seeks to demonstrate
logically without reference to this knowledge. He only arrives at
the intended and predetermined result by starting from arbitrary
concepts framed by himself (_substantia causa sui_, &c.), and in the
demonstrations he allows himself all the freedom of choice for which
the nature of the wide concept-spheres afford such convenient
opportunity. That his doctrine is true and excellent is therefore in
his case, as in that of geometry, quite independent of the
demonstrations of it. Cf. ch. 13 of supplementary volume.
23 Cf. Ch. 17 of Supplement.
24 Omnes perturbationes judicio censent fieri et opinione. Cic. Tusc.,
4, 6. Ταρασσει τους ανθρωπους ου τα πραγματα, αλλα τα περι των
πραγματων δογματα (Perturbant homines non res ipsæ, sed de rebus
opiniones). Epictet., c. v.
25 Τουτο γαρ εστι το αιτιον τοις ανθρωποις παντων των κακων, το τας
προληψεις τας κοινας μη δυνασθαι εφαρμοξειν ταις επι μερους (Hæc est
causa mortalibus omnium malorum, non posse communes notiones aptare
singularibus). Epict. dissert., ii., 26.
26 Cf. Ch. 16 of Supplement.
27 Cf. Ch. xviii. of the Supplement.
28 We can thus by no means agree with Bacon if he (De Augm. Scient., L.
iv. in fine.) thinks that all mechanical and physical movement of
bodies has always been preceded by perception in these bodies;
though a glimmering of truth lies at the bottom of this false
proposition. This is also the case with Kepler’s opinion, expressed
in his essay _De Planeta Martis_, that the planets must have
knowledge in order to keep their elliptical courses so correctly,
and to regulate the velocity of their motion so that the triangle of
the plane of their course always remains proportional to the time in
which they pass through its base.
29 Cf. Ch. xix. of the Supplement.
30 Cf. Ch. xx. of the Supplement, and also in my work, “_Ueber den
Willen in der Natur_,” the chapters on Physiology and Comparative
Anatomy, where the subject I have only touched upon here is fully
discussed.
31 This is specially treated in the 27th Ch. of the Supplement.
32 This subject is fully worked out in my prize essay on the freedom of
the will, in which therefore (pp. 29-44 of the “Grundprobleme der
Ethik”) the relation of _cause_, _stimulus_, and _motive_ has also
been fully explained.
33 Cf. Ch. xxiii. of the Supplement, and also the Ch. on the physiology
of plants in my work “Ueber den Willen in der Natur,” and the Ch. on
physical astronomy, which is of great importance with regard to the
kernel of my metaphysic.
34 Wenzel, De Structura Cerebri Hominis et Brutorum, 1812, ch. iii.;
Cuvier, Leçons d’Anat., comp. leçon 9, arts. 4 and 5; Vic. d’Azyr,
Hist. de l’Acad. de Sc. de Paris, 1783, pp. 470 and 483.
35 On the 16th of September 1840, at a lecture upon Egyptian Archæology
delivered by Mr. Pettigrew at the Literary and Scientific Institute
of London, he showed some corns of wheat which Sir G. Wilkinson had
found in a grave at Thebes, in which they must have lain for three
thousand years. They were found in an hermetically sealed vase. Mr.
Pettigrew had sowed twelve grains, and obtained a plant which grew
five feet high, and the seeds of which were now quite ripe.—_Times_,
21st September 1840. In the same way in 1830 Mr. Haulton produced in
the Medical Botanical Society of London a bulbous root which was
found in the hand of an Egyptian mummy, in which it was probably put
in observance of some religious rite, and which must have been at
least two thousand years old. He had planted it in a flower-pot, in
which it grew up and flourished. This is quoted from the Medical
Journal of 1830 in the Journal of the Royal Institute of Great
Britain, October 1830, p. 196.—“In the garden of Mr. Grimstone of
the Herbarium, Highgate, London, is a pea in full fruit, which has
sprung from a pea that Mr. Pettigrew and the officials of the
British Museum took out of a vase which had been found in an
Egyptian sarcophagus, where it must have lain 2844 years.”—_Times_,
16th August 1844. Indeed, the living toads found in limestone lead
to the conclusion that even animal life is capable of such a
suspension for thousands of years, if this is begun in the dormant
period and maintained by special circumstances.
36 Cf. Chap. xxii. of the Supplement, and also my work “Ueber den
Willen in der Natur,” p. 54 _et seq._, and pp. 70-79 of the first
edition, or p. 46 _et seq._, and pp. 63-72 of the second, or p. 48
_et seq._, and pp. 69-77 of the third edition.
37 The Scholastics therefore said very truly: _Causa finalis movet non
secundum suum esse reale, sed secundum esse cognitum._ Cf. Suarez,
Disp. Metaph. disp. xxiii., sec. 7 and 8.
38 Cf. “Critique of Pure Reason. Solution of the Cosmological Ideas of
the Totality of the Deduction of the Events in the Universe,” pp.
560-586 of the fifth, and p. 532 and following of first edition; and
“Critique of Practical Reason,” fourth edition, pp. 169-179;
Rosenkranz’ edition, p. 224 and following. Cf. my Essay on the
Principle of Sufficient Reason, § 43.
39 Cf. “Ueber den Willen in der Natur,” at the end of the section on
Comparative Anatomy.
40 Cf. “Ueber den Willen in der Natur,” the section on Comparative
Anatomy.
41 Chatin, Sur la Valisneria Spiralis, in the Comptes Rendus de l’Acad.
de Sc., No. 13, 1855.
42 Cf. Chaps. xxvi. and xxvii. of the Supplement.
43 Cf. Chap. xxviii. of the Supplement.
44 F. H. Jacobi.
45 See for example, “Immanuel Kant, a Reminiscence, by Fr. Bouterweck,”
pg. 49, and Buhle’s “History of Philosophy,” vol. vi. pp. 802-815
and 823.
46 Cf. Chap. xxix. of Supplement.
47 I also recommend the perusal of what Spinoza says in his Ethics
(Book II., Prop. 40, Schol. 2, and Book V., Props. 25-38),
concerning the _cognitio tertii generis, sive intuitiva_, in
illustration of the kind of knowledge we are considering, and very
specially Prop. 29, Schol.; prop. 36, Schol., and Prop. 38, Demonst.
et Schol.
48 Cf. Chap. xxx. of the Supplement.
49 This last sentence cannot be understood without some acquaintance
with the next book.
50 Cf. Chap. xxxi. of the Supplement.
51 I am all the more delighted and astonished, forty years after I so
timidly and hesitatingly advanced this thought, to discover that it
has already been expressed by St. Augustine: _Arbusta formas suas
varias, quibus mundi hujus visibilis structura formosa est,
sentiendas sensibus praebent; ut, pro eo quod_ NOSSE _non possunt,
quasi_ INNOTESCERE _velle videantur_.—_De civ. Dei, xi._ 27.
52 Cf. Chap. 35 of Supplement.
53 Jakob Böhm in his book, “de Signatura Rerum,” ch. i., § 13-15, says,
“There is nothing in nature that does not manifest its internal form
externally; for the internal continually labours to manifest
itself.... Everything has its language by which to reveal itself....
And this is the language of nature when everything speaks out of its
own property, and continually manifests and declares itself, ... for
each thing reveals its mother, which thus gives _the essence and the
will_ to the form.”
54 The last sentence is the German of the _il n’y a que l’esprit qui
sente l’esprit_, of Helvetius. In the first edition there was no
occasion to point this out, but since then the age has become so
degraded and ignorant through the stupefying influence of the
Hegelian sophistry, that some might quite likely say that an
antithesis was intended here between “spirit and nature.” I am
therefore obliged to guard myself in express terms against the
suspicion of such vulgar sophisms.
55 This digression is worked out more fully in the 36th Chapter of the
Supplement.
56 In order to understand this passage it is necessary to have read the
whole of the next book.
_ 57 Apparent rari, nantes in gurgite vasto._
58 Cf. Ch. xxxiv. of Supplement.
59 It is scarcely necessary to say that wherever I speak of poets I
refer exclusively to that rare phenomenon the great true poet. I
mean no one else; least of all that dull insipid tribe, the mediocre
poets, rhymsters, and inventors of fables, that flourishes so
luxuriantly at the present day in Germany. They ought rather to have
the words shouted in their ears unceasingly from all sides—
_Mediocribus esse poëtis_
_ Non homines, non Dî, non concessere columnæ._
It is worthy of serious consideration what an amount of time—both
their own and other people’s—and paper is lost by this swarm of
mediocre poets, and how injurious is their influence. For the public
always seizes on what is new, and has naturally a greater proneness
to what is perverse and dull as akin to itself. Therefore these
works of the mediocre poets draw it away and hold it back from the
true masterpieces and the education they afford, and thus working in
direct antagonism to the benign influence of genius, they ruin taste
more and more, and retard the progress of the age. Such poets should
therefore be scourged with criticism and satire without indulgence
or sympathy till they are induced, for their own good, to apply
their muse rather to reading what is good than to writing what is
bad. For if the bungling of the incompetent so raised the wrath of
the gentle Apollo that he could flay Marsyas, I do not see on what
the mediocre poets will base their claim to tolerance.
60 Cf. Ch. xxxviii. of Supplement.
61 Cf. Ch. xxxvii. of the Supplement.
62 Leibnitii epistolæ, collectio Kortholti, ep. 154.
63 Cf. Ch. xxxix. of Supplement.
64 The following remark may assist those for whom it is not too subtle
to understand clearly that the individual is only the phenomenon,
not the thing in itself. Every individual is, on the one hand, the
subject of knowing, _i.e._, the complemental condition of the
possibility of the whole objective world, and, on the other hand, a
particular phenomenon of will, the same will which objectifies
itself in everything. But this double nature of our being does not
rest upon a self-existing unity, otherwise it would be possible for
us to be conscious of ourselves _in ourselves, and independent of
the objects of knowledge and will_. Now this is by no means
possible, for as soon as we turn into ourselves to make the attempt,
and seek for once to know ourselves fully by means of introspective
reflection, we are lost in a bottomless void; we find ourselves like
the hollow glass globe, from out of which a voice speaks whose cause
is not to be found in it, and whereas we desired to comprehend
ourselves, we find, with a shudder, nothing but a vanishing spectre.
65 “Scholastici docuerunt, quod æternitas non sit temporis sine fine
aut principio successio; sed _Nunc stans_, _i.e._, idem nobis _Nunc
esse_, quod erat _Nunc Adamo_, _i.e._, inter _nunc_ et _tunc_ nullam
esse differentiam.”—Hobbes, Leviathan, c. 46.
66 In Eckermann’s “Conversations of Goethe” (vol. i. p. 161), Goethe
says: “Our spirit is a being of a nature quite indestructible, and
its activity continues from eternity to eternity. It is like the
sun, which seems to set only to our earthly eyes, but which, in
reality, never sets, but shines on unceasingly.” Goethe has taken
the simile from me; not I from him. Without doubt he used it in this
conversation, which was held in 1824, in consequence of a (possibly
unconscious) reminiscence of the above passage, for it occurs in the
first edition, p. 401, in exactly the same words, and it is also
repeated at p. 528 of that edition, as at the close of § 65 of the
present work. The first edition was sent to him in December 1818,
and in March 1819, when I was at Naples, he sent me his
congratulations by letter, through my sister, and enclosed a piece
of paper upon which he had noted the places of certain passages
which had specially pleased him. Thus he had read my book.
67 This is expressed in the Veda by saying, that when a man dies his
sight becomes one with the sun, his smell with the earth, his taste
with water, his hearing with the air, his speech with fire, &c., &c.
(Oupnek’hat, vol. i. p. 249 _et seq._) And also by the fact that, in
a special ceremony, the dying man gives over his senses and all his
faculties singly to his son, in whom they are now supposed to live
on (Oupnek’hat, vol. ii. p. 82 _et seq._)
68 Cf. Chap. xli.-xliv. of Supplement.
69 “Critique of Pure Reason,” first edition, pp. 532-558; fifth
edition, pp. 560-586; and “Critique of Practical Reason,” fourth
edition, pp. 169-179; Rosenkranz’s edition, pp. 224-231.
70 Cart. Medit. 4.—Spin. Eth., pt. ii. prop. 48 et 49, cæt.
71 Herodot. vii. 46.
72 Cf. Ch. xlvi. of Supplement.
73 Cf. Ch. xlv. of the Supplement.
74 Thus the basis of natural right of property does not require the
assumption of two grounds of right beside each other, that based on
_detention_ and that based on _formation_; but the latter is itself
sufficient. Only the name _formation_ is not very suitable, for the
spending of any labour upon a thing does not need to be a forming or
fashioning of it.
75 The further exposition of the philosophy of law here laid down will
be found in my prize-essay, “Ueber das Fundament der Moral,” § 17,
pp. 221-230 of 1st ed., pp. 216-226 of 2d ed.
76 Cf. Ch. xlvii. of Supplement.
77 Oupnek’hat, vol. i. p. 60 et seq.
78 That Spanish bishop who, in the last war, poisoned both himself and
the French generals at his own table, is an instance of this; and
also various incidents in that war. Examples are also to be found in
Montaigne, Bk. ii. ch. 12.
79 Observe, in passing, that what gives every positive system of
religion its great strength, the point of contact through which it
takes possession of the soul, is entirely its ethical side. Not,
however, the ethical side directly as such, but as it appears firmly
united and interwoven with the element of mythical dogma which is
present in every system of religion, and as intelligible only by
means of this. So much is this the case, that although the ethical
significance of action cannot be explained in accordance with the
principle of sufficient reason, yet since every mythus follows this
principle, believers regard the ethical significance of action as
quite inseparable, and indeed as absolutely identical, and regard
every attack upon the mythus as an attack upon right and virtue.
This goes so far that among monotheistic nations atheism or
godlessness has become synonymous with the absence of all morality.
To the priests such confusions of conceptions are welcome, and only
in consequence of them could that horrible monstrosity fanaticism
arise and govern, not merely single individuals who happen to be
specially perverse and bad, but whole nations, and finally embody
itself in the Western world as the Inquisition (to the honour of
mankind be it said that this only happened once in their history),
which, according to the latest and most authentic accounts, in
Madrid alone (in the rest of Spain there were many more such
ecclesiastical dens of murderers) in 300 years put 300,000 human
beings to a painful death at the stake on theological grounds—a fact
of which every zealot ought to be reminded whenever he begins to
make himself heard.
80 The Church would say that these are merely _opera operata_, which do
not avail unless grace gives the faith which leads to the new birth.
But of this farther on.
81 The right of man over the life and powers of the brutes rests on the
fact that, because with the growing clearness of consciousness
suffering increases in like measure; the pain which the brute
suffers through death or work is not so great as man would suffer by
merely denying himself the flesh, or the powers of the brutes.
Therefore man may carry the assertion of his existence to the extent
of denying the existence of the brute, and the will to live as a
whole endures less suffering in this way than if the opposite course
were adopted. This at once determines the extent of the use man may
make of the powers of the brutes without wrong; a limit, however,
which is often transgressed, especially in the case of beasts of
burden and dogs used in the chase; to which the activity of
societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals is principally
devoted. In my opinion, that right does not extend to vivisection,
particularly of the higher animals. On the other hand, the insect
does not suffer so much through its death as a man suffers from its
sting. The Hindus do not understand this.
82 As I wander sunk in thought, so strong a sympathy with myself comes
over me that I must often weep aloud, which otherwise I am not wont
to do.
83 Cf. Ch. xlvii. of Supplement. It is scarcely necessary to remind the
reader that the whole ethical doctrine given in outline in §§ 61-67
has been explained fully and in detail in my prize-essay on the
foundation of morals.
84 This thought is expressed by a beautiful simile in the ancient
philosophical Sanscrit writing, “Sankhya Karica:” “Yet the soul
remains a while invested with body; as the potter’s wheel continues
whirling after the pot has been fashioned, by force of the impulse
previously given to it. When separation of the informed soul from
its corporeal frame at length takes place and nature in respect of
it ceases, then is absolute and final deliverance accomplished.”
Colebrooke, “On the Philosophy of the Hindus: Miscellaneous Essays,”
vol i. p. 271. Also in the “Sankhya Karica by Horace Wilson,” § 67,
p. 184.
85 See, for example, “Oupnek’hat, studio Anquetil du Perron,” vol. ii.,
Nos. 138, 144, 145, 146. “Mythologie des Indous,” par Mad. de
Polier, vol. ii., ch. 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. “Asiatisches Magazin,” by
Klaproth: in the first volume, “Ueber die Fo-Religion,” also
“Baghnat Geeta” or “Gespräche zwischen Krishna und Arjoon;” in the
second volume, “Moha-Mudgava.” Also, “Institutes of Hindu Law, or
the Ordinances of Manu,” from the Sanscrit, by Sir William Jones
(German by Hüttner, 1797), especially the sixth and twelfth
chapters. Finally, many passages in the “Asiatic Researches.” (In
the last forty years Indian literature has grown so much in Europe,
that if I were now to complete this note to the first edition, it
would occupy several pages.)
86 At the procession of Jagganath in June 1840, eleven Hindus threw
themselves under the wheels, and were instantly killed. (Letter of
an East Indian proprietor in the _Times_ of 30th December 1840.)
87 On δευτερος πλους cf. Stob. Floril., vol. ii. p. 374.
88 Bruckeri Hist. Philos., tomi iv. pars. i. p. 10.
89 Henry VI., Part ii. act 3, sc. 3.
90 Cf. Ch. xlviii. of the Supplement.
91 How truly this is the case may be seen from the fact that all the
contradictions and inconceivabilities contained in the Christian
dogmatics, consistently systematised by Augustine, which have led to
the Pelagian insipidity which is opposed to them, vanish as soon as
we abstract from the fundamental Jewish dogma, and recognize that
man is not the work of another, but of his own will. Then all is at
once clear and correct: then there is no need of freedom in the
_operari_, for it lies in the _esse_; and there also lies the sin as
original sin. The work of grace is, however, our own. To the
rationalistic point of view of the day, on the contrary, many
doctrines of the Augustinian dogmatics, founded on the New
Testament, appear quite untenable, and indeed revolting; for
example, predestination. Accordingly Christianity proper is
rejected, and a return is made to crude Judaism. But the
miscalculation or the original weakness of Christian dogmatics
lies—where it is never sought—precisely in that which is withdrawn
from all investigation as established and certain. Take this away
and the whole of dogmatics is rational; for this dogma destroys
theology as it does all other sciences. If any one studies the
Augustinian theology in the books “_De Civitate Dei_” (especially in
the Fourteenth Book), he experiences something analogous to the
feeling of one who tries to make a body stand whose centre of
gravity falls outside it; however he may turn it and place it, it
always tumbles over again. So here, in spite of all the efforts and
sophisms of Augustine, the guilt and misery of the world always
falls back on God, who made everything and everything that is in
everything, and also knew how all things would go. That Augustine
himself was conscious of the difficulty, and puzzled by it, I have
already shown in my prize-essay on the Freedom of the Will (ch. iv.
pp. 66-68 of the first and second editions). In the same way, the
contradiction between the goodness of God and the misery of the
world, and also between the freedom of the will and the
foreknowledge of God, is the inexhaustible theme of a controversy
which lasted nearly a hundred years between the Cartesians,
Malebranche, Leibnitz, Bayle, Clarke, Arnauld, and many others. The
only dogma which was regarded as fixed by all parties was the
existence and attributes of God, and they all unceasingly move in a
circle, because they seek to bring these things into harmony,
_i.e._, to solve a sum that will not come right, but always shows a
remainder at some new place whenever we have concealed it elsewhere.
But it does not occur to any one to seek for the source of the
difficulty in the fundamental assumption, although it palpably
obtrudes itself. Bayle alone shows that he saw this.
92 This is also just the Prajna—Paramita of the Buddhists, the “beyond
all knowledge,” _i.e._, the point at which subject and object are no
more. (Cf. J. J. Schmidt, “Ueber das Mahajana und
Pratschna-Paramita.”)