The World as Will and Idea Volume I Part 16

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 ill.u.s.tration 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. x.x.x. of the Supplement.

49 This last sentence cannot be understood without some acquaintance with the next book.

50 Cf. Chap. x.x.xi. 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 Bohm 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 ant.i.thesis 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 pa.s.sage it is necessary to have read the whole of the next book.

_ 57 Apparent rari, nantes in gurgite vasto._

58 Cf. Ch. x.x.xiv. 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 poetis_ _ Non homines, non Di, non concessere columnae._

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 p.r.o.neness 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 r.e.t.a.r.d 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. x.x.xviii. of Supplement.

61 Cf. Ch. x.x.xvii. of the Supplement.

62 Leibnitii epistolae, collectio Kortholti, ep. 154.

63 Cf. Ch. x.x.xix. of Supplement.

64 The following remark may a.s.sist 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 gla.s.s 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 aeternitas non sit temporis sine fine aut principio successio; sed _Nunc stans_, _i.e._, idem n.o.bis _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 pa.s.sage, 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 pa.s.sages 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, caet.

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 a.s.sumption 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 pa.s.sing, 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 G.o.dlessness 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 a.s.sertion 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 princ.i.p.ally 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 "Gesprache zwischen Krishna und Arjoon;" in the second volume, "Moha-Mudgava." Also, "Inst.i.tutes of Hindu Law, or the Ordinances of Manu," from the Sanscrit, by Sir William Jones (German by Huttner, 1797), especially the sixth and twelfth chapters. Finally, many pa.s.sages 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.)