Selected essays of Arthur Schopenhauer

Front matter

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SELECTED ESSAYS OF ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER.

Preface

The following selection of pieces from the two volumes of Miscellaneous Essays, called by Schopenhauer ■“Parerga and Paralipomena,” have been made with a view of meeting the taste alike of him that is specially interested in philosophy and of the “ general’reader.” Some of the essays included in this present volume have been translated before by Mr. Bailey Saunders, and published by Messrs. Swan Sonnenschein, & Co. I may state that the renderings here given have been made without any reference whatever to Mr. Saunders’s work, which I have purposely abstained from consulting. In translating the German author, my aim has been to combine as strict a literality as was possible with a retention of the flavour of the original style in equivalent English idioms. At the same time I have always leant rather toward the side of over-literality than that of mere paraphrase. The introductory memoir and sketch of Schopenhauer’s philosophy will, it is hoped, serve to render the meaning of some passages clearer than they would otherwise be to a reader who might take the book up without any previous knowledge of the system to which they belong, in its general aspect.

Contents

PAGE

Preface , . . v

The Life and Philosophy of Schopenhauer . . , . ix

Appendix

k

Readers who are familiar with what has passed for \ philosophy in Germany, in the course of the present century, may perhaps be surprised not to find mentioned in the period between Kant and myself, either the Fichtean Idealism or the system of the Absolute Identity of the Real and Ideal, since they seem specially to belong to our subject. But I have not been able to include them, simply because, in my opinion, Fichte, ScheUing, and Hegel are no philosophers, inasmuch as they fail in the first requirement of the philosopher, earnestness and honesty of research. They are mere sophists ; they wanted to seem and not to be, and have sought, not the truth, but their own interest ' and advancement in the world. Places from governments, - honoraria from students and booksellers, and as means to , this end as much sensation and effect as possible from their 1 sham philosophy — such were the guiding stars and in- ^ spiring genii of these disciples of wisdom. Hence they have not passed the entrance-examination, and so cannot be admitted into the honorable company of the thinkers of the human race.

Meanwhile, they have excelled in one thing, and that is> in the art of turning the head of the public and of making themselves pass for what they were not, which requires talent, indeed, but not philosophical talent. That they were incapable of effecting anything solid in philosophy was owing, in the last resort, to the fact that their intellect was not free, but remained in the service of the Will ; and in this case, though the intellect can indeed achieve much for this or that purpose, it can do nothing for philosophy any more than for art. For these lay down as their first

TEE DOCTPJJfE OF THE IDEAL AND REAL. 23 condition, that the intellect should act on its own account, and during the time of this activity should cease to be in the service of the will, that is, to have the objects of one’s own personality in view ; but when it is itself active, simply of its own motion, it, in accordance with its nature, knows no other purpose than the truth. Hence it does not suffice, in order to be a philosopher, which means lover of wisdom (this being nothing else than truth), to love the truth in so far as it harmonizes with one’s own interest, or with the will of superiors, or the dogmas of the church, or the prejudices or tastes of contemporaries ; as long as one remains in this position, one is only a (jiiXavrog and no (juXoffotpog. For this title of honour is well and wisely conceived, in that it implies that one should love the truth earnestly and with one’s whole heart, and therefore unconditionally, without reserve before everything, and in case of necessity even to the defiance of everything. The reason is to be found in the fact above indicated that the intellect has become free, in which case it does not even know or understand any other interest than that of truth ; the consequence being, that one then acquires an irreconcilable hatred against all lying and deception, no matter what garb they may wear. In this way we are not very likely to get on well in the world, but all the more in philosophy. On the other hand, it is a bad auspice for the latter, if proceeding avowedly from the investigation of truth, we begin, thereupon, to say farewell to all uprightness, honesty, and thoroughness, and are only concerned to make ourselves appear what we are not. In this case one assumes, like the above three sophists, now a false pathos, now an artificially high earnestness, now a mien of infinite superiority, in order to dazzle where one despairs of being able to convince ; one writes without consideration, because, only thinking of writing, one saves one’s thought up for the purpose of writing ; one seeks now to inculcate palpable sophisms as demonstrations, now to

SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

propound hollow and senseless logomachy for deep thoughts; one invokes intellectual intuition or the absolute thought and self-movement of conceptions ; one challenges expressly the standpoint of “reflection,” that is, of rational thought, straightforward consideration, and honest presentation, in other words, the proper and normal use of the reason generally; one expresses a boundless contempt for the “philosophy of reflection,” by which name is designated every connected course of thought which deduces consequences from principles, such as has constituted every earlier philosophy; and accordingly, if one is only provided with sufficient audacity, and encouraged by the pitiable spirit of the age, one expresses oneself in some such manner as follows : “ It is not difficult to see that the mode of stating a proposition,, adducing reasons for it and refuting its opposite in the same way, by reason, is not the form which truth can assume. Truth is the movement of itself within itself,” etc. (Hegel, preface to the “ Phenomenology of the Mind,” p. Ivii., in the complete edition, p. 36.) I think it is not difficult to see that whoever puts forward anything like this, is a shameless charlatan, who is anxious to befool simpletons, and who observes that he has found his people in the Germans of the nineteenth century.

If accordingly, under pretence of hurrying to the temple of truth, one hands over the bridle to the interests of one’s own person, which looks sideways towards altogether different guiding stars, such for instance as the tastes and foibles of contemporaries, the religion of the land, but especially toward the purposes and hints of the governing powers — Oh, how then can one expect to reach the high, abrupt, bald rock on which stands the temple of truth ? One may easily attach to oneself, by the sure bond of interest, a crowd of genuinely hopeful disciples, hopeful, that is, for protection and places, who may apparently form a sect, but really a faction, and by whose united .stentorian voices one may be proclaimed to all the four winds as a sage without parallel — the interest of the person is satisfied, that of truth betrayed.

All this explains the painful feeling which seizes one, when, after the study of real thinkers, such as have been above described, one turns to the writings of Fichte and Schelling, or indeed to the audaciously daubed nonsense of Hegel, produced as it is with a boundless, though justified, confidence in G-erman folly. ^ With the former one had always found an honest investigation of truth, and as honest an endeavour to communicate their thoughts to others. Hence he who reads Locke, Kant, Hume, Malebranche, Spinoza, Descartes, feels himself elevated and pleasurably impressed. This is effected by contact with a noble mind, which has thoughts and awakens thoughts. ’ The reverse of this takes place in reading the above-mentioned three German sophists. A straightforward person who opens one of their books and then asks himself whether this is the tone of a thinker who would teach or of a charlatan who would deceive, cannot remain five minutes in doubt about it ; so much does everything here

^ The Hegelian sham wisdom is the true millstone in the head 'Of the student in “ Faust.” If one wishes intentionally to make a youth stupid and completely incapable of all thought, there is no more approved means than the industrious study of the original works of Hegel ; for these monstrous piecings together of words, which abolish and contradict one another, so that the mind torments itself in vain to think anything thereby, till it finally collapses exhausted, gradually destroys its capacity of thinking so completely that from that time forward hoUow phrases count with it for thoughts. Add to this, the fancy accredited to the youth by the word and example of all persons in authority that the above logomachy is true and lofty wisdom. Should a guardian ever be concerned lest his wards should become too clever for his plans, he - may avert this misfortune by inculcating an industrious study of the Hegelian philosophy.

SCHOPENHAUER S ESSAYS.

breathe of dishonesty. The tone of quiet investigation characterizing all previous philosophy is exchanged for that of unshakable certainty such as is common to charlatanry of every kind in all time, but which in this case claims to rest on immediate intellectual intuition, or on thought which is absolute, that is, independent of the subject and its fallibility. From every page, from every line, speaks the endeavour to hoodwink, to deceive, the reader, now by dazzling to disconcert him, now by incomprehensible phrases and flagrant nonsense to stun him, now by audacity of assertion to befool him, in short, in every possible way to throw dust in his eyes and to mystify him. Hence the feeling which discovers itself in the transition in question in respect of the theoretical, may be compared with that which in respect of the practical he has, who coming from a society of honourable men, finds himseK in a haunt of swindlers. How worthy a man, in comparison with such, is that Christian Wolff, so undervalued and ridiculed by these three sophists ! He had, and furnished real thoughts, but they only word-images, and phrases for the purpose of deceiving. The truly distinguishing character of the philosophy of this whole, so-called, Post-Kantian school, is dishonesty, its element is the blue ether and personal ends its goal. Its exponents are concerned to seem, not to he, — they are therefore sophists, not philosophers. The mockery of future generations, extending itself to their votaries, and then oblivion, awaits them.

With the tendency of these persons, as above indicated, is connected, we may say in passing, the scolding and abusive tone which, as an obligato accompaniment, pervades all Schelling’s writings. If this were not so, if honesty rather than pretentiousness and emptiness had been at work, Schelling, who is without doubt the most gifted of the three, might at least have occupied the subordinate rank in philosophy of an eclectic of passing service. The amalgam whicli lie prepared from the doctrines of Plotinos, of Spinoza, of Jakob Bohme, of Kant, and of the natural science of modem times, might for a while have filled the vacancy produced by the negative results of the Kantian philosophy, until a really new philosophy had come forward and properly afforded the satisfaction required by the former. He has more particularly used the natural science of our century to revive the abstract pantheism of Spinoza. Spinoza had, without any knowledge of nature, philosophized out of abstract conceptions, and, without knowing the things themselves properly, had erected the edifice of his doctrines. To clothe this dry skeleton with flesh and blood, and, as well as might be, to communicate life and motion to it by the application of the natural sciencewhich has since then developed, although often done with a false application, is the rmdeniable service of Schellingin his philosophy of nature, which is also the best of his multifarious attempts and new departures.

Just as children play with weapons intended for seriouspurposes, or other tools of grown-up persons, so the three sophists we have under consideration have dealt with the^ subject here treated of, thus furnishing the grotesque pendant to two centuries of laborious investigations on the part of serious philosophers. After Kant had more than ever accentuated the great problem of the relation between the self-existent and our presentments, and thereby brought it much nearer its solution, Fichte starts up with the assertion that there is nothing behind the presentments,, these being no more than products of the knowing sub-^ jects, of the Ego. While seeking in this way to outbid Kant, he produced a mere caricature of the latter’s philosophy, inasmuch as, by the continuous application of the method so much vaunted by these three pseudo-philosophers, he abolished the Keal altogether, and left nothing but the Ideal remaining. Then came Schelling, who, in

^8

SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

Lis system of the absolute identity of the E/eal and Ideal, declared the whole distinction of no account, and maintained the Ideal to be also the Eeal, that both were one. In this way he attempted to throw again into confusion what had been so carefully, and, by a process of such slow and gradually developed reflection, separated. (ScheUing, ““ On the Eolation of the Philosophy of Nature to the Pichtean,” pp. 14-21.) The distinction of Ideal and Eeal is crudely denied, in imitation of the above criticised error of Spinoza. At the same time, even the monads of Leibnitz,— that monstrous identification of two absurdities, namely, of the atoms and of the indivisible original and essentially knowing individuals, termed souls — are again brought forward, pompously apotheosized, and pressed into the service. (Schelling, “ Ideas for the Philosophy of Nature,” 2nd ed., pp. 38, 82.) Schelling’s philosophy of nature bears the name of the philosophy of identity, because, walking in the footsteps of Spinoza, it does away with three distinctions which the latter had also done away with, to wit, that between G-od and the world, that between body and soul, and, finally, that between Ideal and Eeal, in the perceived world. The last distinction, however, as has been above shown, in the consideration of Spinoza, in no way depends on the two others. On the contrary, the more it is brought into prominence, by so much the more the two others are rendered doubtful, for while it is based on a simple act of reflection, they are based on dogmatic demonstrations, which Kant has overthrown. In accordance with all this, metaphysic was identified by Schelling with physic, and hence, to a mere physical- chemical diatribe, the high-sounding title of “concerning the world-soul” was affixed. All those properly metaphysical problems, which untiringly impress themselves upon the human consciousness, were to be silenced by a crude denial clothed in strong assertions.

Nature is here just because it is, of itself and through itseK ; we bestow upon it the title G-od, and therewith it is disposed of, and he who asks for anything more is a fool. The distinction between subjective and objective is a mere invention of the schools, hke the whole Kantian philosophy, whose distinction of a priori and a posteriori is also of no account, our empirical perception of itself supplying^ us with the things-in-themselves, etc. Let the reader consult “ On the Relation of the Philosophy of Nature with the Fichtean,” pp. 51 and 57, as also p. 61, where ridicule is expressly heaped on those “ who are astounded to find that not is nothing, and cannot sufficiently wonder that anything really exists.” We see, therefore, that with Herr von Schelling everything seems to explain itself. At bottom, however, this sort of talk is only a veiled appeal in pompous phraseology to the so-called sound, but more correctly rough, understanding. For the rest, I may recall here what I have said in the second volume of my chief work, at the beginning of chapter xvii. Significant for our subject and very naive is the passage on p. 69, in the book of Schelling’ s just quoted from : “ Had empiricism completely attained its object, its opposition to philosophy, and therewith philosophy itself, as special sphere or kind of science, would disappear ; all abstractions would dissolve themselves in the direct, ‘ friendly,’ perception j the highest would be the sport of pleasure and innocence,, the most difficult easy, the most senseless sensible, and man might read joyfully and freely in the book of nature.”^ This would certainly be very nice ! but it is not the case with us. Thought does not let itself be shown the door in this manner. The serious old Sphinx with its riddle lies immovably there, and does not dash itself off the rock because you explain that it is a spectre. As, therefore, Schelling himself observed later that the metaphysical problem cannot be got rid of by dictatorial assertions, he

SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

gives US a genuinely metaphysical essay in his treatise on freedom, which is, however, a mere piece of imagination, a conte hleu, whence it comes that the style, whenever it assumes the tone of demonstration, has a decidedly comical effect.

By his doctrine of the identity of the Ideal and the Real, Schelling has accordingly sought to solve the problem, set going by Descartes, dealt with by all great thinkers, and finally accentuated in the strongest manner by Kant, by cutting the knot, that is, by denying the opposition between the two. With Kant, from whom he professed to start, he came in consequence into direct contradiction. Meanwhile he had at least held fast the original and special sense of the problem, which concerns the relation between our ^perception and the being and essence in themselves of the things which present themselves in the former. But because he got his doctrines chiefly out of Spinoza, he adopted from the latter the expressions thought and being, which designated the problem very badly, and gave occasion later on to the maddest monstrosities. Spinoza had attempted, with his doctrine that substantia cogitans et substantia extensa una eademgue est substantia, qucejam sub hoc jam sub illo attribute comprehenditur (ii. *7, Sch.), or, scilicet mens et corpus una eademgue est res, guce jam sub cogitationis, jam sub extensionis attribute concipitur (iii. 2, Sch.), to abolish the Cartesian opposition of body and soul ; he may also have recognized that the empirical object is not distinct from our presentment of it. Schelling adopted from him the expressions thought and being, which he gradually substituted for those of intuition (perception), or rather intuited (perceived), and the thing-in-itself (“ New Journal of Speculative Physic,” vol. i., 1st article, “ Further expositions,” etc.). For the relation of our perception of things to their being and essence in themselves is the great problem whose history I have here sketched ; that of onr thoughts, i.e. conceptions, is a different one, for these are, quite obviously and undeniably, mere abstractions from that which is perceptively known, having arisen through the arbitrary thinking away, or letting fall, of some qualities, and retention of others ; and to doubt that this is so would ever occur to any reasonable man.^ These conceptions and thoughts, which constitute the class of non-perceptive presentments, never have therefore an immediate relation to the nature and being of the things-in-themselves, but are always mediate, that is, under the mediation of perception ; it is the last-mentioned which on the one side furnishes for them the matter, and on the other stands related to the things-inthemselves, that is, to the unknown true nature of the things which is objectivized in perception.

The inexact expression borrowed by Schelling from Spinoza was used subsequently by the spiritless and tasteless charlatan Hegel, who in this respect appears as Schelling’ s hanswurst, and distorted, so far as to make thought itself, in the narrower sense, namely, as conception, identical with the nature of the things-in-themselves. That, therefore, which is thought in abstractor should, as such and immediately, be one with that which is objectively present in itself, and logic should, accordingly, be the true metaphysic ; in which case we should only require to think or to let our conception have free course in order to know how the world without is absolutely constituted. As a natural consequence, every brain-phantasm would be at once true and real. Since, therefore, “ the madder the better ” was the motto of the philosophasters of this period, the absurdity in question was supported by a second, to wit, that it was not we who thought, but that the conception alone and without our help completed the thought-process, which

^ “ On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Cause,” § 26.

SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

is therefore called the dialectical self-movement of the conception, and counts for a revelation of all things in et extra naturam. But this humbug was based upon another, equally rest'ing on the misuse of words, and which was, indeed, never clearly stated, though it undoubtedly lies behind. Schelling had, according to Spinoza’s procedure, entitled tho world “ God.” Hegel took this in its literal sense. Now since this word properly signifies a personal being, embracing, together with other qualities altogether incompatible with the world, that of omniscience, this was also transferred by him to the world, in which it could naturally obtain no other place than in the empty head of men who only require to give their thoughts free J)lay (dialectical self-movement) in order to reveal all the mysteries of heaven and earth, as in the absolute gallimathias of the Hegelian dialectic. One art this Hegel has certainly understood, namely, how to lead the Germans by the nose. But that is no very great one. We see with what tricks he was able to hold the learned world of Germany for thirty years. That the professors of philosophy still treat these three sophists seriously, and hold it for important to assign them a place in the history of philosophy, happens only because it belongs to their gagne-2)ain, in that they obtain thereby material for elaborate dissertations, verbal and written, on the history of the so-called Post-Kantian philosophy, in which the opinions of the said sophists are elaborately expounded and seriously considered. Prom a reasonable point of view, one has no business to concern oneself at all with what these persons, in order to seem something, brought to market, unless it were that it should be deemed desirable for the scribblings of Hegel to be kept in the chemists’ shops as a physically active vomitive, the disgust they excite being really quite peculiar. But enough of them and their originator, whose glorification we will leave to the Danish Academy of Sciences, wliicli has recognized in him a summus jjhilosophiis, in its sense of the word, and hence requires him to be treated with respect, a fact brought out in the judgment appended to my prize essay on the foundations of morality, as a lasting memorial, and which, no less on account of its acuteness than of its memorable honesty, deserves to be rescued from oblivion, if only that it furnishes a remarkable confirmation of Labruyere’s beautiful saying : Bu meme fonds, dont on neglige un homme de merite, Von salt encore admirer un soU

FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OP PHILOSOPHY.

Section 1. On the Same

TO read, instead of the original works of philosophers, all sorts of expositions of their doctrines, or history of philosophy generally, is as though one should get some one else to masticate one’s food. Would anyone read the history of the world if it were possible for him to behold the interesting events of ancient times with his own eyes ? But, as regards the history of philosophy, such an autopsy of the subject is really possible for him, to wit, the original writings of philosophers ; in which he may none the less, for the sake of shortness, limit himself to well-chosen leading chapters, especially inasmuch as they all teem with repetitions, which one may just as well spare oneself. In this way, then, he will learn to know the essential in their doctrines, in an authentic and unfalsified form, while from the half-dozen histories of philosophy annually appearing he merely receives as much of it as has entered the head of a professor of philosophy, and, indeed, as it appears there. Now it is obvious of itself, that the thoughts of a great mind must shrink up considerably in order to find a place in the three-pound brain of a parasite of philosophy, from which they emerge again clothed in the contemporary jargon of the day, and accompanied by his sapient reflections. Besides this, it must be considered that the money-making history-writer of philosophy can hardly have read a tenth part of the writings which he reports. Their real study demands the whole of a long and laborious life, such as formerly, in the old industrious times, the brave Brucker devoted to them. But what can such persons, who are detained by continuous lectures, official duties, vacation tours and dissipations, and who, for the most part, come forward with their histories of philosophy in their earlier years, have thoroughly investigated ? Add to this, that they are anxious to be pragmatical, and claim to have fathomed and to expound the necessity of the origin and the sequence of systems, and even to judge, correct, and dominate over the earnest and genuine philosophers of former times. How could it be otherwise than that they should copy the older ones, and each other, and then, in order to hide this, make matters worse by endeavouring to give them the modern toumure of the current quinquennium, pronouncing upon them, likewise, in the same spirit ? On the contrary, a collection of important passages and essential chapters of all the leading philosophers, made by honest and intelligent scholars, conscientiously and in common, arranged in a chronologically-pragmatic order, much in the same way as formerly Godicke, and, after him. Bitter and Preller, have done with the philosophy of antiquity, although much more completely — in short, a universal chrestomathy accomplished with care and a knowledge of the subject — would be very useful.

The fragments which I here give are at least not traditional, that is, copied; they are, rather, thoughts occasioned by my own study of the original works.

SCnOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

Section 2. Pre-Sohratic Philosophy

The Eleatic philosophers are the first who became conscious of the opposition between the perceived and the thought, (patvofieva and voov/llevu. The latter alone was for them the true being, the ovtojq ov. Eespecting this, they maintain that it is one, unchangeable and immovable ; not so, however, with the (paivopivoic, that is, with the perceived, appearing, empirically given, of which it would have been absurd to maintain anything of the kind — Whence the so misunderstood proposition refuted by Diogenes in his well-known manner. They already distinguished, therefore, between appearance, (paLvoyevoy, and the thing -in-itselfy. ovroQ ov. The last-mentioned could not be sensuously perceived, but only comprehended by thought, and was accordingly known as voovfXEvov (Arist., “ Metaph.,” i., 5, p. 986, et “ Scholia,” edit. Berol.,pp. 429,430, et 509). In the“Schoha to Aristotle” (pp. 460, 536, 544, et 798), the work of Parmenides, Tu Kara So^av is mentioned. This, then, would have been the doctrine of the phenomenon, physics, which would, without doubt, have implied another work, ra Kar dXrj^Eiav, the doctrine of the thing-in-itself, or metaphysic. Eespecting Melissos, indeed, a scholium of Philoponos says: ev toiq irpoq d\7]Beiav ev eivai Xiyiov to ov, iv roig irpog co^av Zvo (should be ttoXXol) (p-qalv eivai. The opposition tO' '

the Eleatics, and probably called forth by them, is Hera- ;

kleitos, who taught the ceaseless movement of all things, as^ they taught their absolute immobility. He took his stand, therefore, on the (patvopevov Arist. d. Coelo,” iii. 1, p. 298, edit. BeroL). He calledforth thereby as his opposite, Plato’s doctrine of Ideas, as appears from the statement of Aristotle ) (“ Metaph.,” p. 1078).

It is noteworthy that we find the comparatively few main propositions of the Pre-Sokratic philosophers which have been preserved, numberless times repeated in the writings of the ancients, but very little beyond them ; as, for instance, the doctrines of Anaxagoras, of the vovq and of the oiioiofiepiai ; that of Empedokles, of ^/Xta kui vbXkoq and the four elements; that of Demokritos and Lukippos, of the atoms, tlhioXoiQ ; that of Herald eitos, of the continuous flux of all things ; that of the Eleatics as above explained ; that of the Pythagoreans, of the numbers, of metempsychosis, &c. It may well be, therefore, that this was the sum of all their philosophizing ; for we find also in the works of the modems, e.g., of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, and even Kant, the few fundamental propositions of their philosophies numberless times repeated ; so that all these philosophers would seem to have adopted the motto of Empedokles, who may also have been a lover of the sign of repetition, 1\q Kal rplg rd KaXoy (see Sturz., “ Empedocl. Agrigent.,” p. 504).

The two dogmas Anaxagoras started stand in close connection, TrdvTa iv iracnv is, namely, a symbolical designation of the dogma of the homoiomeroi. In the primal chaotic mass, accordingly, the partes similares (in the physiological sense) of all things were present in their completeness. In order to their differentiation, and to their combination into specifically distinct things {partes dissimilares), it required a vovq to arrange and to form them, who, by a selection of the elements, reduced confusion to order, since this chaos contained the most complete mixture of all substances (“ Scholia in Aristot.,” p. 337). Nevertheless the vovq had . not brought the first separation to complete perfection, and therefore in everything was contained the elements of everything else, although in a lesser degree : ttoKiv yap Trdv iv -irdvri fjLBfxiKTai (Ibid.).