Arthur Schopenhauer

“ Nothing but a few entirely abstract, entirely unsubstantial conceptions, floating in the air equally with ourselves. It is from these, or, more correctly, from the mere form of their connection with judgments made, that a Law is declared to proceed, which by so-called absolute necessity is supposed to be valid, and to be strong enough to lay bit and bridle on the surging throng of human desires, on the storm of passion, on the giant might of egoism. ”

“ Where is the man, who, when overtaken by some calamity, of whatever nature, has not noticed with surprise how the persons that previously had displayed the greatest coldness, nay, ill-will towards him, then came forward with unfeigned sympathy ? For misfortune is the condition of Compassion, and Compassion the source of loving-kindness. When our wrath is kindled against a person, nothing quenches it so quickly, even when it is righteous, as the words : " He is an unfortunate man." And the reason is obvious : Compassion is to anger as water to fire. ”

“ The thousands that throng before our eyes, in peaceful intercourse each with the other, can only be regarded as so many tigers and wolves, whose teeth are secured by a strong muzzle. Let us now suppose this muzzle cast off, or, in other words, the power of the state abolished ; the contemplation of the spectacle then to be awaited would make all thinking people shudder ; and they would thus betray the small amount of trust they really have in the efficiency either of religion, or of conscience, or of the natural basis of Morals, whatever it be. ”

“ He who tries to promote human knowledge and insight is destined to always encounter the opposition of his age, which is like the dead weight of some mass that has to be dragged along : there on the ground it lies, a huge inert deformity, defying all efforts to quicken its shape with new life. But such a one must take comfort from the certainty that, although prejudices beset his path, yet the truth is with him. And Truth does but wait for her ally, Time, to join her ”

“ It will now be fully apparent how difficult our problem is. We have to find a motive capable of making a man take up a line of conduct directly opposed to all those propensities which lie deeply ingrained in his nature ; or, given such conduct as a fact of experience, we must search for a motive capable of supplying an adequate and non-artificial explanation of it. The difficulty, in fact, is so great that, in order to solve it, for the vast majority of mankind, it has been everywhere necessary to have recourse to machinery from another world. ”

“ So arises out of this first degree of compassion the rule : Neminem laede. (Do harm to no one.) This is the fundamental principle of the virtue of justice, and here alone is to be found its origin, pure and simple, an origin which is truly moral, and free from all extraneous admixture. Otherwise derived, justice would have to rest on Egoism, a reductio ad absurdum. If my nature is susceptible of Compassion up to this point, then it will avail to keep me back, whenever I should like to use others' pain as a means to obtain my ends ”

“ No doubt the theory lying at the root of Egoism is, from the empirical standpoint, perfectly justified. From the testimony of experience, the distinction between one's own person and that of another appears to be absolute. I do not occupy the same space as my neighbour, and this difference, which separates me from him physically, separates me also from his weal and woe. But in the first place, it should be observed that the knowledge we have of our own selves is by no means exhaustive and transparent to its depths. ”

“ On the other hand, the poor man, who cannot make both ends meet, and who, by reason of the unequal division of property, sees himself condemned to want and hard work, while others before his eyes are lapped in luxury and idleness, will not easily perceive that the raison d'etre of this inequality is a corresponding inequality of service and honest industry. And if he does not recognise this, how is he to be governed by the purely ethical motive to uprightness, which should keep him from stretching out his hand to grasp the superfluity of another ? ”

“ BUT when we cast a retrospect over the attempts made, and made in vain, for more than two thousand years, to find a sure basis for Ethics, ought we not perhaps to think that after all there is no natural morality, independent of human institution ? Shall we not conclude that all moral systems are nothing but artificial products, means invented for the better restraint of the selfish and wicked race of men ; and further, that, as they have no internal credentials and no natural basis, they would fail in their purpose, if without the support of positive religion ? ”

“ For this reason all human actions, as a rule, have their origin in Egoism, and to it, accordingly, we must always first turn, when we try to find the explanation of any given line of conduct ; just as, when the endeavour is made to guide a man in any direction, the means to this end are universally calculated with reference to the same all-powerful motive. Egoism is, from its nature, limitless. The individual is filled with the unqualified desire of preserving his life, and of keeping it free from all pain, under which is included all want and privation. ”

“ And so we find brought upon the stage of our inner self a complete Court of justice, with indictment, judge, plaintiff, defendant, and sentence ; nothing is wanting. Now if this tribunal, as portrayed by Kant, really existed in our breasts, it would be astonishing if a single person could be found to be, I do not say, so bad, but so stupid, as to act against his conscience. ”

“ To a certain extent it is actually comic to see how each individual out of innumerable multitudes considers himself, at least from the practical point of view, as the only real thing, and all others in some sort as mere phantoms. The ultimate reason of this lies in the fact that every one is directly conscious of himself, but of others only indirectly, through his mind's eye ; and the direct impression asserts its right. In other words, it is in consequence of the subjectivity which is essential to our consciousness that each person is himself the whole world ”

“ Individuation is merely an appearance, born of Space and Time ; the latter being nothing else than the forms under which the external world necessarily manifests itself to me, conditioned as they are by my brain's faculty of perception. Hence also the plurality and diiference of individuals is but a phaenomenon, that is, exists only as my mental picture. My true inmost being subsists in every living thing, just as really, as directly as in my own consciousness it is evidenced only to myself. ”

“ According to the code of knightly honour, the reproach of being a liar is of extreme gravity, and only to be washed out with the accuser's blood. Now this obtains, not because the lie is wrong in itself, since, were such the reason, to accuse a man of an injury done by violence would certainly be regarded as equally outrageous, which is not the case, as every one knows ; but it is due to that principle of chivalry, which in reality bases right on might ; so that whoever, when trying to work mischief, has recourse to falsehood, proves that he lacks either power, or the requisite courage. ”

“ The discussion now terminated points to the conclusion that nine-tenths, or perhaps nineteen- twentieths, of what we do is, more or less, due to Egoism, conscious or unconscious ; while acts of real morality, that is, of unselfish justice and pure loving-kindness (admitting that they occur) are to be attributed to Compassion, that is, the sense of suffering with another. Nor is the principle of Altruism new. It is as old as man himself. All the rare and sensitive natures in the world have given utterance to it, each in his own way. ”

“ In point of fact, he considers nothing to be truly real, except his own person, and regards the rest of man- kind practically as troops of phantoms, to whom he assigns merely a relative existence, so far as they may be instruments to serve, or barriers to obstruct, his purposes ; the result being an immeasurable differ- ence, a vast gulf between Ms ego on the one side, and the non-ego on the other. In a word, he lives ex- clusively centred in his own individuality, and on his death-day he sees all reality, indeed the whole world, coming to an end along with himself. ”

“ Therefore he, who here puts his hand to the plough, must, for his encouragement, ever bear in mind that from the doings and affairs of the populace, from the turmoil and bustle of the market-place, nothing is further removed than the quiet retreat and sanctuary of the Academy, where no noise of the world may enter, and where the only god raised on a pedestal is Truth, in solitary, naked sublimity. ”

“ But if any one should suppose such a soil too barren and meagre to bear this great cardinal virtue, let him reflect on what is said above, and remember how small is the amount of true, spontaneous, unselfish, unfeigned justice among men ; how the real thing only occurs as a surprising exception, and how, to its counterfeit, the justice that rests on mere worldly wisdom and is everywhere published abroad it is related, both in quality and quantity, as gold is to copper. ”

“ We distinguish moral self- consciousness from the experience with which it, as an original fact transcending all knowledge, is bound up in the human consciousness ; and we understand by such self-consciousness the direct consciousness of duty, that is, of the necessity we are under of admitting the legitimacy whether pleasurable or the reverse of the will, as the stimulus and as the measure of its own operations. ”

“ The preponderance of either mode of viewing life not only determines single acts ; it shapes a man's whole nature and temperament. Hence the radical difference of mental habit between the good character and the bad. The latter feels everywhere that a thick wall of partition hedges him off from all others. For him the world is an absolute non-ego, and his relation to it an essentially hostile one ”

“ Such, then, are the elements out of which, on the basis of the Will to live, Egoism grows up, and like a broad trench it forms a perennial separation between man and man. If on any occasion some one actually jumps across, to help another, such an act is regarded as a sort of miracle, which calls forth amazement and wins approval. ”

“ After dietetics and hygiene have done their work, and struck it down by irrefutable reasoning, if Ethics desires to take up the matter, she finds little left for her to do. Bestiality, again, is of very rare occurrence ; it is thoroughly abnormal and exceptional, and, moreover, so loath- some and foreign to human nature, that itself, better than all arguments of reason, passes judgment on itself, and deters by sheer disgust. For the rest, as being a degradation of human nature, it is in reality an offence against the species as such, and in the abstract ; not against human units. ”

“ Being original and innate, it measures the responsiveness of the individual to this or that motive, and those alone, to which he is specially sensitive, will appeal to him with any- thing like compelling force. As in chemistry, with unchangeable certainty, one substance reacts only upon acids, another only upon alkalies, so, with equal invariableness, different natures respond to different stimuli. The motives suggesting loving-kindness, which stir so deeply a good disposition, can, of them- selves, effect nothing in a heart that listens only to the promptings of Egoism. ”

“ By means of the intuition, which the brain constructs out of the data supplied by the senses, that is to say, in an indirect manner, we recognise our body as an object in space ; through an inward perception, we are aware of the continuous series of our desires, of our volitions, which arise through the agency of external motives ; and finally, we come to discern the manifold movements, now stronger, now weaker, of our will itself, to which all feelings from within are ultimately traceable. And that is all : for the perceiving faculty is not in its turn perceived. ”

“ That we may be dissatisfied with ourselves, and saddened by reason of sufferings which we have inflicted, not undergone, is a plain fact and impossible to be denied. The connection of this with the only ethical basis that can stand an adequate test we shall examine further on. But Kant, like a clever special pleader, tried by magnifying and embellishing the original datum to make all that he possibly could of it, in order to prepare a very broad foundation for his Ethics and Moral Theology. ”

“ As we have here had occasion to mention the word "obligation," this is the place to determine the conception of Duty, which is so often spoken of both in Ethics and in real life, but with too wide an extension of meaning. We have seen that wrong always signifies injury done to another, whether it be in his person, his freedom, his property, or his honour. The consequence appears to be that every wrong must imply a positive aggression, and so a definite act. Only there are actions, the simple omission of which constitutes a wrong ”

“ In this way alone can be explained what is so astonishing, and yet so well known to all who have learnt life's lessons, the fixed unchangeable- ness of human character. There are certain ethical writers, whose aim is the moral improvement of men, and who talk of progress made in the path of virtue ; but their assurances are always met and victoriously confuted by the irrefragable facts of experience, which prove that virtue is nature's work and cannot be inculcated. The character is an original datum, immutable, and incapable of any amelioration through correction by the intellect. ”

“ It is the law of motivation, a form of the law of causation ; in other words, it is the causation which is brought about by the medium of the understanding. It is the sole demonstrable law to which the human will as such is subject. ”

“ But just as, even in time of public peace, the law allows every one to carry weapons and to use them, when required for self-defence, so Ethics permits lies to be employed for the same purpose, and be it observed for this one purpose only. Every mendacious word is a wrong, excepting only when the occasion arises of defending oneself against violence or cunning. Hence justice requires truthfulness towards all men. ”

“ And how does the character of the phaenomenon, as manifest to us, shape itself out of the essential nature of things ? Indeed, in Moral Science the need of a metaphysical basis is more urgent than in any other, because all systems, philosophical no less than religious, are at one in persistently attaching to conduct not only an ethical, but also a metaphysical significance, which, passing beyond the mere appearance of things, transcends every possibility of experience, and therefore stands in the closest connection with human destiny and with the whole cosmic process. ”

“ The original idea of morality, or the leading conception of the supreme moral law, occurs by a necessity which seems peculiar to the subject, but which is by no means a logical one, both in that science, whose object it is to set forth the knowledge of what is moral, and also in real life, where it shows itself partly in the judgment passed by conscience on our own actions, partly in our moral estimation of the actions of others ”

“ If Compassion be the original incentive of all true, that is, disinterested justice and loving- kindness ; how comes it that some are, while others are not, influenced thereby ? Are we to suppose that Ethics, which discloses the moral stimulus, is also capable of setting it in motion ? Can Ethics fashion the hard-hearted man anew, so that he be- comes compassionate, and, as a consequence, just and humane ? ”

“ It will be seen that philosophy has here indeed reached a precarious standpoint, which yet is to be immovable, notwithstanding that it is neither dependent on, nor supported by, anything in heaven or on earth." We shall therefore with all the greater interest and curiosity await the solution of the problem he has set himself, namely, how something is to arise out of nothing, that is, how out of purely a priori conceptions, which contain nothing empirical or material, the laws of material human action are to grow up. ”

“ Who will refuse to admit that it is constantly preventing much wrong, and calling into existence many a good action, often quite unexpectedly, and where there is no hope of reward ? Is there any one who will gainsay the fact that, where it and it alone has been operative, we all with deep respect and emotion unreservedly recognise the presence of genuine moral worth ?
(4) Boundless compassion for all living beings is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no casuistry. ”