No concessions must be made to this extravagant love of germanising! I shall there- fore retain the word Egoism for the general idea. 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. Everything that opposes the strivings of his Egoism awakens his dislike, his anger, his hate: Egoism is a huge giant overtopping the world.
If each person were allowed to choose between his own destruction and that of the rest of mankind, I need not say what the decision would be in most cases. Thus it is that every human unit. Whatever occurs, even, for instance, the most sweeping changes in the destinies of nations, he brings into relation first and foremost with his own interests, which, however slightly and indirectly they may be affected, ho is sure to think of before anything else.
No sharper contrast can be imagined than that between the profound and exclusive attention which each person devotes to his own self, and the indifference with which, as a rule, all other people regard that self, - an indifference precisely like that with which lie in turn looks upon them. 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.
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. In point of fact, politeness is the conventional and systematic dis- avowal of Egoism in the trifles of daily intercourse, and is, of course, a piece of recognised hypocrisy.
Thus is explained the early construction by reflecting reason of state government, which, arising, as it does, from a mutual fear of reciprocal violence, obviates the disastrous con- sequences of the general Egoism, as far as it is possible to do by negative procedure. Where, how- ever, the two forces that oppose Egoism fail to be operative, the latter is not slow to reveal all its horrible dimensions, nor is the spectacle exactly attractive.
In order to express the strength of this antimoral power in a few words, to portray it, so to say, at one stroke, some very emphatic hyperbole is wanted. It may be put thus: I am only doubtful whether this, after all, is any exaggeration. In war the first. The virtue of loving-kindness, on the other hand, is rather to be matched with ill-will, or spitefulness, the origin and successive stages of which we will now consider. Goethe is assuredly right when he says that in this world indifference and aversion are quite at home.
It is very fortunate for us that the cloak, which prudence and politeness throw over this vice, prevents us from seeing how general it is, and how the bellum omnium contra omnes is constantly waged, at least in thought. Yet ever and anon there is some appearance of it: Ill-will usually arises from the unavoidable collisions of Egoism which occur at every step. It is, moreover, objectively excited by the view of the weakness, the folly, the vices, failings, shortcomings, and imperfections of all kinds, which every one more or less, at least occasionally, affords to others.
If such a mental attitude be indulged, misanthropy is the result. But its degrees vary considerably. It is most poisonous and implacable when directed against personal qualities, because then the envious have nothing to hope for. And precisely in such cases its vilest form also appears, because men are made to hate what they ought to love and honour.
Yet so " the world wags," even as Petrarca complained:. In a certain sense the opposite of envy is the habit of gloating over the misfortunes of others. At any rate, while the former is human, the latter is diabolical. There is no sign more infallible of an. The man in whom this trait is observed ought to be for ever avoided: Hie niger est, hunc tu, Romane, caveto.
Whereas malice and cruelty make others' misery the end in itself, the realisation of which affords distinct pleasure. They therefore constitute a higher degree of moral turpitude. The maxim of Egoism, at its worst is: Neminem juva, immo omnes, si forte conducit thus there is always a condition , laede help no body, but rather injure all people, if it brings you any advantage. The guiding rule of malice is: Omnes, quantum potes, laede injure all people as far as you can.
An examination of the special vices that spring from these two primary antimoral forces forms no part of the present treatise: From Egoism we should probably derive greed, gluttony, lust, selfishness, avarice, covetousness, injustice, hardness. No man is entirely free from some traces of all three. But my plan, which in this respect of course differs from that of all other moralists, required me to consider at the outset this gloomy side of human nature, and, like Dante, to descend first to Tartarus.
It will now be fully apparent how difficult our problem is. 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. Gods have been pointed to, whose will and command the required mode of behaviour was said to be, and who were represented as emphasising this command.
For obviously, every act arising from motives like those just mentioned is after all derived simply from pure Egoism. How can I talk of unselfishness when I am enticed by a promised guerdon, or deterred by a threatened punishment? A recompense in another world, thoroughly believed in, must be regarded as a bill of exchange, which is perfectly safe, though only payable at a very distant date.
For the mass of mankind, it will perhaps be always necessary to continue the appeal to incentives of this nature, and we know that such is the teaching promulgated by the different religions, which are in fact the. Be it, however, observed in this connection that a man is sometimes just as much in error as to the true motives that govern his own acts, as he is with regard to those of others. Hence it is certain that many persons, while they can only account to themselves for their noblest actions by attributing them to motives of the kind above described, are, nevertheless, really guided in their conduct by far higher and purer incentives, though the latter may be much more difficult to discover.
They are doing, no doubt, out of direct love of their neighbour, that which they can but explain as the command of their God. On the other hand, Philosophy, in dealing with this, as with all other problems, endeavours to extract the true and ultimate cause of the given phaenomena from the disclosures which the nature itself of man yields, and which, freed as they must be from all mythical interpretation, from all religious dogmas, and trans- cendent hypostases, she requires to see confirmed by external or internal experience.
THERE is first the empirical question to be settled, whether actions of voluntary justice and unselfish loving-kindness, which are capable of rising to noble- ness and magnanimity, actually occur in experience. Unfortunately, this inquiry cannot be decided alto- gether empirically, because it is invariably only the act that experience gives, the incentives not being apparent.
Hence the possibility always remains that an egoistic motive may have had weight in determining a just or good deed. In a theoretical investigation like the present, I shall not avail myself of the inexcusable trick of shifting the matter on to the reader's conscience. But I believe there are few people who have any doubt about the matter, and who are not convinced from their own experience that just acts are often performed simply and solely to prevent a man suffering from injustice.
These are the men of true probity, the few aequi just among the countless number of the iniqui unjust. Similarly, it will be admitted, I think, that many help and give, perform services, and deny them- selves, without having any further intention in their hearts than that of assisting another, whose distress they see. When Arnold von Winkelried exclaimed: To cases of voluntary justice, which cannot be denied without deliberate and wilful trifling with facts, I have already drawn attention in Chapter II.
Should any one, however, persist in refusing to believe that such actions ever happen, then, according to his view, Ethics would be a science without any real object, like Astrology and Alchemy, and it would be waste of time to discuss its basis any further. With him, therefore, I have nothing to do, and address myself to those who allow that we are deal- ing with something more than an imaginary creation. It is, then, only to conduct of the above kind that genuine moral worth can be ascribed.
Its special mark is that it rejects and excludes the whole class. I mean the self-interested motives, using the word in its widest sense. The absence of all egoistic motives is thus the Criterion of an action of moral value. It may, no doubt, be objected that also acts of pure malice and cruelty are not selfish. If, however, the de- finition be insisted on in its strict sense, then we may expressly except such actions, because of their essential token the compassing of others' suffering. There is also another characteristic of conduct having real moral worth, which is entirely internal and there- fore less obvious.
I allude to the fact that it leaves behind a certain self-satisfaction which is called the approval of conscience: Lastly, there is an external, secondary, and accidental sign that draws a clear line between the two classes. Acts of the former kind win the approval and respect of disinterested witnesses: Those actions that bear the stamp of moral value, so determined, and admitted to be realities, constitute.
We must accordingly search out what it is that moves men to such conduct. THE preceding considerations, which were unavoidably necessary in order to clear the ground, now enable me to indicate the true incentive which underlies all acts of real moral worth. The seriousness, and indisputable genuineness, with which we shall find it is distinguished, removes it far indeed from the hair-splittings, subtleties, sophisms, assertions formu- lated out of airy nothings, and a priori soap-bubbles, which all systems up to the present have tried to make at once the source of moral conduct and the basis of Ethics.
From these propositions the following conclusion is obvious: The weal and woe, which according to our third axiom must, as its ultimate object, lie at the root of everything done, or left undone, is either that of the doer himself, or that of some other person, whose role with reference to the action is passive. Conduct in the first case is necessarily egoistic, as it is impelled by an interested motive.
Nor is it less the fact when our honour, our good name, or the wish to win the respect of some one, the sympathy of the lookers on, etc. Lastly, it is still Egoism that is operative, when a man, following Wolff's principles, seeks by his conduct to work out his own perfection. There is only a single case in which this fails to happen: This narrows the limits of our problem, which may now be stated as follows: How is it possible that another's weal and woe should influence my will directly, that is, exactly in the same way as otherwise my own move it? How can that which affects another for good or bad become my immediate motive, and actually sometimes assume such importance that it more or less supplants my own interests, which are, as a rule, the single source of the incentives that appeal to me?
This, however, necessarily implies that I suffer with him, and feel his woe, exactly as in most cases I feel only mine, and therefore desire his weal as immediately as at other times I desire only my own. Now, since I do not live in his skin, there remains only the knowledge, that is, the mental picture, I have of him, as the possible means where- by I can so far identify myself with him, that my action declares the difference to be practically effaced.
It is this Compassion alone which is the real basis of all voluntary justice and all genuine loving-kindness. When once compassion is stirred within me, by another's pain, then his weal and woe go straight to my heart, exactly in the same way, if not always to the same degree, as otherwise I feel only my own. Consequently the difference between myself and him is no longer an absolute one. No doubt this operation is astonishing, indeed hardly comprehensible. It is, in fact, the great mystery of Ethics, its original phaenomenon, and the boundary stone, past which only transcendental speculation may dare to take a step.
Herein we see the wall of partition, which, according to the light of nature as reason is called by old theologians , entirely separates being from being, broken down, and the non-ego to. I wish for the moment to leave the metaphysical explanation of this enigma untouched, and first to inquire whether all acts of voluntary justice and true loving- kindness really arise from it.
If so, our problem will be solved, for we shall have found the ultimate basis of morality, and shown that it lies in human nature itself. This foundation, however, in its turn cannot form a problem of Ethics, but rather, like every other ultimate fact as such, of Metaphysics. But before I turn to the derivation of the cardinal virtues from the original incentive, as here disclosed, I have still to bring to the notice of the reader two observations which the subject renders necessary.
We are now, however, in a position, by including it, to state the above proof more completely, and rigorously, as follows:. There are only three fundamental springs of human conduct, and all possible motives arise from one or other of these. Rousseau in his Emile Bk. The reason of this is that pain or suffering, which includes all want, privation, need, indeed every wish, is positive, and works directly on the consciousness.
Whereas the nature of satisfaction, of enjoyment, of happiness, and the like, consists solely in the fact that a hardship is done away with, a pain lulled: We thus see why need or desire is the condition of every pleasure. Plato understood this well enough, and only excepted sweet odours, and intellectual enjoyment. This principle explains the fact that only the suffering, the want, the danger, the helplessness of another awakens our sympathy directly and as such. We may of course take pleasure in the success, the well-being, the enjoyment of 'others: Or else we share the joy and happiness of a man, not as such, but because, and in so far as, he is our child, father, friend, relation, servant, subject, etc.
In a word, the good fortune, or pleasure of another, purely as such, does not arouse in us the same direct sympathy as is certainly elicited by his misfortune, privation, or misery, purely as such. If even on our own behalf it is only suffering under which must be reckoned all wants, needs,. For as we have seen our sympathy rests on an identification of ourselves with them. Indeed, the sight of success and enjoy- ment, purely as such, is very apt to raise the envy, to which every man is prone, and which has its place among the antimoral forces enumerated above.
In connection with the exposition of Compassion here given, as the coming into play of motives directly occasioned by another's calamity, I take the opportunity of condemning the mistake of Cassina, 1 which has been so often repeated. His view is that compassion arises from a sudden hallucination, which makes us put ourselves in the place of the sufferer, and then imagine that we are undergoing Ms pain in own own person.
This is not in the least the case. I now turn to consider the derivation of actions of real moral worth from the source which has been indicated. The general rule by which to test such conduct, and which, consequently, is the leading principle of Ethics, I have already enlarged upon in the foregoing Part, and enunciated as follows: As this formula contains two clauses, so the actions corresponding to it fall naturally into two classes.
IF we look more closely at this process called Com- passion, which we have shown to be the primary ethical phaenomenon, we remark at once that there are two distinct degrees in which another's suffering may become directly my motive, that is, may urge me to do something, or to leave it nndone.
The first degree of Compassion is seen when, by counter- acting egoistic and malicious motives, it keeps me from bringing pain on another, and from becoming myself the cause of trouble, which so far does not exist. The other higher degree is manifested, when it works positively, and incites me to active help. It is the natural, unmistakable, and sharp separation between negative and positive, be- tween doing no harm, and helping.
The terms in common use namely, " the duties of law," and " the duties of virtue," the latter being also called " duties of love," or " imperfect duties," are in the. Both have their root in natural Compassion. And this Compassion is an undeniable fact of human consciousness, is an essential part of it, and does not depend on assumptions, conceptions, religions, dogmas, myths, training, and education. On the contrary, it is original and immediate, and lies in human nature itself. It consequently remains unchanged under all circumstances, and reveals itself in every land, and at all times.
The first degree, then, in which this natural and genuine moral incentive shows itself is only negative, Originally we are all disposed to injustice and violence, because our need, our desire, our anger and hate. The right of the first occupant. Whereas the sufferings of others, caused by our injustice and violence, enter the consciousness indirectly, that is, by the secondary channel of a mental picture, and not till they are understood by experience.
Ad neminem ante bona mens venit, quam mala. Good feelings never come before bad ones. In its first degree, therefore, Compassion opposes and baffles the design to which I am urged by the antimoral forces dwelling within me, and which will bring trouble on a fellow-being. It calls out to me: So arises out of this first degree of compassion the rule: 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. I shall therefore lay hands on the property as little as on the person of another, and avoid causing him distress, no less mental than bodily. The same sense of Compassion will check me from gratify- ing my desires at the cost of women's happiness for life, or from seducing another man's wife, or from ruining youths morally and physically by tempting them to paederastia.
Neminem laede, is formed by noble minds out of the knowledge, gained once for all, of the injury which every unjust act necessarily entails upon others, and which is aggravated by the feeling of having to endure wrong through a force majeure. Such natures are led by reflecting reason to carry out this principle with unswerving resolution. They are the cistern or reservoir, in which the habit. In general, the feminine half of humanity is inferior to the masculine in the virtue of justice, and its derivatives, uprightness, conscientiousness, etc.
Hence injustice and falseness are women's besetting sins, and lies their proper element. Nevertheless, Compassion is always ready to pass into active operation. Therefore, whenever, in special cases, the established rule shows signs of breaking down, the one incentive for we exclude of course those based on Egoism , which is capable of infusing fresh life into it, is that drawn from the fonntain-head itself Compassion.
This is true not only where it is a question of personal violence, but also where. In such cases, if we set aside all motives prompted by worldly wisdom, and by religion nothing brings a man back so easily to the path of justice, as the realisation of the trouble, the grief, the lamentation of the loser. It is because this is felt to be trae, that, when publicity is given to the loss of money, the assurance is so often added that the loser is a poor man, a servant, etc.
It is hoped that these considerations have made it clear that, however contrary appearances may be at first sight, yet undoubtedly justice, as a genuine and voluntary virtue has its origin in Compassion. I should like to call the one SiKaioa-vvrj Travbrjiw? To produce such a. It will now be seen that injustice or wrong always consists in working harm on another.
That to this class belongs also whatever is effected with no other object than that of warding off from oneself meditated mischief is an easy inference. For no participation in another's interests, and no sym- pathy for him, can require me to let myself be harmed by him, that is, to undergo wrong. The theory that right is negative, in contradistinction to wrong as positive, we find supported by Hugo Grotius, the father of philosophical jurisprudence.
Jus hie nihil aliud, quam quod justum est, signijicat, idque negante magis sensu, quam aiente, lit jus sit, quod injustum non est. The real meaning is therefore: The coercive apparatus is the state, whose sole raison d'etre is to protect its subjects, individually from each other, and collectively from external foes. It is true that a few German would-be philosophers of this venal age wish to distort the state into an institution for the spread of morality, education, and edifying instruction.
But such a view contains, lurking in the background, the Jesuitical aim of doing away with personal freedom and individual development, and of making men mere wheels in a huge Chinese governmental and religious machine. And this is the road that once led to Inquisitions, to Autos-da-fe", and religious wars.
Frederick the Great showed that he at least never wished to tread it, when he said: The govern- ments appear to have adopted as their guiding principle the tenet of Qnintus Curtius: Nulla res efficacius multitudinem regit, quam super stitio: We have seen that " wrong " and " right " are convertible synonymes of " to do harm " and " to.
It will be obvious that these conceptions are inde- pendent of, and antecedent to, all positive legislation. There is, therefore, a pure ethical right, or natural right, and a pure doctrine of right, detached from all positive statutes. The first principles of this doctrine have no doubt an empirical origin, so far as they arise from the idea of harm done, but per se they rest on the pure understanding, which a priori furnishes ready to hand the axiom: The cause of a cause is the cause of the effect. Taken in this connection the words mean: Here we have, so to say, a law of moral repercussion.
Thus it comes about that the union of the empirical idea of injury done with the axiom supplied by the pure understanding, gives rise to the fundamental con- ceptions of wrong and right, which every one grasps a prioi'i, and learns by actual trial to immediately adopt. In disputes a just settlement satisfies them, whereas unjust procedure drives them to war.
But legislation applies this chapter of moral science conversely, that is, with reference to the passive side of the question, and declares that the same actions need not be endured, since no one ought to have wrong inflicted on him. To frustrate such con- duct the state constructs the complete edifice of the law, as positive Bight. If by unjust action I molest some one, whether in his person, his freedom, his property, or his honour, the wrong as regards quality remains the same. But with respect to quantity it may vary very much.
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This difference in the amount of wrong effected appears not to have been as yet investigated by moralists, although it is everywhere recognised in real life, because the censure passed is always proportional to the harm inflicted. So also with just actions, the right done is constant in quality, but not in quantity To explain this better: I give therefore the following definition: We have further to notice a double form of injustice which is specifically different from the simple kind, be it never so great.
This variety may be detected by the fact that the amount of indignation shown by disinterested witnesses, which is always proportional to the amount of wrong inflicted, never reaches the maximum except when it is present. Double injustice occurs when some one, after definitely undertaking the obligation of protecting his friend, master, client, etc. All such conduct is known by the name of treachery, and is viewed with abhorrence by the whole world. Hence Dante puts traitors in the lowest circle of Hell, where Satan himself is found Inferno: 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. This is the true philosophic definition of the conception " Duty," a term which loses its characteristic note, and hence becomes valueless, if it is used as hitherto it has been in Moral Science to designate all praiseworthy conduct. It is forgotten that " Duty " l necessarily means a. Clearly in this case the injury only takes place through the person, who neglects the duty, having distinctly pledged or bound himself to it.
Consequently all duties depend on an obligation which has been entered into. This, as a rule, takes the form of a definite, if some- times tacit, agreement between two parties: I refer to the duty of parents towards their children. It is clear that merely by failing to provide for the needs of his son, that is, by a simple omission, the father would injure him, indeed jeopardise his life.
Children's duty towards their parents is. It rests on the fact that, as every duty involves a right, parents also must have some just claim on their issue. This is the foundation of the duty of filial obedience, which, however, in course of time ceases simultaneously with the right out of which it sprang. It is replaced by gratitude for that which was done by father and mother over and above their strict duty. Neverthe- less, although ingratitude is a hateful, often indeed a revolting vice, gratitude cannot be called a duty; because its omission inflicts no injury on the other side, and is therefore no wrong.
Otherwise we should have to suppose that in his heart of hearts the benefactor aims at making a good bargain. It should he noticed that reparation made for harm done may also be regarded as a duty arising directly through an action. This, however, is something purely negative, as it is nothing but an attempt to remove and blot out the consequences of an unjust deed, as a thing that ought never to have taken place. The German is a friend of equity, while the Englishman holds to justice. The law of motivation is just as strict as that of physical causality, and hence involves the same.
Consequently wrong may be compassed not only by violence, but also by cunning. These false motives are effected by lies. In reality lies are unjustifiable solely in so far as they are instruments of cunning, in other words, of compulsion, by means of motivation. The binding force of a promise or a compact is contained in the fact that, if it be not observed, it is a deliberate lie, pronounced in the most solemn manner, a lie, whose intention that of putting others under moral compulsion is, in this case, all the clearer, because its motive, the desired performance of something on the other side, is expressly declared.
The contemptible part of the. The highest point of villainy is reached in treachery, which, as we have seen, is a double injustice, and is always regarded with loathing. Hence a promise which is extorted by violence is not binding. But, as a matter of fact, the right to avail myself of lies extends further. Here an untruth is the indispensable weapon against unwarranted inquisitiveness, whose motive is hardly ever a well-meaning one. And 1 have good reason for acting thus, because, in moral, no less than in physical, relations, I am driven to assume that the bad will of others is very possible, and must therefore take all necessary preventive measures beforehand.
Quantunque il simitlar sia le piiib volte Sipreso, e dia di mala mente indici, Si trova pure in molte cose e molte Avere fatti evidenti benefici, E danni e biasnii e morti avere tolte: For with friends, Alas! Scire wlunt secreta domus, atque inde timeri. They wish to know family secrets, and thus become feared.
On the contrary, I am justified in putting him off with a lie, involving danger to himself, in case he is thereby led into a mistake that works him harm. For among the English, who regard the reproach of being a liar as the deepest insult, and who on that account are really more truthful than other nations, all unjustifiable questions, having to do with another's affairs, are looked upon as a piece of ill-breeding, which is denoted by the expression, "to ask questions.
And the cases are. It is this view of the matter alone that removes the crying contradiction between the morality which is taught, and that which is daily practised, even by the best and most upright of men.
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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.
But the entirely unconditional and unreserved condemnation of lies, as properly involved in their nature, is sufficiently refuted by well known facts. Vhomme a requ la parole pour pouwir cacher sa pensee. Declamation is easier than demonstration, and to moralise less difficult than to be sincere. For malignant joy is the exact. 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. THUS justice is the primary and essentially cardinal virtue.
Ancient philosophers recognised it as such, but made it co-ordinate with three others unsuitably chosen. Plato himself, who rises highest in moral science, reaches only so far as voluntary, disinterested justice. We are thinking of course only of Europe. For in Asia, a thousand years before, the bound- less love of one's neighbour had been prescribed and taught, as well as practised: Wisdom, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance. It has been demonstrated in Chapter V.
Monier Williams' Sanskrit Dictionary. But if a beneficent action have any other motive whatever, then it must be egoistic, if not actually malicious. For as the fundamental springs of all human conduct v. Now if the motive of a kind act does not belong to the third class, it must of course be found in the first or second. But it much more usually springs from the first class. In a word, my motive. It should be ob- served, in this connection, that the injunctions which the Gospel adds to its commandment of love, e. And in the same place Matth. Get in full exhaust their reward.
Although, in this respect too, the Vedas shed on us the light of a higher teaching. They repeatedly declare that he, who desires any sort of recompense for his work, is still wandering in the path of dark- ness, and not yet ripe for deliverance. If any one should ask me what he gets from a charitable act, my answer in all sincerity would be: If you are not satisfied, and feel that such is not a suffi- cient end, then your wish was not to give alms,.
Now, how is it possible that trouble which is not mine, and by which I am untouched, should become as direct a motive to me as if it were my own, and incite me to action? No Siempre lo Peor es Cierto. This, however, presupposes that to a certain extent I have become identified with the other, and con- sequently that the barrier between the ego and the non-ego is, for the moment, broken down.
For it is one which Reason can give no direct account of, and its causes lie outside the field of experience. And yet it is of daily occurrence. Every one has often felt its working within himself; even to the most hard-hearted and selfish it is not unknown. It was manifested on a large scale, when after long consideration, and many a stormy debate, the noble- hearted British nation gave twenty millions of pounds to ransom the negroes in its colonies, with the approbation and joy of a whole world.
I, in North America, when the. What will be in each separate case the practical effect of this mysterious inner process may be left to Ethics to analyse, in chapters and paragraphs entitled "Duties of Virtue," "Duties of Love," " Imperfect Duties," or whatever other name be used. Ethics is in truth the easiest of all sciences.
THE truth I have here laid down, that Compassion is the sole non-egoistic stimulus, and therefore the only really moral one, is a strange, indeed almost incomprehensible paradox. I shall hope, therefore, to render it less extraordinary to the reader, if I show that it is confirmed by experience, and by the universal testimony of human sentiment. But not to make the matter too easy, I shall take no instance of loving-kindness, but rather a breach of lawful right, and that of the worse kind.
The sense is undoubtedly derived from Bacon's phrase "instantia crucis" which is one of his "Prerogative Instances. Let us suppose two young people, Cains and Titus, to be passionately in love, each with a different girl, and that both are completely thwarted by two other men who are preferred because of certain external circumstances. They have both resolved to put their rivals out of the way, and are perfectly secure from every chance of detection, even from all suspicion.
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But when they come to actually prepare for the murder, each of them, after an inward struggle, draws back. They are now to give us a truthful and clear account of the reasons why they abandoned their project. As for Caius, I leave it entirely to the reader to choose what motive he likes. Or perhaps he may say: This scruple, be it ob- served in passing, he might well overcome by the hope of soon producing a new instrument of the moral law, when once in possession of his beloved.
Or, again, he may speak after the fashion of Wollaston: In short, he may say what one pleases. But Titus, whose explanation is supplied by myself, will speak as follows: But simultaneously I was seized with compassion and pity; sorrow for him laid hold upon me, and overmastered me: I could not strike the blow.
Which of these two is the better man? To which would he prefer to entrust his own destiny? Which is restrained by the purer motive? Conse- quently, where does the basis of morality lie? Every other offence we can pardon, but not cruelty. The reason is found in the fact that cruelty is the exact opposite of Compassion.
When we hear of intensely cruel conduct, as, for. Then perhaps it intends to say: The sense of the question is assuredly nothing but this: Hence Compassion is the true moral incentive. The chief evidence of this lies in the fact that in spite of the great religious differ- ences in the world, the amount of morality, or rather of immorality, shows no corresponding variation, but in essentials is pretty much the same everywhere. Only it is important not to confound rudeness and refinement with morality and immorality.
The re- ligion of Hellas had an exceedingly small moral tendency, it hardly went further than respect for oaths. But if any one should believe for this reason that European morals have improved pro- portionally, and that now at any rate they surpass what obtains elsewhere, it would not be difficult to demonstrate that among the Mohammedans, Guebres, Hindus, and Buddhists, there is at least as much honesty, fidelity, toleration, gentleness, beneficence, nobleness, and self-denial as among Christian peoples. Indeed, the scale will be found rather to turn unfavour- ably for Christendom, when we put into the balance the long list of inhuman cruelties which have con- stantly been perpetrated within its limits and often in its name.
This is of course due to weakness of faith. Theoretically, and so long as it is only a question of piety in the abstract, every one supposes his belief to be firm enough. Only the searching touch-stone of all our convictions is what we do. When the moment for acting arrives, and our faith has to be tested by great self-denial and heavy sacrifices, then its feeble- ness becomes evident.
If a man is seriously planning some evil, he has already broken the bounds of true and pure morality. Thenceforward the chief restraint that checks him is invariably the dread of justice and the police. Should he be so hopeful of escap- ing detection as to cast such fears aside, the next barrier that meets him is regard for his honour.
If this second rampart be crossed, there is very little likelihood, after both these powerful hindrances are withdrawn, that any religious dogma will appeal to him strongly enough to keep him back from the deed. For if he be not frightened by near and immediate dangers, he will hardly be curbed by terrors which are distant, and rest merely on belief. Moreover, there is a positive objection that may be brought against all good conduct proceeding solely from.
This view we find very clearly expressed in a letter of the celebrated Grand-Duke of Weimar, Karl August. In vino veritas" 1 Letters to J. But now let us turn to the moral incentive which I have disclosed. 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?
S jam attributa VINO est. All because appearance remains appearance, and cannot become thing-in-itself. The inner essence of things is not within the jurisdic- tion of the why-rule. It is the thing-in-itself, and that is Will pure and simple. The Will is because it wills, and it wills because it is. It is the absolutely real in every being.
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The Principle of Sufficient Reason. But this separation, this resolution of the Ego or soul, which had so long been looked upon as indivisible, into two heterogeneous elements, is to Philosophy what the decomposition of water is to Chemistry, although it may be long before this is acknowledged.
With me the eternal and indestructible element in man — that which constitutes the principle of life in him — is not the soul, but, if I may be allowed a chemical expression, the radical of the soul ; and this is the Will. The so-called soul is a compound: This intellect is the secondary, the posterins of the organism, and is, as a mere cerebral function, conditioned by it ; whereas the Will is primary, the prius and conditioning basis of the organism.
For the Will is that essence-in-itself which in the present- ment that mere cerebral function first comes to exhibit itself as such or such an organic body. It is only by means of the forms of knowledge or cerebral function , i. As the actions of the body are only the particular volitions acts of Will reflected in the presentment, so is their substra- tum, the fashion of this body, the image of the Will as a whole. Hence the Will is the agens in all the organic functions of the body, just as it is in all the external actions thereof.
True Physiology, at its best, shows the spiritual 1 part in man — in other words knowledge — to be the product of his physical part: Perceivance 3 and thinking will be ever more and more explained from the organism, but willing never: The order of things according to me is, therefore, as follows: This organ is the objectified Will-to- know, the Will-to-know become presentment, for the Will requires knowledge in order to carry out its ends.
But this function in its turn conditions the whole world as presentment, consequently also the body itself in so far as it is perceptual object — nay, even matter at large, which exists in the presentment alone. For an objective world apart from a subject in whose consciousness it exists, is, if we think carefully, something utterly Will-to-see ; the hand, the objectified Will-to-grasp ; the teeth and throat, the objectified Will-to eat ; and so on. Knowledge and Matter subject and object exist, therefore, only relatively for each other, and together constitute the appearance.
Hence, through the fundamental change introduced by me, the question stands as it never stood before. When outwardly directed to a known object, when therefore it has passed through the medium of know- ledge, we all know that the active principle is the Will, and give it its right name. But it is equally the "Will that is active in the inner processes which precede and condition these outer actions — the processes which create and maintain organic life and its substratum ; and the circulation of the blood, secretion, and digestion are like- wise its work.
But just because we only recognised it where, leaving the individual from which it proceeds, it directs itself to the outside world, which now for the behoof of this very individual exhibits itself in perceiv- ance — we take knowledge to be its essential condition, its sole element, and even the very substance of which it consists, and thus is committed the greatest vartpov npoTipov 1 that the world has ever seen. But before all we must distinguish Will from Freewill 2 Willkilhr and understand that the former can exist without the latter, which of course is the keynote of my whole philosophy.
Freewill is Will enlightened by knowledge ; and therefore motives — presentments, that is — are its moving causes. Objectively expressed, this means that there is freewill when the influence from without, which causes the act, is conveyed through a brain. Motive may be defined as an outer stimulus, the first operation of which is to produce a picture in the brain, by means of which picture the Will consummates 1 Reversal of the true order by placing the last first.
But in man the place of this picture may be taken by a concept abstracted from former pictures of the kind by omission of their differences, and consequently no longer perceptual, but merely denoted and fixed by words. Since, therefore, with him the operation of motives is not confined to con- tact, they can measure their effective strength upon the Will against each other, i. In the animal this choice is confined to the narrow range of view which embraces only what is directly perceptible to it ; whereas in man it has the wide range of all that he can think, i.
We call those move- ments voluntary, therefore, which neither, like the move- ments of inorganic bodies, ensue from causes in the narrowest sense of the word, nor from mere stimuli, like those of plants, but from motives. Motives, however, presuppose Knowledge, which is the medium-of -motives, behind which causality, whose complete necessity remains unimpaired, may be seen at work. Physiologically the difference between stimulus and motive may be distin- guished as follows: Stimulus provokes immediate reaction, for this proceeds from the very part upon which the stimu- lus acts ; whereas Motive is a stimulus which must go round through the brain, where its first effect is to produce a picture, and not until this is formed does it call forth the ensuing reaction, which is then called a volition or voluntary act of Will.
The difference between voluntary and involuntary movements has consequently to do, not with the essential and primary, which in both is the Will, but only with the secondary, the evocation of the manifestation of the Will: On this point all the great thinkers of all ages are agreed ; and it is equally certain that the masses will never understand, never grasp, the great truth, that the work of our freedom is to be sought, not in the particular actions, but in our existence and essence itself. All this is set forth in the plainest way in my Prize Essay on the Freedom of the Will.
Accordingly the liberum arbitrium indiffer entice, 1 which is supposed to be the distinctive mark of movements that proceed from the Witt, is altogether inadmissible ; for it is an assertion of the possibility of effects without causes. As soon, therefore, as we have arrived at distinguishing between Will and Freewill, and have come to regard the latter as a particular species, or mode of appearance, of the former, we shall find no difficulty in discovering the Will in unconscious processes also. That all movements of our body, even those that are merely vegetative or organic, proceed from the Will, by no means implies that they are voluntary, for that would mean that they were occasioned by motives ; but motives are presentments, and their seat is the brain.
Only the parts in direct nerve-connexion with the brain can be moved by it, i. The movement of the inner economy of the organism, on the other hand, is guided by stimuli, as is that of plants ; only, that the complexity of the animal organism — a complexity such that it necessitated an outer sensorium for the apprehension of the external world and for the reaction of the Will upon this — required also a cerebrum abdominale, the sympathetic nervous-system, to direct in like manner the reaction of the Will upon the inner stimuli.
The former may be compared to the Foreign Office, the latter to the Home Office ; but the Will remains the autocrat, who is present everywhere. Hence is explicable the continued life of abscised parts in insects, reptiles, and other lowly organ- ised animals, whose brain has no considerable prepon- derance over the ganglions of its individual parts ; as likewise the fact that many reptiles will live for weeks, and even months, after the excision of their brain.
This perfectly explains the difference between conscious and unconscious, and with it the difference between voluntary and involuntary in the movements of the body ; and there is no further reason to assume two quite different principles of movement — especially as "principles are not to be unnecessarily multiplied.
We can hardly refuse to admit that in the organs of secretion there is a kind of choice of that which is proper to each of them — consequently a, freewill — and that they are aided by some sort of dull sensation, which leads each of them to take from the selfsame blood only that which is suitable to it and nothing else: We may therefore compare the organs of secretion to different kinds of cattle browsing in the same pasture, where each one crops only the herb that corresponds to its appetite. The form of every animal is a long- ing of the Will-to-live — a longing called forth by circum- stances: It can hardly walk at all, because it is only adapted for climbing ; helpless upon the ground, it is agile on trees, where it looks just like a moss-grown bough and so escapes the observation of the hunter.
But let us now look at the matter in a more prosaie and methodical way. The evident fitness, down to the minutest detail, of every animal for its mode of life, for the outer means of procuring subsistence, and the exceeding perfection of its organisation supply the richest materials for teleo- logical speculations, to which from time immemorial the mind of man has been fond of devoting itself, and which, when extended to inanimate Nature also, have furnished the argument of the physico-theological 1 proof. The adaptation in every particular, the evident intentionality 1 The argument from design.
But from the standpoint of empirical information the working of a Will can only be thought of as guided by knowledge. It was accordingly held that where Will acted, knowledge must direct it, and that consequently it directed it here also. But such is the nature of the medium of knowledge — which, as such, is essentially directed out- wards — that a Will deriving its activity from it can only work outwardly, i.
Hence the Will, unmistakable traces of which had been discovered, was not sought where these were found, but was transferred to without, and the animal was made the product of a foreign Will guided by knowledge, which knowledge had then to be a very clear and calculated concept of purpose, and this concept was supposed to precede the existence of the animal, and was placed, together with the Will whose product the animal is, out- side it.
This is the basis of the train of thought upon which the physico-theological proof depends. But this proof is not, like the ontological, 2 a mere sophism of the schools: Hume's reflective and sagacious mind alone stood the test. In his very interesting Dialogues on Natural Religion part 7 and elsewhere , this genuine prede- cessor of Kant reminds us that at bottom there is no similarity whatever between the works of Nature and those of Art working in accordance with design. Where so many failed, Kant's services appear all the more brilliant, both in the Critique of Judgment and in the Critique of Pure Reason, where he severs the nervous probandi' 2 not only of the other two proofs, but also of this exceedingly insidious one.
By refuting the physico- theological proof Kant performed a great service ; for nothing so militates against the true conception of Nature and the essence of things as the taking it to be the work of wise calculation. Let a Duke of Bridgewater bequeath large sums of money as prizes for the confirma- tion and perpetuation of such fundamental errors ; but I, with no reward save that of truth, will tread in the foot- steps of Hume and Kant, and work unflinchingly for their destruction. Truth is worthy of honour ; not that which 1 The proof a terrore, as indicated by the old saying of Petronius, "Primus in orbe Deos fecit timor" Fear first brought Gods into the world.
Here also, however, Kant has confined him- self to negative disproof ; but this will not have its full effect until supplemented by a regular positive proof, which alone affords complete satisfaction and of itself drives out error ; as Spinoza says, Sicut lux se ipsam et tenebras manifestat, sic Veritas norma sui et falsi est. The world was not made by the help of knowledge — consequently not from with- out, but from within ; and in the next place I must do all I can to show the punctum saliens starting-point of the world-egg.
Evident to the uncultured understanding as may be the physico-theological view, that an Intellect must have arranged and moulded Nature, it is none the less fundamentally wrong. For the intellect is known to us from animal nature alone — consequently as an alto- gether secondary and subordinate principle in the world, a product of comparatively recent origin: Nor can a mundas intelligibilis 2 precede the mundus sensibilis, 3 since from the latter alone does the former take all its materials.
It is not an Intellect that has produced Nature, but Nature that has produced the Intellect. The aboriginal is everywhere the Will, which fills all and in everything manifests itself immediately, thereby proclaiming that everything is appearance of the Will. This is just why all teleological facts find their explanation in the Will of the being itself in which they are met with.
For the rest, the physico-theological proof is already invalidated by the empirical observation, that the works done by animals from mechanical instinct — the spider's 1 As light makes manifest both itself and darkness, so is Truth a standard both of itself and the false. From this it follows that the conclusion from such things to such an origin as the proof assumes is uncer- tain, as is always the case when we argue from conse- quent to ground. An exhaustive investigation of mechani- cal instinct will be found in the 27th chapter of the Supplements to my chief work, and this, together with the chapter on Teleology, which precedes it, may be taken as supplementing my present remarks.
I spoke above of the fitness of the organisation or bodily structure of every animal to its mode of life, and to the procuring of means for the maintenance of its existence. On examining this matter rather more closely, the first question that meets us is: Does the mode of life depend upon the organisation, or does the organisation depend upon the mode of life? At first sight the former would seem to be the more correct assumption ; for in Time bodily structure precedes mode of life, and we might think that the animal has adopted that way of life to which its conformation is best suited, and has turned to the best account the organs with which it finds itself provided.
We might therefore suppose the bird to fly because it has wings, the ox to butt because it has horns ; and not vice versa. This view is held by Lucretius always a doubtful sign for an opinion: Nil ideo quoniam natum est in corpore, ut uti Possemus ; sed, quod natum est, id procreat usum; 1 and he enlarges upon this in Bk. But this 1 Not with a view to use was aught prepared In our frame ; but when produced, it leads To using. Thus, for example, the Ant-bear not only possesses long claws on its front paws wherewith to tear open the termites' nests, but also, in order to get into them, a long cylindrical snout terminating in a small mouth furnished with a long thread-shaped viscous tongue, which it thrusts far into the nests and with- draws covered with ants ; but it has no teeth, for it needs none.
Who can fail to see that the form of the Ant-bear is related to termites, as a volition to its motive? At the same time, so extraordinary is the apparent contradiction between the powerful paws of the animal, with their strong, long, curved claws, and its total lack of teeth, that to a new race of rational beings unacquainted with termites a fossil Ant-bear would be an insoluble riddle. Both in birds and quadrupeds the neck is, as a rule, of the same length as the legs, thus enabling them to pick their food from the ground ; but in aquatic birds it is often much longer, for they swim about and bring up their food from beneath the surface of the water.
Now it is quite clear that this creature must get its food from some depth, were it only a deep corolla of a flower Cuvier, Anat. It is just this law — coupled with the fact that no animal ever lacks an organ required for its particular way of living, but all, even the most various organs, are in agree- ment and as it were calculated for a quite specially determined mode of life, for the element in which the prey lives, for the pursuit, conquest, mastication, and digestion of the same — that shows us that it was the mode of life that this animal wanted to lead, in order to find its subsistence, that determined its structure, und not vice versa ; and that things turned out just as they would have, if a knowledge of its mode of life and outer circumstances had preceded that structure, and every animal had consequently chosen its equipment prior to its incarnation ; precisely as the sportsman, before setting out, chooses his equipment — gun, shot, powder, game-bag, hunting-knife, and clothing — according to the game he means to shoot.
He does not shoot at a wild- boar because he carries a rifle ; but he took the rifle, and 1 Nature's law of parsimony. So the ox does not butt because it has horns, but it has horns because it wants to butt. To com- plete the proof, we have this additional evidence: Thus rams, calves, and young males of several species butt with their bare polls before they have any horns ; the young boar strikes sideways, though he has as yet no tusks to gore with, whereas he leaves unused the smaller teeth which he has cut already and with which he really could bite.
Thus his mode of defence is not determined by the weapons he has, but by those he is going to have. Galen De usu partium anim. All this convinces us that the Will does not — as would some- thing adventitious, something that has sprung from knowledge — take advantage of organs which it finds ready-made and make use of parts simply because they and no others exist ; but that the effort to live in this way, to fight after this fashion, is primary and aboriginal — which effort exhibits itself not only in the use, but in the very existence of the weapon ; so much so that the use often precedes its existence, thus showing that the weapon makes its appearance because the effort is there — not vice versa ; and so with every part of the organism.
Aristotle De part, animal. The organic structure of every animal is shaped by its Will. For in his Philosophie Zoologique, vol.
Thus, according to him, aquatic birds and mam- mals gradually acquired webs on their feet by stretching their toes apart in swimming ; marsh-birds got their long necks and long legs in consequence of wading ; horned cattle gradually won their horns because, having no serviceable teeth, they fought with their heads alone, and the desire to fight in this way gradually produced horns and antlers ; the snail, like other mollusks, had no horns at first, but, as it needed them to feel surrounding objects, they gradually came into existence ; the whole cat-tribe developed claws in course of time because they required to tear their prey, and, since they needed to spare them as they walked and at the same time to avoid being hindered by them, they acquired sheaths and claw- contractility ; the giraffe, grazing on the leaves of trees in dry grassless Africa, stretched its forelegs and neck until it attained its present strange form, twenty feet high in front.
And so he goes through a multitude of 36 THE WILL IN NATURE species, which he declares to be evolved on this principle ; taking no heed of the obvious objection that before they had gradually, in the course of untold generations, pro- duced the organs necessary for their subsistence, they must meanwhile have perished from want and died out. So completely are men blinded by a hypothesis that takes possession of them. This particular hypothesis, however, arose from a perfectly correct and very deep apprehension of Nature, and is an error of genius, which, notwithstanding its inherent absurdity, does Lamarck honour.
The truth that lies in it belongs to him as an investigator of Nature: The falsehood, on the other hand, is the fault of the backward condition of Metaphysics in France, where even down to the present day Locke and his feeble follower Condillac reign paramount, and therefore bodies are things- in-themselves, and Time and Space qualities of things-in- themselves ; for France is a country to which the great and pregnant doctrine of the ideality of Space and Time, and consequently of all that presents itself in them, has never penetrated.
Lamarck was therefore unable to think of his animals as constructed otherwise than in Time through succession. From Germany Kant's profound influence has for ever banished errors of this kind, as likewise the crass, absurd atomism of the French and the edifying physico-theological speculations of the English.
So beneficent and lasting is the influence of a great mind, even upon a nation that could leave him to run after windbags and charlatans. He therefore assumes 1 Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. This perception makes it acquainted, as he supposed, with the conditions under which it has to live, and from this knowledge arise its strivings, i.
If he had had the courage to follow this scheme to an end, logic would have compelled him to assume a primitive animal which, originally devoid of form or organs, would afterwards have proceeded, in accordance with climatic and local conditions and the knowledge thereof, to transform itself into myriads of animal forms of every sort, from the midge to the elephant. Really and truly this primitive animal is the Will-to-live ; as such, however, it is not physical but metaphysical. No doubt every animal species has determined its form and bodily struc- ture by its own Will, to suit the conditions under which it willed to live ; not, however, as something physical in time, but as something metaphysical outside time.
Will has not proceeded from knowledge, nor did knowledge, together with the whole animal, exist before the Will came in as a mere accident, a secondary or even tertiary. No ; the Will is the primary, the essence-in-itself: Among these organs is the intellect, knowledge itself, and it is, like the rest, exactly suited to the mode of life of each animal ; whereas Lamarck makes the Will arise from it.
Of this diversity of characters the diversity of forms is merely the portrait. The carnivores, fashioned for fighting and preying, are provided with formidable teeth and claws, with powerful muscles: Timid animals, which will to find their safety in flight and not in battle, have, instead of weapons, light swift feet and sharp hearing — which in the most timid of them all, the hare, has even necessi- tated an extraordinary prolongation of the outer ear. To the external structure the internal corresponds: Each particular striving of the Will exhibits itself in a particular modification of form.
Hence the form of the pursuer is determined by the place which the prey inhabits: To extract the seeds from the scales of the fir-cone, comes the crossbill Loxia curvirostra , with its abnormally- shaped beak. To find the reptiles in their swamps, come marsh-birds, with exaggeratedly long legs, necks, and bills — the strangest figures. To dig out termites, comes the four-feet-long ant-bear, with its short legs, powerful claws, and long narrow muzzle, toothless but provided with a thread-shaped viscous tongue.
The pelican goes 1 That property of muscle which makes it respond to stimulus. To fall upon the sleepers of the night, out fly the owls, with enormously large pupils, enabling them to see in the dark, and with quite soft feathers, so that their flight may be noiseless and not waken the sleepers.
The Silurus, Gymnotus, and Torpedo have brought with them a complete electrical apparatus, to stun their prey before they can secure it, and also to act as a defence against their pursuers. For wherever a living thing breathes, straightway there comes another to devour it, 1 and each of these is furnished with peculiar means intended and exactly calculated, as it were, for the destruction of some other creature. In the insect world, for example, ichneumons deposit their eggs, for the future sustenance of their young, in the bodies of certain caterpillars and similar larvae, which they pierce for this purpose with their ovipositors.
Now those which lay their eggs in larvae which crawl about openly have quite short ovipositors of about one-eighth of an inch ; whereas Pimpla manifestator, which specially affects Chelostoma maxillosa, whose larva lies hidden deep in old timber into which it cannot penetrate, has one of two inches in length ; and almost as long is that of Ichneumon strobile, which deposits its eggs in larvae inhabiting fir- cones. With this instrument they reach the larva, pierce it and lay an egg in the wound, which egg on hatching devours the larva Kirby and Spence's Introcl.
No less plainly does the "Will-to-escape- 1 So convinced was R.
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Owen of this truth that after attentive examina- tion of the many fossil marsupials of Australia, some of which are as big as a rhinoceros, he came, as early as the year , to the correct con- clusion that there must have been a contemporary species of large carni- vore. This has since been confirmed ; for in he received a portion of the fossil skull of a carnivore as big as a lion, which he has named Thylacoleo, i.
Pouch-lion, for it is a marsupial also. Hedge- hogs and porcupines raise aloft a forest of spears. Clad in armour from head to foot, and inaccessible to tooth, beak, and claw, appear armadillos, pangolins, tortoises, and likewise upon a small scale the whole class of crus- taceans. Others have sought to defend themselves, not by physical resistance but by baffling the pursuer: True, our flea is black too, but it trusted to its prodigious and erratic leaps, when it devoted to them an apparatus of such unexampled power.
But the anticipation found to exist in all these preparations will become comprehensible to us when we examine that which manifests itself in mechani- cal instinct. The young spider and ant-lion have as yet no knowledge of the prey for which they construct their first traps. And so of defensive measures: In such anticipations is once more confirmed the ideality of time, which invariably comes to the fore whenever the Will as thing-in-itself is in question.
On the Basis of Morality/Part III
In the matters here touched upon, and in many others as well, the mechanical instinct of animals and the physiological functions throw light upon each other, because in both Will without know- ledge is at work. The intellect is accordingly destined solely for the service of the Will, to which it is always exactly suited. Carnivores needed it more, and have evidently far more of it, than herbivores. The elephant, and to a certain extent the horse also, are exceptions ; but the marvellous intelligence of the elephant was necessary because, with its life-term of two hundred years and its very slow rate of increase, provision had to be made for the longer safeguarding of the individual — and that in countries which swarm with the greediest, sturdiest, and most active beasts of prey.
The horse, too, has a longer term of life and a slower rate of increase than the ruminants: The extraordinary intelligence of apes was necessary, partly because, with a duration of life that even in those of moderate size reaches to fifty years, they have a slow rate of increase, producing only a single young one at a time ; but mainly because they have hands, which had to be directed by an intellect that knew how to use them properly, both for defence by means of extraneous weapons such as sticks and stones, and also for the procuring of food, which necessitates all sorts of artificial devices, chief among which stands an elaborately-organised system of robbery, in which they aid each other, passing the stolen fruit from hand to hand, posting sentries, etc.
It should be observed that this intelligence belongs chiefly to their period of youth, in which the muscular powers are still undeveloped: This applies to all apes: Speaking generally, there is a gradual rise of intelligence in mammals from the rodents, who in this respect occupy the lowest place, through the pachyderms and carnivores, to the quadrumana, who stand highest ; and this result of empirical observation is confirmed by anatomy, which shows accordingly Flourens and Cuvier that the gradual development of the brain follows the same order.
Of reptiles, snakes are the most intelligent, and they can even be trained: As in regard to physical weapons, so also in respect of intelligence we everywhere find the Will to be the prius, and its tool, the Intellect, the posterius. Carnivores do not hunt, nor do foxes steal, because they have more intelligence ; but it is because they willed to live by hunting and stealing that they possess not only stronger teeth and claws, but also more intelligence. The fox has more than made up for his deficiency in power of muscle and strength of teeth by exceeding acuteness of intellect.
We have a peculiar illustration of our theme in the Dodo Didus ineptus , a bird which used to live in the island of Mauritius, and which has died out, as everyone knows: In this case it seems that for once Nature carried her lex parsimonice 1 Among birds, too, none are so intelligent as the birds of prey, many of which — falcons especially — are susceptible of a high degree of train- ing.
If anyone should be led to ask whether Nature should not have given insects as much intelligence as might suffice at least to keep them from rushing into the flame of the candle,jthe answer is: The organism, however, is simply the Will become visible ; to which Will, as the absolute primary, everything constantly points back: The plant has no apperception, 3 because it has no loco- motivity ; for of what use would apperception have been if it did not enable it to seek the beneficial and shun the noxious?
Therefore in the plant we do not yet find the inseparable dyad of Sensibility and Irritability; but it slumbers in its groundwork, the reproductive faculty, 4 in which alone the Will here objectifies itself. The sun- flower, and every flower, desires light ; but its movement towards the light is not yet separated from its perception 1 Nature does nothing in vain. In man the Understanding, 1 which in him is so greatly superior to that of all other beings, is fortified by the addition of Reason the faculty of non-perceptual presentments, i.
All these important require- ments had to be covered by intellectual powers, and it is for this reason that they are so preponderant in man. But everywhere we find the Intellect to be secondary and subordinate, its vocation being merely to serve the ends of the Will. Faithful to this vocation, it remains as a rule always in the service of the Will. In particular cases, however, an abnormal preponderance of cerebral life makes it break away from this service, and there ensues pure objective knowing, which may rise even to genius, as I have described at length in the Third Book the aesthetic portion of my chief work, and later in the Parerga, ii.
If now, after all these observations on the complete agreement between the Will and the bodily structure of every animal, we go through a well-arranged osteological collection from this point of view, we shall seem to see one and the same being Lamarck's aboriginal animal — more properly, the Will-to-live changing its form in 1 That faculty of the mind which apprehends outer objects. This number and arrangement of bones, which Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire Principes de philosophie zoologique, calls the 14 anatomical element," remains in all essential points — as he has exhaustively proved — unchanged throughout the whole series of vertebrates: To this point I shall return presently.
In conjunction with this invariability of order and arrangement, however, we find the greatest variability, plasticity, and ductility of these same bones, as well in regard to size and shape as to the ends to which they are applied — all this being determined, as we see, with aboriginal power and free- dom by the Will, in conformity with the ends prescribed to it by external conditions: If it wills to clamber on trees as an ape, it forthwith seizes the boughs with four hands, and in so doing stretches the ulna and radius very considerably ; at the same time lengthening the ox coccygis to an ell-long prehensile tail, with which to hang on the boughs and swing from one to another.
Contrariwise, it shortens these arm-bones out of all recognition, if it wills to crawl as a crocodile in the mud, or to swim as a seal, or to dig as a mole — in which last case it broadens out the metacaipus and phalanges into enormous shovel-paws at the expense of all the other bones. But if it wills to traverse the air as a bat, not only are the os humeri, radius, and ulna prodigiously prolonged, but the carpus, metacarpus, and phalanges 46 THE WILL IN NATUEE digitorum, which in other animals are quite small and subordinate, extend themselves, as in the vision of St.
Anthony, to a monstrous length exceeding that of the creature's body, and are bespread with a wing-mem- brane. Or if, in order to browse as a giraffe on the crowns of Africa's trees, it places itself on immensely high fore-legs, those same invariable seven cervical vertebrae, which in the mole were so crowded up together as to be unrecognisable, are now prolonged to such an extent that here too, as always, the length of the neck equals that of the fore-legs, so that the animal can reach down to drink. When, however, it appears as an elephant, a long neck could not possibly bear the weight of the enormous massive head, with its added burden of fathom- long tusks, and so this member remains exceptionally short and it helps itself out with a trunk, which it lets down to the earth to draw up food and water, and also rears to the tops of trees.
In harmony with all these changes we see the skull, the receptacle of the intellect, expanding, developing, arching, in proportion as the more or less difficult way in which the animal procures its subsistence requires more or less intelligence ; and the practised eye can clearly determine its different degrees of intellect from the amount of arching.
Now it must be admitted that this " anatomical element," which I spoke of above as being firmly fixed and unchangeable, remains a puzzle, inasmuch as it does not fall within the province of teleological explanation, which cannot begin until we take this element for granted ; for in many cases the organ under observation would have served its purpose equally well with a different number and arrangement of bones. We perfectly under- stand, for instance, why the human cranium is composed of eight bones, viz. We must therefore assume that this anatomical element depends partly upon the unity and identity of the Will-to-live in general, and partly upon the circumstance that the primary forms of animals have proceeded one from the other Parerga, ii.
Aristotle's expression for this anatomical element is " necessary Nature," and the variability of its forms according to the ends in view he calls " Nature guided by reason " see the close of his De partibus animalium, iii. There is no hypothesis which explains the exact corre- spondence of the osseous structure of the animal to its aims and outer conditions of life, and also the amazing adaptation and harmony in the mechanism of its inner economy, half so well, as the truth which has been already established by me elsewhere that the body of the animal is nothing but its Will itself viewed as presentment — consequently under the forms of space, time, and causality — in the brain ; that is, the mere visibility, objectivity, of the Will.
For under this sup- position everything in and about it must conspire to the ultimate aim, the life of this animal. Thus nothing use- less, nothing superfluous, nothing deficient, nothing ill adapted, nothing insufficient or imperfect of its kind, will be found in it ; but everything necessary must exist, just so far as it is necessary, but no farther. For here artist, work, and material are one and the same. Therefore every organism is an exceedingly perfect masterpiece.
Therefore the organism stands there as a marvel, and is not to be compared with any human work elabo- rated by the lamplight of knowledge. Our wonderment at the infinite perfection and suit- ability to their purpose displayed in the works of Nature comes in reality from our regarding them from the point of view of our own works. In these the Will-to-work and the work are two separate things, to begin with ; next, between these two lie two other things, 1 the medium of presentment, which is foreign to the Will as such, and through which the Will has to.
This material must first be overcome, and, no matter how deeply the artificial form may have penetrated, it will continue to struggle against it within. With the works of Nature all is quite different ; for they are not, like ours, a mediate, but an immediate manifestation of the Will. Here the Will is acting in its original condition, i. Will and work are separated by no mediating present- ment ; they are one. And the very material is one with them; for Matter is the mere visibility of the Will. That even here [in Nature's works] we separate them, as we do in a work of art, is a mere abstraction.
Pure absolute matter, devoid of form and quality, which we conceive as the material from which Nature's product is made, is a mere figment of the mind and can be present in no experience; whereas the material of a work of art is empirical i. Identity of form and matter is the distinguishing mark of the product of Nature; diversity of these, that of the product of art.
That is a great truth which Bruno De immenso et innumerabili, 8, 10 proclaims: Art deals with matter from without ; Nature is within matter. The true essence of every animal form is an act of Will outside the presentment, and consequently outside its forms Space and Time — an act which for this very reason knows no succession and concomitancy, but has indivisible unity. But if that form is appre- hended by our cerebral perceivance, and its interior parts dissected with the scalpel, there then comes to the light of knowledge that which, though originally and in- itself foreign to the mind and its laws, must needs now present itself there — of course in accordance with the mind's forms and laws.
The original unity and indivisi- bility of this act of Will, of this truly metaphysical being, now appears lengthened out into a concomitancy of parts and a succession of functions, which nevertheless exhibit themselves as strictly bound one to the other, mutually helping and supporting each other as means and end. The understanding that apprehends this is amazed at the 50 THE WILL IN NATUKE marvellous tief durchdachte arrangement of parts and combination of functions, because, when it perceives how the restoration of the original unity from the multiplicity which its own knowledge-forms first introduced is effected, it cannot help concluding that this animal-form arose in the same manner.
We now see the meaning of the great Kantian doctrine, that the suitableness of things to their end is first brought into Nature by the understanding, which accordingly stands amazed before a miracle of its own creating. If I may venture to explain so deep a matter by a trivial simile, the understanding is here in the position of a mind which is astonished at finding that, on adding the digits of all multiples of 9, it gets 9 again or a number whose digits added together come to 9, although it has prepared this marvel for itself in the decimal system. The physico-theological argument holds that the world existed in an intellect before it really existed: But I say with Kant: A world that exists as presentment must look as if means were adapted to ends ; and this notion of adaptation arises first in our intellect.
It follows, of course, from my doctrine, that every being is its own work. Nature, which can never lie and is as naive as genius, says the same thing straight out ; for every being can only kindle the spark of life in another being which is exactly like it, and then makes itself before our eyes, taking the material for this being from without, and the form and motion from itself: But we do not under- stand Nature's speech, because it is too simple. It never occurred to them that the Will is the primary, and therefore independent of knowledge, with which, as the secondary, consciousness first enters.
Of knowledge, presentment, plants have merely an analogon, a surro- gate ; whereas Will they have actually and quite imme- diately, for it, as thing-in-itself, is the substratum of their, as of every appearance. Proceeding realistically, and therefore starting from the objective, we may also say: When that which lives and moves in vegetable Nature and the animal organism has gradually climbed to a point, in the hierarchy of beings, at which the light of knowledge falls immediately upon it, it exhibits itself, in the consciousness that now arises, as Will, and is here more immediately, and consequently better known than anywhere else ; and this knowledge must therefore supply the key to the understanding of every being that stands lower on the scale ; for in this knowledge the thing-in-itself is veiled by no other form save the single one of the most immediate perception.
This immediate perception of our own willing has been called the " inner sense. As the world would be dark notwithstanding the sun, if there were no bodies to reflect its light ; or, as the 52 THE WILL IN NATURE vibration of a string requires air, and even some kind of resonance-box, in order to become sound ; so does the Will first become conscious of itself by the advent of knowledge — Knowledge being, as it were, the resonance- box of the Will, and Consciousness the resulting tone.
This coming of the Will to a consciousness of itself has been ascribed to the so-called "inner sense," because it is our first and most immediate knowledge. The only things cognisable by this inner sense are the various affections of our own Will: Hence simple mental-picturing direct perceiving is related to thinking proper, i. Therefore perfectly clear and distinct consciousness, both of our own existence and of that of other beings, enters first with Reason the faculty of concepts , which raises man as high above the animal as the merely perceptual faculty of presentment of the animal raises it above the plant.
Now that which, like the plant, has no presentment we call unconscious, and we regard it as differing but little from the non- existent ; for its existence 1 is really only in the conscious- ness of some other being, whose presentment it is. It, however, does not lack the primary of existence, the Will, but only the secondary ; yet without this the primary, which nevertheless is the being of the thing in-itself, seems to us to pass over into nothingness.
Immediately we cannot clearly distinguish an unconscious existence from non - existence, although we have an empirical example of it in deep sleep. Therefore, as I have often said, knowledge is, on account of its being that which conditions movement in response to motives, the true and essentially distinguishing charac- teristic of animality. Where animality ceases, knowledge proper, whose nature is so well known to us from our own experience, disappears, and we can henceforth only make comprehensible to ourselves by analogy that which inter- venes between the influence of the outside world and the movements of beings, 1 while the Will, which we have recognised as the basis and kernel of every being, always and everywhere remains one and the same.
At the lower grade of the plant-world, as also of the vegetative life in the animal organism, the place of knowledge is taken by Stimulus, which now determines the particular manifesta- tions of this omnipresent Will, and becomes the mediator between the outside world and the changes of the being in question [i. Thus Stimulus in the first case, and, in the second, Physical Influence of some kind, exhibits itself — when we look, as we do here, from above to below — as a surrogate of know- ledge, and consequently as something analogous thereto. We cannot say that plants really perceive light and sun: Since, then, the plant has needs, although not such as make the paraphernalia of a sensorium and intellect necessary, it must have, in place of this, something analogous thereto which shall enable the Will, if not to seek, at any rate to grasp the satisfaction offered to it.
Such a thing is the susceptibility to stimulus, whose difference from know- ledge I should like to express as follows: In knowledge the motive that appears as presentment, and the conse- quent volition, remain distinctly separate one from the other, and all the more distinctly the more perfect the intellect is ; whereas, in mere susceptibility to stimulus, perception of the stimulus is no longer distinguishable from the willing excited by it, and both melt into one. Finally, in inorganic Nature, susceptibility to stimulus, the analogy of which to knowledge is not to be mistaken, also ceases: If the body reacts in a different way, it can only be that the influence is different and provokes a different affection in it, which, notwithstanding its indistinctness, has yet a distant analogy to knowledge.
Considerations such as these have hitherto served me as evidence of the Will in all things ; but I now employ them as showing the sphere to which Knowledge proves itself to belong when regarded, not in the usual manner from within, but realistically as a foreign object from an out- side standpoint, i. The same office which is performed for animals and men by knowledge as the medium of motives, is performed for plants by sensibility to stimulus, and for inorganic bodies by susceptibility to causes of every kind ; and in each case the difference is, strictly speaking, one of degree only.
For it is only because the animal's needs have raised its susceptibility to outer impressions to a point at which a nervous system and brain must perforce develop themselves for the satis- faction of these needs, that there arises, as a function of this brain, consciousness, and in it the objective world, 1 I. We thus find know- ledge to be originally calculated entirely for the subjec- tive — to be determined merely for the service of the Will, and consequently of a quite secondary and subordinate character ; nay, as if it only entered per accidens, so to speak, as the condition of the influence of bare motives instead of stimuli — this influence becoming necessary at the stage of animality.
The picture of the world in space and time which now comes into being, is merely a field on which motives exhibit themselves as ends: But what a leap it would be to take this picture of the world which thus accidentally arises in the intellect, i. Surely this assumption would seem to be in the highest degree over-hasty and presumptuous, and yet it is the foundation whereon all the systems of nre - Kantian Dogmatism are reared ; for it is taken for granted in all their ontology, cosmology, and theology, as well as in the ceterna veritates to which these appeal.
But this leap was always taken tacitly and unconsciously: For the latter takes the subjective for its standpoint, and regards consciousness as given ; but from consciousness itself and its a priori ordering, the conclusion is reached that all that takes place in it can be nothing but mere appearance. We, on the contrary, from our outside realistic standpoint, which takes the objective, the beings in Nature, as the absolutely given, see what the intellect is so far as its aims and origin are concerned, and to what class of phenomena it belongs ; and hence we know a priori that it must be confined to mere appearances, and that what exhibits itself in it can never be other than something which in the main is subjectively conditioned, i.
For in the system of Nature we have found the faculty of knowledge to be a conditioned thing, and its statements can for this very reason never have unconditioned validity. On rising from the perusal of the Critique of Pure Reason, to which our standpoint is essentially foreign, the student who has understood it will, however, still feel as if Nature had purposely designed the intellect for a puzzle-glass, and as though she were playing hide and seek with us.
But we, on our realistic-objective path, i. Our objective standpoint is a realistic and therefore condi- tioned one, inasmuch as, taking the beings in Nature as given, it omits to take account of the fact that their objec- tive existence presupposes an intellect whose presentment they are in the first instance ; but Kant's subjective and idealistic standpoint is likewise conditioned, inasmuch as with him a start is made from the intelligence, which, however, itself presupposes Nature, for it is only in con- sequence of having pushed development so far as to reach animal existences that intelligence was able to enter.
Holding fast to this realistic-objective stand- point of ours, we may say of Kant's doctrine that after Locke, in order to know things-in-themselves, had with- drawn from things-as-they-appear the contribution made by the functions of sense, the secondary qualities as he called them, Kant with far greater acumen withdrew that much more considerable contribution made by the cere- bral function, viz. For instance, I said above that where knowledge exists, the motive that appears as presentment and the resulting volition are distinguished one from the other the more distinctly the more perfect the intellect is, i.
In explanation of this I would say: In the lowest animal intelligences of all, such as the Radiaria, Acalepha, and Acephala, etc. Consequently the sense- organs are here very imperfect and incomplete, for they only have to afford to an embryonic understanding exces- sively few perceptual data. As we ascend in the series of animals, the senses become more numerous and more perfect, until we get all five: To this develop- ment of the senses corresponds that of the brain, and its function, the understanding: Still, apprehension never goes beyond what is required for the service of the Will: Even the cleverer animals see in objects only that which concerns them, i.
But to everything else they are insusceptible: Only in the very cleverest animals, that have been educated by taming, do we sometimes see the first weak traces of disinterested contemplation of their surroundings: But not until we come to man is there complete separation between motive and action, presentment and Will. This, however, does not at once abolish the servitude of the intellect to the Will. The ordinary man still clearly apprehends in things only that which directly or indirectly has some connexion with him, interest for him: Whatever he may do, he remains a stranger to philosophic wonderment and artistic rapture ; at bottom everything appears to him to be a matter of course.
The pure objectivity and distinctness with which things present themselves in perceivance that fundamental and most essential kind of knowledge is always in inverse propor- tion to the interest taken in these things by the Will, and will-less knowing is the condition — nay, the very essence of all aesthetic apprehension. Why is this landscape by an ordinary painter so bad, notwithstanding all the trouble he has taken with it? Because to his eyes it is not more beautiful.