Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/473

Rh SCHOPENHAUER 451 language and reasoning he rises out of the animal immersion in the present and is able to anticipate the future. He forms general ideas and thus can preserve and communicate abstract knowledge. But reason, though its "laws of thought" have a formal truth of their own, has no independent value either as theoretical or as practical. In the former aspect it gives rise to scientific knowledge the knowledge of facts and sequences not in their single occur- rences but as instances of a general law. By means of the general truths thus arrived at we can deduce or prove. But a proof is, after all, only a means of showing the disputatious that something which they deny is inseparably bound up with something they admit. It is a mistake, therefore to substitute for the ocular demonstration of which geometry is susceptible a syllogistic reasoning which may compel assent but cannot inspire insight. Singular experiences are the true workers which support the luxury of general ideas, and reasoning cannot claim to be more than a re-arrangement of pro- ducts from other fields. Reason is equally important and equally limited as a factor in conduct. It enables us, as it were, to lead a second life, guided by general principles and not by single appetitions. Such a life is what is called a life according to reason, typified in the ideal of the Stoic sage. The wise man carries out the items of conduct accord- ing to a general plan and is superior to the impulses of the moment. But here too the general rests upon the particular ; a systematic happiness takes the place of single and conflicting pleasures, but still can only justify itself by procuring pleasure. Thus, unless there be a new perception of life's meaning, reasoning cannot make a man virtuous, it can only make him prudent ; it tells him how to reckon with his natural character, but it cannot show him how to amend it. k ii. Book ii. is an attempt to name that residual reality which is pre- supposed but not explained in every scientific explanation, whether retiological or morphological. The key is found in the conscious- ness of ourselves as exerting will. What to the inner conscious- ness is volition is to the outer perception a bodily movement. And as each act of volition is perceived in a bodily motion, so will as a whole is by us perceived as body. This consciousness that my body is my will objectified my will translated into terms of scien- tific apprehension is the "philosophical truth" of truths. And, generalizing this truth, we conclude that, as our corporeal frame is the visibility of our mode of will, so everything is some grade in the objectification of the will. While the setiology of science accounts for the familiar complex by a simpler and more abstract phase, philosophy uses the clearer and more conspicuous instance to explain the more rudimentary. The law of motivation is taken as a key to open the incomprehensibility of mere causation, and in the stone we presume a feeble analogue of what we know as will. The will as such, apart from its objectification in animals, knows nothing of motives, which, though they explain the special circum- stances, presuppose the underlying and originative force. No doubt a false idea of simplicity has often led theorists to reduce all sciences in the last resort to applied mathematics, in which the mysterious something called force was eliminated and only the forms of space and time and motion left. But, though it is doubtless possible to reduce the list of original forces, we cannot get rid of an inexplic- able activity. Hence the original force or will is beyond the range of causality; every cause is only an "occasional cause," and but states the temporal conditions of operation of the eternal energy. While each several act has an aim, the collective will has none. The numerical differences of objects do not touch the underlying activity. It is felt in one oak as much as in a million, for time and space are only semblance for (animal) intelligence. And there- fore, instead of wondering at the uniformity pervading the in- stances of any objectification of will, we should remember that the will-force operating in all is the same, and reveals its inner identity in the common law. For the same reason the adaptations of the parts of an organic body or of one organic body to another are only the consequences of the unity of will. Just as the series of actions throughout a life are only the utterances of one original character, and so intrinsically interdependent, so the grades of objectification in nature are the expression of one identical will, which forms the conditions of existence as well as the living creatures accommodating themselves to them. Will, which appears in its lowest grade of objectification as the physical forces of inorganic nature, rises in the vegetative world to a peculiar sympathetic response to the stimulation by external circumstances, and in the animal world produces for itself a special organ, the brain, which possesses the power of presenting under the forms of sense and in- tellect that objective manifestation of will which we call the world of our experience. With the existence of the animal brain, the world emerged into time and space. It was a step necessitated by the growing complexity of type in the will-products, which could neither exist nor preserve their kind without this new instrument which substituted conscious adaptation for unconscious teleology. In this strange mythology by which Schopenhauer replaces the mystery of creation we see the magic world of will, weaving ever higher complexities of material existence, brought at length by stress of circumstances to forge a material organ which shows the sense-world as the objectification of the will. In this one material organ the will has come to see itself expanded into a complicated order of time and place. But at first the brain and its function, knowledge, are solely employed in the service of the will. Book iii. shows how the intellect is emancipated from this bond- Book iii. age to the will. When we contemplate an object simply for its own sake, forgetting everything and ourselves even in the vision, then what we have before us is no longer one thing among many but a type, not one of a class but an ultimate individuality, not a par- ticular but an adequate embodiment of the universal. Instead of the general concept or class-notion we have the Platonic "idea" one image into which all the essential life of the object has been concentrated. To realize this individual which has not entered into the bonds of individuation, this universal which is not a mere genus but the eternal truth of the individual, is the province of genius. The man of genius, neglecting the search for relationships between things unpractical and to practical judgment sometimes seeming to have a touch of madness instead of seeking to classify a thing or find out what it is for, looks at it for its own sake and sees the one type or ideal which is seeking for expression in its various and contingent manifestations. Such genius begets art. Yet so much at least of genius is in all men that they can follow where the artist leads and see through his eyes. Everything as thus contemplated disinterestedly for its own sake and in its per- manent significance is beautiful. Yet one thing is more beautiful than another. For there are objects which more than others facili- tate the quiescence of desire and present to us their permanent character without suggesting or stimulating appetite. The sense of sight is more independent than others of associations of desire, the past and distant purer from self-interest than the present. Those objects are specially beautiful where the significant idea is most clearly presented in the individual form. Indeed, when a certain effort is required to keep out of sight the general bearing of the object on the will, then the object, where the perception of genius still sees the perfect type in the single form, is called sublime. The several arts fall naturally into an order which rises from the passive enjoyment in the contemplation of inorganic forces to the active perception of will in its most complex types. Architecture seeks in works dedicated to human use to give expression to the fundamental features of physical force, e.g., cohesion, weight, &c., and to that end it intensifies the appearance of strain by refusing the forces an easy and immediate lapse into their natural tendency. In short, it seeks to show resistance visible. Sculpture presents the beauty and grace of the human form, i.e., the "idea" of that form as a whole and in the single movements. Here the "idea" is not derived by comparison and abstraction of observed forms ; but we, as ourselves the will seeking manifestation, anticipate by our ideal the meaning of the imperfect phases and lay down an a priori canon of beauty. While sculpture gives expression to the more generic type in figure and motion, painting aims at repre- senting action. But even historical pictures seek in a given scene to present not the historical importance of the action but its per- manent meaning. Poetry, which uses an arrangement of general concepts to convey an " idea," or moulds reality out of abstractions, gives us the central and abiding truth which history usually dis- sipates in a host of particulars and relations. In lyric poetry the individual subject of will presents himself as the subject of artistic perception : his own experience is displayed as typical and universal. In tragedy the truth shown is the inner conflict at the very root of the will. The hero is exhibited as brought to see the aimlessness of all will ; and by suffering he learns resignation. Music, unlike the other arts, is an image of the movement of will not yet ob- jectified ; and in its elements and harmonies we have a parallel to the stages and complexities of the actual world. Hence the ex- planation of music would be a philosophy of the world. But art, though it affords an interval of rest from the drudgery Book iv. of will-service, cannot claim to be more than a transient consola- tion. Book iv. indicates a surer way of release. It reminds us that our life is the phenomenon of the will, a phenomenon which begins at birth and ends at death, and of which every instant is a partial birth and a partial death. But the cessation of the indi- vidual life is not an annihilation of the will ; our essential being is indestructible. The manifestation of the will in human life is spread out and disposed in an endless multitude of actions. Ex- perience sums up these in a single formula, the maxim of our empirical character ; and that result itself is the type or idea which reveals the one unalterable utterance of will, which is the intel- ligible character. 1 It is this immemorial act which fixes our empirical character, which gives the consistency and regularity of our acts. Velle non discitur. Character is given (by an ante- phenomenal act) ; it is not acquired. If in one sense we can speak of an "acquired character," we mean thereby that we now under- stand what manner of men we are, that we have learned the best and worst of ourselves. But, though the character is given once i The terms are borrowed from Kant.