Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/476

Rh 454 SCHOPENHAUEB look for it in the immemorial act of will which is the timeless origin of living beings. The third essay represents the intellect or "the world as idea " as having its origin in the narrow partition which in men and animals is interposed between the stimulation of a cause and the reaction which supervenes. From this realistic standpoint intellect seems an interloper in nature, an accident associated with the fortunes of man, and made victorious in the genius which can behold the world " in maiden meditation, fancy- free. " The fourth essay traces the grades of disproportion between cause and effect from inorganic to organic nature. Where there is causality there is will ; but for us the more obviously the one shows itself the less is the other remarked. Another paper seeks to connect animal magnetism (mesmerism, hypnotism) and magic with the doctrine that in each of us the whole undivided will re- tains its miraculous potency. In 1837 Schopenhauer sent to the committee entrusted with the execution of the proposed monument to Goethe at Frankfort a long and deliberate expression of his views, in general and particular, on the best mode of carrying out the design. But his fellow -citizens passed by the remarks of the mere writer of books. More weight was naturally attached to the opinion he had advocated in his early criticism of Kant as to the importance, if not the superiority, of the first edition of the Kritik ; in the col- lected issue of Kant's works by Rosenkranz and Schubert in 1838 that edition was put as the substantive text, with supplementary exhibition of the differences of the second. Tioo In 1841 he published under the title Die beiden Grund- J/rtm probleme der Ethik two essays which he had sent in lemt'of 1838-39 in competition for prizes offered. The first was Ethics. * n answer to the question " Whether man's free will can be proved from self -consciousness," proposed by the Nor- wegian Academy of Sciences at Drontheim. His essay was awarded the prize, and the author elected a member of the society. But proportionate to his exultation in this first recognition of his merit was the depth of his mortification and the height of "his indignation at the result of the second competition. He had sent to the Danish Academy at Copenhagen in 1839 an essay "On the Foundations of Morality" in answer to a vaguely worded subject of discussion to which they had invited candidates. His essay, though it was the only one in competition, was refused the prize on the grounds that he had failed to examine the chief problem (i.e., whether the basis of morality was to be sought in an intuitive idea of right), that his explanation was inadequate, and that he had been wanting in due respect to the summi phUosophi of the age that was just passing. This last reason, while probably most effective with the judges, only stirred up more furiously the fury in Schopenhauer's breast, and his preface is one long fulmination against the ineptitudes and the charlatanry of his bete noire, Hegel. In the essay on the freedom of the will Schopenhauer shows that the deliverance of self-consciousness, " I can do what I will," is a mere statement of our physical freedom, or the sequence of outward act upon inner resolve, in the absence of physical restraint. "The statement of self-consciousness concerns the will merely a parte post, the question of freedom, on the contrary, a parte ante." Self-consciousness throws no light on the relation of volition to its antecedents. If, on the other hand, we turn to the objects of the outer senses, we find that it is part and parcel of their very nature to be not free but necessitated, governed, in short, by the principle of causation. But in the ascending scale of causation cause and effect become more and more heterogeneous, their connexion more unintelligible. This is seen in motivation, especially where the motives are not immediate perceptions but general abstract ideas. It is in the possibility of a conflict of motives that man's freedom of choice consists. But, because we can by a feat of abstraction keep an image of one course of action before us and neglect the other concrete conditions of behaviour, there grows up an illusion that the mere initial solicitation or velleity might, if we pleased, become actual will. Hence the delusion that we are free to will and not to will. Still the necessitating cause or motive is only the rule under which the real force or radical will operates. In this radical will consists our being, and on it action is consequent : operari sequitur esse. By our original character acting in certain circumstances of motive our actions are inevitably determined. But the sense of responsibility for our conduct is not altogether a delusion. It is really a responsibility for our character, which we have gradually learned experimentally to know, and which so known serves as a court 01 appeal against single actions, or, in other words, becomes a conscience. That character is the sunra- temporal action of that will which we and all things are. Thus this question of the freedom of the will, which is "a touchstone for distinguishing the profound from the superficial thinker," is solved by the Kantian distinction of empirical and transcendental world. In the words of Malebranche, " La liberte est un mystere." The essay on the foundation of morality is an attempt to present the fundamental fact of the moral consciousness and to show its metaphysical bearings. It includes a lengthy criticism of Kant's system of ethics as only the old theological morality under a disguise of logical forinuke. Kant, according to his critic, though he struck a severe blow at eudaenionism, made the mistake of founding ethics on ideas of obligation and respect, which arc meaningless apart from a positive sanction. His categorical im- perative is attributed to reason, a power which we only know as human, but which Kant regards as more than human and borrows from the "rational psychology," which itself had received it from theology. The moral spring should be a reality and a fact of nature, whereas Kant seeks it in the subtilties of general ideas, forgetting that reasoning is one thing and virtue another. And, when Kant has to illustrate the application of his rule for discover- ing the categorical imperative, he is forced to have recourse to con- siderations of self-interest. After this examination, Schopenhauer preludes his exposition by the sceptical survey of so-called virtuous actions as due in the vast majority of instances to other than moral motives, and by a dis- integration of the average conscience into equal parts of fear of man, superstition, prejudice, vanity, and custom. The mainspring of human action (as of animal) is egoism, supplemented by the hatred or the malice which arises through egoistic conflicts. But, though these are the predominant springs of conduct, there arc cases of unselfish kindness. It is in sympathy, or in our as it were substituting ourselves for another who is in pain, that we find the impulse which gives an action a truly moral value. The influence of sympathy has two degrees : either it keeps me back from doing wrong to others, and in this sense leads to justice as a moral virtue (whereas civil justice prevents from suffering wrong) ; or sympathy may carry me on to positive kindness, to philanthropy or love of the human kind. It is on sympathy the feeling of one identical nature under all the appearance of multiplicity that the two car- dinal virtues of justice and benevolence are based. Schopenhauer notes especially that his principle extends to the relation between man and animals, and that a mistaken conception of human dignity has been allowed to hide the fundamental community of animal nature. In 1 844 appeared the second edition of The World as Will and Idea, in two volumes. The first volume was a slightly altered reprint of the earlier issue ; the second consisted of a series of chapters forming a commentary parallel to those into which the original work was now first divided. The longest of these new chapters deal with the primacy of the will, with death, and with the meta- physics of sexual love. But, though only a small edition was struck off (500 copies of vol. i. and 750 of vol. ii.), the report of sales which Brockhaus rendered in 1846 was unfavourable, and the price had afterwards to be reduced. Yet there were faint indications of coming Da fame, and the eagerness with which each new tribute rec( from critic and admirer was welcomed is both touching "I. 1 . 1 and amusing. From 1843 onwards a jurist named F. gen Dorguth had trumpeted abroad Schopenhauer's name. In 1844 a letter from a Darmstadt lawyer, Joh. August Becker, asking for explanation of some difficulties, began an intimate correspondence which went on for some time (and which was published by Becker's son in 1883). But the chief evangelist (so Schopenhauer styled his literary followers as distinct from the apostles who published not) was Frauenstadt, who made his personal acquaintance in 1846. It was Frauenstadt who succeeded in finding a publisher for the Parerga und Paralipomena, which appeared at Berlin in 1851 (2 vols., pp. 465, 531). Yet for this bulky collection of essays, philosophical and others, Schopenhauer received as honorarium only ten free copies of the work. Soon afterwards, Dr E. O. Lindner, assistant editor of the Vossische Zeitung, began a series of Schopenhauerite articles. Amongst them may be reckoned