Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 2.djvu/252

242 pain, like a sick man whose ulcer the physician touches. The brute can never stray far from the path of nature; for its motives lie only in the world of perception, where only the possible, indeed only the actual, finds room. On the other hand, all that is only imaginable, and therefore also the false, the impossible, the absurd, and senseless, enters into abstract conceptions, into thoughts and words. Since now all partake of reason, but few of judgment, the consequence is that man is exposed to delusion, for he is abandoned to every conceivable chimera which any one talks him into, and which, acting on his will as a motive, may influence him to perversities and follies of every kind, to the most unheard-of extravagances, and also to actions most contrary to his animal nature. True culture, in which knowledge and judgment go hand in hand, can only be brought to bear on a few; and still fewer are capable of receiving it. For the great mass of men a kind of training everywhere takes its place. It is effected by example, custom, and the very early and firm impression of certain conceptions, before any experience, understanding, or judgment were there to disturb the work. Thus thoughts are implanted, which afterward cling as firmly, and are as incapable of being shaken by any instruction as if they were inborn; and indeed they have often been regarded, even by philosophers, as such. In this way we can, with the same trouble, imbue men with what is right and rational, or with what is most absurd. For example, we can accustom them to approach this or that idol with holy dread, and at the mention of its name to prostrate in the dust not only their bodies but their whole spirit; to sacrifice their property and their lives willingly to words, to names, to the defence of the strangest whims; to attach arbitrarily the greatest honour or the deepest disgrace to this or that, and to prize highly or disdain everything accordingly with full inward conviction; to renounce all animal food, as in Hindustan, or to devour still warm and quivering pieces,