Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/342

326 esprit, ses talents, – elle en avait de trop brillans pour son état," &c., and then quotes some delightful lines of hers. D'Alembert was the illegitimate son of Claudine de Tencin, a woman of superior mind, and the author of several romances and similar works, which met with great approbation in her day, and should even still be enjoyable (see her biography in the "Blätter für litterarische Unterhaltung," March 1845, Nos. 71-73). That Buffon's mother was a remarkable woman is shown by the following passage from the "Voyage à Montbar, par Hérault de Sechelles," which Flourens quotes in his "Histoire des travaux de Buffon," p. 288: "Buffon avait ce principe qu'en général les enfants tenaient de leur mère leurs qualités intellectuelles et morales: et lorsqu'il l'avait développé dans la conversation, il en faisait sur-le-champ l'application à lui-même, en faisant un éloge pompeux de sa mère, qui avait en effet, beaucoup d'esprit, des connaissances étandues, et une tête très bien organisée." That he includes the moral qualities is an error which is either committed by the reporter, or depends upon the fact that his mother had accidentally the same character as himself and his father. The contrary of this is shown in innumerable cases in which the mother and the son have opposite characters. Hence the greatest dramatists could present, in Orestes and Hamlet, mother and son in hostile conflict, in which the son appears as the moral representative and avenger of his father. On the other hand, the converse case, that the son should appear as the moral representative and avenger of the mother against the father, would be revolting and, at the same time, almost absurd. This depends upon the fact that between father and son there is actual identity of nature, which is the will, but between mother and son there is merely identity of intellect, and even this only in a conditioned manner. Between mother and son the greatest moral opposition can exist, between father and son only an intellectual opposition. From this point of view, also, one should recognise the necessity of the Salic