Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/418

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CHAPTER XLVII.

ON ETHICS.

is the great gap which occurs in these supplements, on account of the circumstance that I have already dealt with moral philosophy in the narrower sense in the two prize essays published under the title, "Die Grundprobleme der Ethik," an acquaintance with which is assumed, as I have said, in order to avoid useless repetition. Therefore there only remains for me here a small gleaning of isolated reflections which could not be discussed in that work, the contents of which were, in the main, prescribed by the Academies; least of all those reflections which demand a higher point of view than that which is common to all, and which I was there obliged to adhere to. Accordingly it will not surprise the reader to find these reflections here in a very fragmentary collection. This collection again has been continued in the eighth and ninth chapters of the second volume of the Parerga.

That moral investigations are incomparably more difficult than physical, and in general than any others, results from the fact that they are almost immediately concerned with the thing in itself, namely, with that manifestation of it in which, directly discovered by the light of knowledge, it reveals its nature as will. Physical truths, on the other hand, remain entirely in the province of the idea, i.e., of the phenomenon, and merely show how the lowest manifestations of the will present themselves in the idea in conformity to law. Further, the

1 This chapter is connected with §§ 55, 62, 67 of the first volume.