Chapter XIV (2)

Herbart endeavors, as we have seen, to deduce the various mental activities from the play of representations, Feeling and desire are not something beside representations, are not special faculties of the soul, but results of the relations of representations, changing states of representations arrested and working upward against hindrances. A representation which has been forced out of consciousness persists as a _tendency or effort_ to represent, and as such exerts a pressure on the conscious representations. If a representation is suspended between counteracting forces a feeling results; desire is the rise of a representation in the face of hindrances, aversion is hesitation in sinking. If the effort is accompanied by the idea that its goal is attainable, it is termed will. The character of a man depends on the fact that definite masses of representations have become dominant, and by their strength and persistence hold opposing representations in check or suppress them. The longer the dominant mass of representations exercises its power, the firmer becomes the habit of acting in a certain way, the more fixed the will. Herbart's intellectualistic denial of self-dependence to the practical capacities of the soul leads him logically to determinism. Volition depends on insight, is determined by representations; freedom signifies nothing but the fact that the will can be determined by motives. If the individual decisions of man were undetermined he would have no character; if the character were free in the choice between two actions, then, along with the noblest resolve, there would remain the possibility of an opposite decision; freedom of choice would make pure chance the doer of our deeds. Pedagogics, above all, must reject the idea of an undetermined freedom; education, along with imputation, correction, and punishment, would be a meaningless word, if no determining influence on the will of the pupil were possible.--This last objection overlooks the fact that the pedagogical influence is always mediate, and can do no more than, by disciplining the impulses of the pupil and by supplying him with aids against immoral inclinations, to lighten his moral task. We can work on the motives only, never directly on the will itself. Otherwise it would be inexplicable that even the best pedagogical skill proves powerless in the case of many individuals.

Herbart's psychology was preceded by a philosophy of nature, which construes matter from attraction and repulsion, and declares an _actio in distans_ impossible. The intermediate link between physics and psychology is formed by the science of organic life (physiology or biology); and with this natural theology is connected by the following principles: The purposiveness which we notice with admiration in men and the higher animals compels us, since it can neither come from chance nor be explained on natural grounds alone, to assume as its author a supreme artificer, an intelligence which works by ends. It is true, indeed, that the existence of the Deity is not demonstrated by the teleological argument; this is only an hypothesis, but one as highly probable as the assumption that the human bodies by which we are surrounded are inhabited by human souls--a fact which we can only assume, not perceive nor prove. The assurance of faith is different from that of logic and experience, but not inferior to it. Religion is based on humility and grateful reverence, which is favored, not injured, by the immeasurable sublimity of its object, the incompleteness of our idea of the Supreme Being, and the knowledge of our ignorance. If faith rests, on the one hand, on the teleological view of nature, it is, on the other, connected with moral need, and exercises, in addition, aesthetic influences. By comforting the suffering, setting right the erring, reclaiming and pacifying the sinner, warning, strengthening, and encouraging the morally sound, religion brings the spirit into a new and better land, shows it a higher order of things, the order of providence, which, amid all the mistakes of men, still furthers the good. The religious spirit always includes an ethical element, and the bond of the Church holds men together even where the state is destroyed. Indispensable theoretically as a supplement to our knowledge, and practically because of the moral imperfection of men, who need it to humble, warn, comfort, and lift them up, religion is, nevertheless, in its origin independent of knowledge and moral will. Faith is older than science and morals: the doctrine of religion did not wait for astronomy and cosmology, nor the erection of temples for ethics. Before the development of the moral concepts religion already existed in the form of wonder without a special object, of a gloomy awe which ascribed every sudden inner excitement to the impulse of an invisible power. Since a speculative knowledge of the nature of God is impossible, the only task which remains for metaphysics is the removal of improper determinations from that which tradition and phantasy have to say on the subject. We are to conceive God as personal, extramundane, and omnipotent, as the creator, not of the reals themselves, but of their purposive coexistence (_Zusammen_). In order, however, to rise from the idea of the original, most real, and most powerful being to that of the most excellent being we need the practical Ideas, without which the former would remain an indifferent theoretical concept. Man can pray only to a wise, holy, perfect, just, and good God.

This, in essential outline, is the content of the scattered observations on the philosophy of religion given by Herbart. Drobisch (_Fundamental Doctrines of the Philosophy of Religion_, 1840), from the standpoint of religious criticism and with a renewal of the moral argument, and Taute (1840-52) and Flügel (_Miracles and the Possibility of a Knowledge of God_, 1869) with an apologetic tendency and one toward a belief in miracles, have, among others, endeavored to make up for the lack of a detailed treatment of this discipline by Herbart--from which, moreover, much of value could hardly have been expected in view of the jejuneness of his metaphysical conceptions and the insufficiency of his appreciation of evil.

It remains only to glance at Herbart's Aesthetics. The beautiful is distinguished from the agreeable and the desirable, which, like it, are the objects of preference and rejection, by the facts, first, that it arouses an involuntary and disinterested judgment of approval; and second, that it is a predicate which is ascribed to the object or is objective. To these is added, thirdly, that while desire seeks for that which is to come, taste possesses in the present that which it judges.

That which pleases or displeases is always the form, never the matter; and further, is always a relation, for that which is entirely simple is indifferent. As in music we have succeeded in discovering the simplest relations, which please immediately and absolutely--we know not why--so this must be attempted in all branches of the theory of art. The most important among them, that which treats of moral beauty, moral philosophy, has therefore to inquire concerning the simplest relations of will, which call forth moral approval or disapproval (independently of the interest of the spectator), to inquire concerning the practical Ideas or pattern-concepts, in accordance with which moral taste, involuntarily and with unconditional evidence, judges concerning the worth or unworth of (actually happening or merely represented) volitions. Herbart enumerates five such primary Ideas or fundamental judgments of conscience.

(1) The Idea of inner freedom compares the will with the judgment, the conviction, the conscience of the agent himself. The agreement of his desire with his own judgment, with the precept of his taste, pleases, lack of agreement displeases. Since the power to determine the will according to one's own insight of itself establishes only an empty consistency and loyalty to conviction, and may also subserve immoral craft, the first Idea waits for its content from the four following.

(2) The Idea of perfection has reference to the quantitative relations of the manifold strivings of a subject, in intensity, extension, and concentration. The strong is pleasing in contrast with the weak, the greater (more extended, richer) in contrast with the smaller, the collected in contrast with the scattered; in other words, in the individual desires it is energy which pleases, in their sum variety, in the system co-operation. While the first two Ideas have compared the will of the individual man with itself, the remaining ones consider its relation to the will of other rational beings, the third to a merely represented will, and the last two to an actual one.

(3) According to the Idea of benevolence or goodness, which gives the most immediate and definite criterion of the worth of the disposition, the will pleases if it is in harmony with the (represented) will of another, _i.e._, makes the satisfaction of the latter its aim.

(4) The Idea of right is based on the fact that strife displeases. If several wills come together at one point without ill-will (in claiming a thing), the parties ought to submit themselves to right as a rule for the avoidance of strife.

(5) In retribution and equity, also, the original element is displeasure, displeasure in an unrequited act as a disturbance of equilibrium. This last Idea demands that no deed of good or evil remain unanswered; that in reward, thanks, and punishment, a quantum of good and evil equal to that of which he has been the cause return upon the agent. The one-sided deed of good or ill is a disturbance, the removal of which demands a corresponding requital.

Herbart warns us against the attempt to derive the five original Ideas (which scientific analysis alone separates, for in life we always judge according to all of them together) from a single higher Idea, maintaining that the demand for a common principle of morals is a prejudice. From the union of several beings into one person proceed five other pattern-concepts, the derived or social Ideas of the ethical institutions in which the primary Ideas are realized. These correspond to the primary Ideas in the reverse order: The system of rewards, which regulates punishment; the legal society, which hinders strife; the system of administration, aimed at the greatest possible good of all; the system of culture, aimed at the development of the greatest possible power and virtuosity; finally, as the highest, and that which unites the others in itself, society as a person, which, when it is provided with the necessary power, is termed the state.

If we combine the totality of the original Ideas into the unity of the person the concept of virtue arises. If we reflect on the limitations which oppose the full realization of the ideal of virtue, we gain the concepts of law and duty. An ethics, like that of Kant, which exclusively emphasizes the imperative or obligatory character of the good, is one-sided; it considers morality only in arrest, a mistake which goes with its false doctrine of freedom. On the other hand, it was a great merit in Kant that he first made clear the unconditional validity of moral judgment, independent of all eudemonism. Politics and pedagogics are branches of the theory of virtue. The end of education is development in virtue, and, as a means to this, the arousing of varied interests and the production of a stable character.

In conclusion, we may sum up the points in which Herbart shows himself a follower of Kant--he calls himself a "Kantian of the year 1828." His practical philosophy takes from Kant its independence of theoretical philosophy, the disinterested character of aesthetic judgment, the absoluteness of ethical values, the non-empirical origin of the moral concepts: "The fundamental ethical relations are not drawn from experience." His metaphysics owes to Kant the critical treatment of the experience-concepts (its task is to make experience comprehensible), in which the leading idea in the Kantian doctrine of the antinomies, the inevitableness of contradictions, is generalized, extended to all the fundamental concepts of experience, and, as it were, transferred from the Dialectic to the Analytic; it owes to him, further, the conception of being as absolute position, and, finally, the dualism of phenomena and things in themselves. Herbart (with Schopenhauer) considers the renewal of the Platonic distinction between seeming and being the chief service of the great critical philosopher, and finds his greatest mistake in the _a priori_ character ascribed to the forms of cognition. In the doctrine of the pure intuitions and the categories, and the Critique of Judgment, he rejects, and with full consciousness, just those parts of Kant on which the Fichtean school had built further. Finally, Herbart's method of thought, his impersonality, the at times anxious caution of his inquiry, and the neatness of his conceptions, are somewhat akin to Kant's, only that he lacked the gift of combination to a much greater degree than his great predecessor on the Königsberg rostrum. His remarkable acuteness is busier in loosening than in binding; it is more happy in the discovery of contradictions than in their resolution. Therefore he does not belong to the kings who have decided the fate of philosophy for long periods of time; he stands to one side, though it is true he is the most important figure among these who occupy such a position.

The first to give his adherence to Herbart in essential positions, and so to furnish occasion for the formation of an Herbartian school, was Drobisch (born 1802), in two critiques which appeared in 1828 and 1830. Besides Drobisch, from whom we have valuable discussions of Logic (1836, 5th ed., 1887) and Empirical Psychology (1842), and an interesting essay on _Moral Statistics and the Freedom of the Will_ (1867), L. Strümpell (born 1812; _The Principal Points in Herbart's Metaphysics Critically Examined_, 1840), is a professor in Leipsic. The organ of the school, the _Zeitschrift für exakte Philosophie_, now edited by Flügel (the first volume, 1860, contained a survey of the literature of the school), was at first issued by T. Ziller, the pedagogical thinker, and Allihn. The _Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft_, from 1859, edited by M. Lazarus (born 1824; _The Life of the Soul_, 3 vols., 1856 _seq_., 3d ed., 1883 _seq_.) and H. Steinthal (born 1823; _The Origin of Language_, 4th ed., 1888; _Sketch of the Science of Language_, part i. 2d ed., 1881; _General Ethics_, 1885) of Berlin, also belongs to the Herbartian movement. Distinguished service has been done in psychology by Nahlowsky (_The Life of Feeling_, 1862, 2d. ed., 1884), Theodor Waitz in Marburg (1821-84; _Foundation of Psychology_, 1846; _Text-book of Psychology_, 1849), and Volkmann in Prague (1822-77; _Text-book of Psychology_, 3d. ed., by Cornelius, 1884 and 1885); while Friedrich Exner (died 1853) was formerly much spoken of as an opponent of the Hegelian psychology (1843-44). Robert Zimmermann in Vienna (born 1824) represents an extreme formalistic tendency in aesthetics (_History of Aesthetics_, 1858; _General Esthetics as Science of Form_, 1865; further, a series of thorough essays on subjects in the history of philosophy). Among historians of philosophy Thilo has given a rather one-sided representation of the Herbartian standpoint. The school's philosophers of religion have been mentioned above (p. 532). Beneke, whom we have joined with Fries on account of his anthropological standpoint, stands about midway between Herbart and Schopenhauer. He shares in the former's interest in psychology, in the latter's foundation of metaphysical knowledge on inner experience, and in the dislike felt by both for Hegel; while, on the other hand, he differs from Herbart in his empirical method, and from Schopenhauer in the priority ascribed to representation over effort.

%3. Pessimism: Schopenhauer.%

Schopenhauer is in all respects the antipodes of Herbart. If in Herbart philosophy breaks up into a number of distinct special inquiries, Schopenhauer has but one fundamental thought to communicate, in the carrying out of which, as he is convinced, each part implies the whole and is implied by the whole. The former operates with sober concepts where the latter follows the lead of gifted intuition. The one is cool, thorough, cautious, methodical to the point of pedantry; the other is passionate, ingenious, unmethodical to the point of capricious dilettantism. In the one case, philosophy is as far as possible exact science, in which the person of the thinker entirely retires behind the substance of the inquiry; in the other, philosophy consists in a sum of artistic conceptions, which derive their content and value chiefly from the individuality of the author. The history of philosophy has no other system to show which to the same degree expresses and reflects the personality of the philosopher as Schopenhauer's. This personality, notwithstanding its limitations and its whims, was important enough to give interest to Schopenhauer's views, even apart from the relative truth which they contain.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was the son of a merchant in Dantzic and his wife Johanna, _née_ Trosiener, who subsequently became known as a novelist. His early training was gained from foreign travel, but after the death of his father he exchanged the mercantile career, which he had begun at his father's request, for that of a scholar, studying under G.E. Schulze in Göttingen, and under Fichte at Berlin. In 1813 he gained his doctor's degree in Jena with a dissertation _On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason_. Then he moved from Weimar, the residence of his mother, where he had associated considerably with Goethe and had been introduced to Indian philosophy by Fr. Mayer, to Dresden (1814-18). In the latter place he wrote the essay _On Sight and Colors_ (1816; subsequently published by the author in Latin), and his chief work, _The World as Will and Idea_ (1819; new edition, with a second volume, 1844). After the completion of the latter he began his first Italian journey, while his second tour fell in the interval between his two quite unsuccessful attempts (in Berlin 1820 and 1825) to propagate his philosophy from the professor's desk. From 1831 until his death he lived in learned retirement in Frankfort-on-the-Main. Here he composed the opuscule _On Will in Nature_, 1836, the prize treatises _On the Freedom of the Human Will_ and _On the Foundation of Ethics_ (together, _The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics_, 1841), and the collection of minor treatises _Parerga and Paralipomena_, 2 vols., 1851 (including an essay "On Religion"). J. Frauenstädt has published a considerable amount of posthumous material (among other things the translation, _B. Gracians Handorakel der Weltklugheit_); the _Collected Works_ (6 vols., 1873-74, 2d ed., 1877, with a biographical notice); _Lichtstrahlen aus Schopenhauers Werken_, 1861, 5th ed. 1885; and a _Schopenhauer Lexicon_, 2 vols., 1871.[1]

[Footnote 1: From the remaining Schopenhauer literature (F. Laban has published a chronological survey of it, 1880) we may call attention to the critiques of the first edition of the chief work by Herbart and Beneke, and that of the second edition by Fortlage (_Jenaische Litteratur Zeitung_, 1845, Nos. 146-151); J.E. Erdmann _Herbart und Schopenhauer, eine Antithese (Zeitschrift für Philosophie_, 1851); Wilh. Gwinner, _Schopenhauers Leben_, 1878 (the second edition of _Schopenhauer aus persönlichem Umgang dargestellt_, 1862); Fr. Nietzsche, _Schopenhauer als Erzieher (Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, Stück iii_., 1874); O. Busch, _A. Schopenhauer_, 2d. ed., 1878; K. Peters, _Schopenhauer als Philosoph und Schriftsteller_, 1880; R. Koeber, _Die Philosophie A. Schopenhauers_, 1888. [The English reader may be referred to Haldane and Kemp's translation of _The World as Will and Idea_, 3 vols., 1883-86; the translation of _The Fourfold Root_ and the _Will in Nature_ in Bohn's Philosophical Library, 1889; Saunders's translations from the _Parerga and Paralipomena_, 1889 _seq_.; Helen Zimmern's _Arthur Schopenhauer, his Life and his Philosophy_, 1876; W. Wallace's _Schopenhauer_, Great Writers Series, 1890 (with a bibliography by Anderson, including references to numerous magazine articles, etc.); Sully's _Pessimism_, 2d ed., 1882, chap. iv.; and Royce's _Spirit of Modern Philosophy_, chap, viii., 1892.--TR.]]

In regard to subjective idealism Schopenhauer confesses himself a thoroughgoing Kantian. That sensations are merely states in us has long been known; Kant opened the eyes of the world to the fact that the forms of knowledge are also the property of the subject. I know things only as they appear to me, as I represent them in virtue of the constitution of my intellect; the world is my idea. The Kantian theory, however, is capable of simplification, the various forms of cognition may be reduced to a single one, to the category of causality or principle of sufficient reason--which was preferred by Kant himself--as the general expression of the regular connection of our representations. This principle, in correspondence with the several classes of objects, or rather of representations--viz., pure (merely formal) intuitions, empirical (complete) intuitions, acts of will, abstract concepts--has four forms: it is the _principium rationis essendi, rationis fiendi, rationis agendi, rationis cognoscendi_. The _ratio essendi_ is the law which regulates the coexistence of the parts of space and the succession of the divisions of time. The _ratio fiendi_ demands for every change of state another from which it regularly follows as from its cause, and a substance as its unchangeable substratum--matter. All changes take place necessarily, all that is real is material; the law of causality is valid for phenomena alone, not beyond them, and holds only for the states of substances, not for substances themselves. In inorganic nature causes work mechanically, in organic nature as stimuli (in which the reaction is not equal to the action), and in animated nature as motives. A motive is a conscious (but not therefore a free) cause; the law of motivation is the _ratio agendi_. This serial order, "mechanical cause, stimulus, and motive," denotes only distinctions in the mode of action, not in the necessity of action. Man's actions follow as inevitably from his character and the motives which influence him as a clock strikes the hours; the freedom of the will is a chimera. Finally, the _ratio cognoscendi_ determines that a judgment must have a sufficient ground in order to be true. Judgment or the connection of concepts is the chief activity of the reason, which, as the faculty of abstract thought and the organ of science, constitutes the difference between man and the brute, while the possession of the understanding with its intuition of objects is common to both. In opposition to the customary overestimation of this gift of mediate representations, of language, and of reflection, Schopenhauer gives prominence to the fact that the reason is not a creative faculty like the understanding, but only a receptive power, that it clarifies and transforms the content furnished by intuition without increasing it by new representations.

Objective cognition is confined within the circle of our representations; all that is knowable is phenomenon. Space, time, and causality spread out like a triple veil between us and the _per se_ of things, and prevent a vision of the true nature of the world. There is one point, however, at which we know more than mere phenomena, where of these three disturbing media only one, time-form, separates us from the thing in itself. This point is the consciousness of ourselves.

On the one hand, I appear to myself as body. My body is a temporal, spatial, material object, an object like all others, and with them subject to the laws of objectivity. But besides this objective cognition, I have, further, an immediate consciousness of myself, through which I apprehend my true being--I know myself as willing. My will is more than a mere representation, it is the original element in me, the truly real which appears to me as body. The will is related to the intellect as the primary to the secondary, as substance to accident; it is related to the body as the inner to the outer, as reality to phenomenon. The act of will is followed at once and inevitably by the movement of the body willed, nay, the two are one and the same, only given in different ways: will is the body seen from within, body the will seen from without, the will become visible, objectified. After the analogy of ourselves, again, who appear to ourselves as material objects but in truth are will, all existence is to be judged. The universe is the _mac-anthropos_; the knowledge of our own essence, the key to the knowledge of the essence of the world. Like our body, the whole world is the visibility of will. The human will is the highest stage in the development of the same principle which manifests its activity in the various forces of nature, and which properly takes its name from the highest species. To penetrate further into the inner nature of things than this is impossible. What that which presents itself as will and which still remains after the negation of the latter (see below) is in itself, is for us absolutely unknowable.

The world is _per se_ will. None of the predicates are to be attributed to the primal will which we ascribe to things in consequence of our subjective forms of thought--neither determination by causes or ends, nor plurality: it stands outside the law of causality, as also outside space and time, which form the _principium individuationis_. The primal will is groundless, blind stress, unconscious impulse toward existence; it is one, the one and all, [Greek: en nai pan]. That which manifests itself as gravity, as magnetic force, as the impulse to growth, as the _vis medicatrix naturae_, is only this one world-will, whose unity (not conscious character!) shows itself in the purposiveness of its embodiments. The essence of each thing, its hidden quality, at which empirical explanation finds its limit, is its will: the essence of the stone is its will to fall; that of the lungs is the will to breathe; teeth, throat, and bowels are hunger objectified. Those qualities in which the universal will gives itself material manifestation form a series with grades of increasing perfection, a realm of unchangeable specific forms or eternal Ideas, which (with a real value difficult to determine) stand midway between the one primal will and the numberless individual beings. That the organic individual does not perfectly correspond to the ideal of its species, but only approximates this more or less closely, is grounded in the fact that the stadia in the objectification of the will, or the Ideas, contend, as it were, for matter; and whatever of force is used up in the victory of the higher Ideas over the lower is lost for the development of the examples of the former. The higher the level on which a being stands the clearer the expression of its individuality. The most general forces of nature, which constitute the raw mass, play the fundamental bass in the world-symphony, the higher stages of inorganic nature, with the vegetable and animal worlds, the harmonious middle parts, and man the guiding treble, the significant melody. With the human brain the world as idea is given at a stroke; in this organ the will has kindled a torch in order to throw light upon itself and to carry out its designs with careful deliberation; it has brought forth the intellect as its instrument, which, with the great majority of men, remains in a position of subservience to the will. Brain and thought are the same; the former is nothing other than the will to know, as the stomach is will to digest. Those only talk of an immaterial soul who import into philosophy--where such ideas do not belong--concepts taught them when they were confirmed.

Schopenhauer's philosophy is as rich in inconsistencies as his personality was self-willed and unharmonious. "He carries into his system all the contradictions and whims of his capricious nature," says Zeller. From the most radical idealism (the objective world a product of representation) he makes a sharp transition to the crassest materialism (thought a function of the brain); first matter is to be a mere idea, now thought is to be merely a material phenomenon! The third and fourth books of _The World as Will and Idea_, which develop the aesthetic and ethical standpoint of their author, stand in as sharp a contradiction to the first (poëtical) and the second (metaphysical) books as these to each other. While at first it was maintained that all representation is subject to the principle of sufficient reason, we are now told that, besides causal cognition, there is a higher knowledge, one which is free from the control of this principle, viz., aesthetic and philosophical intuition. If, before, it was said that the intellect is the creature and servant of the will, we now learn that in favored individuals it gains the power to throw off the yoke of slavery, and not only to raise itself to the blessedness of contemplation free from all desire, but even to enter on a victorious conflict with the tyrant, to slay the will. The source of this power--is not revealed. R. Haym _(A. Schopenhauer_, 1864, reprinted from the _Preussische Jahrbücher_) was not far wrong in characterizing Schopenhauer's philosophy as a clever novel, which entertains the reader by its rapid vicissitudes.

The contemplation which is free from causality and will is the essence of aesthetic life; the partial and total sublation, the quieting and negation of the will, that of ethical life. It is but seldom, and only in the artistic and philosophical genius, that the intellect succeeds in freeing itself from the supremacy of the will, and, laying aside the question of the _why_ and _wherefore_, _where_ and _when_, in sinking itself completely in the pure _what_ of things. While with the majority of mankind, as with animals, the intellect always remains a prisoner in the service of the will to live, of self-preservation, of personal interests, in gifted men, in artists and thinkers, it strips off all that is individual, and, in disinterested vision of the Ideas, becomes pure, timeless subject, freed from the will. Art removes individuality from the subject as well as from the object; its comforting and cheering influence depends on the fact that it elevates those enjoying it to the stand-point--raised above all pain of desire--of a fixed, calm, completely objective contemplation of the unchangeable essence, of the eternal types of things. For aesthetic intuition the object is not a thing under relations of space, time, and cause, but only an expression, an exemplification, a representative of the Idea. Poetry, which presents--most perfectly in tragedy--the Idea of humanity, stands higher than the plastic arts. The highest rank, however, belongs to music, since it does not, like the other arts, represent single Ideas, but--as an unconscious metaphysic, nay, a second, ideal world above the material world--the will itself. In view of this high appreciation of their art, it is not surprising that musicians have contributed a considerable contingent to the band of Schopenhauer worshipers. A different source of attraction for the wider circle of readers was supplied by the piquant spice of pessimism.

If the purposiveness of the phenomena of nature points to the unity of the primal will, the unspeakable misery of life, which Schopenhauer sets forth with no less of eloquence, proves the blindness and irrationality of the world-ground. To live is to suffer; the world contains incomparably more pain than pleasure; it is the worst possible world. In the world of sub-animal nature aimless striving; in the animal world an insatiable impulse after enjoyment--while the will, deceiving itself with fancied happiness to come, which always remains denied it, and continually tossed to and fro between necessity and _ennui_, never attains complete satisfaction. The pleasure which it pursues is nothing but the removal of a dissatisfaction, and vanishes at once when the longing is stilled, to be replaced by fresh wants, that is, by new pains. In view of the indescribable misery in the world, to favor optimism is evidence not so much of folly and blindness as of a wanton disposition. The old saying is true: Non-existence is better than existence. The misery, however, is the just punishment for the original sin of the individual, which gave itself its particular existence by an act of intelligible freedom. Redemption from the sin and misery of existence is possible only through a second act of transcendental freedom, which, since it consists in the complete transformation of our being, and since it is supernatural in its origin, the Church is right in describing as a new birth and work of grace.

Morality presupposes pessimistic insight into the badness of the world and the fruitlessness of all desire, and pantheistic discernment of the untruth of individual existence and the identity in essence of all individuals from a metaphysical standpoint. Man is able to free himself from egoistic self-affirmation only when he perceives the two truths, that all striving is vain and the longed-for pleasure unattainable, and that all individuals are at bottom one, viz. manifestations of the same primal will. This is temporarily effected in sympathy, which, as the only counterpoise to natural selfishness, is the true moral motive and the source of all love and justice. The sympathizer sees himself in others and feels their suffering as his own. The entire negation of the will, however, inspiring examples of which have been furnished by the Christian ascetics and Oriental penitents, stands higher than the vulgar virtue of sympathy with the sufferings of others. Here knowledge, turned away from the individual and vain to the whole and genuine, ceases to be a motive for the will and becomes a means of stilling it; the intellect is transformed from a motive into a quietive, and brings him who gives himself up to the All safely out from the storm of the passions into the peace of deliverance from existence. Absence of will, resignation, is holiness and blessedness in one. For him who has slain the will in himself the motley deceptive dream of phenomena has vanished, he lives in the ether of true reality, which for our knowledge is an empty nothingness ("Nirvana"), yet (as the ultimate, incomprehensible _per se_, which remains after the annulling of the will) only a relative nothingness--relative to the phenomenon.

Schopenhauer disposes of the sense of responsibility and the reproofs of conscience, which are inconvenient facts for his determinism, by making them both refer, not to single deeds and the empirical character, but to the indivisible act of the intelligible character. Conscience does not blame me because I have acted as I must act with my character and the motives given, but for being what in these actions I reveal myself to be. _Operari sequitur esse_. My action follows from my being, my being was my own free choice, and a new act of freedom is alone capable of transforming it.

If Schopenhauer is fond of referring to the agreement of his views with the oldest and most perfect religions, the idea lies in the background that religion,--which springs from the same metaphysical needs as philosophy, and, for the great multitude, who lack the leisure and the capacity for philosophical thought, takes the place of the former,--as the metaphysics of the people, clothes the same fundamental truths which the philosopher offers in conceptual form and supports by rational grounds in the garb of myth and allegory, and places them under the protection of an external authority. When this character of religion is overlooked, and that which is intended to be symbolical is taken for literal truth (it is not the supernaturalists alone who start with this unjust demand, but the rationalists also, with their minimizing interpretations), it becomes the worst enemy of true philosophy. In Christianity the doctrines of original sin and of redemption are especially congenial to our philosopher, as well as mysticism and asceticism. He declares Mohammedanism the worst religion on account of its optimism and abstract theism, and Buddhism the best, because it is idealistic, pessimistic, and--atheistic.

It was not until after the appearance of the second edition of his chief work that Schopenhauer experienced in increasing measure the satisfaction--which his impatient ambition had expected much earlier--of seeing his philosophy seriously considered. A zealous apostle arose for him in Julius Frauenstädt (died 1878; _Letters on the Philosophy of Schopenhauer_, 1854; _New Letters on the Philosophy of Schopenhauer_, 1876), who, originally an Hegelian, endeavored to remove pessimism from the master's system. Like Eduard von Hartmann, who will be discussed below, Julius Bahnsen (died 1882; _The Contradiction in the Knowledge and Being of the World, the Principle and Particular Verification of Real-Dialectic_, 1880-81; also, interesting characterological studies) seeks to combine elements from Schopenhauer and Hegel, while K. Peters (_Will-world and World-will_, 1883) shows in another direction points of contact with the first named thinker. Of the younger members of the school we may name P. Deussen in Kiel (_The Elements of Metaphysics_, 2d ed., 1890), and Philipp Mainländer (_Philosophy of Redemption_, 2d ed., 1879). As we have mentioned above, Schopenhauer's doctrines have exercised an attractive force in artistic circles also. Richard Wagner (1813-83; _Collected Writings_, 9 vols., 1871-73, vol. x. 1883; 2d ed., 1887-88), whose earlier aesthetic writings (_The Art-work of the Future_, 1850; _Opera and Drama_, 1851) had shown the influence of Feuerbach, in his later works (_Beethoven_, 1870; _Religion and Art_, in the third volume of the _Bayreuther Blätter_, 1880) became an adherent of Schopenhauer, after, in the _Ring of the Nibelung_, he had given poetical expression to a view of the world nearly allied to Schopenhauer's, though this was previous to his acquaintance with the works of the latter.[1] One of the most thoughtful disciples of the Frankfort philosopher and the Bayreuth dramatist is Fried rich Nietzsche (born 1844). His _Unseasonable Reflections_, 1873-76,[2] is a summons to return from the errors of modern culture, which, corrupted by the seekers for gain, by the state, by the polite writers and savants, especially by the professors of philosophy, has made men cowardly and false instead of simple and honorable, mere self-satisfied "philistines of culture." In his writings since 1878[3] Nietzsche has exchanged the rôle of a German Rousseau for that of a follower of Voltaire, to arrive finally at the ideal of the man above men.[4]

[Footnote 1: Cf. on Wagner, Fr. v. Hausegger, _Wagner und Schopenhauer_, 1878. [English translation of Wagner's _Prose Works_ by Ellis, vol. i., 1892.--TR.]]

[Footnote 2: "D. Strauss, the Confessor and the Author"; "On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life"; "Schopenhauer as an Educator"; "R. Wagner in Bayreuth."]

[Footnote 3: _Human, All-too-human_, new ed., 1886; _The Dawn, Thoughts on Human Prejudices_, 1881; _The Merry Science_, 1882; _So spake Zarathustra_, 1883-84; _Beyond Good and Evil_, 1886; _On the Genealogy of Morals_, 1887, 2d ed., 1887; _The Wagner Affair_, 1888, 2d ed., 1892; _Götzendämmerung, or How to Philosophize with the Hammer_, 1889.]

[Footnote 4: Cf. H. Kaatz, _Die Weltanschauung Fr. Nietzsches, I. Kultur und Moral_, 1892.]