Chapter L: Schopenhauer. 1788-1860

The chief interpreter of Buddhistic ideas in Europe, and whose bias in this direction is exercising so remarkable an influence upon contemporaneous thought, in Germany in particular, was born at Dantzig, the son of a wealthy merchant of that city. His mother, herself distinguished in literature, was often the centre of the most eminent persons of the day at Weimar. At a very early age devoted to the philosophies of Plato and of Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer studied at the Universities of Göttingen and Berlin. His course of studies, both scientific and literary, was, even for a German, unusually severe and searching; and his acquirements were encyclopædic in their range. Unlike most German students, it is worth noting, he was addicted neither to beer-drinking nor to duelling.

His most important writings are: _Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_ (“The World as Will and Representation”), 2 vols; _Die Grundprobleme der Ethik_ (“The Ground-Problems of Ethics”); _Parerga und Paralipomena_ (“Incidental and Neglected Subjects”), 2 vols; _Das Fundament der Moral_ (“The Foundation of Morality”), 1840.

The peculiar characteristics of his philosophy are uncompromising opposition to the hollow doctrines of easy-going Optimism--an antagonism which, indeed, assumes the form of an exaggerated Pessimism--and (what especially distinguishes him from most systematisers and formularisers of morals) his making _Compassion_ the principal, and, indeed, the exclusive source of moral action; and it is his vindication of the _rights_ of the subject species, in marked contrast with the silence, or even positive depreciation and contempt for them, on the part of ordinary moralists, which will always entitle him to take exceptionally high rank among reformers of Ethical systems, in spite of his exaggerations and short-comings in other respects. Dr. David Strauss (_Der Alte und der Neue Glaube_) thus writes of his claims on these grounds:--

“Criminal history shows us how many torturers of men, and
murderers, have first been torturers of the lower animals. _The
manner in which a nation, in the aggregate, treats the other
species, is one chief measure of its real civilisation._ The
Latin races, as we know, come forth badly from this examination;
we Germans not half well enough. Buddhism has done more, in this
direction, than Christianity; and Schopenhauer more than all
ancient and modern philosophers together. The warm sympathy with
sentient nature, which pervades all the writings of Schopenhauer,
is one of the most pleasing aspects of his thoroughly intellectual,
though often unhealthy and unprofitable, philosophy.”

This, it is necessary to add, plainly is written in ignorance of the numerous writings of earlier and contemporaneous humanitarian dietists, to whom, of course, is due a higher, because more consistent and more logical, position than even Schopenhauer can claim, who, from ignorance of the physical and moral arguments of anti-kreophagy (it reasonably may be presumed), at the same time that he established the rights of the subject species on the firmest basis, and included them as an essential part of any moral code, yet, with a strange, but too common, inconsistency, did not perceive that to hand over the Cow, the Ox, or the Sheep, &c., to the butcher, is in most flagrant violation of his own ethical standard. While, then, the author of the _Foundation of Morality_ cannot claim the highest place, absolutely; outside the ranks of anti-kreophagistic writers, a high rank may properly be conceded to him as one of the most eminent moralists who, short of entire emancipation, have done most to vindicate the position of the innocent non-human races.[280] Especially has he denounced the horrible outrage upon the commonest principles of justice by the pseudo-scientific torturers of the physiological laboratory.[281] It is thus that he lays the foundations of morality:--

“A Pity, without limits, which unites us with all living
beings--_in that_ we have the most solid, the surest guarantee
of morality. _With that_ there is no need of casuistry. Whoso
possesses it will be quite incapable of causing harm or loss to
any one, of doing violence to any one, of doing ill in any way.
But rather he will have for all long-suffering, he will aid the
helpless with all his powers, and each one of his actions will
be marked with the stamp of justice and of love. Try to affirm:
‘this man is virtuous, only he knows no pity,’ or rather: ‘he is
an unjust and wicked man: nevertheless, he is compassionate.’ The
contradiction is patent to everyone. Each one to his taste: but for
myself, I know no more beautiful prayer than that which the Hindus,
of old used in closing their public spectacles (just as the English
of to-day end with a prayer for their king). They said: ‘May All
that have life be delivered from suffering!’”

Enforcing his teaching that the principles and mainspring of all moral action must be justice and love, Schopenhauer maintains that the real influence of these first of virtues is tested, especially, by the conduct of men to other animals:--

“Another proof that the moral motive, here proposed, is, in fact,
the true one, is, that in accordance with it the lower animals
themselves are protected. The unpardonable forgetfulness in which
they have been iniquitously left hitherto by all the [popular]
moralists of Europe is well known. It is pretended that the
[so-called] beasts have no rights. They persuade themselves that
our conduct in regard to them has nothing to do with morals, or (to
speak in the language of their morality) that we have no duties
towards ‘animals:’ a doctrine revolting, gross, and barbarous,
peculiar to the west, and which has its root in Judaism. In
Philosophy, however, it is made to rest upon a hypothesis, admitted
in the face of evidence itself, of an absolute difference between
man and ‘beast.’ It is Descartes who has proclaimed it in the
clearest and most decisive manner: and, in fact, it was a necessary
consequence of his errors. The Cartesian-Leibnitzian-Wolfian
philosophy, with the assistance of entirely abstract notions, had
built up the ‘rational psychology,’ and constructed an immortal
_anima rationalis_: but, visibly, the world of ‘beasts,’ with its
very natural claims, stood up against this exclusive monopoly--this
_brevet_ of immortality decreed to man alone--and, silently,
Nature did what she always does in such cases--she protested. Our
philosophers, feeling their scientific conscience quite disturbed,
were forced to attempt to consolidate their ‘rational psychology’
by the aid of empiricism. They, therefore, set themselves to work
to hollow out between man and ‘beast’ an enormous abyss, of an
immeasurable width; by this they would wish to prove to us, in
contempt of evidence, an impassable difference. It was at all these
efforts that Boileau already laughed:--

‘Les animaux ont-ils des Universités?
Voit-on fleurir chez eux les Quatre Facultés?’

In accordance with this theory, ‘beasts’ would have finished with
no longer knowing how to distinguish themselves from the external
world, with having no more consciousness of their own existence
than of mine. Against these intolerable assertions one remedy only
was needed. Cast a single glance at an animal, even the smallest,
the lowest in intelligence. See the unbounded _egoism_ of which
it is possessed. It is enough to convince you that ‘beasts’ have
thorough consciousness of their _ego_, and oppose it to the
world--to the _non-ego_. If a Cartesian found himself in the
claws of a Tiger, he would learn, and in the most evident way
possible, whether the Tiger can distinguish between the _ego_ and
the _non-ego_. To these sophisms of the philosophers respond the
sophisms of the people. Such are certain _idiotisms_, notably those
of the German, who, for eating, drinking, conception, birth, death,
corpse (when ‘beasts’ are in question), has special terms; so much
would he fear to employ the same words as for men. He thus succeeds
in dissimulating, under this diversity of terms, the perfect
identity of things.

“The ancient languages knew nothing of this sort of synonymy,
and they simply called things which are the same by one and the
same name. These artificial ideas, then, must needs have been
an invention of the priesthood [_prétraille_] of Europe, a lot
of sacrilegious people who knew not by what means to debase, to
vilipend the eternal essence which lives in the substance of every
animated being. In this way they have succeeded in establishing
in Europe those wicked habits of hardness and cruelty towards
‘beasts,’ which a native of High Asia could not behold without a
just horror. In English we do not find this infamous invention;
that is owing, doubtless, to the fact that the Saxons, at the
moment of the conquest of England, were not yet Christians.
Nevertheless, the pendent of it is found in this particularity of
the English language: all the names of animals there are of the
_neuter gender_: and, as a consequence, when the name is to be
represented by the pronoun, they use the neuter _it_, absolutely as
for inanimate objects. Nothing is more shocking than this idiom,
especially when the _primates_ are spoken of--the Dog, for example,
the Ape, and others. One cannot fail to recognise here a dishonest
device (_fourberie_) of the priests to debase [other] animals
to the rank of things. The ancient Egyptians, for whom Religion
was the unique business of life, deposed in the same tombs human
mummies and those of the Ibis, &c.; but in Europe it would be an
abomination, a crime, to inter the faithful Dog near the place
where his master lies; and yet it is upon this tomb sometimes that,
more faithful and more devoted than man ever was, he has awaited
death.

“If you wish to know how far the identity between ‘beast’ and
man extends, nothing will conduct to such knowledge better than
a little Zoology and Anatomy. Yet what are we to say when an
anatomical bigot is seen at this day (1839) to be labouring to
establish an absolute, radical, distinction between man and other
animals; proceeding so far in enmity against true Zoologists--those
who, without conspiracy with the priesthoods, without platitude,
without _tartuferie_, permit themselves to be conducted by Nature
and Truth--as to attack them, to calumniate them!

“Yet this superiority [of man over other mammals of the higher
species] depends but upon a more ample development of the
brain--upon a difference in one part of the body only; this
difference, besides, being but one of _quantity_. Yes, man and
other animals are, both as regards the moral and the physical,
identical _in kind_, without speaking of other points of
comparison. Thus one might well recall to them--these Judaising
westerns, these menagerie-keepers, these adorers of ‘reason’--that
if _their_ mother has given suck to them, Dogs also have _theirs_
to suckle _them_. Kant fell into this error, which is that of
his time and of his country: I have already brought the reproach
against him. The morality of Christianity has no regard for
‘beasts;’ it is therein a vice, and it is better to avow it than
to eternise it. We ought to be all the more astonished at it,
because this morality is in striking accord with the moral codes of
Brahmanism and of Buddhism.

“Between pity towards ‘beasts’ and goodness of soul there is a
very close connexion. One might say without hesitation, when
an individual is wicked in regard to them, that he cannot be a
_good_ man. One might, also, demonstrate that this pity and the
social virtues have the same source.... That [better section of
the] English nation, with its greater delicacy of feeling, we
see it taking the initiative, and distinguishing itself by its
unusual compassion towards other species, giving from time to time
new proofs of it--this compassion, triumphing over that ‘cold
superstition’ which, in other respects, degrades the nation, has
had the strength to force it to fill up the chasm which Religion
had left in morality. This Chasm is, in fact, the reason why
in Europe and in N. America, we have need of societies for the
protection of the lower animals. In Asia the Religions suffice to
assure to ‘beasts’ aid and protection (?), and there no one thinks
of Societies of that kind. Nevertheless in Europe, also, from day
to day [rather by intervals of _decades_] is being awakened the
feeling of the Rights of the lower animals, in proportion as,
little by little, disappear, vanish, the strange ideas of man’s
domination over [other] animals, as if they had been placed in the
world but for our service and enjoyment, for it is thanks to those
ideas that they have been treated as _Things_.

“Such are, certainly, the causes of that gross conduct, of that
absolute want of regard, of which Europeans are guilty towards the
lower animals; and I have shown the source of those ideas, which is
in the _Old Testament_, in section 177 of the second volume of my
_Parerga_.”[282]

* * * * *

Of the many eminent scientists who, in recent times, indirectly have affirmed the _wantonness_ of slaughtering for human food, the most famous of European Chemists, Justus von Liebig, may seem to demand especial notice. THE founder of the science of Organic Chemistry and the method of Organic Analysis (1803-1873), educated at the Universities of Bonn and Erlangen, received his diploma of Doctor in Philosophy (physical and mathematical sciences) at the age of nineteen. Two years later, chiefly by the influence of Humboldt, he was named Professor Extraordinary of Chemistry at Giessen, whither a crowd of disciples flocked from all parts of Germany and from England. In 1832 he accepted a Chair at Munich. All the Scientific Societies of Europe were eager in offering him honorary distinctions.

It is his application of his Special Science to the advancement of Agriculture, and his more philosophic, though (it must be added) occasionally contradictory views upon the comparative values of Foods, which give him his best title to remembrance with posterity. We can enumerate only a few of his numerous works: _Ueber Theorie und Praxis der Landwirthschaft_ (“Upon the Theory and Practice of Agricultural Economy),” Brunswick, 1824, translated into English; _Anleitung zur Analyse Organische Körper_ (“Introduction to the Organic Analysis of Bodies”), 1837; _Die Organische Chemie in ihren Anwendung auf Physiologie und Pathologie_ (“Organic Chemistry in its Relationship to Physiology and Pathology”), 1839; “Researches upon Alimentary Chemistry,” 1849; _Chemische Briefe_ (“Letters upon Chemistry considered in Relation with Industry, Agriculture, and Physiology”), 1852.

Whatever opinions this eminent German Chemist may have published elsewhere inconsistent with the statements below, such inconsistency, no more than in the case of Buffon, can weaken the force of his more reasonable utterance. Upon the essential ultimate identity of the nutritive properties of animal and vegetable substance he thus clearly pronounces:--

“Vegetable fibrine and animal fibrine, vegetable albumen and
animal albumen, differ at the most (_höchstens_) in form. If these
principles in nourishment fail, the nourishment of the animal will
be cut off; if they obtain them, then the grass-feeding animal gets
the same principles in his food as those upon which the flesh-eater
entirely depends. Vegetables produce in their organism the blood
of all beings. So that when the flesh-eaters consume the blood and
flesh of the vegetable-eaters, they take to themselves exactly and
simply the vegetable principles.

“Vegetable Foods, in particular Corn of all kinds, and through
these Bread, contain as much iron as the flesh of Oxen or as other
kinds of flesh.

“Certain it is, that of three men, of whom the one has fed upon
ox-flesh and bread, the other upon bread and cheese, the third
upon potatoes, each considers it a peculiar hardship from quite
different points of view; yet in fact the only difference between
them is the action of the peculiar elements of each food upon the
brain and nervous system. A Bear, who was kept in a zoological
garden, displayed, so long as he had bread exclusively for
nourishment, quite a mild disposition. Two days of feeding with
flesh made him vicious, aggressive, and even dangerous to his
attendant. It is well known that the _vis irritabilis_ of the Hog
becomes so excessive through flesh-eating that he will then attack
a man.

“The flesh-eating man needs for his support an enormous extent of
land, wider and more extensive even than the Lion and the Tiger.
A nation of Hunters in a circumscribed territory is incapable
of multiplying itself for that reason. The carbon necessary for
maintaining life must be taken from animals, of whom in the limited
area there can be only a limited number. These animals collect
from the plants the elements of their blood and their organs, and
supply them to the Indians living by the chase, who devour them
unaccompanied by the substance (_stoffen_) which during the life
of the animal maintained the life processes. While the Indian, by
feeding upon a single animal, might contrive to _sustain_ his life
and health a certain number of days, he must, in order to gain
for that time the requisite heat, devour _five_ animals. His food
contains a superfluity of nitrogenous substance. What is wanting to
it during the greater portion of the year is the necessary quantity
of carbon, and hence the inveterate inclination of flesh consumers
for brandy.

“The practical illustration of agricultural superiority cannot be
more clearly and profoundly given than in the speech of the North
American Chief, which the Frenchman Crevecous has reported to us.
The Chief, recommending to his tribe the practice of Agriculture,
thus addressed it: ‘Do you not observe that, while we live upon
Flesh, the white men live [_in part_] upon Grain? That Flesh takes
more than thirty months to grow to maturity, and besides is often
scarce? That each of these miraculous grains of corn, which they
bury in the earth, gives back to them more than a hundredfold? That
Flesh has four legs upon which to run away, and we have only two
to overtake them? That the Corn remains and grows where the white
men sow it; that the winter, which for us is a time of toilsome
hunting, is for them the time of rest? Therefore have they so many
children, and live so much longer than we. I say, then, to each
one who hears me: Before the trees over our wigwams have died from
old age, and the maples have ceased to supply us with sugar, the
race of the corn-planter will have exterminated the race of the
flesh-eater, because the hunters determine not to sow.’”[283]

Liebig’s views as to the mischievous effects of the propensity of farmers, and of so-called agriculturists, to convert arable into pasture land are sufficiently well known.[284]