Chapter XVIII: Part 18

All that we intend to bring out clearly through these investigations, the impossibility of attaining lasting satisfaction and the negative nature of all happiness, finds its explanation in what is shown at the conclusion of the Second Book: that the will, of which human life, like every phenomenon, is the objectification, is a striving without aim or end. We find the stamp of this endlessness imprinted upon all the parts of its whole manifestation, from its most universal form, endless time and space, up to the most perfect of all phenomena, the life and efforts of man. We may theoretically assume three extremes of human life, and treat them as elements of actual human life. First, the powerful will, the strong passions (Radscha-Guna). It appears in great historical characters; it is described in the epic and the drama. But it can also show itself in the little world, for the size of the objects is measured here by the degree in which they influence the will, not according to their external relations. Secondly, pure knowing, the comprehension of the Ideas, conditioned by the freeing of knowledge from the service of will: the life of genius (Satwa-Guna). Thirdly and lastly, the greatest lethargy of the will, and also of the knowledge attaching to it, empty longing, life-benumbing languor (Tama-Guna). The life of the individual, far from becoming permanently fixed in one of these extremes, seldom touches any of them, and is for the most part only a weak and wavering approach to one or the other side, a needy desiring of trifling objects, constantly recurring, and so escaping ennui. It is really incredible how meaningless and void of significance when looked at from without, how dull and unenlightened by intellect when felt from within, is the course of the life of the great majority of men. It is a weary longing and complaining, a dream-like staggering through the four ages of life to death, accompanied by a series of trivial thoughts. Such men are like clockwork, which is wound up, and goes it knows not why; and every time a man is begotten and born, the clock of human life is wound up anew, to repeat the same old piece it has played innumerable times before, passage after passage, measure after measure, with insignificant variations. Every individual, every human being and his course of life, is but another short dream of the endless spirit of nature, of the persistent will to live; is only another fleeting form, which it carelessly sketches on its infinite page, space and time; allows to remain for a time so short that it vanishes into nothing in comparison with these, and then obliterates to make new room. And yet, and here lies the serious side of life, every one of these fleeting forms, these empty fancies, must be paid for by the whole will to live, in all its activity, with many and deep sufferings, and finally with a bitter death, long feared and coming at last. This is why the sight of a corpse makes us suddenly so serious.

The life of every individual, if we survey it as a whole and in general, and only lay stress upon its most significant features, is really always a tragedy, but gone through in detail, it has the character of a comedy. For the deeds and vexations of the day, the restless irritation of the moment, the desires and fears of the week, the mishaps of every hour, are all through chance, which is ever bent upon some jest, scenes of a comedy. But the never-satisfied wishes, the frustrated efforts, the hopes unmercifully crushed by fate, the unfortunate errors of the whole life, with increasing suffering and death at the end, are always a tragedy. Thus, as if fate would add derision to the misery of our existence, our life must contain all the woes of tragedy, and yet we cannot even assert the dignity of tragic characters, but in the broad detail of life must inevitably be the foolish characters of a comedy.

But however much great and small trials may fill human life, they are not able to conceal its insufficiency to satisfy the spirit; they cannot hide the emptiness and superficiality of existence, nor exclude ennui, which is always ready to fill up every pause that care may allow. Hence it arises that the human mind, not content with the cares, anxieties, and occupations which the actual world lays upon it, creates for itself an imaginary world also in the form of a thousand different superstitions, then finds all manner of employment with this, and wastes time and strength upon it, as soon as the real world is willing to grant it the rest which it is quite incapable of enjoying. This is accordingly most markedly the case with nations for which life is made easy by the congenial nature of the climate and the soil, most of all with the Hindus, then with the Greeks, the Romans, and later with the Italians, the Spaniards, &c. Demons, gods, and saints man creates in his own image; and to them he must then unceasingly bring offerings, prayers, temple decorations, vows and their fulfilment, pilgrimages, salutations, ornaments for their images, &c. Their service mingles everywhere with the real, and, indeed, obscures it. Every event of life is regarded as the work of these beings; the intercourse with them occupies half the time of life, constantly sustains hope, and by the charm of illusion often becomes more interesting than intercourse with real beings. It is the expression and symptom of the actual need of mankind, partly for help and support, partly for occupation and diversion; and if it often works in direct opposition to the first need, because when accidents and dangers arise valuable time and strength, instead of being directed to warding them off, are uselessly wasted on prayers and offerings; it serves the second end all the better by this imaginary converse with a visionary spirit world; and this is the by no means contemptible gain of all superstitions.

§ 59. If we have so far convinced ourselves _a priori_, by the most general consideration, by investigation of the primary and elemental features of human life, that in its whole plan it is capable of no true blessedness, but is in its very nature suffering in various forms, and throughout a state of misery, we might now awaken this conviction much more vividly within us if, proceeding more _a posteriori_, we were to turn to more definite instances, call up pictures to the fancy, and illustrate by examples the unspeakable misery which experience and history present, wherever one may look and in whatever direction one may seek. But the chapter would have no end, and would carry us far from the standpoint of the universal, which is essential to philosophy; and, moreover, such a description might easily be taken for a mere declamation on human misery, such as has often been given, and, as such, might be charged with one-sidedness, because it started from particular facts. From such a reproach and suspicion our perfectly cold and philosophical investigation of the inevitable suffering which is founded in the nature of life is free, for it starts from the universal and is conducted _a priori_. But confirmation _a posteriori_ is everywhere easily obtained. Every one who has awakened from the first dream of youth, who has considered his own experience and that of others, who has studied himself in life, in the history of the past and of his own time, and finally in the works of the great poets, will, if his judgment is not paralysed by some indelibly imprinted prejudice, certainly arrive at the conclusion that this human world is the kingdom of chance and error, which rule without mercy in great things and in small, and along with which folly and wickedness also wield the scourge. Hence it arises that everything better only struggles through with difficulty; what is noble and wise seldom attains to expression, becomes effective and claims attention, but the absurd and the perverse in the sphere of thought, the dull and tasteless in the sphere of art, the wicked and deceitful in the sphere of action, really assert a supremacy, only disturbed by short interruptions. On the other hand, everything that is excellent is always a mere exception, one case in millions, and therefore, if it presents itself in a lasting work, this, when it has outlived the enmity of its contemporaries, exists in isolation, is preserved like a meteoric stone, sprung from an order of things different from that which prevails here. But as far as the life of the individual is concerned, every biography is the history of suffering, for every life is, as a rule, a continual series of great and small misfortunes, which each one conceals as much as possible, because he knows that others can seldom feel sympathy or compassion, but almost always satisfaction at the sight of the woes from which they are themselves for the moment exempt. But perhaps at the end of life, if a man is sincere and in full possession of his faculties, he will never wish to have it to live over again, but rather than this, he will much prefer absolute annihilation. The essential content of the famous soliloquy in “Hamlet” is briefly this: Our state is so wretched that absolute annihilation would be decidedly preferable. If suicide really offered us this, so that the alternative “to be or not to be,” in the full sense of the word, was placed before us, then it would be unconditionally to be chosen as “a consummation devoutly to be wished.” But there is something in us which tells us that this is not the case: suicide is not the end; death is not absolute annihilation. In like manner, what was said by the father of history(71) has not since him been contradicted, that no man has ever lived who has not wished more than once that he had not to live the following day. According to this, the brevity of life, which is so constantly lamented, may be the best quality it possesses. If, finally, we should bring clearly to a man’s sight the terrible sufferings and miseries to which his life is constantly exposed, he would be seized with horror; and if we were to conduct the confirmed optimist through the hospitals, infirmaries, and surgical operating-rooms, through the prisons, torture-chambers, and slave-kennels, over battle-fields and places of execution; if we were to open to him all the dark abodes of misery, where it hides itself from the glance of cold curiosity, and, finally, allow him to glance into the starving dungeon of Ugolino, he, too, would understand at last the nature of this “best of possible worlds.” For whence did Dante take the materials for his hell but from this our actual world? And yet he made a very proper hell of it. And when, on the other hand, he came to the task of describing heaven and its delights, he had an insurmountable difficulty before him, for our world affords no materials at all for this. Therefore there remained nothing for him to do but, instead of describing the joys of paradise, to repeat to us the instruction given him there by his ancestor, by Beatrice, and by various saints. But from this it is sufficiently clear what manner of world it is. Certainly human life, like all bad ware, is covered over with a false lustre: what suffers always conceals itself; on the other hand, whatever pomp or splendour any one can get, he makes a show of openly, and the more inner contentment deserts him, the more he desires to exist as fortunate in the opinion of others: to such an extent does folly go, and the opinion of others is a chief aim of the efforts of every one, although the utter nothingness of it is expressed in the fact that in almost all languages vanity, _vanitas_, originally signifies emptiness and nothingness. But under all this false show, the miseries of life can so increase—and this happens every day—that the death which hitherto has been feared above all things is eagerly seized upon. Indeed, if fate will show its whole malice, even this refuge is denied to the sufferer, and, in the hands of enraged enemies, he may remain exposed to terrible and slow tortures without remedy. In vain the sufferer then calls on his gods for help; he remains exposed to his fate without grace. But this irremediableness is only the mirror of the invincible nature of his will, of which his person is the objectivity. As little as an external power can change or suppress this will, so little can a foreign power deliver it from the miseries which proceed from the life which is the phenomenal appearance of that will. In the principal matter, as in everything else, a man is always thrown back upon himself. In vain does he make to himself gods in order to get from them by prayers and flattery what can only be accomplished by his own will-power. The Old Testament made the world and man the work of a god, but the New Testament saw that, in order to teach that holiness and salvation from the sorrows of this world can only come from the world itself, it was necessary that this god should become man. It is and remains the will of man upon which everything depends for him. Fanatics, martyrs, saints of every faith and name, have voluntarily and gladly endured every torture, because in them the will to live had suppressed itself; and then even the slow destruction of its phenomenon was welcome to them. But I do not wish to anticipate the later exposition. For the rest, I cannot here avoid the statement that, to me, _optimism_, when it is not merely the thoughtless talk of such as harbour nothing but words under their low foreheads, appears not merely as an absurd, but also as a really _wicked_ way of thinking, as a bitter mockery of the unspeakable suffering of humanity. Let no one think that Christianity is favourable to optimism; for, on the contrary, in the Gospels world and evil are used as almost synonymous.(72)

§ 60. We have now completed the two expositions it was necessary to insert; the exposition of the freedom of the will in itself together with the necessity of its phenomenon, and the exposition of its lot in the world which reflects its own nature, and upon the knowledge of which it has to assert or deny itself. Therefore we can now proceed to bring out more clearly the nature of this assertion and denial itself, which was referred to and explained in a merely general way above. This we shall do by exhibiting the conduct in which alone it finds its expression, and considering it in its inner significance.

The _assertion of the will_ is the continuous willing itself, undisturbed by any knowledge, as it fills the life of man in general. For even the body of a man is the objectivity of the will, as it appears at this grade and in this individual. And thus his willing which develops itself in time is, as it were, a paraphrase of his body, an elucidation of the significance of the whole and its parts; it is another way of exhibiting the same thing-in-itself, of which the body is already the phenomenon. Therefore, instead of saying assertion of the will, we may say assertion of the body. The fundamental theme or subject of all the multifarious acts of will is the satisfaction of the wants which are inseparable from the existence of the body in health, they already have their expression in it, and may be referred to the maintenance of the individual and the propagation of the species. But indirectly the most different kinds of motives obtain in this way power over the will, and bring about the most multifarious acts of will. Each of these is only an example, an instance, of the will which here manifests itself generally. Of what nature this example may be, what form the motive may have and impart to it, is not essential; the important point here is that something is willed in general and the degree of intensity with which it is so willed. The will can only become visible in the motives, as the eye only manifests its power of seeing in the light. The motive in general stands before the will in protean forms. It constantly promises complete satisfaction, the quenching of the thirst of will. But whenever it is attained it at once appears in another form, and thus influences the will anew, always according to the degree of the intensity of this will, and its relation to knowledge which are revealed as empirical character, in these very examples and instances.

From the first appearance of consciousness, a man finds himself a willing being, and as a rule, his knowledge remains in constant relation to his will. He first seeks to know thoroughly the objects of his desire, and then the means of attaining them. Now he knows what he has to do, and, as a rule, he does not strive after other knowledge. He moves and acts; his consciousness keeps him always working directly and actively towards the aims of his will; his thought is concerned with the choice of motives. Such is life for almost all men; they wish, they know what they wish, and they strive after it, with sufficient success to keep them from despair, and sufficient failure to keep them from ennui and its consequences. From this proceeds a certain serenity, or at least indifference, which cannot be affected by wealth or poverty; for the rich and the poor do not enjoy what they have, for this, as we have shown, acts in a purely negative way, but what they hope to attain to by their efforts. They press forward with much earnestness, and indeed with an air of importance; thus children also pursue their play. It is always an exception if such a life suffers interruption from the fact that either the æsthetic demand for contemplation or the ethical demand for renunciation proceed from a knowledge which is independent of the service of the will, and directed to the nature of the world in general. Most men are pursued by want all through life, without ever being allowed to come to their senses. On the other hand, the will is often inflamed to a degree that far transcends the assertion of the body, and then violent emotions and powerful passions show themselves, in which the individual not only asserts his own existence, but denies and seeks to suppress that of others when it stands in his way.

The maintenance of the body through its own powers is so small a degree of the assertion of will, that if it voluntarily remains at this degree, we might assume that, with the death of this body, the will also which appeared in it would be extinguished. But even the satisfaction of the sexual passions goes beyond the assertion of one’s own existence, which fills so short a time, and asserts life for an indefinite time after the death of the individual. Nature, always true and consistent, here even naïve, exhibits to us openly the inner significance of the act of generation. Our own consciousness, the intensity of the impulse, teaches us that in this act the most decided _assertion of the will to live_ expresses itself, pure and without further addition (any denial of other individuals); and now, as the consequence of this act, a new life appears in time and the causal series, _i.e._, in nature; the begotten appears before the begetter, different as regards the phenomenon, but in himself, _i.e._, according to the Idea, identical with him. Therefore it is this act through which every species of living creature binds itself to a whole and is perpetuated. Generation is, with reference to the begetter, only the expression, the symptom, of his decided assertion of the will to live: with reference to the begotten, it is not the cause of the will which appears in him, for the will in itself knows neither cause nor effect, but, like all causes, it is merely the occasional cause of the phenomenal appearance of this will at this time in this place. As thing-in-itself, the will of the begetter and that of the begotten are not different, for only the phenomenon, not the thing-in-itself, is subordinate to the _principim individuationis_. With that assertion beyond our own body and extending to the production of a new body, suffering and death, as belonging to the phenomenon of life, have also been asserted anew, and the possibility of salvation, introduced by the completest capability of knowledge, has for this time been shown to be fruitless. Here lies the profound reason of the shame connected with the process of generation. This view is mythically expressed in the dogma of Christian theology that we are all partakers in Adam’s first transgression (which is clearly just the satisfaction of sexual passion), and through it are guilty of suffering and death. In this theology goes beyond the consideration of things according to the principle of sufficient reason, and recognises the Idea of man, the unity of which is re-established out of its dispersion into innumerable individuals through the bond of generation which holds them all together. Accordingly it regards every individual as on one side identical with Adam, the representative of the assertion of life, and, so far, as subject to sin (original sin), suffering, and death; on the other side, the knowledge of the Idea of man enables it to regard every individual as identical with the saviour, the representative of the denial of the will to live, and, so far as a partaker of his sacrifice of himself, saved through his merits, and delivered from the bands of sin and death, _i.e._, the world (Rom. v. 12-21).

Another mythical exposition of our view of sexual pleasure as the assertion of the will to live beyond the individual life, as an attainment to life which is brought about for the first time by this means, or as it were a renewed assignment of life, is the Greek myth of Proserpine, who might return from the lower world so long as she had not tasted its fruit, but who became subject to it altogether through eating the pomegranate. This meaning appears very clearly in Goethe’s incomparable presentation of this myth, especially when, as soon as she has tasted the pomegranate, the invisible chorus of the Fates—

“Thou art ours!
Fasting shouldest thou return:
And the bite of the apple makes thee ours!”

It is worth noticing that Clement of Alexandria (Strom. iii. c. 15) illustrates the matter with the same image and the same expression: Οἱ μεν ευνουχισαντες ἑαυτους απο πασης ἁμαρτιας, δια την βασιλειαν, των ουρανων, μακαριοι οὑτοι εισιν, οἱ του κοσμου νηστευοντες; (_Qui se castrarunt ab omni peccato propter regnum cœlorum, ii sunt beati, a mundo jejunantes_).

The sexual impulse also proves itself the decided and strongest assertion of life by the fact that to man in a state of nature, as to the brutes, it is the final end, the highest goal of life. Self-maintenance is his first effort, and as soon as he has made provision for that, he only strives after the propagation of the species: as a merely natural being he can attempt no more. Nature also, the inner being of which is the will to live itself, impels with all her power both man and the brute towards propagation. Then it has attained its end with the individual, and is quite indifferent to its death, for, as the will to live, it cares only for the preservation of the species, the individual is nothing to it. Because the will to live expresses itself most strongly in the sexual impulse, the inner being of nature, the old poets and philosophers—Hesiod and Parmenides—said very significantly that Eros is the first, the creator, the principle from which all things proceed. (Cf. Arist. Metaph., i. 4.) Pherecydes said: Εις ερωτα μεταβεβλησθαι τον Δια, μελλοντα δημιουργειν (_Jovem, cum mundum fabricare vellet, in cupidinem sese transformasse_). _Proclus ad Plat. Tim._, l. iii. A complete treatment of this subject we have recently received from G. F. Schœmann, “_De Cupidine Cosmogonico_,” 1852. The Mâya of the Hindus, whose work and web is the whole world of illusion, is also symbolised by love.

The genital organs are, far more than any other external member of the body, subject merely to the will, and not at all to knowledge. Indeed, the will shows itself here almost as independent of knowledge, as in those parts which, acting merely in consequence of stimuli, are subservient to vegetative life and reproduction, in which the will works blindly as in unconscious nature. For generation is only reproduction passing over to a new individual, as it were reproduction at the second power, as death is only excretion at the second power. According to all this, the genitals are properly the _focus_ of will, and consequently the opposite pole of the brain, the representative of knowledge, _i.e._, the other side of the world, the world as idea. The former are the life-sustaining principle ensuring endless life to time. In this respect they were worshipped by the Greeks in the _phallus_, and by the Hindus in the _lingam_, which are thus the symbol of the assertion of the will. Knowledge, on the other hand, affords the possibility of the suppression of willing, of salvation through freedom, of conquest and annihilation of the world.

We already considered fully at the beginning of this Fourth Book how the will to live in its assertion must regard its relation to death. We saw that death does not trouble it, because it exists as something included in life itself and belonging to it. Its opposite, generation, completely counterbalances it; and, in spite of the death of the individual, ensures and guarantees life to the will to live through all time. To express this the Hindus made the _lingam_ an attribute of Siva, the god of death. We also fully explained there how he who with full consciousness occupies the standpoint of the decided assertion of life awaits death without fear. We shall therefore say nothing more about this here. Without clear consciousness most men occupy this standpoint and continually assert life. The world exists as the mirror of this assertion, with innumerable individuals in infinite time and space, in infinite suffering, between generation and death without end. Yet from no side is a complaint to be further raised about this; for the will conducts the great tragedy and comedy at its own expense, and is also its own spectator. The world is just what it is because the will, whose manifestation it is, is what it is, because it so wills. The justification of suffering is, that in this phenomenon also the will asserts itself; and this assertion is justified and balanced by the fact that the will bears the suffering. Here we get a glimpse of _eternal justice_ in the whole: we shall recognise it later more definitely and distinctly, and also in the particular. But first we must consider temporal or human justice.(73)

§ 61. It may be remembered from the Second Book that in the whole of nature, at all the grades of the objectification of will, there was a necessary and constant conflict between the individuals of all species; and in this way was expressed the inner contradiction of the will to live with itself. At the highest grade of the objectification, this phenomenon, like all others, will exhibit itself with greater distinctness, and will therefore be more easily explained. With this aim we shall next attempt to trace the source of _egoism_ as the starting-point of all conflict.

We have called time and space the _principium individuationis_, because only through them and in them is multiplicity of the homogeneous possible. They are the essential forms of natural knowledge, _i.e._, knowledge springing from the will. Therefore the will everywhere manifests itself in the multiplicity of individuals. But this multiplicity does not concern the will as thing-in-itself, but only its phenomena. The will itself is present, whole and undivided, in every one of these, and beholds around it the innumerably repeated image of its own nature; but this nature itself, the actually real, it finds directly only in its inner self. Therefore every one desires everything for himself, desires to possess, or at least to control, everything, and whatever opposes it it would like to destroy. To this is added, in the case of such beings as have knowledge, that the individual is the supporter of the knowing subject, and the knowing subject is the supporter of the world, _i.e._, that the whole of Nature outside the knowing subject, and thus also all other individuals, exist only in its idea; it is only conscious of them as its idea, thus merely indirectly as something which is dependent on its own nature and existence; for with its consciousness the world necessarily disappears for it, _i.e._, its being and non-being become synonymous and indistinguishable. Every knowing individual is thus in truth, and finds itself as the whole will to live, or the inner being of the world itself, and also as the complemental condition of the world as idea, consequently as a microcosm which is of equal value with the macrocosm. Nature itself, which is everywhere and always truthful, gives him this knowledge, originally and independently of all reflection, with simple and direct certainty. Now from these two necessary properties we have given the fact may be explained that every individual, though vanishing altogether and diminished to nothing in the boundless world, yet makes itself the centre of the world, has regard for its own existence and well-being before everything else; indeed, from the natural standpoint, is ready to sacrifice everything else for this—is ready to annihilate the world in order to maintain its own self, this drop in the ocean, a little longer. This disposition is _egoism_, which is essential to everything in Nature. Yet it is just through egoism that the inner conflict of the will with itself attains to such a terrible revelation; for this egoism has its continuance and being in that opposition of the microcosm and macrocosm, or in the fact that the objectification of will has the _principium individuationis_ for its form, through which the will manifests itself in the same way in innumerable individuals, and indeed entire and completely in both aspects (will and idea) in each. Thus, while each individual is given to itself directly as the whole will and the whole subject of ideas, other individuals are only given it as ideas. Therefore its own being, and the maintenance of it, is of more importance to it than that of all others together. Every one looks upon his own death as upon the end of the world, while he accepts the death of his acquaintances as a matter of comparative indifference, if he is not in some way affected by it. In the consciousness that has reached the highest grade, that of man, egoism, as well as knowledge, pain and pleasure, must have reached its highest grade also, and the conflict of individuals which is conditioned by it must appear in its most terrible form. And indeed we see this everywhere before our eyes, in small things as in great. Now we see its terrible side in the lives of great tyrants and miscreants, and in world-desolating wars; now its absurd side, in which it is the theme of comedy, and very specially appears as self-conceit and vanity. Rochefoucault understood this better than any one else, and presented it in the abstract. We see it both in the history of the world and in our own experience. But it appears most distinctly of all when any mob of men is set free from all law and order; then there shows itself at once in the distinctest form the _bellum omnium contra omnes_, which Hobbes has so admirably described in the first chapter _De Cive_. We see not only how every one tries to seize from the other what he wants himself, but how often one will destroy the whole happiness or life of another for the sake of an insignificant addition to his own happiness. This is the highest expression of egoism, the manifestations of which in this regard are only surpassed by those of actual wickedness, which seeks, quite disinterestedly, the hurt and suffering of others, without any advantage to itself. Of this we shall speak soon. With this exhibition of the source of egoism the reader should compare the presentation of it in my prize-essay on the basis of morals, § 14.

A chief source of that suffering which we found above to be essential and inevitable to all life is, when it really appears in a definite form, that _Eris_, the conflict of all individuals, the expression of the contradiction, with which the will to live is affected in its inner self, and which attains a visible form through the _principium individuationis_. Wild-beast fights are the most cruel means of showing this directly and vividly. In this original discord lies an unquenchable source of suffering, in spite of the precautions that have been taken against it, and which we shall now consider more closely.

§ 62. It has already been explained that the first and simplest assertion of the will to live is only the assertion of one’s own body, _i.e._, the exhibition of the will through acts in time, so far as the body, in its form and design, exhibits the same will in space, and no further. This assertion shows itself as maintenance of the body, by means of the application of its own powers. To it is directly related the satisfaction of the sexual impulse; indeed this belongs to it, because the genitals belong to the body. Therefore _voluntary_ renunciation of the satisfaction of that impulse, based upon no _motive_, is already a denial of the will to live, is a voluntary self-suppression of it, upon the entrance of knowledge which acts as a _quieter_. Accordingly such denial of one’s own body exhibits itself as a contradiction by the will of its own phenomenon. For although here also the body objectifies in the genitals the will to perpetuate the species, yet this is not willed. Just on this account, because it is a denial or suppression of the will to live, such a renunciation is a hard and painful self-conquest; but of this later. But since the will exhibits that _self-assertion_ of one’s own body in innumerable individuals beside each other, it very easily extends in one individual, on account of the egoism peculiar to them all, beyond this assertion to the _denial_ of the same will appearing in another individual. The will of the first breaks through the limits of the assertion of will of another, because the individual either destroys or injures this other body itself, or else because it compels the powers of the other body to serve _its own_ will, instead of the will which manifests itself in that other body. Thus if, from the will manifesting itself as another body, it withdraws the powers of this body, and so increases the power serving its own will beyond that of its own body, it consequently asserts its own will beyond its own body by means of the negation of the will appearing in another body. This breaking through the limits of the assertion of will of another has always been distinctly recognised, and its concept denoted by the word _wrong_. For both sides recognise the fact instantly, not, indeed, as we do here in distinct abstraction, but as feeling. He who suffers wrong feels the transgression into the sphere of the assertion of his own body, through the denial of it by another individual, as a direct and mental pain which is entirely separated and different from the accompanying physical suffering experienced from the act or the vexation at the loss. To the doer of wrong, on the other hand, the knowledge presents itself that he is in himself the same will which appears in that body also, and which asserts itself with such vehemence; the one phenomenon that, transgressing the limits of its own body and its powers, it extends to the denial of this very will in another phenomenon, and so, regarded as will in itself, it strives against itself by this vehemence and rends itself. Moreover, this knowledge presents itself to him instantly, not _in abstracto_, but as an obscure feeling; and this is called remorse, or, more accurately in this case, the feeling of _wrong committed_.

_Wrong_, the conception of which we have thus analysed in its most general and abstract form, expresses itself in the concrete most completely, peculiarly, and palpably in cannibalism. This is its most distinct and evident type, the terrible picture of the greatest conflict of the will with itself at the highest grade of its objectification, which is man. Next to this, it expresses itself most distinctly in murder; and therefore the committal of murder is followed instantly and with fearful distinctness by remorse, the abstract and dry significance of which we have just given, which inflicts a wound on our peace of mind that a lifetime cannot heal. For our horror at the murder committed, as also our shrinking from the committal of it, corresponds to that infinite clinging to life with which everything living, as phenomenon of the will to live, is penetrated. (We shall analyse this feeling which accompanies the doing of wrong and evil, in other words, the pangs of conscience, more fully later on, and raise its concept to distinctness.) Mutilation, or mere injury of another body, indeed every blow, is to be regarded as in its nature the same as murder, and differing from it only in degree. Further, wrong shows itself in the subjugation of another individual, in forcing him into slavery, and, finally, in the seizure of another’s goods, which, so far as these goods are regarded as the fruit of his labour, is just the same thing as making him a slave, and is related to this as mere injury is to murder.

For _property_, which is not taken from a man without _wrong_, can, according to our explanation of wrong, only be that which has been produced by his own powers. Therefore by taking this we really take the powers of his body from the will objectified in it, to make them subject to the will objectified in another body. For only so does the wrong-doer, by seizing, not the body of another, but a lifeless thing quite different from it, break into the sphere of the assertion of will of another person, because the powers, the work of this other body, are, as it were, incorporated and identified with this thing. It follows from this that all true, _i.e._, moral, right of property is based simply and solely on work, as was pretty generally assumed before Kant, and is distinctly and beautifully expressed in the oldest of all codes of law: “Wise men who know the past explain that a cultured field is the property of him who cut down the wood and cleared and ploughed it, as an antelope belongs to the first hunter who mortally wounds it” (Laws of Manu, ix. 44). Kant’s philosophy of law is an extraordinary concatenation of errors all leading to each other, and he bases the right of property upon first occupation. To me this is only explicable on the supposition that his powers were failing through old age. For how should the mere avowal of my will to exclude others from the use of a thing at once give me a _right_ to it? Clearly such an avowal itself requires a foundation of right, instead of being one, as Kant assumes. And how would he act unjustly _in se_, _i.e._, morally, who does not respect that claim to the sole possession of a thing which is based upon nothing but its own avowal? How should his conscience trouble him about it? For it is so clear and easy to understand that there can be absolutely no such thing as a just seizure of anything, but only a just conversion or acquired possession of it, by spending our own original powers upon it. When, by any foreign labour, however little, a thing has been cultivated, improved, kept from harm or preserved, even if this labour were only the plucking or picking up from the ground of fruit that has grown wild; the person who forcibly seizes such a thing clearly deprives the other of the result of his labour expended upon it, makes the body of this other serve his will instead of its own, asserts his will beyond its own phenomenon to the denial of that of the other, _i.e._, does injustice or wrong.(74) On the other hand, the mere enjoyment of a thing, without any cultivation or preservation of it from destruction, gives just as little right to it as the mere avowal of our desire for its sole possession. Therefore, though one family has hunted a district alone, even for a hundred years, but has done nothing for its improvement; if a stranger comes and desires to hunt there, it cannot prevent him from doing so without moral injustice. Thus the so-called right of preoccupation, according to which, for the mere past enjoyment of a thing, there is demanded the further recompense of the exclusive right to its future enjoyment, is morally entirely without foundation. A new-comer might with far better right reply to him who was depending upon such a right, “Just because you have so long enjoyed, it is right that others should now enjoy also.” No moral right can be established to the sole possession of anything upon which labour cannot be expended, either in improving it or in preserving it from harm, unless it be through a voluntary surrender on the part of others, as a reward for other services. This, however, already presupposes a community regulated by agreement—the State. The morally established right of property, as we have deduced it above, gives, from its nature, to the owner of a thing, the same unlimited power over it which he has over his own body; and hence it follows that he can part with his possessions to others either in exchange or as a gift, and they then possess them with the same moral right as he did.

As regards the doing of wrong generally, it occurs either through violence or through craft; it matters not which as far as what is morally essential is concerned. First, in the case of murder, it is a matter of indifference whether I make use of a dagger or of poison; and the case of every bodily injury is analogous. Other cases of wrong can all be reduced to the fact that I, as the doer of wrong, compel another individual to serve my will instead of his own, to act according to my will instead of according to his own. On the path of violence I attain this end through physical causality, but on the path of craft by means of motivation, _i.e._, by means of causality through knowledge; for I present to his will illusive motives, on account of which he follows my will, while he believes he is following his own. Since the medium in which the motives lie is knowledge, I can only accomplish this by falsifying his knowledge, and this is the _lie_. The lie always aims at influencing another’s will, not merely his knowledge, for itself and as such, but only as a means, so far as it determines his will. For my lying itself, inasmuch as it proceeds from my will, requires a motive; and only the will of another can be such a motive, not his knowledge in and for itself; for as such it can never have an influence upon _my_ will, therefore it can never move it, can never be a motive of its aim. But only the willing and doing of another can be this, and his knowledge indirectly through it. This holds good not only of all lies that have manifestly sprung from self-interest, but also of those which proceed from pure wickedness, which seeks enjoyment in the painful consequences of the error into which it has led another. Indeed, mere empty boasting aims at influencing the will and action of others more or less, by increasing their respect or improving their opinion of the boaster. The mere refusal of a truth, _i.e._, of an assertion generally, is in itself no wrong, but every imposing of a lie is certainly a wrong. He who refuses to show the strayed traveller the right road does him no wrong, but he who directs him to a false road certainly does. It follows from what has been said, that every _lie_, like every act of violence, is as such _wrong_, because as such it has for its aim the extension of the authority of my will to other individuals, and so the assertion of my will through the denial of theirs, just as much as violence has. But the most complete lie is the _broken contract_, because here all the conditions mentioned are completely and distinctly present together. For when I enter into a contract, the promised performance of the other individual is directly and confessedly the motive for my reciprocal performance. The promises were deliberately and formally exchanged. The fulfilment of the declarations made is, it is assumed, in the power of each. If the other breaks the covenant, he has deceived me, and by introducing merely illusory motives into my knowledge, he has bent my will according to his intention; he has extended the control of his will to another individual, and thus has committed a distinct wrong. On this is founded the moral lawfulness and validity of the _contract_.

Wrong through violence is not so _shameful_ to the doer of it as wrong through craft; for the former arises from physical power, which under all circumstances impresses mankind; while the latter, by the use of subterfuge, betrays weakness, and lowers man at once as a physical and moral being. This is further the case because lying and deception can only succeed if he who employs them expresses at the same time horror and contempt of them in order to win confidence, and his victory rests on the fact that men credit him with honesty which he does not possess. The deep horror which is always excited by cunning, faithlessness, and treachery rests on the fact that good faith and honesty are the bond which externally binds into a unity the will which has been broken up into the multiplicity of individuals, and thereby limits the consequences of the egoism which results from that dispersion. Faithlessness and treachery break this outward bond asunder, and thus give boundless scope to the consequences of egoism.

In the connection of our system we have found that the content of the concept of _wrong_ is that quality of the conduct of an individual in which he extends the assertion of the will appearing in his own body so far that it becomes the denial of the will appearing in the bodies of others. We have also laid down, by means of very general examples, the limits at which the province of wrong begins; for we have at once defined its gradations, from the highest degree to the lowest, by means of a few leading conceptions. According to this, the concept of wrong is the original and positive, and the concept of right, which is opposed to it, is the derivative and negative; for we must keep to the concepts, and not to the words. As a matter of fact, there would be no talk of right if there were no such thing as wrong. The concept right contains merely the negation of wrong, and every action is subsumed under it which does not transgress the limit laid down above, _i.e._, is not a denial of the will of another for the stronger assertion of our own. That limit, therefore, divides, as regards a purely _moral_ definition, the whole province of possible actions into such as are wrong or right. Whenever an action does not encroach, in the way explained above, on the sphere of the assertion of will of another, denying it, it is not wrong. Therefore, for example, the refusal of help to another in great need, the quiet contemplation of the death of another from starvation while we ourselves have more than enough, is certainly cruel and fiendish, but it is not wrong; only it can be affirmed with certainty that whoever is capable of carrying unkindness and hardness to such a degree will certainly also commit every wrong whenever his wishes demand it and no compulsion prevents it.

But the conception of right as the negation of wrong finds its principal application, and no doubt its origin, in cases in which an attempted wrong by violence is warded off. This warding off cannot itself be wrong, and consequently is right, although the violence it requires, regarded in itself and in isolation, would be wrong, and is here only justified by the motive, _i.e._, becomes right. If an individual goes so far in the assertion of his own will that he encroaches upon the assertion of will which is essential to my person as such, and denies it, then my warding off of that encroachment is only the denial of that denial, and thus from my side is nothing more than the assertion of the will which essentially and originally appears in my body, and is already implicitly expressed by the mere appearance of this body; consequently is not wrong, but right. That is to say: I have then a right to deny that denial of another with the force necessary to overcome it, and it is easy to see that this may extend to the killing of the other individual, whose encroachment as external violence pressing upon me may be warded off by a somewhat stronger counteraction, entirely without wrong, consequently with right. For all that happens from my side lies always within the sphere of the assertion of will essential to my person as such, and already expressed by it (which is the scene of the conflict), and does not encroach on that of the other, consequently is only negation of the negation, and thus affirmation, not itself negation. Thus if the will of another denies my will, as this appears in my body and the use of its powers for its maintenance, without denial of any foreign will which observes a like limitation, I can _without wrong_ compel it to desist from such denial, _i.e._, I have so far a _right of compulsion_.

In all cases in which I have a right of compulsion, a complete right to use _violence_ against another, I may, according to the circumstances, just as well oppose the violence of the other with _craft_ without doing any wrong, and accordingly I have an actual _right to lie precisely so far as I have a right of compulsion_. Therefore a man acts with perfect right who assures a highway robber who is searching him that he has nothing more upon him; or, if a burglar has broken into his house by night, induces him by a lie to enter a cellar and then locks him in. A man who has been captured and carried off by robbers, for example by pirates, has the right to kill them not only by violence but also by craft, in order to regain his freedom. Thus, also, a promise is certainly not binding when it has been extorted by direct bodily violence, because he who suffers such compulsion may with full right free himself by killing, and, _a fortiori_, by deceiving his oppressor. Whoever cannot recover through force the property which has been stolen from him, commits no wrong if he can accomplish it through craft. Indeed, if some one plays with me for money he has stolen from me, I have the right to use false dice against him, because all that I win from him already belongs to me. Whoever would deny this must still more deny the justifiableness of stratagem in war, which is just an acted lie, and is a proof of the saying of Queen Christina of Sweden, “The words of men are to be esteemed as nothing; scarcely are their deeds to be trusted.” So sharply does the limit of right border upon that of wrong. For the rest, I regard it as superfluous to show that all this completely agrees with what was said above about the unlawfulness of the lie and of violence. It may also serve to explain the peculiar theory of the lie told under pressure.(75)