Chapter XXII: Part 22

§ 69. Suicide, the actual doing away with the individual manifestation of will, differs most widely from the denial of the will to live, which is the single outstanding act of free-will in the manifestation, and is therefore, as Asmus calls it, the transcendental change. This last has been fully considered in the course of our work. Far from being denial of the will, suicide is a phenomenon of strong assertion of will; for the essence of negation lies in this, that the joys of life are shunned, not its sorrows. The suicide wills life, and is only dissatisfied with the conditions under which it has presented itself to him. He therefore by no means surrenders the will to live, but only life, in that he destroys the individual manifestation. He wills life—wills the unrestricted existence and assertion of the body; but the complication of circumstances does not allow this, and there results for him great suffering. The very will to live finds itself so much hampered in this particular manifestation that it cannot put forth its energies. It therefore comes to such a determination as is in conformity with its own nature, which lies outside the conditions of the principle of sufficient reason, and to which, therefore, all particular manifestations are alike indifferent, inasmuch as it itself remains unaffected by all appearing and passing away, and is the inner life of all things; for that firm inward assurance by reason of which we all live free from the constant dread of death, the assurance that a phenomenal existence can never be wanting to the will, supports our action even in the case of suicide. Thus the will to live appears just as much in suicide (Siva) as in the satisfaction of self-preservation (Vishnu) and in the sensual pleasure of procreation (Brahma). This is the inner meaning of the unity of the Trimurtis, which is embodied in its entirety in every human being, though in time it raises now one, now another, of its three heads. Suicide stands in the same relation to the denial of the will as the individual thing does to the Idea. The suicide denies only the individual, not the species. We have already seen that as life is always assured to the will to live, and as sorrow is inseparable from life, suicide, the wilful destruction of the single phenomenal existence, is a vain and foolish act; for the thing-in-itself remains unaffected by it, even as the rainbow endures however fast the drops which support it for the moment may change. But, more than this, it is also the masterpiece of Mâyâ, as the most flagrant example of the contradiction of the will to live with itself. As we found this contradiction in the case of the lowest manifestations of will, in the permanent struggle of all the forces of nature, and of all organic individuals for matter and time and space; and as we saw this antagonism come ever more to the front with terrible distinctness in the ascending grades of the objectification of the will, so at last in the highest grade, the Idea of man, it reaches the point at which, not only the individuals which express the same Idea extirpate each other, but even the same individual declares war against itself. The vehemence with which it wills life, and revolts against what hinders it, namely, suffering, brings it to the point of destroying itself; so that the individual will, by its own act, puts an end to that body which is merely its particular visible expression, rather than permit suffering to break the will. Just because the suicide cannot give up willing, he gives up living. The will asserts itself here even in putting an end to its own manifestation, because it can no longer assert itself otherwise. As, however, it was just the suffering which it so shuns that was able, as mortification of the will, to bring it to the denial of itself, and hence to freedom, so in this respect the suicide is like a sick man, who, after a painful operation which would entirely cure him has been begun, will not allow it to be completed, but prefers to retain his disease. Suffering approaches and reveals itself as the possibility of the denial of will; but the will rejects it, in that it destroys the body, the manifestation of itself, in order that it may remain unbroken. This is the reason why almost all ethical teachers, whether philosophical or religious, condemn suicide, although they themselves can only give far-fetched sophistical reasons for their opinion. But if a human being was ever restrained from committing suicide by purely moral motives, the inmost meaning of this self-conquest (in whatever ideas his reason may have clothed it) was this: “I will not shun suffering, in order that it may help to put an end to the will to live, whose manifestation is so wretched, by so strengthening the knowledge of the real nature of the world which is already beginning to dawn upon me, that it may become the final quieter of my will, and may free me for ever.”

It is well known that from time to time cases occur in which the act of suicide extends to the children. The father first kills the children he loves, and then himself. Now, if we consider that conscience, religion, and all influencing ideas teach him to look upon murder as the greatest of crimes, and that, in spite of this, he yet commits it, in the hour of his own death, and when he is altogether uninfluenced by any egotistical motive, such a deed can only be explained in the following manner: in this case, the will of the individual, the father, recognises itself immediately in the children, though involved in the delusion of mistaking the appearance for the true nature; and as he is at the same time deeply impressed with the knowledge of the misery of all life, he now thinks to put an end to the inner nature itself, along with the appearance, and thus seeks to deliver from existence and its misery both himself and his children, in whom he discerns himself as living again. It would be an error precisely analogous to this to suppose that one may reach the same end as is attained through voluntary chastity by frustrating the aim of nature in fecundation; or indeed if, in consideration of the unendurable suffering of life, parents were to use means for the destruction of their new-born children, instead of doing everything possible to ensure life to that which is struggling into it. For if the will to live is there, as it is the only metaphysical reality, or the thing-in-itself, no physical force can break it, but can only destroy its manifestation at this place and time. It itself can never be transcended except through knowledge. Thus the only way of salvation is, that the will shall manifest itself unrestrictedly, in order that in this individual manifestation it may come to apprehend its own nature. Only as the result of this knowledge can the will transcend itself, and thereby end the suffering which is inseparable from its manifestation. It is quite impossible to accomplish this end by physical force, as by destroying the germ, or by killing the new-born child, or by committing suicide. Nature guides the will to the light, just because it is only in the light that it can work out its salvation. Therefore the aims of Nature are to be promoted in every way as soon as the will to live, which is its inner being, has determined itself.

There is a species of suicide which seems to be quite distinct from the common kind, though its occurrence has perhaps not yet been fully established. It is starvation, voluntarily chosen on the ground of extreme asceticism. All instances of it, however, have been accompanied and obscured by much religious fanaticism, and even superstition. Yet it seems that the absolute denial of will may reach the point at which the will shall be wanting to take the necessary nourishment for the support of the natural life. This kind of suicide is so far from being the result of the will to live, that such a completely resigned ascetic only ceases to live because he has already altogether ceased to will. No other death than that by starvation is in this case conceivable (unless it were the result of some special superstition); for the intention to cut short the torment would itself be a stage in the assertion of will. The dogmas which satisfy the reason of such a penitent delude him with the idea that a being of a higher nature has inculcated the fasting to which his own inner tendency drives him. Old examples of this may be found in the “Breslauer Sammlung von Natur- und Medicin-Geschichten,” September 1799, p. 363; in Bayle’s “Nouvelles de la République des Lettres,” February 1685, p. 189; in Zimmermann, “Ueber die Einsamkeit,” vol. i. p. 182; in the “Histoire de l’Académie des Sciences” for 1764, an account by Houttuyn, which is quoted in the “Sammlung für praktische Aerzte,” vol. i. p. 69. More recent accounts may be found in Hufeland’s “Journal für praktische Heilkunde,” vol. x. p. 181, and vol. xlviii. p. 95; also in Nasse’s “Zeitschrift für psychische Aerzte,” 1819, part iii. p. 460; and in the “Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal,” 1809, vol. v. p. 319. In the year 1833 all the papers announced that the English historian, Dr. Lingard, had died in January at Dover of voluntary starvation; according to later accounts, it was not he himself, but a relation of his who died. Still in these accounts the persons were generally described as insane, and it is no longer possible to find out how far this was the case. But I will give here a more recent case of this kind, if it were only to ensure the preservation of one of the rare instances of this striking and extraordinary phenomenon of human nature, which, to all appearance at any rate, belongs to the category to which I wish to assign it and could hardly be explained in any other way. This case is reported in the “Nürnberger Correspondenten” of the 29th July 1813, in these words:—“We hear from Bern that in a thick wood near Thurnen a hut has been discovered in which was lying the body of a man who had been dead about a month. His clothes gave little or no clue to his social position. Two very fine shirts lay beside him. The most important article, however, was a Bible interleaved with white paper, part of which had been written upon by the deceased. In this writing he gives the date of his departure from home (but does not mention where his home was). He then says that he was driven by the Spirit of God into the wilderness to pray and fast. During his journey he had fasted seven days and then he had again taken food. After this he had begun again to fast, and continued to do so for the same number of days as before. From this point we find each day marked with a stroke, and of these there are five, at the expiration of which the pilgrim presumably died. There was further found a letter to a clergyman about a sermon which the deceased heard him preach, but the letter was not addressed.” Between this voluntary death arising from extreme asceticism and the common suicide resulting from despair there may be various intermediate species and combinations, though this is hard to find out. But human nature has depths, obscurities, and perplexities, the analysis and elucidation of which is a matter of the very greatest difficulty.

§ 70. It might be supposed that the entire exposition (now terminated) of that which I call the denial of the will is irreconcilable with the earlier explanation of necessity, which belongs just as much to motivation as to every other form of the principle of sufficient reason, and according to which, motives, like all causes, are only occasional causes, upon which the character unfolds its nature and reveals it with the necessity of a natural law, on account of which we absolutely denied freedom as _liberum arbitrium indifferentiæ_. But far from suppressing this here, I would call it to mind. In truth, real freedom, _i.e._, independence of the principle of sufficient reason, belongs to the will only as a thing-in-itself, not to its manifestation, whose essential form is everywhere the principle of sufficient reason, the element or sphere of necessity. But the one case in which that freedom can become directly visible in the manifestation is that in which it makes an end of what manifests itself, and because the mere manifestation, as a link in the chain of causes, the living body in time, which contains only phenomena, still continues to exist, the will which manifests itself through this phenomenon then stands in contradiction to it, for it denies what the phenomenon expresses. In such a case the organs of generation, for example, as the visible form of the sexual impulse, are there and in health; but yet, in the inmost consciousness, no sensual gratification is desired; and although the whole body is only the visible expression of the will to live, yet the motives which correspond to this will no longer act; indeed, the dissolution of the body, the end of the individual, and in this way the greatest check to the natural will, is welcome and desired. Now, the contradiction between our assertions of the necessity of the determination of the will by motives, in accordance with the character, on the one hand, and of the possibility of the entire suppression of the will whereby the motives become powerless, on the other hand, is only the repetition in the reflection of philosophy of this _real_ contradiction which arises from the direct encroachment of the freedom of the will-in-itself, which knows no necessity, into the sphere of the necessity of its manifestation. But the key to the solution of these contradictions lies in the fact that the state in which the character is withdrawn from the power of motives does not proceed directly from the will, but from a changed form of knowledge. So long as the knowledge is merely that which is involved in the _principium individuationis_ and exclusively follows the principle of sufficient reason, the strength of the motives is irresistible. But when the _principium individuationis_ is seen through, when the Ideas, and indeed the inner nature of the thing-in-itself, as the same will in all, are directly recognised, and from this knowledge an universal quieter of volition arises, then the particular motives become ineffective, because the kind of knowledge which corresponds to them is obscured and thrown into the background by quite another kind. Therefore the character can never partially change, but must, with the consistency of a law of Nature, carry out in the particular the will which it manifests as a whole. But this whole, the character itself, may be completely suppressed or abolished through the change of knowledge referred to above. It is this suppression or abolition which Asmus, as quoted above, marvels at and denotes the “catholic, transcendental change;” and in the Christian Church it has very aptly been called the _new birth_, and the knowledge from which it springs, the _work of grace_. Therefore it is not a question of a change, but of an entire suppression of the character; and hence it arises that, however different the characters which experience the suppression may have been before it, after it they show a great similarity in their conduct, though every one still speaks very differently according to his conceptions and dogmas.

In this sense, then, the old philosophical doctrine of the freedom of the will, which has constantly been contested and constantly maintained, is not without ground, and the dogma of the Church of the work of grace and the new birth is not without meaning and significance. But we now unexpectedly see both united in one, and we can also now understand in what sense the excellent Malebranche could say, “_La liberté est un mystère_,” and was right. For precisely what the Christian mystics call _the work of grace_ and _the new birth_, is for us the single direct expression of _the freedom of the will_. It only appears if the will, having attained to a knowledge of its own real nature, receives from this a _quieter_, by means of which the motives are deprived of their effect, which belongs to the province of another kind of knowledge, the objects of which are merely phenomena. The possibility of the freedom which thus expresses itself is the greatest prerogative of man, which is for ever wanting to the brute, because the condition of it is the deliberation of reason, which enables him to survey the whole of life independent of the impression of the present. The brute is entirely without the possibility of freedom, as, indeed, it is without the possibility of a proper or deliberate choice following upon a completed conflict of motives, which for this purpose would have to be abstract ideas. Therefore with the same necessity with which the stone falls to the earth, the hungry wolf buries its fangs in the flesh of its prey, without the possibility of the knowledge that it is itself the destroyed as well as the destroyer. _Necessity is the kingdom of nature; freedom is the kingdom of grace._

Now because, as we have seen, that _self-suppression of the will_ proceeds from knowledge, and all knowledge is involuntary, that denial of will also, that entrance into freedom, cannot be forcibly attained to by intention or design, but proceeds from the inmost relation of knowing and volition in the man, and therefore comes suddenly, as if spontaneously from without. This is why the Church has called it _the work of grace_; and that it still regards it as independent of the acceptance of grace corresponds to the fact that the effect of the quieter is finally a free act of will. And because, in consequence of such a work of grace, the whole nature of man is changed and reversed from its foundation, so that he no longer wills anything of all that he previously willed so intensely, so that it is as if a new man actually took the place of the old, the Church has called this consequence of the work of grace the _new birth_. For what it calls the _natural man_, to which it denies all capacity for good, is just the will to live, which must be denied if deliverance from an existence such as ours is to be attained. Behind our existence lies something else, which is only accessible to us if we have shaken off this world.

Having regard, not to the individuals according to the principle of sufficient reason, but to the Idea of man in its unity, Christian theology symbolises _nature_, the _assertion of the will to live_ in Adam, whose sin, inherited by us, _i.e._, our unity with him in the Idea, which is represented in time by the bond of procreation, makes us all partakers of suffering and eternal death. On the other hand, it symbolises _grace_, the _denial of the will_, _salvation_, in the incarnate God, who, as free from all sin, that is, from all willing of life, cannot, like us, have proceeded from the most pronounced assertion of the will, nor can he, like us, have a body which is through and through simply concrete will, manifestation of the will; but born of a pure virgin, he has only a phantom body. This last is the doctrine of the Docetæ, _i.e._, certain Church Fathers, who in this respect are very consistent. It is especially taught by Apelles, against whom and his followers Tertullian wrote. But even Augustine comments thus on the passage, Rom. viii. 3, “God sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh:” “_Non enim caro peccati erat, quæ non de carnali delectatione nata erat: sed tamen inerat ei similitudo carnis peccati, quia mortalis caro erat_” (Liber 83, _quæst. qu._ 66). He also teaches in his work entitled “_Opus Imperfectum_,” i. 47, that inherited sin is both sin and punishment at once. It is already present in new-born children, but only shows itself if they grow up. Yet the origin of this sin is to be referred to the will of the sinner. This sinner was Adam, but we all existed in him; Adam became miserable, and in him we have all become miserable. Certainly the doctrine of original sin (assertion of the will) and of salvation (denial of the will) is the great truth which constitutes the essence of Christianity, while most of what remains is only the clothing of it, the husk or accessories. Therefore Jesus Christ ought always to be conceived in the universal, as the symbol or personification of the denial of the will to live, but never as an individual, whether according to his mythical history given in the Gospels, or according to the probably true history which lies at the foundation of this. For neither the one nor the other will easily satisfy us entirely. It is merely the vehicle of that conception for the people, who always demand something actual. That in recent times Christianity has forgotten its true significance, and degenerated into dull optimism, does not concern us here.

It is further an original and evangelical doctrine of Christianity—which Augustine, with the consent of the leaders of the Church, defended against the platitudes of the Pelagians, and which it was the principal aim of Luther’s endeavour to purify from error and re-establish, as he expressly declares in his book, “_De Servo Arbitrio_,”—the doctrine that _the will is not free_, but originally subject to the inclination to evil. Therefore according to this doctrine the deeds of the will are always sinful and imperfect, and can never fully satisfy justice; and, finally, these works can never save us, but faith alone, a faith which itself does not spring from resolution and free will, but from the work of grace, without our co-operation, comes to us as from without.

Not only the dogmas referred to before, but also this last genuine evangelical dogma belongs to those which at the present day an ignorant and dull opinion rejects as absurd or hides. For, in spite of Augustine and Luther, it adheres to the vulgar Pelagianism, which the rationalism of the day really is, and treats as antiquated those deeply significant dogmas which are peculiar and essential to Christianity in the strictest sense; while, on the other hand, it holds fast and regards as the principal matter only the dogma that originates in Judaism, and has been retained from it, and is merely historically connected with Christianity.(91) We, however, recognise in the doctrine referred to above the truth completely agreeing with the result of our own investigations. We see that true virtue and holiness of disposition have their origin not in deliberate choice (works), but in knowledge (faith); just as we have in like manner developed it from our leading thought. If it were works, which spring from motives and deliberate intention, that led to salvation, then, however one may turn it, virtue would always be a prudent, methodical, far-seeing egoism. But the faith to which the Christian Church promises salvation is this: that as through the fall of the first man we are all partakers of sin and subject to death and perdition, through the divine substitute, through grace and the taking upon himself of our fearful guilt, we are all saved, without any merit of our own (of the person); since that which can proceed from the intentional (determined by motives) action of the person, works, can never justify us, from its very nature, just because it is _intentional_, action induced by motives, _opus operatum_. Thus in this faith there is implied, first of all, that our condition is originally and essentially an incurable one, from which we need _salvation_; then, that we ourselves essentially belong to evil, and are so firmly bound to it that our works according to law and precept, _i.e._, according to motives, can never satisfy justice nor save us; but salvation is only obtained through faith, _i.e._, through a changed mode of knowing, and this faith can only come through grace, thus as from without. This means that the salvation is one which is quite foreign to our person, and points to a denial and surrender of this person necessary to salvation. Works, the result of the law as such, can never justify, because they are always action following upon motives. Luther demands (in his book “_De Libertate Christiana_”) that after the entrance of faith the good works shall proceed from it entirely of themselves, as symptoms, as fruits of it; yet by no means as constituting in themselves a claim to merit, justification, or reward, but taking place quite voluntarily and gratuitously. So we also hold that from the ever-clearer penetration of the _principium individuationis_ proceeds, first, merely free justice, then love, extending to the complete abolition of egoism, and finally resignation or denial of the will.

I have here introduced these dogmas of Christian theology, which in themselves are foreign to philosophy, merely for the purpose of showing that the ethical doctrine which proceeds from our whole investigation, and is in complete agreement and connection with all its parts, although new and unprecedented in its expression, is by no means so in its real nature, but fully agrees with the Christian dogmas properly so called, and indeed, as regards its essence, was contained and present in them. It also agrees quite as accurately with the doctrines and ethical teachings of the sacred books of India, which in their turn are presented in quite different forms. At the same time the calling to mind of the dogmas of the Christian Church serves to explain and illustrate the apparent contradiction between the necessity of all expressions of character when motives are presented (the kingdom of Nature) on the one hand, and the freedom of the will in itself, to deny itself, and abolish the character with all the necessity of the motives based upon it (the kingdom of grace) on the other hand.

§ 71. I now end the general account of ethics, and with it the whole development of that one thought which it has been my object to impart; and I by no means desire to conceal here an objection which concerns this last part of my exposition, but rather to point out that it lies in the nature of the question, and that it is quite impossible to remove it. It is this, that after our investigation has brought us to the point at which we have before our eyes perfect holiness, the denial and surrender of all volition, and thus the deliverance from a world whose whole existence we have found to be suffering, this appears to us as a passing away into empty nothingness.

On this I must first remark, that the conception of nothing is essentially relative, and always refers to a definite something which it negatives. This quality has been attributed (by Kant) merely to the _nihil privativum_, which is indicated by - as opposed to +, which -, from an opposite point of view, might become +, and in opposition to this _nihil privativum_ the _nihil negativum_ has been set up, which would in every reference be nothing, and as an example of this the logical contradiction which does away with itself has been given. But more closely considered, no absolute nothing, no proper _nihil negativum_ is even thinkable; but everything of this kind, when considered from a higher standpoint or subsumed under a wider concept, is always merely a _nihil privativum_. Every nothing is thought as such only in relation to something, and presupposes this relation, and thus also this something. Even a logical contradiction is only a relative nothing. It is no thought of the reason, but it is not on that account an absolute nothing; for it is a combination of words; it is an example of the unthinkable, which is necessary in logic in order to prove the laws of thought. Therefore if for this end such an example is sought, we will stick to the nonsense as the positive which we are in search of, and pass over the sense as the negative. Thus every _nihil negativum_, if subordinated to a higher concept, will appear as a mere _nihil privativum_ or relative nothing, which can, moreover, always exchange signs with what it negatives, so that that would then be thought as negation, and it itself as assertion. This also agrees with the result of the difficult dialectical investigation of the meaning of nothing which Plato gives in the “Sophist” (pp. 277-287): Την του ἑτερου φυσιν αποδειξαντες ουσαν τε, και κατακεκερματισμενην επι παντα τα οντα προς αλληλα, το προς το ον ἑκαστου μοριου αυτης αντιτιθεμενον, ετολμησαμεν ειπειν, ὡς αυτο τουτο εστιν οντως το μη ον (_Cum enim ostenderemus, alterius ipsius naturam esse perque omnia entia divisam atque dispersam in vicem; tunc partem ejus oppositam ei, quod cujusque ens est, esse ipsum revera non ens asseruimus_).

That which is generally received as positive, which we call the real, and the negation of which the concept nothing in its most general significance expresses, is just the world as idea, which I have shown to be the objectivity and mirror of the will. Moreover, we ourselves are just this will and this world, and to them belongs the idea in general, as one aspect of them. The form of the idea is space and time, therefore for this point of view all that is real must be in some place and at some time. Denial, abolition, conversion of the will, is also the abolition and the vanishing of the world, its mirror. If we no longer perceive it in this mirror, we ask in vain where it has gone, and then, because it has no longer any where and when, complain that it has vanished into nothing.

A reversed point of view, if it were possible for us, would reverse the signs and show the real for us as nothing, and that nothing as the real. But as long as we ourselves are the will to live, this last—nothing as the real—can only be known and signified by us negatively, because the old saying of Empedocles, that like can only be known by like, deprives us here of all knowledge, as, conversely, upon it finally rests the possibility of all our actual knowledge, _i.e._, the world as idea; for the world is the self-knowledge of the will.

If, however, it should be absolutely insisted upon that in some way or other a positive knowledge should be attained of that which philosophy can only express negatively as the denial of the will, there would be nothing for it but to refer to that state which all those who have attained to complete denial of the will have experienced, and which has been variously denoted by the names ecstasy, rapture, illumination, union with God, and so forth; a state, however, which cannot properly be called knowledge, because it has not the form of subject and object, and is, moreover, only attainable in one’s own experience and cannot be further communicated.

We, however, who consistently occupy the standpoint of philosophy, must be satisfied here with negative knowledge, content to have reached the utmost limit of the positive. We have recognised the inmost nature of the world as will, and all its phenomena as only the objectivity of will; and we have followed this objectivity from the unconscious working of obscure forces of Nature up to the completely conscious action of man. Therefore we shall by no means evade the consequence, that with the free denial, the surrender of the will, all those phenomena are also abolished; that constant strain and effort without end and without rest at all the grades of objectivity, in which and through which the world consists; the multifarious forms succeeding each other in gradation; the whole manifestation of the will; and, finally, also the universal forms of this manifestation, time and space, and also its last fundamental form, subject and object; all are abolished. No will: no idea, no world.

Before us there is certainly only nothingness. But that which resists this passing into nothing, our nature, is indeed just the will to live, which we ourselves are as it is our world. That we abhor annihilation so greatly, is simply another expression of the fact that we so strenuously will life, and are nothing but this will, and know nothing besides it. But if we turn our glance from our own needy and embarrassed condition to those who have overcome the world, in whom the will, having attained to perfect self-knowledge, found itself again in all, and then freely denied itself, and who then merely wait to see the last trace of it vanish with the body which it animates; then, instead of the restless striving and effort, instead of the constant transition from wish to fruition, and from joy to sorrow, instead of the never-satisfied and never-dying hope which constitutes the life of the man who wills, we shall see that peace which is above all reason, that perfect calm of the spirit, that deep rest, that inviolable confidence and serenity, the mere reflection of which in the countenance, as Raphael and Correggio have represented it, is an entire and certain gospel; only knowledge remains, the will has vanished. We look with deep and painful longing upon this state, beside which the misery and wretchedness of our own is brought out clearly by the contrast. Yet this is the only consideration which can afford us lasting consolation, when, on the one hand, we have recognised incurable suffering and endless misery as essential to the manifestation of will, the world; and, on the other hand, see the world pass away with the abolition of will, and retain before us only empty nothingness. Thus, in this way, by contemplation of the life and conduct of saints, whom it is certainly rarely granted us to meet with in our own experience, but who are brought before our eyes by their written history, and, with the stamp of inner truth, by art, we must banish the dark impression of that nothingness which we discern behind all virtue and holiness as their final goal, and which we fear as children fear the dark; we must not even evade it like the Indians, through myths and meaningless words, such as reabsorption in Brahma or the Nirvana of the Buddhists. Rather do we freely acknowledge that what remains after the entire abolition of will is for all those who are still full of will certainly nothing; but, conversely, to those in whom the will has turned and has denied itself, this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky-ways—is nothing.(92)

FOOTNOTES

1 F. H. Jacobi.

2 The Hegelian Philosophy.

3 Fichte and Schelling.

4 Hegel.

5 Kant is the only writer who has confused this idea of reason, and in
this connection I refer the reader to the Appendix, and also to my
“Grundprobleme der Ethik”: Grundl. dd. Moral. § 6, pp. 148-154,
first and second editions.

6 Mira in quibusdam rebus verborum proprietas est, et consuetudo
sermonis antiqui quædam efficacissimis notis signat. _Seneca_,
epist. 81.

7 It is shown in the Appendix that matter and substance are one.

8 This shows the ground of the Kantian explanation of matter, that it
is “that which is movable in space,” for motion consists simply in
the union of space and time.

9 Not, as Kant holds, from the knowledge of time, as will be explained
in the Appendix.

10 On this see “The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient
Reason,” § 49.

11 The first four chapters of the first of the supplementary books
belong to these seven paragraphs.

12 Compare with this paragraph §§ 26 and 27 of the third edition of the
essay on the principle of sufficient reason.

13 Cf. Ch. 5 and 6 of the Supplement.

14 Cf. Ch. 9 and 10 of the Supplement.

15 Cf. Ch. 11 of Supplement.

16 I am therefore of opinion that a science of physiognomy cannot, with
certainty, go further than to lay down a few quite general rules.
For example, the intellectual qualities are to be read in the
forehead and the eyes; the moral qualities, the expression of will,
in the mouth and lower part of the face. The forehead and the eyes
interpret each other; either of them seen alone can only be half
understood. Genius is never without a high, broad, finely-arched
brow; but such a brow often occurs where there is no genius. A
clever-looking person may the more certainly be judged to be so the
uglier the face is; and a stupid-looking person may the more
certainly be judged to be stupid the more beautiful the face is; for
beauty, as the approximation to the type of humanity, carries in and
for itself the expression of mental clearness; the opposite is the
case with ugliness, and so forth.

17 Cf. Ch. 7 of the Supplement.

18 Cf. Ch. 8 of Supplement.

19 Suarez, Disput. Metaphysicæ, disp. iii. sect. 3, tit. 3.

20 Cf. Ch. 12 of Supplement.

21 The reader must not think here of Kant’s misuse of these Greek
terms, which is condemned in the Appendix.

22 Spinoza, who always boasts that he proceeds _more geometrico_, has
actually done so more than he himself was aware. For what he knew
with certainty and decision from the immediate, perceptive
apprehension of the nature of the world, he seeks to demonstrate
logically without reference to this knowledge. He only arrives at
the intended and predetermined result by starting from arbitrary
concepts framed by himself (_substantia causa sui_, &c.), and in the
demonstrations he allows himself all the freedom of choice for which
the nature of the wide concept-spheres afford such convenient
opportunity. That his doctrine is true and excellent is therefore in
his case, as in that of geometry, quite independent of the
demonstrations of it. Cf. ch. 13 of supplementary volume.

23 Cf. Ch. 17 of Supplement.

24 Omnes perturbationes judicio censent fieri et opinione. Cic. Tusc.,
4, 6. Ταρασσει τους ανθρωπους ου τα πραγματα, αλλα τα περι των
πραγματων δογματα (Perturbant homines non res ipsæ, sed de rebus
opiniones). Epictet., c. v.

25 Τουτο γαρ εστι το αιτιον τοις ανθρωποις παντων των κακων, το τας
προληψεις τας κοινας μη δυνασθαι εφαρμοξειν ταις επι μερους (Hæc est
causa mortalibus omnium malorum, non posse communes notiones aptare
singularibus). Epict. dissert., ii., 26.

26 Cf. Ch. 16 of Supplement.

27 Cf. Ch. xviii. of the Supplement.

28 We can thus by no means agree with Bacon if he (De Augm. Scient., L.
iv. in fine.) thinks that all mechanical and physical movement of
bodies has always been preceded by perception in these bodies;
though a glimmering of truth lies at the bottom of this false
proposition. This is also the case with Kepler’s opinion, expressed
in his essay _De Planeta Martis_, that the planets must have
knowledge in order to keep their elliptical courses so correctly,
and to regulate the velocity of their motion so that the triangle of
the plane of their course always remains proportional to the time in
which they pass through its base.

29 Cf. Ch. xix. of the Supplement.

30 Cf. Ch. xx. of the Supplement, and also in my work, “_Ueber den
Willen in der Natur_,” the chapters on Physiology and Comparative
Anatomy, where the subject I have only touched upon here is fully
discussed.

31 This is specially treated in the 27th Ch. of the Supplement.

32 This subject is fully worked out in my prize essay on the freedom of
the will, in which therefore (pp. 29-44 of the “Grundprobleme der
Ethik”) the relation of _cause_, _stimulus_, and _motive_ has also
been fully explained.

33 Cf. Ch. xxiii. of the Supplement, and also the Ch. on the physiology
of plants in my work “Ueber den Willen in der Natur,” and the Ch. on
physical astronomy, which is of great importance with regard to the
kernel of my metaphysic.

34 Wenzel, De Structura Cerebri Hominis et Brutorum, 1812, ch. iii.;
Cuvier, Leçons d’Anat., comp. leçon 9, arts. 4 and 5; Vic. d’Azyr,
Hist. de l’Acad. de Sc. de Paris, 1783, pp. 470 and 483.

35 On the 16th of September 1840, at a lecture upon Egyptian Archæology
delivered by Mr. Pettigrew at the Literary and Scientific Institute
of London, he showed some corns of wheat which Sir G. Wilkinson had
found in a grave at Thebes, in which they must have lain for three
thousand years. They were found in an hermetically sealed vase. Mr.
Pettigrew had sowed twelve grains, and obtained a plant which grew
five feet high, and the seeds of which were now quite ripe.—_Times_,
21st September 1840. In the same way in 1830 Mr. Haulton produced in
the Medical Botanical Society of London a bulbous root which was
found in the hand of an Egyptian mummy, in which it was probably put
in observance of some religious rite, and which must have been at
least two thousand years old. He had planted it in a flower-pot, in
which it grew up and flourished. This is quoted from the Medical
Journal of 1830 in the Journal of the Royal Institute of Great
Britain, October 1830, p. 196.—“In the garden of Mr. Grimstone of
the Herbarium, Highgate, London, is a pea in full fruit, which has
sprung from a pea that Mr. Pettigrew and the officials of the
British Museum took out of a vase which had been found in an
Egyptian sarcophagus, where it must have lain 2844 years.”—_Times_,
16th August 1844. Indeed, the living toads found in limestone lead
to the conclusion that even animal life is capable of such a
suspension for thousands of years, if this is begun in the dormant
period and maintained by special circumstances.

36 Cf. Chap. xxii. of the Supplement, and also my work “Ueber den
Willen in der Natur,” p. 54 _et seq._, and pp. 70-79 of the first
edition, or p. 46 _et seq._, and pp. 63-72 of the second, or p. 48
_et seq._, and pp. 69-77 of the third edition.

37 The Scholastics therefore said very truly: _Causa finalis movet non
secundum suum esse reale, sed secundum esse cognitum._ Cf. Suarez,
Disp. Metaph. disp. xxiii., sec. 7 and 8.

38 Cf. “Critique of Pure Reason. Solution of the Cosmological Ideas of
the Totality of the Deduction of the Events in the Universe,” pp.
560-586 of the fifth, and p. 532 and following of first edition; and
“Critique of Practical Reason,” fourth edition, pp. 169-179;
Rosenkranz’ edition, p. 224 and following. Cf. my Essay on the
Principle of Sufficient Reason, § 43.

39 Cf. “Ueber den Willen in der Natur,” at the end of the section on
Comparative Anatomy.

40 Cf. “Ueber den Willen in der Natur,” the section on Comparative
Anatomy.

41 Chatin, Sur la Valisneria Spiralis, in the Comptes Rendus de l’Acad.
de Sc., No. 13, 1855.

42 Cf. Chaps. xxvi. and xxvii. of the Supplement.

43 Cf. Chap. xxviii. of the Supplement.

44 F. H. Jacobi.

45 See for example, “Immanuel Kant, a Reminiscence, by Fr. Bouterweck,”
pg. 49, and Buhle’s “History of Philosophy,” vol. vi. pp. 802-815
and 823.

46 Cf. Chap. xxix. of Supplement.

47 I also recommend the perusal of what Spinoza says in his Ethics
(Book II., Prop. 40, Schol. 2, and Book V., Props. 25-38),
concerning the _cognitio tertii generis, sive intuitiva_, in
illustration of the kind of knowledge we are considering, and very
specially Prop. 29, Schol.; prop. 36, Schol., and Prop. 38, Demonst.
et Schol.

48 Cf. Chap. xxx. of the Supplement.

49 This last sentence cannot be understood without some acquaintance
with the next book.

50 Cf. Chap. xxxi. of the Supplement.

51 I am all the more delighted and astonished, forty years after I so
timidly and hesitatingly advanced this thought, to discover that it
has already been expressed by St. Augustine: _Arbusta formas suas
varias, quibus mundi hujus visibilis structura formosa est,
sentiendas sensibus praebent; ut, pro eo quod_ NOSSE _non possunt,
quasi_ INNOTESCERE _velle videantur_.—_De civ. Dei, xi._ 27.

52 Cf. Chap. 35 of Supplement.

53 Jakob Böhm in his book, “de Signatura Rerum,” ch. i., § 13-15, says,
“There is nothing in nature that does not manifest its internal form
externally; for the internal continually labours to manifest
itself.... Everything has its language by which to reveal itself....
And this is the language of nature when everything speaks out of its
own property, and continually manifests and declares itself, ... for
each thing reveals its mother, which thus gives _the essence and the
will_ to the form.”

54 The last sentence is the German of the _il n’y a que l’esprit qui
sente l’esprit_, of Helvetius. In the first edition there was no
occasion to point this out, but since then the age has become so
degraded and ignorant through the stupefying influence of the
Hegelian sophistry, that some might quite likely say that an
antithesis was intended here between “spirit and nature.” I am
therefore obliged to guard myself in express terms against the
suspicion of such vulgar sophisms.

55 This digression is worked out more fully in the 36th Chapter of the
Supplement.

56 In order to understand this passage it is necessary to have read the
whole of the next book.

_ 57 Apparent rari, nantes in gurgite vasto._

58 Cf. Ch. xxxiv. of Supplement.

59 It is scarcely necessary to say that wherever I speak of poets I
refer exclusively to that rare phenomenon the great true poet. I
mean no one else; least of all that dull insipid tribe, the mediocre
poets, rhymsters, and inventors of fables, that flourishes so
luxuriantly at the present day in Germany. They ought rather to have
the words shouted in their ears unceasingly from all sides—

_Mediocribus esse poëtis_
_ Non homines, non Dî, non concessere columnæ._

It is worthy of serious consideration what an amount of time—both
their own and other people’s—and paper is lost by this swarm of
mediocre poets, and how injurious is their influence. For the public
always seizes on what is new, and has naturally a greater proneness
to what is perverse and dull as akin to itself. Therefore these
works of the mediocre poets draw it away and hold it back from the
true masterpieces and the education they afford, and thus working in
direct antagonism to the benign influence of genius, they ruin taste
more and more, and retard the progress of the age. Such poets should
therefore be scourged with criticism and satire without indulgence
or sympathy till they are induced, for their own good, to apply
their muse rather to reading what is good than to writing what is
bad. For if the bungling of the incompetent so raised the wrath of
the gentle Apollo that he could flay Marsyas, I do not see on what
the mediocre poets will base their claim to tolerance.

60 Cf. Ch. xxxviii. of Supplement.

61 Cf. Ch. xxxvii. of the Supplement.

62 Leibnitii epistolæ, collectio Kortholti, ep. 154.

63 Cf. Ch. xxxix. of Supplement.

64 The following remark may assist those for whom it is not too subtle
to understand clearly that the individual is only the phenomenon,
not the thing in itself. Every individual is, on the one hand, the
subject of knowing, _i.e._, the complemental condition of the
possibility of the whole objective world, and, on the other hand, a
particular phenomenon of will, the same will which objectifies
itself in everything. But this double nature of our being does not
rest upon a self-existing unity, otherwise it would be possible for
us to be conscious of ourselves _in ourselves, and independent of
the objects of knowledge and will_. Now this is by no means
possible, for as soon as we turn into ourselves to make the attempt,
and seek for once to know ourselves fully by means of introspective
reflection, we are lost in a bottomless void; we find ourselves like
the hollow glass globe, from out of which a voice speaks whose cause
is not to be found in it, and whereas we desired to comprehend
ourselves, we find, with a shudder, nothing but a vanishing spectre.

65 “Scholastici docuerunt, quod æternitas non sit temporis sine fine
aut principio successio; sed _Nunc stans_, _i.e._, idem nobis _Nunc
esse_, quod erat _Nunc Adamo_, _i.e._, inter _nunc_ et _tunc_ nullam
esse differentiam.”—Hobbes, Leviathan, c. 46.

66 In Eckermann’s “Conversations of Goethe” (vol. i. p. 161), Goethe
says: “Our spirit is a being of a nature quite indestructible, and
its activity continues from eternity to eternity. It is like the
sun, which seems to set only to our earthly eyes, but which, in
reality, never sets, but shines on unceasingly.” Goethe has taken
the simile from me; not I from him. Without doubt he used it in this
conversation, which was held in 1824, in consequence of a (possibly
unconscious) reminiscence of the above passage, for it occurs in the
first edition, p. 401, in exactly the same words, and it is also
repeated at p. 528 of that edition, as at the close of § 65 of the
present work. The first edition was sent to him in December 1818,
and in March 1819, when I was at Naples, he sent me his
congratulations by letter, through my sister, and enclosed a piece
of paper upon which he had noted the places of certain passages
which had specially pleased him. Thus he had read my book.

67 This is expressed in the Veda by saying, that when a man dies his
sight becomes one with the sun, his smell with the earth, his taste
with water, his hearing with the air, his speech with fire, &c., &c.
(Oupnek’hat, vol. i. p. 249 _et seq._) And also by the fact that, in
a special ceremony, the dying man gives over his senses and all his
faculties singly to his son, in whom they are now supposed to live
on (Oupnek’hat, vol. ii. p. 82 _et seq._)

68 Cf. Chap. xli.-xliv. of Supplement.

69 “Critique of Pure Reason,” first edition, pp. 532-558; fifth
edition, pp. 560-586; and “Critique of Practical Reason,” fourth
edition, pp. 169-179; Rosenkranz’s edition, pp. 224-231.

70 Cart. Medit. 4.—Spin. Eth., pt. ii. prop. 48 et 49, cæt.

71 Herodot. vii. 46.

72 Cf. Ch. xlvi. of Supplement.

73 Cf. Ch. xlv. of the Supplement.

74 Thus the basis of natural right of property does not require the
assumption of two grounds of right beside each other, that based on
_detention_ and that based on _formation_; but the latter is itself
sufficient. Only the name _formation_ is not very suitable, for the
spending of any labour upon a thing does not need to be a forming or
fashioning of it.

75 The further exposition of the philosophy of law here laid down will
be found in my prize-essay, “Ueber das Fundament der Moral,” § 17,
pp. 221-230 of 1st ed., pp. 216-226 of 2d ed.

76 Cf. Ch. xlvii. of Supplement.

77 Oupnek’hat, vol. i. p. 60 et seq.

78 That Spanish bishop who, in the last war, poisoned both himself and
the French generals at his own table, is an instance of this; and
also various incidents in that war. Examples are also to be found in
Montaigne, Bk. ii. ch. 12.

79 Observe, in passing, that what gives every positive system of
religion its great strength, the point of contact through which it
takes possession of the soul, is entirely its ethical side. Not,
however, the ethical side directly as such, but as it appears firmly
united and interwoven with the element of mythical dogma which is
present in every system of religion, and as intelligible only by
means of this. So much is this the case, that although the ethical
significance of action cannot be explained in accordance with the
principle of sufficient reason, yet since every mythus follows this
principle, believers regard the ethical significance of action as
quite inseparable, and indeed as absolutely identical, and regard
every attack upon the mythus as an attack upon right and virtue.
This goes so far that among monotheistic nations atheism or
godlessness has become synonymous with the absence of all morality.
To the priests such confusions of conceptions are welcome, and only
in consequence of them could that horrible monstrosity fanaticism
arise and govern, not merely single individuals who happen to be
specially perverse and bad, but whole nations, and finally embody
itself in the Western world as the Inquisition (to the honour of
mankind be it said that this only happened once in their history),
which, according to the latest and most authentic accounts, in
Madrid alone (in the rest of Spain there were many more such
ecclesiastical dens of murderers) in 300 years put 300,000 human
beings to a painful death at the stake on theological grounds—a fact
of which every zealot ought to be reminded whenever he begins to
make himself heard.

80 The Church would say that these are merely _opera operata_, which do
not avail unless grace gives the faith which leads to the new birth.
But of this farther on.