Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 21, ROT-Siam

451
SCHOPENHAUER
language and reasoning lie rises out of the animal immersion in the
present and is able to anticipate the future. He forms general
ideas and thus can preserve and communicate abstract knowledge.
But reason, though its “ laws of thought ” have a formal truth of
their own, has no independent value either as theoretical or as
practical. In the former aspect it gives rise to scientific knowledge
—the knowledge of facts and sequences not in their single occur¬
rences but as instances of a general law. By means of the general
truths thus arrived at we can deduce or prove. But a proof is, after
all, only a means of showing the disputatious that something which
they deny is inseparably bound up with something they admit.
It is a mistake, therefore to substitute for the ocular demonstration
of which geometry is susceptible a syllogistic reasoning which may
compel assent hut cannot inspire insight. Singular experiences
are the true workers which support the luxury of general ideas, and
reasoning cannot claim to be more than a re-arrangement of pro¬
ducts from other fields.
Reason is equally important and equally limited as a factor m
conduct. It enables us, as it were, to lead a second life, guided
by general principles and not by single appetitions. Such a life is
what is called a life according to reason, typified in the ideal of the
Stoic sage. The wise man carries out the items of conduct accord¬
ing to a general plan and is superior to the impulses of the moment.
But here too the general rests upon the particular ; a systematic
happiness takes the place of single and conflicting pleasures, but
still can only justify itself by procuring pleasure. Thus, unless
there be a new perception of life’s meaning, reasoning cannot
make a man virtuous, it can only make him prudent; it tells him
how to reckon with his natural character, but it cannot show him
how to amend it. .
ook ii. Book ii. is an attempt to name that residual reality which is pre¬
supposed but not explained in every scientific explanation, whether
etiological or morphological. The key is found in the conscious¬
ness of ourselves as exerting will. What to the inner conscious¬
ness is volition is to the outer perception a bodily movement.
And as each act of volition is perceived in a bodily motion, so will
as a whole is by us perceived as body. This consciousness that qny
body is my will objectified—my will translated into terms of scien¬
tific apprehension—is the ‘ ‘ philosophical truth of truths. And,
generalizing this truth, we conclude that, as our coipoieal fiame
is the visibility of our mode of will, so everything is some grade
in the objectification of the will. While the aetiology of science
accounts for the familiar complex by a simpler and more abstract
phase, philosophy uses the clearer and more conspicuous instance
to explain the more rudimentary. The law of motivation is taken
as a key to open the incomprehensibility of mere causation, and in
the stone we presume a feeble analogue of what we know as will.
The will as such, apart from its objectification in animals, knows
nothing of motives, which, though they explain the special circum¬
stances, presuppose the underlying and originative force. No doubt
a false idea of simplicity has often led theorists to reduce all sciences
in the last resort to applied mathematics, in which the mysterious
something called force was eliminated and only the forms of space
and time and motion left. But, though it is doubtless possible to
reduce the list of original forces, we cannot get rid of an inexplic¬
able activity. Hence the original force or will is beyond the range
of causality; every cause is only an “occasional cause,” and but
states the temporal conditions of operation of the eternal energy.
While each several act has an aim, the collective will has none. _
The numerical differences of objects do not touch the underlying
activity. It is felt in one oak as much as in a million, for time
and space are only semblance for (animal) intelligence. And there¬
fore, instead of wondering at the uniformity pervading the in-
stances of any objectification of will, we should remember that the
will-force operating in all is the same, and reveals its inner identity
in the common law. For the same reason the adaptations of the
parts of an organic body or of one organic body to another aie
only the consequences of the unity of will. Just as the series or
actions throughout a life are only the utterances of one original
character, and so intrinsically interdependent, so the grades ot
objectification in nature are the expression of one identical will,
which forms the conditions of existence as well as the living creatures
accommodating themselves to them. Will, which appears in its
lowest grade of objectification as the physical forces of inorganic
nature, rises in the vegetative world to a peculiar sympathetic
response to the stimulation by external circumstances and m the
animal world produces for itself a special organ, the brain, which
possesses the power of presenting under the forms of sense and in¬
tellect that objective manifestation of will which we call the world
of our experience. With the existence of the animal brain, the
world emerged into time and space. It was a step necessitated by
the growing complexity of type in the will-products, which could
neither exist nor preserve their kind without this new instrument
which substituted conscious adaptation for unconscious teleology.
In this strange mythology by which Schopenhauer replaces the
mystery of creation we see the magic world of will, weaving ever
higher complexities of material existence, brought at length by
stress of circumstances to forge a material organ which shows the
sense-world as the objectification of the will. In this one material
organ the will has come to see itself expanded, into a.complicated
order of time and place. But at first the brain and its function,
knowledge, are solely employed in the service of the will.
Book iii. shows how the intellect is emancipated from this bond- Book hi.
age to the will. When we contemplate an object.simply for its own
sake, forgetting everything and ourselves even in the vision, then
what we have before us is no longer one thing among many but a
type, not one of a class but an ultimate individuality, not a par¬
ticular but an adequate embodiment of the universal.. Instead ot
the general concept or class-notion we have the Platonic “idea
one image into which all the essential life of the object has been
concentrated. To realize this individual which has not entered
into the bonds of individuation, this universal which is not a mere
genus but the eternal truth of the individual, is the province, of
genius. The man of genius, neglecting the search for relationships
between things—unpractical and to practical judgment sometimes
seeming to have a touch of madness—instead of seeking to classify
a thing or find out what it is for, looks at it for its own sake and
sees the one type or ideal which is seeking for expression in its
various and contingent manifestations. Such genius begets art.
Yet so much at least of genius is in all men that they can follow
where the artist leads and see through his eyes. Everything as
thus contemplated disinterestedly for its own sake and in its per¬
manent significance is beautiful. Yet one thing is more beautiful
than another. For there are objects which more than, others facili¬
tate the quiescence of desire and present to us their permanent
character without suggesting or stimulating appetite. The sense
of sight is more independent than others of associations of desire,
the past and distant purer from self-interest than the present.
Those objects are specially beautiful where the significant idea is
most clearly presented in the individual form. Indeed, when a
certain effort is required to keep out of sight the general bearing
of the object on the will, then the object, where the perception of
genius still sees the perfect type in the single form, is called sublime.
The several arts fall naturally into an order which rises from the
passive enjoyment in the contemplation of inorganic forces, to the
active perception of will in its most complex types. Architecture
seeks in works dedicated to human use to give expression to the
fundamental features of physical force, e.g., cohesion, weight, &c.,
and to that end it intensifies the appearance of strain by refusing
the forces an easy and immediate lapse into their natural tendency.
In short, it seeks to show resistance visible. Sculpture presents
the beauty and grace of the human form, i.e., the “ idea of that
form as a whole and in the single movements. Here the “idea”
is not derived by comparison and abstraction of observed, forms ;
but we, as ourselves the will seeking manifestation, anticipate by
our ideal the meaning of the imperfect phases and lay down an
a priori canon of beauty. While sculpture gives expression to the
more generic type in figure and motion, painting, aims, at repre¬
senting action. But even historical pictures seek in a given scene
to present not the historical importance of the action but its pei-
manent meaning. Poetry, which uses an arrangement of general
concepts to convey an “ idea,” or moulds reality out of abstractions,
gives us the central and abiding truth which history, usually dis¬
sipates in a host of particulars and relations. In lyric poetry the
individual subject of will presents himself as the subject of artistic
perception: his own experience is displayed as typical and universal.
In tragedy the truth shown is the inner conflict at the very root of
the will. The hero is exhibited as brought to see the aimlessness
of all will; and by suffering he learns resignation. Music, unlike
the other arts, is an image of the movement of will not yet ob¬
jectified ; and in its elements and harmonies we have a parallel to
the stages and complexities of the actual world. Hence the ex¬
planation of music would be a philosophy of the world.*
But art, though it affords an interval of rest from the drudgery Book nr.
of will-service, cannot claim to be more than a transient consola¬
tion. Book iv. indicates a surer way of release. It reminds , us
that our life is the phenomenon of the will,—a phenomenon which
begins at birth and ends at death, and of which every instant is a
partial birth and a partial death. But the cessation of the. indi¬
vidual life is not an annihilation of the will; our essential being is
indestructible. The manifestation of the will in human life is
spread out and disposed in an endless multitude of actions. Ex¬
perience sums up these in a single formula,—the maxim of our
empirical character ; and that result itself is the type or idea which
reveals the one unalterable utterance of will, which, is the intel¬
ligible character.1 It is this immemorial act which fixes our
empirical character, which gives the consistency and regularity
of our acts. Velle non discitur. Character is given (by an ante-
phenomenal act); it is not acquired. If in one sense we can speak
of an “acquired character,” we mean thereby that we now under¬
stand what manner of men we are, that we have learned the best
and worst of ourselves. But, though the character is given once
1 The terms are borrowed from Kant.