Schopenhauer

by Margrieta Beer

CHAPTER IV

VIRTUE

Art, which Schopenhauer calls "the flower of life," enables us to forget the cares and sufferings of life. The consolation which we derive from beauty repays us for the miseries and terrors of existence. The contemplation of beauty brings us deliverance from the deceptions and illusions of life, and gives us a pure, true, and deep knowledge of the inner nature of the world. It acts as a quieter of the will, and such quiet contemplation of beauty is the nearest approach to pure satisfaction that we can achieve. This deliverance, however, is not a path out of life, but only a consolation in life. We must seek the highest solution in proceeding farther in the same direction. In his theories on ethics and religion, Schopenhauer points the way to a permanent escape from life.

True morality is summed up in self-surrender, in the denial of the will to live. There are two stages in this progress of morality. The first and lower is that attained in the perfecting of the good disposition. This is ordinary virtue, which is rooted in love and sympathy, and which rests on the recognition of the real identity of any one individual with all other individuals. The second and higher stage is that of holiness, and is attained only through asceticism, through the complete self-surrender which turns away from all the pleasures of life, and represses even the natural instincts. Man lays hold on that which is real through complete resignation and surrender of the will. Only then is the veil of Mâyâ, the illusion of life, torn asunder, and is it possible for man to be told the vision of truth. This is the way of virtue. It cannot be taught any more than genius can be taught. Systems of ethics can produce virtuous and holy men no more than æsthetics can produce great poets or musicians.

In working out his ethical system, Schopenhauer was deeply influenced by ancient Indian philosophy. The complete release from the slavery of the will is only to be found, in his view, in the asceticism which is the fundamental principle of Buddhism and of early Christianity. The disposition of mind, which alone leads to true holiness and to deliverance from the world of desire, finds expression in renunciation.

Schopenhauer expands his philosophy of art at far greater length than he does his ethical system, and seems at times to attach more significance to it. But in his final view it is only through virtue and holiness that man attains to the gate of heaven.

It follows from his philosophy of the will that human action has a significance far transcending all the possibilities of experience. Human action exceeds in importance all other things in the world. The sanest philosophers, he held, have been those who have played an active part in life, and who have not devoted themselves merely to abstract thought. It is not the highest function of man to think and to understand, but to feel and to live. In short, understanding itself is attained only through life. For reality is greater than our knowledge of it. Knowledge itself is a poor thing at best, an indirect way of seizing hold of reality. We must understand things by a deeper knowledge than that of the intellect. We must exchange head knowledge for heart knowledge. For head knowledge is concerned only with that part of reality which rises above the threshold of consciousness. Our total sense of reality is broader and deeper than a merely intellectual knowledge. It includes the subconscious depths of our personality, making up a whole which is far richer in content than that mere surface life which we know in consciousness.

This insistence on the importance of intuitive knowledge is closely connected with Schopenhauer's treatment of instinct. He is supremely interested in instinct, finding in it a positive quality, which plays frequently a more important part than the knowledge of the understanding or the reason. The one kind of knowledge is set constantly against the other in his system. His treatment of the whole subject is of deep significance in his philosophy.

The typical case in which instinct is most highly developed is that of animals. They strive definitely towards an end, though this end is unknown to them. In all the instinctive actions of animals, the will is clearly as operative as in their other actions, but it is in blind activity. In inorganic and vegetable nature the will acts as blind impulse, and so with infallible certainty. Animals are exposed already to illusion and deception, but in their case instinct comes to their assistance. Though guided by no motive or knowledge, they yet have the appearance of performing their work from rational motives. They work with the greatest precision and definiteness towards an end which they do not know. In man also the will is in many ways only blindly active. Though a tendency of the will, instinct does not act entirely from within. It waits for some external circumstance for its action. Instinct gives the universal, the rule; intellect gives the particular, the application. Instinct seems always to be in accordance with the conception of an end, and yet is entirely without such an end. Schopenhauer also connects instinct with clairvoyance and dreams. In his own life he attached especial importance to dreams, and on several critical occasions regulated his actions in accordance with them. With his treatment of instinct is bound up also his theory of sexual love. The lover is deluded in thinking that he aims at his own happiness. The will to live is forcing him, for nature's own purposes, to aim at a certain typical beauty, which has its end in the perfection of the offspring. The more perfectly two individuals are adapted to each other, the stronger will be their mutual passion. Nature is striving for a better realisation of the type, and to attain its ends must implant a certain illusion in the individual. That which is good only for the species appears to him as good for himself. He serves the species in imagining that he is serving himself. This illusion is instinct. The individual is but a helpless tool carrying out blindly the designs of nature.

An instinctive character belongs also to the highest functions of human life, as in art and virtue. Wisdom proper, says Schopenhauer, is something intuitive, and not something pertaining to the intellect. It does not consist in principles and thoughts, which are carried about ready in the mind, as the result of research, but it is the whole manner in which the world presents itself intuitively to the mind. In real life the scholar is far surpassed by the man of the world, for the strength of the latter consists in perfect intuitive knowledge. The true view of life proceeds from the way in which the world is known and understood, not from abstract knowledge. The heart of all knowledge is intuition. Upon this depends the infinite superiority of genius to learning and scholarship. They stand to each other as the text of a classic to its commentary. It was this emphasis, which Schopenhauer laid on the instinctive and impulsive side in man, rather than on the conscious and deliberate, which led him to the view that man is a creature controlled and dominated by his instincts, and therefore a mere puppet in the hands of nature.

This aspect of Schopenhauer's system acquires a special importance, when compared with much of the most modern philosophy. There are interesting points of contact with the views of M. Bergson, who maintains that in the intuition of life we see reality as it is.

The intellect is merely a tool in the service of the will. Since philosophy must express the real nature of life, we are driven to seek reality through that which is felt. Since the time of Socrates, Schopenhauer maintained, philosophy has made a systematic misuse of general conceptions. We have an immediate experience of the will, and therefore we may be said to have an immediate knowledge of the nature of reality. One of the most valuable contributions which Schopenhauer made to the history of thought, was his insistence on the view that philosophy must be brought back to the recognition of the richness of an immediate and direct knowledge of reality. It must learn that the meaning of things is to be realised more by living than by thinking. The philosopher, therefore, must be before all things "a real man," a guide to fine living. Schopenhauer brought philosophy into relation with life, he drew it down from the icy heights, where abstract conceptions alone can flourish, to the sunny plains below, where art, with "a spark of the divine fire," warms and lightens the ways of man. The intuitive insight of the genius, which divines the truth through art, is a far higher form of knowledge than that of the abstract thinker.

It is suggestive to compare with this the view of Pater, that "philosophy serves culture, not by the fancied gift of absolute or transcendental knowledge, but by suggesting questions which help one to detect the passion, and strangeness, and dramatic contrasts of life."

There is much significance in Schopenhauer's exaltation of intuition over reason. Philosophy has always tended to make too much of reason. And in spite of many crudities in his psychology, Schopenhauer's treatment of the subject contains much of the greatest value. In emphasising the part played in the mental life by instinct, habit, and impulse, he anticipated much that has since been confirmed in the modern science of psychology.

Kant maintained that the only absolutely good thing in the world is the good will, and Schopenhauer practically accepts this dictum. Right action springs from the will, and not from the intellect, for the true nature of man lies in his will. The problem of ethics for Schopenhauer is how the will is to be made good. His treatment of the problem leads him beyond a system of ethics to a philosophy of religion.

Virtue to Socrates was a knowledge of the good; but no amount of mere knowledge of the good can make the will good, and therefore Schopenhauer maintained that Socrates had done next to nothing in ethics. The real solution of the problem of moral obligation lies in sympathy. It is through sympathy that man is able to attain virtue. Goodness of disposition shows itself as pure disinterested love towards others. And when such love becomes perfect it places the fate of other individuals on a level with itself and its own fate. The character which has thus attained the highest goodness and nobility will sacrifice its own interests, and even its life, for the well-being of others. Great heroes in all ages have laid down their lives for their country or their friends. Others have submitted voluntarily to death or torture for the sake of truths or principles which they held dear. Socrates and Giordano Bruno, and many another hero, have suffered death rather than deny what they held to be true. Such heights are reached only by rare natures among men. But all the intermediate stages of goodness spring from the same root of sympathy. Pure love is in its nature sympathy.

Schopenhauer is here in direct contradiction to Kant, who recognised goodness and virtue only when they spring from abstract reflection, from the conception of duty, and who explained sympathy as weakness. On the contrary, says Schopenhauer, the mere concept is as unfruitful for virtue as it is for art. All true and pure love is sympathy, and all love which is not sympathy is selfishness. Many of our sentiments are a combination of the two. Friendship is always, he says, a mixture of selfishness and sympathy. The selfishness lies in the pleasure which we experience in the presence of a friend, the sympathy in the participation in his joy or grief, and the sacrifices we make for his sake.

Genuine virtue springs from the knowledge, which we have through intuition, that other individuals are of the same nature as ourselves. The source of morality is this inward principle of solidarity between individual and individual. This sense of brotherhood, which pervades the whole of humanity, is the real and vital fact which makes the whole world kin. Transcending the spirit of egoism, which is fostered by the actual conditions of life, there springs the spirit of altruism, which strives to subordinate the good of the individual to the good of the whole community, and prompts the individual to self-denial and unselfishness.

In dealing with men, we should never, he says, take into consideration their interested motives, their limited intellectual capacity, nor their wrong-headedness, but we should think only of their sufferings, their needs, their anxieties and their misery. Only in this way can we feel ourselves akin, and so enter into sympathy with others, that we experience a fellow-feeling and a desire to help them in their need. The two fundamental attitudes of mind, in which the virtues and vices of men are rooted, are envy and sympathy. Each man bears within himself these two diametrically opposite characteristics. One or the other quality becomes the fundamental attitude of mind and the basis of action according to the character of the individual. Envy builds up a strong, impregnable wall between each man and his neighbour, isolating the individual in his crust of misanthropy, which grows daily harder and denser. Sympathy, on the other hand, breaks down the barriers between man and man. The sense of division grows thin and transparent, until the individual feels himself a part of an organic whole, deriving his sole usefulness and justification only in so far as he subordinates his own personal ends to the common good.

Schopenhauer's use of the factor of sympathy in explaining morality, differs considerably from that of the English philosophers of the eighteenth century, in whose systems of ethics sympathy played a large part. The sympathy, which Hume presupposes as "a principle in human nature, beyond which we cannot hope to find any principle more general," is sympathy with the pleasure resulting from the effects of virtuous action.

Adam Smith, who also regarded sympathy as the ultimate element into which moral sentiments may be analysed, approached more nearly to the position of Schopenhauer. Morality arises in its simplest form from direct sympathy or "fellow-feeling" with the passions of others, which a spectator feels from imagining himself in their situation. It is of two kinds, and moves the spectator to enter into the sentiments of the person concerned, and also moves the person concerned "to bring down his emotions to what the spectator can go along with." It is a power which enables us to take a disinterested view of our own conduct by putting ourselves in another's position.

In Schopenhauer's view sympathy is a positive principle of conduct. It is based upon the recognition of the identity of all living beings. It alone makes moral conduct possible, and moves us to feel and act towards others as to ourselves.

So far Schopenhauer has described the first stage in the progress of morality, that which is attained in ordinary virtue. The higher stage, that which he calls holiness, is attained through asceticism, the denial of the will to live. On the path of virtue man has learned to make no distinction between his own person and that of others, to take as much interest in the sufferings of others as in his own. He is even ready to sacrifice his own individuality, whenever such sacrifice will benefit humanity. It is no longer the changing joy and sorrow of his own personality which concerns him, but the joy and sorrow of all. He attains to a vision of the real nature of life, and realises the vain striving, the inward conflict, and incessant suffering in which it consists. And with this knowledge he finds it impossible to assert the egoistic desires of his own nature. His will turns away from life. He shudders at the pleasures which recognise the assertion of life. He attains to the state of voluntary renunciation, resignation, and indifference.

The attainment of this goal is the hardest end of all to achieve. Only the saint, the perfect man, ever attains it completely and finally. Weaker and less perfect natures are ever drawn back to life by the sting of the desires, for the veil of Mâyâ, the mist of illusion, still clings about their feet. The vanity and bitterness of life still holds them, although the entrance to all suffering stands open while they are not yet purified by complete and final renunciation. They cannot tear themselves free from the illusions of life, from the allurements of hope, and the sweetness of pleasure. Those who see through the deceptions of life, and recognise the real nature of the world, are already on the way to consolation. They withdraw from the struggle of life, and no longer wish to assert their own individuality. The loftiest goodness means refraining from all willing.

This is the transition from virtue to asceticism. A man who has reached so far ceases to will anything, he guards himself against desire, and strives to attain complete indifference to everything. He gives the lie to his own body, and no longer desires any gratification. Voluntary and complete chastity and poverty are necessary steps in this asceticism. Man is at once the priest and the sacrifice. Every kind of volition is suppressed intentionally. The body is nourished sparingly, lest its vigour and well-being should arouse the will. Every step is taken to break and destroy the will, which is recognised as the source of all suffering. Death when it comes at last is welcomed as a longed-for deliverance, and hailed with gladness.

In this picture of the life of holiness and asceticism Schopenhauer shows the strong influence which Indian philosophy had exercised upon his thought. This is the ideal life, the life of the saint, as portrayed by the early Christian mystics, and in the Indian religious books.

Virtue and holiness proceed from inward, direct and intuitive knowledge, and not from abstract knowledge, as so many earlier philosophers asserted. The chasm between the two kinds of knowledge can be bridged only by philosophy. Everyone is conscious intuitively of philosophical truths, but philosophy is necessary to bring them to abstract knowledge and reflection. Hence Schopenhauer is at enmity with all rational religion. For religion has to do primarily not with the intellect, but with the will and the feelings. He felt this so deeply that he left the rational element almost entirely out of his definition of virtue. We learn the meaning of virtue, in his view, through the sympathy, which makes us feel intuitively the underlying identity in the lives of other beings with our own life. It is possible to express abstractly the inner nature of holiness and asceticism as the denial of the will to live, but this abstract theory has been known directly, and carried into practice by countless saints and ascetics, who all possessed the same inward knowledge, though they used very different language with regard to it, according to their dogmas. Whether a saint is moved by the grossest superstition, or whether he be a philosopher, makes no difference. His conduct testifies to his saintliness, and this proceeds from an intuitive and direct realisation of the nature of the world. The dogmas he holds are merely for the satisfaction of his intellect. It is therefore not necessary that a saint should be a philosopher, just as it is not necessary that a great sculptor should be himself a beautiful man.

The use of philosophy is to gather up the whole nature of the world in concepts, abstractly and universally, and thus to store up "a reflected image of it in permanent concepts always at the command of reason." Intuitive knowledge, on the other hand, is expressed most perfectly in deeds and conduct, not in abstract conceptions. To understand it fully, therefore, we must know examples in experience and actual life. A mere description of a beautiful soul is cold and abstract. Schopenhauer refers as models to the biographies of the early Christian and of the Buddhist saints, and in later times to the biography of Spinoza. He holds up with especial admiration the life of St. Francis of Assisi. These records of the lives of simple, self-denying men, mixed as they are with superstition, are for the philosopher far more significant and important than the lives of the great fighters and conquerors of the world. The life of St. Francis is of greater import than that of Alexander the Great. It is the ethical aspect of action which is important, and therefore the most significant life which the world can show is not the conqueror of the world, but he who has in himself subdued the world. It is the quiet, unobserved life of the man who has learned to deny the will to live that is most profoundly instructive.

This ethical teaching is no new thing. It is only the philosophical expression of it which is new. As Christianity developed, the seed of asceticism unfolded into full flower in the writings of the saints and mystics. Even more fully developed and more vividly expressed is this teaching in the ancient Indian writings. In the Indian sacred books, in their poems, myths, and legends, and in the lives of their saints, the love of one's neighbour is taught, and the complete surrender of self enjoined. Such love is not confined to humanity, but includes all living creatures. The path of asceticism is marked as the ideal way for all who strive after true holiness. There is wonderful harmony between the life of a Christian mystic and that of a Hindu saint. In each case the inward life and effort is the same. The rule of life enjoined on both shows striking resemblances. The renunciation of all possessions, the choice of deep, unbroken solitude, which is spent in silent contemplation, perfect chastity, and voluntary penance, is the teaching of Christian and Hindu alike. In such rare similarity of teaching, followed by races differing so radically in outward circumstances, Schopenhauer finds proof that this manifestation has its root in the nature of man, and appeals to an essential side of human, nature.

In his treatment of art, Schopenhauer points out how happiness is achieved in the contemplation of beauty. In his treatment of ethics he shows how permanent happiness may be attained. It is the man alone who follows the path of renunciation, and who succeeds in denying the will to live, who attains perfect happiness. He is filled with inward joy and peace. This joy is in no way akin to the passionate delight experienced by those who love life. That is a fleeting emotion, which has keen suffering as its correlative. But "it is a peace that cannot be shaken, a deep rest and inward serenity, a state which we cannot contemplate without the greatest longing, when it is brought before our imagination, because we at once recognise it as that which infinitely surpasses anything else. Then we feel that every gratification won from the world is merely like the alms which the beggar receives from life to-day, that he may hunger again on the morrow. Resignation, on the other hand, is like an inherited estate, it frees the owner for ever from all care." He who can enter into the spirit of the beautiful, as revealed in art, silences his will for the moment, but the saint who attains holiness is altogether blessed, for he silences his will, not only for the moment, but for ever. His will is wholly extinguished, save for the last glimmering spark, which retains his body in life, and which will be extinguished only with his death. Such a man has endured bitter struggles with his own nature, but has emerged triumphant. "Nothing can trouble him more, nothing can move him, for he has cut all the thousand cords of will which hold us bound to the world, and as desire, fear, envy, and anger drag us hither and thither in constant pain. He now looks back smiling and at rest on the delusions of the world, which once were able to agonise his spirit, but which now are as indifferent to him as the chessmen when the game is ended. Life passes before him as a fleeting illusion, as a light morning dream before half-waking eyes, the real world already shining through it."

It is interesting to compare Schopenhauer's ideal of the highest form of human life with that of Aristotle. For Aristotle too the highest end of man was the life of pure contemplation. This, however, was a more purely intellectual state than Schopenhauer had in mind, but still an existence withdrawn from the cares and struggles of life, wrapped securely in quiet contemplation.

It must not be supposed that when this self-surrender has been won, that it never wavers or hesitates. We can never rest upon it as an assured possession. It must ever be attained anew by a constant battle. For so long as the body lives, the whole will to live exists potentially, striving to realise itself and to burn again with its old intensity. The peace and blessedness which is attained in the lives of holy men is found only as the flower which blossoms after victory in the constant battle with the will to live. In the histories of the saints we find their inner lives full of conflicts and temptations, the end which gives the deepest peace and opens the door of freedom constantly eluding them.

The suffering which is experienced personally is that which most frequently produces the fullest resignation. The illusions of life are a constant hindrance to the fullest self-surrender. The will must first be broken by great personal suffering before complete self-conquest is reached. Then, having passed through increasing stages of affliction, and being brought finally to the verge of despair, a man knows himself and the world, and rises above himself and all suffering. He renounces willingly everything he desired formerly, and faces death joyfully. This is the refined gold, which is drawn out of the purifying flame of suffering. Goethe has given an incomparable picture of an unfolding of character to such ends, in his drawing of Gretchen in Faust.

The extent to which man is free to make himself good raises the perennial question of the freedom of the will. Schopenhauer held that the answer depends entirely on the statement of the problem. In so far as the real nature of man is will, and man himself is only a phenomenon of this will, a particular action follows inevitably on a given motive in a given character. It is just as absurd, he says, to doubt such inevitableness as to doubt that the three angles of any triangle are together equal to two right angles. If the character and the motives were given completely, it would be possible to calculate the future conduct of a man as exactly as we can calculate an eclipse of the sun or moon. Character is as consistent as nature. There is no independence of the law of causality, the necessity of which extends to man as to all else in nature. But in the metaphysical world, Schopenhauer, following Kant, maintains that the will is free. In so far as the will represents the only reality, it transcends experience. It is outside time, outside every form of the mind which limits or moulds our experience. It is above and beyond the forms of causality, and therefore free transcendentally. In that dim region where character is formed we are our own creators. Action which is seen empirically to follow inevitably from a character already formed is seen from another point of view to be but a form of self-realisation, of self-expression.

Mysticism is strong in Schopenhauer. Now and again it breaks through the even flow of European thought, usually, as with Schopenhauer, drawing its main inspiration from the East. There is a recurring period in the history of thought, when the scientific point of view does not make its accustomed appeal, when it is felt intensely that science can give but a partial and limited view. Academic culture and science are felt to be inadequate, are felt even to be leading away from the real heart of the matter, and putting us outside the deepest current of existence. Intuitive and direct knowledge is given then an importance denied to the knowledge of the reason. Man retires into himself, instead of searching outside himself for objective knowledge. He seeks the secret of the universe in the depths of his own heart and will, and strives to pluck out the heart of life's mystery in waiting on the silent twilight of inner feeling. The eyes are shut on the outer world, in order that one may see the more inwardly. Then only does man experience the sense of solidarity and kinship which runs through all things, and feel himself one with the universe.

These recurring waves of mysticism seem always to appear in the history of thought at the end of a specially brilliant intellectual period. It is as though the human mind, having striven to the top of its capacity on the lines of the intellect and the reason, impatient at its own limitations, and wearying of the discrepancy between its endeavours and its achievements, turns eagerly in the opposite direction, and directs its gaze inward. The great school of Neo-Platonists, for example, followed immediately the most brilliant age of Greek thought. And the same is true of the strong trend in the direction of mysticism, which is so marked towards the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries in Germany, a tendency which shows itself in Schopenhauer more strongly than in any other philosopher.

There is a strong appeal in this ideal of human life, which Schopenhauer depicts in words of glowing eloquence. Based on the pessimism which claims that all life is worthless, it aims at conquering life by withdrawing altogether from it. This is a negative solution of the problem of life. It is possible to oppose to this philosophy a robuster view, which would come to grips with the misery and evil of existence on another plane. William James points to the spiritual gain that comes of fighting ills. To wage war obstinately against the odds of life fills us with courage and resolution, and there is possibly a deeper satisfaction to be won from the determined facing of the battle of life than in the attitude of pessimism, which bids us draw back and take no part in the fray. There is a fine courage in the attitude of mind, which admits "the deliciousness of insanities and realities, strivings and deadnesses, hopes and fears, agonies and exultations," but which claims that we who are born for the conflict, the shifting struggle of the sunbeam in the gloom, must accept it all as a vital part of the whole. "When the healthy love of life is on one, and all its forms and its appetites seem so unutterably real; when the most brutal and the most spiritual things are lit by the same sun, and each is an integral part of the total richness, it seems a grudging and sickly way of meeting so robust a universe to shrink away from any of its facts and wish them not to be. Rather take the strictly dramatic point of view, and treat the whole thing as a great unending romance which the spirit of the universe, striving to realise its own content, is eternally thinking out and representing to itself."