He, who goes to meet death for his fatherland, has freed himself from the illusion which limits a man's existence to his own person. Such a one has broken the fetters of the principium individuationis. In his widened, enlightened nature he embraces all his countrymen, and in them lives on and on. Nay, he reaches forward to, and merges himself in the generations yet unborn, for whom he works; and he regards death as a wink of the eyelids, so momentary that it does not interrupt the sight.
We may here sum up the characteristics of the two human types above indicated. To the Egoist all other people are uniformly and intrinsically strangers. In point of fact, he considers nothing to be truly real, except his own person, and regards the rest of mankind practically as troops of phantoms, to whom he assigns merely a relative existence, so far as they may be instruments to serve, or barriers to obstruct, his purposes; the result being an immeasurable difference, a vast gulf between his ego on the one side, and the non-ego on the other. In a word, he lives exclusively centred in his own individuality, and on his death-day he sees all reality, indeed the whole world, coming to an end along with himself.[11] Whereas the Altruist discerns in all other persons, nay, in every living thing, his own entity, and feels therefore that his being is commingled, is identical with the being of whatever is alive. By death he loses only a small part of himself. Patting off the narrow limitations of the individual, he passes into the larger life of all mankind, in whom he always recognised, and, recognising, loved, his very self; and the illusion of Time and Space, which separated his consciousness from that of others, vanishes. These two opposite modes of viewing the world are probably the chief, though not indeed the sole cause of the difference we find between very good and exceptionally bad men, as to the manner in which they meet their last hour.
In all ages Truth, poor thing, has been put to shame for being paradoxical; and yet it is not her fault. She cannot assume the form of Error seated on his throne of world-wide sovereignty. So then, with a sigh, she looks up to her tutelary god, Time, who nods assurance to her of future victory and glory, but whose wings beat the air so slowly with their mighty strokes, that the individual perishes or ever the day of triumph be come. Hence I, too, am perfectly aware of the paradox which this metaphysical explanation of the ultimate ethical phaenomenon must present to Western minds, accustomed, as they are, to very different methods of providing Morals with a basis. Nevertheless, I cannot offer violence to the truth. All that is possible for me to do, out of consideration for European blindness, is to assert once more, and demonstrate by actual quotation, that the Metaphysics of Ethics, which I have here suggested, was thousands of years ago the fundamental principle of Indian wisdom. And to this wisdom I point back, as Copernicus did to the Pythagorean cosmic system, which was suppressed by Aristotle and Ptolemaeus. In the Bhagavadgîtâ (Lectio XIII.; 27, 28), according to A. W. von Schlegel's translation, we find the following passage: Eundem in omnibus animantibus consistentem summum dominum, istis pereuntibus kaud pereuntem qui cernit, is vere cernit. Eundem vero cernens ubique praesentem dominum, non violat semet ipsum sua ipsius culpa: exinde pergit ad summum iter.[12]
With these hints towards the elaboration of a metaphysical basis for Ethics I must close, although an important step still remains to be taken. The latter would presuppose a further advance in Moral Science itself; and this can hardly be made, because in the West the highest aim of Ethics is reached in the theory of justice and virtue. What lies beyond is unknown, or at any rate ignored. The omission, therefore, is unavoidable; and the reader need feel no surprise, if the above slight outline of the Metaphysics of Ethics does not bring into view—even remotely—the corner-stone of the whole metaphysical edifice, nor reveal the connection of all the parts composing the Divina Commedia. Such a presentment, moreover, is involved neither in the question set, nor in my own plan. A man cannot say everything in one day, and should not answer more than he is asked.
He who tries to promote human knowledge and insight is destined to always encounter the opposition of his age, which is like the dead weight of some mass that has to be dragged along: there on the ground it lies, a huge inert deformity, defying all efforts to quicken its shape with new life. But such a one must take comfort from the certainty that, although prejudices beset his path, yet the truth is with him. And Truth does but wait for her ally, Time, to join her; once he is at her side, she is perfectly sure of victory, which, if to-day delayed, will be won to-morrow.
[1] The conception of the Good, in its purity, is an ultimate one, "an absolute Idea, whose substance loses itself in infinity."—(Bouterweek: Praktische Aphorismen, p. 54.)
It is obvious that this writer would like to transform the familiar, nay, trivial conception "Good" into a sort of Διἴπετής, to be set up as an idol in his temple. Διἴπετής lit., "fallen from Zeus"; and so "heaven-sent," "a thing of divine origin." Cf. Horn., Il.. XVI, 174; Od.. IV. 477. Eur., Bacch., 1268.—(Translator.)
[2]The genuineness of the Oupnek'hat has been disputed on the ground of certain marginal glosses which were added by Mohammedan copyists, and then interpolated in the text, it has, however, been fully established by the Sanskrit scholar, F.H.H. Windischmann (junior) in his Sancara, sive de Theologumenis Vedanticorum, 1833, p. xix; and also by Bochinger in his book De la Vie Contemplative chez les Indous, 1831, p. 12. The reader though ignorant of Sanskrit, may yet convince himself that Anquetil Duperron's word for word Latin translation of the Persian version of the Upanishads made by the martyr of this creed, the Sultan Dârâ-Shukoh, is based on a thorough and exact knowledge of the language. He has only to compare it with recent translations of some of the Upanishads by Rammohun Boy, by Poley, and especially with that of Colebrooke, as also with Röer's, (the latest). These writers are obviously groping in obscurity, and driven to make shift with hazy conjectures, so that without doubt their work is much less accurate. More will be found on this subject in Vol. II. of the Parerga, chap. 16, § 184. [V. The Upanishads, translated by Max Müller, in The Sacred Books of the East, Vols. I. and XV. Cf. also Max Müller, The Science of Language, Vol. I., p. 171. Now that an adequate translation of the original exists, the Oupnek'hat has only an historical interest. The value which Schopenhauer attached to the Upanishads is very clearly expressed also in the Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Preface to the first Edition; and in the Parerga, II., chap, xvi., § 184.—(Translator.)]
[3] For the Sûfi, more correctly *Sūfīy a sect which appeared already in the first century of the Hijrah, the reader is referred to: Tholuck's Blüthensammlung aus der Morgenländischen Mystik (Berlin, 1825); Tholuck's Sûfismus, sive Theosophia Persarum Pantheistica (Berlin, 1821); Kremer's Geschichte der Herrschenden Ideen des Islâms (Leipzig, 1868); Palmer's Oriental Mysticism (London, 1867); Gobineau's Les Religions et les Philosophies dans l'Asie Centrale (2nd edit. Paris, 1866); A Dictionary of Islâm, by T. P. Hughes (London, 1885), p. 608 sqq.—(Translator.)