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.