полная версия

Артур Шопенгауэр
The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 3 of 3)

But what we have now considered between the plant and the animal, and then between the different species of animals, occurs also between man and man. Here also that which is secondary, the intellect, by means of the clearness of consciousness and distinctness of knowledge which depends upon it, constitutes a fundamental and immeasurably great difference in the whole manner of the existence, and thereby in the grade of it. The higher the consciousness has risen, the more distinct and connected are the thoughts, the clearer the perceptions the more intense the sensations. Through it everything gains more depth: emotion, sadness, joy, and sorrow. Commonplace blockheads are not even capable of real joy: they live on in dull insensibility. While to one man his consciousness only presents his own existence, together with the motives which must be apprehended for the purpose of sustaining and enlivening it, in a bare comprehension of the external world, it is to another a camera obscura in which the macrocosm exhibits itself:

 
“He feels that he holds a little world
Brooding in his brain,
That it begins to work and to live,
That he fain would give it forth.”
 

The difference of the whole manner of existence which the extremes of the gradation of intellectual capacity establish between man and man is so great that that between a king and a day labourer seems small in comparison. And here also, as in the case of the species of animals, a connection between the vehemence of the will and the height of the intellect can be shown. Genius is conditioned by a passionate temperament, and a phlegmatic genius is inconceivable: it seems as if an exceptionally vehement, thus a violently longing, will must be present if nature is to give an abnormally heightened intellect, as corresponding to it; while the merely physical account of this points to the greater energy with which the arteries of the head move the brain and increase its turgescence. Certainly, however, the quantity, quality, and form of the brain itself is the other and incomparably more rare condition of genius. On the other hand, phlegmatic persons are as a rule of very moderate mental power; and thus the northern, cold-blooded, and phlegmatic nations are in general noticeably inferior in mind to the southern vivacious and passionate peoples; although, as Bacon² has most pertinently remarked, if once a man of a northern nation is highly gifted by nature, he can then reach a grade which no southern ever attains to. It is accordingly as perverse as it is common to take the great minds of different nations as the standard for comparing their mental powers: for that is just attempting to prove the rule by the exceptions. It is rather the great majority of each nation that one has to consider: for one swallow does not make a summer. We have further to remark here that that very passionateness which is a condition of genius, bound up with its vivid apprehension of things, produces in practical life, where the will comes into play, and especially in the case of sudden occurrences, so great an excitement of the emotions that it disturbs and confuses the intellect; while the phlegmatic man in such a case still retains the full use of his mental faculties, though they are much more limited, and then accomplishes much more with them than the greatest genius can achieve. Accordingly a passionate temperament is favourable to the original quality of the intellect, but a phlegmatic temperament to its use. Therefore genius proper is only for theoretical achievements, for which it can choose and await its time, which will just be the time at which the will is entirely at rest, and no waves disturb the clear mirror of the comprehension of the world. On the other hand, genius is ill adapted and unserviceable for practical life, and is therefore for the most part unfortunate. Goethe's “Tasso” is written from this point of view. As now genius proper depends upon the absolute strength of the intellect, which must be purchased by a correspondingly excessive vehemence of disposition, so, on the other hand, the great pre-eminence in practical life that makes generals and statesmen depends upon the relative strength of the intellect, thus upon the highest degree of it that can be attained without too great excitability of the emotions, and too great vehemence of character, and that therefore can hold its own even in the storm. Great firmness of will and constancy of mind, together with a capable and fine understanding, are here sufficient; and whatever goes beyond this acts detrimentally, for too great a development of the intelligence directly impedes firmness of character and resolution of will. Hence this kind of eminence is not so abnormal, and is a hundred times less rare than the former kind; and accordingly we see great generals and great ministers appear in every age, whenever the merely external conditions are favourable to their efficiency. Great poets and philosophers, on the other hand, leave centuries waiting for them; and yet humanity may be contented even with this rare appearance of them, for their works remain, and do not exist only for the present, like the achievements of those other men. It is also quite in keeping with the law of the parsimony of nature referred to above that it bestows great eminence of mind in general upon very few, and genius only as the rarest of all exceptions, while it equips the great mass of the human race with no more mental power than is required for the maintenance of the individual and the species. For the great, and through their very satisfaction, constantly increasing needs of the human race make it necessary that the great majority of men should pass their lives in occupations of a coarsely physical and entirely mechanical description. And what would be the use to them of an active mind, a glowing imagination, a subtle understanding, and a profoundly penetrating intellect? These would only make them useless and unhappy. Therefore nature has thus gone about the most costly of all her productions in the least extravagant manner. In order not to judge unfairly one ought also to settle definitely one's expectations of the mental achievements of men generally from this point of view, and to regard, for example, even learned men, since as a rule they have become so only by the force of outward circumstances, primarily as men whom nature really intended to be tillers of the soil; indeed even professors of philosophy ought to be estimated according to this standard, and then their achievements will be found to come up to all fair expectations. It is worth noticing that in the south, where the necessities of life press less severely upon the human race, and more leisure is allowed, the mental faculties even of the multitude also become more active and finer. It is physiologically noteworthy that the preponderance of the mass of the brain over that of the spinal cord and the nerves, which, according to Sömmerring's acute discovery, affords the true and closest measure of the degree of intelligence both of species of brutes and of individual men, at the same time increases the direct power of moving, the agility of the limbs; because, through the great inequality of the relation, the dependence of all motor nerves upon the brain becomes more decided; and besides this the cerebellum, which is the primary controller of movements, shares the qualitative perfection of the cerebrum; thus through both all voluntary movements gain greater facility, rapidity, and manageableness, and by the concentration of the starting-point of all activity that arises which Lichtenberg praises in Garrick: “that he appeared to be present in all the muscles of his body.” Hence clumsiness in the movement of the body indicates clumsiness in the movement of the thoughts, and will be regarded as a sign of stupidity both in individuals and nations, as much as sleepiness of the countenance and vacancy of the glance. Another symptom of the physiological state of the case referred to is the fact that many persons are obliged at once to stand still whenever their conversation with any one who is walking with them begins to gain some connection; because their brain, as soon as it has to link together a few thoughts, has no longer as much power over as is required to keep the limbs in motion by means of the motory nerves, so closely is everything measured with them.

It results from this whole objective consideration of the intellect and its origin, that it is designed for the comprehension of those ends upon the attainment of which depends the individual life and its propagation, but by no means for deciphering the inner nature of things and of the world, which exists independently of the knower. What to the plant is the susceptibility to light, in consequence of which it guides its growth in the direction of it, that is, in kind, the knowledge of the brute, nay, even of man, although in degree it is increased in proportion as the needs of each of these beings demand. With them all apprehension remains a mere consciousness of their relations to other things, and is by no means intended to present again in the consciousness of the knower the peculiar, absolutely real nature of these things. Rather, as springing from the will, the intellect is also only designed for its service, thus for the apprehension of motives; it is adapted for this, and is therefore of a thoroughly practical tendency. This also holds good if we conceive the significance of life as ethical; for in this regard too we find man knowing only for the benefit of his conduct. Such a faculty of knowledge, existing exclusively for practical ends, will from its nature always comprehend only the relations of things to each other, but not the inner nature of them, as it is in itself. But to regard the complex of these relations as the absolute nature of the world as it is in itself, and the manner in which it necessarily exhibits itself in accordance with the laws predisposed in the brain as the eternal laws of the existence of all things, and then to construct ontology, cosmology, and theology in accordance with this view – this was really the old fundamental error, of which Kant's teaching has made an end. Here, then, our objective, and therefore for the most part physiological consideration of the intellect meets his transcendental consideration of it; nay, appears in a certain sense even as an a priori insight into it; for, from a point of view which we have taken up outside of it, our objective view enables us to know in its origin, and therefore as necessary, what that transcendental consideration, starting from facts of consciousness, presents only as a matter of fact. For it follows from our objective consideration of the intellect, that the world as idea, as it exists stretched out in space and time, and moves on regularly according to the strict law of causality, is primarily only a physiological phenomenon, a function of the brain, which brings it about, certainly upon the occasion of certain external stimuli, but yet in conformity with its own laws. Accordingly it is beforehand a matter of course, that what goes on in this function itself, and therefore through it and for it, must by no means be regarded as the nature of things in themselves, which exist independently of it and are entirely different from it, but primarily exhibits only the mode or manner of this function itself, which can always receive only a very subordinate modification through that which exists completely independently of it, and sets it in motion as a stimulus. As, then, Locke claimed for the organs of sense all that comes into our apprehension by means of the sensation, in order to deny that it belongs to things in themselves, so Kant, with the same intention, and pursuing the same path further, has proved all that makes perception proper possible, thus space, time, and causality, to be functions of the brain; although he has refrained from using this physiological expression, to which, however, our present method of investigation, coming from the opposite side, the side of the real, necessarily leads us. Kant arrived upon his analytical path at the result that what we know are mere phenomena. What this mysterious expression really means becomes clear from our objective and genetic investigation of the intellect. The phenomena are the motives for the aims of individual will as they exhibit themselves in the intellect which the will has produced for this purpose (which itself appears as a phenomenon objectively, as the brain), and which, when comprehended, as far as one can follow their concatenation, afford us in their connection the world which extends itself objectively in time and space, and which I call the world as idea. Moreover, from our point of view, the objectionable element vanishes which in the Kantian doctrine arises from the fact that, because the intellect knows merely phenomena instead of things as they are in themselves, nay, in consequence of this is led astray into paralogisms and unfounded hypostases by means of “sophistications, not of men but of the reason itself, from which even the wisest does not free himself, and if, perhaps indeed after much trouble, he avoids error, can yet never get quit of the illusion which unceasingly torments and mocks him” – because of all this, I say, the appearance arises that our intellect is intentionally designed to lead us into errors. For the objective view of the intellect given here, which contains a genesis of it, makes it conceivable that, being exclusively intended for practical ends, it is merely the medium of motives, and therefore fulfils its end by an accurate presentation of these, and that if we undertake to discover the nature of things in themselves, from the manifold phenomena which here exhibit themselves objectively to us, and their laws, we do this at our own peril and on our own responsibility. We have recognised that the original inner force of nature, without knowledge and working in the dark, which, if it has worked its way up to self-consciousness, reveals itself to this as will, attains to this grade only by the production of an animal brain and of knowledge, as its function, whereupon the phenomenon of the world of perception arises in this brain. But to explain this mere brain phenomenon, with the conformity to law which is invariably connected with its functions, as the objective inner nature of the world and the things in it, which is independent of the brain, existing before and after it, is clearly a spring which nothing warrants us in making. From this mundus phœnomenon, however, from this perception which arises under such a variety of conditions, all our conceptions are drawn. They have all their content from it, or even only in relation to it. Therefore, as Kant says, they are only for immanent, not for transcendental, use; that is to say, these conceptions of ours, this first material of thought, and consequently still more the judgments which result from their combination, are unfitted for the task of thinking the nature of things in themselves, and the true connection of the world and existence; indeed, to undertake this is analogous to expressing the stereometrical content of a body in square inches. For our intellect, originally only intended to present to an individual will its paltry aims, comprehends accordingly mere relations of things, and does not penetrate to their inner being, to their real nature. It is therefore a merely superficial force, clings to the surface of things, and apprehends mere species transitivas, not the true being of things. From this it arises that we cannot understand and comprehend any single thing, even the simplest and smallest, through and through, but something remains entirely inexplicable to us in each of them. Just because the intellect is a product of nature, and is therefore only intended for its ends, the Christian mystics have very aptly called it “the light of nature,” and driven it back within its limits; for nature is the object to which alone it is the subject. The thought from which the Critique of Pure Reason has sprung really lies already at the foundation of this expression. That we cannot comprehend the world on the direct path, i. e., through the uncritical, direct application of the intellect and its data, but when we reflect upon it become ever more deeply involved in insoluble mysteries, points to the fact that the intellect, thus knowledge itself, is secondary, a mere product, brought about by the development of the inner being of the world, which consequently till then preceded it, and it at last appeared as a breaking through to the light out of the obscure depths of the unconscious striving the nature of which exhibits itself as will to the self-consciousness which now at once arises. That which preceded knowledge as its condition, whereby it first became possible, thus its own basis, cannot be directly comprehended by it; as the eye cannot see itself. It is rather the relations of one existence to another, exhibiting themselves upon the surface of things, which alone are its affair, and are so only by means of the apparatus of the intellect, its forms, space, time, and causality. Just because the world has made itself without the assistance of knowledge, its whole being does not enter into knowledge, but knowledge presupposes the existence of the world; on which account the origin of the world does not lie within its sphere. It is accordingly limited to the relations between the things which lie before it, and is thus sufficient for the individual will, for the service of which alone it appeared. For the intellect is, as has been shown, conditioned by nature, lies in it, belongs to it, and cannot therefore place itself over against it as something quite foreign to it, in order thus to take up into itself its whole nature, absolutely, objectively, and thoroughly. It can, if fortune favours it, understand all that is in nature, but not nature itself, at least not directly.

However discouraging to metaphysics this essential limitation of the intellect may be, which arises from its nature and origin, it has yet another side which is very consoling. It deprives the direct utterances of nature of their unconditional validity, in the assertion of which naturalism proper consists. If, therefore, nature presents to us every living thing as appearing out of nothing, and, after an ephemeral existence, returning again for ever to nothing, and if it seems to take pleasure in the unceasing production of new beings, in order that it may be able unceasingly to destroy, and, on the other hand, is unable to bring anything permanent to light; if accordingly we are forced to recognise matter as that which alone is permanent, which never came into being and never passes away, but brings forth all things from its womb, whence its name appears to be derived from mater rerum, and along with it, as the father of things, form, which, just as fleeting as matter is permanent, changes really every moment, and can only maintain itself so long as it clings as a parasite to matter (now to one part of it, now to another), but when once it entirely loses hold, disappears, as is shown by the palæotheria and the ichthyosaurians, we must indeed recognise this as the direct and genuine utterance of nature, but on account of the origin of the intellect explained above, and the nature of it which results from this origin, we cannot ascribe to this utterance an unconditional truth, but rather only an entirely conditional truth, which Kant has appropriately indicated as such by calling it the phenomenon in opposition to the thing in itself.

If, in spite of this essential limitation of the intellect, it is possible, by a circuitous route, to arrive at a certain understanding of the world and the nature of things, by means of reflection widely pursued, and the skilful combination of objective knowledge directed towards without, with the data of self-consciousness, this will yet be only a very limited, entirely indirect, and relative understanding, a parabolical translation into the forms of knowledge, thus a quadam prodire tenus, which must always leave many problems still unsolved. On the other hand, the fundamental error of the old dogmatism in all its forms, which was destroyed by Kant, was this, that it started absolutely from knowledge, i.e., the world as idea, in order to deduce and construct from its laws being in general, whereby it accepted that world of idea, together with its laws, as absolutely existing and absolutely real; while its whole existence is throughout relative, and a mere result or phenomenon of the true being which lies at its foundation, – or, in other words, that it constructed an ontology when it had only materials for a dianoiology. Kant discovered the subjectively conditioned and therefore entirely immanent nature of knowledge, i. e., its unsuitableness for transcendental use, from the constitution of knowledge itself; and therefore he very appropriately called his doctrine the Critique of Reason. He accomplished this partly by showing the important and thoroughly a priori part of all knowledge, which, as throughout subjective, spoils all objectivity, and partly by professedly proving that if they were followed out to the end the principles of knowledge, taken as purely objective, led to contradictions. He had, however, hastily assumed that, apart from objective knowledge, i. e., apart from the world as idea, there is nothing given us except conscience, out of which he constructed the little that still remained of metaphysics, his moral theology, to which, however, he attributed absolutely only a practical validity, and no theoretical validity at all. He had overlooked that although certainly objective knowledge, or the world as idea, affords nothing but phenomena, together with their phenomenal connection and regressus, yet our own nature necessarily also belongs to the world of things in themselves, for it must have its root in it. But here, even if the root itself cannot be brought to light, it must be possible to gather some data for the explanation of the connection of the world of phenomena with the inner nature of things. Thus here lies the path upon which I have gone beyond Kant and the limits which he drew, yet always restricting myself to the ground of reflection, and consequently of honesty, and therefore without the vain pretension of intellectual intuition or absolute thought which characterises the period of pseudo-philosophy between Kant and me. In his proof of the insufficiency of rational knowledge to fathom the nature of the world Kant started from knowledge as a fact, which our consciousness affords us, thus in this sense he proceeded a posteriori. But in this chapter, and also in my work, “Ueber den Willen in der Natur,” I have sought to show what knowledge is in its nature and origin, something secondary, designed for individual ends; whence it follows that it must be insufficient to fathom the nature of the world. Thus so far I have reached the same goal a priori. But one never knows anything wholly and completely until one has gone right round it for that purpose, and has got back to it from the opposite side from which one started. Therefore also, in the case of the important fundamental knowledge here considered, one must not merely go from the intellect to the knowledge of the world, as Kant has done, but also from the world, taken as given, to the intellect, as I have undertaken here. Then this physiological consideration, in the wider sense, becomes the supplement of that ideological, as the French say, or, more accurately, transcendental consideration.

In the above, in order not to break the thread of the exposition, I have postponed the explanation of one point which I touched upon. It was this, that in proportion as, in the ascending series of animals, the intellect appears ever more developed and complete, knowledge always separates itself more distinctly from will, and thereby becomes purer. What is essential upon this point will be found in my work, “Ueber den Willen in der Natur,” under the heading, “Pflanzenphysiologie” (p. 68-72 of the second, and 74-77 of the third edition), to which I refer, in order to avoid repetition, and merely add here a few remarks. Since the plant possesses neither irritability nor sensibility, but the will objectifies itself in it only as plastic or reproductive power, it has neither muscle nor nerve. In the lowest grades of the animal kingdom, in zoophites, especially in polyps, we cannot as yet distinctly recognise the separation of these two constituent parts, but still we assume their existence, though in a state of fusion; because we perceive movements which follow, not, as in the case of plants, upon mere stimuli, but upon motives, i. e., in consequence of a certain apprehension. Now in proportion as, in the ascending series of animals, the nervous and muscular systems separate ever more distinctly from each other, till in the vertebrate animals, and most completely in man, the former divides into an organic and a cerebral nervous system, and of these the latter again develops into the excessively complicated apparatus of the cerebrum and cerebellum, spinal marrow, cerebral and spinal nerves, sensory and motor nerve fascicles, of which only the cerebrum, together with the sensory nerves depending upon it, and the posterior spinal nerve fascicles are intended for the apprehension of the motive from the external world, while all the other parts are intended for the transmission of the motive to the muscles in which the will manifests itself directly; in the same proportion does the motive separate ever more distinctly in consciousness from the act of will which it calls forth, thus the idea from the will; and thereby the objectivity of consciousness constantly increases, for the ideas exhibit themselves ever more distinctly and purely in it. These two separations are, however, really only one and the same, which we have here considered from two sides, the objective and the subjective, or first in the consciousness of other things and then in self-consciousness. Upon the degree of this separation ultimately depends the difference and the gradation of intellectual capacity, both between different kinds of animals and between individual human beings; thus it gives the standard for the intellectual completeness of these beings. For the clearness of the consciousness of the external world, the objectivity of the perception, depends upon it. In the passage referred to above I have shown that the brute only perceives things so far as they are motives for its will, and that even the most intelligent of the brutes scarcely overstep these limits, because their intellect is too closely joined to the will from which it has sprung. On the other hand, even the stupidest man comprehends things in some degree objectively; for he recognises not merely what they are with reference to him, but also something of what they are with reference to themselves and to other things. Yet in the case of very few does this reach such a degree that they are in a position to examine and judge of anything purely objectively; but “that must I do, that must I say, that must I believe,” is the goal to which on every occasion their thought hastens in a direct line, and at which their understanding at once finds welcome rest. For thinking is as unendurable to the weak head as the lifting of a burden to the weak arm; therefore both hasten to set it down. The objectivity of knowledge, and primarily of perceptive knowledge, has innumerable grades, which depend upon the energy of the intellect and its separation from the will, and the highest of which is genius, in which the comprehension of the external world becomes so pure and objective that to it even more reveals itself directly in the individual thing than the individual thing itself, namely, the nature of its whole species, i. e., its Platonic Idea; which is brought about by the fact that in this case the will entirely vanishes from consciousness. Here is the point at which the present investigation, starting from physiological grounds, connects itself with the subject of our third book, the metaphysics of the beautiful, where æsthetic comprehension proper, which, in a high degree, is peculiar to genius alone, is fully considered as the condition of pure, i. e., perfectly will-less, and on that account completely objective knowledge. According to what has been said, the rise of intelligence, from the obscurest animal consciousness up to that of man, is a progressive loosening of the intellect from the will, which appears complete, although only as an exception, in the genius. Therefore genius may be defined as the highest grade of the objectivity of knowledge. The condition of this, which so seldom occurs, is a decidedly larger measure of intelligence than is required for the service of the will, which constitutes its basis; it is accordingly this free surplus which first really properly comes to know the world, i. e., comprehends it perfectly objectively, and now paints pictures, composes poems, and thinks in accordance with this comprehension.