The Basis of Morality. Arthur Schopenhauer
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The discussion now terminated points to the conclusion that nine-tenths, or perhaps nineteen-twentieths, of what we do is, more or less, due to Egoism, conscious or unconscious; while acts of real morality, that is, of unselfish justice and pure loving-kindness (admitting that they occur) are to be attributed to Compassion, that is, the sense of suffering with another. Nor is the principle of Altruism new. It is as old as man himself. All the rare and sensitive natures in the world have given utterance to it, each in his own way. Like a golden thread it runs from the earliest Indian literature to George Eliot, to Tolstoï; and every day, for unnumbered ages, "from youth to eld, from sire to son," in lowly dwellings and in princes' palaces, it has been unawares translated into action.
And if we may forecast the future from the past, it would appear that in all the stormy seas yet to be traversed by the human race, before its little day is spent, Compassion will ever be the surest guide to better things; and that the light of knowledge illuminating the path, whereby the world may become relatively happier, will always vary directly as man's susceptibility to its promptings: for "Durch Mitleid wissend" is not truer of Parsifal than of all other saviours.
In the fourth Part of the treatise Schopenhauer attempts the metaphysical explanation of Compassion, which for those, who still think that Metaphysics is something more than a pseudo-science of the past—like Alchemy or Astrology—will have special interest.
It should be observed (as is pointed out in our author's Preface to the first edition) that the line of thought followed does not belong to any particular metaphysical school, but to many; being in fact a principle at the root of the oldest systems in the world, and traceable in one form or another down to Kant. As in the dawn of history it was our own Aryan forefathers, who divined with subtle intuition the ideality of Time and Space; so in the fulness of the ages it was reserved for another Aryan of Scotch descent to formulate the same in exact language. Now, by the vast majority of men the ideality of the principium individuationis is undoubtedly either not consciously realised at all, or else but dimly perceived under the form of allegories and mythologies. Yet, if this theory be true, if individuation be only a phaenomenon depending on the subjectivity of Time and Space, then Compassion, and its external expression, the ἀγάπη that is greater than Faith and Hope, receive their final explanation. And every εὐθανασία; every word that vibrates in harmony with the inspired rhapsody of 1 Corinthians xiii.; every act of genuine justice, or of true loving-kindness, done by man to man, as well as the uplifting emotion which stirs our hearts at the sight of such conduct:—all these things become fraught with a new and luminous significance: the secret writing is interpreted, its deepest meaning disclosed.
Moreover, the "thou shalt," and the "thou shalt not," no less of the various theologies than of the Categorical Imperative, may from this point of view be accounted for, on the ground of the identity of man, so far as he is noumenal, with the transcendental Reality behind phaenomena. The crude threats of punishment and promises of reward, the stern Moral Law, poised in mid air—these hypotheses, and all their varieties (whose function is in reality nothing else but to check Egoism), are seen to be due to the intellect's imperfect comprehension of, or rather, its vague groping after, the transcendental unity of life, however individualised and differentiated as a phaenomenon in Time and Space.[8] It thus becomes apparent that the position developed by Schopenhauer in the third and fourth parts of the Essay is not so much destructive, as explanatory, of the usual theories, which, if once the former be fully grasped, lose themselves in it as stars and moon in the light of day. They are at once interpreted, and shown to be no longer of importance. Similarly, all the religions of the world, "which are the Metaphysics of the people," find their raison d'être in the same doctrine. The theory of an external δημιουργὸς takes its place as the natural mode of denoting, in children's language, the internal metaphysical Entity, whose appearance-form, in terms of our consciousness, is called the Universe. The circle is completed; the discords vanish, and an ultimate harmony is reached. And so over the thrice-tangled skein of phaenominal existence a simplifying and integrating light is shed, showing that the πᾱν is but the reflection of the ἕν, under the forms of our faculty of perception, namely, Time, Space, and Causality—forms, which necessarily imply plurality and change, on which, again, in the last resort the Welt-Schmerz depends.
"The One remains, the many change and pass;
… … … . … .
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments."
"What an unspeakable gain," says Richard Wagner,[9] "we should bring to those who are terrified by the threats of the Church, and, on the other hand, to those who are reduced to despair by our physicists, if we could quicken the noble edifice of 'Love, Faith, and Hope,' with a clear consciousness of the ideality of the world, conditioned by the laws of Space and Time, which form the sole basis of our perceptive capacity! In that case all anxious inquiries as to a 'Where' and 'When' of the 'other world' would be understood to be only answerable by a blissful smile. For, if there is a solution to these questions, which seem of such boundless importance, our philosopher has given it with incomparable precision and beauty in the following sentence, which, to a certain extent, is only a corollary to the definition of the ideality of Time and Space: 'Peace, Rest, and Bliss dwell only there where there is no where, and no when.'" (V. Schopenhauer: Parerga and Paralipomena, vol. ii., chap. 3, § 30 bis.)
[1] He died September 21st.
[2] It should be noticed that this "essential part of the question," a few lines before, is said to have been passed over altogether (omisso enim eo, quod potissimum postulabatur).
[3] Any one who cares to see how this Judgment, the Danish Royal Society of Sciences, Hegel, Fichte, and "Professors of Philosophy" in general, are all pulverised together under our sage's withering wrath and trenchant irony, should read his Introduction to each Edition.
[4] Incidentally (Chapter III.), duties towards ourselves, properly so called, are shown to be non-existent from the Schopenhauerian standpoint. Cf. the definition of Duty in Part III., Chapter VI.
[5] Schopenhauer treated this subject exhaustively in his Essay on "The Freedom of the Will," which, written immediately before, and more fortunate than, the present treatise, was awarded the prize by the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences in January, 1839.
[6] If, as above suggested, Malice be taken as a form of Egoism, we may simplify as follows:—
| Egoism. | Compassion. |
| (a) Lower power: seen in | (a) Lower power: seen in |
| selfishness, covetousness, etc. | justice. |
| (b) Higher power: seen in | (d) Higher power: seen in |
| malice, cruelty, etc. | loving-kindness. |