The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp

If, under the same circumstances, a man could act now one way and now another, it would be necessary that his will itself should have changed in the meantime, and thus that it should lie in time, for change is only possible in time; but then either the will would be a mere phenomenon, or time would be a condition of the thingin -itself. Accordingly the dispute as to the freedom of the particular action, the liherum arhitrium indifferentioe, really turns on the question whether the will lies in time or not. If, as both Kant’s doctrine and the whole of my system necessitates, the will is the thing-in-itself outside time and outside every form of the principle of sufficient reason, not only must the individual act in the same way in the same circumstances, and not only must every bad action be the sure warrant of innumerable others, which the individual must perform and cannot leave, but, as Kant said, if only the empirical character and the motives were completely given, it would be possible to calculate the future conduct of q man just as we can calculate anp. 377 eclipse of the sun or moon. As Nature is consistent, so is the character ; every action must take place in accordance with it, just as every phenomenon takes place according to a law of Nature : the causes in the latter case and the motives in the former are merely the occasional causes, as was shown in the Second Book. The will, whose phenomenon is the whole being and life of man, cannot deny itself in the particular case, and what the man wills on the whole, that will he also wUl in the particular case.

The assertion of an empirical freedom of the will, a liherum m'hitrium indifferentice, agrees precisely with the doctrine that places tlie inner nature of man in a soul, which is originally a knowing, and indeed really an abstract thinking nature, and only in consequence of this a willing nature — a doctrine which thus regards the will as of a secondary or derivative nature, instead of knowledge which is really so. The will indeed came to be regarded as an act of thought, and to be identified with the judgment, especially by Descartes and Spinoza. According to this doctrine every man must become what he is only through his knowledge ; he must enter the world as a moral cipher come to know the things in it, and thereupon determine to be this or that, to act thus or thus, and may also through new knowledge achieve a new course of action, that is to say, become another person. Further, he must first know a thing to be good, and in consequence of this will it, instead of first vnlling it, and in consequence of this calling it good. According to my fundamental point of view, all this is a reversal of the true relation. Will is first and original ; knowledge is merely added to it as an instrument belonging to the phenomenon of will. Therefore every man is what he is through his will, and his character is original, for willing is the basis of his nature. Through the knowledge which is added to it he comes to know in the course of experience what he is, i.e., he learns his

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THE WORLD AS WILL.

BK. IV.

character. Thus he knows himself in consequence of and in accordance with the nature of his will, instead of willing in consequence of and in accordance with his knowing. According to the latter view, he would only require to consider how he would like best to be, and he would be it; that is its doctrine of the freedom of the will. Thus it consists really in this, that a man is his own work guided by the light of knowledge.

I, on the contrary, say that he is his own work before all knowledge, and knowledge is merely added to it to enlighten it. Therefore he cannot resolve to he this or that, nor can he become other than he is ; but he is once for all, and he knows in the course of experience what he is. According to one doctrine he wills what he knows, and according to the other he knows what he wills.