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

THE ASSERTION AND DENIAL OF THE WILL. 3*3

keeping with my character, and lay up for myself repentance of another kind. Thus repentance is always corrected knowledge of the relation of an act to its special intention. When the will reveals its Ideas in space alone, through mere form, the matter in which other Ideas — in this case natural forces — already reign, resists the will, and seldom allows the form that is striving after visibility to appear in perfect purity and distinctness, i.e., in perfect beauty. And there is an analogous hindrance to the will as it reveals itself in time alone, i.e., through actions, in the knowledge which seldom gives it the data quite correctly, so that the action which takes place does not accurately correspond to the will, and leads to repentance. Repentance thus always proceeds from corrected knowledge, not "from the change of the 'will, which is impossible. Anguish of conscience for past deeds is anything but repentance. It is pain at the knowledge of. .oneself . in one’s irunpst nature, i.6y_a3 wiU. It rests precisely on the certainty that we have still the 8ame”win. If the will were changed, and therefore the anguish of conscience mere repentance, it would cease to exist The past could then no longer give us pain, for it exhibited the expressions of a will which is no longer that of him who has repented. We shall explain the significance of anguish of conscience in detail farther on.

The influence which knowledge, as the medium of motives, exerts, not indeed upon the will itself, but upon its appearance in actions, is also the source of the principal distinction between the action of men and that of brutes, for their methods of knowledge are different. The brute has only knowledge of perception, the man, through reason, has also abstract ideas, conceptions. Now, although man and brute are with equal necessity determined by their motives, yet man, as distin"ui^hg4 from Jihe brute, has a complete choice, which has often been regarded as a freedom of the will in particulu actions, although it is nothing but the posa^tbiliW pf a

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THE WORLD AS WILL.

BK. IT.

thoroughly - fought - out battle between several motives, the sttongest of which then determines it with necessity. For this the motives must 'have assumed the form of abstract thoughts, because it is really only by means of these that deliberation, i.e., a weighing of opposite reasons for action, is possible.

In the case of the brute there can only be a choice between perceptible motives presented to it, so that the choice is limited to the narrow sphere of its present sensuous perception ^ Therefore the necessity of the determination of the will by the motive, which is like that of the effect by - the cause, can be exhibited perceptibly and directly only in the case of the brutes, because here the spectator has the motives just as directly before his eyes as their effect; while in the case of man the motives are almost always abstract ideas, ^ich are not communicated to the spectator, and even for the actor himself the necessity of their effect is hidden behind their conflict.

For only in dbstracto can several Ideas, ~as Judgments and chains of conclusions, lie beside each other in consciousness, and then, free from all determination of time, work against each other till the stronger overcomes the rest and determines the will. .

Tliis is the complete choice or power of deliberation which man has as distinguished from the brutes, and on account of which freedom of the will has been attributed to him, in the belief that his willing is a mere result of the operations of his intellect, without a definite tendency which serves as its basis ; while, in truth, the motives only work on the foundation and under the presupposition of his definite tendency, which in his case is individual, i,e., a character.

A fuller exposition of this power of deliberation, and the difference between human and brute choice which is introduced by it, will be found in the “ Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics” ( 1st edition, p. 35, et seq. ; 2d edition, p. 34, et seq.), to which I therefore refer. For the rest, this power of deliberation which^ man possesses is one of those things that ma^es his