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

by pirates, has the right to IdU them not only by violence but also by craft, in order to regain his freedom. Thus, alsora promise is certainly not binding when it has been extorted by direct bodily violence, because he who suffersp. 439 been stolen from him, commits no wrong if he can accom- ^ish it through craft. Indeed, if ^ome one plars with me for money he has stolen from me. I have the right to use fajgg^ige,,aiaiaaUumJi!fe^ him already belongs to me. Whoever would deny this must still more deny the justifiableness of stratagem in war, which is just an acted lie, and is a proof of the saying of Queen Christina of Sweden, “ The words of men are to be esteemed as nothing ; scarcely are their deeds to be trusted.” So sharply does the limit of right border upon that of wrong. For the rest, I regard it as superfluous to show that all this completely agrees with what was said above about the unlawfulness of the lie and of violence. It may also serve to explain the peculiar theory of the lie told under pressure.^

In accordance with what has been said, wrong and right are merely moral determinations, i.e., such as are valid with regard to the consideration of human action as such, and in relation to the inner significance of this action in itself. This asserts itself directly in consciousness through the fact that the doing of wrong is accompanied by an inward pain, which is the merely felt consciousness of the wrong-doer of the excessive strength of the assertion of will in itself, which extends even to the denial of the manifestation of the will of another, and also the consciousness that although he is different from the person suffering wrong as far as the manifestation is concerned, yet in himself he is identical with him. The further explanation of this inner significance of all pain of conscience cannot be given till later. He who suffers wrong is, on the other hand, painfully conscious of the denial of his will, as it is expressed through the body and its natural requirements, for the satisfaction of which nature refers him to the powers of his body ; and at the

' The further exposition of the “ TJeber das Fundament der Moral,” philosophy of law here laid down § 17, pp. 221-2300! 1st ed., pp. 216will be found in my prize-essay 226 of 2d ed.

p. 440

THE WORLD AS WILL.

BK. IV.

same time he is conscious that v/ithout doing wrong he might ward off that denial by every means unless he lacks the power. This purely moral significance is the only one which right and wrong have for men as men, not as members of the State, and which consequently remains even when man is in a state of nature without any positive law.

It constitutes the basis and the content of all that has on this account been named naturai law, though it is better called moral law, for its validity does not extend to suffering, to the external reality, but only to the action of man and the self-knowledge of his individual vidll which grows up in him from his action, and which is called conscience.

It cannot, however, in a state of nature, assert itself in all cases, and outwardly upon other individuals, and prevent might from reigning instead of right. In a state of nature it depends ujjon every one merely to see that in every case he docs no wrong, but by no means to see that in every case he suffers no wrong, for this depends on the accident of his outward power.

Therefore the concepts right and wrong, even in a state of nature, are certainly valid and by no means conventional, but there they are valid merely as moral concepts, for the self-knowledge of one’s own will in each.

They are a fixed point in the scale of the very different degrees of strength with which the will to live asserts itself in human individuals, like the freezing-point on the thermometer ; the point at which the assertion of one’s own will becomes the denial of the will of another, i.e., specifies through wrong-doing the degree of its intensity, combined with the degree in which knowledge is involved in the principium individuationis (which is the form of all knowledge that is subject to the will).

But whoever wants to set aside the purely moral consideration of human action, or denies it, and wishes to regard conduct merely in its outward effects and their consequences, may certainly, with Hobbes, explain right and wrong as conventional definitions arbitrarily assumed, and therefore