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

p. 441

not existing outside positive law, and we can never show him through external experience what does not belong to such experience. Hobbes himself characterises his completely empirical method of thought very remarkably by the fact that in his book “ De Principiis Geometrarum ” he denies all pure mathematics properly so called, and obstinately maintains that the point has extension and the line has breadth, and we can never show him a point without extension or a line without breadth. Thus we can just as little impart to him the a priori nature of mathematics as the a priori nature of right, because he shuts himself out from all knowledge whicii is not erapiricaL

The pure doctrine of right is thus a chapter of ethics, and is directly related only to action, not to suffering ; for only the former is the expression of will, and this alone is considered by ethics. Suffering is mere occurrence. Ethics can only have regard to sutler ing indirectly, merely to show that what takes place merely to avoid suffering wrong is itself no infliction of wrong. The working out of this chapter of ethics would contain the precise definition of the limits to which an individual may go in the assertion of the will already objectified in his body without denying the same will as it appears in another itdividual ; and also the actions which transgress these limitt. which consequently are wrong, and therefore in their turn may oe warded off without wrong. Thus our own action always remains the point of view of the investigation.

But the suffering of wrong appears as an event in outward experience, and in it is manifested, as we have said, more distinctly than anywhere else, the phenomenon of the conflict of the will to live with itself, arising from the multiplicity of individuals and from egoism, both of which are conditioned through the principium individuationis, which is the form of the world as idea for the knowledge of the individual We also saw above that a very large

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THE WORLD AS WILL.

BK. IV.

part of the suffering essential to human life has its perennial source in that conflict of individuals.

The reason, however, which is common to all these individuals, and which enables them to know not merely the particular case, as the brutes do, but also the whole abstractly in its connection, has also taught them to discern the source of that suffering, and induced them to consider the means of diminishing it, or, when possible, of suppressing it by a common sacrifice, which is, however, more than counterbalanced by the common advantage that proceeds from it.

However agreeable it is to the egoism of the individual to inflict wrong in particular cases, this has yet a necessary correlative in the suffering of wrong of another individual, to whom it is a great pain.

And because the reason which surveys the whole left the one-sided point of view of the individual to which it belongs, and freed itself for the moment from its dependence upon it, it saw the pleasure of an individual in inflicting wrong always outweighed by the relatively greater pain of the other who suffered the wrong ; and it found further, that because here everything was left to chance, every one had to fear that the pleasure of conveniently inflicting wrong would far more rarely faU to his lot than the pain of enduring it.

From this reason recognised that both in order to diminish the suffering which is everywhere disseminated, and as far as possible to divide it equally, the best and only means was to s{.are all the pain of suffering wrong by renoimcing all the pleasure to be obtained by inflicting it. This means is the contract of the state or law.

It is easily conceived, and little by little carried out by the egoism, which, through the use of reason, proceeds methodically and forsakes its one- sided point of view. This origin of the state and of law I have indicated was already exhibited as such by Plato in the “ Eepublic. In fact, it is the essential and only origin, determined by the nature of the matter. Moreover, in no land can the state have ever had a