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

p. 443

different origin, because it is just this mode of originating this aim that makes it a state. But it is a matter of indifference whether, in each particular nation, the condition which preceded it was that of a horde of savages independent of each other (anarchy), or that of a horde of slaves ruled at will by the stronger (despotism). In both cases there existed as yet no state ; it first arose through that common agreement ; and according as that agreement is more or less free from anarchy or despotism, the state is more or less perfect. Republics tend to anarchy, monarchies to despotism, and the mean of constitutional monarchy, which was therefore devised, tenuFTo" govefnmeht~^ factionsT Tn orSej to found a perfect state, we must begin by providing beings whose nature allows them always to sacrifice their own to the public good. Till then, however, something may he attained through the existence of one; family whose good is quite inseparable from that of the country ; so that, at least in matters of importance, it can never advance the one without the other. On this rests the power and the advantage of the hereditary monarchy.

Now as ethics was concerned exclusively with right and wrong doing, and could accurately point out the limits of his action to whoever was resolved to do no wrong ; politics, on the contrary, the theory of legislation, is exclusively concerned with the suffering of wrong, and would never trouble itself with wrong-doing at all if it were not on account of its ever-necessary coirelative, the suffering of wrong, which it always keeps in view as the enemy it opposes. Indeed, if it were possible to conceive an infliction of wrong with which no suffering of wrong on the part of another was connected, the state woidd, consistently, by no means prohibit it And because in ethics the will, the disposition, is the object of consideration, and the only real thing, the firm will to do wrong, which is only restrained

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THE WORLD AS WILL.

BK. IV.

and rendered ineffective by external might, and the actually committed wrong, are to it quite the same, and it condemns him who so wills as unjust at its tribunal On the other hand, will and disposition, merely as such, do not concern the state at all, but only the deed (whether it is merely attempted or carried out), on accoimt of its correlative, the suffering ou the part of another.

Thus for the state the deed, the event, is the only real; the disposition, the intention, is only investigated so far as the significance of the deed becomes known through it. Therefore the state will forbid no one to carry about in his thought murder and poison against another, so long as it knows certainly that the fear of the sword and the wheel will always restrain the effects of that will.

The state has also by no means to eradicate the foolish purpose, the inclination to wrongdoing, the wicked disposition ; but merely always to place beside every possible motive for doing a wrong a more powerful motive for leaving it undone in the inevitable punishment that will ensue.

Therefore the criminal coda is as complete a register as possible of motives against every criminal action that can possibly be imagined — both in abstracto, in order to make any case that occurs an application in concreto. Politics or legislation will therefore for this end borrow from that chapter of ethics which is the doctrine of right, and which, besides the inner significance of right and wrong, determines the exact limits between them.

Yet it will only do so for the purpose of making use of its reverse side, and regarding all the limits which ethics lays down as not to be transgressed, if we are to avoid doing wrong, from the other side, as the limits which we must not allow others to transgress if we do not wish to suffer wrong, and from which we have therefore a right to drive others back.

Therefore these limits are, as much as i)ossible, from the passive side, barricaded by laws. It is evident that as an historian has very wittily been “opIeT an inverted proghet, tlie proiessor of