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

law is an inverted moralist, and therefore law itself, in its proper sense. i.e., the doctrine of the right, which we ou^ht to maintain, is inverted ethics in that chapter of it in which the rights are laid down which we ought not to violate. The concept of wrong and its negation, tEat" of right, which is originally ethical, becomes juridical by the transference of the starting-point from the active to the passive side, and thus by inversion.

This, as well as Kant’s theory of law, which very falsely deduces the institution of the state as a moral duty from his categorical imperative, has, even in the most recent times, repeatedly occasioned the very extraordinary error that the state is an institution for furthering morality ; that it arises from the endeavour after this, and is, consequently, directed against egoism* As if the inward disposition, to wliich alone morality or immorality belongs, the externally free wUl, would allow itself to be modified from without and changed by influences exerted upon it !

Still more perverse is the theory that the state is the condition of freedom in the moral sense, and in this way the condition of morality ; for freedom lies beyond the phenomenon, and indeed beyond human arrangements.

The state is, as we have said, so little directed against egoism in general and as such, that, on the contrary, it has sprung from egoism and exists only in its service — an egoism that well understands itself, proceeds methodically and forsakes the one-sided for the universal point of view, and so by addition is the common egoism of all.

The state is thus instituted xmder the correct presupposition that pure morality, i.e., right action from moral grounds, is not to be expected ; if this were not the case, it would itself be superfluous.

Thus the state, which aims at well-being, is by no means directed against egoism, but only against the disadvantageous consequences which arise from the multiplicity of egoistic individuals, and reciprocally affect them all and disturb their well-being. Therefore it was already said by Aristotle (De. Rep. iii) ; TeXo? fiev ovv irdKem to ev fiji*

TovTo Be eariv to ^r)p evBaifiov(o<} xai KaXu><i {Finis civitatis est hene vivere, hoc autcm est heate et pulchre vivere). Hobbes also has accurately and excellently expounded this origin and end of the state ; and that old first principle of all state policy, salus pMica prima lex esto, indicates the same thing.

If the state completely attains its end, it wiU produce the same outward result as if perfect justice of disposition prevailed everywhere. But the inner nature and origin of both phenomena will be the converse. Thus in the second case it would be that no one wished to do wrong, and in the first that no one wished to suffer wrong, and the means appropriate to this end had been fully employed.

Thus the same line may be drawn from opposite directions, and a beast of prey with a muzzle is as harmless as a graminivorous animal But beyond this point the state cannot go. It cannot exhibit a phenomenon such as would spring from universal mutual well-wishing and love.

For just as we found that from its nature it would not forbid the doing of a wrong which involved no corresponding suffering of wrong on the part of another, and proliibits all wrong-doing only because this is impossible ; so conversely, in accordance with its tendency towards the well-being of all, it woiJd very gladly take care that every benevolent action and work of human love should be experienced, if it were not that these also have an inevitable correlative in the performance of acts of benevolence and works of love, and every member of the state woiild wish to assume the passive and none the active r61e, and there would be no reason for exacting the latter from one member of the state rather than from another.

Accordingly only the negative, which is just the rij^ht, not the positive, which has been comprehended imder the name of obligations of love, or, less completely, duties, can be exacted hy force.

Legislation, as we have said, borrows the pure philosophy of right, or the doctrine of the nature and limits of right and wrong, from ethics, in ordei^to apply it from

p. 447