The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp
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The translator’s English as printed (R. B. Haldane & J. Kemp). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
THE WORLD AS WILL.
BK. nr.
■less which is or ever was committed in the world proceeds from that will which constitutes his own nature also, appears also in him, and that through this phenomenon and its assertion he has taken upon himself all the sufferings which proceed from such a will and bears them as his due, so long as he is this will. From this knowledge speaks the profound poet Calderon in “ Life a Dream ” —
“ Pues el delito mayor Del liombre es liaber nacido.”
(“ For the greatest crime of man Is that he ever was born.”)
Why should it not be a crime, since, according to an eternal law, death follows upon it ? Calderon has merely expressed in these lines the Christian dogma of original sin.
The living knowledge of eternal justice, of the balance that inseparably binds together the malum culpce with the malum poence, demands the complete transcending of individuality and the principle of its possibility. Therefore it will always remain unattainable to the majority of men, as will also be the case with the pure and distinct knowledge of the nature of all virtue, which is akin to it, and which we are about to explain. Accordingly the wise ancestors of the Hindu people have directly expfessecnrin the Vedas, which are only allowed to the three regenerate castes, or in their esoteric teaching, so far at any rate as conception and language cqmpg’ehend it, arid their ihethod of exposition, which always remains pictorial and even rhapsodical, admits ; but in the religion of the people, or exoteric teaching, they onl^ communicate it by means of myths. The dire_ct^ exposition we find m ' "ffi© ^Ee fruit of the high^_ human taiowledge and wisdom, the kernel of i^ch has a£ l^t reached us in the Uimiiishads as the greatest gift of this century. It is expregsed_in varioiM ways, but especially by making all the beings in tlw worM^ving and lifeless, pass successively before the view oFfEe student, and pronouncing over every one of them th^ word which h^ become a formula, and as sucbJbas l^era called the Mahavakya : Tatoumes^ — more coiTectly.
Tat Warn asi,— which means, “ This thou art.” ^ But for the people, that great truth, so far as in their limited condition they could comprehend it, was translated into the form of knowledge which follows the principle of sufficient reason.
This form of knowledge is indeed, from its nature, quite incapable truth pure and in itself, and even to itj. jet in the form of a myth it received a substitute for it which was sufficient as a guide for conduct.
For the myth enables the method of knowledge, in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason, to comprehend by figurative representation the ethical significance of conduct, which itself is ever foreign to it This is the aim of all systems of religion, for as a whole they are tlm mythical clothing of the truth wjiich .is unattainable to the uncultured human intellect.
In this sense this myth might, ih Slant’s language, be called a postulate of the practical reason ; but regarded as such, it has the great advantage that it contains absolutely no elements but such as lie before our eyes in the course of actual experience, and can therefore support all its conceptions with perceptions.
What is here referred to is the myth of the transmigration of 80uIs.~~TOeacK^fhat~airiin5enhgV in life one inflicta, appa Qtlier fornga must Fe expiateTiii a subsequent life in this world, through jprccisely the same sufferings ; and this.ex^.nd,s.so,far, that he who only kills a brute must, some time in endless time, be born as the same kind of brute and suffer the samTUeath.
It teaches that wicked conduct involves aTiiiEuK lifeTiTthis' world in' sdffbrltig'xtncF'des^eir areatures7'¥n3^~Mcofdi^lj, that one will tEien BeBorn again inTdwer ^tes, dir as
^ Oupuek’hat, vol. i. p. 6o et seq.
tands in contradiction
4<So
THE WORLD AS WILL.
BK. IV.
a woman, or as a brute, as Pariah or Tschandala, as a leper, or as a crocodile, and so Wth'.' All the pains which the myth threatens it supports with perceptions from actual life, through suffering creatures which do not know how they have merited their misery, and it does not require to call in the assistance of any other hell. As a reward, on the other hand, it promises re-birth in better, nobler forms, as Brahmans, wise men, or saints. The highest reward, which awaits the noblest deeds and the completest resignation, which is also given to the woman who in seven successive lives has voluntarily died on the funeral pile of her husband, and not less to the man whose pure mouth has never uttered a single lie, — this reward the myth can only express negatively in the language of this world by the promise, which is so often repeated, that they shall never be bom again. Non adsumes iierum exisientiam apparentem; or, as the Buddhists, who recognise neither Vedas nor casteiT^ express it, "Thou shalt attain to NirvSna,'*~?;'(?.7'f6 a'state in which four filings no longer exist — birth, age, sickness, and deatk
Never has a myth entered, and never will one enter, more closely into the philosophical truth which is atteinahTe £0*36" few than this primitive doctrine of the noblest anS most aum^t Broken up as £Eis~hafir6h now is into
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