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

First, however, I wish to trace back to their real meaning those conceptions of good and had which have been treated by the philosophical writers of the day, very extraordinarily, as simple conceptions, and thus incapable of analysis ; so that the reader may not remain involved in the senseless delusion that they contain more than is actually the case, and express in and for themselves aD that is here necessary. I am in a position to do this because in ethics I am no more disposed to take refuge behind the word good than formerly behind the words heaxdifvd and true, in order that by the adding a “ ness,” which at the present day is supposed to have a special crefivorrrf}, and therefore to be of assistance in various cases, and by assuming an air of solemnity, I might induce the belief that by uttering three such words I had done more than denote three very wide and abstract, and consequently empty conceptions, of very different origin and significance. Who is there, indeed, who has made himself acquainted with the books of our own day to whom these three words, admirable as are the things to which they originally refer, have not become an aversion after he has seen for the thousandth time how those who are least capable of thinking believe that they have only to utter these three words with open mouth and the air of an intelligent sheep, in order to have spoken the greatest wisdom ?

The explanation of the concept true has already been

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given in the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, chap. V. § 2g et seg. The content of the concept beautiful found for the first time its proper explanation through the whole of the Third Book of the present work. We now wish to discover the significance of the concept good, which can be done with very little trouble. This concept is essentially relative, and signifies the conformity of an object to any definite effort of the will.

Accordingly everything that corresponds to the will in any of its expressions and fulfils its end is thought tlirough the concept good, however different such things may be in other respects.

Thus we speak of good eating, good roads, good weather, good weapons, good omens, and so on ; in short, we call everything good that is just as we wish it to be ; and therefore that may be good in the eyes of one man which is just the reverse in those of another.

The conception of the good divides itself into two sub-species — that of the direct and present satisfaction of any volition, and that of its indirect satisfaction which has reference to the future, i.e., the agreeable and the useful The conception of the opposite, so long as we are speaking of unconscious existence, is expressed by the word bad, more rarely and abstractly by the word evil, which thus denotes everything that does not correspond to any effort of the will.

Like all other tilings that can come into relation to the will, men who are favourable to the ends which happen to be desired, who further and befriend them, are called good, in the same sense, and always with that relative limitation, which shows itself, for example, in the expression, “ I find this good, but you don’t” Those, however, who are naturally disposed not to hinder the endeavours of others, but rather to assist them, and who are thus consistently helpful, benevolent, friendly, and charitable, are called good men, on account of this relation of their conduct to the will of others in general. In the case of conscious beings (brutes and men) the contrary concepition is denoted in German,

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THE WORLD AS WILL.

BK. IV.

and, witldn the last hundred years or so, in French also, by a different word from that which is used in speaking of unconscious existence; in German, lose; in French, m^chaivt ; while in almost all other languages this distinction does not exist ; and KaKo<:, malus, cattiw, had, are used of men, as of lifeless things, which are opposed to the ends of a definite individual wilL Thus, having started entirely from the passive element in the good, the inquiry could only proceed later to the active element, and investigate the conduct of the man who is called good, no longer with reference to others, but to himself ; specially setting itself the task of explaining both the purely objective respect which such conduct produces in others, and the peculiar contentment with himself which it clearly produces in the man himself, sinoe he purchases it with sacrifices of another kind ; and also, on the other hand, the inner pain which accompanies the bad disposition, whatever outward advantages it brings to him who entertains it It was from this source that the ethical systems, both the philosophical and those which are supported by systems of religion, took their rise. Both seek constantly in some way or other to connect happiness with virtue, the former either by means of the principle of contradiction or that of sufficient reason, and thus to make happiness either identical with or the consequence of virtue, always sophistically ; the latter, by asserting the existence of other worlds than that which alone can be known to experience.' In our system, on the con-