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

For virtue certainly proceeds from knowledge, but not from the abstract knowledge that can be communicated through words. If it were so, virtue could be taught, and by here expressing in abstract language its nature and the knowledge which lies at its foundation, we should make every one who comprehends this even ethically better. But this is by no means the case.

On the contrary, ethical discourses and preaching will just as little produce a virtuous man as all the systems of aesthetics from Aristotle downwards have succeeded in producing a poet. For the real inner nature of virtue the concept is unfruitful, just as it is in art, and it is only in a completely subordinate position that it can be of use as a tool in the elaboration and preserving of what has been ascertained and inferred by other means.

Velle non discitur. Abstract dogmas are, in fact, without influence upon virtue, i.e., upon the goodness of the disposition. False dogmas do not disturb it; true ones will scarcely assist it.

It would, in fact, be a bad look-out if the cardinal fact in the life of man, his ethical worth, tliat worth which counts for eternity, were dependent upon anything the attainment of which is so much a matter of chance as is the case with dogmas, religious doctrines, and philosophical theories.

For morality dogmas have this value only : The man who has become virtuous from knowledge of another kind, which is presently to be considered, possesses in them a scheme or formula according to which he accounts to his own reason, for the most part fictitiously, for his non-egoistical action, the nature of which it, i.e., he himself, does not comprehend, and with which account he has accustomed it to be content.

(the last because the ordinary man does not trust his judgment, of the weakness of which he is conscious, but only follows his own or some one else’s experience), but the disposition is not altered in this way.^ All abstract knowledge gives only motives ; but, as was shown above, motives can only alter the direction of the will, not the will itself. All communicable knowledge, however, can only affect the will as a motive.

Thus when dogmas lead it, what the man really and in general wills remains still the same. He has only received different thoughts as to the ways in which jt m^ to be attained, and imaginary motives guide him just like real ones.

Therefore, for example, it “is all one, as regards hS^"6tbical wortlGi7 ^ietEef'’Ke gives large gifts to the poor, firmly persuaded that he will receive eve^thing te^nfold in a future life, or expends the same sum on the improvement of an estate which will yield' interest, certa,inly late, but all the more, surely and largely.

And he who for the sake of orthodoxy commits tiie heretic to the flames is as much ajmurderer as the bandit ''wEor’'does it for gain : and indeed, as regards inward circumstances, so also was he who slaughtered the Turks in the Holy Land, if, like the burner ^f heretics, he really did so because he thought that he would thereby gain a ptace~in heaven.

For these are carefuLonly for themselves, for their own egoism, just like the bwdit, from~\^bm they are only distinguished by the absurdity of their means. From without, as has been said,~the can only be reached through motives, and these only alter the way in which it expresses itself, never the will itself. Velle Twn disdtur.

In the case of good deeds, however, the doer of which appeals to dogmas, we must always distinguish whether these dogmas really are the motives which lead to the good deeds, or whether, as was said above, they are

^ The Church would say that these which leads to the new birth. But are merely opera operata^ which do of this farther on, not avail unless grace gives the faith

p. 477