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

merely the illusive account of them with which he seeks to satisfy his own reason with regard to a good deed which really flows from quite a different source, a deed which he does because he is good, though he does not understand how to explain it rightly, and yet wishes to think something with regard to it. But this distinction is very hard to make, because it lies in the heart of a man. Therefore we can scarcely ever pass a correct moral judgment on the action of others, and very seldom on our own. The deeds and conduct of an individual and of a nation may be very much modified through dogmas, example, and custom. But in themselves all deeds {opera operata) are merely empty forms, and only the disposition which leads to them gives them moral significance. This disposition, however, may be quite the same when its outward manifestation is very different. With an equal degree of wickedness, one man may die on the wheel, and another in the bosom of his family. It may be the same grade of wicke3ness~wKi35^ expresses itself in one nation in the coarse characteristics of murder and cannibalism, and in another finely and softly in miniature, in court intrigue.s, oppressions, and delicate plots of every kind ; the inner nature remains the same. It is conceivable that a perfect state, or perhaps indeed a complete anT firmly believed doctrine of rewards and puTiishmejits aTteF~3eatE^~migirt~~^event ^eiy^ crime j polItfcaUy naucK" would be galne3~~ thereby. ; , mor^y, nothing ; only the expression of the wiU in life would bVrestricfcâl;

Thus genuine goodness of disposition, disinterested virtue, and pure nobility do not proceed from abstract knowledge. Yet they do proceed from knowledge ; but it is a direct intuitive knowledge, which can neither be reasoned away, nor arrived at by reasoning, a knowledge which, just because it is not abstract, cannot be communicated, but must arise in each for himself, which therefore finds its real and adequate expression not in

478 THE WORLD AS WILL. BK. nr.

words, but only in deeds, in conduct, in the course of the life of man. We who here seek the theory of virtue, and have therefore also to express abstractly the nature of the knowledge which lies at its foundation, will yet be unable to convey that knowledge itself in this expression. We can only give the concept of this knowledge, and thus always start from action in which alone it becomes visible, and refer to action as its only adequate expression. We can only explain and interpret action, i.e., express abstractly what really takes place in it.

Before we speak of the good proper, in opposition to the had, which has been explained, we must touch on an intermediate grade, the mere negation of the bad: this is jmtice. The nature of right and wrong has been fully explained above ; therefore we may briefly say here, that he who voluntarily recognises and observes those merely moral limits between wrong and right, even where this is not secured by the state or any other external power, thus he who, according to our explanation, never carries the assertion of his own will so far as to deny the will appearing in another individual, is just. Thus, in order to increase his own well-being, he will not inflict suffering upon others, i.e., he will commit no crime, he will respect the rights and the property of others. We see that for such a just man the principium individuationis is no longer, as in the case of the bad man, an absolute wall of partition. We see that he does not, like the bad man, merely assert his own manifestation of will and deny all others ; that other persons are not for him mere masks, whose nature is quite different from his own ; l>ut he shows in his conduct that he also recognises his own nature — the will to live as a thiug-in-itself, in the foreign manifestation which is only given to him as idea. Thus he finds himself again in that other manifestation, up to a certain point, that of doing no wrong, i.e., abstaining from injury. To this extent, therefore, he sees through the pt'incipium individuationis, the veil of Mâyfi, ; so far hep. 479 sets the being external to him on a level with his own — ■ he does it no injury.