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

pain, like a sick man whose ulcer the physician touches. The brute can never stray far from the path of nature ; for its motives lie only in the world of perception, where only the possible, indeed only the actual, finds room. Oi the other hand, all that is only imaginable, and therefore also the false, the impossible, the absurd, and senseless, enters into abstract conceptions, into thoughts and words.

Since now all partake of reason, but few of judgment, the consequence is that man is exposed to delusion, for he is abandoned to every conceivable chimera which any one talks him into, and which, acting on his will as a motive, may influence him to perversities and follies of every kind, to the most unheard-of extravagances, and also to actions most contrary to his animal nature.

True culture, in which knowledge and judgment go hand in hand, can only be brought to bear on a few ; and still fewer are capable of receiving it. For the great mass of men a kind of training everywhere takes its place. It is effected by example, custom, and the very early and firm impression of certain conceptions, before any experience, understanding, or judgment were there to disturb the work.

Thus thoughts are implanted, which afterward cling as firmly, and are as incapable of being shaker by any instruction as if they were inborn; and indeec they have often been regarded, even by philosophers as such. In this way we can, with the same trouble imbue men with what is right and rational, or wit! what is most absurd.

For example, we can accustoi them to approach this or that idol with holy dread, and a the mention of its name to prostrate in the dust not onl their bodies but their whole spirit ; to sacrifice their pre perty and their lives willingly to words, to names, to tfc defence of the strangest whims ; to attach arbitrarily tl greatest honour or the deepest disgrace to this or that, an to prize highly or disdain everything accordingly wit full inward conviction ; to renounce all animal food, as : Hindustan, or to devour still warm and quivering piec< 2cut from the living animal, as in Abyssinia ; to eat men, as in New Zealand, or to sacrifice their children to Moloch ; to castrate themselves, to fling themselves voluntarily on the funeral piles of the dead — in a word, to do anything we please. Hence the Crusades, the extravagances of fanatical sects ; hence Chiliasts and Flagellants, persecutions, autos da fe, and all that is offered by the long register of human perversities.

Lest it should be thought that only the dark ages afford such examples, I shall add a couple of more modern instances.

In the year 1818 there went from Wiirtemberg 7000 Chiliasts to the neighbourhood of Ararat, because the new kingdom of God, specially announced by Jung Stilling; was to appear there.1 Gall relates that in his time a mother killed her child and roasted it in order to cure her husband's rheumatism with its fat.8 The tragical side of error lies in the practical, the 3omical is reserved for the theoretical.

For example, if we could firmly persuade three men that the sun is not :he cause of daylight, we might hope to see it soon established as the general conviction.

In Germany it vas possible to proclaim as the greatest philosopher of all iges Hegel, a repulsive, mindless charlatan, an unparalleled cribbler of nonsense, and for twenty years many thouands have believed it stubbornly and firmly ; and indeed, utside Germany, the Danish Academy entered the lists gainst myself for his fame, and sought to have him rearded as a su/mmus philosophus. (Upon this see the reface to my Grundproblemen der ffihik.) These, then, re the disadvantages which, on account of the rarity of ldgment, attach to the existence of reason.

We must id to them the possibility of madness. The brutes do ot go mad, although the carnivora are subject to fury, id the ruminants to a sort of delirium.