The World as Will and Idea, Vol. II — 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.
purpose waver, and the delusive forms with which preconcerted plots surround it leave it unmoved, if the scorn of fools and of the vulgar herd does not disturb it nor trouble it as to its own worth, then it seems to stand under the influence of a spirit-world, visible to it alone (and this is the world of conceptions), before which that perceptibly present world which lies open to all dissolves like a phantom.
But, on the other hand, what gives to the external world and visible reality their great power over the mind is their nearness and directness.
As the magnetic needle, which is kept in its position by the combined action of widely distributed forces of nature embracing the whole earth, can yet be perturbed and set in violent oscillation by a small piece of iron, if only it comes quite close to it, so even a great mind can sometimes be disconcerted and perturbed by trifling events and insignificant men, if only they affect it very closely, and the deliberate purpose can be for the moment shaken by a trivial but immediately present counter motive.
For the influence of the motives is subject to a law which is directly opposed to the law according to which weights act on a balance, and in consequence of it a very small motive, which, however, lies very near to us, can outweigh one which in itself is much stronger, but which only affects us from a distance.
But it is this quality of the mind, by reason of which it allows itself to be determined in accordance with this law, and does not withdraw itself from it by the strength of actual practical reason, which the ancients denoted by animi impotentia, which really signifies ratio regendce voluntatis impotens.
Every emotion {animi perturbatio) simply arises from the fact that an idea which affects our will comes so excessively near to us that it conceals everything else from us, and we can no longer see anything but it, so that for the moment we become incapable of taking account of things of another kind. It would be a valuable safeguard against this if we were to bring ourselves to regard
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the present, by the assistance of imagination, as if it were past, and should thus accustom our apperception to the epistolary style of the Romans. Yet conversely we are very well able to regard what is long past as so vividly present that old emotions which have long been asleep are thereby reawakened in their full strength. Thus also no one would be irritated or disconcerted by a misfortune, a disappointment, if reason always kept present to him what man really js : the most needy of creatures, daily and hourly abandoned to innumerable misfortunes, great and small, to BeiXorarov £ooov, who has therefore to live in constant care and fear. Herodotus already says, " Uav e<m avdpcoTTOs <rvfi<f>opa" (homo totivs est calamitas).
The application of reason to practice primarily accomplishes this. It reconstructs what is one-sided and defective in knowledge of mere perception, and makes use of the contrasts or oppositions which it presents, to correct each other, so that thus the objectively true result is arrived at. For example, if we look simply at the bad action of a man we will condemn him; on the other hand, if we consider merely the need that moved him to it, we will compassionate him : reason, by means of its conceptions, weighs the two, and leads to the conclusion that he must be restrained, restricted, and curbed by a proportionate punishment.
I am again reminded here of Seneca's saying : " Si vis tibi omnia subjicere, te subjice rationi" Since, however, as was shown in the fourth book, the nature of suffering
9 O is positive, and that of pleasure negative, he who takes abstract or rational knowledge as the rule of his conduct, and therefore constantly reflects on its consequences and on the future, will very frequently have to practise sustine et abstine, for in order to obtain the life that is most free from pain he generally sacrifices its keenest joys and pleasures, mindful of Aristotle's " 6 <f>povcfw; to akviTov Siw/cei. ov to rjSv" (guod dolore vacat, non quodp. 348 suave est, persequitur vir prudens). Therefore with him the future constantly borrows from the present, instead of the present borrowing from the future, as is the case with a frivolous fool, who thus becomes impoverished and finally bankrupt In the case of the former reason must, for the most part, assume the rdle of a churlish mentor, and unceasingly call for renunciations, without being able to promise anything in return, except a fairly painless existence. This rests on the fact that reason, by means of its conceptions, surveys the whole of life, whose outcome, in the happiest conceivable case, can be no other than what we have said.
When this striving after a painless existence, so far as it might be attainable by the application of and strict adherence to rational reflection and acquired knowledge of the true nature of life, was carried out with the greatest consistency and to the utmost extreme, it produced cynicism, from which stoicism afterwards proceeded. I wish briefly here to bring this out more fully for the sake of establishing more firmly the concluding exposition of our first book.
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