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

ii. 2) without hesitation numbers Aristippus among the Sophists. In Diogenes Laertius (ii. 65) we find that the reason of this is that he was the first of the Socratics who accepted payment for his philosophy ; on account of which Socrates also returned him his present.

Among the moderns also those who live by philosophy are not only, as a rule, and with the rarest exceptions, quite different from those who live for philosophy, but they are very often the opponents, the secret and irreconcilable enemies of the latter. For every true and important philosophical achievement will overshadow their own too much, and, moreover, cannot adapt itself to the views and limitations of their guild.

Therefore it is always their endeavour to prevent such a work from making its way ; and for this purpose, according to the age and circumstances in each case, the customary means are suppressing, concealing, hushing up, ignoring and keeping secret, or denying, disparaging, censuring, slandering and distorting, or, finally, denouncing and persecuting.

Hence many a great man has had to drag himself wearily through life unknown, unhonoured, unrewarded, till at last, after his death, the world became undeceived as to him and as to them. In the meanwhile they had attained their end, had been accepted by preventing him from being accepted, and, with wife and child, had lived by philosophy, while he lived for it.

But if he is dead, then the thing is reversed ; the new generation of the former class, which always exists, now becomes heir to his achievements, cuts them down to its own measure, and now lives by him. That Kant could yet live both by and for philosophy depended on the rare circumstance that, for the first time since Divus Antoninus and Dimes Julianus, a philosopher sat on the throne.

Only under such auspices could the " Critique of Pure Reason " have seen the light. Scarcely was the king dead than we see that Kant also, seized with fear, because he belonged to the guild, modified, expurgated, and spoiled his masterpiece in the second edition,

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and yet was soon in danger of losing his place ; so that Campe invited him to come to him, in Brunswick, and live with him as the instructor of his family (Ring., Ansichten aus Kant's Leben, p. 68). University philosophy is, as a rule, mere juggling. Its real aim is to impart to the students, in the deepest ground of their thought, that tendency of mind which the ministry that appoints to the professorships regards as consistent with its views. The ministry may also be perfectly right in this from a statesman's point of view ; only the result of it is that such philosophy of the chair is a nervis alienis mobile lignum and cannot be regarded as serious philosophy, but as the mere jest of it. Moreover, it is at any rate just that such inspection or guidance should extend only to the philosophy of the chair, and not to the real philosophy that ii in earnest. For if anything in the world is woi-th wishins for — so well worth wishing for that even the ignorant anc dull herd in its more reflective moments would prize imore than silver and gold — it is that a ray of light shouk fall on the obscurity of our being, and that we should gaii I some explanation of our mysterious existence, in which nothing is clear but its misery and its vanity. But evei if this is in itself attainable, it is made impossible fr imposed and compulsory solutions.

We shall now subject to a general consideration th different ways of satisfying this strong metaphysical need

By metaphysics I understand all knowledge that pre tends to transcend the possibility of experience, thus t* transcend nature or the given phenomenal appearance o things, in order to give an explanation of that by which in some sense or other, this experience or nature is con ditioned; or, to speak in popular language, of that whicl is behind nature, and makes it possible. But the grea original diversity in the power of understanding, beside the cultivation of it, which demands much leisure, make so great a difference between men, that as soon as a peopl has emerged from the state of savages, no one metapliysi

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