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

It would be most beneficial to both kinds of metaphysics that each of them should remain clearly separated from the other and confine itself to its own province, that it may there be able to develop its nature fully. Instead of which, through the whole Christian era, the endeavour vol. 11. 2 A

37o FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVII.

has been to bring about a fusion of the two, for the dogmas and conceptions of the one have been carried over into the other, whereby both are spoiled. This has taken place in the most open manner in our own day in that strange hermaphrodite or centaur, the so-called philosophy of religion, which, as a kind of gnosis, endeavours to interpret the given religion, and to explain what is true sensu allegorico through something which is true sensu proprio. But for this we would have to know and possess the truth sensu proprio already ; and in that case such an interpretation would be superfluous. For to seek first to find metaphysics, i.e., the truth sensu proprio, merely out of religion by explanation and interpretation would be a doubtful and dangerous undertaking, to which one would only make up one's mind if it were proved that truth, like iron and other base metals, could only be found in a mixed, not in a pure form, and therefore one could only obtain it by reduction from the mixed ore.

Religions are necessary for the people, and an inestimable benefit to them. But if they oppose themselves to the progress of mankind in the knowledge of the truth, they must with the utmost possible forbearance be set aside. And to require that a great mind — a Shakspeare; a Goethe — should make the dogmas of any religion implicitly, bond fide, et sensu proprio, his conviction is to require that a giant should put on the shoe of a dwarf.

Eeligions, being calculated with reference to the power of comprehension of the great mass of men, can only have indirect, not immediate truth. To require of them the latter is as if one wished to read the letters set up in the form-chase, instead of their impression. The value of s religion will accordingly depend upon the greater or less content of truth which it contains under the veil of alle gory, and then upon the greater or less distinctness witl which it becomes visible through this veil, thus upon tin transparency of the latter. It almost seems that, as th< oldest languages are the most perfect, so also are the oldes

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religions. If I were to take the results of my philosophy as the standard of truth, I would be obliged to concede to Buddhism the pre-eminence over the rest. In any case it must be a satisfaction to me to see my teaching in such close agreement with a religion which the majority of men upon the earth hold as their own; for it numbers far more adherents than any other.

This agreement, however, must be the more, satisfactory to me because in my philosophising I have certainly not been under its influence. For up till 18 18, when my work appeared, there were very few, exceedingly incomplete and scanty, accounts of Buddhism to be found in Europe, which were almost entirely limited to a few essays in the earlier volumes of "Asiatic Eesearches," and were principally concerned with the Buddhism of the Burmese.

Only since then has fuller information about this religion gradually reached us, chiefly through the profound and instructive essays of the meritorious member of the St. Petersburg Academy, J. J.

Schmidt, in the proceedings of his Academy, and then little by little through several English and Erench scholars, so that I was able to give a fairly numerous list of the best works on this religion in my work, " JJeber den Willen in der Natur" under the heading Sinologie.

Unfortunately Csoma Korosi, that persevering Hungarian, who, in order to study the language and sacred writings of Buddhism, spent many years in Tibet, and for the most part in Buddhist monasteries, was carried off by death just as he was beginning to work out for us the results of his researches.

I cannot, however, deny the pleasure with which I read, in his provisional accounts, several passages cited directly from the Kahgyur itself; for example, the following conversation of the dying Buddha with Brahma, who is doing him homage : " There is a description of their conversation on the subject of creation, — by whom was the world made ? Shakya asks several questions of Brahma, — whether was tt he who made or produced such and such things, and