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

p. 447

means favourable or akin to goodness of character. But, on the other hand, it cannot be asserted that great understanding is so ; nay, rather, no scoundrel has in general been without it. Indeed even the highest intellectual eminence can coexist with the worst moral depravity. An example of this is afforded by Bacon of Verulam : " Ungrateful, filled with the lust of power, wicked and base, he at last went so far that, as Lord Chancellor and the highest judge of the realm, he frequently allowed himself to be bribed in civil actions. Impeached before his peers, he confessed himself guilty, was expelled by them from the House of Lords, and condemned to a fine of forty thousand pounds and imprisonment in the Tower " (see the review of the latest edition of Bacon's Works in the Edinburgh Review, August 1837). Hence also Pope called him "the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind " (" Essay on Man," iv. 282). A similar example is afforded by the historian Guicciardini, of whom Eosini says in the Notizie Storiche, drawn from good contemporary sources, which is given in his historical romance " Luisa Strozzi : " " Da coloro, che pongono Vingegno e il sapere al di sopra di tutte le umane qualitdb, questo uomo sard riguardato come fra i piiju grandi del suo secolo : ma da quelli, che reputano la virtii dovere andare innanzi a tutto, non potra esecrarsi abbastanza la sua memoria. Esso fu il piu crudele fra i cittadini a perseguitare, uccidere e confinare," &C1

If now it is said of one man, " He has a good heart, though a bad head," but of another, " He has a very good head, yet a bad heart," every one feels that in the first case the praise far outweighs the blame — in the other case the reverse. Answering to this, we see that if some one has done a bad deed his friends and he himself try to remove the guilt from the will to the intellect, and to give out that

1 By those who place mind and dence of everything else his memory learning above all other human can never be execrated enough. He qualities this man will be reckoned was the cruelest of the citizens in the greatest of his century. But persecuting, putting to death, and by those who let virtue take prece- banishing.

p. 448

faults of the heart were faults of the head ; roguish tricks they will call errors, will say they were merely want of understanding, want of reflection, light-mindedness, folly ; nay, if need be, they will plead a paroxysm, momentary mental aberration, and if a heavy crime is in question, even madness, only in order to free the will from the guilt And in the same way, we ourselves, if we have caused a misfortune or injury, will before others and ourselves willingly impeach our stultitia, simply in order to escape the reproach of malitia.

In the same way, in the case of the equally unjust decision of the judge, the difference, whether he has erred or been bribed, is so infinitely great. All this sufficiently proves that the will alone is the real and essential, the kernel of the man, and the intellect is merely its tool, which may be constantly faulty without the will being concerned.

The accusation of want of understanding is, at the moral judgment-seat, no accusation at all ; on the contrary, it even gives privileges.

And so also, before the courts of the world, it is everywhere sufficient to deliver a criminal from all punishment that his guilt should be transferred from his will to his intellect, by proving either unavoidable error or mental derangement, for then it is of no more consequence than if hand or foot had slipped against the will.

I have fully discussed this in the appendix, " Ueber die Intellektuelle Freiheit" to my prize essay on the freedom of the will, to which I refer to avoid repetition.