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

Our estimation of our own selves leads to the same result as we have here obtained by considering our estimation of others. How different is the self-satisfaction which we experience in a moral regard from that which we experience in an intellectual regard ! The former arises when, looking back on our conduct, we see that with great sacrifices we have practised fidelity and honesty, that we have helped many, forgiven many, have behaved better to others than they have behaved to us ; so that we can say with King Lear, "lama man more sinned against than sinning ; " and to its fullest extent if perhaps some noble deed shines in our memory. A deep seriousness will accompany the still peace which such a review affords us ; and if we see that others are inferior to us here, this will not cause us any joy, but we will rather deplore it, and sincerely wish that they were as we are. How entirely differently does the knowledge of our intellectual superiority affect us ! Its ground bass is really the saying of Hobbes quoted above : Omnis animi voluptas, omnisque alacritas in eo sita est, quod quis habeat, quibuscum conferens 8e, possit magnifice sentire de se ipso. Arrogant, triumphant vanity, proud, contemptuous looking down on others, inordinate delight in the consciousness of decided and considerable superiority, akin to pride of physical advantages, — that is the result here. This opposition between the two kinds of self-satisfaction shows that the one concerns our true inner and eternal nature, the other a more external, merely temporal, and indeed scarcely more than a mere physical excellence. The intellect is in fact simply the

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function of the brain; the will, on the contrary, is that whose function is the whole man, according to his being and nature.

If, looking without us, we reflect that o /3to? /3pa^v?, 17 Se re^vv fiatcpa (vita brevis, ars longa), and consider how the greatest and most beautiful minds, often when they have scarcely reached the summit of their power, and the greatest scholars, when they have only just attained to a thorough knowledge of their science, are snatched away by death, we are confirmed in this, that the meaning and end of life is not intellectual but moral.

The complete difference between the mental and moral 1 qualities displays itself lastly in the fact that the intellect suffers very important changes through time, while the will and character remain untouched by it. The newborn child has as yet no use of its understanding, but obtains it within the first two months to the extent of perception and apprehension of the things in the external world — a process which I have described more fully in my essay, " Ueber das Sehn und die Farben," p. 10 of the second (and third) edition. The growth of reason to the point of speech, and thereby of thought, follows this first and most important step much more slowly, generally only in the third year; yet the early childhood remains hopelessly abandoned to silliness and folly, primarily because the brain still lacks physical completeness, which, both as regards its size and texture, it only attains in the seventh year. But then for its energetic activity there is still wanting the antagonism of the genital system; it therefore only begins with puberty. Through this, however, the intellect has only attained to the capacity for its psychical improvement ; this itself can only be won by practice, experience, and instruction. Thus as soon as the mind has escaped from the folly of childhood it falls into the snares of innumerable errors, prejudices, and chimeras, sometimes of the absurdest and crudest kind, which it obstinately sticks to, till experience gradually removes them, and many of them also are insensibly lost. All

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