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.
aith.1 Now, how do these gentlemen help themselves ? 'hey simply declare that the existence of God is selfvident. Indeed ! After the ancient world, at the expense f its conscience, had worked miracles to prove it, and lie modern world, at the expense of its understanding, ad brought into the field ontological, cosmological, and hysico-theological proofs — to these gentlemen it is selfvident. And from this self-evident God they then explain le world : that is their philosophy. Till Kant came there was a real dilemma between laterialism and theism, i.e., between the assumption that blind chance, or that an intelligence working from withit in accordance with purposes and conceptions, had •ought about the world, neque ddbatur tertium. Thereire atheism and materialism were the same ; hence the )ubt whether there really could be an atheist, i.e., a man ho really could attribute to blind chance the disposition ': nature, so full of design, especially organised nature, je, for example, Bacon's Essays (sermones Jldeles), Essay 5, on Atheism. In the opinion of the great mass of en, and of the English, who in such things belong itirely to the great mass (the mob), this is still the case, en with their most celebrated men of learning. One is only to look at Owen's " Osteologie Compared" of 1855, eface, p. 11, 12, where he stands always before the old ilemma between Democritus and Epicurus on the one :le, and an intelligence on the other, in which la conKant said, " It is very absurd the late Professor Bachmann who,
1 expect enlightenment from rea- in the Jena Litteraturzeitung for
», and yet to prescribe to her July 1840, No. 126, so indiscreetly lorehand which side she must blurted out the maxim of all his i:essarily take" ("Critique of Pure colleagues. However, it is worth lason," p. 747 ; V. 775). On the noticing, as regards the character-
( er hand, the following is the istics of the University philosophy, ive assertion of a professor of how here the truth, if it will not llosophyin our own time : "If a suit and adapt itself, is shown the jlosophy denies the reality of the door without ceremony, with, "Be f damental ideas of Christianity, off, truth ! we cannot make use of i s either false, or, even if true, it you. Do we owe you anything !
I let useless." That is to say, for Do you pay us ? Then be off 1 " F feasors of philosophy. It wasp. 132 l.wi
;lem.
naissance d"un Stre tel que Vhomme a exists avant I'homme fit son apparition. All design must have pro ceeded from an intelligence ; he has never even dreamt doubting this. Yet in the lecture based upon this modified preface, delivered in the Academie des Sciences the 5th September 1853, he says, with childish naiv " La Uliologie, ou la theologie scientifique " {Com/ptes Sept.
1853), that is for him precisely the same thing! anything in nature designed ? then it is a work of inl tion, of reflection, of intelligence. Yet, certainly, has such an Englishman and the AcadSmie des Scietu to do with the " Critique of Judgment," or, indeed, my book upon the Will in Nature ? These gentle: do not see so far below them.
These illustres con4 disdain metaphysics and the philosophie allemande: th confine themselves to the old woman's philosophy.
T validity of that disjunctive major, that dilemma betwe materialism and theism, rests, however, upon the assun tion that the present given world is the world of things themselves; that consequently there is no other order things than the empirical But after the world and order had through Kant become mere phenomenon, 1 laws of which rest principally upon the forms of » intellect, the existence and nature of things and of j world no longer required to be explained according to j analogy of the changes perceived or effected by us in ) world ; nor must that which we comprehend as means ; I end have necessarily arisen as the consequence of a sim r knowledge Thus, inasmuch as Kant, through his im] ■ taut distinction between phenomenon and thing in its '■, withdrew the foundation from theism, he opened, on e other hand, the way to entirely different and more profo J explanations of existence.
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