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

at all To reproach Machiavelli not begin his instructions with a with the immorality of his writ- moral lecture against murder and ing is just the same as to reproach slaughter. a fencing-master because he does

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par la raison seul, quelle solide base peut-on lui donner ? " In the " BSveries du Promeneur," prom. 4 Sine, he says : " Dane toutes les questions de morale difjicilesje me suis toujour s Men trouve" de les resoudre par le dictamen de la conscience, plutdt que par les lumiires de la raison. Indeed Aristotle already says expressly (Eth. Magna, i.

5) that the virtues have their seat in the a\oyq> popup T779 yfrv)(7j<; (in parte irrationali animi), and not in the Xoyov eypvri {in parte rationali). In accordance with this, Stobaeus says (Eel., ii., c. 7), speaking of the Peripatetics : " Trjv tjOcktiv aperrjv {hroXafiftavovat irepc to aXoyov fi€po$ ycyveadac ttjs ^f^?, €tt€c8i] Bcfieprj 7r/)o? ttjv trapovaav dewpcav viredevro ttjv 'r"vX7lv> T0 ^v ^wywov e^ovaav, to 6° aXoyov.

Kac irepc (lev to Xoytfcov tt\v /caAo/car/adcav ycyvecrdav, Kac ttjv (ppovrj- (Tiv, Kac tt]v a/YXjbvoiav, tcai ao<pcav, nai evpadecav, /cat p,vr)p,r/v, Kac t<z?

Ofjcocovs' irepc Se to aXoyov, craKppocrvvrjv, /cat SifcaioavvTjv, teat avSpecav, Kac Ta<; aX\a<; tcc? r)6c/ca<; icaXovfievas apera?." (Ethicam virtutem circa partem animm ratione carentem versari putant, cum duplieem, ad hanc disquisitionem, animam ponant, ratione prceditam, et ea carentem.

In parte vero ratione prmdita collocant ingenuitatem, prudentiam, perspicacitatem, sapientiam, docilitatem, memoriam et reliqua ; in parte vero ratione destituta temperantiam, justitiam, fortitudinem, et reliquas virtutes, quas ethicas vocant.) And Cicero {De Nat. Deor., iii., c. 26-31) explains at length that reason is the necessary means, the tool, of all crime.

I have explained reason to be the faculty of framing concepts. It is this quite special class of general nonperceptible ideas, which are symbolised and fixed only by words, that distinguishes man from the brutes and gives him the pre-eminence upon earth. While the brute is the slave of the present, and knows only immediate sensible motives, and therefore when they present themselves to it is necessarily attracted or repelled by them, as iron is by the magnet, in man, on the contrary, deliberation has been introduced through the gift of reason.

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Delphic Mrjhev ar/av. To translate nil admirari "to admire nothing" is quite wrong. This Horatian maxim does not concern the theoretical so much as the practical, and its real meaning is : " Prize no object unconditionally. Do not fall in love with anything ; do not believe that the possession of anything can give you happiness. Every intense longing for an object is only a delusive chimera, which one may just as well, and much more easily, get quit of by fuller knowledge as by attained possession." Cicero also uses admirari in this sense (De Divinatione, ii. 2). What Horace means is thus the adafifiia and aKarairkr}^, also adavfiaaia, which Democritus before him prized as the highest good (see Clem. Alex. Strom., ii. 21, and cf. Strabo, i. p. 98 and 105). Such reasonableness of conduct has properly nothing to do with virtue and vice ; but this practical use of reason is what gives man his pre-eminence over the brute, and only in this sense has it any meaning and is it permissible to speak of a dignity of man.