Sympathies

In the same way, those who in our own day have seen occasion to combat communism with reasons (for example, the Archbishop of Paris, in his pastoral of June 1851) have always brought forward the argument that property is the result of work, as it were only embodied work. This is further evidence that the right of property can only be established by the application of work to things, for only in this respect does it find free recognition and make itself morally valid.

An entirely different kind of proof of the same truth is afforded by the moral fact that while the law punishes poaching just as severely as theft, and in many countries more severely, yet civil honour, which is irrevocably lost by the latter, is really not [412] affected by the former; but the poacher, if he has been guilty of nothing else, is certainly tainted with a fault, but yet is not regarded, like the thief, as dishonourable and shunned by all. For the principles of civil honour rest upon moral and not upon mere positive law; but game is not an object upon which labour is bestowed, and thus also is not an object of a morally valid possession: the right to it is therefore entirely a positive one, and is not morally recognised.

According to my view, the principle ought to lie at the basis of criminal law that it is not really the man but only the deed which is punished, in order that it may not recur. The criminal is merely the subject in whom the deed is punished, in order that the law in consequence of which the punishment is inflicted may retain its deterrent power. This is the meaning of the expression, “He is forfeited to the law.” According to Kant’s explanation, which amounts to a jus talionis, it is not the deed but the man that is punished.

The penitentiary system also seeks not so much to punish the deed as the man, in order to reform him. It thereby sets aside the real aim of punishment, determent from the deed, in order to attain the very problematic end of reformation. But it is always a doubtful thing to attempt to attain two different ends by one means: how much more so if the two are in any sense opposite ends. Education is a benefit, punishment ought to be an evil; the penitentiary prison is supposed to accomplish both at once. Moreover, however large a share untutored ignorance, combined with outward distress, may have in many crimes, yet we dare not regard these as their principal cause, for innumer- able persons living in the same ignorance and under absolutely similar circumstances commit no crimes. Thus the substance of the matter falls back upon the personal, moral character; but this, as I have shown in my prize essay on the freedom of the will, is absolutely unalterable. Therefore moral reformation is really not possible, but only determent from the deed through fear. At the[413] same time, the correction of knowledge and the awakening of the desire to work can certainly be attained; it will appear what effect this can produce. Besides this, it appears to me, from the aim of punishment set forth in the text, that, when possible, the apparent severity of the punishment should exceed the actual: but solitary confinement achieves the reverse. Its great severity has no witnesses, and is by no means anticipated by any one who has not experienced it; thus it does not deter. It threatens him who is tempted to crime by want and misery with the opposite pole of human suffering, ennui: but, as Goethe rightly observes— “When real affliction is our lot, Then do we long for ennui.”

The contemplation of it will deter him just as little as the sight of the palatial prisons which are built by honest men for rogues. If, however, it is desired that these penitentiary prisons should be regarded as educational institutions, then it is to be regretted that the entrance to them is only obtained by crimes, instead of which it ought to have preceded them.

That punishment, as Beccaria has taught, ought to bear a proper proportion to the crime does not depend upon the fact that it would be an expiation of it, but rather on the fact that the pledge ought to be proportionate to the value of that for which it answers. Therefore every one is justified in demanding the pledge of the life of another as a guarantee for the security of his own life, but not for the security of his property, for which the freedom, and so forth, of another is sufficient pledge. For the security of the life of the citizens capital punishment is therefore absolutely necessary.

Those who wish to abolish it should be answered, “First remove murder from the world, and then capital punishment ought to follow.” It ought also to be inflicted for the clear attempt to murder just as for murder itself; for the law desires to punish the [414] deed, not to revenge its consequences. In general the injury to be guarded against affords the right measure for the punishment which is to be threatened, but it does not give the moral baseness of the forbidden action. Therefore the law may rightly impose the punishment of imprisonment for allowing a flower-pot to fall from a window, or impose hard labour for smoking in the woods during the summer, and yet permit it in the winter. But to impose the punishment of death, as in Poland, for shooting an ure-ox is too much, for the maintenance of the species of ure-oxen may not be purchased with human life. In determining the measure of the punishment, along with the magnitude of the injury to be guarded against, we have to consider the strength of the motives which impel to the forbidden action. Quite a different standard of punishment would be established if expiation, retribution, jus talionis, were its true ground. But the criminal code ought to be nothing but a register of counter-motives for possible criminal actions: therefore each of these motives must decidedly outweigh the motives which lead to these actions, and indeed so much the more the greater the evil is which would arise from the action to be guarded against, the stronger the temptation to it, and the more difficult the conviction of the criminal;—always under the correct assumption that the will is not free, but determinable by motives;—apart from this it could not be got at at all. So much for the philosophy of law.

In my prize essay on the freedom of the will (p. 50 seq.) I have proved the originality and unalterableness of the inborn character, from which the moral content of the course of life proceeds. It is established as a fact. But in order to understand problems in their full extent it is sometimes necessary to oppose opposites sharply to each other. In this case, then, let one recall how incredibly great is the inborn difference between man and man, in a moral and in an intellectual regard. Here nobleness and wisdom; there wickedness and stupidity. In one the goodness[415] of the heart shines out of the eyes, or the stamp of genius is enthroned in his countenance. The base physiognomy of another is the impression of moral worthlessness and intellectual dulness, imprinted by the hands of nature itself, unmistakable and inerad- icable; he looks as if he must be ashamed of existence. But to this outward appearance the inner being really corresponds. We cannot possibly assume that such differences, which transform the whole being of the man, and which nothing can abolish, which, further, in conflict with his circumstances, determine his course of life, could exist without guilt or merit on the part of those affected by them, and be merely the work of chance. Even from this it is evident that the man must be in a certain sense his own work. But now, on the other hand, we can show the source of these differences empirically in the nature of the parents; and besides this, the meeting and connection of these parents has clearly been the work of the most accidental circumstances.

By such considerations, then, we are forcibly directed to the distinc- tion between the phenomenon and the true being of things, which alone can contain the solution of that problem. The thing in itself only reveals itself by means of the forms of the phenomenon; therefore what proceeds from the thing in itself must yet appear in those forms, thus also in the bonds of causality. Accordingly it will present itself to us here as a mysterious and incomprehensible guidance of things, of which the external empirical connection would be the mere tool. Yet all that happens appears in this empirical connection introduced by causes, thus necessarily and determined from without, while its true ground lies in the inner nature of what thus manifests itself. Certainly we can here see the solution of the problem only from afar, and when we reflect upon it we fall into an abyss of thought—as Hamlet very truly says, “thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls.” In my essay in the first volume of the Parerga “On the Appearance of Intention [416] in the Fate of Individuals” I have set forth my thoughts upon this mysterious guidance of things, a guidance which indeed can only be conceived symbolically.

In § 14 of my prize essay on the foundation of morals there will be found an exposition of egoism, as regards its nature; and the following attempt to discover its root may be looked upon as supplementary to that paragraph. Nature itself contradicts itself directly, according as it speaks from the individual or the universal, from within or from without, from the centre or the periphery. It has its centre in every individual; for each individual is the whole will to live. Therefore, even if this individual is only an insect or a worm, nature itself speaks out of it thus: “I alone am all in all: in my maintenance everything is involved; the rest may perish, it is really nothing.” So speaks nature from the particular standpoint, thus from the point of view of self-consciousness, and upon this depends the egoism of every living thing.

On the other hand, from the universal point of view,—which is that of the consciousness of other things, that of objective knowledge, which for the moment looks away from the individual with whom the knowledge is connected,—from without then, from the periphery nature speaks thus: “The individual is nothing, and less than nothing. I destroy millions of individuals every day, for sport and pastime: I abandon their fate to the most capricious and wilful of my children, chance, who harasses them at pleasure. I produce millions of new individuals every day, without any diminution of my productive power; just as little as the power of a mirror is exhausted by the number of reflections of the sun, which it casts on the wall one after another. The individual is nothing.” Only he who knows how to really reconcile and eliminate this patent contradiction of nature has a true answer to the question as to the perishableness and imperishableness of his own self. I believe I have given, in the first four chapters of this fourth book[417] of the supplements, an adequate introduction to such knowledge. What is said above may further be illustrated in the following manner. Every individual, when he looks within, recognises in his nature, which is his will, the thing in itself, therefore that which everywhere alone is real. Accordingly he conceives himself as the kernel and centre of the world, and regards himself as of infinite importance. If, on the other hand, he looks without, then he is in the province of the idea the mere phenomenon, where he sees himself as an individual among an infinite number of other individuals, accordingly as something very insignificant, nay, vanishing altogether. Consequently every individual, even the most insignificant, every I, when regarded from within, is all in all; regarded from without, on the other hand, he is nothing, or at least as good as nothing. Hence upon this depends the great difference between what each one necessarily is in his own eyes and what he is in the eyes of others, consequently the egoism with which every one reproaches every one else.

In consequence of this egoism our fundamental error of all is this, that with reference to each other we are reciprocally not I.

On the other hand, to be just, noble, and benevolent is nothing else than to translate my metaphysics into actions. To say that time and space are mere forms of our knowledge, not conditions of things in themselves, is the same as to say that the doctrine of metempsychosis, “Thou shalt one day be born as him whom thou now injurest, and in thy turn shalt suffer like injury,” is identical with the formula of the Brahmans, which has frequently been mentioned, Tat twam asi, “This thou art.” All true virtue proceeds from the immediate and intuitive knowledge of the metaphysical identity of all beings, which I have frequently shown, especially in § 22 of my prize essay on the foundation of morals. But just on this account it is not the result of a special pre-eminence of intellect; on the contrary, even the weakest intellect is sufficient to see through the principium individuationis, which is what is [418] required in this matter. Accordingly we may find the most ex- cellent character even in the case of a very weak understanding. And further, the excitement of our sympathy is accompanied by no exertion of our intellect. It rather appears that the requisite penetration of the principium individuationis would be present in every one if it were not that the will opposes this, and by virtue of its immediate mysterious and despotic influence upon the intellect generally prevents it from arising; so that ultimately all guilt falls back upon the will, as indeed is in conformity with the fact.

The doctrine of metempsychosis, touched on above, deviates from the truth merely through the circumstance that it transfers to the future what already is now. It makes my true inner nature exist in others only after my death, while, according to the truth, it already lives in them now, and death merely removes the illusion on account of which I am not aware of this; just as an innumerable host of stars constantly shine above our heads, but only become visible to us when the one sun near the earth has set.

From this point of view my individual existence, however much, like that sun, it may outshine everything, appears ultimately only as a hindrance which stands between me and the knowledge of the true extent of my being. And because every individual, in his knowledge, is subject to this hindrance, it is just individuation that keeps the will to live in error as to its own nature; it is the Mâyâ of Brahmanism. Death is a refutation of this error, and abolishes it. I believe that at the moment of death we become conscious that it is a mere illusion that has limited our existence to our person. Indeed empirical traces of this may be found in several states which are related to death by the abolition of the concentration of consciousness in the brain, among which the magnetic sleep is the most prominent; for in it, if it reaches a high degree, our existence shows itself through various symptoms, beyond our persons and in other beings, most strikingly by direct[419] participation in the thoughts of another individual, and ultimately even by the power of knowing the absent, the distant, and even the future, thus by a kind of omnipresence.

Upon this metaphysical identity of the will, as the thing in itself, in the infinite multiplicity of its phenomena, three principal phenomena depend, which may be included under the common name of sympathies:

1. sympathy proper, which, as I have shown, is the basis of justice and benevolence, caritas; (2) sexual love, with capricious selection, amor, which is the life of the species, that asserts its precedence over that of the individual; (3) magic, to which animal magnetism and sympathetic cures also belong. Accordingly sympathy may be defined as the empirical appearance of the metaphysical identity of the will, through the physical multiplicity of its phenomena, whereby a connection shows itself which is entirely different from that brought about by means of the forms of the phenomenon which we comprehend under the principle of sufficient reason.