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aspect is in one respect exdnsively mental perception, but on the other absolutely will!*[1]
L. A. Sanders, F. T. S.
Borneo, 18th March 1883.
Editor's Note.—For the benefit of those of our readers in India, who, although excellent Vedantic scholars, may have never heard of Arthur Schopenhauer and his philosophy, it will be useful to say a few word's regarding this German Metaphysician, who is ranked by many among the world's great philosophers. Otherwise, the above translated fragment, picked out by our brother, Mr. Sanders, for the soul purpose of showing the great identity of view, between the Vedanta system—the archaic philosophy (we beg Professor Max Müller's pardon) and the comparatively modern school of thought founded by Schopenhauer,—may appear unintelligible in its isolated form. A student of the Göttingen and Berlin Universities, a friend of Goethe and his disciple initiated by him into the mysteries of colour (See A. Schopenhauer's Essay Ueber Sehen und Farben, 1816,) he evoluted, so to say, into a profoundly original thinker without any seeming transaction, and brought his philosophical views into a full system before he was thirty. Possessed of a large private fortune, which enabled him to pursue and develope his ideas uninterruptedly, he remained an independent thinker and soon won for himself, on account of his strangely pessitimistic view of the world, the name of the "misanthropic sage." The idea that the present world is radically evil, is the only important point in his system that differs from the teachings of the Vedanta. According to his philosophical doctrines, the only thing truly real, original, metaphysical and absolute, is will. The world of objects consists simply of appearances; of Maya or illusion—as the Vedantins have it. It lies entirely in, and depends on, our representation. Will is the "thing in itself" of the Kanitian puilosophy, "the substratum of all appearances and of nature herself. It is totally different from, and wholly independent of, cognition, can exist and manifest itself without it, and actually does so in all nature from animal beings downward." Not only the voluntary actions of animated beings, but also the organic frame of their bodies, its form
- ↑ * An entity, however that would be none of either, but an Object for itself, to which Kant's "Ding an sich" degenerated under his treatment, is a phantasm, and its recognition a will-o'-the-whisp in "philosopiy." Arthur Schopenhauer (Vol. I, p. 35,) edited in 1818, at a period when the knowledge of Sanskrit in Europe was very meagre. Schopenhauer's "Objectivation of Will" throws light upon the other side of the universe.—L. A. S.
