of the world. Thus in the true idea of things there is no irreducible residuum of matter: mind is the Alpha and Omega, at once the initial postulate and the final truth of reality.
In various ways a reaction arose against this absorption of everything in reason. In Fichte himself the source of being is primeval activity, the groundless and incomprehensible deed-action (That Handlung) of the absolute ego. The innermost character of that ego is an infinitude in act and effort. “The will is the living principle of reason,” he says again. “In the last resort,” says Schelling (1809), in his Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom, “there is no other being but will. Wollen ist Ursein (will is primal being); and to this alone apply the predicates fathomless, eternal, independent of time, self-affirming.” It is unnecessary to multiply instances to prove that idealism was never without a protest that there is a heart of existence, life, will, action, which is presupposed by all knowledge and is not itself amenable to explanation. We may, if we like, call this element, which is assumed as the basis of all scientific method, irrational—will instead of reason, feeling rather than knowledge.
It is under the banner of this protest against rationalizing idealism that Schopenhauer advances. But what marks out his armament is its pronounced realism. He fights with the weapons of physical doctrine and on the basis of the material earth. He knows no reason but the human, no intelligence save what is exhibited by the animals. He knows that both animals and men have come into existence within assignable limits of time, and that there was an anterior age when no eye or ear gathered the life of the universe into perceptions. Knowledge, therefore, with its vehicle, the intellect, is dependent upon the existence of certain nerve-organs located in an animal system; and its function is originally only to present an image of the interconnexions of the manifestations external to the individual organism, and so to give to the individual in a partial and reflected form that feeling with other things, or innate sympathy, which it loses as organization becomes more complex and characteristic. Knowledge or intellect, therefore, is only the surrogate of that more intimate unity of feeling or will which is the underlying reality—the principle of all existence, the essence of all manifestations, inorganic and organic. And the perfection of reason is attained when man has transcended those limits of individuation in which his knowledge at first presents him to himself, when by art he has risen from single objects to universal types, and by suffering and sacrifice has penetrated to that innermost sanctuary where the euthanasia of consciousness is reached—the blessedness of eternal repose.
In substantials the theory of Schopenhauer may be compared with a more prosaic statement of Herbert Spencer (modernizing Hume). All psychical states may, according to him, be treated as incidents of the correspondence between the organism and its environment. In this adjustment the lowest stage is taken by reflex action and instinct, where Schopenhauer and Herbert Spencer.Spencer the change of the organs is purely automatic. As the external complexity increases, this automatic regularity fails; there is only an incipient excitation of the nerves. This feeble echo of the full response to stimulus is an idea, which is thus only another word for imperfect organization or adjustment. But gradually this imperfect correspondence is improved, and the idea passes over again into the state of unconscious or organic memory. Intellect, in short, is only the consequence of insufficient response between stimulus and action. Where action is entirely automatic, feeling does not exist. It is when the excitation is partial only, when it does not inevitably and immediately appear as action, that we have the appearance of intellect in the gap. The chief and fundamental difference between Schopenhauer and Spencer lies in the refusal of the latter to give this “adjustment” or “automatic action” the name of will. Will, according to Mr Spencer, is only another aspect of what is reason, memory or feeling—the difference lying in the fact that as will the nascent excitation (ideal motion) is conceived as passing into complete or full motion. But he agrees with Schopenhauer in basing consciousness, in all its forms of reason, feeling or will, upon “automatic movement—psychical change,” from which consciousness emerges and in which it disappears.
What Schopenhauer professed, therefore, is to have dispelled the claims of reason to priority and to demonstrate the relativity and limitation of science. Science, he reminds us, is based on final inexplicabilities; and its attempts by theories of evolution to find an historical origin for humanity in rudimentary matter show a misconception Main tendencies
of his
system.of the problem. In the successions of material states there can nowhere be an absolute first. The true origin of man, as of all else, is to be sought in an action which is everlasting and which is ever present: nec te quaesiveris extra. There is a source of knowledge within us by which we know, and more intimately than we can ever know anything external, that we will and feel. That is the first and the highest knowledge, the only knowledge that can strictly be called immediate; and to ourselves we as the subject of will are truly the “immediate object.” It is in this sense of will—of will without motives, but not without consciousness of some sort—that reality is revealed. Analogy and experience make us assume it to be omnipresent. It is a mistake to say will means for Schopenhauer only force. It means a great deal more; and it is his contention that what the scientist calls force is really will. In so doing he is only following the line predicted by Kant[1] and anticipated by Leibnitz. If we wish, said Kant, to give a real existence to the thing in itself or the noumenon we can only do so by investing it with the attributes found in our own internal sense, viz. with thinking or something analogous thereto. It is thus that Fechner in his “day-view” of things sees in plants and planets the same fundamental “soul” as in us—that is, “one simple being which appears to none but itself, in us as elsewhere wherever it occurs self-luminous, dark for every other eye, at the least connecting sensations in itself, upon which, as the grade of soul mounts higher and higher, there is constructed the consciousness of higher and still higher relations.”[2] It is thus that Lotze declares[3] that “behind the tranquil surface of matter, behind its rigid and regular habits of behaviour, we are forced to seek the glow of a hidden spiritual activity.” So Schopenhauer, but in a way all his own, finds the truth of things in a will which is indeed unaffected by conscious motives and yet cannot be separated from. some faint analogue of non-intellectual consciousness.
In two ways Schopenhauer has influenced the world. He has. shown with unusual lucidity of expression how feeble is the spontaneity of that intellect which is so highly lauded, and how overpowering the sway of original will in all our action. He thus re- asserted realism, whose gospel reads, “In the beginning was appetite, passion, will,” and has discredited the doctrinaire belief that ideas have original force of their own. This creed of naturalism is. dangerous, and it may be true that the pessimism it implies often degenerates into cynicism and a cold-blooded denial that there is any virtue and any truth. But in the crash of established creeds. and the spread of political indifferentism and social disintegration it is probably wise, if not always agreeable, to lay bare the wounds under which humanity suffers, though pride would prompt their concealment. But Schopenhauer’s theory has another side. If it is daringly realistic, it is no less audacious in its idealism. The second aspect of his influence is the doctrine of redemption of the soul from its sensual bonds, first by the medium of art and second by the path of renunciation and ascetic life. It may be difficult in each case to draw the line between social duty and individual perfection. But Schopenhauer reminds us that the welfare of society is a temporal and subordinate aim, never to be allowed to dwarf the full realization of our ideal being. Man’s duty is undoubtedly to join in the common service of sentient beings; but his final goal is to rise above the toils and comforts of the visible creature into the vast bosom of a peaceful Nirvana.
Bibliography—Complete works edited by J. Frauenstadt (6 vols., Leipzig, 1873, 1874); with notes and introduction, M. Brasch (3rd ed., Leipzig, 1891); E. Grisebach (6 vols., Leipzig,. 1892). There are many translations of special works in all languages;. among English translators are R. B. Haldane, T. B. Saunders,. W. M. Thompson, A. B. Bullock. Arthur Schopenhauers handschriftlicher Nachlass was published by Grisebach in 4 vols. (1896), from MSS. in the Royal Library at Berlin. On Schopenhauer's. life see Gwinner, Schopenhauers Leben (1878); E. Grisebach, Schopenhauer, Geschichte seines Lebens (1897); J. Volkelt, Schopenhauer (1907). A list of works is given by Balan, Schopenhauer-Literatur (1880); see also G. F. Wagner, Encyklopädisches Register zu Schopenhauers Werken (1909), and W. L. Hertslet, Schopenhauer-Register (1890). Among earlier criticisms see: Frauenstädt and Lindner, A. Schopenhauer; von ihm; über ihn (1863); Helen Zimmern, Schopenhauer and his Philosophy (1877); O. Busch, A. Schopenhauer (1878); K. Peters, Schopenhauer als Philosoph (1883); Koeber, Schopenhauers Erlösungslehre (1881), and Die Philos. Schopenhauers (1888). More recent works are: T. Whittaker, Schopenhauer (1909); G. Simmel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche (1907); F. Paulsen, Schopenhauer. Hamlet. Mephistopheles (1900), three studies in pessimism; T. Lorenz, Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Metaphysik Schopenhauers (1897); Mobius, Schopenhauer (1899); R. Lehmann, Schopenhauer and die Entwickelung der monistischen Weltanschauung (1892) and Schopenhauer. Ein Beitrag zur Psychologie der Metaphysik (1894); Th. Ribot, La Philosophie de Schopenhauer (9th ed., 1903); H. Bamberger, Das Tier in der Philosophie Schopenhauers (1897) Kuno Fischer, Schopenhauer (in the Gesch. d. neuer. Philos., 3893); R. Bottger, Das Grundproblem der Schopenhauerschen Philos. (1898) W. Caldwell, Schopenhauer’s System (1896); O. Damm, Schopenhauers Ethik im Verhältnis zu seiner Erkenntnislehre (1898) and Schopenhauers Rechtsand Staatsphilosophie (1901); W. Hauff, Die Überwindung des Schopenhauerschen Pessimismus durch F. Nietzsche (1904); M. Kelly, Kant’s Ethics and Schopenhauer’s criticism (1910). (W. W.; X.)
SCHOPPE, CASPAR (1576–1649), German controversialist and scholar, was born at Neumarkt in the upper Palatinate on the 27th of May 1576 and studied at several German universities. Having become a convert to Roman Catholicism about 1599, he obtained the favour of Pope Clement VIII., and, even
