§ 14. Some Observations on my own Philosophy
There is scarcely a philosophical system so simple and composed of so few elements as is mine; and so it can be taken in and comprehended at a glance. This is due ultimately to the complete unity and agreement of its fundamental ideas and is generally a favourable indication of its truth; indeed truth is akin to simplicity: [x], simplex sigillum veri. [94] My system might be described as immanent dogmatism, for its doctrines are indeed dogmatic, yet they do not go beyond the world that is given in experience. On the contrary, by analysing it into its ultimate elements, they explain merely what the world is. Thus the old dogmatism that was overthrown by Kant (and likewise the blarney and humbug of the three modern university sophists) is transcendent since it goes beyond the world in order to explain it from something different; it makes the world the consequent of a ground, such ground being inferred from the consequent itself. My philosophy, on the other hand, began with the proposition that there are grounds and consequents solely within the world and on the assumption thereof, since the principle of sufficient reason or ground in its four aspects is merely the most universal form of the intellect, but that in this intellect alone, as the true locus mundi, the objective world exists.
In other philosophical systems, consistency is effected by inferring one proposition from another. But this necessarily demands that the real content of the system exists already in the very first propositions, whereby the remainder, as derived therefrom, can hardly prove to be other than monotonous, poor, empty, and tedious, since it merely develops and repeats what was already stated in the basic propositions. This dismal consequence of demonstrative deduction is most noticeable in Christian Wolff; but even Spinoza, who strictly followed this method, was unable entirely to escape its drawback, although through his intellect he was able to compensate for it. My propositions, on the other hand, for the most part do not rest on chains of reasoning, but directly on the world of intuitive perception itself, and the strict consistency to be found in my system as much as in any other is, as a rule, not obtained on the merely logical path. On the contrary, it is that natural agreement of the propositions which inevitably results from the fact that all are based on the same intuitive knowledge, that is to say, on the intuitive apprehension of the same object that is successively contemplated from different points of view and hence of the real world in all its phenomena, by virtue of the consciousness wherein it presents itself. And so I was never concerned about the harmony and agreement of my propositions, not even when some of them seemed to me to be inconsistent, as was occasionally the case for a time. For agreement subsequently appeared automatically according as the propositions all came together numerically complete, since with me such harmony or consistency is simply nothing more than the agreement of reality with itself, which of course can never go wrong. This is analogous to our sometimes not understanding the continuity and connection of a building's parts when we look at it for the first time and from only one direction; yet we are certain that such continuity is not wanting and that it will appear as soon as we have walked right round the building. But this kind of consistency is perfectly certain by virtue of its original nature and because it is constantly under the control of experience. On the other hand, the deduced consistency that is brought about solely by the syllogism can easily prove to be false in some particular, that is to say, as soon as some link in the long chain is not genuine, is loosely fitted, or is otherwise of a faulty nature. Accordingly, my philosophy has a wide basis whereon everything stands directly and thus securely; whereas other systems are like tall towers where, if one support breaks, the whole edifice collapses. All that I have said here may be summarized by saying that my philosophy has arisen and is presented on the analytical path, not on the synthetical.
I may mention, as a special characteristic of my philosophizing, that I try everywhere to go to the very root of things, since I continue to pursue them up to the ultimate given reality. This happens by virtue of a natural disposition that makes it wellnigh impossible for me to rest content with any general and abstract knowledge that is therefore still indefinite, with mere concepts, not to mention words. On the contrary, I am urged forward until I have plainly before me the ultimate basis of all concepts and propositions which is at all times intuitive. I must then let this stand as the primary phenomenon, or, if possible, I still resolve it into its elements, but in any case I follow out to the utmost the essential nature of the matter. It will, therefore, be recognized one day (though naturally not in my lifetime) that the treatment of the same subject by any previous philosopher appears shallow and superficial when compared with mine. Thus mankind has learned much from me that will never be forgotten and my works will not sink into oblivion.
Even theism represents the world as proceeding from a will; the planets are represented as being guided in their orbits by a will, and a nature as being produced on their surface. But theism childishly puts this will outside the universe and causes it to act on things only indirectly, through the intervention of knowledge and matter, in human fashion. With me, on the other hand, the will acts not so much on things as in them; indeed they themselves are simply nothing but the very visibility of the will. However, in this agreement we see that we cannot conceive the original of things as anything but a will. Pantheism calls the will that operates in things a God and the absurdity of this has been censured by me often and severely enough. I call it the will-to-live because this expresses what is ultimately knowable therein. This same relation of mediateness to immediateness appears once again in morality. The theists want a reconciliation between what a man does and what he suffers; so do I. But they assume such a reconciliation first by means of time and of a judge and avenger; whereas I do this directly, since I point out the same essential nature in the doer and the sufferer. The moral results of Christianity up to the most extreme asceticism are found in my works based on reason and the connection and continuity of things, whereas in Christianity they are founded on mere fables. Belief in these is daily disappearing and people will, therefore, have to turn to my philosophy. The pantheists cannot have any seriously meant morality, for with them everything is divine and excellent.
I have often been criticized for having represented, in philosophy and thus theoretically, life as wretched, full of misery, and by no means worth desiring. Yet whoever shows practically the most decided disregard and contempt for life is praised and even admired, whereas the man who is carefully concerned over its preservation is despised.
My works had scarcely excited the attention of a few, when the dispute as to priority arose with regard to my fundamental idea, and it was stated that Schelling had once said 'willing is original and primary being', and anything else of this kind that could be adduced. With regard to the matter itself, it may be observed that the root of my philosophy is to be found already in the Kantian, especially in Kant's doctrine of the empirical and intelligible characters, but generally in the fact that, whenever Kant brings the thing-in-itself somewhat nearer to the light, it always appears through its veil as will. I have expressly drawn attention to this in my 'Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy', and accordingly have said that my philosophy is only his thought out to the end. Therefore we need not wonder if the philosophemes of Fichte and Schelling, which also start from Kant, show traces of the same fundamental idea, although they there appear without sequence, continuity, or development, and accordingly may be regarded as a mere foreshadowing of my doctrine. In general, however, it may be said on this point that, before every great truth has been discovered, a previous feeling, a presentiment, a faint outline thereof, as in a fog, is proclaimed, and there is a vain attempt to grasp it just because the progress of the times prepared the way for it. Accordingly, it is preluded by isolated utterances; but he alone is the author of a truth who has recognized it from its grounds and has thought it out to its consequents; who has developed its whole content and has surveyed the extent of its domain; and who, fully aware of its value and importance, has therefore expounded it clearly and coherently. On the other hand, in ancient and modern times, one has expressed a truth on some occasion, semi-consciously and almost like talking in sleep; and accordingly it can be found there if it is expressly looked for. Yet this does not signify much more than if such a truth were before us totidem litteris, [95] even although it may exist totidem verbis. [96] In the same way, the finder of a thing is only the man who, knowing its value, picked it up and kept it, not he who once accidentally took it up in his hand and dropped it again. Or again Columbus is the discoverer of America, not the first shipwrecked sailor there cast up by the waves. This is precisely the meaning of the saying of Donatus: pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt. [97] If, on the other hand, opponents wanted to admit such chance utterances as priorities against me, they could have gone back much further and quoted, for example, what Clement of Alexandria said (Stromata, lib. II, c. 17) : [x] (Velle ergo omnia antecedit: rationales enim facultates sunt voluntatis ministrae. [98] See Sanctorum patrum opera polemica, vol. v, Wurzburg, 1779: Clement of Alexandria, Opera, Tom. ii, p. 304). Spinoza also said: Cupiditas est ipsa unius cujusque natura seu essentia [99] (Ethics, Pt. III, prop. 57, demonstr.) and previously: Hic conatus, cum ad mentem solam refertur, Voluntas appellatur; sed cum ad mentem et corpus simul refertur, vocatur Appetitus, qui proinde nihil aliud est, quam IPSA HOMINIS ESSENTIA. [1] (Pt. III, prop. 9, schol., and finally Pt. III, Defin. I, explic.) He;vetius quite rightly says: Il n'est point de moyens que l'envieux sous l'apparence de la fustice n'emploie pour degrader le merite ... C'est l'envie seule qui nous fait trouver dans les anciens toutes les decouvertes modernes. Une phrase vide de sens ou du moins inintelligible avant ces decouvertes, suffit pour faire crier au plagiat. [2] (De l'esprit, IV, 7.) On this point I make so bold as to recall yet another passage from Helvetius; but I ask the reader not to ascribe my quotation to vanity and presumption, but simply to bear in mind the correctness of the idea expressed in it and to leave it an open question whether or not anything contained in it could apply to me. Quiconque se plait a considerer l'esprit humain voit dans chaque siecle cinq ou six hommes d'esprit tourner autour de la decouverte que fait l'homme de genie. Si l'honneur en reste a ce dernier, c'est que cette decouverte est, entre ses mains, plus feconde que dans les mains de tout autre; c'est qu'il rend ses idees avec plus de force et de nettete; et qu'enfin on voit toujours a la maniere differente, dont les hommes tirent parti d'un principe ou d'une decouverte, a qui ce principe ou cette decouverte appartient [3] (De l'esprit, IV, I).
In consequence of the old and implacable war that is always and everywhere waged by incapacity and stupidity against intellect and understanding-by legions on the one side against individuals on the other-anyone producing anything valuable and genuine has to fight a hard battle against want of understanding, dullness, depraved taste, private interests, and envy, all in worthy alliance, of which Chamfort says: en examinant la ligue des sots contre les gens d'esprit, on croirait voir une conjuration de valets pour ecarter les maitres. [4] For me there was in addition an unusual adversary; the majority of those whose business and occasion it was to guide public opinion in my branch of knowledge were appointed and paid to propagate, laud, and even extol to the skies, the worst of all systems, namely Hegelry. But this cannot succeed if at the same time we are willing to accept the good even only to some extent. This may explain to later readers the fact, otherwise so puzzling to them, that to my contemporaries I have remained as strange and unknown as the man in the moon. Yet a system of thought which, even in spite of an absence of any co-operation on the part of others, is capable of ardently and incessantly engaging its author throughout a long life, and of spurring him on to unremitting and unrewarded labour, possesses in this very fact a testimony as to its value and truth. Without any encouragement from outside, love for my work alone sustained my efforts and did not let me grow weary throughout the many days of my life during which I looked down with contempt on the noisy trumpeting of the bad. For when I entered life, my genius offered me the choice either of recognizing truth but then of pleasing no one, or with others of teaching the false with encouragement and approbation; and for me the choice had not been difficult. Accordingly, the fate of my philosophy was so entirely the opposite of that enjoyed by Hegelry that we can regard the two as the opposite sides of the same sheet, corresponding to the nature and character of the two philosophies. Hegelry, devoid of truth, clearness, intelligence, and even of common sense, appearing moreover in the cloak of the most nauseous nonsense ever heard of, was a subsidized and privileged chair-philosophy and consequently a species of nonsense that nourished its man. Appearing simultaneously with it, my philosophy indeed had all the qualities which it lacked; but such a philosophy was not cut out for any ulterior aims, was not at all suited for the chair at that time, and hence, as we say, there was nothing to be made out of it. It then followed, as day follows night, that Hegelry became the banner to which all flocked, whereas my philosophy met with neither approbation nor followers. On the contrary, it was universally and deliberately ignored, suppressed, and, where possible, smothered because through its presence that fine old game would have been upset, as is the shadow-play on the wall by the incoming light of day. Accordingly, I became the iron mask or, as the noble Dorguth says, the Caspar Hausers of the professors of philosophy, secluded from air and light so that no one would see me and my natural claims might not gain authority. But now the man who was killed by the silence of the professors of philosophy, has risen again from the dead, to their great consternation, for they do not know at all what expression they should now assume.
_______________
Notes:
1 ['The doctrine of meaning'.)
2 ['The doctrine of truth '.]
3 [' Whereas in the doctrine of truth he (Melissus) declares that what exists is one, in the doctrine of meaning he asserts that there are two (many) of them.']
4 [' Mind' and 'homogeneous elements of things'.]
5 ['Love and hatred'.]
6 ['Copies, likenesses'.]
7 ['The good can be spoken twice and also thrice.' (Proverb.)]
8 ['Something of everything is to be found in everything.']
9 [' Everything is indeed blended with everything.']
10 [' A vast field of evil'.]
11 [' Agreement of all peoples'.]
12 [The Editiones Bipontinae were editions, mainly of the Greek and Latin classics, published in Zweibrucken in Germany, from 1779 onwards.]
13 (' For the properties and proportions of numbers are the basis for the properties and relations of things, as for example, the double, one and a third, one and a half.']
14 (This work was not written by Plutarch.]
15 (' The Pythagoreans said that an active fire is to be found in the middle and centre of the earth which gives warmth and life to the earth.']
16 ('The ten principles' (of the Pythagoreans).]
17 ['In the beginning was the word.')
18 ['"The emotions are material numerical relations;" and shortly after, "for the numerical relation is the form of the thing.''')
19 ['Creative reason' (containing the germs of all things).)
20 ['However, we cannot pass over in silence the followers of Pythagoras when they say: God is one; but he is not, as some imagine, outside the universe, but inside it. He is the entire sphere as overlord of all origin, as pervading everything. He exists eternally and is a master of all his own forces and works, a light in the heavens, father of the universe, spirit and inspiration of the whole world-orbit, movement of the universe.']
21 ['"An old opinion finds favour with the natural philosophers that the homogeneous is knowable for the homogeneous." Shortly afterwards: "But in the Timaeus Plato makes use of this very method of proof to demonstrate the incorporeal nature of the soul. For if, he says, the face is adapted to light because it is susceptible to light, and hearing is aerially conditioned because it perceives the concussion of the air, namely the tone, and smell because it experiences fumes and vapours, is at all events so conditioned, and taste is similarly adapted because it tastes juices, then the soul must also be of necessity an incorporeal essence because it knows incorporeal ideas as, for example, those in numbers and those to be found in the forms of bodies." ']
22 [' But if thought is a kind of imagination, or takes place not without imagination, then something of the kind cannot take place without body.']
23 [' In the intellect there is nothing that has not previously existed in the senses.']
24 [' Eternal truths'.)
25 ['The thinking substance and the extended substance are one and the same substance which is comprehended now under this attribute, now under that.')
26 ['To think is to perceive.')
27 ['Therefore let us take another starting-point for our consideration.']
28 ['What matter of importance can be promised by this opening of the mouth?']
29 [' Commonplaces, platitudes'.]
* The older authors who ascribe to Aristotle actual theism, take their proofs from the books De mundo which are definitely not by him. This, of course, is now generally accepted.
30 [' Every being of nature strives to preserve itself.']
31 ['Creative reason' (containing the germs of all things).]
32 ['Calmness', 'serenity', 'equanimity'.]
33 ['From us'.]
34 ['Of concern to us'.]
35 [' Sequence of ideas'.)
36 [' Out of the East comes the light.')
37 ['The desires of souls (before their birth) contribute most to the shaping of their course of life, and we do not look as if we had been formed from without, but from out of ourselves we come across the elective decisions whereby we live.']
38 [Being by and of itself. All other being are ab alio, dependent in their existence on a creator (God).]
39 ['We do not look as if we had been formed from without.']
40 [' On the essential nature of the soul.']
41 ['Whether all souls are one.']
42 ['For there is for this universe no other place than the soul or mind.']
43 ['We should not accept time outside the soul or mind.']
44 [' The world of Ideas and the world of the senses'.]
45 ['Up there and here below'.]
46 ['The purification and perfection of the soul and the liberation from becoming; ... the fire at the sacrifice delivers us from the fetters of becoming.']
47 ['Willy-nilly'.]
48 [' Sin is causeless ... it is entirely causeless and insubstantial.']
49 [' Everything was very good.' 'Hence those tears.')
50 ['From sheer wantonness'.)
* For the rest, the spiritus animales occur as something well known in Vanini, De naturae Arcanis, Dial. 49. Their originator is possibly (De anatome cerebri; De anima brutorum, Geneva, 1680, pp. 35 ff.) Flourens, De la vie et de l'intelligence, vol. ii, p. 72, ascribes them to Galen. Indeed even Jamblichus in Stobaeus (Eclogues, lib. I, c. 52, § 29) mentions them pretty clearly as a doctrine of the Stoics.
51 ['Physical influence'.]
52 ['We see everything in God,']
53 [' The most perfect of all beings'.)
54 [' Cause of itself': that whose nature cannot be conceived as not existing.)
55 [A logical inconsistency between a noun and its modifying adjective, such as ‘round square'. 'wooden iron', 'cold fire', 'hot snow'.)
56 [' The first false step'. i.e. the fault in a premiss which is the cause of the conclusion's also being false.)
57 [' Confusion of ground and consequent'.]
58 ['The cowl does not make a monk.')
59 [' Besides human beings, we know of no individual being in nature whose mentality could give us pleasure, and with whom we could be united through friendship or through any kind of association.']
60 ['Indispensable condition'.)
61 ['Which he saw through the mist as it were'.)
62 [' Simplicity is the stamp of truth.']
63 ['Vicious circle'.]
64 ['He begins by doubting everything and ends by believing everything'.]
65 ['By hook or by crook'.)
66 Here I observe once for all that the pagination of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, from which I usually quote, is also appended to Rosenkranz's edition.
[The page numbering of the German first edition is given in square brackets in the text of Prof. Max Muller's English translation (1881; repr. with additions, 1896) of the Critique of Pure Reason.]
67 [' What transcends the power of algebra'.]
* The Critique of Pure Reason has transformed ontology into dianoiology.
* Just as our eye produces green, red, and blue, so does our brain produce, time, space, and causality (whose objectified abstraction is matter). My intuitive perception of a body in space is the product of my sense-function and brain-function with x.
* Everything has two kinds of properties, those that can be known a priori, and those that can be known only a posteriori. The former spring from the intellect that apprehends them, the latter from the essence-in-itself of the thing which is what we find in ourselves as will.
68 ['This could be asserted and could not be refuted.']
* Nowadays the study of the Kantian philosophy is still specially useful in showing us how low philosophical literature in Germany has sunk since the Critique of Pure Reason was written. Kant's profound investigations are in such striking contrast with the crude twaddle of today; and in connection with this we imagine we see, on the one hand, hopeful candidates and, on the other, barbers' assistants.
69 See the preface to my Fundamental Problems of Ethics.
70 [' One must be a sage to recognize a sage.']
71 ['The mind alone is capable of understanding the mind.']
72 ['Willy-nilly'.]
* Since the above was written, things with us have changed. In consequence of the resurrection of time-honoured and ten-times-exploded materialism, philosophers have appeared from the druggist's shop and the dispensary, men who have learnt nothing but what belongs to their profession, and who now quite innocently and honestly lecture on their old-women's speculation and dispute over' body and soul' and their relation to each other, as though Kant had just been born. Indeed (credite posteri! ['believe it, posterity!']), they show that the seat of the aforesaid soul is in the brain. Their audacity merits the reprimand that one must have learnt something to be allowed to join in the discussion and that they would be wiser not to expose themselves to the unpleasant allusions to apothecaries and the catechism.
73 [' Begging of the question'; a fallacy involving the assumption, as premisses, of one or more propositions that are identical with (or equivalent to) the conclusion to be proved.]
74 [It is possible that 'ein Fixstern', rather than 'kein Fixstern' should be the reading here. On this point the Translator consulted Arthur Hubscher, the editor of the German edition. Since 'kein Fixstern' does make sense, and since it is the reading of all the earlier editions from the first onwards, neither felt justified in making this emendation.)
* If things are considered quite realistically and objectively, it is as clear as daylight that the world maintains itself. Organic beings subsist and propagate by virtue of their own inner and original vital force. Inorganic bodies bear within themselves forces whereof physics and chemistry are the mere description; and the planets proceed in their courses from inner forces by virtue of their inertia and gravitation. Hence for its subsistence the world needs no one outside itself. For this is Vishnu.
But to say that at some point in time this world with all its indwelling forces did not exist at all, but was produced out of nothing by a foreign force lying outside it, is a wholly vain and futile notion that is incapable of any proof or support, more especially as all its forces are bound up with matter, whose arising or passing away cannot even be conceived by us.
This conception of the world will do for Spinozism. It is very natural for men in their extreme anguish to have conceived everywhere beings who control the forces of nature and the course thereof in order to be able to invoke them. The Greeks and Romans, however, were content to let the matter rest with the control exercised by each being in its own sphere. It never occurred to them to say that one of them had made the world and the forces of nature.
75 [' Existence does not pertain to the essence of anything. ')
76 ['Cause of itself, i.e. which exists by and through itself and is conceived through itself; hence it requires nothing else in order to exist.')
77 ['Conjuring trick'.)
78 [' Grain of salt'.]
* As regards the genesis of this divine consciousness, we recently had a remarkable pictorial illustration, namely a copper engraving depicting a mother and her three-year-old child kneeling on the bed with hands folded, whom she is teaching to pray. This certainly is a frequent occurrence constituting the genesis of the divine consciousness; for there is no doubt that after the brain has been moulded in this way at the tenderest age and in the first stage of its development, the divine consciousness has become as firmly embedded as if it were actually inborn.
79 ['Nature naturing', 'creative nature'; the term is used by Spinoza and other philosophers.)
80 [' Nature natured'. 'created nature'; the complex of all created things; the term is used by Spinoza and other philosophers.]
81 ['Proof is incumbent on the man who makes a positive assertion.']
82 ['The right of first occupancy'.]
83 [A logical inconsistency between a noun and its modifying adjective, such as 'round square', 'wooden iron', 'cold fire', 'hot snow'.)
84 Caspar Hauser (1812?-33) was a German foundling youth of mysterious and controversial origins.
85 In an essay on his religion given by him to a Catholic bishop, the Zaradobura, the Chief Rahan (High Priest) of the Buddhists in Ava, reckons as one of the six damnable heresies the doctrine that a being exists who created the world and all things therein and is alone worthy of worship; Francis Buchanan, On the Religion of the Burmas, in the Asiatic Researches, vol. vi, p. 268. Here it is also worth mentioning what is said in the same series, vol. xv, p. 148, namely that the Buddhists do not bow down before any idol, giving as their reason the fact that the primary being permeates the whole of nature and consequently is also in their heads. Similarly, I. J. Schmidt, the profoundly erudite orientalist of St. Petersburg Academy, says in his Forschungen im Gebiete der alteren Bildungsgeschichte Mitelasiens, St. Petersburg, 1824, p. 180: 'The system or Buddhism knows no eternal, uncreated, single, divine being who existed prior to all time and created everything visible and invisible. This idea is quite foreign to it, and not the slightest trace of it is found in Buddhist books. Just as little is there a creation', and so on. Where, then, is the 'divine consciousness' of the professors of philosophy who have been embarrassed by Kant and the truth? How is this to be reconciled with the fact that the language of the Chinese, who constitute about two-fifths of the human race, has no expressions at all for God and Creation? Thus the first verse of the Pentateuch cannot be translated into Chinese, to the great perplexity of the missionaries whom Sir George Staunton wished to help with his book entitled: An Inquiry into the proper mode of rendering the word God in translating the Sacred Scriptures into the Chinese Language, London, 1848.
* From God, who was originally Jehovah, philosophers and theologians have stripped off one covering after another until in the end nothing is left but the word.
86 [' Proof is incumbent on the man who makes a positive assertion.')
87 ['A being who has received everything can act only in keeping with what has been given to him; and all the power of God which is infinite could not make him independent.']
88 ('The will's free decision, uninfluenced by any antecedent determination.']
89 [' Of such animals that incline to the earth and serve their bellies'. (Sallust, Catilina, c. 1.)]
90 [Being by and of itself. All other beings are ab olio, dependent in their existence on a creator (God).]
91 [' I am all these creatures, every one of them, and besides me no other being exists.')
* The real religion of the Jews, as presented and taught in Genesis and all the historical books up to the end of Chronicles, is the crudest of all religions because it is the only one that has absolutely no doctrine of immortality, not even a trace thereof. When he dies, each king, each hero or prophet, is buried with his fathers and with this everything is finished. There is no trace of any existence after death; indeed every idea of this kind seems to be purposely dismissed. For example, Jehovah delivers a long eulogy to King Josiah and ends it with the promise of a reward. It says: [x] ['Behold, I will gather thee to thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in peace.' 2 Chronicles 34: 28); thus he shall not live to see Nebuchadnezzar. But there is no idea of another existence after death and with it of a positive reward instead of the merely negative one of dying and of suffering no further sorrows. On the contrary, when Jehovah has sufficiently used up and tormented his handiwork and plaything, he throws it away into the ditch; that is the reward for it. Just because the religion of the Jews knows no immortality and consequently no punishments after death, Jehovah can threaten the sinner, the one who prospers on earth, only with punishing his misdeeds in the persons of his children and children's children unto the fourth generation, as may be seen in Exodus 34:7, and Numbers 14: 18. This proves the absence of any doctrine of immortality. Likewise the passage in Tobias, 3: 6, where the latter begs Jehovah to let him die, [x] ['that I may be saved, and return to dust']; nothing more, no notion of an existence after death. In the Old Testament the reward promised to virtue is to live a really long time on earth (e.g. Deuteronomy 5:16 and 33); in the Veda, on the other hand, it is not to be born again. The contempt in which the Jews were always held by contemporary peoples may have been due in great measure to the poor character of their religion. What is said in Ecclesiastes 3:19, 20 is the true sentiment of the Jews' religion. If immortality is alluded to, as in Daniel 12:2, it is as an imported foreign doctrine, as is evident from Daniel, :4 and 6. In the second book of Maccabees, chapter 7, the doctrine of immortality appears clearly to be of Babylonian origin. All other religions, those of the Indians, both Brahmans and Buddhists, of the Egyptians, Persians, and even of the Druids, teach immortality and, with the exception of the Persians in the Zendavesta, metempsychosis as well. D. G. v. Ekendahl establishes in his review of the Svenska Siare och Skalder of Atterbom, in the Blatter fur litter. Unterhaltung, 25 August 1843, that the Edda, especially the Voluspa, teaches transmigration of souls. Even Greeks and Romans had something post letum ['after death'], namely Tartarus and Elysium, and said:
unt aliquid manes, letum non omnia finit:
Luridaque evictos effugit umbra rogos.
Propertius, IV. 7.
['The shades of the departed are still something, death does not end all: the lurid shadow rises triumphant from the fiery flames.']
Speaking generally, the really essential element in a religion as such consists in the conviction it gives that our existence proper is not limited to our life, but is infinite. Now this wretched religion of the Jews does not do this at all, in fact it does not even attempt it. It is, therefore, the crudest and poorest of all religions and consists merely in an absurd and revolting theism. It amounts to this that the [x] ['Lord'], who has created the world, desires to be worshipped and adored; and so above all he is jealous, is envious of his colleagues, of all the other gods; if sacrifices are made to them he is furious and his Jews have a bad time. All these other religions and their gods are stigmatized in the Septuagint as [x] ['abomination']; but it is crude Judaism without any immortality that really merits this description. It is most deplorable that this religion has become the basis of the prevailing religion of Europe; for it is a religion without any metaphysical tendency. While all other religions endeavour to explain to the people by symbols and parables the metaphysical significance of life, the religion of the Jews is entirely immanent and furnishes nothing but a mere war-cry in the struggle with other nations. Lessing's Erziehung des Menschmgeschlechts should be called education of the Jewish race, for the whole of the human race with the exception of these elect of God was convinced of that truth. The Jews are the chosen people of their God and he is the chosen God of his people. And this need not trouble anyone else. [x] ['I will be their God, and they shall be my people'] is a passage from one of the prophets, according to Clement of Alexandria. But when I observe that the present nations of Europe to a certain extent regard themselves as the heirs to that chosen people of God, I cannot conceal my regret. On the other hand, Judaism cannot be denied the reputation of being the only really monotheistic religion on earth; for no other religion can boast of an objective God, creator of heaven and earth.
92 ['The spirit fell in love with its own origin.']
93 [' But it did not itself recognize its own creation.']
94 [' Whoever has truth to tell expresses himself simply. Simplicity is the seal of truth.']
95 [' With just so many letters'.]
96 [' With just so many words'.)
97 [' Down with those who, prior to us, have expressed our ideas.']
98 ['Therefore willing precedes everything; for the forces of reason are the handmaidens of willing.')
99 ['Cupidity is precisely that which constitutes everyone's nature or true essence.']
1 ['This impulse is called will when it is referred to the mind alone; it is called appetite when it is referred simultaneously to mind and body; and it is nothing but man's real essence.']
2 ['There are no means which an envious man, in the guise of justice, will not employ to belittle merit ... It is mere envy which makes us find among the ancients every modern discovery. A phrase devoid of meaning, or at any rate unintelligible prior to those discoveries, suffices to bring an accusation of plagiarism.']
3 [' Whoever takes pleasure in observing the human mind sees how in every century five or six men of intellect wander round the discovery that is made by a man of genius. If the honour of that discovery rests with the latter, this is because the discovery is in his hands more fruitful than in those of everyone else; because he expresses his ideas with greater force and precision; and finally because we can always see from the different ways in which men make use of a principle or discovery to whom that principle or discovery belongs.']
4 [' When we see the league of blockheads against men of intelligence, we think we are witnessing a conspiracy of servants to overthrow their masters.']
5 [Caspar Hauser (1812?-33), a German foundling youth of mysterious and controversial origins, claimed to have spent most of his life in solitary confinement.]