Project Gutenberg's The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer, by Arthur Schopenhauer

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Title: The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer

Author: Arthur Schopenhauer

Release Date: January 18, 2004 [EBook #10739]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ESSAYS OF ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER ***

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THE ESSAYS

OF

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

TRANSLATED BY

T. BAILEY SAUNDERS, M.A.

ON HUMAN NATURE.

CONTENTS.

HUMAN NATURE
GOVERNMENT
FREE-WILL AND FATALISM
CHARACTER
MORAL INSTINCT
ETHICAL REFLECTIONS

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

The following essays are drawn from the chapters entitled _Zur Ethik_
and _Zur Rechtslehre und Politik_ which are to be found both in
Schopenhauer's _Parerga_ and in his posthumous writings. As in my
previous volumes, so also in this, I have omitted a few passages which
appeared to me to be either antiquated or no longer of any general
interest. For convenience' sake I have divided the original chapters
into sections, which I have had to name; and I have also had to invent
a title which should express their real scope. The reader will find
that it is not so much _Ethics_ and _Politics_ that are here treated,
as human nature itself in various aspects.

T.B.S.

HUMAN NATURE.

Truths of the physical order may possess much external significance,
but internal significance they have none. The latter is the privilege
of intellectual and moral truths, which are concerned with the
objectivation of the will in its highest stages, whereas physical
truths are concerned with it in its lowest.

For example, if we could establish the truth of what up till now is
only a conjecture, namely, that it is the action of the sun which
produces thermoelectricity at the equator; that this produces
terrestrial magnetism; and that this magnetism, again, is the cause of
the _aurora borealis_, these would be truths externally of great, but
internally of little, significance. On the other hand, examples
of internal significance are furnished by all great and true
philosophical sys