Chapter 36 Part III The World as Representation Revisited §36

History is the thread that follows great events.If history develops these events according to the law of motivation, then history is practical in so far.But the law of motivation determines the manifested will when the will is illuminated by "knowledge".On the lower level of the objectivity of the will, when the will functions without "knowledge," natural science considers the laws of the phenomenal changes of the will as etiology, and the phenomenal changes of the will as morphology. something.Morphology, by means of concepts, generalizes the general in order to derive the particular, and this simplifies its almost endless subjects.Mathematics, finally, examines those naked forms in which, for the knowledge of the subject as individual, the Idea appears as a divided multiplicity; hence time and space.Therefore, all these [academics] with the common name of science follow this law in various forms of the law of sufficient reason, and their subjects are always phenomena, the laws and connections of phenomena and the resulting relationships. —But in considering that which is not in all relations and does not depend on all relations, the only true essence of the world, the true immanence of its phenomena, that which is not in change and is therefore at all times regarded with equal truth Knowing, in a word, what kind of knowledge or mode of knowing is it when considering the Idea, the immediate and appropriate objectivity of the thing in itself, that is, the will?This is art, the task of genius.Art reproduces the eternal ideas grasped by pure observation, and reproduces the essential and permanent things in all phenomena in the world; and according to the material used for reproduction, it can be plastic art, literature or music.The only source of art is the knowledge of the Idea, and its sole aim is to convey this knowledge. —While science follows the endless and ever-changing torrent of grounds and consequences [both] of the four types of forms, after each attainment of its goal, it has to go on again without ever having a final goal, Nor is total satisfaction possible, as one sprints [forward] in order to reach the point where the sky meets the horizon.The opposite of this is art, which arrives at [its] destination everywhere.This is because art has pulled the object of its contemplation out of the torrent of world history and isolated it before it.And this individual thing, originally just a tiny drop in the torrent, is a representative of the whole in art, an equivalent of the infinite "many" in space and time.So art stops here, guarding this particular thing, art stops the gears of time.In the case of art, those relationships also disappear.Only what is essential, the idea, is the object of art. —Therefore, we may call art a way of seeing things independently of the principle of sufficient reason, which corresponds exactly to the method of investigation following the principle of sufficient reason; the latter is the way of experience and science.The latter way of consideration may be compared to an endless horizontal line parallel to the ground, while the former may be compared to a vertical line cutting this horizontal line at any point.The method of reason which obeys the law of sufficient reason is the only valid and useful one in practical life and in science, and leaving aside the content of this law is the one of genius, which is the only valid and useful one in art. way of inspection.The former is Aristotle's method of investigation, and the latter, generally speaking, is Plato's method of investigation.The former is like a great storm, moving forward without cause and purpose, shaking, bending everything, and carrying everything away; the latter is like the quiet sunshine, piercing the path of the storm and being completely unmoved.The former is like the countless, powerfully churning water spots in a waterfall, which are always changing [position] and never stays for a moment; the latter is like a long rainbow that calmly shines amidst the turbulent waves. —The idea can only be grasped by the above-mentioned pure contemplation of the object, and the essence of genius consists in the preeminence of this contemplation.Since this kind of observation requires complete forgetting of one's own self and the relationship between one's own self, then the nature of genius is nothing but the most perfect objectivity, that is, the objective direction of the spirit, and the subjective one, which points to the self, that is, to the will. in the opposite direction.Accordingly, the faculty of genius is the faculty of standing in the place of pure intuition, in which one forgets oneself, and frees knowledge, which formerly served the will, from this servitude, that is to say, is completely detached from one's own interests, wills, and ends. As a result, one completely revokes one's own personality for a while, so that [after the revoking of the personality] there remains a pure subject for knowing, a bright world eye.And this is not a matter of a few moments, but depends on the need to decide how long it should last, how much thinking should be done in order to reproduce what has been mastered through deliberate art, so as to fasten "the erratic things in phenomena to the eternal in thought". [This is genius performance. ]—It seems that if genius is to appear in the individual, the individual must be endowed with a quantitative faculty of knowledge far in excess of that required for the service of the individual will; The subject of the will becomes a transparent mirror [reflecting] the nature of the world. ——From this it can be explained [why] in a genius individual, his excitement is so disturbing that he has no possibility of satisfying them in the present [in front of him], [this is again] because the present cannot fill them consciousness.It is this that often causes them to pursue endlessly, constantly looking for newer, more observable objects, and it also makes them almost forever in order to find their own kind, who is born to be consistent with them, and who can empathize with them. Not satisfied.At the same time, mortals are content with being completely filled with the present, and are completely immersed in it: and they have everywhere their likeness, and in everyday life they have that quality which genius cannot have. A special kind of comfort. —Imagination was once thought to be an essential part of genius, and sometimes even equated with it.The former view is correct, but the latter is incorrect.Since genius as a genius, his object is the eternal idea, the permanent and basic form of the world and all its phenomena, and the knowledge of the idea must be intuitive and not abstract; His horizon extends far beyond the reality of his personal experience, and the few things that enable him to actually enter his awareness constitute all the rest [things], so that almost every possible situation of life--appears to him If it were before him, the genius's knowledge would be limited to the ideas of objects which actually existed before him, and would depend on the series of circumstances which brought them to him.And those actual objects are almost often only very defective specimens of the Ideas which express themselves in them, so that genius requires imagination in order to see in things not what nature actually constitutes, but to that which nature strives to form, but fails to do so by the inter-struggle of its forms described in the preceding chapter.We shall return to this point later when we examine engraving.The imagination thus extends, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the vision of genius beyond the objects actually present to the genius himself.For this reason, a particularly strong imagination is the companion, the condition, of genius.But it is not that imagination in turn produces genius; in fact, often even the most genius-less people can have a lot of imagination.This is because one can observe an actual object in two opposite ways, the one purely objective, with an idea ingeniously grasping it; Object, observed in relation to the will [what happens] of the person.In the same way, one can intuit an imaginary thing in two ways: in the first way, the imaginary thing is a means of knowing the idea, and art is the expression of that idea; in the second way Observation by way of observation, imaginary things are used to build castles in the air.These castles in the air are congenial to people's selfish desires and personal interests, and have a momentary fascination and refreshing effect; [but] at this time, what people realize from such connected imaginary things is often only some of their relationships. .A man who does such things is a fantasist.It is easy for him to mix images of himself with which he enjoys himself alone and thus become incompetent [person] in real [life].He might write down the plots of his fantasies, and this gave rise to pulp fiction of all kinds.These novels can also entertain the likes of the author, and even the general public, while the reader finds the story "interesting" in the dream of being the protagonist of the novel.

This kind of ordinary people, the products of nature, and thousands of such ordinary people are born every day. It is the real Jing-Guan—he is only in such a range, that is, these things always have a certain relationship with his will, even if it is only a very indirect relationship, so that they can focus their attention on things.As far as 255 is concerned, since all that is required is always the knowledge of relations, and the abstract concepts of things are sufficiently applicable, and in most cases even more useful, the common man does not linger in pure intuition.no longer fixes his gaze permanently on an object; but rapidly seeks the concept in all that comes before him, in order to place it under the concept, as one who moves indolently seeks a concept. Like a chair, [if found, then] he is no longer interested in this thing either.Therefore, he would skim through everything, such as works of art, beautiful natural scenery, and scenes that are meaningful everywhere in every scene of life.He does not linger.He was only looking for a way in life, at best something that might one day become his way in life, that is, topographical records in the broadest sense.He spent little time in observing how life itself was going on.The genius, on the contrary, spends a part of his life in which his cognitive faculties, preponderantly disengaged from the service of his own will, linger on the observation of life itself, and strive to master the meaning of everything. Ideas instead of grasping the relation of each thing to every other thing.For this reason, he often neglects to examine his own way of life, which, on most occasions, he is stupid enough to take.A person's cognitive ability, to ordinary people, is a lantern that illuminates his life; to geniuses, it is the sun that illuminates the world.These two so different ways of looking at life can then even be seen in the faces of the two kinds of people, and the eyes of a man who has genius living and working in his cavity are easily confused. The genius is marked, because this kind of eyes are both lively and firm at the same time, obviously with the characteristics of quiet observation and observation.This is what we can see from the head portraits of a few rare geniuses, one or two geniuses that nature produces from time to time among countless millions of people.On the contrary, the eyes of other people, even if they are not so dull or sophisticated and unfeeling as they are in most cases, it is still easy to see in them the real opposite of the observation [attitude], the "spying" [attitude] manner].Accurately, the so-called "genius performance" in human appearance lies in the ability to see in appearance that cognition has a decisive advantage over desire, so that a kind of cognition that has nothing to do with desire is shown in appearance, that is, pure cognition. .In contrast to this, in the general picture, as a rule, it is the expression of desire that stands out, and one sees that knowledge is always driven into action by desire, so [the activity of "knowledge"] is only motivated by motives.

Since the knowledge of genius [meaning] or knowledge of ideas is that which does not obey the principle of sufficient reason, but which, on the contrary, obeys the principle of sufficient reason, it is the knowledge which brings prudence and prudence to life, and which establishes science; then, Geniuses are unavoidable, some shortcomings, and these shortcomings come with ignoring the latter way of understanding.But as far as I am going to clarify this point, [we] still have to pay attention to this limit, that is, what I am talking about is only when the genius is really immersed in the genius [meaning] way of knowing, and only as a limit ; but this is by no means to say that every moment of a genius's life is in this state; Long breaks.In these intervals genius and man are largely alike, both in virtue and in defect.Therefore, people have always regarded the function played by genius as inspiration; yes, as the name of genius indicates, it has always been regarded as the function of something different from the individual itself, superhuman, and this superhuman It is only the periodic possession of the individual.The reluctance of men of genius to fix their attention on the content of the principle of sufficient reason manifests itself above all in respect of the ground of existence as an aversion to mathematics; [for] mathematical investigation is the most general form of investigation of phenomena, of time and space, and Time and space themselves are nothing but [two] forms of the principle of sufficient reason; therefore mathematical investigation is quite the opposite of that which disregards all relations and pursues only the inner contents of phenomena, and the ideas expressed in them.In addition, the logical approach to mathematics [problems] is also contrary to genius, because this method not only blocks real experience and cannot satisfy people, but also expresses some chains of inferences nakedly according to the law of grounds of knowledge. ; and therefore in all mental powers the chief thing is the memory required, in order to always keep in mind all the preceding propositions on which one is to base one.Experience has also proved that the great geniuses of art have little talent for mathematics.No one has ever been equally outstanding in both fields.Alfieri said that he himself never even understood Euclid's fourth theorem.Goethe has had enough of being accused of lack of mathematical knowledge by those ignorant opponents of his color theory; the problem here is not so much the reckoning and measuring from hypothetical data, but the immediate perception of cause and effect by the understanding, [So] that kind of accusation is completely misplaced and inappropriate.The utter lack of judgment [of the fact] of those who opposed him, by this, and by them, has been exposed as much as the nonsense of King Midas.As for today, half a century after Goethe's theory of colours, Newton's phrasing still dominates the lectures of [professors] without hindrance even in Germany, and people go on about the seven homogeneous lights and their Different degrees of refraction;—this will one day be counted as one of the psychic characteristics of human nature in general, and of German human nature in particular.For the same reason as above, it also explains the well-known fact that, conversely, eminent mathematicians [also] have little sensibility [for] artistic beauty.This is shown with particular candor in the famous story of a French mathematician who, after reading Racine's Iphigeny, shrugged his shoulders and asked: "But what does it prove?"— —and furthermore, since the accurate grasp of those relations according to the law of causality and motivation is actually shrewdness [in life], and the knowledge of genius is not developed for these relations; then, a wise man is a shrewd man In other words, when he is just shrewd, he is not a genius, and a genius is not shrewd when he is a genius. ——Finally, appreciable cognition is fundamentally opposite to rational or abstract cognition. What is within the scope of the former is always ideas, while the latter is guided by the law of grounds for cognition.As we all know, it is also difficult for people to find that a great genius is matched with an outstanding personality that seeks to be reasonable in everything. In fact, on the contrary, geniuses often succumb to violent feelings and irrational passions.The reason for this, however, is not so much the weakness of reason, but, on the one hand, that the whole phenomenon of will which constitutes a man of genius has an unusually special energy, which is expressed in the violentness of the various acts of will; The predominance of intuitive knowledge over abstract knowledge, and hence the tendency to give decided attention to the intuitive, whose very strong impression [produces] on individuals of genius, so much overshadows the dull conception that it guides action. It is no longer the concept but the impression, and it is from this that the behavior [of genius] becomes irrational.Therefore, immediate impressions are extremely powerful for geniuses, [often] taking geniuses to break through [the barriers], without thinking, and fall into the [abyss] of excitement and lust.Therefore, since their cognition has been partly freed from the service of the will, they also, at all, pay less attention to their counterparts in conversation than to what they are talking about, what is vividly before their eyes. thing.Therefore, as far as their own interests are concerned, their judgments or narrations will be too objective, and some things that are better not to be said, but which are smarter, they will say out, and so on. .Finally, they are thus fond of talking to themselves, and at all often display weaknesses that border on madness indeed.It has been frequently pointed out that genius and madness have a borderline adjacent to each other, and even cross each other, and people even call poetic interest a kind of madness: Horace calls it "lovely madness" , ("Ode" III. 4.) Virant called "amiable madness" in the opening words of "Oberon".According to Sinaica's quotation (On the Serenity of Mind, 15.16), Aristotle himself said: "There is no great genius who is not somewhat mad." In the aforementioned myth of the cave, Plato This is how he talked about it: ("Republic" 7), he said, "Those outside the cave saw both the real sunlight and the real thing (that is, the idea), because their eyes were not used to the darkness. , When they got into the cave, they couldn't see anything, and they couldn't see the shadows below them clearly, so when they were at a loss, they would be laughed at by others; but these people who laughed at them never came out. through the caves, and never left those shadows.” Plato also put it bluntly in Phaedolos (p. 317): “Without a certain madness, one cannot be a poet, and says (p. 327 pp): "Anyone who sees the idea of ​​eternity in impermanent things looks like mad. Cissaro also cites: "Democritus denies [the saying] that one cannot be a great poet without madness, [yet] Plato says so." "("Theory of Divinity" Ⅰ. 37) Finally, Bo Pu also said:

"Wisdom and madness are like neighbors and relatives, The partition wall is as thin as paper, don't divide the boundaries. " In this regard, Goethe's [play] Tolquedo Dasso is particularly significant.In this play, he not only makes us see the pain of genius, the martyrdom spirit of genius, but also makes us see that genius is often in the transition to madness.Finally, the fact that genius and madness are directly adjacent is attested by the biographies of such geniuses as Rousseau, Byron, Alfieri, and also by anecdotes from the lives of others.There is another part of the proof, which I have to deal with on the other hand: in frequent visits to asylums, I have found individual patients with special endowments that cannot be ignored, and their genius can be clearly seen in their madness, but Madness always has the absolute upper hand here.This situation cannot be attributed [entirely] to chance, since on the one hand the number of madmen is relatively small, and on the other hand a man of genius is a rarity, far less than any usual estimate. phenomena are those which occur in nature as the most prominent exceptions.To believe this, one has only to count the truly great geniuses, which the whole of civilized Europe has produced throughout all time, and only count those who have contributed works of permanent value to the The geniuses of mankind—then, I say, compare these few geniuses with the 250,000,000 people who live in Europe constantly, changing a generation every thirty years!Yes, I might as well mention that I have known people who, while not very great, did have some spiritual superiority, and that superiority was at the same time slightly insane.It thus appears that every excess of the human intellect beyond its ordinary limits is, as an anomaly, a tendency towards madness.In between, I want to be as brief as possible and give my own opinion on the purely intellectual reasons for the affinity between genius and madness, for this discussion somewhat helps to explain the nature of genius. The true essence, which is the only spiritual attribute that can create a true work of art.But this necessarily requires [us] to speak briefly of the [problem] of madness itself.

As far as I know, there has never been a clear and complete view of the nature [problem] of madness, nor a correct and clear conception of what makes a madman really different from ordinary people. —[We] cannot say that madmen are neither rational nor understanding, for they [also] speak and understand; and their inferences are often just as well.Generally speaking, they can also correctly treat the things in front of them and understand the relationship between cause and effect.Visions, like delirium in fever, are not the usual symptoms of madness; delirium disturbs intuition only, madness disturbs thought.In most cases madmen make no mistakes at all in their immediate acquaintance with things before them, and their nonsense always relates to things which are not present and past, and it is only for this reason that they talk about the connection of these things with the things in front of them.I therefore feel that their ailments are particularly memory-related; but this does not mean that they have no memory at all, since many madmen can recite many things by heart, and sometimes recognize people after long absences, but that the threads of their memory are interrupted. Now, the continuous connection of this thread is cancelled, and it is impossible to recall the past consistently and coherently.Individual scenes from the past, like individual present [circumstances], can be seen with correctness, but there are gaps in the recollection, and the madman fills the gaps with fictitious fantasies.These fictional things or always the same old.If it becomes a stereotyped delusion, then this is paranoia and depression; or every time it is another set of delusion that arises suddenly, it is called ignorance, which is "the heart is not bright".Therefore, when a madman first enters the madhouse, it is very difficult to ask him about his past life experience.In his memory, the more he asked, the more he confused the real and the fake.Even if [he] correctly understands the present present, the "present" will be confused by referring to an imaginary past and creating a fictitious relationship with the present present.So they identify themselves and others with his fictional past characters, and some acquaintances are completely unrecognizable.In this way, when they have a correct understanding of the individual things in front of them, [they mistake the relationship between these things and the things that are not in front of them,] they have such wrong relationships in their hearts.Madness, if carried to a severe degree, produces a total amnesia; the madman is therefore no longer able to think of anything present or past, but is determined solely by the present moment of pleasure, which connects him Use it in your own mind to fill in the fantasies of the past.So approaching such a madman is not for a second guaranteed not to be attacked or killed by him, if people do not often make him see [the opponent's] superiority. ——The cognition of the madman and the cognition of animals have one thing in common, that is to say, both are limited to the present, and the difference between them is that the animals are completely ignorant of the past. Although habits act on animals through the medium of habit, for example, if a dog can still recognize its former master after many years, it is called regaining the habitual impression from the face of the master; but for the years since the master left, it But there is no memory.The madman, on the other hand, always carries with him an abstract past in his reason, but a false past which exists only for him, and which may be constant or merely present. .This influence of the false past in turn prevents him from using the correctly recognized "present," which animals are capable of.As for violent mental anguish, which often causes madness due to terrible accidents, my explanation is this: every such pain, as a real event, is always limited to the present, and therefore only temporary, so it is always there. Not overly heavy.Only long-lasting pain can be too great a pain.But such pain is again only a thought, and thus a [thing] of memory.If, then, there is such an affliction, such a painful realization or recollection, that it is so tormenting that it is almost unbearable and the individual is about to become overwhelmed, then nature threatened to such a degree [ Instinct] resorted to madness as a last resort.The mind, which suffers so deeply, seems to tear off the thread of memory, fills the holes with phantasies, and thus flees from mental anguish beyond its own power to madness—as one burns The limbs were sawed off and replaced with wooden ones. —As examples we may look at Ajax in madness, King Lear, and Ophelia; Characters for illustration.Moreover, common practical experience has consistently confirmed the same.The transition from this mode of pain to madness can be compared to a near analogy, that is, all of us are often tempted to cry out mechanically when a painful memory suddenly overtakes us. Or do something to expel this memory, lead yourself to another direction, and force yourself to think about other things. ——

We have seen above that the madman can correctly recognize some things in front of him, and he can also know certain things in the past, but he recognizes the connection and relationship [between them], so mistakes and nonsense occur, so, this It's the point of contact between the madman and the genius.This is because the gifted individual also abandons knowledge of the relations of things—relations which obey the principle of sufficient reason—in order to seek in things alone, to see their ideas, in order to grasp the true Nature.As far as this essence is concerned, one thing can represent its entire category of things. Therefore, Goethe also said that "what is true for one situation is also true for thousands of situations." ——A genius also ignores the cognition of the connection of things at this point. The individual objects in his contemplation or the "now" grasped by him too vividly appear so distinct that this "now" belongs to The other links in the chain of psyche are thus faded into darkness and pale; and this produces precisely certain phenomena which have a long-recognized similarity to the phenomena of madness.What is only imperfect in individual ready-made things, and weakened by various determinations, the mode of observation of genius raises it to the idea of ​​those things, to perfection.Hence everywhere he sees [only] extremes, and his actions are driven by them.He doesn't know what is the proper measure, he lacks a clear [head] and the result is what was just said.He knows the Idea fully, but not the individual in this way.Therefore, it has been pointed out that a poet can know people deeply and thoroughly, but he does not know them enough; he is gullible, and in the hands of cunning ]Toy.