The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer | Page 6

can get a better. Again,
Ormuzd and Ahriman are rival powers, continually at war. That is not
bad. But that a God like Jehovah should have created this world of
misery and woe, out of pure caprice, and because he enjoyed doing it,
and should then have clapped his hands in praise of his own work, and
declared everything to be very good--that will not do at all! In its
explanation of the origin of the world, Judaism is inferior to any other
form of religious doctrine professed by a civilized nation; and it is quite
in keeping with this that it is the only one which presents no trace
whatever of any belief in the immortality of the soul.[1]
[Footnote 1: See Parerga, vol. i. pp. 139 et seq.]
Even though Leibnitz' contention, that this is the best of all possible
worlds, were correct, that would not justify God in having created it.
For he is the Creator not of the world only, but of possibility itself; and,
therefore, he ought to have so ordered possibility as that it would admit
of something better.
There are two things which make it impossible to believe that this
world is the successful work of an all-wise, all-good, and, at the same
time, all-powerful Being; firstly, the misery which abounds in it
everywhere; and secondly, the obvious imperfection of its highest
product, man, who is a burlesque of what he should be. These things
cannot be reconciled with any such belief. On the contrary, they are just
the facts which support what I have been saying; they are our authority
for viewing the world as the outcome of our own misdeeds, and
therefore, as something that had better not have been. Whilst, under the
former hypothesis, they amount to a bitter accusation against the
Creator, and supply material for sarcasm; under the latter they form an
indictment against our own nature, our own will, and teach us a lesson
of humility. They lead us to see that, like the children of a libertine, we
come into the world with the burden of sin upon us; and that it is only
through having continually to atone for this sin that our existence is so
miserable, and that its end is death.
There is nothing more certain than the general truth that it is the

grievous sin of the world which has produced the grievous suffering of
the world. I am not referring here to the physical connection between
these two things lying in the realm of experience; my meaning is
metaphysical. Accordingly, the sole thing that reconciles me to the Old
Testament is the story of the Fall. In my eyes, it is the only
metaphysical truth in that book, even though it appears in the form of
an allegory. There seems to me no better explanation of our existence
than that it is the result of some false step, some sin of which we are
paying the penalty. I cannot refrain from recommending the thoughtful
reader a popular, but at the same time, profound treatise on this subject
by Claudius[1] which exhibits the essentially pessimistic spirit of
Christianity. It is entitled: Cursed is the ground for thy sake.
[Footnote 1: Translator's Note.--Matthias Claudius (1740-1815), a
popular poet, and friend of Klopstock, Herder and Leasing. He edited
the Wandsbecker Bote, in the fourth part of which appeared the treatise
mentioned above. He generally wrote under the pseudonym of Asmus,
and Schopenhauer often refers to him by this name.]
Between the ethics of the Greeks and the ethics of the Hindoos, there is
a glaring contrast. In the one case (with the exception, it must be
confessed, of Plato), the object of ethics is to enable a man to lead a
happy life; in the other, it is to free and redeem him from life
altogether--as is directly stated in the very first words of the Sankhya
Karika.
Allied with this is the contrast between the Greek and the Christian idea
of death. It is strikingly presented in a visible form on a fine antique
sarcophagus in the gallery of Florence, which exhibits, in relief, the
whole series of ceremonies attending a wedding in ancient times, from
the formal offer to the evening when Hymen's torch lights the happy
couple home. Compare with that the Christian coffin, draped in
mournful black and surmounted with a crucifix! How much
significance there is in these two ways of finding comfort in death.
They are opposed to each other, but each is right. The one points to the
affirmation of the will to live, which remains sure of life for all time,
however rapidly its forms may change. The other, in the symbol of

suffering and death, points to the denial of the will to live, to
redemption from