Noel’s Reviews > Essays and Aphorisms > Status Update

“The monarchical form of government is the form most natural to man. How could it possibly happen that, universally and at all times, many millions, even hundreds of millions, of us men have subjected ourselves to and willingly obeyed one man, occasionally even a woman or, provisionally, a child, if there were not in man a monarchical instinct which drives him to it as to the condition most appropriate to him? … Republics are anti-natural, artificial, and derive from reflection: consequently there are also very few of them in the entire history of mankind…”

Schopenhauer builds this argument over several sections but most decisive is that:

“A constitution embodying nothing but abstract justice would be a wonderful thing, but it would not be suited to beings such as men. Because the great majority of men are in the highest degree egoistic, unjust, inconsiderate, deceitful, sometimes even malicious, and equipped moreover with very mediocre intelligence, there exists the need for a completely unaccountable power, concentrated in one man and standing above even justice and the law, before which everything bows and which is regarded as a being of a higher order, a sovereign by the grace of God. Only thus can mankind in the long run be curbed and ruled.”