The World as Will and Idea, Volume 1 quotes

§ 2.

That which knows all things and is known by none is the subject.

Thus it is the supporter of the world, that condition of all phenomena, of all objects which is always pre-supposed throughout experience; for all that exists, exists only for the subject.

This simplest form of the principle we have found to be time. In it each instant is, only in so far as it has effaced the preceding one, its generator, to be itself in turn as quickly effaced.

The past and the future (considered apart from the consequences of their content) are empty as a dream, and the present is only the indivisible and unenduring boundary between them.

And in all the other forms of the principle of sufficient reason, we shall find the same emptiness, and shall see that not time only but also space, and the whole content of both of them, i.e., all that proceeds from causes and motives, has …

… question, quite different from the purely speculative one which we have considered, a specially empirical origin, though the question is always raised from a speculative point of view, and in this form it has a much more comprehensible meaning than it had in the first.

We have dreams; may not our whole life be a dream?

or more exactly: is there a sure criterion of the distinction between dreams and reality? between phantasms and real objects?

After these numerous quotations from the poets, perhaps I also may be allowed to express myself by a metaphor.

Life and dreams are leaves of the same book.

The systematic reading of this book is real life, but when the reading hours (that is, the day) are over, we often continue idly to turn over the leaves, and read a page here and there without method or connection:

for example, Mont Blanc seen from Salenche.

All such illusions are immediately present to us as perceptions, and cannot be dispelled by any arguments of the reason.

Reason can only prevent error, that is, a judgment on insufficient grounds, by opposing to it a truth;

whereas in truth all that is objective is already determined as such in manifold ways by the knowing subject through its forms of knowing, and presupposes them; and consequently it entirely disappears if we think the subject away.

Thus materialism is the attempt to explain what is immediately given us by what is given us indirectly.

All that is objective, extended, active—that is to say, all that is material—is regarded by materialism as affording so solid a basis for its explanation, that a reduction of everything to this can leave nothing to be desired (especially if in ultimate analysis this reduction …

so that the lower animals existed before men, fishes before land animals, plants before fishes, and the unorganised before all that is organised; that, consequently, the original mass had to pass through a long series of changes before the first eye could be opened.

And yet, the existence of this whole world remains ever dependent upon the first eye that opened, even if it were that of an insect.

For such an eye is a necessary condition of the possibility of knowledge, and the whole world exists only in and for knowledge, and without it is not even thinkable.

Without this medium of knowledge it cannot be, and therefore it was not before it. But without that eye, that is to say, outside of knowledge, there was also no before, no time.

Thus time has no beginning, but all beginning is in time.

Since, however, it is the most universal form of the knowable, in which all phenomena are united together through causality, time, with its infinity of past and future, is present in the beginning of knowledge.

In his case, indeed, it could not have been otherwise.

A man becomes a philosopher by reason of a certain perplexity, from which he seeks to free himself.

This is Plato's θαυμαξειν, which he calls a μαλα φιλοσοφικον παθος. But what distinguishes the false philosopher from the true is this:

In his case, indeed, it could not have been otherwise. A man becomes a philosopher by reason of a certain perplexity, from which he seeks to free himself. This is Plato's θαυμαξειν, which he calls a μαλα φιλοσοφικον παθος.

But what distinguishes the false philosopher from the true is this: the perplexity of the latter arises from the contemplation of the world itself, while that of the former results from some book, some system of philosophy which is before him.

Now Fichte belongs to the class of the false philosophers.

… as anxious to discover and to root out all error even [pg 046] when no harm is anticipated from it, because its mischief may be very indirect, and may suddenly appear when we do not expect it, for all error has poison at its heart.

If it is mind, if it is knowledge, that makes man the lord of creation, there can be no such thing as harmless error, still less venerable and holy error.

And for the consolation of those who in any way and at any time may have devoted strength and life to the noble and hard battle against error, I cannot refrain from adding that, so long as truth is absent, error will have free play, …

… bats drive back the sun in the eastern heavens, than that any truth which has once been known and distinctly and fully expressed, can ever again be so utterly vanquished and overcome that the old error shall once more reign undisturbed over its wide kingdom.

This is the power of truth; its conquest is slow and laborious, but if once the victory be gained it can never be wrested back again.

Besides the ideas we have as yet considered, which, according to their construction, could be referred to time, space, and matter, if we consider them with reference to the object, or to pure sensibility and understanding (i.e., knowledge of causality), if we consider them with …

… itself, and therefore what springs purely from it, and remains true to it, for example, a genuine work of art, can never be false, nor can it be discredited through the lapse of time, for it does not present an opinion but the thing itself.

But with abstract knowledge, with reason, doubt and error appear in the theoretical, care and sorrow in the practical.

In the idea of perception, illusion may at moments take the place of the real;

also science, the storing up of experience, the uniting of common properties in one concept, the communication of truth, the spread of error, thoughts and poems, dogmas and superstitions.

The brute first knows death when it dies, but man draws consciously nearer to it every hour that he lives; and this makes life at times a questionable good even to him who has not recognised this character of constant annihilation in the whole of life.

Principally on this account man has philosophies and religions, though it is uncertain whether the qualities we admire most in his conduct, voluntary rectitude and nobility of feeling, were ever the fruit of either of them.

To desire to make practical use of logic means, therefore, to desire to derive with unspeakable trouble, from general rules, that which is immediately known with the greatest certainty in the particular case.

It is just as if a man were to consult mechanics as to the motion of his body, and physiology as to his digestion; and whoever has learnt logic for practical purposes is like him who would teach a beaver to make its own dam.

Logic is, therefore, without practical utility; but it must nevertheless be retained, because it has philosophical interest as the special knowledge of the organisation and action of reason. It is rightly regarded as a definite, self-subsisting, self-contained, complete, and thoroughly safe discipline;

… all this, the question presses ever more upon us, how certainty is to be attained, how judgments [pg 065]are to be established, what constitutes rational knowledge, (wissen), and science, which we rank with language and deliberate action as the third great benefit conferred by reason.

Reason is feminine in nature; it can only give after it has received.

Of itself it has nothing but the empty forms of its operation. There is no absolutely pure rational knowledge except the four principles to which I have attributed metalogical truth; the principles of identity, contradiction, excluded middle, and sufficient reason of knowledge.

… here apprehends at a glance completely and with perfect accuracy, namely, how the co-sine diminishes as the sine increases, how the co-sine of one angle is the sine of another, the inverse relation of the increase and decrease of the two angles, and so forth.

How time, we might say, must complain, that with its one dimension it should be compelled to express the three dimensions of space!

Yet this is necessary if we wish to possess, for application, an expression, in abstract concepts, of space-relations.

If the singer or the virtuoso attempts to guide his execution by reflection he remains silent. And this is equally true of the composer, the painter, and the poet.

The concept always remains unfruitful in art; it can only direct the technical part of it, its sphere is science.

We shall consider more fully in the third book, why all true art proceeds from sensuous knowledge, never from the concept.

and the converse also holds good; action, we say, is guided by feelings,—that is, simply not by concepts, but as a matter of fact by the ethical character.

Dogmas occupy the idle reason; but action in the end pursues its own course independently of them, generally not according to abstract rules, but according to unspoken maxims, the expression of which is the whole man himself.

Therefore, however different the religious dogmas of nations may be, yet in the case of all of them, a good action is accompanied by unspeakable satisfaction, and a bad action by endless remorse. No mockery can shake the former;

… the last case, that of the jester, wit must always show itself in words, folly generally in actions, though also in words, when it only expresses an intention and does not actually carry it out, or when it shows itself merely in judgments and opinions.

Pedantry is a form of folly.

It arises in this way: a man lacks confidence in his own understanding, and, therefore, does not wish to trust to it, to recognise what is right directly in the particular case.

When we speak, especially in connection with politics, of doctrinaires, theorists, savants, and so forth, we mean pedants, that is, persons who know the things well in the abstract, but not in the concrete.

Abstraction consists in thinking away the less general predicates; but it is precisely upon these that so much depends in practice.

To complete our theory it remains for us to mention a spurious kind of wit, the play upon words, the calembourg, the pun, to which may be added the equivocation, the double entendre, the chief use of which is the expression of what is obscene.

whereas, on the contrary, every demonstration [pg 084] requires an undemonstrated truth, which ultimately supports it, or it may be, its own demonstration.

Therefore a directly established truth is as much to be preferred to a truth established by demonstration as water from the spring is to water from the aqueduct.

Perception, partly pure a priori, as it forms the basis of mathematics, partly empirical a posteriori, as it forms the basis of all the other sciences, is the source of all truth and the foundation of all science.

Since all demonstration is syllogistic, in the case of a new truth we must first seek, not for a demonstration, but for direct evidence, and only in the absence of such evidence is a demonstration to be temporarily made use of.

No science is susceptible of demonstration throughout any more than a building can stand in the air; all its demonstrations must ultimately rest upon what is perceived, and consequently cannot be demonstrated, for the whole world of reflection rests upon and is rooted in the world of perception.

All primal, that is, original, evidence is a perception, as the word itself indicates. Therefore it is either empirical or founded upon the perception a priori of the conditions of possible experience. In both cases it affords only immanent, not transcendent knowledge.

Thus, for example, I have shown that all empirical perception implies the [pg 089] application of the law of causality, the knowledge of which is hence a condition of all experience, and therefore cannot be first given and conditioned through experience as Hume thought.

Demonstrations in general are not so much for those who wish to learn as for those who wish to dispute.

Such persons stubbornly deny directly established insight; now only the truth can be consistent in all directions, and therefore we must show such persons that they admit under one form and indirectly, what they deny under another form and directly;

We have therefore almost the same uncomfortable feeling that we experience after a juggling trick, and, in fact, most of Euclid's demonstrations are remarkably like such feats.

The truth almost always enters by the back door, for it manifests itself per accidens through some contingent circumstance.

Often a reductio ad absurdum shuts all the doors one after another, until only one is left through which we are therefore compelled to enter.

in botany and zoology it is the difference of species, and life itself; in history it is the human race with all its properties of thought and will: in all it is that form of the principle of sufficient reason which is respectively applicable.

It is peculiar to philosophy that it presupposes nothing as known, but treats everything as equally external and a problem; not merely the relations of phenomena, but also the phenomena themselves, and even the principle of sufficient reason to which the other sciences are content to refer everything.

In philosophy nothing would be gained by such a reference, as one member of the series is just as external to it as another;

The principle of sufficient reason explains the connections of phenomena, but not the phenomena themselves; therefore philosophy cannot proceed upon these principles to seek a causa efficiens or a causa finalis of the whole world.

My philosophy, at least, does not by any means seek to know whence or wherefore the world exists, but merely what the world is.

But the why is here subordinated to the what, for it already belongs to the world, as it arises and has meaning and validity only through the form of its phenomena, the principle of sufficient reason.

we view life freely on all its sides, and go far beyond the present and the actual.

Thus what the eye is in space and for sensuous knowledge, reason is, to a certain extent, in time and for inner knowledge.

But as the visibility of objects has its worth and meaning only in the fact that it informs us of their tangibility, so the whole worth of abstract knowledge always consists in its relation to what is perceived.

He, therefore, stands to the lower animals as the navigator who, by means of chart, compass, and quadrant, knows accurately his course and his position at any time upon the sea, stands to the uneducated sailors who see only the waves and the heavens.

Thus it is worth noticing, and indeed wonderful, how, besides his life in the concrete, man always lives another life in the abstract.

In the former he is given as a prey to all the storms of actual life, and to the influence of the present; he must struggle, suffer, and die like the brute.

… to our individuality, or the good things that must of necessity always be denied us, are treated with indifference, in accordance with the peculiarity of human nature that every wish soon dies and can no more beget pain if it is not nourished by hope.

It followed from all this that happiness always depends upon the proportion between our claims and what we receive.

It is all one whether the quantities thus related be great or small, and the proportion can be established just as well by diminishing the amount of the first as by increasing the amount of the second;

… use of his reason in order to arrive at a general knowledge of this characteristic of life, or he lacks judgment, in that he does not recognise in the particular what he knows in general, and is therefore surprised by it and loses his self-command.25

Thus also every keen pleasure is an error and an illusion, for no attained wish can give lasting satisfaction; and, moreover, every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.

All pain rests on the passing away of such an illusion; thus both arise from defective knowledge; the wise man therefore holds himself equally aloof from joy and sorrow, and no event disturbs his αταραξια.

… what now impels us to inquiry is just that we are not satisfied with knowing that we have ideas, that they are such and such, and that they are connected according to certain laws, the general expression of which is the principle of sufficient reason.

We wish to know the significance of these ideas; we ask whether this world is merely idea; in which case it would pass by us like an empty dream or a baseless vision, not worth our notice; or whether it is also something else, something more than idea, and if so, what.

Thus much is certain, that this something we seek for must be completely and in its whole nature different from the idea; that the forms and laws of the idea must therefore be completely foreign to it;

Thus we see already that we can never arrive at the real nature of things from without.

However much we investigate, we can never reach anything but images and names. We are like a man who goes round a castle seeking in vain for an entrance, and sometimes sketching the façades.

And yet this is the method that has been followed by all philosophers before me.

Only the carrying out of the resolve stamps it as will, for till then it is never more than an intention that may be changed, and that exists only in the reason in abstracto.

It is only in reflection that to will and to act are different; in reality they are one.

Every true, genuine, immediate act of will is also, at once and immediately, a visible act of the body. And, corresponding to this, every impression upon the body is also, on the other hand, at once [pg 131] and immediately an impression upon the will.

The parts of the body must, therefore, completely correspond to the principal desires through which the will manifests itself; they must be the visible expression of these desires.

Teeth, throat, and bowels are objectified hunger; the organs of generation are objectified sexual desire; the grasping hand, the hurrying feet, correspond to the more indirect desires of the will which they express.

As the human form generally corresponds to the human will generally, so the individual bodily structure corresponds to the individually modified will, the character of the individual, and therefore it is throughout and in all its parts characteristic and full of expression.

The fact is, however, overlooked that the individual, the person, is not will as a thing-in-itself, but is a phenomenon of will, is already determined as such, and has come under the form of the phenomenal, the principle of sufficient reason.

Hence arises the strange fact that every one believes himself a priori to be perfectly free, even in his individual actions, and thinks that at every moment he can commence another manner of life, which just means that he can become another person.

But a posteriori, through experience, he finds to his astonishment that he is not free, but subjected to necessity;

Therefore in such cases their action takes place without motive, is not guided by the idea, and shows us first and most distinctly how the will may be active entirely without knowledge.

The bird of a year old has no idea of the eggs for which it builds a nest; the young spider has no idea of the prey for which it spins a web; nor has the ant-lion any idea of the ants for which he digs a trench for the first time.

The larva of the stag-beetle makes the hole in the wood, in which it is to await its metamorphosis, twice as big if it is going to be a male beetle as if it is going to be a female, so that if it is …

This is the will itself, to which the principle of sufficient reason has not application, and which is therefore groundless.

Nothing in the world has a sufficient cause of its existence generally, but only a cause of existence just here and just now.

That a stone exhibits now gravity, now rigidity, now electricity, now chemical qualities, depends upon causes, [pg 180] upon impressions upon it from without, and is to be explained from these.

that is, the matter in which its Idea expresses itself must yield itself to the expression of another Idea, for each animal can only maintain its existence by the constant destruction of some other.

Thus the will to live everywhere preys upon itself, and in different forms is its own nourishment, till finally the human race, because it subdues all the others, regards nature as a manufactory for its use.

Yet even the human race, as we shall see in the Fourth Book, reveals in itself with most terrible distinctness this conflict, this variance with itself of the will, and we find homo homini lupus.

while in order to know an animal in its Idea, it is necessary to observe the course of its action. As for man, he must be fully investigated and tested, for reason makes him capable of a high degree of dissimulation.

The beast is as much more naïve than the man as the plant is more naïve than the beast.

In the beast we see the will to live more naked, as it were, than in the man, in whom it is clothed with so much knowledge, and is, moreover, so veiled through the capacity for dissimulation, that it is almost only by chance, and …

This innocence of the plant results from its complete want of knowledge.

Guilt does not lie in willing, but in willing with knowledge.

Every plant speaks to us first of all of its home, of the climate, and the nature of the ground in which it has grown.

Therefore, even those who have had little practice easily tell whether an exotic plant belongs to the tropical or the temperate zone, and whether it grows in water, in marshes, on mountain, or on moorland.

Besides this, however, every plant expresses the special will of its species, and says something that cannot be uttered in any other tongue.

But we must now apply what has been said to the teleological consideration of the organism, so far as it concerns its inner design.

Thus, for example it is immaterial whether a man plays for nuts or for crowns; but whether a man cheats or plays fairly, that is the real matter; the latter is determined by the intelligible character, the former by outward circumstances.

As the same theme may be expressed in a hundred different variations, so the same character may be expressed in a hundred very different lives.

But various as the outward influence may be, the empirical character which expresses itself in the course of life must yet, whatever form it takes, accurately objectify the intelligible character, for the latter adapts its objectification to the given material of actual circumstances.

The tendency of matter can therefore only be confined, never completed or appeased. But this is precisely the case with all tendencies of all phenomena of will.

Every attained end is also the beginning of a new course, and so on ad infinitum.

The plant raises its manifestation from the seed through the stem and the leaf to the blossom and the fruit, which again is the beginning of a new seed, a new individual, that runs through the old course, and so on through endless time.

… and as such comes into the knowing consciousness in the only way in [pg 228] which an object can, through the forms of the principle of sufficient reason, and consequently already presupposes, and therefore brings in, time, and all other forms which that principle expresses.

Time is only the broken and piecemeal view which the individual being has of the Ideas, which are outside time, and consequently eternal.

Therefore Plato says time is the moving picture of eternity: αιωνος εικων κινητη ὁ χρονος.46

But time is the most universal form of all objects of the [pg 230] knowledge which is subject to the will, and the prototype of its other forms.

Knowledge now, as a rule, remains always subordinate to the service of the will, as indeed it originated for this service, and grew, so to speak, to the will, as the head to the body.

In the case of the brutes this subjection of knowledge to the will can never be abolished. In the case of men it can be abolished only in exceptional cases, which we shall presently consider more closely.

and in doing this he often forgets to consider his own path in life, and therefore for the most part pursues it awkwardly enough.

While to the ordinary man his faculty of knowledge is a lamp to lighten his path, to the man of genius it is the sun which reveals the world.

This great diversity in their way of looking at life soon becomes visible in the outward appearance both of the man of genius and of the ordinary mortal.

he therefore sees everywhere extremes, and therefore his own action tends to extremes; he cannot hit the mean, he lacks soberness, and the result is what we have said. He knows the Ideas completely but not the individuals.

Therefore it has been said that a poet may know mankind deeply and thoroughly, and may yet have a very imperfect knowledge of men.

He is easily deceived, and is a tool in the hands of the crafty.

… work of art than directly from nature and the real world, arises from the fact that the artist, who knew only the Idea, no longer the actual, has reproduced in his work the pure Idea, has abstracted it from the actual, omitting all disturbing accidents.

The artist lets us see the world through his eyes.

That he has these eyes, that he knows the inner nature of things apart from all their relations, is the gift of genius, is inborn;

Moreover, we shall see that the pleasure which is produced by the contemplation of the beautiful arises from these two constituent parts, sometimes more from the one, sometimes more from the other, according to what the object of the æsthetical contemplation may be.

All willing arises from want, therefore from deficiency, and therefore from suffering.

The satisfaction of a wish ends it; yet for one wish that is satisfied there remain at least ten which are denied. Further, the desire lasts long, the demands are infinite; the satisfaction is short and scantily measured out.

the satisfaction is short and scantily measured out. But even the final satisfaction is itself only apparent; every satisfied wish at once makes room for a new one; both are illusions; the one is known to be so, the other not yet.

No attained object of desire can give lasting satisfaction, but merely a fleeting gratification; it is like the alms thrown to the beggar, that keeps him alive to-day that his misery may be prolonged till the morrow.

Therefore, so long as our consciousness is filled by our will, so long as we are [pg 254] given up to the throng of desires with their constant hopes and fears, so long as we are the subject of willing, we can never have lasting …

All willing arises from want, therefore from deficiency, and therefore from suffering.

The satisfaction of a wish ends it; yet for one wish that is satisfied there remain at least ten which are denied. Further, the desire lasts long, the demands are infinite; the satisfaction is short and scantily measured out.

But even the final satisfaction is itself only apparent; every satisfied wish at once makes room for a new one; both are illusions; the one is known to be so, the other not yet.

… and inseparably the perceived particular thing is raised to the Idea of its whole species, and the knowing individual to the pure subject of will-less [pg 255] knowledge, and as such they are both taken out of the stream of time and all other relations.

It is then all one whether we see the sun set from the prison or from the palace.

Inward disposition, the predominance of knowing over willing, can produce this state under any circumstances.

Thus all difference of individuality so entirely disappears, that it is all the same whether the perceiving eye belongs to a mighty king or to a wretched beggar; for neither joy nor complaining can pass that boundary with us.

So near us always lies a sphere in which we escape from all our misery; but who has the strength to continue long in it?

As soon as any single relation to our will, to our person, even of these objects of our pure contemplation, comes again into consciousness, the magic is at an end; we fall back into the knowledge which is governed by the principle of sufficient reason;

But we must first add the following remarks to what has been said.

Light is the pleasantest and most gladdening of things; it has become the symbol of all that is good and salutary.

In all religions it symbolises salvation, while darkness symbolises damnation. Ormuzd dwells in the purest light, Ahrimines in eternal night.

It is the faintest trace of the sublime in the beautiful; and beauty itself is indeed present only in a slight degree. The following is almost as weak an example.

Let us imagine ourselves transported to a very lonely place, with unbroken horizon, under a cloudless sky, trees and plants in the perfectly motionless air, no animals, no men, no running water, the deepest silence.

Such surroundings are, as it were, a call to seriousness and contemplation, apart from all will and its cravings; but this is just what imparts to such a scene of desolate stillness a touch of the sublime.

The ancients are almost always free from this fault in their representations of beauty and complete nakedness of form, because the artist himself created them in a purely objective spirit, filled with ideal beauty, not in the spirit of subjective, and base sensuality.

The charming is thus everywhere to be avoided in art.

There is also a negative species of the charming or exciting which is even more reprehensible than the positive form which has been discussed; this is the disgusting or the loathsome.

… of the insight into the Idea of man which it reveals, in that it brings [pg 298] to light sides of that Idea which rarely appear, by making individuals who assert themselves distinctly and decidedly, disclose their peculiar characteristics by means of appropriately arranged circumstances.

Only the inward significance concerns art; the outward belongs to history.

They are both completely independent of each other; they may appear together, but may each appear alone. An action which is of the highest significance for history may in inward significance be a very ordinary and common one;

and then their long-restrained hatred against all that is great and beautiful, and against the authors of it, gladly relieves itself; for such things never appealed to them, and for that very reason were humiliating to them.

For as a rule a man must have worth in himself in order to recognise it and believe in it willingly and freely in others.

On this rests the necessity of modesty in all merit, and the disproportionately loud praise of this virtue, which alone of all its sisters is always included in the eulogy of every one who ventures to praise any distinguished man, in order to appease and …

… modesty in all merit, and the disproportionately loud praise of this virtue, which alone of all its sisters is always included in the eulogy of every one who ventures to praise any distinguished man, in order to appease and quiet the wrath of the unworthy.

What then is modesty but hypocritical humility, by means of which, in a world swelling with base envy, a man seeks to obtain pardon for excellences and merits from those who have none?

For whoever attributes to himself no merits, because he actually has none, is not modest but merely honest.

What then is modesty but hypocritical humility, by means of which, in a world swelling with base envy, a man seeks to obtain pardon for excellences and merits from those who have none?

For whoever attributes to himself no merits, because he actually has none, is not modest but merely honest.

The Idea is the unity that falls into multiplicity on account of the temporal and spatial form of our intuitive apprehension; the concept, on the contrary, is the unity reconstructed out of multiplicity by the abstraction of our reason;

but after a few years these works become insipid, because the spirit of the age, i.e., the prevailing concepts, in which alone they could take root, have changed.

Only true works of art, which are drawn directly from nature and life, have eternal youth and enduring power, like nature and life themselves.

For they belong to no age, but to humanity, and as on that account they are coldly received by their own age, to which they disdain to link themselves closely, and because indirectly and negatively they expose the existing errors, they are slowly and unwillingly …

It is these successively appearing individuals, for the mass of posterity will always be and remain just as perverse and dull as the mass of contemporaries always was and always is.

We read the complaints of great men in every century about the customs of their age. They always sound as if they referred to our own age, for the race is always the same.

At every time and in every art, mannerisms have taken the place of the spirit, which was always the possession of a few individuals, but mannerisms are just the old cast-off garments of the last manifestation of the spirit that existed and was recognised.

not a concept, but an Idea floats before his mind; therefore he can give no justification of what he does.

He works, as people say, from pure feeling, and unconsciously, indeed instinctively.

On the contrary, imitators, mannerists, imitatores, servum pecus, start, in art, from the concept; they observe what pleases and affects us in true works of art;

if further, it is forbidden in art to start from the concept, we shall not be able to consent to the intentional and avowed employment of a work of art for the expression of a concept; this is the case in the Allegory.

An allegory is a work of art which means something different from what it represents.

But the object of perception, and consequently also the Idea, expresses itself directly and completely, and does not require the medium of something else which implies or indicates it.

And no one has the right to prescribe to the poet what he ought to be—noble and sublime, moral, pious, Christian, one thing or another, still less to reproach him because he is one thing and not another.

He is the mirror of mankind, and brings to its consciousness what it feels and does.

If we now consider more closely the nature of the lyric proper, and select as examples exquisite and pure models, not those that approach in any way to some other form of poetry, such as the ballad, the elegy, the hymn, the epigram, &c., we …

… characters, contradiction either of themselves or of the nature of humanity in general, as well as impossibility, or very great improbability in the events, even in mere accessories, offend just as much in poetry as badly drawn figures, false perspective, or wrong lighting in painting.

For both in poetry and painting we demand the faithful mirror of life, of man, of the world, only made more clear by the representation, and more significant by the arrangement.

For there is only one end of all the arts, the representation of the Ideas; and their essential difference lies simply in the different grades of the objectification of will to which the Ideas that are to be represented belong.

Yet the point of comparison between music and the world, the respect in which it stands to the world in the relation of a copy or repetition, is very obscure.

Men have practised music in all ages without being able to account for this; content to understand it directly, they renounce all claim to an abstract conception of this direct understanding itself.

I gave my mind entirely up to the impression of music [pg 332] in all its forms, and then returned to reflection and the system of thought expressed in the present work, and thus I arrived at an explanation of the inner nature of music …

The conception is here, as everywhere in art, unfruitful.

The composer reveals the inner nature of the world, and expresses the deepest wisdom in a language which his reason does not understand; as a person under the influence of mesmerism tells things of which he has no conception when he awakes.

Therefore in the composer, more than in any other artist, the man is entirely separated and distinct from the artist. Even in the explanation of this wonderful art, the concept shows its poverty [pg 337] and limitation. I shall try, however, to complete our analogy.

The composer reveals the inner nature of the world, and expresses the deepest wisdom in a language which his reason does not understand; as a person under the influence of mesmerism tells things of which he has no conception when he awakes.

Therefore in the composer, more than in any other artist, the man is entirely separated and distinct from the artist.

Even in the explanation of this wonderful art, the concept shows its poverty [pg 337] and limitation. I shall try, however, to complete our analogy.

Dance-music in the minor seems to indicate the failure of that trifling happiness which we ought rather to despise, seems to speak of the attainment of a lower end with toil and trouble.

The inexhaustibleness of possible melodies corresponds to the inexhaustibleness of Nature in difference of individuals, physiognomies, and courses of life.

The transition from one key to an entirely different one, since it altogether breaks the connection with what went before, is like death, for the individual ends in it;

for music always expresses only the quintessence of life and its events, never these themselves, and therefore their differences do not always affect it.

It is precisely this universality, which belongs exclusively to it, together with the greatest determinateness, that gives music the high worth which it has as the panacea for all our woes.

Thus, if music is too closely united to the words, and tries to form itself according to the events, it is striving to speak a language which is not its own. No one has kept so free from this mistake as Rossini;

… not a copy of the phenomenon, or, more accurately, the adequate objectivity of will, but is the direct copy of the [pg 340] will itself, and therefore exhibits itself as the metaphysical to everything physical in the world, and as the thing-in-itself to every phenomenon.

We might, therefore, just as well call the world embodied music as embodied will; and this is the reason why music makes every picture, and indeed every scene of real life and of the world, at once appear with higher significance, certainly all the more in proportion as its melody is analogous to the inner spirit of the given phenomenon.

It rests upon this that we are able to set a poem to music as a song, or a perceptible representation as a pantomime, or both as an opera.

In music also there is something corresponding to this. A complete, pure, harmonious system of tones is not only physically but arithmetically impossible.

The numbers themselves by which the tones are expressed have inextricable irrationality.

There is no scale in which, when it is counted, every fifth will be related to the keynote as 2 to 3, every major third as 4 to 5, every minor third as 5 to 6, and so on.

If the whole world as idea is only the visibility of will, the work of art is to render this visibility more distinct. It is the camera obscura which shows the objects more purely, and enables us to survey them and comprehend them better.

It is the play within the play, the stage upon the stage in “Hamlet.”

The pleasure we receive from all beauty, the consolation which art affords, the enthusiasm of the artist, which enables him to forget the cares of life,—the latter an advantage of the man of genius over other men, which alone repays him for the suffering that …

In general, we shall not speak at all of “ought,” for this is how one speaks to children and to nations still in their childhood, but not to those who have appropriated all the culture of a full-grown [pg 351] age.

It is a palpable contradiction to call the will free, and yet to prescribe laws for it according to which it ought to will.

“Ought to will!”—wooden iron! But it follows from the point of view of our system that the will is not only free, but almighty. From it proceeds not only its action, but also its world;

what has become of it? As it is with it, so is it with the life of those millions. Or should we suppose that the past could receive a new existence because it has been sealed by death?

Our own past, the most recent part of it, and even yesterday, is now no more than an empty dream of the fancy, and such is the past of all those millions.

What was? What is? The will, of which life is the mirror, and knowledge free from will, which beholds it clearly in that mirror.

The latter are only in the conception, exist only in the connection of knowledge, so far as it follows the principle of sufficient reason.

No man has ever lived in the past, and none will live in the future; the present alone is the form of all life, and is its sure possession which can never be taken from it.

The present always exists, together with its content. Both remain fixed without wavering, like the rainbow on the waterfall. For life is firm and certain in the will, and the present is firm and certain in life.

No man has ever lived in the past, and none will live in the future; the present alone is the form of all life, and is its sure possession which can never be taken from it.

The present always exists, together with its content. Both remain fixed without wavering, like the rainbow on the waterfall.

For life is firm and certain in the will, and the present is firm and certain in life.

Dogmas change and our knowledge is deceptive; but Nature never errs, her procedure is sure, and she never conceals it.

Everything is entirely in Nature, and Nature is entire in everything.

She has her centre in every brute. It has surely found its way into existence, and it will surely find its way out of it.

Man alone carries about with him, in abstract conceptions, the certainty of his death; yet this can only trouble him very rarely, [pg 363] when for a single moment some occasion calls it up to his imagination.

Against the mighty voice of Nature reflection can do little.

In man, as in the brute which does not think, the certainty that springs from his inmost consciousness that he himself is Nature, the world, predominates as a lasting frame of mind;

Certainly the decision enters the sphere of the intellect altogether empirically, as the final conclusion of the matter; but yet it proceeded from the inner nature, the intelligible character, of the individual will in its conflict with given motives, and therefore with complete necessity.

The intellect can do nothing more than bring out clearly and fully the nature of the motives; it cannot determine the will itself; for the will is quite inaccessible to it, and, as we have seen, cannot be investigated.

If, under the same circumstances, a man could act now one way and now another, it would be necessary that his will itself should have changed in the meantime, and thus that it should lie in time, for change is only possible in time;

Therefore he cannot resolve to be this or that, nor can he become other than he is; but he is once for all, and he knows in the course of experience what he is.

According to one doctrine he wills what he knows, and according to the other he knows what he wills.

Hence, also, we are all innocent to begin with, and this merely means that neither we nor others know the evil of our own nature; it only appears with the motives, and only in time do the motives appear in knowledge. [pg 382]

Finally we come to know ourselves as quite different from what a priori we supposed ourselves to be, and then we are often terrified at ourselves.

Repentance never proceeds from a change of the will (which is impossible), but from a change of knowledge. The essential and peculiar in what I have always willed I must still continue to will;

Yet it must be observed that, in order to deceive themselves, men prearrange what seem to be hasty errors, but are really secretly considered actions.

For we deceive and flatter no one through such fine devices as ourselves.

The converse of the case we have given may also occur.

… an analogous hindrance to the will as it reveals itself in time alone, i.e., through actions, in the knowledge which seldom gives it the data quite correctly, so that the action which takes place does not accurately correspond to the will, and leads to repentance.

Repentance thus always proceeds from corrected knowledge, not from the change of the will, which is impossible.

Anguish of conscience for past deeds is anything but repentance. It is pain at the knowledge of oneself in one's inmost nature, i.e., as will. It rests precisely on the certainty that we have still the same will.

… accordance with considered and abstract motives,—is the expression of the intelligible maxims of his conduct, the result of his inmost willing, and is related as a letter to the word that stands for his empirical character, itself merely the temporal expression of his intelligible character.

In a healthy mind, therefore, only deeds oppress the conscience, not wishes and thoughts; for it is only our deeds that hold up to us the mirror of our will.

The deed referred to above, that is entirely unconsidered and is really committed in blind passion, is to a certain extent an intermediate thing between the mere wish and the resolve.

He will, therefore, envy many men on account of a position and circumstances which are yet only suitable to their characters and not to his, and in which he would feel unhappy, if indeed he found [pg 393] them endurable at all.

For as a fish is only at home in water, a bird in the air, a mole in the earth, so every man is only at home in the atmosphere suitable to him.

For example, not all men can breathe the air of court life.

For since the whole man is only the phenomenon of his will, nothing can be more perverse than to try, by means of reflection, to become something else than one is, for this is a direct contradiction of the will with itself.

The imitation of the qualities and idiosyncrasies of others is much more shameful than to dress in other people's clothes; for it is the judgment of our own worthlessness pronounced by ourselves.

Knowledge of our own mind and its capacities of every kind, and their unalterable limits, is in this respect the surest way to the attainment of the greatest possible contentment with ourselves.

Instead of the answer to this question, it appeared clearly before us how, in all the grades of its manifestation, from the lowest to the highest, the will dispenses altogether with a final goal and aim.

It always strives, for striving is its sole nature, which no attained goal can put an end to.

Therefore it is not susceptible of any final satisfaction, but can only be restrained by hindrances, while in itself it goes on for ever.

We may also transfer this terminology to the phenomena of the unconscious world, for though weaker in degree, they are identical in nature. Then we see them involved in constant suffering, and without any continuing happiness.

For all effort springs from defect—from discontent with one's estate—is thus suffering so long as it is not satisfied; but no satisfaction is lasting, rather it is always merely the starting-point of a new effort.

The striving we see everywhere hindered in many ways, everywhere in conflict, and therefore always under the form of suffering. Thus, if there is no final end of striving, there is no measure and end of suffering.

In the end, death must conquer, for we became subject to him through birth, and he only plays for a little while with his prey before he swallows it up.

We pursue our life, however, with great interest and much solicitude as long as possible, as we blow out a soap-bubble as long and as large as possible, although we know perfectly well that it will burst.

We saw that the inner being of unconscious nature is a constant striving without end and without rest. And this appears to us much more distinctly when we consider the nature of brutes and man.

If, on the other hand, it lacks objects of desire, because it is at once deprived of them by a too easy satisfaction, a terrible void and ennui comes over it, i.e., its being and existence itself becomes an unbearable burden to it.

Thus its life swings like a pendulum backwards and forwards between pain and ennui.

This has also had to express itself very oddly in this way; after man had transferred all pain and torments to hell, there then remained nothing over for heaven but ennui.

Thus its life swings like a pendulum backwards and forwards between pain and ennui.

This has also had to express itself very oddly in this way; after man had transferred all pain and torments to hell, there then remained nothing over for heaven but ennui.

But the constant striving which constitutes the inner nature of every manifestation of will obtains its primary and most general foundation at the higher grades of objectification, from the fact that here the will manifests itself as a living body, with the iron command to …

the people require panem et circenses. The strict penitentiary system of Philadelphia makes use of ennui alone as a means of punishment, through solitary confinement and idleness, and it is found so terrible that it has even led prisoners to commit suicide.

As want is the constant scourge of the people, so ennui is that of the fashionable world.

In middle-class life ennui is represented by the Sunday, and want by the six week-days.

As want is the constant scourge of the people, so ennui is that of the fashionable world.

In middle-class life ennui is represented by the Sunday, and want by the six week-days.

Thus between desiring and attaining all human life flows on throughout. The wish is, in its nature, pain; [pg 405] the attainment soon begets satiety: the end was only apparent; possession takes away the charm; the wish, the need, presents itself under a new form;

As want is the constant scourge of the people, so ennui is that of the fashionable world. In middle-class life ennui is represented by the Sunday, and want by the six week-days.

Thus between desiring and attaining all human life flows on throughout.

The wish is, in its nature, pain; [pg 405] the attainment soon begets satiety: the end was only apparent; possession takes away the charm; the wish, the need, presents itself under a new form;

Thus an error and delusion always lies at the foundation of immoderate joy or grief, and consequently both these excessive strainings of the mind can be avoided by knowledge.

Every immoderate joy (exultatio, insolens lætitia) always rests on the delusion that one has found in life what can never be found there—lasting satisfaction of the harassing desires and cares, which are constantly breeding new ones.

From every particular delusion of this kind one must inevitably be brought back later, and then when it vanishes must pay for it with pain as bitter as the joy its entrance caused was keen.

Hence it arises that we are not properly conscious of the blessings and advantages we actually possess, nor do we prize them, but think of them merely as a matter of course, for they gratify us only negatively by restraining suffering.

Only when we have lost them do we become sensible of their value; for the want, the privation, the sorrow, is the positive, communicating itself directly to us.

Thus also we are pleased by the remembrance of past need, sickness, want, and such like, because this is the only means of enjoying the present blessings.

for now there would remain nothing for it to do but to show that the glittering goal in which the hero expected to find happiness had only disappointed him, and that after its attainment he was no better off than before.

Because a genuine enduring happiness is not possible, it cannot be the subject of art.

Certainly the aim of the idyll is the description of such a happiness, but one also sees that the idyll as such cannot continue.

This is why the sight of a corpse makes us suddenly so serious.

The life of every individual, if we survey it as a whole and in general, and only lay stress upon its most significant features, is really always a tragedy, but gone through in detail, it has the character of a comedy.

For the deeds and vexations of the day, the restless irritation of the moment, the desires and fears of the week, the mishaps of every hour, are all through chance, which is ever bent upon some jest, scenes of a comedy.

In like manner, what was said by the father of history71 has not since him been contradicted, that no man has ever lived who has not wished more than once that he had not to live the following day. [pg 419]

According to this, the brevity of life, which is so constantly lamented, may be the best quality it possesses.

If, finally, we should bring clearly to a man's sight the terrible sufferings and miseries to which his life is constantly exposed, he would be seized with horror;

… open to him all the dark abodes of misery, where it hides itself from the glance of cold curiosity, and, finally, allow him to glance into the starving dungeon of Ugolino, he, too, would understand at last the nature of this “best of possible worlds.”

For whence did Dante take the materials for his hell but from this our actual world?

And yet he made a very proper hell of it. And when, on the other hand, he came to the task of describing heaven and its delights, he had an insurmountable difficulty before him, for our world affords no materials at all for this.

for the rich and the poor do not enjoy what they have, for this, as we have shown, acts in a purely negative way, but what they hope to attain to by their efforts.

They press forward with much earnestness, and indeed with an air of importance; thus children also pursue their play.

It is always an exception if such a life suffers interruption from the fact that either the æsthetic demand for contemplation or the ethical demand for renunciation proceed from a knowledge which is independent of the service of the will, and directed to the nature …

The mere refusal of a truth, i.e., of an assertion generally, is in itself no wrong, but every imposing of a lie is certainly a wrong.

He who refuses to show the strayed traveller the right road does him no wrong, but he who directs him to a false road certainly does.

It follows from what has been said, that every lie, like every act of violence, is as such wrong, because as such it has for its aim the extension of the authority of my will to other individuals, and so the assertion of my will …

Since the medium in which the motives lie is knowledge, I can only accomplish this by falsifying his knowledge, and this is the lie.

The lie always aims at influencing another's will, not merely his knowledge, for itself and as such, but only as a means, so far as it determines his will.

For my lying itself, inasmuch as it proceeds from my will, requires a motive; and only the will of another can be such a motive, not his knowledge in and for itself;

But it is just the same as if we fired a bullet against a cliff. In India our religions will never take root.

The ancient [pg 461] wisdom of the human race will not be displaced by what happened in Galilee.

On the contrary, Indian philosophy streams back to Europe, and will produce a fundamental change in our knowledge and thought.

Therefore things which are long past still weigh on the conscience.

The prayer, “Lead me not into temptation,” means, “Let me not see what manner of person I am.”

In the might with which the bad man asserts life, and which exhibits itself to him in the sufferings which he inflicts on others, he measures how far he is from the surrender and denial of that will, the only possible deliverance from the world …

If it were so, virtue could be taught, and by here expressing in abstract language its nature and the knowledge which lies at its foundation, we should make every one who comprehends this even ethically better. But this is by no means the case.

On the contrary, ethical discourses and preaching will just as little produce a virtuous man as all the systems of æsthetics from Aristotle downwards have succeeded in producing a poet.

For the real inner nature of virtue the concept is unfruitful, just as it is in art, and it is only in a completely subordinate position that it can be of use as a tool in the elaboration and preserving of what has been ascertained …

But this distinction is very hard to make, because it lies in the heart of a man.

Therefore we can scarcely ever pass a correct moral judgment on the action of others, and very seldom on our own.

The deeds and conduct of an individual and of a nation may be very much modified through dogmas, example, and custom. But in themselves all deeds (opera operata) are merely empty forms, and only the disposition which leads to them gives them moral significance.

hence the peace, the unbroken serenity, which a virtuous disposition and a good conscience affords, and the more distinct appearance of this with every good deed, for it proves to ourselves the depth of that disposition.

The egoist feels himself surrounded by strange and hostile individuals, and all his hope is centred in his own good.

The good man lives in a world of friendly individuals, the well-being of any of whom he regards as his own.

… felt suffering only comes to perception by a doubly circuitous route, imagined as the suffering of another, sympathised with as such, and then suddenly perceived again as directly our own,—in this complex frame of mind, I say, Nature relieves itself through that remarkable physical conflict.

Weeping is accordingly sympathy with our own selves, or sympathy directed back on its source.

It is therefore conditional upon the capacity for love and sympathy, and also upon imagination.

… certifies that he is a saint, for, in a moral regard, it proceeds from knowledge of the world and its nature, which is not abstractly but intuitively and directly apprehended, and is only expressed by him in any dogma for the satisfaction of his reason.

It is therefore just as little needful that a saint should be a philosopher as that a philosopher should be a saint; just as it is not necessary that a perfectly beautiful man should be a great sculptor, or that a great sculptor should himself be a beautiful man.

In general, it is a strange demand upon a moralist that he should teach no other virtue than that which he himself possesses.

The more intense the will is, the more glaring is the conflict of its manifestation, and thus the greater is the suffering.

A world which was the manifestation of a far more intense will to live than this world manifests would produce so much the greater suffering; would thus be a hell.

All suffering, since it is a mortification and a call to resignation, has potentially a sanctifying power. This is the explanation of the fact that every great misfortune or deep pain inspires a certain awe.

Between this voluntary death arising from extreme asceticism and the common suicide resulting from despair there may be various intermediate species and combinations, though this is hard to find out.

But human nature has depths, obscurities, and perplexities, the analysis and elucidation of which is a matter of the very greatest difficulty.

§ 70.

Therefore with the same necessity with which [pg 523] the stone falls to the earth, the hungry wolf buries its fangs in the flesh of its prey, without the possibility of the knowledge that it is itself the destroyed as well as the destroyer.

Necessity is the kingdom of nature; freedom is the kingdom of grace.

Now because, as we have seen, that self-suppression of the will proceeds from knowledge, and all knowledge is involuntary, that denial of will also, that entrance into freedom, cannot be forcibly attained to by intention or design, but proceeds from the inmost relation of knowing …

For what it calls the natural man, to which it denies all capacity for good, is just the will to live, which must be denied if deliverance from an existence such as ours is to be attained.

Behind our existence lies something else, which is only accessible to us if we have shaken off this world.

Having regard, not to the individuals according to the principle of sufficient reason, but to the Idea of man in its unity, Christian theology symbolises nature, the assertion of the will to live in Adam, whose sin, inherited by us, i.e., our unity with him …

47, that inherited sin is both sin and punishment at once. It is already present in new-born children, but only shows itself if they grow up. Yet the origin of this sin is to be referred to the will of the sinner.

This sinner was Adam, but we all existed in him; Adam became miserable, and in him we have all become miserable.

Certainly the doctrine of original sin (assertion of the will) and of salvation (denial of the will) is the great truth which constitutes the essence of Christianity, while most of what remains is only the clothing of it, the husk or accessories.

Yet the origin of this sin is to be referred to the will of the sinner. This sinner was Adam, but we all existed in him; Adam became miserable, and in him we have all become miserable.

Certainly the doctrine of original sin (assertion of the will) and of salvation (denial of the will) is the great truth which constitutes the essence of Christianity, while most of what remains is only the clothing of it, the husk or accessories.

Therefore Jesus Christ ought always to be conceived in the universal, as the symbol or personification of the denial of the will to live, but never as an individual, whether according to his mythical history given in the Gospels, or according to the probably true …

For neither the one nor the other will easily satisfy us entirely. It is merely the vehicle of that conception for the people, who always demand something actual.

That in recent times Christianity has forgotten its true significance, and degenerated into dull optimism, does not concern us here.

It is further an original and evangelical doctrine of [pg 525] Christianity—which Augustine, with the consent of the leaders of the Church, defended against the platitudes of the Pelagians, and which it was the principal aim of Luther's endeavour to purify from error and re-establish, …