The World as Will and Idea Volume I Part 15

Before us there is certainly only nothingness. But that which resists this pa.s.sing into nothing, our nature, is indeed just the will to live, which we ourselves are as it is our world. That we abhor annihilation so greatly, is simply another expression of the fact that we so strenuously will life, and are nothing but this will, and know nothing besides it. But if we turn our glance from our own needy and embarra.s.sed condition to those who have overcome the world, in whom the will, having attained to perfect self-knowledge, found itself again in all, and then freely denied itself, and who then merely wait to see the last trace of it vanish with the body which it animates; then, instead of the restless striving and effort, instead of the constant transition from wish to fruition, and from joy to sorrow, instead of the never-satisfied and never-dying hope which const.i.tutes the life of the man who wills, we shall see that peace which is above all reason, that perfect calm of the spirit, that deep rest, that inviolable confidence and serenity, the mere reflection of which in the countenance, as Raphael and Correggio have represented it, is an entire and certain gospel; only knowledge remains, the will has vanished. We look with deep and painful longing upon this state, beside which the misery and wretchedness of our own is brought out clearly by the contrast. Yet this is the only consideration which can afford us lasting consolation, when, on the one hand, we have recognised incurable suffering and endless misery as essential to the manifestation of will, the world; and, on the other hand, see the world pa.s.s away with the abolition of will, and retain before us only empty nothingness. Thus, in this way, by contemplation of the life and conduct of saints, whom it is certainly rarely granted us to meet with in our own experience, but who are brought before our eyes by their written history, and, with the stamp of inner truth, by art, we must banish the dark impression of that nothingness which we discern behind all virtue and holiness as their final goal, and which we fear as children fear the dark; we must not even evade it like the Indians, through myths and meaningless words, such as reabsorption in Brahma or the Nirvana of the Buddhists. Rather do we freely acknowledge that what remains after the entire abolition of will is for all those who are still full of will certainly nothing; but, conversely, to those in whom the will has turned and has denied itself, this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky-ways-is nothing.(92)

FOOTNOTES

1 F. H. Jacobi.

2 The Hegelian Philosophy.

3 Fichte and Sch.e.l.ling.

4 Hegel.

5 Kant is the only writer who has confused this idea of reason, and in this connection I refer the reader to the Appendix, and also to my "Grundprobleme der Ethik": Grundl. dd. Moral. -- 6, pp. 148-154, first and second editions.

6 Mira in quibusdam rebus verborum proprietas est, et consuetudo sermonis antiqui quaedam efficacissimis notis signat. _Seneca_, epist. 81.

7 It is shown in the Appendix that matter and substance are one.

8 This shows the ground of the Kantian explanation of matter, that it is "that which is movable in s.p.a.ce," for motion consists simply in the union of s.p.a.ce and time.

9 Not, as Kant holds, from the knowledge of time, as will be explained in the Appendix.

10 On this see "The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason," -- 49.

11 The first four chapters of the first of the supplementary books belong to these seven paragraphs.

12 Compare with this paragraph ---- 26 and 27 of the third edition of the essay on the principle of sufficient reason.

13 Cf. Ch. 5 and 6 of the Supplement.

14 Cf. Ch. 9 and 10 of the Supplement.

15 Cf. Ch. 11 of Supplement.

16 I am therefore of opinion that a science of physiognomy cannot, with certainty, go further than to lay down a few quite general rules.

For example, the intellectual qualities are to be read in the forehead and the eyes; the moral qualities, the expression of will, in the mouth and lower part of the face. The forehead and the eyes interpret each other; either of them seen alone can only be half understood. Genius is never without a high, broad, finely-arched brow; but such a brow often occurs where there is no genius. A clever-looking person may the more certainly be judged to be so the uglier the face is; and a stupid-looking person may the more certainly be judged to be stupid the more beautiful the face is; for beauty, as the approximation to the type of humanity, carries in and for itself the expression of mental clearness; the opposite is the case with ugliness, and so forth.

17 Cf. Ch. 7 of the Supplement.

18 Cf. Ch. 8 of Supplement.

19 Suarez, Disput. Metaphysicae, disp. iii. sect. 3, t.i.t. 3.

20 Cf. Ch. 12 of Supplement.

21 The reader must not think here of Kant's misuse of these Greek terms, which is condemned in the Appendix.

22 Spinoza, who always boasts that he proceeds _more geometrico_, has actually done so more than he himself was aware. For what he knew with certainty and decision from the immediate, perceptive apprehension of the nature of the world, he seeks to demonstrate logically without reference to this knowledge. He only arrives at the intended and predetermined result by starting from arbitrary concepts framed by himself (_substantia causa sui_, &c.), and in the demonstrations he allows himself all the freedom of choice for which the nature of the wide concept-spheres afford such convenient opportunity. That his doctrine is true and excellent is therefore in his case, as in that of geometry, quite independent of the demonstrations of it. Cf. ch. 13 of supplementary volume.

23 Cf. Ch. 17 of Supplement.

24 Omnes perturbationes judicio censent fieri et opinione. Cic. Tusc., 4, 6. ?a?a.s.se? t??? a????p??? ?? ta p?a?ata, a??a ta pe?? t??

p?a?at?? d??ata (Perturbant homines non res ipsae, sed de rebus opiniones). Epictet., c. v.

25 ???t? ?a? est? t? a?t??? t??? a????p??? pa?t?? t?? ?a???, t? ta?

p?????e?? ta? ????a? ? d??as?a? efa???e?? ta?? ep? e???? (Haec est causa mortalibus omnium malorum, non posse communes notiones aptare singularibus). Epict. dissert., ii., 26.

26 Cf. Ch. 16 of Supplement.

27 Cf. Ch. xviii. of the Supplement.

28 We can thus by no means agree with Bacon if he (De Augm. Scient., L.

iv. in fine.) thinks that all mechanical and physical movement of bodies has always been preceded by perception in these bodies; though a glimmering of truth lies at the bottom of this false proposition. This is also the case with Kepler's opinion, expressed in his essay _De Planeta Martis_, that the planets must have knowledge in order to keep their elliptical courses so correctly, and to regulate the velocity of their motion so that the triangle of the plane of their course always remains proportional to the time in which they pa.s.s through its base.

29 Cf. Ch. xix. of the Supplement.

30 Cf. Ch. xx. of the Supplement, and also in my work, "_Ueber den Willen in der Natur_," the chapters on Physiology and Comparative Anatomy, where the subject I have only touched upon here is fully discussed.

31 This is specially treated in the 27th Ch. of the Supplement.

32 This subject is fully worked out in my prize essay on the freedom of the will, in which therefore (pp. 29-44 of the "Grundprobleme der Ethik") the relation of _cause_, _stimulus_, and _motive_ has also been fully explained.

33 Cf. Ch. xxiii. of the Supplement, and also the Ch. on the physiology of plants in my work "Ueber den Willen in der Natur," and the Ch. on physical astronomy, which is of great importance with regard to the kernel of my metaphysic.

34 Wenzel, De Structura Cerebri Hominis et Brutorum, 1812, ch. iii.; Cuvier, Lecons d'Anat., comp. lecon 9, arts. 4 and 5; Vic. d'Azyr, Hist. de l'Acad. de Sc. de Paris, 1783, pp. 470 and 483.

35 On the 16th of September 1840, at a lecture upon Egyptian Archaeology delivered by Mr. Pettigrew at the Literary and Scientific Inst.i.tute of London, he showed some corns of wheat which Sir G. Wilkinson had found in a grave at Thebes, in which they must have lain for three thousand years. They were found in an hermetically sealed vase. Mr.

Pettigrew had sowed twelve grains, and obtained a plant which grew five feet high, and the seeds of which were now quite ripe.-_Times_, 21st September 1840. In the same way in 1830 Mr. Haulton produced in the Medical Botanical Society of London a bulbous root which was found in the hand of an Egyptian mummy, in which it was probably put in observance of some religious rite, and which must have been at least two thousand years old. He had planted it in a flower-pot, in which it grew up and flourished. This is quoted from the Medical Journal of 1830 in the Journal of the Royal Inst.i.tute of Great Britain, October 1830, p. 196.-"In the garden of Mr. Grimstone of the Herbarium, Highgate, London, is a pea in full fruit, which has sprung from a pea that Mr. Pettigrew and the officials of the British Museum took out of a vase which had been found in an Egyptian sarcophagus, where it must have lain 2844 years."-_Times_, 16th August 1844. Indeed, the living toads found in limestone lead to the conclusion that even animal life is capable of such a suspension for thousands of years, if this is begun in the dormant period and maintained by special circ.u.mstances.

36 Cf. Chap. xxii. of the Supplement, and also my work "Ueber den Willen in der Natur," p. 54 _et seq._, and pp. 70-79 of the first edition, or p. 46 _et seq._, and pp. 63-72 of the second, or p. 48 _et seq._, and pp. 69-77 of the third edition.

37 The Scholastics therefore said very truly: _Causa finalis movet non secundum suum esse reale, sed secundum esse cognitum._ Cf. Suarez, Disp. Metaph. disp. xxiii., sec. 7 and 8.

38 Cf. "Critique of Pure Reason. Solution of the Cosmological Ideas of the Totality of the Deduction of the Events in the Universe," pp.

560-586 of the fifth, and p. 532 and following of first edition; and "Critique of Practical Reason," fourth edition, pp. 169-179; Rosenkranz' edition, p. 224 and following. Cf. my Essay on the Principle of Sufficient Reason, -- 43.

39 Cf. "Ueber den Willen in der Natur," at the end of the section on Comparative Anatomy.

40 Cf. "Ueber den Willen in der Natur," the section on Comparative Anatomy.

41 Chatin, Sur la Valisneria Spiralis, in the Comptes Rendus de l'Acad.

de Sc., No. 13, 1855.

42 Cf. Chaps. xxvi. and xxvii. of the Supplement.