The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp

The recfprocal adaptation and self-accommodation of phenomena that springs from this unity cannot, however, annul the inner contradiction which appears in the uniyersd conflict of nature described aboye^ , and which

1 Ohatin, Sur la Valisneria Spiralis, in the Ck>mptes Rendus de I’Acad. de So., No. 13, 1855.

THE OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL.

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is essential to the will. That harmony goes only so far as to render possible the duration of the world and the different kinds of existences in it, which without it would long since have perished. Therefore it only extends to the continuance of the species, and the general conditions of life, but not to that of the individual. If, then, by reason of that harmony and accommodation, tim species in organised nature and the universal f(/rces in unorganised nature continue to exist beside each other, and indeed support each other reciprocally, on the other hand, the inner cbhtradfcffoh of the will which objectifies itself in all these ideas shows itself in the ceaseless internecine war of the individuals of these species, and in the constant struggle of tliQinanifestationsoi these natural forces with each other, as we pointed out above. The scene and tlie object of this conflict is matter, which they try to wrest from each other, and also space and time, the combination 6T which through the form of causality is, in fact, matter, as was explained in the Fii’st Book.^

§ 29. I here conclude the second principal division of my exposition, in the hope that, so far as is possible in the case of an entirely new thought, which cannot be quite free from traces of the individuality in which it originated, I have succeeded in conveying to the reader the complete certainty that this world in which we live and have our being is in its whole nature through and through vnll, and a,t the same time through and through t^’eoT^hat this idea, as such, already presupposes a form, object and subject, is therefore relative; and if we_ask v^at remains if we taire away lhis_ fornij^ an^ all those fbrfds W’lhch'~are subordinate to itj and which express^ the principle of sufficient reason, the answer must be that as Bompthing loto genere ^^erânt horn idea, tliis can be nothing but wUl, which is thus properly the ihing-inifse??!"'Every one hnds that lie himself Ts this willi'' in which the real nature of the w^rld consists, and he also

^ Cf. Chaps, xxvi. and xxvii. of the Supplement.

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THE WORLD AS WILL.

BK. II,

finds that he is the knowing subject, whose idea the wEdleTworld is, the world which exists only in'^ehllion to his consciousness, as its necessary supporter. one is thus Tnms(nf in a doulbTe aspect the whole world, the microcosm ; finds both sides whole and complete in~lnmself.

And what he thus recognises as hjs own real being also exhausts the. heil»g._Qf the .\YMle„world — the macrocosm ; thus the worlds like man, is through and through ivill, and through and through idea, and nothing more than this. So we see the philosophy of Thales^ which concerned the macrocosm, unite at this point with that of Socrates, which dealt with the microcosni^7or the object of both is found, to he the same.

But all the knowledge that has been communicated in the two first books will gain greater completeness, and consequently greater certainty, from the two following books, in which I hope that several questions that have more or less distinctly arisen in the course of our work will also be sufficiently answered.