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

complicated (nroXvreXeaTepa) aims for sustaining a being of manifold requirements. Thus originally and according to its nature, knowledge is completely subject to the will, and, like the immediate object, which, by means of the application of the law of causality, is its starting-point, all knowledge which proceeds in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason remains in a closer or more distant relation to the will. For the individual finds his body as an object among objects, to all of which it is related and connected according to the principle

^ Cf. Chap. xxix. of Supplement.

p. 229

of sufficient reason. Thus all investigations of these relations and connections lead back to his body, and consequently to his will.

Since it is the principle of sufficient reason which places the objects in this relation to the body, and, through it, to the will, the one endeavour of the knowledge which is subject to this principle will be to find out the relations in which objects are placed to each other through this principle, and thus to trace their innumerable connections in space, time, and causality.

For only through these is the object interesting to the individual, i.e., related to the will Therefore the knowledge which is subject to the will knows nothing further of objects than their relations, knows the objects only so far as they exist at this time, in this place, under these circumstances, from these causes, and with these effects — in a word, as particular things ; and if all these relations were to be taken away, the objects would also have disappeared for it, because it knew nothing more about them.

We must not disguise the fact that what the sciences consider in things is also in reality nothing more than this ; their relations, the connections of time and space, the causes of natural changes, the resemblance of forms, the motives of actions, — thus merely relations.

Whai distinguishes science from ordinary knowledge is merely its systematic form, the facilitating of knowledge by'The cbmprehehsion'of IJI' ^ftrciilsjs in'TKe'uhive']^',' by means of the subordinationToiTconcepts, and the cbmpleteness of knowledge, which is . thjere^ attained All relation has itself only a relative existence ; for example, aiTbein^in time is also non-being; for time is only that by means of which opposite determinations can belong to the same thing ; therefore every phenomenon which is in time ^ain is not, for what separates ,its beginning from its^nd is only time, which is essentially a fleeting, inconstant, and relative thing, here called duration. But time is the most~universariorm~of all objects of the

THE WORLD AS IDEA.

BK. in.

*3° knowledge which is subject to the will, and the prototype of its other forms.

Knowledge now, as a rule, remains alvvnys siibordinate to the service of the will,_as indeed it originated for this "service, and grew, so Jo speak, to the will, as tlie head to the body;. '~Tn"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. This distinction between man and brute is outwardly expressed by the difference of the relation of the head to the body. In the case of the lower brutes both are deformed : in all brutes the head is directed towards the earth, where the objects of its will. .he ; even Th the higii^ specieT the head and the body are still far more one than in the case of man, w'hose head seems freely set upon his body, as if only carried by and not serving it. This human excellence is exhibited in the highest degree by tFe AipIIo of Belvedere ; the head oFTlTe i^d of the Muses, with eyes fixed on tlie far distance, stands so freely on his ^loulders that it seems wholly delivered ffbni' the body, and no more subject to its ca,res.