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

p. 241

them that restless aspiration, that unceasing desire for new things, and for the 'cohfempTaSoh of lofty things, and alsol^t longing that is hardly ever satisfied, for of simU^ M.4 pI.. like, stature, to whom theyjnight TOmmunicate themselves ; whilst the _common mortal, entirely filled and satisfied by the common present, ends in it, and finding everywhere his like, enjoys that peculiar satisfaction in daily life that is denied to gehuisr'

Inaagination has rightly been recognised as an essential element of genius ; itjias sometimes even been regarded as identical with, it ; but this is a mistake. As the objects of genius are the eternal Ideas, the permanent, essential forms of the world and all its phenomena, and as the knowledge of the Idea is necessarily knowledge through perception, is not abstract, the knowledge of the genius would be limited to the Ideas of the objects actually present to his person, and dependent upon the chain of circumstances that brought these objects to him, if his imagination did not extend his horizon far beyond the limits of his actual personal existence, and thus enable him to construct the whole out of the little that conies into his own actual apperception, and so to let almost all possible scenes of life pass before him in his own consciousness. Further, the actual objects are ahnost always very imperfect copies of the Ideas expressed in them; therefore the man of genius requires imagination in order to see in things, not that which Nature has actually made, but that which she endeavoured to make, yet could not because of that conflict of her forms among themselves which we referred to in the last book. We shall return to this farther on in treating of sculpture. The imagination then extends the intellectual horizon of the man of genius beyond the objects which actually present themselves to him, both as regards quality and quantity Therefore extra,ordinary ^strength of imagination accpm p^ies, and is indeed a necessary condition, of genius But the converse does not hold, for strength of imagi242

THE WORLD AS IDEA.

BK. HI.

nation does not indicate genius ; on the contrary, men who have no touch of genius may have much Tniagihatiom “as it Ts possihle to consider a real o1[)jecr''m'iEwo opposite ways, purely objectively, the way of genius grasping its Idea, or in the common way, merely in the relations in which it stands to other objects and to one’s own will, in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason, it is also possible to perceive an imaginary object in both of these ways.

Regarded in the first way, it is a means to the knowledge of the Idea, the communication of which is the work of art; in the second case, the imaginary object is used to build castles in the air congenial to egotism and the individual humour, and which for the moment delude and gratify ; thus only the relations of the phantasies so linked together are known.

The man who indulges in such an amusement is a dreamer ; he will easily mingle those fancies that delight his solitude with reality, and so unfit himself for real life : perhaps he will write them down, and then we "ihaTT have the ordinary novel of every description, which entertains those who are like him and the public at large, for the readers imagine themselves in the place of the hero, and then find the story very agreeable.