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

Lastly; it is this bless^ness of will-less perceptionp. 257 which casts an enchanting glamour over the past and distant, and presents them to us in so fair a light by means of self-deception. For as we think of days long gone by, days in which we lived in a distant place, it is only the objects which our fancy recalls, not the subject of win, which bore about with it then its incurable sorrows just as it bears them now ; but they are forgotten, because since then they have often given place to others. Now, objective perception acts with regard to what is remembered just as it would in what is present, if we let it have influence over us, if we suiTendered ourselves to it free from wiU. Hence it arises that, especially when we are more than ordinarily disturbed by some want, the remembrance of past and distant scenes suddenly flits across our minds like a lost paradise. The fancy recalls only what was objective, not what was individually subjective, and we imagine that that objective stood before us then just as pure and undisturbed by any relation to the will as its image stands in our fancy now; while in reality the relation of the objects to our will gave us pain then just as it does now. We can deliver ourselves from all suffering just as well through present objects as through distant ones whenever we raise ourselves to a purely objective contemplation of them, and so are able to bring about the illusion that only the objects are present and not we ourselves. Then, as the pure subject of knowledge, freed from the miserable self, we become entirely one with these objects, and, for the moment, our wants are as foreign to us as they are to them. The world as idea alone remains, and ttm world as. wilLbas disa^earedT

In all these reflections it has been my object to bring out clearly the nature and the scope of the subjective element in aesthetic pleasure ; the deliverance of knowledge from the service of the will, the forgetting of self as an individual, and the raising of the consciousness to the pure will-less, timeless, subject of knowledge, indeisS TUB WOULD AS IDEA. BK. ill.

pendent of all relations. With this subjective side of aesthetic contein^afion, there must always appear as its necessary correlative the objective side, the intuitive comprehension of the Platonic Idea. But before we turn to the closer consideration of this, and to the achievements of art in relation to it, it is better that we should pause for a little at the subjective side of sesthetic pleasure, in order to complete our treatment of this by explaining the impression of the sublime which depends altogether upon it, and arises from a modification of it. After that we shall complete our investigation of eesthetic pleasure by considering its objective side.

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. Dante’s Paradise would look very much like Vauxhall irTTohdon, for alT the LTessed spirits appear as points of light and arrange themselves in regular figures. The very^ahsence of light makes us sad ; its return cheers us. Colours excite directly a keen Helight, which reaches ifs highest degree when they^^ are transparent. All this dei^nds entirely upon the fact that light is the correlative and condition of the most perfect kind of knowledge of perception, the only knowledge which does not in any way affect the will. For sight, unlike the affections of the other senses, cannot, in itself, directly and through its sensuous effect, make the sensation of the special organ agreeable or disagreeable ; that is, it has no immediate connection with the wilL Such a quality can only belong to the perception which arises in the understanding, and then it lies in the relation of the object to the wilL In the case of hearing this is to some extent otherwise; sounds can give pain directly, and they may also be sensuously agreeable, directly and without regard to

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