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

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THE WORLD AS IDEA.

BK. III.

evaded. Yet one tragedy may be referred to as a perfect model of tHis kind, a tragedy which in pther respects is far surpassed by more than one jvqrk of the same_g^rea^ master; it is “Clayigo.’L. “Hamlet” belongs to a certain extent to this class, as far as the relation of Hamlet to Laertes and Ophelia is concerned. “Wallenstein” has also this excellence. “ Faust ” belongs entirely to this class, if we regard the events connected with Gretchen and her brother as the principal action ; also the “Cid” of Corneflle,_ only that_ it lacks the tragm conclusion, while on tHe con'Erary the analogous relation of Max to Theda has_it.^

§ 52. Now that we have considered all the fine arts in the general way that is suitable to our point of view, beginning with architecture, the peculiar end of which is to elucidate the objectification of will at the lowest grades of its visibility, in which it shows itself as the dumb unconscious tendency of the mass in accordance with laws, and yet already reveals a breach of the unity of will with itself in a conflict between gravity and rigidity — and ending with the consideration of tragedy, which presents to us at the highest grades of the objectification of will this very conflict with itself in terrible magnitude and distinctness ; we And that there is still another fine art which has been excluded from our consideration, and had to be excluded, for in the systematic connection of our exposition there was no fitting place for it — I mean music. It stands alone, quite cut off from all the other arts. In it we do not recognise the copy or repetition of any Idea of existence in the world. Yet it is such a great and exceedingly noble art, its effect on the inmost nature of man is so powerful, and it is so entirely and deeply understood by him in his inmost consciousness as a perfectly universal language, the distinctness of which surpasses even that of tho perceptible world itself, that we certainly have more to ^ Of. Ch. XXX vii. of the Supplement,

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look for in it than an exercitum ariihmeticce occultum nescientis se numerare animi^ which Leibnitz called it. Yet he was perfectly right, as he considered only its immediate external significance, its form.

But if it were nothing more, the satisfaction which it affords would be like that which we feel when a sum in arithinelic comes out right, and could not be that intense pleasure with which we see the deepest recesses^ our nature find utterance^ Prom oulTstaiid^ point, therefore, at which the sesthetic effect is the criterion, we must attribute to music a far more serious and deep significance, connected with the inmost nature of the world and our own self, and in reference to which the arithmetical proportions, to which it may be reduced, are related, not as the thing signified, but merely as the sign.

That in some sense music must be related to the world as the representation to the thing represented, as the copy to the original, we may conclude from the analogy of the other arts, all of which possess this character, and affect us on the whole in the same way as it does, only that the effect of music is stronger, quicker, more necessary and infallible.

Further, its representative relation to the world must be very deep, absolutely true, and strikingly accurate, because it is instantly understood by every one, and has the appearance of a certain infallibility, because its form may be reduced to perfectly definite rules expressed in numbers, from which it cannot free itself without entirely ceasing to be music.

Yet the point of comparison between music and the world, the respect in which it stands to the world in the relation of a copy or repetition, is very obscure. Men have practised music in all ages without being able to account for this ; content to understand it directly, they renounce all claim to an abstract conception of this direct understanding itself.