The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp
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The translator’s English as printed (R. B. Haldane & J. Kemp). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
sion of that in which all the rest of life consists. This is through and through nothing else than the constant change of matter in the fixed permanence of form ; and this is what constitutes the transitoriness of the individual and the permanence of the species. Constant nourishment and renewal differ from generation only in degree, and constant excretion differs only in degree from death.
The first shows itself most simply and distinctly in the plant. The plant is throughout a constant recurrence of the same impulse of its simplest fibre, which groups itself into leaf and branch. It is a systematic aggregate of similar plants supporting each other, whose constant reproduction is its single impulse.
It ascends to the full satisfaction of this tendency through the grades of its metamorphosis, finally to the blossom and fruit, that compendium of its existence and effort in which it now attains, by a short way, to that which is its single aim, and at a stroke produces a thousand-fold what, up till then, it effected only in the particular case — ^the repetition of itself.
Its earlier growth and development stands in the same relation to its fruit as writing stands to printing. With the animal it is clearly quite the same. The process of nourishing is a constant reproduction ; the process of reproduction is a higher power of nourishing. The ple^ure which accoiapames the act of procreation is a higher power of , the agreeableness of the sense of life.
On the other hand, excretion, the constant e:^alation and throwing off of matter, is the same as that which, at a higher power, death^ is the conti^y of generation. And if here we are always ^^^cdhlbeht to retain the form without lamenting the discarded matter, vie ought to bj^r ourselves in the sa^ 3eatS the same thing happens, in ji fogher degree and to the wKoIeT^as tokes place daily and h9ur]j iq_.j8^_ partial manner in excretion ; if we are indifferent to the one, we oughrn^lo'sKnnk from the o£Eerr~" therefore, from this point of view, it appears just as perverse to desire
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THE WORLD AS WILL.
BK. IV.
the continuance of an individuality which will be replaced by other individuals as to desire the pefmanence of matter which will be replaced by other matter. It appears just as foohsh^to einhalm the body as it would cMefiSnj^ ^resei^e jts_excrement As to the individual consciousness which is bound to the individual body, it^ absolutely interrupted every ,d^ bjy sleep. Deep sleep is, while it lasts, in no way different from dea&, into wElcS, m fact, it often passes continuously, as in the case of freezing to death. It differs only with regard to the future, the awaking. Death is a sleep in ^fch individuality is forgotten ; everything else wakes agmn, or rather ne^ sTep^
Above all things, we must distinctly recognise that the form of the phenomenon of will, the form of life or reality, is really only the present, not the future nor the pafit. The latter are only in the conception, exist only in the connection of knowledge, so far as it follows the principle of sufficient reason. No man has ever Jfved in the past, and none wiU live in the future ; the alone is the formljf ILir' Iife, aiid is it3_.suie possession which can never Jbe taken from Jt. The j)resent always together, with.-it3-..contenL Both remain fixed without wavering, like the rainbow on the waterfall. For life is firm a.nd certain iii the will, and the present
Certainly, if we reflect bn
oui-selves in nursdveHf and indepen^ dcrU of the objects of k nowledge and will. Now this is by no means possible, for as soon as we turn into ourbt'lves to mako the attempt, and seek for once to know our8elve.s fully by means of introspective reflection, w'Q are lost in a bottomless void; we find ourselves like the hollow glass globe, from out of which a voice speaks w'hose cause is not to be found in it, and whereas we desired to com})rehend ourselves, we find, with a shudder, notliing but a vanishing spectre.
is firm and certain in Hfe.
^ The following remark may assist those for whom it is not too subtle to understand clearly that the indi> vidual is only the phenomenon, not the thing in itself. Every individual is, on the one hand, the subject of knowing, t.c., the complemental condition of the possibility of the whole objective world, and, on the other hand, a particular phenomenon of will, the same will which objectifies itself in everything. But this double nature of our being does not rest upon a selfexisting unity, otherwise it would
Ka rvAHniblA fnr im f.n be eonsmotifl tifp. 359 the thousands of years that are past, of the millions of men who lived in them, we ask, what has become of them ? B need only recall our own past life and renew its scenes
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