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.
vmdly in our imagination, and then ask agfu^Wh^ was all thisj^ what~Kas’T)ecome of ftT it is with it, so is it with the life of tKose" '’millions. ~br should we suppose that the past could receive a new existence because it has been sealed by death ? Our own past, the most_recmit part of if and^e^^ yesterday, is now no more than an empty~3feam of the fancy, and su^ is the past of all those milTionsr^^WEaTwasT "'W^at i8_? The will, of which life is the mirror, and knowledge free from will, which beholds it clearly in that mirror. Whoever has not yet recognised this, or will not recognise it, must add to the question asked above as to the fate of past generations of men this question also : Why he, the questioner, is^ so fortunate as to be conscious of tins costly, Ileetingi^ and only real present, while tliose hundred§,pf genefaBqns qf’msh, even the heroes and philosophers of those ages, have sunk into the night of the past, and have thus become nothing; but he, his insignificant ego, actually exists? of inbre shortly, though somewhat strangely : Why tins now, his now, is .lUSt now and was ^t hng ago ? Since he asks such strange questions, he regards his existence and his time as independent of each other, and the former as projected into the latter. He assumes indeed two nows — one which belongs to the object, the other which belongs to the subject, and marvels at the happy accident of their coincidence. But in truth, only the point of contact of the object, the form of which is time, with the subject, which has no mode of the principle of sufficient reason as its form, constitutes the present, as is shown in the essay on the principle of sufficient reason. Now all object is the will so far as it has become idea, and the subject is the necessary correlative of the object. But real objects are only in the
36o the world i4S WILL. bk. iv.
present ; the past and the future contain only conceptions and fancies, therefore the present is the essential form of the phenomenon of the will, and inseparable from it. The present alone is that which always exists and remains immovable.
That which, empirically apprehended, is the most transitory of all, presents itself to the metaphysical vision, which sees beyond the forms of empirical perception, as that which alone endures, the nunc stans of the schoolmen. The source and the supporter of its content is the will to live or the thing -in -itself, — which we are.
That which constantly becomes and passes away, in that it has either already been or is still to be, belongs to the phenomenon as such on account of its forms, which make coming into being and passing away possible. Accordingly, we must think ; — Quid fuU i — Quod est. Quid erit ? — Quod fuit ; and take it in the strict meaning of the words; thus understand not simile but idem. For life is certain to the will, and the present is certain to life.
Thus it is that every one can say, “ I am once for all lord of the present, and through all eternity it will accompany me as my shadow : therefore I do not wonder where it has come from, and how it happens that it is exactly now.
We might compare time to a constantly revolving sphere ; the half that was always sinking would be the past, that which was always rising would be the future ; but the indivisible point at the top, where the tangent touches, would be the extensionless present.
As the tangent does not revolve with the sphere, neither does the present, the point of contact of the object, the form of which is time, with the subject, which has no form, because it does not belong to the knowable, but is the condition of all that is knowable. Or, time is like an unceasing stream, and the present a rock on which the stream breaks itself, but does not car^
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