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.
Vni, as thing-in-itself, is just as little subordinate to the principle of sufficient reasonp. 361 as the subject of knowledge, which, finally, in a certain regard is the will itself or its expression. And as life, its own phenomenon, is assured to the will, so is ths l^sent, the single form of real life. Therefore we have not to investigate the past before life, nor the future after death ; we have rather to know the freserU, the one form in which the will manifests itself.^ It will not escape from the will, but neither will the will escape from it. If, therefore, life as it is satisfies, whoever affirms it in every way may regard it with confidence as endless, and banish the fear 'of death as an illusion that inspires him with the foolish dread that he can ever be robbed of the present, and foreshadows a~time Tn which there is no present; an illusion with regard^to time analogous to the illusion with regard to ^^ce through which every one imagines the position on the globe he happens to occupy as above, and all other places as below. In the same way every one links the present to his own individuality, and imagines that all present is extinguished with it ; that then past and future might be without a present But as on the surface of the globe every place is above, so the form of all life is the present, and to fear death hecauto it robs us of the present, is just m foolish as to fear that we may slip down from the round globe upon which we have now the good fortune to occupy the upper surface. The present is the form essential to the objectification of the will. It cuts time, which extends infinitely in both directions, as a mathematical point, and stands immovably fixed, like an everlasting mid-day with no cool evening, as the actual sun burns without intermission, while it only seems to sink into the bosom of night. Therefore, if ^man fears death as his ajanj^jt^jOB, it is justj^ifb^ were to thi^ that the sun cries out at evening, “ Woe is
* “ Scholastici docuerunt, quod quod erat Nunc Adamo, inter seternitas non sit temporia sine fine nunc et tunc nullam esse different aut principio successio ; sed Nunc tiam.” — Hobbes, Leviathan, o. 46. i.e., idem nobia Nunc esse,
p. 362
THE WORLD AS WILL.
BK. IV.
me ! for I go down into eternal ni^ht.” * And conversely. wEoever is oppressed with the burden of life, whoever desires life and affirms it^, but abhors its torments, and especially can no longer endure the hard lot that has fallen to himself, such a man has no deliverance to Hope for from death, and cannot right himself bj^suicida The OToI shades o! ^cus allure him only with the false appearSacT of a haven of rest.
The earth rolls Trom day into night, til e individual dieSj^ut the sun itself ^mesi wltKout intermission, an eternal noon. Life is assured to the will to live ; the form of life is an endless present, no matter how the individuals, the phenomena of the Idea^ arise and pass away in time, lilce fleeting dr^ms.
Thus even already suicide appears to us as a vain and therefore a fdolisli action; when we have carried our investigation further it wil^appear to us in a still less favourable light Dogmas change and our knowledge is deceptive ; but Nature never errs, her procedure is sure, and she novel conceals it .. Everything is entirely in Nature, and Nature is entire in .everythliig^ . SKeTias' her centre' in' every brute.
It has surely found its way into existence, and it will surely find its way out of it. In the meantime it lives, fearless and without care, in the presence of annihilation, supported by the consciousness that it is Nature herself, and imperishable as she is. Man alone carries about with him, in abstract conceptions, the certainty of his death ; yet this can only trouble liim very^^ rarely,
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