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.
distinctly to us in the intelligent world in the life of animals, whose constant suffering is easily proved. But without lingering over these intermediate grades, we shall turn to the life of man, in which all this appears with the greatest distinctness, illuminated by the clearest knowledge ; for as the phenomenon of will becomes more complete, the suffering also becomes more and more apparent.
In the plant there is as yet no sensibility, and therefore no pain. A certain very small degree of suffering is experienced by the lowest species of animal life — infusoria and radiata; even in insects the capacity to feel and suffer is still limited. It first appears in a high degree with the complete nervous system of vertebrate animals, and always in a higher degree the more intelligence develops.
Thus, in proportion M knowledge attains to distinctness, as consciousnes^ascendsj^pain al^o increase, and therefore reaches ite highest degree in ^an.
And then, _agaia, the more distinctly a man knows, the more intelligent he is, the more pain he has ; the man who _i3 ^fted with genius suffers most of all In this sense, that isTwitBi* reference to the degree of knowledge in general, not mere abstract rational knowledge, I understand and use here that saying of the Preacher : Qui auget scimtiam, auget et dolorem.
That philosophical painter or painting philosopher, Ti^hbem, lias very beautifully expressed the accurate relation between the degree of consciousness and that of suffering by exhibiting it in a visible and cl^r form in a drawing. The upper half of his drawing represents women whose children have been stolen, and who in different groups and attitudes, express in many ways deep maternal pain, anguish, and despair.
The lower half of the drawing represents sheep whose lambs have been taken away. They are arranged and grouped in precisely the same way ; so that every human head, every human attitude of the upper half, has below a brute head and attitude corresponding to it Thus we see distinctly how the pain which is possible in the dull brute consciousness
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is related to the violent grief, which only becomes possible through distinctness of knowledge and clearness of consciousness.
We desire to consider in this way, in human exigence, the inner and essential destiny of will. Every one will easily recognise that same destiny expressed in various degrees in the life of the brutes, only more weakly, and may also convince himself to his~own satisfaction^ ffom the suffering animal wojld, how essential to all life is su^'enng.
§ 57. At every grade that is enlightened by knowledge, the will appears as an individual. The human individual finds himself as finite in infinite space and time, and consequently as a vanishing quantity compared with them. He is projected into them, and, on account of their unlimited nature, he has always a merely r^atrv^ never ^solute tvlien and where of his existence; for his jplace and duration are finite parts of w^t is infinite and boundless. His real existence is only in the present, whose unchecked flight into the past is a constant transition into death, a co^ai^ hT3*'past life, apart fromTits possible consequences for the present, and the testimony regarding the will that is expressed in it, is now entirely done with, dead, and no longer anything ; and, therefore, it must be, as a matter of reason, indifferent to him whetlier the content of that past was pain or Measure. But the present Ts aF^ys passing through his hands into ^e pastT”fhe future is quite uncertain an^ alwajs short. Thus his existence, even when we consider only its formal side, is a constant hurrying of the present into the dead past, a constant dying. But if we look at it from the physical side ; it is clear that, as our walking is admittedly merely a constantly prevented falling, the life of our body is only a constantly prevented dying, an ever-postponed death : finally, in the same way, the activity of our mind is a constantly ^[eferi’ccT ennui.
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THE WORLD AS WILL.
BK. IV.
Every breath we draw wards off the death that is constantly intruding upon us. ]ir "tEi3~M^~we~fi with it every moment., and again, at longer intervals, through every meal we eat, every sleep we take, every time we •wiffm "ourselves, In tfie end, deatH must conquer, for we became subject to him through birth, ^^lie only plays for a little while with his prey before he swallows it up. We pursue our life, however, with great interest and much solicitude as Jong as possible, as we Blow out a .^oap^buyde as long and as large"^ possible, although we know perfectly well that it will brn^stw
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