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

not at all to knowledge. Indeed, the will shows itself here almost as independent of knowledge, as in those parts which, acting merely in consequence of stimuli, are subservient to vegetative life and reproduction, in which the will works blindly as in unconscious Nature. For generation is only reproduction passing over to a new individuaT,~a¥ il~wefe reproJucBoTi^tlhe^s^^ as death’

is only excretion at_the second power. According to all this, the genitals are properly the focus of will, and consequently the opposite pole of the brain, the representative of knb\^edge, ie., the other side of the world, the world as idea. I’he former are the life-sustaining principle ensiiring endless life to time. In this respect they were worshipped by the Greeks in the by _ the

Sindus in the lingam, which arc thus ftie symbol of the assertion of the will. Knowledge, on the other hand, aSordTtKe possTKfity of the suppressidhTdf jelling, of salTOli6h~fhrougE^ freeiJom, of conquest and anniIuration_ of the wqrid.

We already considered fully at the beginning of this Fourth Book how the will to live in its assertion must regard its relation to death. We saw that death does not trouble it, because it exists as something included in life itself and belonging to it Its opposite, generation^ completely counterbalances it ; and, in spite oFthe death of the individual, ensures and guarantees life to the wiU to live througE~SCI timeT *Td”^press ‘ tins' ' the 'Hindus made the lingam an attribute of Siva, the god of death. We also fully explained there how he wHo with full consmousness occupies the standpoint of the decided asserfiSn of life awaits death witâut fear. We shall therefore say nothing more about this here. Without clear consciousness most men occupy this standpoint and continually a.ssert life. The world exists as the mirror of this assertion, with innumerable individuals in infinite time and space, in infinite suffering, between generation and death without end. Yet from no side is a complaint to bep. 427 further raised about this ; for the will conducts the great tragedy and comedy at its own expense, and is also its own spectator. The world is just what it is because the will, whose manifestation it is, is what it is, because it so wills. The jtistification of suffering is, that in this phenomenon also the will asserts itself 7~ahd^ this assertion is justified ahdr~bnance3r'5y~the~fa5b that the will bears the suffering. Here we get a glimpse of etertial justice in the whole : we shall recognise it later more definitely and distinctly^ and also in the particular. But first we must consider temporal or human justice.^

§ 61. It may be remembered from the Second Book that in the whole of nature, at all the grades of the objectification of will, there was a necessary and constant conflict between the individuals of all species ; and in this way was expressed the inner contradiction of the will to live with itself. At the highest grade of the objectification, this phenomenon, like all others, will exhibit itself with greater distinctness, and will therefore be more easily explained. With this aim we shall next attempt to trace the source of egoism as the starting-point of all conflict.

We have called time and space the principium individuationis, because only through them and in them is multiplicity of the homogeneous possible. They are the essential forms of natural knowledge, i.e., ,knowledge springing from the will Therefore the will everywhere manifests itself in the multiplicity of individuals EuF this multiplicity does not concern the will as thing-in-itself, but only its. phenoineixa, The will itsel? is present, whole and undiyidedj^ m every one of these, and beholds around it the innumerably repeated imaffl ot Its bwn~ nature; but this nature itself, the actually real, it finds directly only in iits inner self. Therefore every one diMufes^ very thuig for himsmfTHesires to possess, or at least to control, everything, and whatever opposes it it would like to destroy. To this is added, m

^ Of. Oh. xly. of the Supplement.

42« THB world as will. bk. iv