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

Thus we have come to recognise in the state the means by which egoism endowed with reason seeks to escape from its own evil consequences which turn against itself, and now each promotes the well-being of all because he sees that his own well-being is involved in it. If the state attained its end completely, then to a certain extent something approaching to an Utopia might finally, by the removal of all kinds of evil, be brought about. For by the human powers united in it, it is able to make the rest of nature more and more serviceable. But as yet the state has always remained very far from this goal. And even if it attained to it, innumerable evils essential to all life would still keep it in suffering ; and finally, if they were all removed, ennui would at once occupy

452 the world as WILL. BK. IV.

every place they left And besides, the strife of individuals is never completely abolished by the state, for it vexes in trifles when it is prohibited in greater things. Finally, EriSj happily expelled frmn wi^in, turns to what is without : as^J^e conflict of individuals, she is banished by the institution of the stete ; but she reappears from without jw the war of nations, and now demands in hulk and at once, as an accumulated debK the bloody sacrifice which by wise precautions has been denied her in the particular. And even supposing that all this were finally overcome and removed, by wisdom founded on the experience of tHdusaniS of years, at the end the result would be the actual over-popuIaHffl^of the whole planet, the terrible eyil of which only a bold imagination can now realise.^

§ 63. We have recognised temporal jiistice, which has its seat in the state, as requiting and punishing, and have seen that this only becomes justice through a reference to the future. For without this reference all punishing and requiting would be an outrage without justification, and indeed merely the addition of another evil to that which has already occurred, without meaning or significance. But it is quite otherwise with eternal justice, which was referred to before, and which rules not the state but the world, is not dependent upon human institutions, is not subject to chance and deception, is not uncertain, wavering, and erring, but infallible, fixed, and sure The conception of requital implies that of time ; therefore eternal justice caimot be requital Thus it cannot, like temporal justice, admit of respite and delay, and require time in order to triumph, equalising the evil deed by the evil consequences only by means of time. The punishment must here be so bound up with the ofifence that both are one.

^ Cf. Oh. xlviL of Supplement

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Aox»rf itijicft r’ ahixruj.a.r' ti( houg nrejo;m, xrl'reir’ fv Aiog deXrou wru^uig Tiocfiit riv* aura, Ztita, d’ tiaopmra m &vf)T»ig Sixa^ni/ • Ovi’ 6 ira.g eu^ap6g,

A/Of yga^ovrof raj /Sjorwv ufiagriag,

E^agKsasifv, Olid’ (xe/»of av oxovmh nt/iTiiP ixagr<fi ^ti/ti/ap‘ aX\' jj A/x»|

Evrauda ^ou ’ffr/» syyuf, ti ^ovXief ogif*.

Eurip. ap. Stob. EcL, L c. 4.

(“Volare pennis scelera ad setherias domas Putatis, illic in Jovis tabularia Script© referri ; tuiu Jovem lectis super Sententiam proferre 1 — sed mortalium Facinora coeli, quantaquanta est, regia Nequit tenere : nec legendis Jnppiter Et puniendis par est. Est tamen ultio,

Et, si iutuemur, ilia nos habitat prope.”)

Now that such an eternal justice really lies in the nature of the world will soon become completely evident to whoever has grasped the whole of the thought which we have hitherto been developing.

The world, in all the multiplicity of its parts and forms, is the manifestation, the objectivity, of the one will to live. Existence itself, and the kind of existence, both as a collective whole and in every part, proceeds from the will alone. The will is free, the will is almighty. The will appears in everything, just as it determines itself in itself and outside time. The world is only the mirror of this willing ; and all finitude, all suffering, all miseries, which it contains, belong to the expression of that which the will wills, are as they are because the will so wUls. Accordingly with perfect right every being supports existence in general, and also the existence of its species and its peculiar individuality, entirely as it is and in circumstances as they are, in a world such as it is, swayed by chance and error, transient, ephemeral, and constantly suffering; and in all that it experiences, or indeed can experience, it always gets its

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THE WORLD ^5 WILL.

BK. IV.