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.
due. For the will belongs to it ; and as the will is, so is the world. Only this world itself can bear the responsibility of its own existence and nature — no other ; for by what means could another have assumed it ? Do we desire to know what men, morally considered, are worth as a whole and in general, we have only to consider their fate as a whole and in general. This is want, wretchedness, affliction, misery, and death. Eternal justice reigns ; if they were not, as a whole, worthless, their fate, as a whole, would not be so sad. In this sense we may say, the world itself is the judgment of the world. If we could lay aU the misery of the world in one scale of the balance, and all the guilt of the world in the other, the needle would certainly point to the centre.
Certainly, however, the world does not exhibit itself to the knowledge of the individual as such, developed for the service of the will, as it finally reveals itself to the inquirer as the objectivity of the one and only will to live, which he himself is. But the sight of the unc^tured individual is clouded, as the Hindus say, by the veil of Jdayfi,. He sees not the thing-in-itself but the pitenomenon in time and space, the pnncipium individuationis, and in the other forms of the principle of sufficient reason. And in this form of his limited knowledge he sees not the inner nature of things, which is one, but its phenomena as separated, disunited, innumerable, very different, and indeed opposed. For to him pteasure appears as one thiiig and pain as quite anotKer tEmg : one man as aT tormentor and_ a^ jnurderer, another as a martyr and a victim ; wickedness as one thing and evil as another. He sees ^ne man^Uve in joy^ abupdance, and pleasure, and even at his door another die mi^raEIy of want, and cold. Then he asks. Where is the retribution ? And he himself, in the veherne^ pressure of will \^ich is his origin and his nature, seizes lyioi^the j^easufes^and^enjoj^mentsT oF life,, firmly
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embraces them, and knows not that by this very act of bis will he seizes and hugs all those pains and sorrows at the sight of which ^ shudders.
He sees the ills and he sees the wickedness in the world, but far from knowing that both of these are but differeivt siSes of the manifestation of the one wifi to live^ he regards them as very different, and indeed quite opposed, and^~olteh seekr to" escape by wickedness. i.e.. by causing the sufferi^ of another, ^om ills, from the suffering of his own individuality, for he is invoIve3™in~tEe minexpium individibationis, deluded by the veil of Mây&.
Tust as a sailor sits in a Bo^ trustm^to^Eis frail farque in a stormy sea, unbounded in eveij direction" rising and fifing with the howling mountainous waves; ^ in the midst of a wqild of sorrows the individual man sits quietly, supported by and trusting^ to the principium individuationis, or Jhe way in which the individual knows things as phenomena.
The boundless world, everywhere full of suffering in the infinite past, in the infinite future, is strange to him, indeed is to him but a fable ; his ephemeral person, his extensiouless present, his momentary satisfaction, this alone has reality for him ; and he does aU to maintain this, so long as his eyes are not opened by a better knowledge.
Till then, there lives only in the inmost depths of his consciousness a very obscure presentiment that all that is after all not really so strange to him, but has a connection with him, from which the principium individuationis cannot protect him.^ From this presentiment arises that ineradicable awe common to all men (and indeed perhaps even to the most sensible of the brutes) which suddenly seizes them if by any chance they become puzzled about the principium individxuttionis, because the principle of sufficient reason in some one of its forms seems to admit of an e.xception.
For example, if it seems as if some change took place without a cause, or some one who is dead appears again, or if in any
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