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.
p. 456
other way the past or the future becomes present or the distant becomes near. The fearful terror at anything of the kind is founded on the fact that they suddenly become puzzled about the forms of knowledge of the phenomenon, which alone separate their own individuality from the rest of the world. But even this separation lies only in the phenomenon, and not in the thing-in-itself ; and on this rests eternal justice. In fact, all temporal happiness stands, and all prudence proceeds, upon ground that is undermined. They defend the person from accidents and supply its pleasures ; but the person is merely phenomenon, and its difference from other individuals, and exemption from the sufferings which they endure, rests merely in the form of the phenomenon, the principium indimdvxUionis. According to the trua nature of things, every nnft haa all the Rnfrefing nf t,b^ world ashis own, and indeed has to regard all merely possible suffering as for him actual, so long as he is the fixed will to live, l.e., asserte life with ^ his power! h’or the l^owledge ffiaF~8ees through the principium indivi^ iuatioi^, a happy life m time^ thg g^~of c^ svdn^ by prudence, amid the sorrows of innumerable others, is only the dream of a beggar in which he is a king, but from which he must awa]te and loaiii. from experience that only a fleeting illusion had separated him froin jâe suflermg of,lm
Eternal justice withdraws itself from the vision that is involved in the knowledge which follows the principle of mflicient reason in the principium individuaiionis ; such vision misses it altogether unless it vindicates it in some way by fictions. It sees the bad, after misdeeds and inielties of every kind, live in happiness and leave the world unpunished.
It sees the oppressed drag out a life full of sufiering to the end without an avenger, a req^uiter ippearmg. But that man only will grasp and comprehend eternal justice who raises himself above the knowledge Jiat proceeds under the guidance of the principle of suffiTHEp. 457 cient reason, bound to the particular thing, and recognises the Ideas, sees through the principium individuationis, and becomes conscious that the forms of the phenomenon do not apply to the thing-in-itself.
Moreover, he alone, by virtue of the same knowledge, can imderstand the true nature of virtue, as it will soon disclose itself to us in connection with the present inquiry, although for the practice of virtue this knowledge in the abstract is by no means demanded.
Thus it becomes clear to whoever has attained to the knowledge^eferred to, that because the wHI is ffie in-Ttself of aU phenomena, the misery which is^ awarded to others aU'cTlEal'wHct'he^ex^enences Iii^ffi the bad and the evil, always concerns only^that one hiner_ being which is everywhere the sam^^Cj although the, phenomena "in which the one and the other exhibits itself exist as ’ quite different individuals, and are widely separated by time and space. .HQ,,_sfiea . that,, the difference betwejga^him who inflicts the suffering and him who must bear it is onl^ the phenomenons and ^ does not concern the thing-in-itself, for this is^j^e. y?’!!!
Kiong in both, which here, deceived by the knowledge which Js bound to its service, does not recognise itself, and seeking an increased happiness in cme of its phenomena,'“pfo3uces”'poat''Wfifering''lfin5^f^r7^d the "pressure of excitement, buries its teeth in ite own fleshrhot khdwThg hliat it alw^s injiires only itself, revving ih~'5Gi~lorm.~tErough the medium of individuality, the conflict with itself _whmh it bears in its inner nature.
The^ inflicter of suffering and the sufferer are one. former errs in thaT he believes he is noT a partaker in thft .suffp-rinq ; the latter, . in that F^heTTeye^K^^n^^ partaker in the guilt.
If the eyes of both were opened, the inflicter of sunering woxild see that he lives in all that suffers pain in the wide world, and which, if endowed with reason, in vain asks why it was called into existence for such great suffering, its desert of which it does not understand. And the sufferer would see that all the wicked458
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