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

' As I wander sunk in thought, weep aloud, which otherwise I am to strong a sympathy with n)yself not wont to do. comes over me that I must often

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THE WORLD i4S WILL.

BK. IV.

mankind, which is necessarily finite, so that every life, however aspiring, and often rich in deeds, must be extinguished and become nothing. But in this lot of mankind the mourner sees first of all his own, and this all the more, the more closely he is related to him who has died, thus most of all if it is his father. Although to his father his life was misery through age and sickness, and thougE his helplessness w^s a_ heavy burden to bis son, yet that~s6n weeps bitterly over the ^eath of his father for the reason which has been given."^

§ 68. After this digression about the identity of pure love and sympathy, the final return of which upon our own individuality has, as its symptom, the phenomenon of weeping, I now take up the thread of our discussion of the ethical significance of action, in order to show how, from the same source from which all goodness, love, virtue, and nobility of character spring, there finally arises that which I call the denial of the will to live.

We saw before that hatred and wickedness are conditioned by egoism, and egoism rests on the entanglement of knowledge in the prineipium individuationis. Thus we found that the penetration of that prineipium individvutionis is the source and the nature of justice, and when it is carried further, even to its fullest extent, it is the source and nature of love and nobility of character, For this penetration alone, by abolishing the distinction between our own individuality and that of others, renders possible and explains perfect goodness of disposition, extending to disinterested love and the most generous self-sacrifice for others.

If, however, this penetration of the prineipium individuadionis, this direct knowledge of the identity of will in all its manifestations, is present in a high degree of distinctness, it will at once show an influence upon the will

* Cf. Ch. xlvii. of Supplement. It has boon explained fully and in is scarcely necessary to remind the detail in my prize-essay on the reader tliat the whole ethical doc- foundation of morals, trine given in outline in g§ 61-67

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which extends still further.

If that veil of Mây&, the frvmvpiwm mdividuaiiorm, is lifted from the eyes of a man to such an extent that he no longer makes the egotistical distinction between his person and that of others, but takes as much interest in the sufferings of other individuals as in his own, and therefore is not only benevolent in the highest degree, but even ready to sacrifice his own individuality whenever such a sacrifice will save a number of other persons, then it clearly follows that such a man, who recognises in all beings his own inmost and true self, must also regard the infinite suffering of all suffering beings as his own, and take on himself the pain of the whole world.

No suffering is any longer strange to him. All the miseries of others which he sees and is so seldom able to alleviate, aU the miseries he knows directly, and even those which he only knows as possible, work upon his mind like his own.

It is no longer the changing joy and sorrow of his own person that he has in view, as is the case with him who is still involved in egoism ; but, since he sees through the prindpium individuationis, all lies equally near him. He knows the whole, comprehends its nature, and finds that it consists in a constant passing away, vain striving, inward conflict, and continual suffering.

He sees wherever he looks suffering humanity, the suffering brute creation, and a world that passes away. But all this now lies as near him as his own person lies to the egoist. Why should he now, with such knowledge of the world, assert this very life through constant acts of will, and thereby bind himself ever more closely to it, press it ever more firmly to himself ?

Thus he who is still involved in the prineipium individttcUionis, in egoism, only knows particular things and their relation to his own person, and these constantly become new motives of his volition. But, on the other hand, that knowledge of the whole, of the nature of the thing-in-itself which has been described, becomes a quieter of all and every volition. The will now turns away