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.
490 * WORLD WILL. bk. iv.
from life ; it now shudders at the pleasures in which it recognises the assertion of life. Man now attains to the state of voluntary renunciation, resignation, true indifife* rence, and perfect will-lessness. If at times, in the hard eijqperience.of our own suffering," or liTWe vivid re<^^ nition of that of others, the knowledge of the vanity and hittemess of life draws nigh to us also who are still wrapt in the veil of Mtlyfl, and we would like to destroy the sting of the desires, close the entrance against all sufifering, and purify and sanctify ourselves by complete and final renunciation j yet the illusion of the phenomenon soon entangles us again, and its motives influence the will anew ; we cannot tear ourselves free. The alluretnent of hope, th^ flattery of ttie . present, the sweetness of pleasure, the well-being which falls to our lot, amid tHo lamentations of a suffering world .g.Qyerned by chance and error, draws us back to it-jand JlYfite our bonds anew. Therefore Jesus says: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, tlmi^ for a rich man to enter mto the~kIngdom of God.”
If we compare life to a course or path through which we must unceasingly run — a path of red-hot coals, with a few cool places here and there ; then he who is entangled in delusion is consoled by the cool places, on which he now stands, or which he sees near him, and sets out to run through the course.
But he who sees through the priiicipium individuationis, and recognises the real nature of the thing-in-itself, and thus the whole, is no longer susceptible of such consolation ; he sees himself in all places at once, and withdraws. His will turns round, no longer asserts its own nature, which is reflected in the phenomenon, but denies it. The phenomenon by which this change is marked, is the transition from virtue to asceticism.
That is to say, it no longer suffices for such a man to love others as himself, and to do as much for them as for himself ; but there arises within him a horror of the nature of which his own phenomenal existTHEp. 491 ence is an expression, the will to live, the kernel and inner nature of that world which is recognised as full of misery. He therefore disowns this nature which appears in him, and is already expressed through his body, and his action gives the lie to his phenomenal existence, and appears in open contradiction to it.
Essentially nothing else but a manifestation of will, he ceases to will anything, guards against attaching his will to anything, and seeks to confirm in himself the greatest indifference to everything. His body, healthy and strong, expresses through the genitals, the sexual impulse ; but he denies the will and gives the^ Tf^ to the body ; he desires no imsuaT gratification under any condition.
Voluntary and coinplete chastity is the first step in asce^isin oF Bie denial of the will to live. It thereby denies the assertion of the will which extends beyohj the individual life, and gives the assurance that with the life of this £ody3^e ^viil, whose manifestation it is, ceases.
Nature, ah^s true and naive, declares that if this maxim became universal, the human race would die out; and I think I may assume, in accordance with what was said in the Second Book about the connection of all manifestations of will, that with its highest manifestation, the weaker reflection of it would also pass away, as the twilight vanishes along with the full light.
With the entire abolition of knowledge, the rest of the^woHd^ wbuTdr of ibieirvanisli into hotlun^ITfbVwithout a sutdecThliere is no object. I should like here to refer to a passage in the Vedas, where it is said : “ As in this, world. hungry infants press rouiid tHerr mother; so derail beings await the holy oblation.” ^ (Asiatic Eesearches, vol. viiL ; Colebrooke.
On the Vedas, Abstract of the Sama-Veda; also in Colebrooke’s Miscellaneous Essays, vol. i. p. 79.) Sacrifice means resignation generally, and the rest of nature must look for its salvation to man who is at once the priest and the sacrifice. Indeed it deserves to be noticed as very remarkable, that this thought has also
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