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.
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THE WORLD ^5 WILL.
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which appears as the life of this body: it is most welcome^ and is''gTadly received as a longed-for, deliverance. Here it is not, as in 'fhe c^ase of others^ merely the. maaifestation which ends with death ; but the inner nature itself is abolfsTiedjr which here existed only ip festation, and that In a very weak degree;^ this last slight bond is now broken. For him who thus ends^ the world has ende^AlsQ.,
And what I have here described with feeble tongue and only in general terms, is no philosophical fable^ invented hy~1h)i?en;;^'hnd only oi _t9-jiay.LJaQ,. Jfe enviable life of so many saints and beauUful souls ampjag (jhristians, ahcT stiU more among Hindus andJBjjddhiats, and also among the believers of other religions^ However 3fifereut~ were^the dogmas ImpresseT on thehr reason, the same inward, direct, intuitive knowledge, frqm,whic^ alone all virtue and holiness proceed, expressed itself in precisely the same way in the conduct of life. For here also the great distinction between intui^tive and abstraqj knowledge shows itself ; a distinction which is of such importance'and universal application in our whole investigation, and which has hitherto been too little attended There is a wide guj.f between the two,^ which can only be crossed by the aid of philosophy, as regards the knowledge of the nature of the world. Intuitively or in concrete, every man is jeallx conscious of all_phllo8QphicaI truths, butTo hring them to abstract knowledge, to refl.e(> fion, is theTwork of ""piiTosophy, which neither ought JiQI is able to do more than this.
Thus it may be. that the inner nature cf bolipcsay-aalfrenunciation, mortification of our own will, asceticism, is
^ This thought is expressed by a formed soul from its corporeal frame beautiful simile in the ancient philo- at length takes place and nature in lophical Sanscrit writing, “ Sank- respect of it ceases, then is absolute hya Karica “Yet the soul remains and final deliverance accomplished.” Ik while invested with body; as the Colebrooke, “ On the Philosophy of potter’s wheel continues whirling the Hindus; Miscellaneous Essays,” after the pot has been fashioned, by vol, i. p. 271. Also in the “Sankforce of the impulse previously given hya Karica by Horace Wilson,” § 67, to it. When separation of the in- p. 184.
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here for the first time expre^ed abstractly, and free from as denied of the will to live, aj^earing after the complete knowiedge of its own nature has hccome a c^uieter of all volition,. On &e other hand^ it has been known directly and revised in practice by saints and ascetics, who had all the same inward knowledge, though they 'used” i^ry different languagp with fegffd to it, according to ^he dogm^ which their reason had accepted, and in consequence of ■v^nchjin In^an, ^Christian,^r "a JLama sahit must each give a very different account of His conduct, which is, however, of no importance as regar(^ ^e'Tack " X^*ht he fiill of the ahsurdSt superstition^ or, on the contrary, he may be a phllbsophei^ it is ail the same,. His conduct alone certifies that he is a^ saint, for,, jn a rnoral r^rd, it ^p> ceeds from knowledge, of the world and Jta !!?bich is not abstractly but intuitively, and directly. appreJiendgd, and is only expressed by him.ia any dogma, for the„s.atisfaction of his reason. It is therefore just as little needful that a saint should be a philosopher '^thara philosopher should be a saint fTust as it is not necessary that a_ perfect be^tiful man should be a great sculptor, or that a great sculptor should himself be a beautiful man. In genemh'iris a” sTraTige dem^^ upon a moralist that he should teach no other virtue tha.11 that which he himself possesses. To repeat the whole nature of the world ^tracEIyTuriiversally. and distinctly in concepts, and thus to store up, as it were, a reflected »f it in permanent concepts always at the command pf _th§,yeason; Ihis^anB. nothing else is philosophy. I refer the reader to the passage quoted from Bacon in the First Book.
But the description I have given above of the denial of the will to live, of the conduct of a beautiful soul, of a resigned and voluntarily expiating saint, is merely abstract and general, and therefore cold. As the knowledge from which the denial of the will proceeds is intuitive and not abstract, it finds its most perfect expression, not in ab*
p. 496
THE WORLD AS WILL.
BK. IV.
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