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

publique des Lettres,” February 1685, p. 189 ; in Zimmermann, “Ueber die Einsamkeit,” vol. i. p. 182 ; in the “Histoire de 1’ Academic des Sciences” for 1764, an account by Houttuyn, which is quoted in the “ Sarainlung fiir praktische Aerzte,” vol. i. p. 69.

More recent accounts may be found in Hufeland’s “Journal fiir praktisclie Heilkunde,” vol. x. p. 181, and voL xlviii. p. 9$ ; also in Nasse’s “ Zeitschrift fiir psychische Aerzte,” 1819, part iil p. 460 ; and in the “ Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal,” 1809, vol. v. p. 319.

In the year 1833 all the papers announced that the English historian, Dr. Lingard, had died in January at Dover of voluntary starvation ; according to later accounts, it was not he himself, but a relation of his who died. Still in these accovints the persons were generally described as insane, and it is no longer possible to find out how far this was the case.

But I will give here a more recent case of this kind, if it were only to ensure the preservation of one of the rare instances of this striking and extraordinary phenomenon of human nature, which, to all appearance at any rate, belongs to the category to which I wish to assign it and could hardly be explained in any other way.

This case is reported in the “ Niirnberger Correspondenten ” of the 29 th July 1813, in these words: — “ We hear from Bern that in a thick wood near Thurnen a hut has been discovered in which was lying the body of a man who had been dead about a month. His clothes gave little or no clue to his social position. Two very fine shirts lay beside him.

The most important article, however, was a Bible interleaved with white paper, part of which had been written upon by the deceased. In this writing he gives the date of his departure from home (but does not mention where his home was). He then says that he was driven by the Spirit of God into the wilderness to pray and fast. During his journey he had fasted seven days and then he had again taken food. After this he had begun again to fast, and continued to do so for

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the same number of days as before. From this point we find each day marked with a stroke, and of these there are five, at the expiration of which the pilgrim presumably died. There was further found a letter to a clergyman about a sermon which the deceased heard him preach, but the letter was not addressed.” Between this voluntary death arising from extreme asceticism and the common suicide resulting from despair there may be various intermediate species and combinations, though this is hard to find out. But human nature has depths, obscurities, and perplexities, the analysis and elucidation of which is a matter of the very greatest difficulty.

§ 70. It might be supposed that the entire exposition (now terminated) of that which I call the denial of the will is irreconcilable with the earlier explanation of necessity, which belongs just as much to motivation as to every other form of the principle of sufficient reason, and according to which, motives, like all causes, are only occasional causes, upon which the character unfolds its nature and reveals it with the necessity of a natural law, on account of which we absolutely denied freedom as liherum, arbitrium indifferentice. But far from suppressing this here, I would call it to mind. In truth, real freedom, i.e., independence of the principle of sufficient reason, belongs to the will only as a thing-in-itself, not to its manifestation, whose essential form is everywhere the principle of sufficient reason, the element or sphere of necessity. But the one case in which that freedom can become directly visible in the manifestation is that in which it makes an end of what manifests itself, and because the mere manifestation, as a link in the chain of causes, the living body in time, which contains only phenomena, still continues to exist, the will which manifests itself through this phenomenon then stands in contradiction to it, for it denies what the phenomenon expresses. In such a case the organs of generation, for example, as the visible form of the sexual impulse, are

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