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

Now because, as we have seen, that self-suppression of the wUl proceeds from knowledge, and all knowledge is involuntary, that denial of will also, that entrance into freedom, cannot be forcibly attained to by intention or design, but proceeds from the inmost relation of knowing and volition in the man, and therefore comes suddenly, as if spontaneously from without. This is why the Church has called it the work of grace ; and that it still regards it as independent of the acceptance of grace corresponds to the fact that the effect of the quieter is finally a free act of will. And because, in consequence of such a work of grace, the whole nature of man is changed and reversed from its foundation, so that he no longer wills anything of all that he previously willed so intensely, so that it is as if a new man actually took the place of the old, the Church has called this consequence of the work of grace the new birth. For what it calls the natural man, to which it denies all capacity for good, is just the will to live, which must be denied if deliverance from an existence such as ours is to be attained. Behind our existence lies something else, which is only accessible to us if we have shaken off this world.

Having regard, not to the individuals according to the principle of sufficient reason, but to the Idea of man in its unity, Christian theology symbolises nature, the ossertion of the unit to live in Adam, whose sin, inherited by us, i.e., our unity with him in the Idea, which is represented in time by the bond of procreation, makes us all partakers of suffering and eternal death. On the other hand, it symbolises grace, the denial of the wiU, scdvaiion, in the incarnate God, who, as free from all sin, that is,

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THE WORLD AS WILL.

BK. IV.

from all willing of life, cannot, like us, have proceeded from the most pronounced assertion of the will, nor can he, like us, have a body which is through and through simply concrete will, manifestation of the will ; but born of a pure virgin, he has only a phantom body. This last is the doctrine of the Docetae, i.e., certain Church Fathers, who in this respect are very consistent.

It is especially taught by Apelles, against whom and his followers Tertullian wrote. But even Augustine comments thus on the passage, Kom. viiL 3, “ God sent Ids Son in the likeness of sinful flesh : ” “ Non enim caro peecati erat, quce non de carnali ddectatione nata erat : scd tamen inerat ei similitudo camis peccati, quia mortalis caro erat" {Liber St,, qucest. qu. 66). He also teaches in his work entitled “ Opns Imperfectum" i.

47, that inherited sin is both sin and punishment at once. It is already present in newborn children, but only shows itself if they grow up. Yet the origin of this sin is to be referred to the will of the sinner. This sinner was Adam, but we all existed in him ; Adam became miserable, and in him we have all become miserable.

Certainly the doctrine of original sin (assertion of the will) and of salvation (denial of the will) is the great truth which constitutes the essence of Christianity, w’hile most of what remains is only the clothing of it, the husk or accessories.

Therefore Jesus Christ ought always to be conceived in the universal, as the symbol or personification of the denial of the will to live, but never as an individual, whether according to his mythical history given in the Gospels, or according to the probably true history which lies at the foundation of this. For neither the one nor the other will easily satisfy us entirely.

It is merely the vehicle of that conception for the people, who always demand something actual. That in recent times Christianity has forgotten its true significance, and degenerated into dull optimism, does not concern us here.

It is further an original and evangelical doctrine of

THE ASSERTION AND DENIAL OF THE WILL, 525

Christianity — which Augustine, with the consent of the leaders of the Church, defended against the platitudes of the Pelagians, and which it was the principal aim of Luther’s endeavour to purify from error and re-establish, as he expressly declares in his book, “ De Servo Arhitrio'' — the doctrine that the will is not freCy but originally subject to the inclination to evil. Therefore according to this doctrine the deeds of the will are always sinful and imperfect, and can never fully satisfy justice ; and, finally, these works can never save us, but faith alone, a faith which itself does not spring from resolution and free will, hut from the work of grace, without our co-operation, comes to us as from without.

Not only the dogmas referred to before, hut also this last genuine evangelical dogma belongs to those which at the present day an ignorant and dull opinion rejects as absurd or hides. For, in spite of Augustine and Luther, it adheres to the vulgar Pelagianism, which the rationalism of the day really is, and treats as antiquated those deeply significant dogmas which are peculiar and essential to Christianity in the strictest sense ; while, on the other hand, it holds fast and regards as the principal matter only the dogma that originates in Judaism, and has been retained from it, and is merely historically connected with Christianity.^ We, however,