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

for it is a combination of words ; it is an example of the unthinkable, which is necessarjTin logic in order to prove the laws of thought. Therefore if for this end such an example is sought, we will stick to the nonsense as the positive which we are in search of, and pass over the sense as the negative.

Thus every nihU negativum, if subordinated to a higher concept, will appear as a mere nihU privatiwm or relative nothing, which can, moreover, always exchange signs with what it negatives, so that that would then be thought as negation, and it itself as assertion.

This also agrees with the result of the diflScult dialectical investigation of the meaning of nothing WEleL Plato gives .in. iEa^“-§^hi^* (pp. 277— 287) : T171/ tow irepov (putriv airoSei^avres ovcrav Te, Kai KaTaKeKep/xaTicrfxepyjp eiri -iraPTa to opra irpoi aXXjjXa, to irpoi to ot' exoTTow fiopiop awTJj? aPTiTide/iepOP, eroXfitia-afiep eiireip, W5 avTo TouTo ea-TiP oprm to fiti op (Cum enim ostenderemus, aZterius ipsius naturam essepergue omnia entia divisam atque dispersam in vicern ; twnc partem ejus opposUam ei, quod cujusque ens est, esse ipsum revera non ens asseruimus).

That which is generally received m positive, which we call the real, and the negation of which the concept nothing in its most general significance expresses, is just the world as idea, which I have shown to be the objectivity and mirror of the wUL Moreover, we ourselves are just this will and this world, and to them belongs the idea in general, as one aspect of them. The form of the idea is space and time, therefore for this point of view's!! that is real must be Tn some place hiid^at some tame. Denial, abolition, conversion of the will, is also the abolition and the vanishing of the world*^it^m^or, If we no longer perceive it in ..this., mirrs^ we ask in vain where it has gone, and then, because it has no longer any where and when, complain that it has vanished into nothing.

A reversed point of view, if it were possible for us, VOL. I. 2 L

p. 530

THE WORt^D AS WILL.

BK. IV.

would reverse the signs and show the real for us as nothing, and that nothing as the real But as long as we ourselves are the will to live, this last — nothing as the real — can only be known and signified by us negatively, because the old saying of Empedocles, that like can only be known by like, deprives us here of all knowledge, as, conversely, upon it finally rests the possibility of all our actual knowledge, i.fc, the world as idea ; for the world is the self-knowledge of the wUt. ^

If, howler, it should be absolutely insisted upon that in some way or other a positive knowledge should be lit@hM of that which philosophy can^pnj^^ express, negatively as the, denial of the will, there would be nothing for it but to refer to that state which all those who have atiaihed to complete denial of the will have experience3, alid which has been variously denoted by the names ecstasy^ rapture, Ulumination, union with God, and so forth ; a~st^, however, which cannot properly be called knowledge, because it hw not jthe fornr~of and object, and is, moreover, only attainable in oneX..9wn experience and cannot be further communicated

'W’e7 however, who consistently occupy, the stan^oint of philosophy, must be satisfied here with negative knowledgeTcbhtent td~haye reached the utmost limit of ^e posiETve. We have recognised the inmost nature of the world as will, and all its phenomena as only the objecfivrty of will ; and we have followed this objectivity from the uncon^ious working of obscure forces of Nature up to the^ completely conscious action of man. Therefore we shall by no means evade the consequence, that with the free denial, the surrender of the will, all those phenomena are also abolished; that constant strain and effort without end and without rest at all the grades of objectivity, in which and through which the world consists ; the multifarious forms succeeding each other in gradation ; the whole manifestation of the will ; and, finally, also the universal forms of this manifestation, time and space, andp. 531 also its last fundamental form, subject and object ; a^a. aBofisEed. No wjU : no idea, no world.

]^fore us’TE^ls But