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

that which resists this passing into nothing, our nature, is indeeif^just^e will to liye, which we oursely^ are as it Is our world.

That we abhor annihilation so greatly, is simply another expression of the fact that we so strenuousiy will life, and are nothing but this wUl, and know nothihg ^sides it But if we turn our glance from our own needy and embarrassed condition to those 'v^o have overcome the world, in whom the will, having attained to perfect self-knowledge, found its^f again in and then freely denied itself, and who then merely wait to see the last trace of it vanish with the body which it animates ; then, instead of the restless striving and effort, instead of the constant transition from wish to fruition, and from joy to sorrow^ instead of the never-satis%d and never-dying hope which constitutes the life of the m^ who wills, we shall see that. _peace _w^ is above all reasdnT^that perfect jcalm. of the spirit, that deep, rest, that inviolable confidence and serenity, the mere refl.eetion of which in the counteimime, as Eaphael and Correggio ^ave "represented it is an entire and certaon ^spel ; onlyTEhbwledge remains, the will has vanished.

We look wit^ deep and painful longing upon,, this state, beside which the misery and wretchedness of our own. brought ouF ckarly hy the contrast.

Yet this is the only consideration which can afford, us lasting consolation, when, on the one hand, we have recognised incurable suffering and endless misery as essential to the manifestation of W1II7 the world; and, on the other hand, see the world pass away with tnelibolition of wili, ^d retam before us o^ly empty nothingness.

Thus, in this way, by contem^ plation of the life and conduct of s^ts, whom it is cerSinly rarely granted us to meet with in our own experTence, 1hul“wdI6 life* "Brought before our eyes by their written history, ah<^' with the Stamp hf inner' "truth, By

53?

THE WORLD AS WILL.

BK. IV,

art, we must banish the dark impression of that nothingness wTiich^we discern behind all virtue and hoImS^as theirTfinal goal, S which we fear as children fear the da^j we must not even evade it like the Indians, through myths and meaningless words, ^uch as reabsorptiog in Srahma orThVHirvana of the Buddhists. Rather do we fr^^y^c¥n6wledge t^^ after the entire abolition of will is for all those who are still full of will certainly nothing ; but, conversely, to those in whom the will has turned and has denied itself, this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky -ways — is nothing.^

^ This is also just the Prajna- are no more. (Cf. J. J. Schmidt, Faramita* of the Buddhji§t3» thf ‘‘TTe'ber das Mahajana und Prat- “h^ond all knowledge,” the . schna-Paramita.”)

|K>In^ at which subject and object

IND OF VOL. h