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

^ On the 1 6th of September 1840, years old. He had planted it in a at a lecture upon Egyptian Archaeo- flower «pot, in which it grew up and logy delivered by Mr. Pettigrew at flourished. This is quoted from the the Literary and Scientific Institute Medical Journal of 1830 in the Jourof London, he showed some corns of nal of the Koyal Institution of Great wheat which Sir G. Wilkinson had Britain, October 1830, p. 196. — ‘‘In found in a grave at Thebes, in which the garden of Mr. Grimstone of the they must have lain for three thou- Herbarium, Highgate, London, is a sand years. They were found in an pea in full fruit, which has spruna hermetically sealed vase. Mr. Petti- from a pea that Mr. Pettigrew and grew had sowed twelve grains, and the officials of the British Museum obtained a plant which grew five feet took out of a vase which had been high, and the seeds of which were found in an Egyptian sarcophagus, now quite ripe. — Times^ 2i8t Septem- where it must have lain 2844 years.*’ ber 1840. In the same way in 1830 — Times, i6th August 1844. Indeed, Mr. Haulton produced in the Medical the living toads found in limestone Botanical Society of London a bul- lead to the conclusion that even anibous root which was found in the mal life is capable of such a suspenband of an Egyptian mummy, in sion for thousands of years, if this which it was probably put in observ- is begun in the dormant period ance of some religions rite, and which and maintained by special oirctunmust have been at least two thousand stances.

THE OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL.

p. 179

while comparing this doctrine of his, as he explains it in the " MechercTies de la Vdrite” both in the 3rd Chapter of the second part of the 6th Book, and in the eclaircissementa appended to this chapter, with this exposition of mine, and observing the complete agreement of the two doctrines in the case of such different systems of thought. Indeed I cannot help admiring how Malebranche, though thoroughly involved in the positive dogmas which his age inevitably forced upon him, yet, in such bonds and under such ^ burden, hit the truth so happily, so correctly, and even knew how to combine it with these dogmas, at all events verbally.

For the power of truth is incredibly great and of unspeakable endurance. We find constant traces of it in all, even the most eccentric and absurd dogmas, of different times and different lands, — often indeed in strange company, curiously mixed up with other things, but still recognisable. It is like a plant that germinates under a heap of great stones, but still struggles up to the light, working itself through with many deviations and windings, disfigured, worn out, stunted in its growth, — but yet, to the light.

In any case Malebranche is right: every natural cause is only an occasional cause. It only gives opportunity 6F occasion for the manifestation of the one indivisible wiil which is the “in-itself” of all things, and whose graduated objectification is the whole visible world. Only the appearance, the becoming visible, in this place, at this time, is brought about by the cause and is so far dependent on it, but not the whole of the phenomenon, nor its inner nature. This is the will itself, to which the principle of sufficient reason has not application, and which is therefore groundless. Nothing in the world has a sufficient cause of its existence generally, but only a cause of existence just here and just now. That a stone exhibits now gravity, now rigidity, now electricity, now chemical qualities, depends upon causes, i8o

THE WORLD /1 5 WILL.

BK. 11.