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

All this, however, is absolutely not the case.

Only to the brutes, who are without thought, does the world and existence appear as a matter of course ; to man, on the contrary, it is a problem, of which even the most uneducated and narrow-minded becomes vividly conscious in certain brighter moments, but which enters more distinctly and more permanently into the consciousness of each one of us the clearer and more enlightened that conscious374 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVII.

ness is, and the more material for thought it has acquire through culture, which all ultimately rises, in minds tha are naturally adapted for philosophising, to Plato's " davfia- £e«>, fMaXa (f>L\o(ro<f)iKov TraOos " (mirari, valde philosophicus affectus), that is, to that wonder which comprehends in its whole magnitude that problem whicli unceasingly occupies the nobler portion of mankind in every age and in every land, and gives it no rest.

In fact, the pendulum which keeps in motion the clock of metaphysics, that never runs down, is the consciousness that the non-existence of this world is just as possible as its existence. Thus, then, the Spinozistic view of it as an absolutely necessary existence, that is, as something that absolutely and in every sense ought to and must be, is a false one.

Even simple Theism, since in its cosmological proof it tacitly starts by inferring the previous non-existence of the world from its existence, thereby assumes beforehand that the world is something contingent. Nay, what is more, we very soon apprehend the world as something the non-existence of which is not only conceivable, but indeed preferable to its existence.

Therefore our wonder at it easily passes into a brooding over the fatality which could yet call forth its existence, and by virtue of which such stupendous power as is demanded for the production and maintenance of such a world could be directed so much against its own interest. The philosophical astonishment is therefore at bottom perplexed and melancholy ; philosophy, like the overture to " Don Juan," commences with a minor chord.

It follows from this that it can neither be Spinozism nor optimism. The more special nature, which has just been indicated, of the astonishment which leads us to philosophise clearly springs from the sight of the suffering and the wickedness in the world, which, even if they were in the most just proportion to each other, and also were far outweighed by good, are yet something which absolutely and in general ought not to be. But since now nothing can come out of nothing, these also must have their germ in the

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origin or in the kernel of the world itself. It is hard for us to assume this if we look at the magnitude, the order and completeness, of the physical world, for it seems to us that what had the power to produce such a world must have been able to avoid the suffering and the wickedness. That assumption (the truest expression of which is Ormuzd and Ahrimines), it is easy to conceive, is hardest of all for Theism. Therefore the freedom of the will was primarily invented to account for wickedness. But this is only a concealed way of making something out of nothing, for it assumes an Operari that proceeded from no Esse (see Die beiden Ghundprobleme der Ethik, p. 58, et seq. ; second edition, p. 57 et seq.) Then it was sought to get rid of evil by attributing it to matter, or to unavoidable necessity, whereby the devil, who is really the right Expediens ad hoc, was unwillingly set aside. To evil also belongs death ; but wickedness is only the throwing of the existing evil from oneself on to another. Thus, as was said above, it is wickedness, evil, and death that qualify and intensify the philosophical astonishment. Not merely that the world exists, but still more that it is such a wretched world, is the punctum pruriens of metaphysics, the problem which awakens in mankind an unrest that cannot be quieted by scepticism nor yet by criticism.