If the will to live exhibited itself merely as an impulse to self‐
preservation, this would only be an assertion of the individual phenomenon
for the span of time of its natural duration. The cares and troubles of
such a life would not be great, and consequently existence would be easy
and serene. Since, on the contrary, the will wills life absolutely and for
all time, it exhibits itself also as sexual impulse, which has in view an
endless series of generations. This impulse does away with that
carelessness, serenity, and innocence which would accompany a merely
individual existence, for it brings unrest and melancholy into the
consciousness; misfortunes, cares, and misery into the course of life. If,
on the other hand, it is voluntarily suppressed, as we see in rare
exceptions, then this is the turning of the will, which changes its
course. The will does not then transcend the individual, but is abolished
in it. Yet this can only take place by means of the individual doing
painful violence to itself. If, however, it does take place, then the
freedom from care and the serenity of the purely individual existence is
restored to the consciousness, and indeed in a higher degree. On the other
hand, to the satisfaction of that most vehement of all impulses and
desires is linked the origin of a new existence, thus the carrying out of
life anew, with all its burdens, cares, wants, and pains; certainly in
another individual; yet if the two who are different in the phenomenon
were so absolutely and in themselves, where would then be eternal justice?
Life presents itself as a problem, a task to be worked out, and therefore,
as a rule, as a constant conflict with necessity. Accordingly every one
tries to get through with it and come off as well as he can. He performs
life as a compulsory service which he owes. But who has contracted the
debt?—His begetter, in the enjoyment of sensual pleasure. Thus, because
the one has enjoyed this, the other must live, suffer, and die. However,
we know and look back here to the fact that the difference of the similar
is conditioned by space and time, which in this sense I have called the
_principium individuationis_. Otherwise eternal justice could not be
vindicated. Paternal love, on account of which the father is ready to do,
to suffer, and to risk more for his child than for himself, and at the
same time knows that he owes this, depends simply upon the fact that the
begetter recognises himself in the begotten.
The life of a man, with its endless care, want, and suffering, is to be
regarded as the explanation and paraphrase of the act of procreation,
_i.e._, the decided assertion of the will to live; and further, it is also
due to this that he owes to nature the debt of death, and thinks with
anxiety of this debt. Is this not evidence of the fact that our existence
involves guilt? At any rate, we always exist, subject to the periodical
payment of the toll, birth and death, and successively partake of all the
sorrows and joys of life, so that none can escape us: this is just the
fruit of the assertion of the will to live. Thus the fear of death, which
in spite of all the miseries of life holds us firmly to it, is really
illusory; but just as illusory is the impulse which has enticed us into
it. This enticement itself may be seen objectively in the reciprocal
longing glances of two lovers; they are the purest expression of the will
to live, in its assertion. How soft and tender it is here! It wills well‐
being, and quiet pleasure, and mild joys for itself, for others, for all.
It is the theme of Anacreon. Thus by allurements and flattery it makes its
way into life. But when once it is there, misery introduces crime, and
crime misery; horror and desolation fill the scene. It is the theme of
Æschylus.
But now the act through which the will asserts itself and man arises is
one of which all are, in their inmost being, ashamed, which they therefore
carefully conceal; nay, if they are caught in it, are terrified as if they
had been taken in a crime. It is an action of which in cold reflection one
generally thinks with dislike, and in a lofty mood with loathing.
Reflections which in this regard approach the matter more closely are
offered by Montaigne in the fifth chapter of the third book, under the
marginal heading: “_Ce que c’est que l’amour_.” A peculiar sadness and
repentance follows close upon it, is yet most perceptible after the first
performance of the act, and in general is the more distinct the nobler is
the character. Hence even Pliny, the pagan, says: “_Homini tantum primi
coitus pœnitentia, augurium scilicet vitæ, a pœnitenda origine_” (_Hist.
Nat._, x. 83). And, on the other hand, in Goethe’s “Faust,” what do devil
and witches practise and sing of on their Sabbath? Lewdness and obscenity.
And in the same work (in the admirable “Paralipomena” to “Faust”) what
does incarnate Satan preach before the assembled multitude? Lewdness and
obscenity. But simply and solely by means of the continual practice of
such an act as this does the human race subsist. If now optimism were
right, if our existence were to be thankfully recognised as the gift of
the highest goodness guided by wisdom, and accordingly in itself
praiseworthy, commendable, and agreeable, then certainly the act which
perpetuates it would necessarily have borne quite another physiognomy. If,
on the other hand, this existence is a kind of false step or error; if it
is the work of an originally blind will, whose most fortunate development
is that it comes to itself in order to abolish itself; then the act which
perpetuates that existence must appear precisely as it does appear.
With reference to the first fundamental truth of my doctrine, the remark
deserves a place here that the shame mentioned above which attaches to the
act of generation extends even to the parts which are concerned in this,
although, like all other parts, they are given us by nature. This is again
a striking proof that not only the actions but even the body of man is to
be regarded as the manifestation, the objectification, of his will, and as
its work. For he could not be ashamed of a thing which existed without his
will.
The act of generation is further related to the world, as the answer is
related to the riddle. The world is wide in space and old in time, and of
an inexhaustible multiplicity of forms. Yet all this is only the
manifestation of the will to live; and the concentration, the focus of
this will is the act of generation. Thus in this act the inner nature of
the world expresses itself most distinctly. In this regard it is indeed
worth noticing that this act itself is also distinctly called “the will”
in the very significant German phrase, “_Er verlangte von ihr, sie sollte
ihm zu Willen sein_” (He desired her to comply with his wishes). As the
most distinct expression of the will, then, this act is the kernel, the
compendium, the quintessence of the world. Therefore from it we obtain
light as to the nature and tendency of the world: it is the answer to the
riddle. Accordingly it is understood under “the tree of knowledge,” for
after acquaintance with it the eyes of every one are opened as to life, as
Byron also says:
“The tree of knowledge has been plucked,—all’s known.”
—_Don Juan_, i. 128.
It is not less in keeping with this quality that it is the great αρρητον,
the open secret, which must never and nowhere be distinctly mentioned, but
always and everywhere is understood as the principal matter, and is
therefore constantly present to the thoughts of all, wherefore also the
slightest allusion to it is instantly understood. The leading part which
that act, and what is connected with it, plays in the world, because love
intrigues are everywhere, on the one hand, pursued, and, on the other
hand, assumed, is quite in keeping with the importance of this _punctum
saliens_ of the egg of the world. The source of the amusing is simply the
constant concealment of the chief concern.
But see now how the young, innocent, human intellect, when that great
secret of the world first becomes known to it, is startled at the
enormity! The reason of this is that in the long course which the
originally unconscious will had to traverse before it rose to intellect,
especially to human, rational intellect, it became so strange to itself
that it no longer knows its origin, that _pœnitenda origo_, and now, from
the standpoint of pure, and therefore innocent, knowing, is horrified at
it.
Since now the focus of the will, _i.e._, its concentration and highest
expression, is the sexual impulse and its satisfaction, this is very
significantly and naïvely expressed in the symbolical language of nature
through the fact that the individualised will, that is, the man and the
brute, makes its entrance into the world through the door of the sexual
organs.
The assertion of the will to live, which accordingly has its centre in the
act of generation, is in the case of the brute infallible. For the will,
which is the _natura naturans_, first arrives at reflection in man. To
arrive at reflection means, not merely to know the momentary necessity of
the individual will, how to serve it in the pressing present—as is the
case with the brute, in proportion to its completeness and its
necessities, which go hand in hand—but to have attained a greater breadth
of knowledge, by virtue of a distinct remembrance of the past, an
approximate anticipation of the future, and thereby a general survey of
the individual life, both one’s own life and that of others, nay, of
existence in general. Really the life of every species of brute, through
the thousands of years of its existence, is to a certain extent like a
single moment; for it is mere consciousness of the present, without that
of the past and the future, and consequently without that of death. In
this sense it is to be regarded as a permanent moment, a _Nunc stans_.
Here we see, in passing, most distinctly that in general the form of life,
or the manifestation of the will with consciousness, is primarily and
immediately merely the present. Past and future are added only in the case
of man, and indeed merely in conception, are known _in abstracto_, and
perhaps illustrated by pictures of the imagination. Thus after the will to
live, _i.e._, the inner being of nature, in the ceaseless striving towards
complete objectification and complete enjoyment, has run through the whole
series of the brutes,—which often occurs in the various periods of
successive animal series each arising anew on the same planet,—it arrives
at last at reflection in the being who is endowed with reason, man. Here
now to him the thing begins to be doubtful, the question forces itself
upon him whence and wherefore all this is, and chiefly whether the care
and misery of his life and effort is really repaid by the gain? “_Le jeu
vaut‐il bien la chandelle?_” Accordingly here is the point at which, in
the light of distinct knowledge, he decides for the assertion or denial of
the will to live; although as a rule he can only bring the latter to
consciousness in a mythical form. We have consequently no ground for
assuming that a still more highly developed objectification of the will is
ever reached, anywhere; for it has already reached its turning‐point here.