being, and as a rule, his knowledge remains in constant relation to his
will. He first seeks to know thoroughly the objects of his desire, and
then the means of attaining them. Now he knows what he has to do, and, as
a rule, he does not strive after other knowledge. He moves and acts; his
consciousness keeps him always working directly and actively towards the
aims of his will; his thought is concerned with the choice of motives.
Such is life for almost all men; they wish, they know what they wish, and
they strive after it, with sufficient success to keep them from despair,
and sufficient failure to keep them from ennui and its consequences. From
this proceeds a certain serenity, or at least indifference, which cannot
be affected by wealth or poverty; for the rich and the poor do not enjoy
what they have, for this, as we have shown, acts in a purely negative way,
but what they hope to attain to by their efforts. They press forward with
much earnestness, and indeed with an air of importance; thus children also
pursue their play. It is always an exception if such a life suffers
interruption from the fact that either the æsthetic demand for
contemplation or the ethical demand for renunciation proceed from a
knowledge which is independent of the service of the will, and directed to
the nature of the world in general. Most men are pursued by want all
through life, without ever being allowed to come to their senses. On the
other hand, the will is often inflamed to a degree that far transcends the
assertion of the body, and then violent emotions and powerful passions
show themselves, in which the individual not only asserts his own
existence, but denies and seeks to suppress that of others when it stands
in his way.
The maintenance of the body through its own powers is so small a degree of
the assertion of will, that if it voluntarily remains at this degree, we
might assume that, with the death of this body, the will also which
appeared in it would be extinguished. But even the satisfaction of the
sexual passions goes beyond the assertion of one’s own existence, which
fills so short a time, and asserts life for an indefinite time after the
death of the individual. Nature, always true and consistent, here even
naïve, exhibits to us openly the inner significance of the act of
generation. Our own consciousness, the intensity of the impulse, teaches
us that in this act the most decided _assertion of the will to live_
expresses itself, pure and without further addition (any denial of other
individuals); and now, as the consequence of this act, a new life appears
in time and the causal series, _i.e._, in nature; the begotten appears
before the begetter, different as regards the phenomenon, but in himself,
_i.e._, according to the Idea, identical with him. Therefore it is this
act through which every species of living creature binds itself to a whole
and is perpetuated. Generation is, with reference to the begetter, only
the expression, the symptom, of his decided assertion of the will to live:
with reference to the begotten, it is not the cause of the will which
appears in him, for the will in itself knows neither cause nor effect,
but, like all causes, it is merely the occasional cause of the phenomenal
appearance of this will at this time in this place. As thing-in-itself,
the will of the begetter and that of the begotten are not different, for
only the phenomenon, not the thing-in-itself, is subordinate to the
_principim individuationis_. With that assertion beyond our own body and
extending to the production of a new body, suffering and death, as
belonging to the phenomenon of life, have also been asserted anew, and the
possibility of salvation, introduced by the completest capability of
knowledge, has for this time been shown to be fruitless. Here lies the
profound reason of the shame connected with the process of generation.
This view is mythically expressed in the dogma of Christian theology that
we are all partakers in Adam’s first transgression (which is clearly just
the satisfaction of sexual passion), and through it are guilty of
suffering and death. In this theology goes beyond the consideration of
things according to the principle of sufficient reason, and recognises the
Idea of man, the unity of which is re-established out of its dispersion
into innumerable individuals through the bond of generation which holds
them all together. Accordingly it regards every individual as on one side
identical with Adam, the representative of the assertion of life, and, so
far, as subject to sin (original sin), suffering, and death; on the other
side, the knowledge of the Idea of man enables it to regard every
individual as identical with the saviour, the representative of the denial
of the will to live, and, so far as a partaker of his sacrifice of
himself, saved through his merits, and delivered from the bands of sin and
death, _i.e._, the world (Rom. v. 12-21).
Another mythical exposition of our view of sexual pleasure as the
assertion of the will to live beyond the individual life, as an attainment
to life which is brought about for the first time by this means, or as it
were a renewed assignment of life, is the Greek myth of Proserpine, who
might return from the lower world so long as she had not tasted its fruit,
but who became subject to it altogether through eating the pomegranate.
This meaning appears very clearly in Goethe’s incomparable presentation of
this myth, especially when, as soon as she has tasted the pomegranate, the
invisible chorus of the Fates—
“Thou art ours!
Fasting shouldest thou return:
And the bite of the apple makes thee ours!”
It is worth noticing that Clement of Alexandria (Strom. iii. c. 15)
illustrates the matter with the same image and the same expression: Οἱ μεν
ευνουχισαντες ἑαυτους απο πασης ἁμαρτιας, δια την βασιλειαν, των ουρανων,
μακαριοι οὑτοι εισιν, οἱ του κοσμου νηστευοντες; (_Qui se castrarunt ab
omni peccato propter regnum cœlorum, ii sunt beati, a mundo jejunantes_).
The sexual impulse also proves itself the decided and strongest assertion
of life by the fact that to man in a state of nature, as to the brutes, it
is the final end, the highest goal of life. Self-maintenance is his first
effort, and as soon as he has made provision for that, he only strives
after the propagation of the species: as a merely natural being he can
attempt no more. Nature also, the inner being of which is the will to live
itself, impels with all her power both man and the brute towards
propagation. Then it has attained its end with the individual, and is
quite indifferent to its death, for, as the will to live, it cares only
for the preservation of the species, the individual is nothing to it.
Because the will to live expresses itself most strongly in the sexual
impulse, the inner being of nature, the old poets and philosophers—Hesiod
and Parmenides—said very significantly that Eros is the first, the
creator, the principle from which all things proceed. (Cf. Arist. Metaph.,
i. 4.) Pherecydes said: Εις ερωτα μεταβεβλησθαι τον Δια, μελλοντα
δημιουργειν (_Jovem, cum mundum fabricare vellet, in cupidinem sese
transformasse_). _Proclus ad Plat. Tim._, l. iii. A complete treatment of
this subject we have recently received from G. F. Schœmann, “_De Cupidine
Cosmogonico_,” 1852. The Mâya of the Hindus, whose work and web is the
whole world of illusion, is also symbolised by love.
The genital organs are, far more than any other external member of the
body, subject merely to the will, and not at all to knowledge. Indeed, the
will shows itself here almost as independent of knowledge, as in those
parts which, acting merely in consequence of stimuli, are subservient to
vegetative life and reproduction, in which the will works blindly as in
unconscious nature. For generation is only reproduction passing over to a
new individual, as it were reproduction at the second power, as death is
only excretion at the second power. According to all this, the genitals
are properly the _focus_ of will, and consequently the opposite pole of
the brain, the representative of knowledge, _i.e._, the other side of the
world, the world as idea. The former are the life-sustaining principle
ensuring endless life to time. In this respect they were worshipped by the
Greeks in the _phallus_, and by the Hindus in the _lingam_, which are thus
the symbol of the assertion of the will. Knowledge, on the other hand,
affords the possibility of the suppression of willing, of salvation
through freedom, of conquest and annihilation of the world.
We already considered fully at the beginning of this Fourth Book how the
will to live in its assertion must regard its relation to death. We saw
that death does not trouble it, because it exists as something included in
life itself and belonging to it. Its opposite, generation, completely
counterbalances it; and, in spite of the death of the individual, ensures
and guarantees life to the will to live through all time. To express this
the Hindus made the _lingam_ an attribute of Siva, the god of death. We
also fully explained there how he who with full consciousness occupies the
standpoint of the decided assertion of life awaits death without fear. We
shall therefore say nothing more about this here. Without clear
consciousness most men occupy this standpoint and continually assert life.
The world exists as the mirror of this assertion, with innumerable
individuals in infinite time and space, in infinite suffering, between
generation and death without end. Yet from no side is a complaint to be
further raised about this; for the will conducts the great tragedy and
comedy at its own expense, and is also its own spectator. The world is
just what it is because the will, whose manifestation it is, is what it
is, because it so wills. The justification of suffering is, that in this
phenomenon also the will asserts itself; and this assertion is justified
and balanced by the fact that the will bears the suffering. Here we get a
glimpse of _eternal justice_ in the whole: we shall recognise it later
more definitely and distinctly, and also in the particular. But first we
must consider temporal or human justice.(73)
§ 61. It may be remembered from the Second Book that in the whole of
nature, at all the grades of the objectification of will, there was a
necessary and constant conflict between the individuals of all species;
and in this way was expressed the inner contradiction of the will to live
with itself. At the highest grade of the objectification, this phenomenon,
like all others, will exhibit itself with greater distinctness, and will
therefore be more easily explained. With this aim we shall next attempt to
trace the source of _egoism_ as the starting-point of all conflict.
We have called time and space the _principium individuationis_, because
only through them and in them is multiplicity of the homogeneous possible.
They are the essential forms of natural knowledge, _i.e._, knowledge
springing from the will. Therefore the will everywhere manifests itself in
the multiplicity of individuals. But this multiplicity does not concern
the will as thing-in-itself, but only its phenomena. The will itself is
present, whole and undivided, in every one of these, and beholds around it
the innumerably repeated image of its own nature; but this nature itself,
the actually real, it finds directly only in its inner self. Therefore
every one desires everything for himself, desires to possess, or at least
to control, everything, and whatever opposes it it would like to destroy.
To this is added, in the case of such beings as have knowledge, that the
individual is the supporter of the knowing subject, and the knowing
subject is the supporter of the world, _i.e._, that the whole of Nature
outside the knowing subject, and thus also all other individuals, exist
only in its idea; it is only conscious of them as its idea, thus merely
indirectly as something which is dependent on its own nature and
existence; for with its consciousness the world necessarily disappears for
it, _i.e._, its being and non-being become synonymous and
indistinguishable. Every knowing individual is thus in truth, and finds
itself as the whole will to live, or the inner being of the world itself,
and also as the complemental condition of the world as idea, consequently
as a microcosm which is of equal value with the macrocosm. Nature itself,
which is everywhere and always truthful, gives him this knowledge,
originally and independently of all reflection, with simple and direct
certainty. Now from these two necessary properties we have given the fact
may be explained that every individual, though vanishing altogether and
diminished to nothing in the boundless world, yet makes itself the centre
of the world, has regard for its own existence and well-being before
everything else; indeed, from the natural standpoint, is ready to
sacrifice everything else for this—is ready to annihilate the world in
order to maintain its own self, this drop in the ocean, a little longer.
This disposition is _egoism_, which is essential to everything in Nature.
Yet it is just through egoism that the inner conflict of the will with
itself attains to such a terrible revelation; for this egoism has its
continuance and being in that opposition of the microcosm and macrocosm,
or in the fact that the objectification of will has the _principium
individuationis_ for its form, through which the will manifests itself in
the same way in innumerable individuals, and indeed entire and completely
in both aspects (will and idea) in each. Thus, while each individual is
given to itself directly as the whole will and the whole subject of ideas,
other individuals are only given it as ideas. Therefore its own being, and
the maintenance of it, is of more importance to it than that of all others
together. Every one looks upon his own death as upon the end of the world,
while he accepts the death of his acquaintances as a matter of comparative
indifference, if he is not in some way affected by it. In the
consciousness that has reached the highest grade, that of man, egoism, as
well as knowledge, pain and pleasure, must have reached its highest grade
also, and the conflict of individuals which is conditioned by it must
appear in its most terrible form. And indeed we see this everywhere before
our eyes, in small things as in great. Now we see its terrible side in the
lives of great tyrants and miscreants, and in world-desolating wars; now
its absurd side, in which it is the theme of comedy, and very specially
appears as self-conceit and vanity. Rochefoucault understood this better
than any one else, and presented it in the abstract. We see it both in the
history of the world and in our own experience. But it appears most
distinctly of all when any mob of men is set free from all law and order;
then there shows itself at once in the distinctest form the _bellum omnium
contra omnes_, which Hobbes has so admirably described in the first
chapter _De Cive_. We see not only how every one tries to seize from the
other what he wants himself, but how often one will destroy the whole
happiness or life of another for the sake of an insignificant addition to
his own happiness. This is the highest expression of egoism, the
manifestations of which in this regard are only surpassed by those of
actual wickedness, which seeks, quite disinterestedly, the hurt and
suffering of others, without any advantage to itself. Of this we shall
speak soon. With this exhibition of the source of egoism the reader should
compare the presentation of it in my prize-essay on the basis of morals, §
14.
A chief source of that suffering which we found above to be essential and
inevitable to all life is, when it really appears in a definite form, that
_Eris_, the conflict of all individuals, the expression of the
contradiction, with which the will to live is affected in its inner self,
and which attains a visible form through the _principium individuationis_.
Wild-beast fights are the most cruel means of showing this directly and
vividly. In this original discord lies an unquenchable source of
suffering, in spite of the precautions that have been taken against it,
and which we shall now consider more closely.
§ 62. It has already been explained that the first and simplest assertion
of the will to live is only the assertion of one’s own body, _i.e._, the
exhibition of the will through acts in time, so far as the body, in its
form and design, exhibits the same will in space, and no further. This
assertion shows itself as maintenance of the body, by means of the
application of its own powers. To it is directly related the satisfaction
of the sexual impulse; indeed this belongs to it, because the genitals
belong to the body. Therefore _voluntary_ renunciation of the satisfaction
of that impulse, based upon no _motive_, is already a denial of the will
to live, is a voluntary self-suppression of it, upon the entrance of
knowledge which acts as a _quieter_. Accordingly such denial of one’s own
body exhibits itself as a contradiction by the will of its own phenomenon.
For although here also the body objectifies in the genitals the will to
perpetuate the species, yet this is not willed. Just on this account,
because it is a denial or suppression of the will to live, such a
renunciation is a hard and painful self-conquest; but of this later. But
since the will exhibits that _self-assertion_ of one’s own body in
innumerable individuals beside each other, it very easily extends in one
individual, on account of the egoism peculiar to them all, beyond this
assertion to the _denial_ of the same will appearing in another
individual. The will of the first breaks through the limits of the
assertion of will of another, because the individual either destroys or
injures this other body itself, or else because it compels the powers of
the other body to serve _its own_ will, instead of the will which
manifests itself in that other body. Thus if, from the will manifesting
itself as another body, it withdraws the powers of this body, and so
increases the power serving its own will beyond that of its own body, it
consequently asserts its own will beyond its own body by means of the
negation of the will appearing in another body. This breaking through the
limits of the assertion of will of another has always been distinctly
recognised, and its concept denoted by the word _wrong_. For both sides
recognise the fact instantly, not, indeed, as we do here in distinct
abstraction, but as feeling. He who suffers wrong feels the transgression
into the sphere of the assertion of his own body, through the denial of it
by another individual, as a direct and mental pain which is entirely
separated and different from the accompanying physical suffering
experienced from the act or the vexation at the loss. To the doer of
wrong, on the other hand, the knowledge presents itself that he is in
himself the same will which appears in that body also, and which asserts
itself with such vehemence; the one phenomenon that, transgressing the
limits of its own body and its powers, it extends to the denial of this
very will in another phenomenon, and so, regarded as will in itself, it
strives against itself by this vehemence and rends itself. Moreover, this
knowledge presents itself to him instantly, not _in abstracto_, but as an
obscure feeling; and this is called remorse, or, more accurately in this
case, the feeling of _wrong committed_.
_Wrong_, the conception of which we have thus analysed in its most general
and abstract form, expresses itself in the concrete most completely,
peculiarly, and palpably in cannibalism. This is its most distinct and
evident type, the terrible picture of the greatest conflict of the will
with itself at the highest grade of its objectification, which is man.
Next to this, it expresses itself most distinctly in murder; and therefore
the committal of murder is followed instantly and with fearful
distinctness by remorse, the abstract and dry significance of which we
have just given, which inflicts a wound on our peace of mind that a
lifetime cannot heal. For our horror at the murder committed, as also our
shrinking from the committal of it, corresponds to that infinite clinging
to life with which everything living, as phenomenon of the will to live,
is penetrated. (We shall analyse this feeling which accompanies the doing
of wrong and evil, in other words, the pangs of conscience, more fully
later on, and raise its concept to distinctness.) Mutilation, or mere
injury of another body, indeed every blow, is to be regarded as in its
nature the same as murder, and differing from it only in degree. Further,
wrong shows itself in the subjugation of another individual, in forcing
him into slavery, and, finally, in the seizure of another’s goods, which,
so far as these goods are regarded as the fruit of his labour, is just the
same thing as making him a slave, and is related to this as mere injury is
to murder.