The World as Will and Idea
Arthur Schopenhauer
2,809 passages indexed from The World as Will and Idea (Arthur Schopenhauer) — Page 21 of 57
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The World as Will and Idea, passage 1701
For as it is incumbent upon the chemist not only to exhibit the simple elements, pure and genuine, and their principal compounds, but also to expose them to the influence of such reagents as will clearly and strikingly bring out their peculiar qualities, so is it incumbent on the poet not only to present to us significant characters truly and faithfully as nature itself; but, in order that we may get to know them, he must place them in those situations in which their peculiar qualities will fully unfold themselves, and appear distinctly in sharp outline; situations which are therefore called significant.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1128
Thus, time has no significance for our present examination of the manner in which the objectification of the will distributes itself among the Ideas, and the Ideas whose _manifestations_ entered into the course of time earlier, according to the law of causality, to which as phenomena they are subject, have no advantage over those whose manifestation entered later; nay rather, these last are the completest objectifications of the will, to which the earlier manifestations must adapt themselves just as much as they must adapt themselves to the earlier.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1476
Leaping waterfalls foaming and tumbling over rocks, cataracts dispersed into floating spray, springs gushing up as high columns of water, and clear reflecting lakes, reveal the Ideas of fluid and heavy matter, in precisely the same way as the works of architecture unfold the Ideas of rigid matter.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1478
§ 44. What the two arts we have spoken of accomplish for these lowest grades of the objectivity of will, is performed for the higher grades of vegetable nature by artistic horticulture. The landscape beauty of a scene consists, for the most part, in the multiplicity of natural objects which are present in it, and then in the fact that they are clearly separated, appear distinctly, and yet exhibit a fitting connection and alternation.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2567
Bonaventura, also famous as a scholastic, has recently been republished. “Vita S. Francisci a S. Bonaventura concinnata” (Soest, 1847), though shortly before a painstaking and detailed biography, making use of all sources of information, appeared in France, “Histoire de S. François d’Assise, par Chavin de Mallan” (1845).
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2448
Therefore suicide affords no escape; what every one in his inmost consciousness _wills_, that must he _be_; and what every one _is_, that he _wills_. Thus, besides the merely felt knowledge of the illusiveness and nothingness of the forms of the idea which separate individuals, it is the self-knowledge of one’s own will and its degree that gives the sting to conscience.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1105
Every plant speaks to us first of all of its home, of the climate, and the nature of the ground in which it has grown. Therefore, even those who have had little practice easily tell whether an exotic plant belongs to the tropical or the temperate zone, and whether it grows in water, in marshes, on mountain, or on moorland. Besides this, however, every plant expresses the special will of its species, and says something that cannot be uttered in any other tongue.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2162
It is the expression and symptom of the actual need of mankind, partly for help and support, partly for occupation and diversion; and if it often works in direct opposition to the first need, because when accidents and dangers arise valuable time and strength, instead of being directed to warding them off, are uselessly wasted on prayers and offerings; it serves the second end all the better by this imaginary converse with a visionary spirit world; and this is the by no means contemptible gain of all superstitions.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 34
How can I venture to present a book to the public under conditions and demands the first two of which are presumptuous and altogether immodest, and this at a time when there is such a general wealth of special ideas, that in Germany alone they are made common property through the press, in three thousand valuable, original, and absolutely indispensable works every year, besides innumerable periodicals, and even daily papers; at a time when especially there is not the least deficiency of entirely original and profound philosophers, but in Germany alone there are more of them alive at the same time, than several centuries could formerly boast of in succession to each other?
The World as Will and Idea, passage 11
It is self-evident that under these circumstances no other advice can be given as to how one may enter into the thought explained in this work than _to read the book twice_, and the first time with great patience, a patience which is only to be derived from the belief, voluntarily accorded, that the beginning presupposes the end almost as much as the end presupposes the beginning, and that all the earlier parts presuppose the later almost as much as the later presuppose the earlier.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1369
This exaltation must not only be consciously won, but also consciously retained, and it is therefore accompanied by a constant remembrance of will; yet not of a single particular volition, such as fear or desire, but of human volition in general, so far as it is universally expressed in its objectivity the human body.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2290
The working out of this chapter of ethics would contain the precise definition of the limits to which an individual may go in the assertion of the will already objectified in his body without denying the same will as it appears in another individual; and also the actions which transgress these limits, which consequently are wrong, and therefore in their turn may be warded off without wrong. Thus our own _action_ always remains the point of view of the investigation.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 885
This ether, if it reaches the eye, beats rapidly upon the retina, and gives us the knowledge of colour. Thus, for example, four hundred and eighty-three billion beats in a second give red, and seven hundred and twenty-seven billion beats in a second give violet. Upon this theory, persons who are colour-blind must be those who are unable to count the beats, must they not?
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2433
Those ills which are common to all and inseparable from human life trouble us little, just as those which belong to the climate, to the whole country. The recollection of greater sufferings than our own stills our pain; the sight of the sufferings of others soothes our own.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2732
Thus every _nihil negativum_, if subordinated to a higher concept, will appear as a mere _nihil privativum_ or relative nothing, which can, moreover, always exchange signs with what it negatives, so that that would then be thought as negation, and it itself as assertion. This also agrees with the result of the difficult dialectical investigation of the meaning of nothing which Plato gives in the “Sophist” (pp.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2728
On this I must first remark, that the conception of nothing is essentially relative, and always refers to a definite something which it negatives.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 360
This characteristic arises from the fact that a concept is an idea of an idea, _i.e._, its whole nature consists in its relation to another idea; but as it is not this idea itself, which is generally an idea of perception and therefore belongs to quite a different class, the latter may have temporal, spacial, and other determinations, and in general many relations which are not thought along with it in the concept.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 887
They might indeed, some day, come to an ignominious end; but then every one would slink away and pretend that he never had anything to do with them. We shall soon have to speak again of this false reduction of the forces of nature to each other; so much for the present.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2140
“_Suave, mari magno, turbantibus æquora ventis,_ _E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem:_ _Non, quia vexari quemquam est jucunda voluptas;_ _Sed, quibus ipse malis careas, quia cernere suave est._”
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2668
But, more than this, it is also the masterpiece of Mâyâ, as the most flagrant example of the contradiction of the will to live with itself.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2666
Thus the will to live appears just as much in suicide (Siva) as in the satisfaction of self-preservation (Vishnu) and in the sensual pleasure of procreation (Brahma). This is the inner meaning of the unity of the Trimurtis, which is embodied in its entirety in every human being, though in time it raises now one, now another, of its three heads. Suicide stands in the same relation to the denial of the will as the individual thing does to the Idea.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 706
If we turn to mathematics to look for the fuller knowledge we desire of the idea of perception, which we have, as yet, only understood generally, merely in its form, we find that mathematics only treats of these ideas so far as they fill time and space, that is, so far as they are quantities. It will tell us with the greatest accuracy the how-many and the how-much; but as this is always merely relative, that is to say, merely a comparison of one idea with others, and a comparison only in the one respect of quantity, this also is not the information we are principally in search of.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2070
The existence of the plant is just such a restless, never satisfied striving, a ceaseless tendency through ever-ascending forms, till the end, the seed, becomes a new starting-point; and this repeated _ad infinitum_—nowhere an end, nowhere a final satisfaction, nowhere a resting-place.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 557
Instead of an exhaustive knowledge of these space-relations we therefore receive merely certain results of them, imparted to us at pleasure, and in fact we are very much in the position of a man to whom the different effects of an ingenious machine are shown, but from whom its inner connection and construction are withheld. We are compelled by the principle of contradiction to admit that what Euclid demonstrates is true, but we do not comprehend _why_ it is so.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1493
It is further to be observed that at the next grade below this, animal painting, the characteristic is entirely one with the beautiful; the most characteristic lion, wolf, horse, sheep, or ox, was always the most beautiful also. The reason of this is that animals have only the character of their species, no individual character.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1869
But real objects are only in the present; the past and the future contain only conceptions and fancies, therefore the present is the essential form of the phenomenon of the will, and inseparable from it. The present alone is that which always exists and remains immovable.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 669
The aim of Stoical ethics is happiness: τελος το ευδαι μονειν (_virtutes omnes finem habere beatitudinem_) it is called in the account of the Stoa by Stobæus (Ecl., L. ii. c. 7, p. 114, and also p. 138). Yet the ethics of Stoicism teach that happiness can only be attained with certainty through inward peace and quietness of spirit (αταραξια), and that this again can only be reached through virtue; this is the whole meaning of the saying that virtue is the highest good.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2638
To this class belong all true accounts of conversions; for example, that of Raymond Lully, who had long wooed a fair lady, and was at last admitted to her chamber, anticipating the fulfilment of all his wishes, when she, opening her bodice, showed him her bosom frightfully eaten with cancer.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2153
It is a weary longing and complaining, a dream-like staggering through the four ages of life to death, accompanied by a series of trivial thoughts. Such men are like clockwork, which is wound up, and goes it knows not why; and every time a man is begotten and born, the clock of human life is wound up anew, to repeat the same old piece it has played innumerable times before, passage after passage, measure after measure, with insignificant variations.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 529
It is true we often hear men speak in a lofty strain of sciences which rest entirely upon correct conclusions drawn from sure premises, and which are consequently unassailable. But through pure logical reasoning, however true the premises may be, we shall never receive more than an articulate expression and exposition of what lies already complete in the premises; thus we shall only _explicitly_ expound what was already _implicitly_ understood.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1210
Therefore the knowledge which is subject to the will knows nothing further of objects than their relations, knows the objects only so far as they exist at this time, in this place, under these circumstances, from these causes, and with these effects—in a word, as particular things; and if all these relations were to be taken away, the objects would also have disappeared for it, because it knew nothing more about them.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 91
I have always been compelled to admire not merely the sagacity, the true and fine tact with which, immediately on its appearance, they recognised my philosophy as something altogether different from and indeed dangerous to their own attempts, or, in popular language, something that would not suit their turn; but also the sure and astute policy by virtue of which they at once discovered the proper procedure with regard to it, the complete harmony with which they applied it, and the persistency with which they have remained faithful to it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 619
My opinion is (and this is what gives this explanation its proper place here) that _every error is an inference from the consequent to the reason_, which indeed is valid when we know that the consequent has that reason and can have no other; but otherwise is not valid.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1132
The bird builds the nest for the young which it does not yet know; the beaver constructs a dam the object of which is unknown to it; ants, marmots, and bees lay in provision for the winter they have never experienced; the spider and the ant-lion make snares, as if with deliberate cunning, for future unknown prey; insects deposit their eggs where the coming brood finds future nourishment.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 145
All the innumerable conceivable phenomena and conditions of things, might be coexistent in boundless space, without limiting each other, or might be successive in endless time without interfering with each other: thus a necessary relation of these phenomena to each other, and a law which should regulate them according to such a relation, is by no means needful, would not, indeed, be applicable: it therefore follows that in the case of all co-existence in space and change in time, so long as each of these forms preserves for itself its condition and its course without any connection with the other, there can be no causation, and since causation constitutes the essential nature of matter, there can be no matter.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1645
The skill of a master, in poetry as in chemistry, enables us always to obtain the precise precipitate we intended. This end is assisted by the numerous epithets in poetry, by means of which the universality of every concept is narrowed more and more till we reach the perceptible.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1823
Now, as this attempt has been made from other points of view in the three preceding books with the generality that is proper to philosophy, in this book the action of men will be considered in the same way; and this side of the world might, indeed, be considered the most important of all, not only subjectively, as I remarked above, but also objectively.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 532
This is the whole material of astronomy, which both by its simplicity and its certainty leads to definite results, which are highly interesting on account of the vastness and importance of the objects. For example, if I know the mass of a planet and the distance of its satellite from it, I can tell with certainty the period of the revolution of the latter according to Kepler’s second law.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2133
And thus, although we are now at variance with our fate, we are reconciled to our existence, for the knowledge is again put far from us that suffering is essential to this existence itself, and true satisfaction impossible.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 544
Demonstrations in general are not so much for those who wish to learn as for those who wish to dispute. Such persons stubbornly deny directly established insight; now only the truth can be consistent in all directions, and therefore we must show such persons that they admit under _one_ form and indirectly, what they deny under another form and directly; that is, the logically necessary connection between what is denied and what is admitted.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2027
Both are experienced, not because these past deeds have still an existence; they are past, they have been, and now are no more; but their great importance for us lies in their significance, lies in the fact that these deeds are the expression of the character, the mirror of the will, in which we look and recognise our inmost self, the kernel of our will.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1658
Yet that which is significant in itself, not in its relations, the real unfolding of the Idea, will be found far more accurately and distinctly in poetry than in history, and, therefore, however paradoxical it may sound, far more really genuine inner truth is to be attributed to poetry than to history. For the historian must accurately follow the particular event according to life, as it develops itself in time in the manifold tangled chains of causes and effects.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2392
But it is just the same as if we fired a bullet against a cliff. In India our religions will never take root. The ancient wisdom of the human race will not be displaced by what happened in Galilee. On the contrary, Indian philosophy streams back to Europe, and will produce a fundamental change in our knowledge and thought.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 578
It is the analytical method in general that I wish for the exposition of mathematics, instead of the synthetical method which Euclid made use of. Yet this would have very great, though not insuperable, difficulties in the case of complicated mathematical truths. Here and there in Germany men are beginning to alter the exposition of mathematics, and to proceed more in this analytical way.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 3
Where a choice has had to be made, the alternative of a somewhat slavish adherence to Schopenhauer’s _ipsissima verba_ has accordingly been preferred to that of inaccuracy. The result is a piece of work which leaves much to be desired, but which has yet consistently sought to reproduce faithfully the spirit as well as the letter of the original.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2761
In the same way in 1830 Mr. Haulton produced in the Medical Botanical Society of London a bulbous root which was found in the hand of an Egyptian mummy, in which it was probably put in observance of some religious rite, and which must have been at least two thousand years old. He had planted it in a flower-pot, in which it grew up and flourished. This is quoted from the Medical Journal of 1830 in the Journal of the Royal Institute of Great Britain, October 1830, p. 196.—“In the garden of Mr.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2172
In like manner, what was said by the father of history(71) has not since him been contradicted, that no man has ever lived who has not wished more than once that he had not to live the following day. According to this, the brevity of life, which is so constantly lamented, may be the best quality it possesses.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2219
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.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 982
In any case Malebranche is right: every natural cause is only an occasional cause. It only gives opportunity or occasion for the manifestation of the one indivisible will 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.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1325
That he has these eyes, that he knows the inner nature of things apart from all their relations, is the gift of genius, is inborn; but that he is able to lend us this gift, to let us see with his eyes, is acquired, and is the technical side of art.