Because the passion depended upon an illusion which represented that which has value only for the species as valuable for the individual, the deception must vanish after the attainment of the end of the species. The individual discovers that he has been the dupe of the species. If Petrarch’s passion had been gratified, his song would have been silenced.60
The subordination of the individual to the species as instrument of its continuance, appears again in the apparent dependence of individual vitality on the condition of the reproductive cells.
The sexual impulse is to be regarded as the inner life of the tree (the species) upon which the life of the individual grows, like a leaf that is nourished by the tree and assists in nourishing the tree; this is why that impulse is so strong, and springs from the depths of our nature. To castrate an individual, means to cut him off from the tree of the species upon which he grows, and thus severed, leaves him to wither; hence the degradation of his mental and physical powers. That the service of the species, i.e., fecundation, is followed in the case of every animal individual by momentary exhaustion and debility of all the powers, and in the case of most insects, indeed, by speedy death,—on account of which Celsus said, Seminis emissio est partis animae jactura; that in the case of man the extinction of the generative power shows that the individual approaches death; that excessive use of this power at every age shortens life, while on the other hand, temperance in this respect increases all the powers, and especially the muscular powers, on which account it was part of the training of the Greek athletes; that the same restraint lengthens the life of the insect even to the following spring; all this points to the fact that the life of the individual is at bottom only borrowed from that of the species . . . . Procreation is the highest point; and after attaining to it, the life of the first individual quickly or slowly sinks, while a new life ensures to nature the endurance of the species, and repeats the same phenomena . . . . Thus the alternation of death and reproduction is as the pulsebeat of the species . . . . Death is for the species what sleep is for the individual; . . . his is nature’s great doctrine of immortality . . . . For the whole world, with all its phenomena, is the objectivity of the one indivisible will, the Idea, which is related to all other Ideas as harmony is related to the single voice . . . . In Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe (vol. i, p. 161), Goethe says: “Our spirit is a being of a nature quite indestructible, and its activity continues from eternity to eternity. It is like the sun, which seems to set only to our earthly eyes, but which, in reality, never sets, but shines on unceasingly.” Goethe has taken the simile from me, not I from him.61
Only in space and time do we seem to be separate beings; they constitute the “principle of individuation” which divides life into distinct organisms as appearing in different places or periods; space and time are the Veil of Maya,—Illusion hiding the unity of things. In reality there is only the species, only life, only will. “To understand clearly that the individual is only the phenomenon, not the thing-in-itself,” to see in “the constant change of matter the fixed permanence of form,”—this is the essence of philosophy.62 “The motto of history should run: Eadem, sed aliter.”63 The more things change, the more they remain the same.
He to whom men and all things have not at all times appeared as mere phantoms or illusions, has no capacity for philosophy . . . . The true philosophy of history lies in perceiving that, in all the endless changes and motley complexity of events, it is only the self-same unchangeable being that is before us, which today pursues the same ends as it did yesterday and ever will. The historical philosopher has accordingly to recognize the identical character in all events, . . . and in spite of all the variety of special circumstances, of costumes and manners and customs, has to see everywhere the same humanity . . . . To have read Herodotus is, from a philosophical point of view, to have studied enough history . . . . Throughout and everywhere the true symbol of nature is the circle, because it is the schema or type of recurrence.64
We like to believe that all history is a halting and imperfect preparation for the magnificent era of which we are the salt and summit; but this notion of progress is mere conceit and folly. “In general, the wise in all ages have always said the same things, and the fools, who at all times form the immense majority, have in their way too acted alike, and done the opposite; and so it will continue. For, as Voltaire says, we shall leave the world as foolish and wicked as we found it.”65
In the light of all this we get a new and grimmer sense of the inescapable reality of determinism. “Spinoza says (Epistle 62) that if a stone which has been projected through the air had consciousness, it would believe that it was moving of its own free will. I add to this only that the stone would be right. The impulse given it is for the stone what the motive is for me; and what in the stone appears as cohesion, gravitation, rigidity, is in its inner nature the same as that which I recognize in myself as well, and what the stone also, if knowledge were given to it, would recognize as will.”66 But in neither the stone nor the philosopher is the will “free.” Will as a whole is free, for there is no other will beside it that could limit it; but each part of the universal Will—each species, each organism, each organ—is irrevocably determined by the whole.
Everyone believes himself à priori to be perfectly free, even in his individual actions, and thinks that at every moment he can commence another manner of life, which just means that he can become another person. But à posteriori, through experience, he finds to his astonishment that he is not free, but subjected to necessity; that in spite of all his resolutions and reflections he does not change his conduct, and that from the beginning of his life to the end of it, he must carry out the very character which he himself condemns, and as it were, play the part which he has undertaken, to the very end.67
V. The World as Evil
But if the world is will, it must be a world of suffering.
And first, because will itself indicates want, and its grasp is always greater than its reach. For every wish that is satisfied there remain ten that are denied. Desire is infinite, fulfilment is limited—“it is like the alms thrown to a beggar, that keeps him alive today in order that his misery may be prolonged tomorrow . . . . As long as our consciousness is filled by our will, so long as we are given up to the throng of desires with their constant hopes and fears, so long as we are subject to willing, we can never have lasting happiness or peace.”68 And fulfilment never satisfies; nothing is so fatal to an ideal as its realization. “The satisfied passion oftener leads to unhappiness than to happiness. For its demands often conflict so much with the personal welfare of him who is concerned that they undermine it.”69 Each individual bears within himself a disruptive contradiction; the realized desire develops a new desire, and so on endlessly. “At the bottom this results from the fact that the will must live on itself, for there exists nothing besides it, and it is a hungry will.”70
In every individual the measure of the pain essential to him was determined once for all by his nature; a measure which could neither remain empty, nor be more than filled . . . If a great and pressing care is lifted from our breast, . . . another immediately replaces it, the whole material of which was already there before, but could not come into consciousness as care because there was no capacity left for it . . . . But now that there is room for this it comes forward and occupies the throne.71