The World as Will and Idea, passage 1689

If we now consider more closely the nature of the lyric proper, and select as examples exquisite and pure models, not those that approach in any way to some other form of poetry, such as the ballad, the elegy, the hymn, the epigram, &c., we shall find that the peculiar nature of the lyric, in the narrowest sense, is this: It is the subject of will, _i.e._, his own volition, which the consciousness of the singer feels; often as a released and satisfied desire (joy), but still oftener as a restricted desire (grief), always as an emotion, a passion, a moved frame of mind.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2561

To repeat the whole nature of the world abstractly, universally, and distinctly in concepts, and thus to store up, as it were, a reflected image of it in permanent concepts always at the command of the reason; this and nothing else is philosophy. I refer the reader to the passage quoted from Bacon in the First Book.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1832

or. 5), instead of which it would be shorter to say at once cloud-cuckoo-town (νεφελοκοκκυγια): we shall not require to serve up covered empty dishes of this kind. Finally, we shall not in this book, any more than in those which have preceded it, narrate histories and give them out as philosophy.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1359

Thus the last two senses are most closely related to the will, and therefore they are always the most ignoble, and have been called by Kant the subjective senses.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1270

Regarded in the first way, it is a means to the knowledge of the Idea, the communication of which is the work of art; in the second case, the imaginary object is used to build castles in the air congenial to egotism and the individual humour, and which for the moment delude and gratify; thus only the relations of the phantasies so linked together are known.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1271

The man who indulges in such an amusement is a dreamer; he will easily mingle those fancies that delight his solitude with reality, and so unfit himself for real life: perhaps he will write them down, and then we shall have the ordinary novel of every description, which entertains those who are like him and the public at large, for the readers imagine themselves in the place of the hero, and then find the story very agreeable.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 540

Therefore that truth has at all times been evident to all men everywhere, nor has it ever been seriously doubted; and this could not be the case if it had no other ground of knowledge than the abstruse and exceedingly subtle proof of Kant.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2462

And he who for the sake of orthodoxy commits the heretic to the flames is as much a murderer as the bandit who does it for gain; and indeed, as regards inward circumstances, so also was he who slaughtered the Turks in the Holy Land, if, like the burner of heretics, he really did so because he thought that he would thereby gain a place in heaven.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2280

The further explanation of this inner significance of all pain of conscience cannot be given till later. He who suffers wrong is, on the other hand, painfully conscious of the denial of his will, as it is expressed through the body and its natural requirements, for the satisfaction of which nature refers him to the powers of his body; and at the same time he is conscious that without doing wrong he might ward off that denial by every means unless he lacks the power.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1390

The impression of the sublime may be produced in quite another way, by presenting a mere immensity in space and time; its immeasurable greatness dwindles the individual to nothing. Adhering to Kant’s nomenclature and his accurate division, we may call the first kind the dynamical, and the second the mathematical sublime, although we entirely dissent from his explanation of the inner nature of the impression, and can allow no share in it either to moral reflections, or to hypostases from scholastic philosophy.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1455

For just because each part bears just as much as it conveniently can, and each is supported just where it requires to be and just to the necessary extent, this opposition unfolds itself, this conflict between rigidity and gravity, which constitutes the life, the manifestation of will, in the stone, becomes completely visible, and these lowest grades of the objectivity of will reveal themselves distinctly.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1118

The empirical character is entirely determined through the intelligible, which is without ground, _i.e._, as thing-in-itself is not subordinated to the principle of sufficient reason (the form of the phenomenon). The empirical character must in the course of life afford us the express image of the intelligible, and can only become what the nature of the latter demands. But this property extends only to the essential, not to the unessential in the course of life to which it applies.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1143

And what he thus recognises as his own real being also exhausts the being of the whole world—the macrocosm; thus the world, like man, is through and through _will_, and through and through _idea_, and nothing more than this. So we see the philosophy of Thales, which concerned the macrocosm, unite at this point with that of Socrates, which dealt with the microcosm, for the object of both is found to be the same.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 274

For, on the one hand, the law of homogeneity leads to the assumption of a primary chemical state of matter, which alone belongs to matter as such, and precedes all others which are not essentially matter as such, but merely contingent forms and qualities. On the other hand, we cannot understand how this one state could ever experience a chemical change, if there did not exist a second state to affect it. Thus the same difficulty appears in chemistry which Epicurus met with in mechanics.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 614

Logical demonstrations from concepts or syllogisms have the advantage of proceeding from the reason to the consequent, just as much as knowledge through perception _a priori_, and therefore in themselves, _i.e._, according to their form, they are infallible. This has greatly assisted to bring demonstration in general into such esteem.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2802

91 How truly this is the case may be seen from the fact that all the contradictions and inconceivabilities contained in the Christian dogmatics, consistently systematised by Augustine, which have led to the Pelagian insipidity which is opposed to them, vanish as soon as we abstract from the fundamental Jewish dogma, and recognize that man is not the work of another, but of his own will.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1730

It stands alone, quite cut off from all the other arts. In it we do not recognise the copy or repetition of any Idea of existence in the world.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2286

But whoever wants to set aside the purely moral consideration of human action, or denies it, and wishes to regard conduct merely in its outward effects and their consequences, may certainly, with Hobbes, explain right and wrong as conventional definitions arbitrarily assumed, and therefore not existing outside positive law, and we can never show him through external experience what does not belong to such experience.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 615

But this infallibility is merely relative; the demonstration merely subsumes under the first principles of the science, and it is these which contain the whole material truth of science, and they must not themselves be demonstrated, but must be founded on perception. In the few _a priori_ sciences we have named above, this perception is pure, but everywhere else it is empirical, and is only raised to universality through induction.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 879

Therefore the more necessity any knowledge carries with it, the more there is in it of that which cannot be otherwise thought or presented in perception—as, for example, space-relations—the clearer and more sufficing then it is, the less pure objective content it has, or the less reality, properly so called, is given in it.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2131

“_Sed, dum abest quod avemus, id exsuperare videtur_ _Cætera; post aliud, quum contigit illud, avemus;_ _Et sitis æqua tenet vitai semper hiantes._”—LUCR. iii. 1095.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1005

But if etiology, instead of preparing the way for philosophy, and supplying its doctrines with practical application by means of instances, supposes that its aim is rather to deny the existence of all original forces, except perhaps _one_, the most general, for example, impenetrability, which it imagines it thoroughly understands, and consequently seeks forcibly to refer all the others to it—it forsakes its own province and can only give us error instead of truth.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1235

§ 35. In order to gain a deeper insight into the nature of the world, it is absolutely necessary that we should learn to distinguish the will as thing-in-itself from its adequate objectivity, and also the different grades in which this appears more and more distinctly and fully, _i.e._, the Ideas themselves, from the merely phenomenal existence of these Ideas in the forms of the principle of sufficient reason, the restricted method of knowledge of the individual.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1880

The earth rolls from day into night, the individual dies, but the sun itself shines without intermission, an eternal noon. Life is assured to the will to live; the form of life is an endless present, no matter how the individuals, the phenomena of the Idea, arise and pass away in time, like fleeting dreams. Thus even already suicide appears to us as a vain and therefore a foolish action; when we have carried our investigation further it will appear to us in a still less favourable light.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 153

It manifests its origin in space, partly through the form which is inseparable from it, but especially through its persistence (substance), the _a priori_ certainty of which is therefore wholly deducible from that of space(9) (for variation belongs to time alone, but in it alone and for itself nothing is persistent).

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1147

So then of every particular movement or change of any kind in nature, a cause is to be sought, that is, a condition that of necessity produced it, but never of the natural force itself which is revealed in this and innumerable similar phenomena; and it is therefore simple misunderstanding, arising from want of consideration, to ask for a cause of gravity, electricity, and so on.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1692

Therefore, in the lyric and the lyrical mood, desire (the personal interest of the ends), and pure perception of the surrounding presented, are wonderfully mingled with each other; connections between them are sought for and imagined; the subjective disposition, the affection of the will, imparts its own hue to the perceived surrounding, and conversely, the surroundings communicate the reflex of their colour to the will.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2717

For, in spite of Augustine and Luther, it adheres to the vulgar Pelagianism, which the rationalism of the day really is, and treats as antiquated those deeply significant dogmas which are peculiar and essential to Christianity in the strictest sense; while, on the other hand, it holds fast and regards as the principal matter only the dogma that originates in Judaism, and has been retained from it, and is merely historically connected with Christianity.(91) We, however, recognise in the doctrine referred to above the truth completely agreeing with the result of our own investigations.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 530

The esteemed sciences referred to are, however, specially the mathematical sciences, particularly astronomy. But the certainty of astronomy arises from the fact that it has for its basis the intuition or perception of space, which is given _a priori_, and is therefore infallible. All space-relations, however, follow from each other with a necessity (ground of being) which affords _a priori_ certainty, and they can therefore be safely deduced from each other.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2326

The remaining content of the doctrine of right is mere application of these principles, mere accurate definition of the limits of right and wrong for all possible relations of life, which are consequently united and distributed under certain points of view and titles. In these special doctrines the books which treat of pure law are fairly at one; it is only in the principles that they differ much, for these are always connected with some philosophical system.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2493

The opposite of the sting of conscience, the origin and significance of which is explained above, is the _good conscience_, the satisfaction which we experience after every disinterested deed.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 799

But in order to serve as a clue for the understanding, this can be no other than the most complete of all its manifestations, _i.e._, the most distinct, the most developed, and directly enlightened by knowledge. Now this is the human will. It is, however, well to observe that here, at any rate, we only make use of a _denominatio a potiori_, through which, therefore, the concept of will receives a greater extension than it has hitherto had.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 616

If, then, in the empirical sciences also, the particular is proved from the general, yet the general, on the other hand, has received its truth from the particular; it is only a store of collected material, not a self-constituted foundation.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2323

The pure theory of right or natural right—better, moral right—though always reversed, lies at the foundation of every just positive legislation, as pure mathematics lies at the foundation of every branch of applied mathematics. The most important points of the doctrine of right, as philosophy has to supply it for that end to legislation, are the following: 1.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1836

For all such historical philosophy, whatever airs it may give itself, regards _time_ just as if Kant had never lived, as a quality of the thing-in-itself, and thus stops at that which Kant calls the phenomenon in opposition to the thing-in-itself; which Plato calls the becoming and never being, in opposition to the being and never becoming; and which, finally, is called in the Indian philosophy the web of Mâya.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1712

It becomes visible in the suffering of men, which is now introduced, partly through chance and error, which appear as the rulers of the world, personified as fate, on account of their insidiousness, which even reaches the appearance of design; partly it proceeds from man himself, through the self-mortifying efforts of a few, through the wickedness and perversity of most.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1680

For here also genius holds up to us the magic glass, in which all that is essential and significant appears before us collected and placed in the clearest light, and what is accidental and foreign is left out.(60)

The World as Will and Idea, passage 422

Thus the immeasurably wide sphere of the concept of feeling includes the most different kinds of objects, and no one can ever understand how they come together until he has recognised that they all agree in this negative respect, that they are not _abstract concepts_.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 769

But if we now analyse the reality of this body and its actions, beyond the fact that it is idea, we find nothing in it except the will; with this its reality is exhausted. Therefore we can nowhere find another kind of reality which we can attribute to the material world.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1307

The true and the false are always mixed up in their memory. Although the immediate present is correctly known, it becomes falsified through its fictitious connection with an imaginary past; they therefore regard themselves and others as identical with persons who exist only in their imaginary past; they do not recognise some of their acquaintances at all, and thus while they perceive correctly what is actually present, they have only false conceptions of its relations to what is absent.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 565

It came to be known that sense-perception was not to be trusted unconditionally, and it was therefore hastily concluded that only rational, logical thought could establish truth; although Plato (in the Parmenides), the Megarics, Pyrrho, and the New-Academy, showed by examples (in the manner which was afterwards adopted by Sextus Empiricus) how syllogisms and concepts were also sometimes misleading, and indeed produced paralogisms and sophisms which arise much more easily and are far harder to explain than the illusion of sense-perception.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1639

But in poetry, as in plastic art, the allegory passes into the symbol if there is merely an arbitrary connection between what it presented to perception and the abstract significance of it. For as all symbolism rests, at bottom, on an agreement, the symbol has this among other disadvantages, that in time its meaning is forgotten, and then it is dumb. Who would guess why the fish is a symbol of Christianity if he did not know? Only a Champollion; for it is entirely a phonetic hieroglyphic.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1909

Since, as has been said, this whole work is only the unfolding of a single thought, it follows that all its parts have the most intimate connection with each other. Not merely that each part stands in a necessary relation to what immediately precedes it, and only presupposes a recollection of that by the reader, as is the case with all philosophies which consist merely of a series of inferences, but that every part of the whole work is related to every other part and presupposes it.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 782

It has already been advanced in confirmation of this that every impression upon my body also affects my will at once and immediately, and in this respect is called pain or pleasure, or, in its lower degrees, agreeable or disagreeable sensation; and also, conversely, that every violent movement of the will, every emotion or passion, convulses the body and disturbs the course of its functions.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 31

And if, indeed, in addition to this he is a partaker of the benefit conferred by the Vedas, the access to which, opened to us through the Upanishads, is in my eyes the greatest advantage which this still young century enjoys over previous ones, because I believe that the influence of the Sanscrit literature will penetrate not less deeply than did the revival of Greek literature in the fifteenth century: if, I say, the reader has also already received and assimilated the sacred, primitive Indian wisdom, then is he best of all prepared to hear what I have to say to him.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2463

For these are careful only for themselves, for their own egoism, just like the bandit, from whom they are only distinguished by the absurdity of their means. From without, as has been said, the will can only be reached through motives, and these only alter the way in which it expresses itself, never the will itself. _Velle non discitur._

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1787

When now, in the particular case, such a relation is actually given, that is to say, when the composer has been able to express in the universal language of music the emotions of will which constitute the heart of an event, then the melody of the song, the music of the opera, is expressive.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1886

The same fact explains the circumstance that at all times and among all peoples dogmas of some kind or other relating to the continued existence of the individual after death arise, and are believed in, although the evidence in support of them must always be very insufficient, and the evidence against them forcible and varied.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 926

Men have tried in various ways to bring the immeasurable greatness of the material universe nearer to the comprehension of us all, and then they have seized the opportunity to make edifying remarks. They have referred perhaps to the relative smallness of the earth, and indeed of man; or, on the contrary, they have pointed out the greatness of the mind of this man who is so insignificant—the mind that can solve, comprehend, and even measure the greatness of the universe, and so forth.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 523

To this explanation of the faculty of judgment, moreover, Kant’s division of it into reflecting and subsuming judgment may be applied, according as it passes from the perceived objects to the concepts, or from the latter to the former; in both cases always mediating between empirical knowledge of the understanding and the reflective knowledge of the reason.