Chapter 35 Part III The World as Representation Revisited §35

In order to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of the world, it is inevitable that people must learn to distinguish the will as a thing-in-itself from its proper objectivity, and then make this objectivity more obvious and complete step by step. The different levels above which arise, that is, the Ideas themselves, and the phenomena of the Ideas [appearing] in the modes of the law of sufficient reason, are distinguished from the limited modes of cognition of the individual.Thus one would agree with Plato that only the Ideas have a real existence [approach], as opposed to things in space and time, the world which the individual considers real, to have only an illusory, dreamlike The presence.Then one understands how the same idea manifests itself in so many phenomena, and how it exhibits its essence only fragmentarily, aspect after aspect, to the knowing individual.so.People will distinguish the idea from its phenomenon according to the methods and methods that fall into the individual's investigation, and regard the former as essential and the latter as non-essential.We shall examine this, by way of example, in the smallest and in the greatest [things]. —When the floating clouds are floating, the shapes formed by the clouds are not essential to the clouds, but are indifferent; but as elastic vapors, they are [sometimes] compressed into a ball by the momentum of the wind, [sometimes] ] Floating, stretching, and shattering, this is its nature, the essence of various forces that objectify themselves in the cloud, and it is an idea.Each time the cloud takes form, that is only a [thing] to the individual observer. —The eddies, waves, foams, etc., which it makes us see are indifferent and unessential to the stream rolling between the [giant] rocks.As for water falling down with gravity, as an inelastic, easy-flowing, amorphous, transparent liquid, this is its essence; if these are intuitively known, it is an idea.Only for us, when we are knowing as individuals, are there those eddies, waves, bubbles. —The thin ice on the window glass forms crystals according to the laws of crystallization, which reveal the essence of the natural forces present here, and express the rational form; but the trees and flowers formed by ice crystallization are not essential, but only for We have. ——What appears in clouds, streams, and crystals is [already] the weakest epilogue of the will. If it appears in plants, it will be more complete, and it will be more complete in animals, and the most complete is in human beings.But only the objectification of the will, all those levels of essence, constitutes the Idea; in contrast, the unfolding of the Idea—since the Idea has been dispersed in the forms of the principle of sufficient reason into multiple and multifaceted phenomena— What is inessential to the Idea is only within the mode of cognition of the individual, and has reality only for this individual.The same must be true, then, of the development of the Idea—the Idea of ​​the most perfect objectivity of the will; The complex forms of human life in the world, all of which are merely accidental forms of the appearance of the Idea, do not belong to the Idea itself - in which there is only the proper objectivity of the will - but only to phenomena - phenomena ] into the cognition of the individual—; to ideas, these are alien, unessential, and indifferent, as [the dog’s] forms are to the clouds—it is the clouds that form those forms—and the forms of the swirling foam are to the Streams, trees and flowers are like thin ice on windows.

Whoever has mastered this, and knows how to distinguish the will from the Idea, and the Idea from its appearance, will see the great events of the world for him only because they are signs, from which the ideas of man can be discerned. , and then it makes sense; not that these things in themselves and for themselves have any meaning.He will not, like others, believe that time really produces something new and important; As a whole there is an end, a plan, a development, and perhaps with the ultimate goal of helping the latest generation, who live to thirty years of age, to achieve the highest perfection (according to their conception).Therefore, this person will not, like Homer, set up the entire Mount Olympus, and direct the world events in those times full of gods; Do concrete things; because it has been said above that [world affairs and white clouds and dogs] both have the same meaning in terms of the ideas that appear in them.In the complex structure of human life, in the endless vicissitudes of worldly affairs, he also regards only the Idea as permanent and essential.It is in this Idea that the will-to-live has its most perfect objectivity, and the Idea expresses its various aspects in those qualities of man, in those passions, errors and specialties, in selfishness, hatred, love, fear, courage, Recklessness, dullness, cunning, cleverness, genius, etc., etc.; and all these converge and condense into thousands of forms (individuals) to perform world history, large and small; and in the performance, promote all these What it is, whether it is a walnut or a crown, is irrelevant as far as the idea-free itself is concerned.In the end the man [also] found that in the human world just as in Geji's zaju, in all those plays it is always the same characters, and the aims and fates of those characters are always the same, though each play has its own peculiarities. Theme and plot, but the spirit of the plot is always the same; (at the same time), the characters of one play know nothing of the plot of another play, though they themselves are characters of that play.Thus, although [the characters] Bandalon did not grow quicker or more generous after the experience of the previous plays, nor did Dataglia become more serious and honest, and Brigna did not became bolder, and Colombine did not become more disciplined.

If one day, in the realm of possibility, we are allowed to see clearly the interlocking of all causes and effects, if Ksitigarbha appears and points out to us those eminent figures in a picture, The illuminators and heroes of the world, before they were useful, accident destroyed them; Chance, the tiniest chance, kills these events at the first, and points out at the end the majestic energies of great men, but by mistake, or by lust, or by compulsion, they This kind of energy is wasted uselessly, even childishly, on things of no value and no result.Had we seen all this, we might have shuddered and lamented the loss of an ancient treasure.But the Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha would smile and say: "The sources from which individual characters and their energies flow are inexhaustible, as inexhaustible as time and space, because characters and their energies are just like everything else. These [both] forms of phenomena are also just phenomena, the 'visibility' of the will. The inexhaustible source is inexhaustible on a finite scale. Therefore, for any The same inexhaustible [fountain of source] always remains open and [provides endless opportunities.] In this world of appearances, there can be neither real loss nor loss. There may be any real gain. Only the will exists, only it, [this] thing-in-itself; only it, the source of all these phenomena. Its self-knowledge and consequently its decisive self-affirmation Or self-denial, that is its only great thing.”—