Chapter 58 Book IV The World as Will Revisited §58

All satisfaction, or happiness in general, is in its original sense and essence only negative, and in any case never positive.This happiness is not a blessing that comes to us by itself, but must always be the fulfillment of a wish, since the wish, that is, the defect, is the precondition of any enjoyment.But with satisfaction comes the end of desire, and thus the end of enjoyment.Satisfaction or the attainment of happiness, therefore, can be nothing but liberation from pain, from embarrassment.It turns out that to achieve this kind of liberation, we must first have not only all kinds of real and obvious pains, but also all kinds of obsessions that disturb our peaceful wishes, and even the fatal emptiness that burdens us with existence. boring. ——But it is so difficult to achieve something and implement something; every plan has endless difficulties and hardships against it, and after every step, obstacles are piled up in front of it.However, even if in the end all obstacles are overcome and the goal is achieved, then what is won is the liberation of people from a certain pain or a certain desire, and thus in addition to returning to the state before this pain and this desire arose. There can never be anything other than the state of being. ——What we know directly is always only defects, and defects are pain.Satisfaction and enjoyment are known only indirectly, by recalling antecedent pain and embarrassment which ended with the appearance of enjoyment.For this reason, we often do not feel or appreciate our real wealth and advantages, as if it were a matter of course and nothing else.This is because the happiness that these wealth and favorable conditions bring to us is always only negative, and it only fends off pain.We don't feel the value of these things until we've lost them; the defect, the lack, the pain, [is] something positive, something that the self throws directly at us.Therefore, it is also pleasant to remember the difficulties, diseases, defects, etc. that we have overcome, because this is the only means of enjoying the beautiful situation before us.At the same time, it cannot be denied that at this point, from the standpoint of selfishness--self-interest is the form of desire for life--seeing the sight of another's suffering or hearing the account of another's suffering is precisely This line gives us satisfaction and enjoyment; as Luknez puts it beautifully and frankly at the beginning of the second volume:

"In the sea, the wind is raging and the waves are raging, but the people on the shore are safe and at ease. Seeing that the boat is in danger, he is happy and proud. Why is it that others are in trouble, but self-satisfied? Just because I already knew that the shore was safe and sound. " But a little later in this chapter it will be pointed out that pleasures of this type, obtained through such indirect knowledge of one's own happiness, come very close to the real source of positive malice. As to the fact that all happiness is only negative, not positive; as to the fact that all happiness, for this very reason, cannot be a lasting satisfaction and blessing, but is always only the liberation from pain or inadequacy, after which it must follow. Or a new kind of pain, or dullness, that is, empty desires, boredom, etc.; all this is to be found in art, especially in poetry, in the faithful reflection of the world and of the essence of life. Illustrative.It turns out that any epic or dramatic work can only express a kind of struggle, effort and struggle for happiness, but it can never express the permanent and complete happiness.Dramatic writing directs its hero through a thousand difficulties and dangers to achieve his goal, and hastily let the curtain fall when he has achieved his goal.This is because, after the goal has been achieved, besides pointing out the splendid goal in which the hero tried to find the goal of happiness, it is only a joke to the hero, pointing out that after reaching the goal, he is no better than before. Beyond that, there's nothing left [to act].Since true abiding happiness is impossible, it cannot be the subject of art.It is true that the purpose of pastoral poetry is to describe such happiness, but people also see that pastoral poetry is not up to this task.In the hands of the poets, pastoral poetry is always unconsciously transformed into narrative poetry, which is only a very meaningless epic, consisting only of trivial pains, trivial joys and trivial struggles: this is the most common Condition.The pastoral poems may unknowingly become poems that simply describe the scenery, describing the beauty of nature.This is pure knowledge without will, in fact it is indeed the only pure happiness, without pain and need beforehand, and without regret, pain, emptiness, and restlessness afterward.But this kind of happiness cannot fill the whole life, but only some moments of the whole life. —What we see in poetry we see in music.In the whirl of music, we see the most profound inner history of self-consciousness expressed in a general way, and see the most hidden life of the human mind, yearning, bitterness and joy, tide and tide.A melody is always a change in pitch, with a thousand ingenious twists and turns to painful dissonance, and then back to pitch again.This fundamental note signifies contentment and peace of the will, but after that, it is of no use to take it; if it goes on, it will be just boring, meaningless monotony, which resembles emptiness.

All that these investigations aim to make clear, such as the unattainability of lasting satisfaction, such as the passivity of all happiness, is explained in the point made at the end of the second book, that is to say, that the will is shown as a kind without an aim. , endless struggle, and the objectification of will is human life and any phenomenon.We also see this stamp of supremacy stamped on all the parts of the general phenomenon of the will; from the most general forms of these partial phenomena, from the infinity of time and space, to the most perfect One, as far as human life and struggle [, it is the same]. ——In theory, people can admit that there are three extremes in life and regard these extremes as the basic factors of real life.The first are powerful wills, those great passions (developed passionate dispositions).This happens to great historical figures and is described in epics and plays.But this is also seen in the narrow circle of life, for here the size of the goals is measured not by external circumstances but by the degree to which they excite the will.The second is pure cognition, which is the experience of ideas. This is based on the premise of "knowledge" getting rid of serving the will, that is, the life of a genius (a tense and pure temperament).Finally, the third is the maximum numbness of the will and the numbness of the "knowledge" tied to the will, that is, empty meditation, the emptiness and boredom that make life rigid (inertial dull temperament).Far from always lingering in one of these three extremes, the individual's life is only rarely touched by these extremes, and most of them are only weak and vacillating from one extreme to the other; The impatient desire repeats itself forever, which is how it escapes the emptiness.It is truly unbelievable how senseless and empty the lives of the vast majority of people look from the outside, and how dull and mindless they feel on the inside.It is a kind of vague pursuit and suffering, wandering in a dream, passing through four stages of age in a series of petty thoughts and going to death. These people are like clockwork machines, and go away , and do not know why to go.Every time a person is born, every time a person is born, it is a "clock of life" that is wound up so that it can replay the street organ that has been played countless times and can no longer be heard. The tones, if any, are insignificantly varied. ——Then every individual, every human face and the life experience of this face is just a short dream, the short dream of the endless natural spirit, the short dream of the permanent life will; The erratic portrait is drawn by the will on its endless frame with playful brush and ink, painted in space and time, allowing the portrait to stay for a short moment, which is only a moment close to zero compared with time, and then erased for the sake of New portraits vacate space.But each such erratic image, each such superficial thought, must be inspired by the whole will to live, no matter how violent it may be, with many deep pains, and finally with the death that has been dreaded for a long time and finally comes, the bitter death. , to repay.Here is the bad side of life.This is why the sight of a dead body makes us so suddenly serious.

The life of any individual man, taken in general, and focusing only on the most important outlines, is of course always a tragedy; but the close examination of individual cases has the character of comedy.This is because the hustle and bustle of the day, the incessant mischief of the moment, the wishes and fears of the week, the antics of the hour, by chance, always prepared to tease, They're all comedic shots.But the hopes never fulfilled, the wasted struggles, the hopes ruthlessly trampled by fate, the wretched mistakes of a whole life, with increasing pain and finally death, often play out tragedy.In this way, fate seems to mock on top of the pain of our life; our life already contains all the pains of tragedy, but at the same time we cannot claim the dignity of tragic characters, but we have to live in the vastness of life. The details inevitably become some trivial comic characters.

However, although there are big and small troubles filling everyone's life, making life often in turmoil and turmoil, it still cannot make up for the inability of life to fill the spirit, the emptiness and superficiality of life, and the rejection of boredom and boredom. Always waiting to fill every gap left by worry.From this there arises the fact that the human mind, not content with the cares, troubles, and woes imposed on it by the real world, creates yet another imaginary world in the form of a thousand superstitions; Give him a little leisure--which he is not capable of enjoying--and he will be busy dealing with this fantasy world in various ways, and waste time and energy in this world.

It was, therefore, mostly the case of peoples with a warm climate and a fertile land where life was easy, first with the Indians, then with the Greeks and Romans, then with the Italians and Spaniards, and so on.Man creates demons, gods, and saints in his own image, and to these things he must often offer sacrifices, pray, repair monasteries, fulfill vows, pay homage, greet gods, decorate idols, and so on.Worship and ghosts are everywhere intertwined with reality, and even cast a shadow over reality.Every event that happens in life is to be regarded as the work of those ghosts and gods.Dealing with ghosts and gods takes up half of one's life to keep hope alive, and because of the charm of fantasy parties, it is often more interesting than dealing with real people.This is the expression and symptom of people's double needs, one is the need for salvation and help, the other is the need for something to do and pass the time.Even this dealing [with the gods] is often precisely counterproductive to the first need, for precious time and energy, when accidents and dangers occur, are not expended in avoiding them, but are uselessly wasted in praying and Sacrifice on.But for the second need, because people maintain a fantastic relationship with the world of ghosts and spirits in their dreams, this kind of communication has a better effect.This is the great benefit of all superstitions.