Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 1.djvu/463

THE ASSERTION AND DENIAL OF THE WILL. 421 § 60. We have now completed the two expositions it as necessary to insert; the exposition of the freedom of the will in itself together with the necessity of its phenomenon, and the exposition of its lot in the world which reflects its own nature, and upon the knowledge of which it has to assert or deny itself. Therefore we can now proceed to bring out more clearly the nature of this assertion and denial itself, which was referred to and explained in a merely general way above. This we shall do by exhibiting the conduct in which alone it finds its expression, and considering it in its inner significance.

The assertion of the will is the continuous willing itself, undisturbed by any knowledge, as it fills the life of man in general. For even the body of a man is the objectivity of the will, as it appears at this grade and in this individual. And thus his willing which develops itself in time is, as it were, a paraphrase of his body, an elucidation of the significance of the whole and its parts; it is another way of exhibiting the same thing-in-itself, of which the body is already the phenomenon. Therefore, instead of saying assertion of the will, we may say assertion of the body. The fundamental theme or subject of all the multifarious acts of will is the satisfaction of the wants which are inseparable from the existence of the body in health, they already have their expression in it, and may be referred to the maintenance of the individual and the propagation of the species. But indirectly the most different kinds of motives obtain in this way power over the will, and bring about the most multifarious acts of will. Each of these is only an example, an instance, of the will which here manifests itself generally. Of what nature this example may be, what form the motive may have and impart to it, is not essential; the important point here is that something is willed in general and the degree of intensity with which it is so willed. The will can only become visible in the motives, as the eye only manifests its power of seeing in the light