Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 1.djvu/467

THE ASSERTION AND DENIAL OF THE WILL. 425 "Thou art ours! Fasting shouldest thou return: And the bite of the apple makes thee ours!"

It is worth noticing that Clement of Alexandria (Strom, iii. c. 15) illustrates the matter with the same image and the same expression:. (Qui se castrarunt ab omni peccato propter regnum cælorum, ii sunt beati, a mundo jejunantes).

The sexual impulse also proves itself the decided and strongest assertion of life by the fact that to man in a state of nature, as to the brutes, it is the final end, the highest goal of life. Self-maintenance is his first effort, and as soon as he has made provision for that, he only strives after the propagation of the species: as a merely natural being he can attempt no more. Nature also, the inner being of which is the will to live itself, impels with all her power both man and the brute towards propagation. Then it has attained its end with the individual, and is quite indifferent to its death, for, as the will to live, it cares only for the preservation of the species, the individual is nothing to it. Because the will to live expresses itself most strongly in the sexual impulse, the inner being of nature, the old poets and philosophers — Hesiod and Parmenides — said very significantly that Eros is the first, the creator, the principle from which all things proceed. (Cf. Arist. Metaph., i. 4.) Pherecydes said: (Jovem, cum mundum fabricare vellet, in cupidinem sese transformasse). ''Proclus ad Plat. Tim.,'' l. iii. A complete treatment of this subject we have recently received from G. F. Schœmann, "De Cupidine Cosmogonico," 1852. The Mâya of the Hindus, whose work and web is the whole world of illusion, is also symbolised by love.

The genital organs are, far more than any other external member of the body, subject merely to the will, and