Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 1.djvu/495

THE ASSERTION AND DENIAL OF THE WILL. 453 Eurip. ap. Stob. Ecl., i c. 4.

("Volare pennis scelera ad ætherias domus Putatis, illic in Jovis tabularia Scripto referri; tum Jovem lectis super Sententiam proferre? — sed mortalium Facinora cœli, quantaquanta est, regia Nequit tenere: nec legendis Juppiter Et puniendis par est. Est tamen ultio, Et, si intuemur, illa nos habitat prope.")

Now that such an eternal justice really lies in the nature of the world will soon become completely evident to whoever has grasped the whole of the thought which we have hitherto been developing.

The world, in all the multiplicity of its parts and forms, is the manifestation, the objectivity, of the one will to live. Existence itself, and the kind of existence, both as a collective whole and in every part, proceeds from the will alone. The will is free, the will is almighty. The will appears in everything, just as it determines itself in itself and outside time. The world is only the mirror of this willing; and all finitude, all suffering, all miseries, which it contains, belong to the expression of that which the will wills, are as they are because the will so wills. Accordingly with perfect right every being supports existence in general, and also the existence of its species and its peculiar individuality, entirely as it is and in circumstances as they are, in a world such as it is, swayed by chance and error, transient, ephemeral, and constantly suffering; and in all that it experiences, or indeed can experience, it always gets its