Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 1.djvu/530

488 THE WORLD AS WILL. bk. iv. mankind, which is necessarily finite, so that every life, however aspiring, and often rich in deeds, must be extinguished and become nothing. But in this lot of mankind the mourner sees first of all his own, and this all the more, the more closely he is related to him who has died, thus most of all if it is his father. Although to his father his life was misery through age and sickness, and though his helplessness was a heavy burden to his son, yet that son weeps bitterly over the death of his father for the reason which has been given.

§ 68. After this digression about the identity of pure love and sympathy, the final return of which upon our own individuality has, as its symptom, the phenomenon of weeping, I now take up the thread of our discussion of the ethical significance of action, in order to show how, from the same source from which all goodness, love, virtue, and nobility of character spring, there finally arises that which I call the denial of the will to live.

We saw before that hatred and wickedness are conditioned by egoism, and egoism rests on the entanglement of knowledge in the principium individuationis. Thus we found that the penetration of that principium individuationis is the source and the nature of justice, and when it is carried further, even to its fullest extent, it is the source and nature of love and nobility of character. For this penetration alone, by abolishing the distinction between our own individuality and that of others, renders possible and explains perfect goodness of disposition, extending to disinterested love and the most generous self-sacrifice for others.

If, however, this penetration of the principium individuationis, this direct knowledge of the identity of will in all its manifestations, is present in a high degree of distinctness, it will at once show an influence upon the will