Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 2.djvu/344

334 forth consciousness for its own ends. Therefore it is also the will which gives it imity and holds together all its ideas and thoughts, accompanying them like a continuous harmony. Without it the intellect would no longer have the unity of consciousness, as a mirror in which now this and now that successively presents itself, or at the most only so much as a convex mirror whose rays unite in an imaginary point behind its surface. But the will alone is that which is permanent and unchangeable in consciousness. It is the will which holds together all thoughts and ideas as means to its ends, and tinges them with the colour of its own character, its mood, and its interests, commands the attention, and holds in its hand the train of motives whose influence ultimately sets memory and the association of ideas in activity; at bottom it is the will that is spoken of whenever "I" appears in a judgment. Thus it is the true and final point of unity of consciousness, and the bond of all its functions and acts; it does not itself, however, belong to the intellect, but is only its root, source, and controller.

From the form of time and the single dimension of the series of ideas, on account of which, in order to take up one, the intellect must let all the others fall, there follows not only its distraction, but also its forgetfulness. Most of what it lets fall it never takes up again; especially since the taking up again is bound to the principle of sufficient reason, and thus demands an occasion which the association of thoughts and motivation have first to supply; an occasion, however, which may be the more remote and smaller in proportion as our sensibility for it is heightened by our interest in the subject. But memory, as I have already shown in the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, is not a store-house, but merely a faculty acquired by practice of calling up ideas at pleasure, which must therefore constantly be kept in practice by use; for otherwise it will gradually be lost. Accordingly the knowledge even of the learned