Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/144

128 which constitutes the real self, with the withdrawal of this side of consciousness all possibility of suffering is also abolished; therefore the condition of the pure objectivity of perception is one which throughout gives pleasure; and hence I have shown that in it lies one of the two constituent elements of æsthetic satisfaction. As soon, on the other hand, as the consciousness of our own self, thus subjectivity, i.e., the will, again obtains the upper hand, a proportional degree of discomfort or unrest also enters; of discomfort, because our corporealness (the organism which in itself is the will) is again felt; of unrest, because the will, on the path of thought, again fills the consciousness through wishes, emotions, passions, and cares. For the will, as the principle of subjectivity, is everywhere the opposite, nay, the antagonist of knowledge. The greatest concentration of subjectivity consists in the act of will proper, in which therefore we have the most distinct consciousness of our own self. All other excitements of the will are only preparations for this; the act of will itself is for subjectivity what for the electric apparatus is the passing of the spark. Every bodily sensation is in itself an excitement of the will, and indeed oftener of the noluntas than of the voluntas. The excitement of the will on the path of thought is that which occurs by means of motives; thus here the subjectivity is awakened and set in play by the objectivity itself. This takes place when ever any object is apprehended no longer in a purely objective manner, thus without participation in it, but, directly or indirectly, excites desire or aversion, even if it is only by means of a recollection, for then it acts as a motive in the widest sense of the word.

I remark here that abstract thinking and reading, which are connected with words, belong indeed in the wider sense to the consciousness of other things, thus to the objective employment of the mind; yet only indirectly, by means of conceptions. But the latter are the artificial product of the reason, and are therefore already a work