Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/145

Rh of intention. Moreover, the will is the ruler of all abstract exercise of the mind, for, according to its aims, it imparts the direction, and also fixes the attention; therefore such mental activity is always accompanied by some effort; and this presupposes the activity of the will. Thus complete objectivity of consciousness does not exist with this kind of mental activity, as it accompanies the æsthetic apprehension, i.e., the knowledge of the Ideas, as a condition.

In accordance with the above, the pure objectivity of perception, by virtue of which no longer the individual thing as such, but the Idea of its species is known, is conditioned by the fact that one is no longer conscious of oneself, but only of the perceived objects, so that one's own consciousness only remains as the supporter of the objective existence of these objects. What increases the difficulty of this state, and therefore makes it more rare, is, that in it the accident (the intellect) overcomes and annuls the substance (the will), although only for a short time. Here also lies the analogy and, indeed, the relationship of this with the denial of the will expounded at the end of the following book. Although knowledge, as was shown in the preceding book, is sprung from the will and is rooted in the manifestation of the will, the organism, yet it is just by the will that its purity is disturbed, as the flame is by the fuel and its smoke. It depends upon this that we can only apprehend the purely objective nature of things, the Ideas which appear in them, when we have ourselves no interest in them, because they stand in no relation to our will. From this, again, it arises that the Ideas of anything appeal to us more easily from a work of art than from reality. For what we behold only in a picture or in poetry stands outside all possibility of having any relation to our will; for in itself it exists only for knowledge and appeals immediately to knowledge alone. On the other hand, the apprehension of Ideas from reality assumes some measure