Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/146

130 of abstraction from our own volition, a rising above its interests which demands a special power of the intellect. In a high degree, and for some duration, this belongs only to genius, which consists indeed in this, that a greater measure of the power of knowledge exists than is required for the service of an individual will, and this surplus becomes free, and now comprehends the world without reference to the will. Thus that the work of art facilitates so greatly the apprehension of the Ideas, in which æsthetic satisfaction consists, depends not merely upon the fact that art, by giving prominence to what is essential and eliminating what is unessential, presents the things more distinctly and characteristically, but just as much on the fact that the absolute silence of the will, which is demanded for the purely objective comprehension of the nature of the things, is attained with the greatest certainty when the perceived object itself lies entirely outside the province of things which are capable of having a relation to the will, because it is nothing real, but a mere picture. Now this holds good, not only of the works of plastic and pictorial art, but also of poetry; the effect of which is also conditioned by indifferent, will-less, and thereby purely objective apprehension. It is exactly this which makes a perceived object picturesque, an event of actual life poetical; for it is only this that throws over the objects of the real world that magic gleam which in the case of sensibly perceived objects is called the picturesque, and in the case of those which are only perceived in imagination is called the poetical. If poets sing of the blithe morning, the beautiful evening, the still moonlight night, and many such things, the real object of their praise is, unknown to themselves, the pure subject of knowledge which is called forth by those beauties of nature, and on the appearance of which the will vanishes from consciousness, and so that peace of heart enters which, apart from this, is unattainable in the world. How otherwise, for example, could the verse –