Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/397

Rh own life and that of others, nay, of existence in general. Really the life of every species of brute, through the thousands of years of its existence, is to a certain extent like a single moment; for it is mere consciousness of the present, without that of the past and the future, and consequently without that of death. In this sense it is to be regarded as a permanent moment, a Nunc stans. Here we see, in passing, most distinctly that in general the form of life, or the manifestation of the will with consciousness, is primarily and immediately merely the present. Past and future are added only in the case of man, and indeed merely in conception, are known in abstracto, and perhaps illustrated by pictures of the imagination. Thus after the will to live, i.e., the inner being of nature, in the ceaseless striving towards complete objectification and complete enjoyment, has run through the whole series of the brutes, – which often occurs in the various periods of successive animal series each arising anew on the same planet, – it arrives at last at reflection in the being who is endowed with reason, man. Here now to him the thing begins to be doubtful, the question forces itself upon him whence and wherefore all this is, and chiefly whether the care and misery of his life and effort is really repaid by the gain? "Le jeu vaut-il bien la chandelle?" Accordingly here is the point at which, in the light of distinct knowledge, he decides for the assertion or denial of the will to live; although as a rule he can only bring the latter to consciousness in a mythical form. We have consequently no ground for assuming that a still more highly developed objectification of the will is ever reached, anywhere; for it has already reached its turning-point here.