Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/445

Rh the root of all beings, the moral action is a momentary passing through the point, the permanent return to which is the denial of the will to live.

It follows, as a deduction from what has been said, that we have no ground to assume that there are more perfect intelligences than that of human beings. For we see that even this degree of intelligence is sufficient to impart to the will that knowledge in consequence of which it denies and abolishes itself, upon which the individuality, and consequently the intelligence, which is merely a tool of individual, and therefore animal nature, perish. This will appear to us less open to objection if we consider that we cannot conceive even the most perfect intelligences possible, which for this end we may experimentally assume, existing through an endless time, which would be much too poor to afford them constantly new objects worthy of them. Because the nature of all things is at bottom one, all knowledge of them is necessarily tautological. If now this nature once becomes comprehended, as by those most perfect intelligences it soon would be comprehended, what would then remain but the wearisomeness of mere repetition through an infinite time? Thus from this side also we are pointed to the fact that the end of all intelligence can only be reaction upon the will; since, however, all willing is an error, it remains the last work of intelligence to abolish the willing, whose ends it had hitherto served. Accordingly even the most perfect intelligence possible can only be a transition step to that to which no knowledge can ever extend: indeed such an intelligence can, in the nature of things, only assume the position of the moment of the attainment of perfect insight.

In agreement with all these considerations, and also with what is proved in the second book as to the origin of knowledge in the will, the assertion of which it reflects in fulfilling the sole function of knowledge, that of being serviceable to the ends of the will, while true salvation