The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer | Page 9

the enjoyment of
the present the supreme object of life; because that is the only reality,
all else being merely the play of thought. On the other hand, such a
course might just as well be called the greatest folly: for that which in
the next moment exists no more, and vanishes utterly, like a dream, can
never be worth a serious effort.
The whole foundation on which our existence rests is the present--the
ever-fleeting present. It lies, then, in the very nature of our existence to
take the form of constant motion, and to offer no possibility of our ever
attaining the rest for which we are always striving. We are like a man
running downhill, who cannot keep on his legs unless he runs on, and
will inevitably fall if he stops; or, again, like a pole balanced on the tip
of one's finger; or like a planet, which would fall into its sun the
moment it ceased to hurry forward on its way. Unrest is the mark of
existence.
In a world where all is unstable, and nought can endure, but is swept
onwards at once in the hurrying whirlpool of change; where a man, if
he is to keep erect at all, must always be advancing and moving, like an
acrobat on a rope--in such a world, happiness in inconceivable. How
can it dwell where, as Plato says, continual Becoming and never Being
is the sole form of existence? In the first place, a man never is happy,
but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks
will make him so; he seldom attains his goal, and when he does, it is
only to be disappointed; he is mostly shipwrecked in the end, and
comes into harbor with masts and rigging gone. And then, it is all one
whether he has been happy or miserable; for his life was never anything
more than a present moment always vanishing; and now it is over.
At the same time it is a wonderful thing that, in the world of human
beings as in that of animals in general, this manifold restless motion is
produced and kept up by the agency of two simple impulses--hunger
and the sexual instinct; aided a little, perhaps, by the influence of
boredom, but by nothing else; and that, in the theatre of life, these

suffice to form the primum mobile of how complicated a machinery,
setting in motion how strange and varied a scene!
On looking a little closer, we find that inorganic matter presents a
constant conflict between chemical forces, which eventually works
dissolution; and on the other hand, that organic life is impossible
without continual change of matter, and cannot exist if it does not
receive perpetual help from without. This is the realm of finality; and
its opposite would be an infinite existence, exposed to no attack from
without, and needing nothing to support it; [Greek: haei hosautos dn],
the realm of eternal peace; [Greek: oute giguomenon oute
apollumenon], some timeless, changeless state, one and undiversified;
the negative knowledge of which forms the dominant note of the
Platonic philosophy. It is to some such state as this that the denial of
the will to live opens up the way.
The scenes of our life are like pictures done in rough mosaic. Looked at
close, they produce no effect. There is nothing beautiful to be found in
them, unless you stand some distance off. So, to gain anything we have
longed for is only to discover how vain and empty it is; and even
though we are always living in expectation of better things, at the same
time we often repent and long to have the past back again. We look
upon the present as something to be put up with while it lasts, and
serving only as the way towards our goal. Hence most people, if they
glance back when they come to the end of life, will find that all along
they have been living ad interim: they will be surprised to find that the
very thing they disregarded and let slip by unenjoyed, was just the life
in the expectation of which they passed all their time. Of how many a
man may it not be said that hope made a fool of him until he danced
into the arms of death!
Then again, how insatiable a creature is man! Every satisfaction he
attains lays the seeds of some new desire, so that there is no end to the
wishes of each individual will. And why is this? The real reason is
simply that, taken in itself, Will is the lord of all worlds: everything
belongs to it, and therefore no one single thing can ever give it
satisfaction, but only the whole, which is endless.