To which must be added:
and to cause others to perceive what is. Thus the old adage _operari
sequitur esse_ (action follows being) must be modified by saying that to
be is to act, and only that which acts--the active--exists, and in so
far as it acts.
As regards Schopenhauer, there is no need to endeavour to show that the
will, which he posits as the essence of things, proceeds from
consciousness. And it is only necessary to read his book on the Will in
Nature to see how he attributed a certain spirit and even a certain
personality to the plants themselves. And this doctrine of his carried
him logically to pessimism, for the true property and most inward
function of the will is to suffer. The will is a force which feels
itself--that is, which suffers. And, someone will add, which enjoys. But
the capacity to enjoy is impossible without the capacity to suffer; and
the faculty of enjoyment is one with that of pain. Whosoever does not
suffer does not enjoy, just as whosoever is insensible to cold is
insensible to heat.
And it is also quite logical that Schopenhauer, who deduced pessimism
from the voluntarist doctrine or doctrine of universal personalization,
should have deduced from both of these that the foundation of morals is
compassion. Only his lack of the social and historical sense, his
inability to feel that humanity also is a person, although a collective
one, his egoism, in short, prevented him from feeling God, prevented him
from individualizing and personalizing the total and collective
Will--the Will of the Universe.
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