Essays of Schopenhauer by Arthur Schopenhauer
page 75 of 236 (31%)
page 75 of 236 (31%)
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maintained in the balance by a continual advancing and moving, it is
impossible to imagine happiness. It cannot dwell where, as Plato says, _continual Becoming and never Being_ is all that takes place. First of all, no man is happy; he strives his whole life long after imaginary happiness, which he seldom attains, and if he does, then it is only to be disillusioned; and as a rule he is shipwrecked in the end and enters the harbour dismasted. Then it is all the same whether he has been happy or unhappy in a life which was made up of a merely ever-changing present and is now at an end. Meanwhile it surprises one to find, both in the world of human beings and in that of animals, that this great, manifold, and restless motion is sustained and kept going by the medium of two simple impulses--hunger and the instinct of sex, helped perhaps a little by boredom--and that these have the power to form the _primum mobile_ of so complex a machinery, setting in motion the variegated show! Looking at the matter a little closer, we see at the very outset that the existence of inorganic matter is being constantly attacked by chemical forces which eventually annihilates it. While organic existence is only made possible by continual change of matter, to keep up a perpetual supply of which it must consequently have help from without. Therefore organic life is like balancing a pole on one's hand; it must be kept in continual motion, and have a constant supply of matter of which it is continually and endlessly in need. Nevertheless it is only by means of this organic life that consciousness is possible. Accordingly this is a _finite existence_, and its antithesis would be an _infinite_, neither exposed to any attack from without nor in want of help from without, and hence αÌεί ὡÏαÏÏÏÏ á½Î½, in eternal rest; οá½Ïε |
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