supply us with everything, and therefore satisfy us. But our existence
would not be a joyous thing unless we were striving after something;
distance and obstacles to be overcome then represent our aim as
something that would satisfy us--an illusion which vanishes when our aim
has been attained; or when we are engaged in something that is of a
purely intellectual nature, when, in reality, we have retired from the
world, so that we may observe it from the outside, like spectators at a
theatre. Even sensual pleasure itself is nothing but a continual
striving, which ceases directly its aim is attained. As soon as we are
not engaged in one of these two ways, but thrown back on existence
itself, we are convinced of the emptiness and worthlessness of it; and
this it is we call boredom. That innate and ineradicable craving for
what is out of the common proves how glad we are to have the natural and
tedious course of things interrupted. Even the pomp and splendour of the
rich in their stately castles is at bottom nothing but a futile attempt
to escape the very essence of existence, _misery_.

* * * * *

That the most perfect manifestation of the _will to live_, which
presents itself in the extremely subtle and complicated machinery of the
human organism, must fall to dust and finally deliver up its whole being
to dissolution, is the na�ve way in which Nature, invariably true and
genuine, declares the whole striving of the will in its very essence to
be of no avail. If it were of any value in itself, something
unconditioned, its end would not be non-existence. This is the dominant
note of Goethe's beautiful song:

"Hoch auf dem alten Thurme steht
Des Helden edler Geist."