ally suppose there are no people in the world as bad as
Robespierre, Napoleon, or other murderers? Does he fail to see that
there are many who would act like them if only they could?

Many a criminal dies more quietly on the scaffold than many a
non-criminal in the arms of his family. The one has perceived what his
will is and has discarded it. The other has not been able to discard
it, because he has never been able to perceive what it is. The aim
of the State is to produce a fool's paradise, and this is in direct
conflict with the true aim of life, namely, to attain a knowledge of
what the will, in its horrible nature, really is.

* * * * *

Napoleon was not really worse than many, not to say most, men. He was
possessed of the very ordinary egoism that seeks its welfare at the
expense of others. What distinguished him was merely the greater power
he had of satisfying his will, and greater intelligence, reason and
courage; added to which, chance gave him a favourable scope for his
operations. By means of all this he did for his egoism what a thousand
other men would like to do for theirs, but cannot. Every feeble lad
who by little acts of villainy gains a small advantage for himself by
putting others to some disadvantage, although it may be equally small,
is just as bad as Napoleon.

Those who fancy that retribution comes after death would demand that
Napoleon should by unutterable torments pay the penalty for all the
numberless calamities that he caused. But he is no more culpable than
all those who possess the same will, unaccompanied by the same power.

The circumstance that in his case this extraordinary power was added
allowed him to reveal the whole wickedness of the human will; and the
sufferings of his age, as the necessary obverse of the medal, reveal
the misery which is inextricably bound up with this bad will. It is
the general manipulation of this will that constitutes the world. But
it is precisely that it should be understood how inextricably the will
to live is bound up with, and is really one and the same as, this
unspeakable misery, that is the world's aim and purpose; and it is an
aim and purpose which the appearance of Napoleon did much to assist.
Not to be an unmeaning fools' paradise but a tragedy, in which the
will to live understands itself and yields--that is the object for
which the world exists. Napoleon is only an enormous mirror of the
will to live.

The