d is the
Unconscious. The two attributes of this absolute are the active,
groundless, alogical, infinite will, and the passive, finite representation
(Idea); the former is the ground of the _that_ of the world, the latter
the ground of its purposive _what_ and _how_. Without the will the
representation, which in itself is without energy, could not become real,
and without the representation (of an end) the will, which in itself is
without reason, could not become a definite willing (relative or immanent
dualism of the attributes, a necessary moment in absolute monism). The
empirical preponderance of pain over pleasure, which can be shown by
calculation,[1] proves that the world is evil, that its non-existence were
better than its existence; the purposiveness everywhere perceptible in
nature and the progress of history toward a final goal (it is true, a
negative one) proves, nevertheless, that it is the best world that was
possible (reconciliation of eudemonistic pessimism with evolutionistic
optimism). The creation of the world begins when the blind will to live
groundlessly and fortuitously passes over from essence to phenomenon, from
potency to act, from supra-existence to existence, and, in irrational
striving after existence, draws to itself the only content which is capable
of realization, the logical Idea. This latter seeks to make good the
error committed by the will by bringing consciousness into the field as
a combatant against the insatiable, ever yearning, never satisfied will,
which one day will force the will back into latency, into the (antemundane)
blessed state of not-willing. The goal of the world-development is
deliverance from the misery of existence, the peace of non-existence, the
return from the will and representation, become spatial and temporal, to
the original, harmonious equilibrium of the two functions, which has been
disturbed by the origin of the world or to the antemundane identity of the
absolute. The task of the logical element is to teach consciousness more
and more to penetrate the illusion of the will--in its three stages of
childlike (Greek) expectation of happiness to be attained here, youthful
(Christian) expectation of happiness to be attained hereafter, and
adult expectation of happiness to be attained in the future of the
world-development--and, finally, to teach it to know, in senile longing
after rest, that only the doing away with this miserable willing, and,
consequently, with