er remains unaltered. Here also life presents
itself by no means as a gift for enjoyment, but as a task, a drudgery to
be performed; and in accordance with this we see, in great and small,
universal need, ceaseless cares, constant pressure, endless strife,
compulsory activity, with extreme exertion of all the powers of body and
mind. Many millions, united into nations, strive for the common good,
each individual on account of his own; but many thousands fall as a
sacrifice for it. Now senseless delusions, now intriguing politics,
incite them to wars with each other; then the sweat and the blood of the
great multitude must flow, to carry out the ideas of individuals, or to
expiate their faults. In peace industry and trade are active, inventions
work miracles, seas are navigated, delicacies are collected from all
ends of the world, the waves engulf thousands. All strive, some
planning, others acting; the tumult is indescribable. But the ultimate
aim of it all, what is it? To sustain ephemeral and tormented
individuals through a short span of time in the most fortunate ease with
endurable want and comparative freedom from pain, which, however, is at
once attended with ennui; then the reproduction of this race and its
striving. In this evident disproportion between the trouble and the
reward, the will to live appears to us from this point of view, if taken
objectively, as a fool, or subjectively, as a delusion, seized by which
everything living works with the utmost exertion of its strength for
something that is of no value. But when we consider it more closely, we
shall find here also that it is rather a blind pressure, a tendency
entirely without ground or motive.

The law of motivation only extends to the particular actions, not to
willing _as a whole and in general_. It depends upon this, that if we
conceive of the human race and its action _as a whole and universally_,
it does not present itself to us, as when we contemplate the particular
actions, as a play of puppets who are pulled after the ordinary manner
by threads outside them; but from this point of view, as puppets that
are set in motion by internal clockwork. For if, as we have done above,
one compares the ceaseless, serious, and laborious striving of men with
what they gain by it, nay, even with what they ever can gain, the
disproportion we have pointed out becomes apparent, for one recognizes
that that which is to be gained, taken as the motive power, is enti