rely
insufficient for the explanation of that movement and that ceaseless
striving. What, then, is a short postponement of death, a slight easing
of misery or deferment of pain, a momentary stilling of desire, compared
with such an abundant and certain victory over them all as death? What
could such advantages accomplish taken as actual moving causes of a
human race, innumerable because constantly renewed, which unceasingly
moves, strives, struggles, grieves, writhes, and performs the whole
tragi-comedy of the history of the world, nay, what says more than all,
_perseveres_ in such a mock-existence as long as each one possibly can?
Clearly this is all inexplicable if we seek the moving causes outside
the figures and conceive the human race as striving, in consequence of
rational reflection, or something analogous to this (as moving threads),
after those good things held out to it, the attainment of which would be
a sufficient reward for its ceaseless cares and troubles. The matter
being taken thus, everyone would rather have long ago said, "Le jeu ne
vaut pas la chandelle," and have gone out. But, on the contrary,
everyone guards and defends his life, like a precious pledge entrusted
to him under heavy responsibility, under infinite cares and abundant
misery, even under which life is tolerable. The wherefore and the why,
the reward for this, certainly he does not see; but he has accepted the
worth of that pledge without seeing it, upon trust and faith, and does
not know what it consists in. Hence I have said that these puppets are
not pulled from without, but each bears in itself the clockwork from
which its movements result. This is _the will to live_, manifesting
itself as an untiring machine, an irrational tendency, which has not its
sufficient reason in the external world. It holds the individuals firmly
upon the scene, and is the _primum mobile_ of their movements; while the
external objects, the motives, only determine their direction in the
particular case; otherwise the cause would not be at all suitable to the
effect. For, as every manifestation of a force of nature has a cause,
but the force of nature itself none, so every particular act of will has
a motive, but the will in general has none: indeed at bottom these two
are one and the same. The will, as that which is metaphysical, is
everywhere the boundary-stone of every investigation, beyond which it
cannot go. We often see a miserable figure, deformed and shr