reed
from the will. Art removes individuality from the subject as well as from
the object; its comforting and cheering influence depends on the fact that
it elevates those enjoying it to the stand-point--raised above all pain
of desire--of a fixed, calm, completely objective contemplation of the
unchangeable essence, of the eternal types of things. For aesthetic
intuition the object is not a thing under relations of space, time, and
cause, but only an expression, an exemplification, a representative of
the Idea. Poetry, which presents--most perfectly in tragedy--the Idea of
humanity, stands higher than the plastic arts. The highest rank, however,
belongs to music, since it does not, like the other arts, represent single
Ideas, but--as an unconscious metaphysic, nay, a second, ideal world above
the material world--the will itself. In view of this high appreciation
of their art, it is not surprising that musicians have contributed a
considerable contingent to the band of Schopenhauer worshipers. A different
source of attraction for the wider circle of readers was supplied by the
piquant spice of pessimism.

If the purposiveness of the phenomena of nature points to the unity of the
primal will, the unspeakable misery of life, which Schopenhauer sets forth
with no less of eloquence, proves the blindness and irrationality of the
world-ground. To live is to suffer; the world contains incomparably more
pain than pleasure; it is the worst possible world. In the world of
sub-animal nature aimless striving; in the animal world an insatiable
impulse after enjoyment--while the will, deceiving itself with fancied
happiness to come, which always remains denied it, and continually
tossed to and fro between necessity and _ennui_, never attains complete
satisfaction. The pleasure which it pursues is nothing but the removal of
a dissatisfaction, and vanishes at once when the longing is stilled, to
be replaced by fresh wants, that is, by new pains. In view of the
indescribable misery in the world, to favor optimism is evidence not so
much of folly and blindness as of a wanton disposition. The old saying is
true: Non-existence is better than existence. The misery, however, is the
just punishment for the original sin of the individual, which gave itself
its particular existence by an act of intelligible freedom. Redemption from
the sin and misery of existence is possible only through a second act
of transcendental freedom, which, since it co