unk with
age, want, and disease, implore our help from the bottom of his heart
for the prolongation of an existence, the end of which would necessarily
appear altogether desirable if it were an objective judgment that
determined here. Thus instead of this it is the blind will, appearing as
the tendency to life, the love of life, and the sense of life; it is the
same which makes the plants grow. This sense of life may be compared to
a rope which is stretched above the puppet show of the world of men, and
on which the puppets hang by invisible threads, while apparently they
are supported only by the ground beneath them (the objective value of
life). But if the rope becomes weak the puppet sinks; if it breaks the
puppet must fall, for the ground beneath it only seemed to support it:
i.e., the weakening of that love of life shows itself as hypochondria,
spleen, melancholy: its entire exhaustion as the inclination to suicide.
And as with the persistence in life, so is it also with its action and
movement. This is not something freely chosen; but while everyone would
really gladly rest, want and ennui are the whips that keep the top
spinning. Therefore everything is in continual strain and forced
movement, and the course of the world goes on, to use an expression of
Aristotle's (_De coelo_ ii. 13), [Greek: "ou physei, alla bia"] (_motu,
non naturali sed molento_). Men are only apparently drawn from in front;
really they are pushed from behind; it is not life that tempts them on,
but necessity that drives them forward. The law of motivation is, like
all causality, merely the form of the phenomenon.

In all these considerations, then, it becomes clear to us that the will
to live is not a consequence of the knowledge of life, is in no way a
_conclusio ex praemissis_, and in general is nothing secondary. Rather,
it is that which is first and unconditioned, the premiss of all
premisses, and just on that account that from which philosophy must
_start_, for the will to live does not appear in consequence of the
world, but the world in consequence of the will to live.

III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS

1. Progress and Social Research

The problem of progress comes back finally to the problem of the
ultimate good. If the world is getting better, measured by this ultimate
standard, then there is progress. If it is growing worse, then there is
retrogression. But in regard to the ultimate good there is no agreement.
What is tempo