We saw that the inner being of unconscious nature is a constant striving
without end and without rest. And this appears to us much more distinctly
when we consider the nature of brutes and man. Willing and striving is its
whole being, which may be very well compared to an unquenchable thirst.
But the basis of all willing is need, deficiency, and thus pain.
Consequently, the nature of brutes and man is subject to pain originally
and through its very being. If, on the other hand, it lacks objects of
desire, because it is at once deprived of them by a too easy satisfaction,
a terrible void and ennui comes over it, _i.e._, its being and existence
itself becomes an unbearable burden to it. Thus its life swings like a
pendulum backwards and forwards between pain and ennui. This has also had
to express itself very oddly in this way; after man had transferred all
pain and torments to hell, there then remained nothing over for heaven but
ennui.
But the constant striving which constitutes the inner nature of every
manifestation of will obtains its primary and most general foundation at
the higher grades of objectification, from the fact that here the will
manifests itself as a living body, with the iron command to nourish it;
and what gives strength to this command is just that this body is nothing
but the objectified will to live itself. Man, as the most complete
objectification of that will, is in like measure also the most necessitous
of all beings: he is through and through concrete willing and needing; he
is a concretion of a thousand necessities. With these he stands upon the
earth, left to himself, uncertain about everything except his own need and
misery. Consequently the care for the maintenance of that existence under
exacting demands, which are renewed every day, occupies, as a rule, the
whole of human life. To this is directly related the second claim, that of
the propagation of the species. At the same time he is threatened from all
sides by the most different kinds of dangers, from which it requires
constant watchfulness to escape. With cautious steps and casting anxious
glances round him he pursues his path, for a thousand accidents and a
thousand enemies lie in wait for him. Thus he went while yet a savage,
thus he goes in civilised life; there is no security for him.
“_Qualibus in tenebris vitæ, quantisque periclis_
_Degitur hocc’ ævi, quodcunque est!_”—LUCR. ii. 15.