forth up to the human animal.  Only the organs are different, of which the will must avail itself in the higher stages of its objective existence, in order to satisfy its more complicated, and therefore more disputed and less easily obtainable, wants.  By gaining this insight, which is confirmed by the enormous progress of modern science, we understand at once the characteristic feature of the life of the vast majority of men, and are no longer astonished because they appear to us simply as animals; for this is the normal essence of man.  A very large portion of mankind remains below this normal stage, for in them the complicated organ of perception is not developed even up to the capability of satisfying normal wants; but, on the other hand, although of course very rarely, there are abnormal natures in which the ordinary measure of the organ of perception—­that is, the brain—­is exceeded, just as nature frequently forms monstrosities in which one organ is developed at the expense of the others.  Such a monstrosity, if it reaches the highest degree, is called genius, which at bottom is caused only by an abnormally rich and powerful brain.  This organ of perception, which originally and in normal cases looks outward for the purpose of satisfying the wants of the will of life, receives in the case of an abnormal development such vivid and such striking impressions from outside that for a time it emancipates itself from the service of the will, which originally had fashioned it for its own ends.  It thus attains to a “will-less”—­i.e., aesthetic—­ contemplation of the world; and these external objects, contemplated apart from the will, are exactly the ideal images which the artist in a manner fixes and reproduces.  The sympathy with the external world which is inherent in this contemplation is developed in powerful natures to a permanent forgetfulness of the original personal will, that is to a sympathy with external things for their own sake, and no longer in connection with any personal interest.

The question then arises what we see in this abnormal state, and whether our sympathy takes the form of common joy or common sorrow.  This question the true men of genius and the true saints of all times have answered in the sense that they have seen nothing but sorrow and felt nothing but common sorrow.  For they recognized the normal state of all living things and the terrible, always self-contradictory, always self-devouring and blindly egotistic, nature of the “will of life” which is common to all living things.  The horrible cruelty of this will, which in sexual love aims only at its own reproduction, appeared in them for the first time reflected in the organ of perception, which in its normal state had felt its subjection to the Will to which it owed its existence.  In this manner the organ of perception was placed in an abnormal sympathetic condition.  It endeavoured to free itself permanently and finally from its disgraceful serfdom, and this it at last achieved in the perfect negation of the “will of life.”