The same force urges the tender germ of the plant to break through the hard crust of the earth and, stretching toward the light, to enfold itself in the proud crown of the palm-tree. Will sharpens the beak of the eagle and the tooth of the tiger and, finally, reaches its highest grade of objectivation in the human brain. Want, the struggle for existence, the necessity of procuring and selecting sufficient food for the preservation of the individual and the species, has at last developed a suitable tool, the brain, and its function, the intellect. With the intellect appear consciousness and a realm of rational life full of yearning and desires, pleasures and pain, hatred and love. Brothers slay their brothers, conquerors trample down the races of the earth, and tyrants are forging chains for the nations.
There is violence and fear, vexation and trouble. Unrest is the mark of existence, and onward we are swept in the hurrying whirlpool of change. This manifold restless motion is produced and kept up by the agency of two single impulses—hunger and the sexual instinct. These are the chief agents of the Lord of the Universe—the Will—and set in motion so strange and varied a scene.
The Will-to-Live is at the bottom of all love-affairs. Every kind of love springs entirely from the instinct of sex.
Love is under bonds to secure the existence of the human race in future times. The real aim of the whole of love's romance, although the persons concerned are unconscious of the fact, is that a particular being may come into the world.
It is the Will-to-Live, presenting itself in the whole species, which so forcibly and exclusively attracts two individuals of different sex towards each other.
This yearning and this pain do not arise from the needs of an ephemeral individual, but are, on the contrary, the sigh of the Spirit of the Species.
Since life is essentially suffering, the propagation of the species is an evil—the feeling of shame proves it.
In his "Metaphysics of Love," Schopenhauer says: "We see a pair of lovers exchanging longing glances—yet why so secretly, timidly and stealthily? Because these lovers are traitors secretly striving to perpetuate all the misery and turmoil that otherwise would come to a timely end."
Will, as the source of life, is the origin of all evil.
Having awakened to life from the night of unconsciousness, the individual finds itself in an endless and boundless world, striving, suffering, erring; and, as though passing through an ominous dream, it hurries back to the old unconsciousness. Until then, however, its desires are boundless, and every satisfied wish begets a new one. So-called pleasures are only a mode of temporary relief. Pain soon returns in the form of satiety. Life is a more or less violent oscillation between pain and ennui. The latter, like a bird of prey, hovers over us, ready to swoop down wherever it sees a life secure from need.