THE ASSERTION AND DENIAL OF THE WILL. 397
So much with regard to the acquired character, which, indeed, is not of so much importance for ethics proper as for life in the world. But its investigation was related as that of a third species to the investigation of the intelligible and the empirical character, in regard to which we were obliged to enter upon a somewhat detailed inquiry in order to bring out clearly how in all its phenomena the will is subject to necessity, while yet in itself it may be called free and even omnipotent.
§ 56. This freedom, this omnipotence, as the expression of which the whole visible world exists and progressively develops in accordance with the laws which belong to the form of knowledge, can now, at the point at which in its most perfect manifestation it has attained to the completely adequate knowledge of its own nature, express itself anew in two ways. Either it wills here, at the summit of mental endowment and self-consciousness, simply what it willed before blindly and unconsciously, and if so, knowledge always remains its motive in the whole as in the particular case. Or, conversely, this knowledge becomes for it a quieter, which appeases and suppresses all willing. This is that assertion and denial of the will to live which was stated above in general terms. As, in the reference of individual conduct, a general, not a particular manifestation of will, it does not disturb and modify the development of the character, nor does it find its expression in particular actions; but, either by an ever more marked appearance of the whole method of action it has followed hitherto, or conversely by the entire suppression of it, it expresses in a living form the maxims which the will has freely adopted in accordance with the knowledge it has now attained to. By the explanations we have just given of freedom, necessity, and character, we have somewhat facilitated and prepared the way for the clearer development of all this, which is the principal subject of this last book. But we shall have done so still more when we have turned our attention to
