All this shows very clearly that we are possessed of two different, nay, absolutely contradictory, ways of regarding the world:  one according to the principle of individuation, which exhibits all creatures as entire strangers to us, as definitely not ourselves.  We can have no feelings for them but those of indifference, envy, hatred, and delight that they suffer.  The other way of regarding the world is in accordance with what I may call the Tat-twam-asi—­this-is-thyself principle.  All creatures are exhibited as identical with ourselves; and so it is pity and love which the sight of them arouses.

The one method separates individuals by impassable barriers; the other removes the barrier and brings the individuals together.  The one makes us feel, in regard to every man, that is what I am; the other, that is not what I am.  But it is remarkable that while the sight of another’s suffering makes us feel our identity with him, and arouses our pity, this is not so with the sight of another’s happiness.  Then we almost always feel some envy; and even though we may have no such feeling in certain cases,—­as, for instance, when our friends are happy,—­yet the interest which we take in their happiness is of a weak description, and cannot compare with the sympathy which we feel with their suffering.  Is this because we recognise all happiness to be a delusion, or an impediment to true welfare?  No!  I am inclined to think that it is because the sight of the pleasure, or the possessions, which are denied to us, arouses envy; that is to say, the wish that we, and not the other, had that pleasure or those possessions.

It is only the first way of looking at the world which is founded on any demonstrable reason.  The other is, as it were, the gate out of this world; it has no attestation beyond itself, unless it be the very abstract and difficult proof which my doctrine supplies.  Why the first way predominates in one man, and the second in another—­though perhaps it does not exclusively predominate in any man; why the one or the other emerges according as the will is moved—­these are deep problems.  The paths of night and day are close together: 

  [Greek:  Engus gar nuktos de kai aematos eisi keleuthoi.]

It is a fact that there is a great and original difference between one empirical character and another; and it is a difference which, at bottom, rests upon the relation of the individual’s will to his intellectual faculty.  This relation is finally determined by the degree of will in his father and of intellect in his mother; and the union of father and mother is for the most part an affair of chance.  This would all mean a revolting injustice in the nature of the world, if it were not that the difference between parents and son is phenomenal only and all chance is, at bottom, necessity.

As regards the freedom of the will, if it were the case that the will manifested itself in a single act alone, it would be a free act.  But the will manifests itself in a course of life, that is to say, in a series of acts.  Every one of these acts, therefore, is determined as a part of a complete whole, and cannot happen otherwise than it does happen.  On the other hand, the whole series is free; it is simply the manifestation of an individualised will.