The circumstance that in his case this extraordinary power was added allowed him to reveal the whole wickedness of the human will; and the sufferings of his age, as the necessary obverse of the medal, reveal the misery which is inextricably bound up with this bad will.  It is the general manipulation of this will that constitutes the world.  But it is precisely that it should be understood how inextricably the will to live is bound up with, and is really one and the same as, this unspeakable misery, that is the world’s aim and purpose; and it is an aim and purpose which the appearance of Napoleon did much to assist.  Not to be an unmeaning fools’ paradise but a tragedy, in which the will to live understands itself and yields—­that is the object for which the world exists.  Napoleon is only an enormous mirror of the will to live.

The difference between the man who causes suffering and the man who suffers it, is only phenomenal.  It is all a will to live, identical with great suffering; and it is only by understanding this that the will can mend and end.

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What chiefly distinguishes ancient from modern times is that in ancient times, to use Napoleon’s expression, it was affairs that reigned:  les paroles aux choses.  In modern times this is not so.  What I mean is that in ancient times the character of public life, of the State, and of Religion, as well as of private life, was a strenuous affirmation of the will to live.  In modern times it is a denial of this will, for such is the character of Christianity.  But now while on the one hand that denial has suffered some abatement even in public opinion, because it is too repugnant to human character, on the other what is publicly denied is secretly affirmed.  Hence it is that we see half measures and falsehood everywhere; and that is why modern times look so small beside antiquity.

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The structure of human society is like a pendulum swinging between two impulses, two evils in polar opposition, despotism and anarchy.  The further it gets from the one, the nearer it approaches the other.  From this the reader might hit on the thought that if it were exactly midway between the two, it would be right.  Far from it.  For these two evils are by no means equally bad and dangerous.  The former is incomparably less to be feared; its ills exist in the main only as possibilities, and if they come at all it is only one among millions that they touch.  But, with anarchy, possibility and actuality are inseparable; its blows fall on every man every day.  Therefore every constitution should be a nearer approach to a despotism than to anarchy; nay, it must contain a small possibility of despotism.