The Story of Philosophy

by Will Durant

But if the world is will, it must be a world of suffering. And first, because will itself indicates want, and its grasp is always greater than its reach. For every wish that is satisfied there remain ten that are denied. Desire is infinite, fulfilment is limited—“it is like the alms thrown to a beggar, that keeps him alive today in order that his misery may be prolonged tomorrow . . . . As long as our consciousness is filled by our will, so long as we are given up to the throng of desires with their constant hopes and fears, so long as we are subject to willing, we can never have lasting happiness or peace.”68 And fulfilment never satisfies; nothing is so fatal to an ideal as its realization. “The satisfied passion oftener leads to unhappiness than to happiness. For its demands often conflict so much with the personal welfare of him who is concerned that they undermine it.”69 Each individual bears within himself a disruptive contradiction; the realized desire develops a new desire, and so on endlessly. “At the bottom this results from the fact that the will must live on itself, for there exists nothing besides it, and it is a hungry will.”70