§161

To a certain extent it can be seen a priori, and colloquially it is self-evident, that that which now produces the phenomenon of the world must also be capable of not doing this, consequently of remaining at rest; or, in other words, that there must also be a systole to the present diastole. Now if the former is the appearance of life's willing, then the other will be the appearance of its non-willing. Also this will essentially be identical with the great Sakhepat of the Veda doctrine (in the Oupnek'hat, vol. 1, p. 163), the Nirvana of the Buddhists, also with the epekeina of the Neoplatonists.

Counter to certain silly objections I maintain that the negation of the will to life in no way signifies the annihilation of a substance, but the mere act of not-willing; the same thing that willed hitherto wills no more. Since we know this being, the will, as thing in itself merely in and through the act of willing, we are incapable of saying or grasping what else it is or does after it has given up this act; this is why negation for us, who are the appearance of the will, is a transition to nothingness.

The affirmation and negation of the will to life is a mere velle and nolle. The subject of these two acts is one and the same, and consequently as such it is not annihilated by one or the other act. Its velle manifests itself in this intuitive world, which is precisely why it is the appearance of its thing in itself. Of the nolle, on the other hand, we know no other appearance than merely its occurrence, and moreover in the individual, who already belongs originally to the appearance of the velle. Thus we see the nolle struggling always with the velle as long as the individual exists; if the individual has come to an end and the nolle achieved the upper hand in him, then this has been a pure declaration of the nolle (this is the meaning of the Papal canonization). Of the latter we can only say that its appearance cannot be that of the velle, but we do not know whether it appears at all, i.e., whether it obtains a secondary existence for an intellect which it would first have to produce.