now most people bear life without any considerable grumbling, and consequently believe in the value of existence, but precisely because each one is solely willing and affirming himself, and does not step out of himself like those exceptions, everything extrapersonal is imperceptible to them, or at most seems a faint shadow. therefore on this alone is based the value of life for the ordinary man: that he regards himself as more important than the world. the great lack of imagination from which he suffers is the reason why he cannot enter into the feelings of other beings, and therefore sympathesizes as little as possible with their fate and suffering. he, on the other hand, who really could sympathesize therewith, would have to despair of the value of life; were he to succeed in comprehending and feeling in himself the general consciousness of mankind, he would collapse, cursing existence; for mankind as a whole has no goals, consequently a man, in considering his whole course, cannot find in it his comfort and support, but finds his despair. if, in all that he does, he considers the final aimlessness of man, his own activity assumes in his eyes the character of wastefulness. but to feel oneself wasted -as humanity, not as an individual- as we see the single blossom of nature wasted, is a feeling above all other feelings.