Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/153

The following remark may find room here as an addition to what is said in § 38 of the first volume on the æsthetic pleasure afforded by light, reflection, and colours. The whole immediate, thoughtless, but also unspeakable, pleasure which is excited in us by the impression of colours, strengthened by the gleam of metal, and still more by transparency, as, for example, in coloured windows, and in a greater measure by means of the clouds and their reflection at sunset, – ultimately depends upon the fact that here in the easiest manner, almost by a physical necessity, our whole interest is won for knowledge, without any excitement of our will, so that we enter the state of pure knowing, although for the most part this consists here in a mere sensation of the affection of the retina, which, however, as it is in itself perfectly free from pain or pleasure, and therefore entirely without direct influence on the will, thus belongs to pure knowledge.