Just as ivy in search of support entwines itself around a thick prop, adjusts itself to its contours and exactly follows its shape, though it retains… - Arthur Schopenhauer
" "Just as ivy in search of support entwines itself around a thick prop, adjusts itself to its contours and exactly follows its shape, though it retains its own life and its particular charms, and looks most attractive, so Christian doctrine issuing from the wisdom of India has covered over the old trunk of gross Judaism, which is completely dissimilar to itself. What has been preserved of the fundamental form of the latter is something entirely different, something true and living which has been transformed by this doctrine. The trunk looks the same but is quite different. The Creator outside the world, which he has made out of nothing, is identified with the Saviour and through him with mankind; he is mankind's representative, it was redeemed by him as it had been lost in Adam, since when it has been enchained by the bonds of sin, corruption, suffering and death. For this is the attitude of Christianity as it is of Buddhism. The world can no longer be seen in the light of Jewish optimism which found that "all is well". No, rather is it the devil who now calls himself "prince of this world".... "We may hope", he wrote, "that Europe will free itself some day of all Jewish mythology. Perhaps the century is approaching when the peoples of Japhetic stock, originating in Asia, will find the sacred relics of their native land, because, after going astray for so long, they have reached sufficient maturity for this."
About Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher, most famous for his work The World as Will and Representation (1819).
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Additional quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer
"In order to elucidate especially and most clearly the origination of this error (...) let us imagine a man who, while standing on the street, would say to himself:
"It is six o'clock in the evening, the working day is over. Now I can go for a walk, or I can go to the club; I can also climb up the tower to see the sunset; I can go to the theater; I can visit this friend or that one; indeed, I also can run out of the gate, into the wide world, and never return. All of this is strictly up to me, in this I have complete freedom. But still I shall do none of these things now , but with just as free a will I shall go home to my wife".
This is exactly as if water spoke to itself: "I can make high waves (yes! in the sea during a storm), I can rush down hill (yes! in the river bed), I can plunge down foaming and gushing (yes! in the waterfall), I can rise freely as a stream of water into the air (yes! in the fountain), I can, finally boil away and disappear (yes! at a certain temperature); but I am doing none of these things now, and am voluntaringly remaining quiet and clear water in the reflecting pond.