The World As Will and Representation, by Arthur Schopenhauer

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CHAPTER XXI: Retrospect and More General Consideration

If the intellect were not of a secondary nature, as the two preceding chapters show, then everything that takes place without it, in other words, without intervention of the representation, such, for example, as generation, procreation, the development and preservation of the organism, the healing of wounds, the restoration or vicarious repair of mutilated parts, the salutary crisis in diseases, the works of animal mechanical skill, and the activity of instinct in general, would not turn out so infinitely better and more perfect than what takes place with the aid of the intellect, namely all the conscious and intended achievements and works of men. Such works and achievements, when compared with those others, are mere botching and bungling. Generally, nature signifies that which operates, urges, and creates without the intervention of the intellect. That this is really identical with what we find in ourselves as will is the sole and exclusive theme of this second book, as also of the essay On the Will in Nature. The possibility of this fundamental knowledge rests on the fact that the same thing is immediately illuminated in us by the intellect, here appearing as self-consciousness; otherwise we should just as little arrive at a fuller knowledge of it in ourselves as outside ourselves, and we should have to stop for ever in the presence of inscrutable natural forces. We have to think away the assistance of the intellect, if we wish to comprehend the true essence of the will-in-itself, and thus, as far as possible, to penetrate into nature's inner being.

Incidentally, for this reason, my direct antipode among the philosophers is Anaxagoras; for he arbitrarily assumed a [x], an intelligence, a creator of representations, as the first and original thing, from which everything proceeds; and he is looked upon as the first to have advanced such a view. According to this view, the world had existed earlier in the mere representation than in itself, whereas with me it is the will-without-knowledge that is the foundation of the reality of things; and their development must have already gone] a good way before representation and intelligence were reached in animal consciousness, so that with me thinking appears as the last thing of all. But according to the testimony of Aristotle (Metaphysics, i, 4), Anaxagoras himself did not very well know how to begin with [x], but merely set it up, and then left it standing, like a painted saint at the entrance, without making use of it for his elucidations of nature, except in cases of need, when he did not know how to help himself otherwise. All physico-theology is a perpetration of the error opposed to the truth (expressed at the beginning of this chapter), the error that the most perfect manner of origin of things is that through the medium of an intellect. This, therefore, puts a stop to all deeper investigation of nature.

From the time of Socrates down to our own, we find that a principal subject of the interminable disputations of philosophers is that ens rationis called soul. We see most of them assert its immortality, which means its metaphysical nature; yet we see others, supported by facts that incontestably show the intellect's complete dependence on bodily organs, unweariedly maintain the opposite. By all and above all, that soul was taken to be absolutely simple; for precisely from this were its metaphysical nature, its immateriality, and its immortality demonstrated, although these by no means necessarily follow from it. For although we can conceive the destruction of a formed body only through its decomposition into its parts, it does not follow from this that the destruction of a simple substance or entity, of which, moreover, we have no conception, may not be possible in some other way, perhaps by its gradually vanishing. I, on the other hand, start by doing away with the presupposed simplicity of our subjectively conscious nature or of the ego, since I show that the manifestations from which this simplicity was inferred have two very different sources, and that in any case the intellect is physically conditioned, the function of a material organ, and therefore dependent on it; and that without such an organ it is just as impossible as it is to grasp without a hand. Accordingly with me the intellect belongs to the mere phenomenon, and therefore shares its fate; the will, on the contrary, is tied to no special organ, but is everywhere present, is everywhere that which really moves and forms, and consequently conditions, the whole organism. In fact, the will constitutes the metaphysical substratum of the whole phenomenon, and thus is not, like the intellect, a posterius, but the prius, of the phenomenon; the phenomenon depends on it, not it on the phenomenon. The body, however, is reduced even to a mere representation, since it is only the way in which the will exhibits itself in the perception of the intellect or brain. On the other hand, the will, which appears as one of the last results in all previous systems, so different in other respects, is with me the very first. As mere function of the brain, the intellect is affected by the destruction of the body; the will, on the contrary, is by no means so affected. From this heterogeneity of the two, together with the secondary nature of the intellect, it is easy to understand that, in the depths of his self-consciousness, man feels himself to be eternal and indestructible; but that nevertheless he can have no memory, either a parte ante or a parte post, [1] beyond the duration of his life. I do not want to anticipate here the discussion of the true indestructibility of our inner nature, which has its place in the fourth book; I wish only to indicate the place with which it is connected.

But in an expression certainly one-sided yet from our point of view true, the body is called a mere representation. This is due to the fact that an existence in space as something extended and in time as something changing, yet more closely determined in both by the causal nexus, is possible only in the representation. For those determinations together rest on the forms of the representation, and hence in a brain, in which such an existence accordingly appears as something objective, in other words as foreign. Therefore even our own body can have this kind of existence only in a brain. For the knowledge I have of my body as extended, as filling space, and as movable, is merely indirect; it is a picture in my brain which is brought about by means of the senses and the understanding. The body is given to me directly only in muscular action and in pain or pleasure, both of which primarily and immediately belong to the will. But bringing together these two different kinds of knowledge of my own body afterwards gives me the further insight that all other things, which have also the aforesaid objective existence that is primarily only in my brain, that all other things, I say, are not therefore absolutely non-existent apart from this brain, but that they too in themselves must ultimately be what makes itself known to self-consciousness as will.

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Notes:

1. "On the side of the past or of the future." [Tr.]

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CHAPTER XXII: Objective View of the Intellect [1]

There are two fundamentally different ways of considering the intellect, which depend on the difference of point of view; and much as they are in consequence opposed to each other, they must yet be brought into agreement. One is the subjective way, which, starting from within, and taking consciousness as what is given, shows us by what mechanism the world exhibits itself in this consciousness, and how from materials furnished by the senses and the understanding the world is built up in it. We must regard Locke as the originator of this method of consideration; Kant brought it to an incomparably higher perfection, and our first book, together with its supplements, is devoted to this method.

The opposite to this way of considering the intellect is the objective method. Starting from outside, it takes as its object not our own consciousness, but the beings that are given in external experience, and are conscious of themselves and the world. It then investigates what relation their intellect has to their other qualities, how this intellect has become possible, how it has become necessary, and what it achieves for them. The standpoint of this method of consideration is the empirical; it takes the world and the animal beings in it as absolutely given, since it starts from them. Accordingly, it is primarily zoological, anatomical, physiological, and becomes philosophical only through connexion with that first method of consideration, and from the higher point of view obtained thereby. We are indebted to zootomists and physiologists, mostly French, for the only foundation to it hitherto given. In particular, Cabanis is to be mentioned here; his excellent work, Des rapports du physique au moral, is a pioneer work on the path of physiology for this method of consideration. The celebrated Bichat was a contemporary of his, but his theme was much more comprehensive. Even Gall may be mentioned here, although his principal aim was missed. Ignorance and prejudice have brought the accusation of materialism against this method of consideration, because, adhering simply to experience, it does not know the immaterial substance, namely soul. The most recent advances in the physiology of the nervous system by Sir Charles Bell, Magendie, Marshall Hall, and others have also enriched and corrected the subject-matter of this method of consideration. A philosophy like the Kantian, that entirely ignores this point of view for the intellect, is one-sided, and therefore inadequate. It leaves an immense gulf between our philosophical and physiological knowledge, with which we can never be satisfied.

Although what I have said in the two preceding chapters on the life and activity of the brain belongs to this method of consideration, and in the same way all the explanations given under the heading "Physiology of Plants" in the essay On the Will in Nature, and also a part of those to be found under the heading "Comparative Anatomy" are devoted to it, the following statement of its results in general will certainly not be superfluous.

We shall become most vividly aware of the glaring contrast between the two methods of considering the intellect which in the above remarks are clearly opposed, if we carry the matter to the extreme, and realize that what the one as reflective thought and vivid perception immediately takes up and makes its material, is for the other nothing more than the physiological function of an internal organ, the brain. In fact, we are justified in asserting that the whole of the objective world, so boundless in space, so infinite in time, so unfathomable in its perfection, is really only a certain movement or affection of the pulpy mass in the skull. We then ask in astonishment what this brain is, whose function produces such a phenomenon of all phenomena. What is this matter that can be refined and potentiated to such a pulpy mass, that the stimulation of a few of its particles becomes the conditional supporter of the existence of an objective world? The dread of such questions drove men to the hypothesis of the simple substance of an immaterial soul, which merely dwelt in the brain. We say fearlessly that this pulpy mass, like every vegetable or animal part, is also an organic structure, like all its humbler relations in the inferior dwelling-place of our irrational brothers' heads, down to the humblest that scarcely apprehends. Nevertheless, that organic pulpy mass is nature's final product, which presupposes all the rest. In itself, however, and outside the representation, the brain too, like everything else, is will. To-exist-for-another is to-be-represented; being-in-itself is to will. Precisely to this is due the fact that, on the purely objective path, we never attain to the inner nature of things, but if we attempt to find their inner nature from outside and empirically, this inner always becomes an outer in our hands; the pith of the tree as well as its bark; the heart of the animal as well as its hide; the white and the yolk of an egg as well as its shell. On the subjective path, however, the inner nature is at every moment accessible to us, for we find it as the will primarily within ourselves; and with the clue of the analogy with our own inner nature, it must be possible for us to unravel the rest, since we attain to the insight that a being-in-itself, independent of being known, that is, of exhibiting itself in an intellect, is conceivable only as a willing.

Now if in the objective comprehension of the intellect we go back as far as we can, we shall find that the necessity or need of knowledge in general arises from the plurality and separate existence of beings, from individuation. For let us imagine that there exists only a single being, then such a being needs no knowledge, because there would not then exist anything different from that being itself, -- anything whose existence such a being would therefore have to take up into itself only indirectly through knowledge, in other words, through picture and concept. It would already itself be all in all; consequently there would remain nothing for it to know, in other words, nothing foreign that could be apprehended as object. On the other hand, with the plurality of beings, every individual finds itself in a state of isolation from all the rest, and from this arises the necessity for knowledge. The nervous system, by means of which the animal individual first of all becomes conscious of itself, is bounded by a skin; yet in the brain raised to intellect, it crosses this boundary by means of its form of knowledge, causality, and in this way perception arises for it as a consciousness of other things, as a picture or image of beings in space and time, which change in accordance with causality. In this sense it would be more correct to say "Only the different is known by the different," than, as Empedocles said, "Only the like is known by the like," which was a very indefinite and ambiguous proposition; although points of view may well be expressed from which it is true; as, for instance, that of Helvetius, when he observes beautifully and strikingly: Il n'y a que l'esprit qui sente l'esprit: c'est une corde qui ne fremit qu'a l'unison; [2] this corresponds to Xenophanes' [x] (sapientem esse oportet eum qui sapientem agniturus sit), [3] and is a great and bitter grief. But we know again from the other side that, conversely, plurality of the homogeneous becomes possible only through time and space, i.e., through the forms of our knowledge. Space first arises by the knowing subject seeing outwards; it is the manner in which the subject apprehends something as different from itself. But we just now saw that knowledge in general is conditioned by plurality and difference. Therefore knowledge and plurality, or individuation, stand and fall together, for they condition each other. It is to be concluded from this that, beyond the phenomenon, in the true being-in-itself of all things, to which time and space, and therefore plurality, must be foreign, there cannot exist any knowledge. Buddhism describes this as Prajna Paramita, i.e., that which is beyond all knowledge. (See I. J. Schmidt, On the Mahayana and Prachna-Paramita.) Accordingly, a "knowledge of things-in-themselves" in the strictest sense of the word, would be impossible, because where the being-in-itself of things begins, knowledge ceases, and all knowledge primarily and essentially concerns merely phenomena. For it springs from a limitation, by which it is rendered necessary, in order to extend the limits.

For the objective consideration, the brain is the efflorescence of the organism; therefore only where the organism has reached its highest perfection and complexity does the brain appear in its greatest development. But in the preceding chapter we recognized the organism as the objectification of the will; hence the brain, as part of the organism, must belong to this objectification. Further, from the fact that the organism is only the visibility of the will, and thus in itself is this will, I have deduced that every affection of the organism simultaneously and immediately affects the will, in other words, is felt pleasantly or painfully. Yet through the enhancement of sensibility, with the higher development of the nervous system, there arises the possibility that in the nobler, i.e., objective, sense-organs (sight and hearing), the extremely delicate affections appropriate to them are felt without affecting the will immediately and in themselves, in other words, without being painful or pleasant; and that in consequence they appear in consciousness as in themselves indifferent, merely perceived, sensations. But in the brain this enhancement of sensibility reaches such a high degree that on received sense-impressions there even occurs a reaction. This reaction does not come directly from the will, but is primarily a spontaneity of the function of understanding, a function that makes the transition from the directly perceived sensation of the senses to the cause of this sensation. In this way there arises the perception or intuition of an external object, since here the brain simultaneously produces the form of space. We can therefore regard as the boundary between the world as will and the world as representation, or even as the birth-place of the latter, the point where, from the sensation on the retina, still a mere affection of the body and to that extent of the will, the understanding makes the transition to the cause of that sensation. The understanding projects the sensation, by means of its form of space, as something external and different from its own person. But with man the spontaneity of the brain's activity, conferred of course in the last instance by the will, goes farther than mere perception and immediate apprehension of causal relations. It extends to the formation of abstract concepts from those perceptions, and to operating with them, in other words, to thinking, as that in which man's reason (Vernunft) consists. The ideas, therefore, are farthest removed from the affections of the body, and since this body is the objectification of the will, these can pass at once into pain through intensification, even in the organs of sense. In accordance with what we have said, representation and idea can also be regarded as the efflorescence of the will, in so far as they spring from the highest perfection and enhancement of the organism; but, in itself and apart from the representation, this organism is the will. In my explanation, the existence of the body certainly presupposes the world of representation, in so far as it also, as body or real object, is only in this world. On the other hand, the representation itself just as much presupposes the body, for it arises only through the function of an organ of the body. That which lies at the foundation of the whole phenomenon, that in it which alone is being-in-itself and is original, is exclusively the will; for it is the will which, through this very process, assumes the form of the representation, in other words, enters into the secondary existence of an objective world, the sphere of the knowable. The philosophers before Kant, with few exceptions, attempted from the wrong side to explain how our knowledge comes about. They started from a so-called soul, an entity whose inner nature and peculiar function consisted in thinking, indeed quite specially in abstract thinking, with mere concepts; and these belonged to it the more completely the farther they lay from all perceptibility. (Here I request the reader to look up the note at the end of § 6 in my essay On the Basis of Morality.) This soul is supposed to have come into the body in some inconceivable way, and there suffers only disturbances in its pure thinking first from sense-impressions and perceptions, still more from the desires that these excite, and finally from the emotions, in fact the passions, into which these desires develop. On the other hand, this soul's own and original element is said to be pure, abstract thinking; left to this, it has only universals, inborn concepts, and aeternae veritates for its objects, and leaves everything of perception lying far below it. Hence arises the contempt with which even now "sensibility" and the "sensible" or "sensuous" are referred to, and are even made by the professors of philosophy the chief source of immorality; whereas because the senses, in combination with the a priori functions of the intellect, produce perception, it is precisely these that are the pure and innocent source of all our knowledge, from which all thinking first borrows its contents. We might really suppose that, in speaking of sensibility, these gentlemen always thought only of the pretended sixth sense of the French. Therefore, as previously stated, in the process of knowledge, its ultimate product, namely abstract thinking, was made the first and original thing, and accordingly, as I have said, the matter was tackled from the wrong end. According to my account, the intellect springs from the organism, and thus from the will, and so without this could not exist. Without the will, it would find no material and nothing to occupy it, since everything knowable is just the objectification of the will.

But not only is perception of the external world, or the consciousness of other things, conditioned by the brain and its functions, but so is self-consciousness also. The will in itself is without consciousness, and in the greatest part of its phenomena remains so. The secondary world of the representation must be added for the will to become conscious of itself, just as light becomes visible only through the bodies that reflect it, and otherwise loses itself ineffectually in darkness. Since the will, for the purpose of comprehending its relations with the external world, produces in the animal individual a brain, the consciousness of itself first arises in this by means of the subject of knowledge, and this subject comprehends things as existing and the I or ego as willing. Thus the sensibility, enhanced to the highest degree in the brain and yet spread through its different parts, must first of all bring together all the rays of its activity, concentrate them, so to speak, in a focus; yet this focal point lies not without, as with concave mirrors, but within, as with convex. With this point, sensibility first of all describes the line of time on which everything represented by it must exhibit itself, and which is the first and most essential form of all knowing, or the form of the inner sense. This focal point of the whole activity of the brain is what Kant called the synthetic unity of apperception. [*] Only by means of this does the will become conscious of itself, since this focus of the brain's activity, or that which knows, apprehends itself as identical with its own basis from which it has sprung, i.e., with what wills, and thus arises the ego. Nevertheless, this focus of brain-activity remains primarily a mere subject of knowing, and, as such, capable of being the cold and indifferent spectator, the mere guide and counsellor of the will, and also of comprehending the external world purely objectively, regardless of the will and of its weal or woe. But as soon as it is directed inwards, it recognizes the will as the basis of its own phenomenon, and therefore merges with this will into the consciousness of an ego. That focus of brain-activity (or the subject of knowledge) is indeed, as an indivisible point, simple, yet it is not on that account a substance (soul), but a mere condition or state. That of which it itself is a state or condition can be known by it only indirectly, through reflection as it were. But the cessation of the state or condition cannot be regarded as the annihilation of that of which it is a state or condition. This knowing and conscious ego is related to the will, which is the basis of its phenomenal appearance, as the image in the focus of the concave mirror is to that mirror itself; and, like that image, it has only a conditioned, in fact, properly speaking, a merely apparent reality. Far from being the absolutely first thing (as Fichte taught, for example), it is at bottom tertiary, since it presupposes the organism, and the organism presupposes the will. I admit that everything said here is really only metaphor and figure of speech, in part even hypothetical; but we stand at a point which thoughts and ideas, much less proofs, scarcely reach. I therefore ask the reader to compare it with what I have set forth at length on this subject in chapter 20.

Now, although the true being-in-itself of every existing thing consists in its will, and knowledge together with consciousness is added only as something secondary at the higher stages of the phenomenon, we find nevertheless that the difference placed between one being and another by the presence and different degree of consciousness and intellect is exceedingly great, and has important results. We must picture to ourselves the subjective existence of the plant as a weak analogue, a mere shadow of comfortable and uncomfortable feeling; and even in this extremely weak degree, the plant knows only of itself, not of anything outside it. On the other hand, even the lowest animal that stands next to it is induced by enhanced and more definitely specified needs to extend the sphere of its existence beyond the limit of its own body. This takes place through knowledge. It has a dull perception of its immediate surroundings out of which motives for its action arise for the purpose of its maintenance and support. Accordingly, the medium of motives appears in this way, and this is -- the world standing out objectively in time and space, the world as representation, however feeble, dull, and dimly dawning this first and lowest specimen of it may be. Yet it is marked more and more distinctly, more and more widely and deeply, in proportion as the brain is more and more perfectly produced in the ascending series of animal organizations. But this enhancement of brain-development, and hence of the intellect and of the clearness of the representation, at each of these ever higher stages, is brought about by the ever-increasing and more complicated need of these phenomena of the will. This need must always first give rise to it, for without need or want nature (in other words, the will objectifying itself therein) produces nothing, least of all the most difficult of her productions, a more perfect brain, in consequence of her lex parsimoniae: Natura nihil agit frustra et nihil facit supervacaneum. [4] She has equipped every animal with the organs necessary for its maintenance and support, with the weapons necessary for its conflict, as I have explained at length in the work On the Will in Nature under the heading "Comparative Anatomy." Therefore by the same standard, she has imparted to each the most important of the organs directed outwards, namely the brain with its function, i.e., the intellect. Thus the more complicated its organization became through higher development, the more manifold and specially determined became its needs; consequently, the more difficult and dependent on opportunity became the procuring of what satisfies them. Therefore, a wider range of vision, a more accurate comprehension, a more correct distinction of things in the external world in all their circumstances and relations were here required. Accordingly, we see the powers of representation and their organs, brain, nerves, and organs of sense, appear more and more perfect, the higher we ascend in the scale of animals; and in proportion as the cerebral system develops, does the external world appear in consciousness ever more distinct, many-sided, and complete. The comprehension of the world now demands more and more attention, and ultimately to such an extent that at times its relation to the will must be momentarily lost sight of, so that it may occur the more purely and correctly. This quite definitely appears first in the case of man; only with him does a pure separation of knowing from willing occur. This is an important point that I merely touch on here, to indicate its place, so as to be able to take it up again later on. But this last step in extending and perfecting the brain, and thus increasing the powers of knowledge, is taken by nature, like all the rest, merely in consequence of the increased needs, and hence in the service of the will. What this will aims at and attains in man is indeed essentially the same as, and not more than, what its goal is in the animal, nourishment and propagation. But through the organization of man the requirements for the attainment of that goal were so greatly increased, enhanced, and specified, that an incomparably more important enhancement of the intellect than that offered by previous stages was necessary, or at any rate was the easiest means of attaining the end. But as the intellect, in consequence of its very essence, is a tool of exceedingly varied and extensive uses, and is equally applicable to the most heterogeneous aims and objects, nature, true to her spirit of parsimony, could now meet through it alone all the demands of the wants and needs that had become so manifold. Therefore she sent man forth without clothing, without natural weapons of defence or of attack, indeed with relatively little muscular strength, great weakness, and little endurance against adverse influences and deficiencies. This she did in reliance on that one great tool, for which she had to retain only the hands of the next stage below him, the ape. But through the preponderating intellect that here appears, not only are the comprehension of the motives, their multiplicity and variety, and generally the horizon of the aims infinitely increased, but the distinctness with which the will is conscious of itself is also enhanced in the highest degree, in consequence of the clearness of the whole consciousness which has come about. This clearness, supported by the capacity for abstract knowledge, now reaches complete reflectiveness. But in this way, as also through the vehemence of the will, necessarily presupposed as the supporter of so enhanced an intellect, there appeared a heightening of all the emotions, indeed the possibility of passions, which, in the proper sense, are unknown to the animal. For the vehemence of the will keeps pace with the enhancement of the intelligence, just because in reality this enhancement always springs from the will's increased needs and more pressing demands; but in addition to this, the two mutually support each other. Thus the vehemence of the character is connected with greater energy of heart-beat and of blood circulation, which physically heightens the activity of the brain. On the other hand, clearness of intelligence again heightens the emotions produced through external circumstances by means of the more lively apprehension of them. Therefore young calves, for example, calmly allow themselves to be packed into a cart and dragged off; but young lions, if only separated from their mother, remain permanently restless and roar incessantly from morning till night; children in such a situation would cry and worry themselves almost to death. The liveliness and impetuosity of the ape are connected precisely with its greatly developed intelligence. It depends precisely on this reciprocal relationship that man is generally capable of much greater sorrows than is the animal, but also of greater joy in satisfied and happy emotions. In just the same way, enhanced intellect makes him more susceptible to boredom than the animal; but, if it is individually very complete, it also becomes a perennial source of diversion and entertainment. Thus on the whole, the phenomenal appearance of the will in man is related to that in the animal of a higher species as a note that is struck is to its fifth pitched two or three octaves lower. But even between the different species of animals, the differences of intellect and therefore of consciousness are great and endlessly graduated. The mere analogue of consciousness, which we must ascribe to the plant, will be related to the still far duller subjective inner being of an inorganic body in much the same way as the consciousness of the lowest animal is related to this quasi-consciousness of the plant. We can picture to ourselves the innumerable gradations in degree of consciousness from the illustration of the different velocity of points on a disc which are situated at different distances from the centre. But the most correct, and indeed, as our third book teaches, the natural illustration of that gradation is afforded by the musical scale in its whole range from the lowest audible note to the highest. But it is the degree of consciousness that determines the degree of a being's existence. For all immediate existence is subjective; objective existence is present in the consciousness of another, and hence is only for this other; consequently it is quite indirect. Through the degree of consciousness beings are as different as through the will they are alike, in so far as this will is what is common to them all.

However, what we have now considered as between plant and animal, and again between the different species of animals, also occurs between one man and another. Thus what is secondary, namely the intellect, here sets up, by means of the clearness of consciousness and the distinctness of knowledge dependent on it, a fundamental and immeasurably great difference in the whole mode, and thus in the degree, of existence. The higher the consciousness has risen, the more distinct and connected are the thoughts and ideas, the clearer the perceptions, the deeper and profounder the sensations. In this way everything gains more depth: emotion, sadness, joy, and sorrow. Ordinary shallow minds are not even capable of real joy; they live on in dull insensibility. Whereas one man's consciousness presents to him only his own existence, together with the motives that must be apprehended for the purpose of sustaining and enlivening it, in a bare and inadequate apprehension of the external world, to another person his own consciousness is a camera obscura in which the macrocosm exhibits itself:

He feels he holds a little world
Brooding in his brain,
That it begins to act and live,
That it from himself he fain would give. [5]

The difference of the whole mode of existence established between one man and another by the extremes of gradation of intellectual abilities is so great, that that between a king and an artisan seems small by comparison. Here also, as in the case of animal species, a connexion can be shown between the vehemence of the will and the enhancement of the intellect. Genius is conditioned by a passionate temperament, and a phlegmatic genius is inconceivable. It seems that an exceedingly vehement and hence strongly desiring will must exist, if nature is to provide an abnormally heightened intellect as appropriate to it, whilst the merely physical account of this points to the greater energy with which the arteries of the head move the brain and increase its turgescence. But the quantity, quality, and form of the brain itself are of course the other and incomparably rarer condition of genius. On the other hand, phlegmatic persons are as a rule of very moderate mental powers, and so the northern, cold-blooded, and phlegmatic nations are in general noticeably inferior in mind to the southern, vivacious, and passionate races; although, as Bacon has most strikingly observed, [6] when once a northerner is highly gifted by nature, he can reach a degree never attained by a southerner. Accordingly, it is as absurd as it is common to take the great minds of the different nations as the standard for comparing those nations' mental powers; for this is equivalent to trying to establish the rule through the exceptions. On the contrary, it is the great majority of every nation that we have to consider; for one swallow does not make a summer. It has still to be observed here that the very passionateness that is a condition of genius, and is bound up with the genius's vivid apprehension of things, produces in practical life, where the will comes into play, especially in sudden emergencies, so great an excitement of the emotions that it disturbs and confuses the intellect. The phlegmatic man, on the other hand, still retains the full use of his mental powers, although these are much more limited; and then he achieves far more with these than the greatest genius can. Accordingly, a passionate temperament is favourable to the original quality of the intellect; but a phlegmatic one is favourable to its use. Therefore genius proper is only for theoretical achievements, for which it can choose and bide its time. This time will be precisely when the will is entirely at rest, and no wave disturbs the clear mirror of the world-view. Genius, on the other hand, is unqualified and unserviceable for practical life, and is therefore often unlucky and unhappy. Goethe's Tasso is written in this sense. Now just as genius proper rests on the absolute strength and vigour of the intellect, which must be paid for by a correspondingly excessive vehemence of disposition, so great preeminence in practical life, which makes generals and statesmen, rests on the relative strength of the intellect, on the highest degree of it which can be attained without too great an excitability of the emotions, together with too great a vehemence of character, and which therefore holds its own even in the storm. Here great firmness of will and imperturbability of mind, together with a capable and fine understanding, are sufficient; and what goes beyond this has a detrimental effect, for too great a development of intelligence stands right in the way of firmness of character and resoluteness of will. Accordingly this kind of eminence is not so abnormal, and is a hundred times less rare than that other; and so we see great generals and great ministers appear at all times, whenever external circumstances are favourable to their activity. On the other hand, great poets and philosophers are centuries in coming; yet humanity may rest content with even this rare appearance of them, for their works remain, and do not exist merely for the present, as do the achievements of those others. It is also wholly in accordance with the above-mentioned law of the parsimony of nature that she bestows intellectual eminence generally on extremely few, and genius only as the rarest of all exceptions. She equips the great mass of the human race, however, with no more mental powers than are required for the maintenance of the individual and the species. For the great needs of the human race are constantly increased by their very satisfaction, and make it necessary for the large majority to spend their lives in rough physical and wholly mechanical work. For what would be the use to such persons of a lively mind, a glowing imagination, a subtle understanding, or a profound and penetrating discrimination? Such qualities would merely make them misfits and unhappy. Nature has therefore dealt with the most precious of all her productions in the least extravagant way. In order not to judge unfairly, we should also definitely settle our expectations of the mental achievements of people generally from this point of view. For example, as even scholars have, as a rule, become such merely through external causes, we should regard them primarily as men who are really destined by nature for farming and wood-cutting. In fact, even professors of philosophy should be estimated according to this standard, and then their achievements will be found to come up to all reasonable expectations. It is noteworthy that in the south, where the cares of life weigh less heavily on the human race and more leisure is given it, the mental faculties even of the mob at once become more active and acute. Physiologically, it is remarkable that the preponderance of the mass of the brain over that of the spinal cord and nerves, which according to Sommering's clever discovery affords the true and closest measure of the degree of intelligence both in animal species and in individual men, at the same time increases the direct mobility, the agility, of the limbs. For through the great inequality of the relation, the dependence of all the motor nerves on the brain becomes more decided. In addition to this, we have the fact that the cerebellum, that primary controller of movement, shares the qualitative perfection of the cerebrum. Therefore through both, all arbitrary movements gain greater facility, rapidity, and manageableness; and through the concentration of the starting-point of all activity there arises what Lichtenberg praises in Garrick, namely that "he appeared wholly present in the muscles of his body." Heaviness in the movement of the body, therefore, indicates heaviness in the movement of thoughts and ideas; and it is regarded as a sign of dulness and stupidity both in individuals and in nations, just as are flabbiness of the facial features and feebleness of the glance. Another symptom of the physiological facts of the case referred to is the circumstance that many people have at once to stand still, as soon as their conversation with anyone accompanying them begins to have some connexion. For as soon as their brain has to link a , few ideas together, it no longer has as much force left over as is I required to keep the legs in motion through the motor nerves; with them everything is so fine and close-cut.

The result of the whole of this objective consideration of the intellect and of its origin is the fact that it is designed for comprehending those ends on the attainment of which depend individual life and its propagation. But such an intellect is by no means destined to interpret the inner essence-in-itself of things and of the world, which exists independently of the knower. What susceptibility to light, in consequence of which it guides its growth in the direction of the light, is to the plant is the same in kind as knowledge to the animal, in fact even to man, although it is enhanced in degree in proportion as the needs of each of these beings demand. With all of them, perception or apprehension remains a mere awareness of their relation to other things, and is by no means intended to present once again the true, absolutely real inner nature of these things in the consciousness of the knower. On the contrary, as springing from the will, the intellect is designed for the will's service, and hence for the comprehension of motives; to this it is adapted, and so it is thoroughly practical in tendency. This also holds good in so far as we conceive the metaphysical significance of life as ethical; for in this sense too, we find man a knower only with a view to his conduct. Such a faculty of knowledge, existing exclusively for practical ends, will by its nature always comprehend only the relations of things to one another, not their inner nature as it is in itself. But to regard the complex of these relations as the inner being of the world, which exists absolutely and in itself, and the manner in which they necessarily exhibit themselves according to laws preformed in the brain as the eternal laws of the existence of all things, and then to construct ontology, cosmology, and theology on this pattern -- all this was really the ancient fundamental error, which Kant's teaching brought to an end. Here, then, our consideration of the intellect, objective and thus for the most part physiological, meets his transcendental consideration; in fact, in a sense, it even appears as an a priori insight into it, since, from an external standpoint that we have taken, our objective consideration enables us to know genetically, and thus as necessary, what the transcendental consideration, starting from facts of consciousness, presents only as a matter of fact. For in consequence of our objective consideration of the intellect, the world as representation, as it exists extended in space and time and continues to move regularly according to the strict rule of causality, is primarily only a physiological phenomenon, a function of the brain that brings this about on the occasion of certain external stimuli, it is true, but yet in accordance with its own laws. Accordingly, it is already a matter of course that what goes on in this function itself, and consequently through it and for it, cannot possibly be regarded as the quality or nature of things-in-themselves that exist independently of and are entirely different from it; but primarily exhibits merely the mode and manner of this function itself. This can always receive only a very minor modification through that which exists wholly independent of it, and as stimulus sets it in motion. Accordingly, just as Locke claimed for the organs of sense all that comes into perception or apprehension by means of sensation, in order to deny it to things-in-themselves, so Kant, with the same purpose and pursuing the same path, showed everything that makes real perception possible, namely space, time, and causality, to be brain-function. He refrained, however, from using this physiological expression, to which our present method of consideration necessarily leads us, coming as it does from the op posite, the real side. On his analytical path, Kant reached the result that what we know is mere phenomena. What this puzzling expression really means becomes clear from our objective and genetic consideration of the intellect. The phenomena are the motives for the purposes and aims of an individual will, as they exhibit themselves in the intellect produced by the will for this purpose (this intellect itself appears objectively as brain); and when they are comprehended as far as we can follow their concatenation, they furnish in their continuity and sequence the world extending itself in time and space, which I call the world as representation. Moreover, from our point of view, the objectionable element to be found in the Kantian doctrine disappears. This element arises from the fact that, since the intellect knows mere phenomena instead of things as they are in themselves, and in fact in consequence of them is led astray into paralogisms and unfounded hypostases by means of "sophistications, not of persons but of reason itself, from which even the wisest cannot rid himself, and when perhaps after much effort he is able to prevent error, he can never get rid of the delusion that incessantly worries and mocks him" -- this element, I say, makes it appear as if our intellect were intentionally designed to lead us into error. For the objective view of the intellect here given, which contains a genesis of it, makes it conceivable that, being destined exclusively for practical ends, the intellect is the mere medium of motives. Consequently, it fulfils its mission by correctly presenting these, and if we undertake to construct the true nature of things-in-themselves from the complex and conformity to law of the phenomena that objectively present themselves to us here, it is done at our own peril and on our own responsibility. Thus we have recognized that the inner force of nature, originally without knowledge and working in the dark, which, if it has worked its way up to self-consciousness, reveals itself thereto as will, reaches this stage only by the production of an animal brain and of knowledge as the function thereof, whereupon there arises in this brain the phenomenon of the world of perception. But to declare this mere brain-phenomenon, with the conformity to law that invariably belongs to its functions, to be the objective being-in-itself of the world and of the things in it -- a being-in itself that exists independently of this phenomenon, before it and after it-is obviously a leap that nothing warrants us in taking. From this mundus phaenomenon, however, from this perception arising under such a variety of conditions, all our concepts are drawn; they have all their content only from it, indeed only in relation to it. Therefore, as Kant says, they are only for immanent, not for transcendent use; in other words, these concepts of ours, this first material of thinking, and so still more the judgements resulting from their combination, are unsuitable for the task of reflecting on the inner essence of things-in-themselves and on the true connexion of the world and of existence. Indeed, to undertake this is analogous to expressing the cubical contents of a body in square inches. For our intellect, originally intended only to present to an individual will its paltry aims, accordingly comprehends mere relations of things, and does not penetrate to their inner being, their true nature. Accordingly it is a mere superficial force, clinging to the surface of things, and grasping mere species transitivae, [7] not their true being. The result is that we cannot understand and grasp a single thing, even the simplest and smallest, through and through, but in everything there is something left over that remains entirely inexplicable to us. Just because the intellect is a product of nature, and is therefore adapted only for her aims and ends, the Christian mystics have very aptly called it the "light of nature," and have kept it within bounds; for nature is the object to which it alone is the subject. The idea from which the Critique of Pure Reason sprang is really at the root of this expression. That we cannot comprehend the world on the direct path, in other words, through the uncritical, direct application of the intellect and its data, but are ever more deeply involved in insoluble riddles when we reflect on it, points to the fact that the intellect, and so knowledge itself, is already something secondary, a mere product. It is brought about by the development of the inner being of the world, which consequently till then preceded it; and it finally appeared as a breaking through into the light from the obscure depths of the striving without knowledge, and the true nature of such striving exhibits itself as will in the self-consciousness that simultaneously arises in this way. That which precedes knowledge as its condition, whereby that knowledge first of all became possible, and hence its own basis, cannot be immediately grasped by knowledge, just as the eye cannot see itself. On the contrary. the relations that exhibit themselves on the surface of things between one being and another are its sole concern, and are so only by means of the apparatus of the intellect, that is, its forms, time, space. causality. Just because the world has made itself without the aid of knowledge, its whole inner being does not enter into knowledge, but knowledge presupposes the existence of the world, and for this reason the origin of the world's existence does not lie within the province of knowledge. Accordingly, knowledge is limited to the relations between existing things, and is thus sufficient for the individual will, for whose service alone it arose. For, as has been shown, the intellect is conditioned by nature, resides therein, belongs thereto, and therefore cannot be set up in opposition to nature as something entirely foreign to it, in order thus to assimilate absolutely, objectively, and thoroughly nature's whole inner essence. With the help of good fortune, the intellect can understand everything in nature, but not nature itself, at any rate not immediately.

However discouraging for metaphysics this essential limitation of the intellect may be, resulting as it does from the intellect's nature and origin, there is yet another very consoling side to it. It deprives the direct utterances of nature of their unconditional validity, in the assertion of which naturalism proper consists. Thus nature presents to us every living thing as arising out of nothing, and, after an ephemeral existence, returning for ever into nothing again; and she seems to take a delight in ceaselessly creating afresh, in order to be able ceaselessly to destroy. On the other hand, she is unable to bring to light anything lasting or enduring. Accordingly we have to recognize matter as the only permanent thing, as that which never originated and never passes away, which brings forth everything from its womb; for this reason, its name seems to have come from mater rerum. Along with matter we have to recognize, as the father of things, form, which, just as fleeting as matter is permanent, really changes every moment, and can maintain itself only so long as it clings parasitically to matter (now to one part thereof, now to another). But when once form entirely loses its hold, it ceases to exist, as is testified by the palaeotherium and the ichthyosaurus. If we consider all this, we must indeed recognize it as the direct and genuine utterance of nature; but, on account of the origin of the intellect previously explained, and of the nature of the intellect that results from this origin, we cannot grant an unconditional truth to this utterance, but in general only a conditional, which Kant has strikingly indicated as such by calling it the phenomenon as opposed to the thing-in-itself.

If, in spite of this essential limitation of the intellect, it becomes possible in a roundabout way, by means of widely pursued reflection and by the ingenious connexion of outwardly directed objective knowledge with the data of self-consciousness, to arrive at a certain understanding of the world and the inner essence of things, this will nevertheless be only a very limited, entirely indirect, and relative understanding, a parabolic translation into the forms of knowledge, hence a quadam prodire tenus, [8] which must leave many problems still unsolved. On the other hand, the fundamental mistake of the old dogmatism in all its forms, which Kant destroyed, was that it started absolutely from knowledge, i.e., from the world as representation, in order to deduce and construct being in general from the laws of knowledge. Such dogmatism took that world of the representation, together with its laws, to be something positively existing and absolutely real; whereas the whole existence of that world is fundamentally relative, and a mere result or phenomenon of the true being-in-itself that lies at its root; or in other words, dogmatism constructed an ontology where it had material only for a dianoiology. Kant discovered the subjectively conditioned, and thus positively immanent, nature of knowledge, in other words, its unsuitability for transcendent use, from this knowledge's own conformity to law. He therefore very appropriately called his teaching the Critique of Reason. He carried this out partly by showing the considerable and universally a priori portion of all knowledge, which, as being absolutely subjective, vitiates all objectivity; and partly by ostensibly proving that the principles of knowledge, taken as purely objective, led to contradictions when followed out to the end. But he had too hastily assumed that, apart from objective knowledge, in other words, apart from the world as representation, nothing is given to us except perhaps conscience. From this he constructed the little of metaphysics that still remained, namely moral theology, to which, however, he granted positively only a practical, certainly not a theoretical, validity. He had overlooked the fact that, although objective knowledge, or the world as representation, certainly affords nothing but phenomena, together with their phenomenal connexion and regressus, our own inner being nevertheless belongs of necessity to the world of things-in-themselves, since this inner being must be rooted in such a world. From this, however, even if the root cannot be directly brought to light, it must yet be possible to lay hold of some data for explaining the connexion between the world of phenomena and the being-in-itself of things. Here, therefore, lies the path on which I have gone beyond Kant and the limit he set. But in doing this, I have always stood on the ground of reflection, consequently of honesty, and hence without the vain pretension of intellectual intuition or absolute thought that characterizes the period of pseudo-philosophy between Kant and myself. In his proof of the inadequacy of rational knowledge for fathoming the inner nature of the world, Kant started from knowledge as a fact furnished by our consciousness; thus in this sense, he proceeded a posteriori. In this chapter, however, as well as in my work On the Will in Nature, I have tried to show what knowledge is according to its essence and origin, that is, something secondary destined for individual ends. From this it follows that knowledge is bound to be inadequate for fathoming the true nature of the world; and so to this extent I have reached the same goal a priori. But we do not know anything wholly and completely until we have gone right round it, and have arrived back at the starting-point from the other side. Therefore, in the case of the important fundamental knowledge considered here, we must also go not merely from intellect to knowledge of the world, as Kant did, but also, as I have undertaken to do here, from the world, taken as given, to the intellect. Then in the wider sense this physiological consideration becomes the supplement to that ideological, as the French say, or more accurately transcendental, consideration.

In order not to break the thread of the discussion, I have in the above remarks postponed the explanation of one point I have touched on. This was that, in proportion as the intellect appears more and more developed and complete in the ascending series of animals, knowing is more and more distinctly separated from willing, and thereby becomes purer. What is essential on this point is to be found in my work On the Will in Nature under the heading "Physiology of Plants" (pp. 68-72 of the second edition), and to that I refer, in order to avoid repetition; here I add only a few remarks. Since the plant possesses neither irritability nor sensibility, but in it the will objectifies itself only as plasticity or reproductive force, it has neither muscle nor nerve. At the lowest stages of the animal kingdom, in the zoophytes, especially the polyps, we are still unable to recognize distinctly the separation of these two constituent parts, yet we assume their existence, although in a state of fusion, since we perceive movements occurring, not on mere stimuli like those of the plant, but on motives, in other words, in consequence of a kind of perception or apprehension. Now in the ascending series of animals, the nervous and muscular systems separate ever more distinctly from each other, till in the vertebrates, and most completely in man, the nervous system is divided into an organic and a cerebral nervous system. This cerebral nervous system, again, is developed to the extremely complicated apparatus of the cerebrum and cerebellum, the spinal cord, cerebral and spinal nerves, sensory and motor nerve-fascicles. Of these only the cerebrum, together with the sensory nerves attached to it, and the posterior spinal nerve-fascicles are intended to take up the motives from the external world. All the other parts, on the other hand, are intended only to transmit the motives to the muscles in which the will directly manifests itself. Bearing the above separation in mind, we see the motive separated to the same extent more and more distinctly in consciousness from the act of will it calls forth, as is the representation from the will. Now in this way the objectivity of consciousness is constantly increasing, since in it the representations exhibit themselves more and more distinctly and purely. However, the two separations are really only one and the same, considered here from two sides, the objective and the subjective, or first in the consciousness of other things and then in self-consciousness. On the degree of this separation ultimately depend the difference and gradation of the intellectual abilities between the various species of animals, as well as between individual human beings; hence it gives the standard for their intellectual perfection. For on it depends clearness of consciousness of the external world, the objectivity of perception. In the passage referred to above, I have shown that the animal perceives things only in so far as they are motives for its will, and that even the most intelligent animals scarcely go beyond this limit, since their intellect is still too firmly attached to the will from which it has sprung. On the other hand, even the stupidest person comprehends things to some extent objectively, since he recognizes in them not merely what they are with reference to him, but also something of what they are with reference to themselves and other things. Yet in the case of very few does this reach such a degree that they are able to examine and judge of anything purely objectively, but their goal is "This must I do, this must I say, this must I believe"; and on every occasion their thinking hurries in a straight line to this goal where their understanding at once finds welcome relaxation. For thinking is as intolerable to the feeble head as lifting a load is to the weak arm; both hasten to put it down. The objectivity of knowledge, and above all of knowledge of perception, has innumerable degrees, depending on the energy of the intellect and its separation from the will. The highest degree is genius, in which the comprehension of the external world becomes so pure and objective that to it even more is directly revealed in the individual things than these things themselves, namely the true nature of their whole species, i.e., their Platonic Idea. This is conditioned by the fact that the will here vanishes entirely from consciousness. This is the point where the present consideration, starting from physiological foundations, is connected with the subject of our third book, the metaphysics of the beautiful. Really aesthetic comprehension, in the higher degree peculiar only to genius, is fully considered there as the state or condition of pure, that is to say wholly will-less, knowledge, which on this account is completely objective. In accordance with what has been said, the enhancement of intelligence from the dullest animal consciousness to that of man is a progressive loosening of the intellect from the will, which appears complete, although only by way of exception, in genius. Genius can therefore be defined as the highest degree of the objectivity of knowledge. The condition for this, which exists so rarely, is a decidedly greater measure of intelligence than is required for the service of the will which constitutes its foundation. Accordingly, it is only this surplus or excess becoming free that really and truly becomes aware of the world, in other words, comprehends it perfectly objectively, and then paints, writes poetry, and thinks in accordance with this comprehension.

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Notes:

1. This chapter refers to the last half of § 27 of volume 1.

2. ''The mind alone is capable of understanding the mind; it is a string that vibrates only in harmony with another." [Tr.]

3. "One must be a sage to recognize a sage." [Tr.]

* Cf. p. 251.

4. "Law of parsimony: Nature does nothing in vain, and creates nothing superfluous." [Tr.]

5. From Goethe's Miscellaneous Poems. [Tr.]

6. De Augmentis Scientiarum, Bk. vi, c. 3.

7. '''Fleeting phenomena" [an expression of the scholastics. Tr.].

8. "Advance up to a certain limit." [Tr.]

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CHAPTER XXIII: On the Objectification of the Will in Nature without Knowledge [1]

The first step in the fundamental knowledge of my metaphysics is that the will we find within us does not, as philosophy previously assumed, proceed first of all from knowledge; that it is not, in fact, a mere modification of knowledge, and thus something secondary, derived, and, like knowledge itself, conditioned by the brain; but that it is the prius of knowledge, the kernel of our true being. The will is that primary and original force itself, which forms and maintains the animal body, in that it carries out that body's unconscious as well as conscious functions. Paradoxical as it appears to many even now that the will-in-itself is without knowledge, yet the scholastics already recognized and saw it to some extent, for Jul. Caes. Vaninus (that well-known victim of fanaticism and priestly wrath), who was thoroughly versed in their philosophy, says in his Amphitheatrum, p. 181; Voluntas potentia caeca est, ex scholasticorum opinione. [2] Further, it is the same will that in the plant forms the bud, in order to develop from it leaf or flower; in fact the regular form of the crystal is only the trace of its momentary striving left behind. Generally, as the true and only [x] in the proper sense of the word, it underlies all the forces of inorganic nature, plays and acts in all their manifold phenomena, endows their laws with force, and, even in the crudest mass, manifests itself as gravity. This insight is the second step in that fundamental knowledge, and is brought about by further reflection. It would, however, be the grossest of all misunderstandings to imagine that this is a question only of a word for denoting an unknown quantity. On the contrary, it is the most real of all real knowledge that is here expressed in language. For it is the tracing back of that which is wholly inaccessible to our immediate knowledge, hence of that which is essentially foreign and unknown to us, which we denote by the words force of nature, to that which is known to us most accurately and intimately, yet is immediately accessible to us only in our own inner being; it must therefore be transferred from this to other phenomena. It is the insight that what is inward and original in all the changes and movements of bodies, however varied and different they may be, is essentially identical; that we nevertheless have only one opportunity of becoming more closely and immediately acquainted with it, namely in the movements of our own body; and in consequence of this knowledge, we must call it will. It is the insight that what acts and drives in nature, and manifests itself in ever more perfect phenomena, after working itself up to such a height that the light of knowledge immediately falls on it -- in other words, after getting as far as the state or condition of self-consciousness -- now stands out as that will. It is the will which is what we know most intimately, and is therefore not to be explained further by anything else; on the contrary, it furnishes the explanation for all else. Accordingly, it is the thing-in-itself, in so far as this can in any way be reached by knowledge. Consequently, it is what must express itself in some way in everything in the world; for it is the true inner being of the world and the kernel of all phenomena.

As my essay On the Will in Nature is specially devoted to the subject of this chapter, and furnishes the evidence of unprejudiced empiricists for this principal point of my teaching, I have here to add only a few supplementary remarks to what was said in that work; and these are therefore strung together somewhat piecemeal.

First, therefore, in regard to plant life; I draw attention to the remarkable first two chapters of Aristotle's work on plants. As is so often the case with Aristotle, what is most interesting in them are the opinions of the earlier and profounder philosophers he quotes. There we see that Anaxagoras and Empedocles quite rightly taught that plants have the motion of their growth by virtue of their indwelling desire ([x]); in fact that they attributed to them even pleasure and pain, and consequently sensation. Plato, however, attributed to them only desires, and that on account of their appetite for nutrition (cf. Timaeus, p. 403 Bip.). On the other hand, true to his customary method, Aristotle glides over the surface of things, sticks to isolated characteristics and concepts fixed by current expressions, and asserts that there can be no desire without sensation, whereas plants have no sensation. However, as his confused words testify, he is considerably embarrassed, until here also "where concepts fail, a word appears on the scene at the right moment," namely [x], the faculty of nourishing. He asserts that plants have this, and hence a part of the so-called soul, according to his favourite division into anima vegetativa, sensitiva, et intellectiva. But this is just a scholastic quidditas, and says: Plantae nutriuntur, quia habent facultatem nutritivam. [3] Consequently it is a bad substitute for the deeper enquiry of his predecessors whom he criticizes. We see also in the second chapter that Empedocles had recognized even the sexuality of plants. Aristotle finds fault with this, and conceals his lack of real practical knowledge behind general principles, such as that plants could not have the two sexes in combination, for then they would be more complete than animals. By a wholly analogous procedure, he set aside the correct astronomical system of the universe propounded by the Pythagoreans; and by his absurd fundamental principles, explained in detail in his books De Coelo, he introduced the system of Ptolemy. In this way, mankind was once more deprived for almost two thousand years of an already discovered truth of the highest importance.

I cannot refrain from giving here the saying of an excellent biologist of our own time who fully agrees with my teaching: G. R. Treviranus, who in his work Ueber die Erscheinungen und Gesetze des organischen Lebens (1832, Vol. II, Part 1, p. 49), says: "A form of life is, however, conceivable where the effect of the external on the internal gives rise to mere feelings of inclination and aversion, and in consequence of these to cravings or desires. Such a form is plant life. In the higher forms of animal life the external is felt as something objective." Here Treviranus speaks from a pure and unprejudiced comprehension of nature, and is as little aware of the metaphysical importance of his utterance as he is of the contradictio in adjecto that lies in the concept of something "felt as objective," a thing that he even works out at great length. He does not know that all feeling is essentially subjective, and that everything objective is perception, and consequently a product of the understanding. But this does not detract from the truth and importance of his statement.

Indeed, the truth that the will can exist without knowledge is apparent, we might say palpably recognizable, in plant life. For in it we see a decided striving, determined by needs, modified in many different ways, and adapting itself to the variety of circumstances -- yet clearly without knowledge. And just because the plant is without knowledge, it ostentatiously displays its organs of generation in complete innocence; it knows nothing of them. On the other hand, as soon as knowledge appears in the series of beings, the genitals are shifted to a concealed spot. But man, with whom this is less the case, covers them up deliberately; he is ashamed of them.

Primarily, therefore, the vital force is identical with the will; but so also are all the other forces of nature, though this is less apparent. Therefore, if we find the recognition of a desire, in other words of a will, as the basis of plant life expressed at all times with more or less distinctness of conception, then the reference of the forces of inorganic nature to the same foundation is rarer to the extent that their remoteness from our own inner being is greater. In fact, the boundary between the organic and the inorganic is the most sharply drawn in the whole of nature, and is probably the only one admitting of no transitions, so that here the saying Natura non facit saltus [4] seems to meet with an exception. Although many crystallizations display an external form resembling the vegetable, yet even between the smallest lichen, the lowest fungus, and everything inorganic there remains a fundamental and essential difference. In the inorganic body the essential and permanent element, that on which its identity and integrity rest, is the material, is matter; the inessential and changeable, on the other hand, is the form. With the organic body the case is the very opposite; for its life, in other words its existence as something organic, consists simply in the constant change of the material with persistence of the form; thus its essence and identity lie in the form alone. Therefore the inorganic body has its continued existence through repose and isolation from external influences; only in this way is its existence preserved; and if this state or condition is perfect, such a body lasts for ever. On the other hand, the organic body has its continued existence precisely through incessant movement and the constant reception of external influences. As soon as these cease, and movement in it comes to a standstill, it is dead, and thus ceases to be organic, although the trace of the organism that existed still for a while continues. Accordingly, the talk, so fashionable in our day, of the life of the inorganic, and even of the globe, and that this globe as well as the planetary system is an organism, is absolutely inadmissible. The predicate life belongs only to what is organic. However, every organism is organic through and through, is so in all its parts, and nowhere are these, even in their smallest particles, composed by aggregation from what is inorganic. Therefore, if the earth were an organism, all mountains and rocks and the whole interior of their mass would necessarily be organic. Properly speaking, therefore, absolutely nothing inorganic would exist; consequently, the whole conception of the inorganic would be wanting.

On the other hand, an essential point of my teaching is that the phenomenal appearance of a will is as little tied to life and organization as it is to knowledge, and that therefore the inorganic also has a will, whose manifestations are all its fundamental qualities that are incapable of further explanation; although the trace of such an idea is to be found far more rarely in the writers who have preceded me than is that of the will in plants, where such a will is still without knowledge.

In the formation of the crystal we see, as it were, a tendency to life, an attempt thereat, though it does not attain to it, because the fluidity of which, like a living thing, it consists at the moment of that movement, is not enclosed in a skin, as with a living thing is always the case; accordingly, it does not have vessels in which that movement could continue, nor does anything separate it from the outside world. Therefore, coagulation at once seizes that momentary movement, of which only the trace remains as crystal.

Even Goethe's Elective Affinities, as its title itself indicates, although he was unaware of this, has as its foundation the idea that the will, which constitutes the basis of our own inner being, is the same will that manifests itself in the lowest, inorganic phenomena; for this reason, the conformity to law of both phenomena exhibits a complete analogy.

Mechanics and astronomy really show us how this will conducts itself in so far as it appears at the lowest stage of its phenomenon merely as gravity, rigidity, and inertia. Hydraulics shows us the same thing where rigidity is abolished, and the fluid material is abandoned without restraint to its prevailing passion, gravity. In this sense, hydraulics can be conceived as a description of the character of water, in that it states for us the manifestations of will to which water is moved by gravity. These always correspond exactly to the external influences, for in the case of all non-individual modes of existence, no particular character exists along with the general one; thus they can easily be referred to fixed fundamental characteristics, which we call laws, and learn by observing the experience of water. These laws state exactly how water will behave in different circumstances of every kind by reason of its weight, the unconditioned mobility of its parts, and its want of elasticity. Hydrostatics teaches how it is brought to rest through gravity; hydrodynamics, how it is set in motion. This last has to take into consideration also the hindrances that adhesion opposes to the will of the water; the two together constitute hydraulics. In the same way, chemistry teaches us how the will behaves when the inner qualities of the elements obtain free play through the bringing about of a state of fluidity. There now appear that wonderful seeking and shunning, separating and combining, the giving up of one thing in order to seize another, that is testified by every precipitate, and all this is expressed as elective affinity (an expression borrowed entirely from the conscious will). But anatomy and physiology enable us to see how the will behaves, in order to bring about the phenomenon of life and maintain it for a while. Finally, the poet shows us how the will conducts itself under the influence of motives and of reflection. Therefore he generally exhibits it in the most perfect of its phenomena, rational beings, whose character is individual, and whose actions and sufferings he presents as drama, epic, romance, and so on. The more correct, the more strictly in accordance with the laws of nature, the presentation of his characters proves to be, the greater is his fame; hence Shakespeare stands at the head. The point of view here adopted corresponds at bottom to the spirit in which Goethe pursued and loved the natural sciences, although he was not conscious of the matter in the abstract. I know this from his personal statements even more than it appears from his works.

If we consider the will where no one denies it, namely in knowing beings, we find everywhere, as its fundamental effort, the self-preservation of every being: Omnis natura vult esse conservatrix sui. [5] But all manifestations of this fundamental effort can always be traced back to a seeking or pursuing, an avoiding, shunning, or fleeing, according to the occasion. This can still be demonstrated even at the lowest of all the stages of nature, and hence of the objectification of the will, namely where bodies still act only as bodies in general, that is, where they are the objects of mechanics, and are considered merely according to their manifestations of impenetrability, cohesion, rigidity, elasticity, and weight. Here also the seeking shows itself as gravitation, the fleeing as reception of motion; and the mobility of bodies by pressure or impact, which constitutes the basis of mechanics, is at bottom a manifestation of the effort after self-preservation which dwells also in them. Since as bodies they are impenetrable, this is the sole means of preserving their cohesion, and so their continued existence in each case. The body that is pushed or pressed would be pulverized by what pushes or presses it, if it did not withdraw itself from its power through flight, in order to preserve its cohesion; and where it is deprived of flight, this actually happens. In fact, we can regard elastic bodies as the more courageous, which try to repel the enemy, or at least to deny him further pursuit. Thus we see in the only secret which (apart from gravity) is left by mechanics, which is otherwise so clear, namely the communicability of motion, a manifestation of the will's fundamental effort in all its phenomena, the impulse to self-preservation, which shows itself as the essential element even at the lowest stage.

In inorganic nature the will objectifies itself primarily in the universal forces, and only by their means in the phenomena of individual things brought about by causes. In § 26 of volume one I adequately explained the relation between cause, force of nature, and will as thing-in-itself. It is seen from this that metaphysics never interrupts the course of physics, but only takes up the thread where physics leaves it, that is, at the original forces in which all causal , explanation has its limits. Only here begins the metaphysical explanation from the will as thing-in-itself. In the case of every physical phenomenon, every change of material things, its cause is first of all to be indicated, and this is just such a particular change appearing immediately before it. Then the original force of nature, by virtue of which this cause was capable of acting, is to be indicated; and the will is to be recognized primarily as this force's being-in-itself, in contrast to its phenomenon. Yet the will proclaims itself just as directly in the fall of a stone as in the action of man. The difference is only that its particular manifestation is brought about in the one case by a motive, in the other by a mechanically acting cause, e.g., the removal of the stone's support, yet in both cases with equal necessity; and that in the one case it depends on an individual character, in the other on a universal force of nature. This identity of what is fundamentally essential even becomes obvious when, for instance, we attentively observe a body that has lost its equilibrium. By virtue of its special shape, it rolls backwards and forwards for a long time, till it again finds its centre of gravity; a certain appearance of life then forces itself on us, and we feel directly that something analogous to the basis of life is active here also. This, of course, is the universal force of nature, which, in itself identical with the will, becomes here, so to speak, the soul of a very brief quasi-life. Thus what is identical in the two extremes of the will's phenomenon makes itself faintly known even to direct perception, since this raises a feeling in us that here also something entirely original, such as we know only from the acts of our own will, attains directly to the phenomenon.

We can arrive at an intuitive knowledge of the existence and activity of the will in inorganic nature in quite a different and majestic way, if we carefully study the problem of the three bodies, and therefore become somewhat more accurately and specially acquainted with the course of the moon round the earth. Through the different combinations produced by the constant change of the position of these three heavenly bodies relative to one another, the course of the moon is now accelerated, now retarded, and now approaches, now recedes from the earth. Again, this is different at the perihelion of the earth from what it is at the aphelion; and all this together introduces such an irregularity into the moon's course, that it acquires a really capricious appearance, since even Kepler's second law no longer remains constantly valid, but the moon sweeps out unequal areas in equal times. The consideration of this course is a small and separate chapter of celestial mechanics. Such mechanics differs from the terrestrial in a sublime way by the absence of all impact and pressure, and hence of the vis a tergo [6] which appears so intelligible to us, and even of the actually completed case, since besides the vis inertiae [7] it knows no other moving and directing force but gravitation, that longing of bodies for union which emerges from their true inner being. Now if in this given case we picture to ourselves down to the smallest detail the working of gravitation, we recognize distinctly and directly in the force that moves here just that which is given to us in self-consciousness as will. For the alterations in the course of the earth and the moon, according as one of them is by its position now more, now less exposed to the sun's influence, have an obvious analogy to the influence of newly appearing motives on the will, and to the modifications of our action according to them.

The following is an illustrative example of another kind. Liebig (Chemie in Anwendung aut Agrikultur, p. 501), says: "If we bring damp copper into air containing carbonic acid, the affinity of the metal for the oxygen of the air is raised by contact with this acid to such a degree that the two combine with each other. The surface of the copper is covered with green carbonic oxide of copper. But two bodies which have the capacity to combine assume opposite states of electricity the moment they come in contact with each other. Therefore, if we touch the copper with iron by arousing a particular state of electricity, the capacity of the copper to enter into combination with the oxygen is destroyed; even under the above conditions it remains bright." The fact is well known and of use in technology. I quote it, in order to say that here the will of the copper, claimed and preoccupied by the electrical opposition to the iron, leaves unused the opportunity that presents itself for its chemical affinity for oxygen and carbonic acid. Accordingly, it behaves exactly as the will does in a person who abstains from an action to which he would otherwise feel moved, in order to perform another to which he is urged by a stronger motive.

In volume one I have shown that the forces of nature lie outside the chain of causes and effects, since they constitute their universal condition, their metaphysical foundation. They therefore prove to be eternal and omnipresent, in other words independent of time and space. Even in the undisputed truth that the essential point of a cause, as such, consists in its producing at any future time the same effect as it does now, there is already contained the fact that there lies in the cause something independent of the course of time, something outside all time; this is the force of nature that manifests itself therein. We can even convince ourselves, to a certain extent empirically and as a matter of fact, of the mere ideality of this form of our perception by fixing our eye on the powerlessness of time in face of the forces of nature. For example, if by some external cause a planet is put into a rotatory motion, this will go on for ever if no new cause comes along to stop it. This could not be so if time were something in itself, and had an objective, real existence; for then it would inevitably produce some effect. Therefore we here see that the forces of nature, which manifest themselves in that rotation, and when once it is begun continue it for ever, without themselves growing weary or dying out, prove to be eternal or timeless, and thus positively real and existing in themselves. On the other hand, we see time as something that consists in the mode and manner in which we apprehend that phenomenon, since it exerts no power and no influence on the phenomenon itself; for that which does not act, likewise does not exist.

We have a natural tendency to explain, whenever possible, every natural phenomenon mechanically, doubtless because mechanics calls in the assistance of the fewest original, and therefore inexplicable, forces, and again because it contains much which is a priori knowable and therefore depends on the forms of our intellect. That which is a priori knowable, precisely as such, carries with it the highest degree of intelligibility and clearness. However, in the Metaphysical Rudiments of Natural Science, Kant traces mechanical activity itself back to a dynamic activity. On the other hand, the application of mechanical hypotheses of explanation beyond the demonstrably mechanical, to which acoustics, for example, still belongs, is entirely unjustified, and I shall never believe that even the simplest chemical combination, or even the difference of the three states of aggregation, will ever be capable of mechanical explanation, much less the properties of light, heat, and electricity. These will always admit of only a dynamic explanation, in other words, of one that explains the phenomenon from original forces entirely different from those of impact, pressure, weight, and so on, and thus of a higher order, that is to say, most distinct objectifications of the will that attains to visibility in all things. I am of the opinion that light is neither an emanation nor a vibration; both views are akin to that which explains transparency from pores, the obvious falsity of which proves that light is not amenable to any mechanical laws. To obtain the most direct conviction of this, we need only look at the effects of a strong gale, which bends, upsets, and scatters everything, but during which a ray of light shooting down from a gap in the clouds stands out entirely unmoved and is firmer than a rock. Thus it directly proclaims that it belongs to an order of things other than the mechanical; it stands there motionless like a ghost. But the constructions of light from molecules and atoms which have come from the French are a revolting absurdity. We can regard as a flagrant expression of this absurdity, as of the whole atomistic theory in general, an article by Ampere, otherwise so clear-sighted, on light and heat to be found in the issue of the Annales de chimie et de physique for April 1835. There the solid, fluid, and elastic consist of the same atoms, and all differences spring solely from their aggregation. In fact, it is said that space is infinitely divisible, but not matter, because, if the division has been carried as far as the atoms, further division must fall into the spaces between the atoms! Light and heat, then, are vibrations of atoms; sound, on the other hand, is a vibration of the molecules compounded from the atoms. But in truth the atoms are a fixed idea of French savants, who therefore talk about them just as if they had seen them. Besides, we cannot help marvelling that such a matter-of-fact nation, holding such empirical views, as the French, can stick so firmly to a wholly transcendent hypothesis that soars beyond all possibility of experience, and confidently build on it at random. This is just a consequence of the backward state of the metaphysics which they avoid so much, and which is poorly represented by M. Cousin. In spite of his good will, this man is superficial and very scantily endowed with power of judgement. Fundamentally they are still followers of Locke through the earlier influence of Condillac. To them, therefore, the thing-in-itself is really matter, from whose fundamental properties, such as impenetrability, form, shape, hardness, and the other primary qualities, everything in the world must be ultimately capable of explanation. They will not be talked out of this, and their tacit assumption is that matter can be moved by mechanical forces alone. In Germany Kant's teaching has prevented the continuance of the absurdities of the atomistic and purely mechanical physics, although even here, at the present moment, such views prevail. This is a consequence of the shallowness, lack of culture and of knowledge brought about by Hegel. It is undeniable, however, that not only the obviously porous nature of natural bodies, but also two special doctrines of modern physics, have apparently supported the atomic mischief. Thus Hauy's crystallography, which traces every crystal back to its kernel-form that is something ultimate, yet only relatively indivisible; and Berzelius's doctrine of chemical atoms, which are nevertheless mere expressions of the ratios of combination, and thus only arithmetical quantities, and at bottom nothing more than counters. On the other hand, Kant's thesis in the second antinomy, set up, of course, only for dialectical purposes and in defence of atoms, is, as I have demonstrated in the criticism of his philosophy, a mere sophism; and our understanding itself certainly does not lead us necessarily to the assumption of atoms. For I am not obliged to think of the slow but constant and uniform motion of a body, which occurs in my presence, as consisting of innumerable motions that are absolutely rapid, but are broken off and interrupted by just as many absolutely short moments of rest. On the contrary, I know quite well that the stone that is thrown flies more slowly, of course, than the projected bullet, but that on its path it does not rest for a moment. In just the same way, I am no more obliged to think of the mass of a body as consisting of atoms and of the spaces between them, in other words, of absolute density and absolute vacuum, but I comprehend without difficulty those two phenomena as constant continua, one of which uniformly fills time, and the other space. But just as one motion can be quicker than another, in other words, run through more space in equal time, so can one body be specifically heavier than another, in other words, contain more matter in equal space. In both cases, the difference depends on the intensity of the operating force, for Kant (after the example of Priestley) has quite rightly reduced matter to forces. But even if we did not admit as valid the analogy here set up, but tried to insist that the difference of specific gravity can always have its ground only in porosity, then this assumption would still not lead to atoms, but only to a perfectly dense matter unequally distributed in different bodies. Therefore this matter could certainly not be further compressed, where pores no longer run through it, yet, like the space it fills, it would always remain infinitely divisible. For the fact that it would be without pores certainly does not mean that no possible force could do away with the continuity of its spatial parts. It is an entirely arbitrary assertion to say that this is everywhere possible only by extending the already existing interstices.

The assumption of atoms rests on the two phenomena mentioned, namely the difference of the specific gravity of bodies, and that of their compressibility, as both are conveniently explained by the assumption of atoms. But then both would also have to be present in equal measure; which is by no means the case. Water, for instance, has a far lower specific gravity than have all the metals properly so called; it would therefore necessarily have fewer atoms and greater interstices between them, and so would inevitably be very compressible; but it is almost entirely incompressible.

The defence of atoms could be conducted by our starting from porosity and saying something like this: all bodies have pores, and so too have all the parts of a body; if this were continued to infinity, then there would ultimately be nothing left of a body but pores. The refutation would be that what remained would certainly have to be assumed as without pores, and to this extent as absolutely dense, yet still not on that account as consisting of absolutely indivisible particles or atoms. Nevertheless it would be absolutely incompressible, but not absolutely indivisible; for we should have to try to assert that the division of a body is possible only by penetrating into its pores; but this is entirely unproved. Yet if we assume it, then, of course, we have atoms, in other words, absolutely indivisible bodies, that is, bodies with such strong cohesion of their spatial parts that no possible power can separate them. But then we can just as well assume such bodies to be large as small, and an atom might be as large as an ox, if only it resisted every possible attack.

Imagine two extremely heterogeneous bodies rendered entirely free from all pores by compression, say by means of hammering or by pulverization; would their specific gravity then be the same? This would be the criterion of dynamics.

_______________

Notes:

1. This chapter refers to § 23 of volume 1.

2. "According to the view of the scholastics, the will is a blind power." [Tr.]

3. "Plants are nourished, because they have a faculty of nourishing." [Tr.]

4. "Nature makes no jumps." [Law of continuity first propounded by Aristotle. Tr.]

5. "Every being in nature endeavours to preserve itself." [Tr.]

6. "Force impelling from behind." [Tr.]

7. "Force of inertia." [Tr.]

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CHAPTER XXIV: On Matter

Matter was discussed in chapter 4 of the supplements to the first book, when we were considering that part of our knowledge of which we are a priori conscious. Yet it could be considered there only from a one-sided point of view, because we had in mind its relation merely to the forms of the intellect, not to the thing-in-itself. Consequently we investigated it only from the subjective side, in so far as it is our representation, and not from the objective side, according to what it may be in itself. In the first respect, our conclusion was that it is activity in general, conceived objectively yet without further definition; therefore it occupies the position of causality in the table of our a priori knowledge given in that chapter. For what is material is that which acts (the actual) in general, apart from the specific nature of its acting. Therefore, merely as such, matter is not an object of perception, but only of thinking, and is thus really an abstraction. On the other hand, it occurs in perception only in combination with form and quality, as body, in other words, as a quite definite mode of acting. Only by abstracting from this closer determination do we think of matter as such, that is to say, as separated from form and quality. Consequently, under matter we think of acting positively and in general, and hence of activity in the abstract. We then comprehend the more closely determined acting as the accident of matter; only by means of this accident does matter become perceptible, in other words, exhibit itself as body and object of experience. Pure matter, on the other hand, which alone, as I have shown in the Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy, constitutes the actual and legitimate content of the concept substance, is causality itself, thought of objectively, consequently as in space, and therefore as filling space. Accordingly, the whole essence of matter consists in acting; only through this does it fill space and endure in time; it is through and through pure causality. Therefore wherever there is action there is matter, and the material is in general that which acts. But causality itself is the form of our understanding, for we are conscious of it a priori, just as we are of space and time. Therefore matter, so far and up to this point, belongs also to the formal part of our knowledge, and is accordingly the understanding's form of causality itself, a form that is combined with space and time, and thus objectified, in other words, conceived as that which fills space. (The fuller explanation of this doctrine is found in the second edition of the essay On the Principle of Sufficient Reason, p. 77.) So far, however, matter is, properly speaking, not the object but the condition of experience, just as is the pure understanding itself, whose function to this extent it is. Of pure matter, therefore, there is only a concept, no perception; it enters into every external experience as a necessary constituent part thereof; yet it cannot be given in any experience; on the contrary, it is only thought, and thought indeed as what is absolutely inert, inactive, formless, and without qualities, but is nevertheless the supporter of all forms, qualities, and effects. Accordingly, of all fleeting phenomena, and so of all the manifestations of natural forces and all living beings, matter is the permanent substratum, necessarily produced by the forms of our intellect, in which the world as representation exhibits itself. As such, and as having sprung from the forms of the intellect, its behaviour towards those phenomena themselves is one of absolute indifference, that is to say, it is just as ready to be the supporter of one natural force as of another, whenever under the guidance of causality the conditions for this have appeared. On the other hand, matter itself, just because its existence is really only formal, in other words, is grounded in the intellect, must be conceived as that which under all that change endures and persists absolutely, hence as that which is without beginning and end in time. This is why we cannot give up the idea that anything can come out of anything, for example gold out of lead, since this would merely require that we should find out and bring to pass the intermediate states that matter, in itself indifferent, would have to pass through on that path. For a priori, we can never see why the same matter that is now the supporter of the quality lead might not one day become the supporter of the quality gold. Matter, as what is merely thought a priori, is indeed distinguished from the a priori intuitions or perceptions proper by the fact that we are able to think it away entirely, but space and time we are never able to think away. But this means simply that we can form a mental picture or representation of space and time even without matter. For the matter that is once put into them, and is accordingly conceived as existing, can no longer be absolutely thought away by us, in other words, pictured by us as having vanished and been annihilated; on the contrary, we can always picture it only as moved into another space. Therefore to this extent matter is connected with our faculty of knowledge just as inseparably as are space and time themselves. Yet the difference that matter must first be voluntarily posited as existing, in itself indicates that it does not belong so entirely and in every respect to the formal part of our knowledge as do space and time, but that simultaneously it contains an element that is given only a posteriori. In fact, it is the point of connexion of the empirical part of our knowledge with the pure and a priori part, and consequently the special and characteristic foundation-stone of the world of experience.

Only where all a priori assertions cease, and consequently in the entirely empirical part of our knowledge of bodies, hence in their form, quality, and definite mode of acting, does that will reveal itself which we have already recognized and established as the being-in-itself of things. But these forms and qualities always appear only as properties and manifestations of that matter, whose existence and essence depend on the subjective forms of our intellect; in other words, they become visible only in it, and so by means of it. For whatever exhibits itself to us is always only matter acting in some specially determined way. Every definite mode of acting of given bodies results from the inner properties of such matter, properties incapable of further explanation; and yet matter itself is never perceived, only those effects and the definite properties that underlie them. After the separation and setting aside of those properties, matter, as what still remains over, is necessarily added by us in thought; for, in accord with the explanations given above, it is objectified causality itself. Consequently, matter is that whereby the will, which constitutes the inner essence of things, enters into perceptibility, becomes perceptible or visible. Therefore in this sense matter is the mere visibility of the will, or the bond between the world as will and the world as representation. It belongs to the latter in so far as it is the product of the intellect's functions; to the former, in so far as that which manifests itself in all material beings, i.e., in phenomena, is the will. Therefore, every object as thing-in-itself is will, and as phenomenon is matter. If we could divest any given matter of all properties that come to it a priori, in other words, of all the forms of our perception and apprehension, we should be left with the thing-in-itself, that which, by means of those forms, appears as the purely empirical in matter, but would then itself no longer appear as something extended and acting; that is to say, we should no longer have before us any matter, but the will. This very thing-in-itself, or the will, by becoming the phenomenon, by entering the forms of our intellect, appears as matter, that is to say, as the supporter, itself invisible but necessarily assumed, of properties visible only through it. Therefore in this sense, matter is the visibility of the will. Accordingly, Plotinus and Giordano Bruno were right, not in their sense only but also in ours, when they made the paradoxical statement already mentioned in chapter 4, that matter itself is not extended, and consequently is incorporeal. For space, which is our form of intuition or perception, endows matter with extension, and corporeality consists in acting, and acting depends on causality, consequently on the form of our understanding. On the other hand, every definite quality or property, and thus everything empirical in matter, even gravity, rests on that which becomes visible only by means of matter, on the thing-in-itself, on the will. But gravity is the lowest of all the grades of the will's objectification; it therefore shows itself in all matter without exception; thus it is inseparable from matter in general. Yet, just because it is already manifestation of will, it belongs to knowledge a posteriori, not to knowledge a priori. Therefore, we can perhaps picture matter to ourselves without weight, but not without extension, force of repulsion, and persistence; for it would then be without impenetrability, and consequently without space-occupation, that is to say, without the power of acting. But the essence of matter, as such, consists precisely in acting, that is to say, in causality in general; and causality rests on the a priori form of our understanding, and therefore cannot be thought away.

Accordingly, matter is the will itself, yet no longer in itself, but in so far as it is perceived, that is to say, assumes the form of the I objective representation; thus what objectively is matter, subjectively is will. Wholly in keeping with this, as was shown above, our body is only the visibility, the objectivity of our will; and in just the same way, each body is the objectivity of the will at one of its stages. As soon as the will exhibits itself to objective knowledge, it enters into the intellect's forms of perception, into time, space, and causality. But it at once stands out as a material object by virtue of these forms. We can picture to ourselves form without matter, but not matter without form, because matter, divested of form, would be the will itself. The will, however, becomes objective only by entering our intellect's mode of perception, and therefore only by means of the assumption of form. Space is the perception-form of matter, because space is the substance (Stoff) of mere form, but matter can appear only in the form.

Since the will becomes objective, that is to say, passes over into the representation, matter is the universal substratum of this objectification, or rather the objectification itself taken in the abstract, that is, apart from all form. Matter is accordingly the visibility of the will in general, whereas the character of its definite phenomena has its expression in form and quality. Hence that which in the phenomenon, in other words for the representation, is matter, is in itself will. Therefore, under the conditions of experience and perception, everything holds good of it that holds good of the will in itself, and it gives again in the image of time all the relations and properties of the will. Accordingly it is the substance of the world of perception, just as the will is the being-in-itself of all things. The shapes and forms are innumerable: matter is one, just as the will is one in all its objectifications. Just as the will never objectifies itself as something general, in other words, as will absolutely, but always as something particular, that is to say, under special determinations and a given character, so matter never appears as such, but always in combination with some particular form and quality. In the phenomenon or objectification of the will, matter represents the totality and entirety of the will, the will itself that in all things is one, just as matter in all bodies is one. Just as the will is the innermost kernel of all phenomenal beings, so is matter the substance left over after the elimination of all accidents. Just as the will is the absolutely indestructible in all that exists, so is matter that which is imperishable in time and endures through all changes. That matter by itself, separated from form, cannot be perceived or represented, rests on the fact that, in itself and as that which is the purely substantial of bodies, it is really the will itself. But the will cannot be apprehended objectively or perceived in itself, but only under all the conditions of the representation, and thus only as phenomenon. Under these conditions, however, it exhibits itself forthwith as body, that is, as matter clothed in form and quality; but form is conditioned by space, and quality or activity by causality; and so both rest on the functions of the intellect. Matter without them would be just the thing-in-itself, i.e., the will itself. Therefore, as has been said, Plotinus and Giordano Bruno could only be brought on the completely objective path to the assertion that matter in and by itself is without extension, consequently without spatiality, and hence without corporeality.

Therefore, since matter is the visibility of the will, and every force in itself is will, no force can appear without a material substratum, and conversely no body can exist without forces dwelling in it which constitute its quality. Thus a body is the union of matter and form which is called substance (Stoff). Force and substance are inseparable, because at bottom they are one; for, as Kant has shown, matter itself is given to us only as the union of two forces, that of expansion and that of attraction. Therefore there exists no opposition between force and substance; on the contrary, they are precisely one.

Led by the course of our consideration to this standpoint and having arrived at this metaphysical view of matter, we shall readily confess that the temporal origin of forms, shapes, or species cannot reasonably be sought elsewhere than in matter. At one time they must have burst forth from matter, just because it is the mere visibility of the will that constitutes the being-in-itself of all phenomena. Since the will becomes phenomenon, that is to say, objectively exhibits itself to the intellect, matter, as its visibility, assumes form by means of the functions of the intellect. Therefore the scholastics said: Materia appetit formam. [1] That such was the origin of all forms of living things is not to be doubted; we cannot even conceive it otherwise. But whether even now, as the paths to perpetuating the forms are open, and are secured and maintained by nature with I boundless care and eagerness, generatio aequivoca takes place, is to be decided only by experience, especially since the saying natura nihil facit frustra [2] might be used as a valid argument against it with reference to the paths of regular propagation. Yet, despite the most recent objections to it, I regard generatio aequivoca as extremely probable at very low stages, and above all in the case of entozoa and epizoa, particularly those which appear in consequence of special cachexia of the animal organisms. For the conditions for their life occur only by way of exception; thus their form cannot propagate itself in the regular way, and therefore has to arise anew when the opportunity offers. Therefore, as soon as the conditions for life of epizoa have appeared, as a result of certain chronic diseases or cachexia, there arise according to them, entirely automatically and without any egg, pediculus capitis, or pubis, or corporis, however complicated the structure of these insects may be. For the putrefaction of a living animal body affords material for higher productions than those of hay in water, which gives rise only to infusoria. Or do we prefer to think even that the eggs of the epizoa are constantly floating about in the air full of hope? (Terrible thought!) Let us rather call to mind the disease of phthiriasis, which is found even now. An analogous case occurs when, through special circumstances, the life-conditions appear for a species that was till then foreign to the locality. Thus in Brazil, August Saint-Hilaire, after the burning of a primeval forest, saw a number of plants grow up out of the ashes, as soon as they had become cool; and far and wide this species of plant was not to be found. Quite recently, Admiral Petit-Thouars informed the Academie des Sciences that on the newly forming coral islands in Polynesia a soil is being gradually deposited, now dry, now lying in water. Vegetation at once takes possession of this soil, producing trees that are quite exclusively peculiar to these islands (Comptes Rendus, 17 Jan. 1859, p. 147). Wherever putrefaction occurs, mould, fungi, and, in liquids, infusoria appear. The assumption, now in favour, that spores and eggs of the innumerable species of all those kinds of animal are floating everywhere in the air, waiting long years for a favourable opportunity, is more paradoxical than that of generatio aequivoca. Putrefaction is the decomposition of an organic body first into its more immediate chemical constituents. Now since in all living beings these are more or less of the same nature, the omnipresent will-to-live can at such a moment take possession of them, in order, according to the circumstances, to produce new beings from them. Forming and shaping themselves appropriately, in other words, objectifying the will's volition in each case, these new beings cbagulate out of the chemical constituents just as the chicken does out of the fluid part of the egg. But if this does not take place, the putrefying substances are decomposed into their more remote constituent parts which are the chemical elements, and they then pass over into the great circulation of nature. The war that has been waged for the last ten or fifteen years against generatio aequivoca, with its premature shouts of victory, was the prelude to the denial of vital force, and is related thereto. But let us not be deceived by dogmatic utterances and brazen assurances that these matters are decided, settled, and generally admitted. On the contrary, the entire mechanical and atomistic view of nature is approaching bankruptcy, and its advocates have to learn that something more is concealed behind nature than thrust and counter-thrust. The reality of generatio aequivoca and the unreality of the fantastic assumption that everywhere and always in the atmosphere billions of seeds of all possible fungi and eggs of all possible infusoria are floating about, until first one and then another by chance finds the medium suitable to it, have been thoroughly and triumphantly demonstrated quite recently (1859) by Pouchet before the French Academy, to the great annoyance of its other members.

Our astonishment at the idea of the origination of forms from matter is at bottom like that of the savage who looks in a mirror for the first time, and marvels at his own image facing him. For our own inner nature is the will, the mere visibility whereof is matter. Yet matter never appears otherwise than with the visible, that is to say, under the veil of form and quality; therefore it is never immediately apprehended, but is always only added in thought as that which is identical in all things under every variety of quality and form, as that which is precisely substantial, properly speaking, in all of them. For this reason, it is rather a metaphysical than a merely physical principle of explanation of things, and to represent all beings as springing from it is really equivalent to explaining them by something that is very mysterious. This is recognized as such by all except those who confuse undertaking something with understanding it. In truth, the ultimate and exhaustive explanation of things is by no means to be looked for in matter; but of course the temporal origin of both inorganic forms and organic beings is certainly to be sought in it. But it seems that the original generation of organic forms, the production of the species themselves, is almost as difficult for nature to effect as for us to comprehend. This is indicated by nature's entirely extravagant provision for the maintenance of the species that now exist. Yet on the present surface of this planet the will-to-live has played through the scale of its objectification three times, quite independently of one another, in a different mode, but also in very varied perfection and completeness. Thus, as is well known, the Old World, America, and Australia have each its own characteristic series of animals, independent of and entirely different from those of the other two. On each of these great continents the species are different in every way; but yet they have a thorough analogy with one another which runs parallel through them, since all three belong to the same planet; therefore the genera are for the most part the same. In Australia this analogy can be followed only very imperfectly, since its fauna is very poor in mammalia, and has neither beasts of prey nor apes. On the other hand, between the Old World and America this analogy is obvious, in fact in such a way that in mammalia America shows always the worse analogue, but in birds and reptiles the better. Thus it certainly has the advantage in the condor, the macaw, the humming-bird, and in the largest amphibians and reptiles; on the other hand, it has, for example, only the tapir instead of the elephant, the puma instead of the lion, the jaguar instead of the tiger, the llama instead of the camel, and only long-tailed monkeys instead of apes proper. It may be concluded from this last defect that in America nature was unable to rise to the production of man; for even from the nearest stage below man, namely the chimpanzee and the orang-utan or pongo, the step to man was exceedingly great. In keeping with this, we find that the three races of men, which on physiological as well as on linguistic grounds are not to be doubted and are equally original, namely the Caucasian, the Mongolian, and the Ethiopian, are at home only in the Old World. America, on the other hand, is populated by a mixed or climatically modified Mongolian race that must have come over from Asia. On the surface of the earth which immediately preceded the present surface, nature in places got as far as apes, but not as far as man.

From this standpoint of our consideration, which enables us to recognize matter as the immediate visibility of the will appearing in all things, and even regards matter as the origin of things for the merely physical investigation that follows the guidance of time and causality, we are easily led to the question whether, even in philosophy, we could not just as well start from the objective as from the subjective side, and accordingly set up as the fundamental truth the proposition: "In general there is nothing but matter and the forces inherent in it." But with these "inherent forces," here spoken of so readily, it must at once be remembered that to assume them reduces every explanation to a wholly incomprehensible miracle, and then lets it stop at this, or rather begin from it. For every definite and inexplicable force of nature, lying at the root of the different kinds of effects of an inorganic body, no less than the vital force that manifests itself in every organic body, is indeed such an incomprehensible miracle. I have fully explained this in chapter 17, and have there shown that physics can never be set on the throne of metaphysics, just because it leaves the assumption mentioned, and also many others, quite untouched. In this way it renounces at the outset the claim to give the ultimate explanation of things. Further, I must remind the reader of the proof of the inadmissibility of materialism given towards the end of chapter 1, in so far as materialism, as stated in that chapter, is the philosophy of the subject who forgets himself in his calculation. But all these truths rest on the fact that everything objective, everything external, as it is always only something apprehended, something known, always remains only indirect and secondary; and thus it can never possibly become the ultimate ground of the explanation of things or the starting-point of philosophy. Thus philosophy necessarily requires for its starting-point that which is absolutely immediate; but obviously such an absolutely immediate thing is only that which is given to self-consciousness, that which is within, the subjective. It is therefore a most eminent merit of Descartes that he was the first to make philosophy start from self-consciousness. This path the genuine philosophers, particularly Locke, Berkeley, and Kant, have since continued to follow, each in his own way; and in consequence of their investigations, I was led to recognize and make use not of one, but of two wholly different I data of immediate knowledge in self-consciousness, the representation and the will. By the combined application of these we go farther in philosophy, to the same extent that we can achieve more in an algebraical problem when two known quantities are given instead of only one.

In agreement with what has been said, the inevitably false element in materialism consists primarily in its starting from a petitio principii, a which, more closely considered, proves to be even a [x]. [4] It starts from the assumption that matter is something positively and unconditionally given, something that exists independently of the knowledge of the subject, and thus really a thing-in-itself. It attributes to matter (and also to its presuppositions, time and space) an existence that is absolute, that is to say, independent of the perceiving subject; this is its fundamental mistake. If it intends to go to work honestly, it must leave unexplained and start from the qualities inherent in the given materials, hence in the substances, together with the natural forces that manifest themselves therein, and finally even vital force, as unfathomable qualitates occultae of matter. Physics and physiology actually do this, just because they make no claim to be the ultimate explanation of things. But precisely in order to avoid this, materialism does not go to work honestly, at any rate as it has been seen hitherto. Thus it flatly denies all those original forces, since it ostensibly and apparently reduces them all, and in the last resort even vital force, to the merely mechanical activity of matter, and thus to manifestations of impenetrability, form, cohesion, impact, inertia, gravity, and so on. Of course, these qualities have in themselves that which is least inexplicable, just because they rest partly on what is a priori certain, consequently on the forms of our own intellect, which are the principle of all ease of comprehension. But the intellect, as the condition of every object, and thus of the entire phenomenon, is totally ignored by materialism. Its purpose is to reduce everything qualitative to something merely quantitative, since it refers the qualitative to mere form in contrast to matter proper. Of the really empirical qualities it leaves to matter only gravity, because this already appears in itself as something quantitative, as the sole measure of the quantity of matter. This path necessarily leads materialism to the fiction of atoms, which now become the material out of which it intends to construct the very mysterious manifestations of all the original forces. Here it is really no longer concerned at all with empirically given matter, but with a matter which is not to be found in rerum natura, which is rather a mere abstraction of that actual matter. Thus it is concerned with a matter that would have absolutely none other than those mechanical qualities; and, with the exception of gravity, these can be pretty well construed a priori, just because they depend on the forms of space, time, and causality, and consequently on our intellect. Materialism, therefore, sees itself reduced to this miserable stuff in the erection of its castle in the air.

Here it inevitably becomes atomism, as happened to it in its childhood at the hands of Leucippus and Democritus, and as happens to it again now that it has reached its second childhood through age; thus at the hands of the French, because they have never known the Kantian philosophy, and of the Germans, because they have forgotten it. In fact, it behaves even more strangely in its second childhood than in its first; not merely are solid bodies said to consist of atoms, but also fluids, water, even air, gases, and light. This last is said to be the undulations of a wholly hypothetical and entirely undemonstrated ether consisting of atoms, and colours are said to be caused by their varying velocity. This is a hypothesis that starts, like Newton's seven-colour hypothesis of old, from an analogy with music which is quite arbitrarily assumed and then forcibly carried through. One must really be credulous to an unheard-of extent, to allow oneself to be persuaded that the infinitely varied ether-vibrations, arising from the endless variety and multiplicity of coloured surfaces in this many-coloured world, could constantly, each at a different speed, run through one another in all directions, and cross one another everywhere, without disturbing one another, but would, on the contrary, through such tumult and confusion produce the profoundly peaceful aspect of illuminated nature and art. Credat Judaeus Apella! [5] The nature of light is certainly a mystery, but it is better to confess this than to bar the way to future knowledge by bad theories. That light is something quite different from a merely mechanical movement, undulation, or vibration and tremor, indeed that it is material, is shown by its chemical effects, a beautiful series of which was recently laid before the Academie des Sciences by Chevreul, who caused sunlight to act on materials of different colours. The most beautiful thing here is that a white roll of paper which has been exposed to sunlight produces the same effects, in fact does so even after six months, if during this time it has been kept in a firmly closed metal tube. Has the tremor, then, paused for some six months, and does it join in again a tempo? (Comptes Rendus of 20 December 1858.) This whole ether-atom-tremor-hypothesis is not only a chimera, but in crude clownishness equals Democritus at his worst; yet it is shameless enough to give itself out at the present day as an established fact. The result of all this is that this hypothesis is repeated mechanically and in an orthodox manner, and believed in as gospel by a thousand stupid scribblers of all branches of knowledge, who know nothing of such things. But the doctrine of atoms in general goes even farther; and soon it will be a case of Spartam, quam nactus es, orna! [6] Different perpetual motions, revolving, vibrating, and so on, are then ascribed to all the atoms according to their function. Similarly, each atom has its atmosphere of ether, or something else, and whatever other fancies of this kind there are. The fancies of Schelling's philosophy of nature and of its followers were indeed often ingenious, lively, or at any rate witty; but these other fancies are dull, crude, clumsy, insipid, paltry, and clownish. They are the offspring of minds incapable, in the first place, of conceiving any reality other than a fabulous matter devoid of qualities, a matter that would thus be an absolute object, an object without subject, and, in the second place, of conceiving any activity other than motion and impact. These two things alone are intelligible to them, and their a priori assumption is that everything runs back to these; for these are their thing-in-itself. To attain this goal, vital force is reduced to chemical forces (insidiously and unjustifiably called molecular forces), and all processes of inorganic nature are reduced to mechanism, to thrust and counter-thrust. And so in the end, the whole world with all the things in it would be merely a mechanical conjuring-trick, like the toys driven by levers, wheels, and sand, which represent a mine or the work on a farm. The source of the evil is that, through the large amount of hand-work in experimenting, the head-work of thinking has got out of practice. Crucibles and voltaic piles are supposed to take over the functions of thinking; hence the deep aversion to all philosophy.

But the case could also be presented in such a way as this by saying that materialism, as it has appeared hitherto, has failed, merely because it has not adequately known the matter out of which it thought to construct the world, and has therefore dealt not with matter itself, but with a false conception of it devoid of qualities. On the other hand, if instead of this materialism had taken the actual and empirically given matter (in other words, material substance or rather substances), endowed as it is with all the physical, chemical, electrical properties, and also with properties spontaneously producing life out of matter itself, hence the true mater rerum, from the obscure womb of which all phenomena and forms come forth to fall at some time back into it again, then from this, that is to say, from matter fully comprehended and exhaustively known, a world could have been constructed of which materialism need not have been ashamed. Quite right: only the trick would then have consisted in our putting the quaesita in the data, since we should take as given, and make the starting-point of the deductions, ostensibly mere matter, but actually all the mysterious forces of nature that cling to it, or more correctly, that become visible to us by its means; much the same as when we understand by the word dish that which lies on it. For actually matter is for our knowledge merely the vehicle of the qualities and natural forces that appear as its accidents; and just because I have traced these back to the will, I call matter the mere visibility of the will. Stripped of all these qualities, however, matter remains behind as that which is devoid of qualities, the caput mortuum of nature, out of which nothing can honestly be made. On the other hand, if, in the manner mentioned, we leave to it all those qualities, we have committed a concealed petitio principii, since we have caused the quaesita to be given to us in advance as data. What is brought about by this will no longer be a materialism proper, but mere naturalism, that is to say, an absolute system of physics, which, as shown in chapter 17, can never occupy and fill the place of metaphysics, just because it begins only after so many assumptions, and so never once undertakes to explain things from the very bottom. Therefore mere naturalism is based essentially on nothing but qualitates occultae, and we can never get beyond these, except, as I have done, by calling in the aid of the subjective source of knowledge. This, then, naturally leads to the long and toilsome roundabout way of metaphysics, since it presupposes the complete analysis of self-consciousness and of the intellect and will that are given in it. However, to start from the objective, the basis of which is external perception, so distinct and comprehensible, is a path that is so natural, and presents itself of its own accord to man, that naturalism, and consequently materialism, because it cannot satisfy as not being exhaustive, are systems to which speculative reason must necessarily come, in fact before everything else. We therefore see naturalism appear at the very beginning of the history of philosophy in the systems of the Ionic philosophers, and then materialism in the teaching of Leucippus and Democritus; and indeed even later we see them always renewed from time to time.

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Notes:

1."Matter strives for form." [Tr.]

2. "Nature does nothing in vain." [Tr.]

3. "Begging of the question." [Tr.]

4. "A first false step" (in the premiss of a syllogism). [Tr.]

5. "The Jew Apella may believe it!" [Horace, Satires, I, v, 100. Tr.]

6. "Sparta is the place you belong to; be a credit to it!" [Tr.]

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CHAPTER XXV: Transcendent Considerations on the Will as Thing-in-Itself

The merely empirical consideration of nature already recognizes a constant transition from the simplest and most necessary manifestation of some universal force of nature up to the life and consciousness of man, through easy gradations and with merely relative, indeed often vague and indefinite, boundaries. Reflection, following this view and penetrating into it somewhat more deeply, is soon led to the conviction that in all these phenomena the inner essence, that which manifests itself, that which appears, is one and the same thing standing out more and more distinctly. Accordingly, that which exhibits itself in a million forms of endless variety and diversity, and thus performs the most variegated and grotesque play without beginning and end, is this one essence. It is so closely concealed behind all these masks that it does not recognize itself again, and thus often treats itself harshly. Therefore the great doctrine of the [x] [1] appeared early in the East as well as in the West; and in spite of every contradiction it has asserted itself, or has been constantly renewed. But now we are let more deeply into the secret, since, by what has been said hitherto, we have been led to the insight that, when in any particular phenomenon a knowing consciousness is added to that inner being that underlies all phenomena, a consciousness that in its direction inward becomes self-consciousness, then that inner being exhibits itself to this self· consciousness as that which is so familiar and mysterious, and is denoted by the word will. Consequently, we have called that universal fundamental essence of all phenomena the will, according to the manifestation in which it appears most unveiled. Accordingly, by the word will we express anything but an unknown x; on the contrary, we express that which, at any rate from one side, is infinitely better known and more intimate than anything else.

Now let us call to mind a truth whose fullest and most thorough proof is found in my essay On the Freedom of the Will, namely that, by virtue of the absolutely universal validity of the law of causality, the conduct or action of all beings in this world appears always strictly necessitated by the causes that in each case call it forth. It makes no difference in this respect whether such conduct or action has been called forth by causes in the narrowest sense of the word, or by stimuli, or finally by motives, since these differences refer only to the degree of susceptibility of the different kinds of beings. We must have no illusion on this point: the law of causality knows of no exceptions, but everything, from the movement of a mote in a sunbeam to the well-considered action of man, is subject to it with equal strictness. Therefore, in the whole course of the world, a mote in a sunbeam could never describe any line in its flight other than the one it has described, nor could a man ever act in any way different from that in which he has acted. No truth is more certain than this, namely that all that happens, be it great or small, happens with complete necessity. Consequently, at every given moment of time the whole state or condition of all things is firmly and accurately determined by the state or condition that has just preceded it; and so it is with the stream of time back to infinity and on to infinity. Consequently, the course of the world is like that of a clock after it has been put together and wound up; hence, from this undeniable point of view, it is a mere machine, whose purpose we do not see. Even if we were to assume a first beginning, quite without justification and also despite all conceivability with its conformity to law, nothing would be essentially changed thereby. For the first condition of things arbitrarily assumed would have irrevocably determined and fixed at their origin the condition immediately following it, as a whole and down to the smallest detail; this state again would have determined the next following, and so on per saecula saeculorum. For the chain of causality with its universal strictness -- that brazen bond of necessity and fate -- produces every phenomenon irrevocably and unalterably, just as it is. The difference would be merely that, in the case of the one assumption, we should have before us a piece of clockwork once wound up, in the case of the other a perpetuum mobile; but the necessity of the course would remain the same. In the essay already quoted, I have irrefutably proved that man's action can form no exception, since I have shown how it results every time with strict necessity from two factors, his character and the motives that present themselves. The character is inborn and unalterable, the motives are necessarily produced under the guidance of causality by the strictly determined course of the world.

Accordingly, from one point of view, which we cannot possibly avoid, because it is established by world-laws valid objectively and a priori, the world with everything in it appears as a purposeless, and therefore incomprehensible, play of an eternal necessity, an unfathomable and inexorable [x]. [2] But the shocking, indeed revolting, thing about this inevitable and irrefutable view of the world cannot be thoroughly eliminated by any assumption except the one that, as every being in the world is on the one hand phenomenon and is necessarily determined by the laws of the phenomenon, it is on the other in itself will, indeed absolutely free will. For all necessity arises only through the forms that belong entirely to the phenomenon, namely the principle of sufficient reason in its different aspects. But then aseity [3] must also belong to such a will, for as free, in other words, as thing-in-itself and thus not subordinate to the principle of sufficient reason, it can no more depend on another thing in its being and essence than it can in its doing and acting. By this assumption alone, as much freedom is supposed as is necessary to counterbalance the inevitable strict necessity that governs the course of the world. Accordingly, we really have only the choice either of seeing the world as a mere machine of necessity running down, or of recognizing a free will as the world's essence-in-itself, whose manifestation is not directly the action, but primarily the existence and essence of things. This freedom is therefore transcendental, and is just as compatible with empirical necessity as the transcendental ideality of phenomena is with their empirical reality. I have shown in the essay On the Freedom of the Will that only on its assumption is a person's action nevertheless his own, in spite of the necessity with which it follows from his character and from the motives; but here aseity is attributed to his true being. Now the same relation holds good of all things in the world. The strictest necessity, honestly carried out with rigid consistency, and the most perfect freedom, raised to omnipotence, had to appear simultaneously and together in philosophy. But without doing violence to truth, this could come about only by putting the whole necessity in the acting and doing (operari), and the whole freedom, on the other hand, in the being and essence (esse). In this way a riddle is solved which is as old as the world, just because hitherto it had always been held upside down, and freedom was positively looked for in the operari, and necessity in the esse. On the other hand, I say that every being without exception acts with strict necessity, but exists and is what it is by virtue of its freedom. Therefore with me, freedom and necessity are to be met with neither more nor less than in any previous system; although now one and now the other must appear, according as we take umbrage at the fact that the will is attributed to natural events hitherto explained from pure necessity, or at the fact that the same strict necessity is attributed to motivation as to mechanical causality. The two have merely changed places; freedom has been shifted to the esse, and necessity limited to the operari.

In short, determinism stands firm; for fifteen hundred years attempts to undermine it have been made in vain. They have been urged by certain queer ideas which we know quite well, but dare not call entirely by their name. In consequence of it, however, the world becomes a puppet show worked by wires (motives) without its even being possible to see for whose amusement. If the piece has a plan, then a fate is the director; if it has no plan, blind necessity is the director. There is no escape from this absurdity other than the knowledge that the being and essence of all things are the phenomenon of a really free will that knows itself precisely in them; for their doing and acting are not to be delivered from necessity. To save freedom from fate or chance, it had to be transferred from the action to the existence.

Accordingly, as necessity belongs only to the phenomenon, not to the thing-in-itself, in other words, not to the true nature of the world, so also does plurality; this is sufficiently explained in § 2S of volume one. Here I have to add merely a few remarks confirming and illustrating this truth.

Everyone knows only one being quite immediately, namely his own will in self-consciousness. He knows everything else only mediately, and then judges it by analogy with that one being; according to the degree of his power of reflection, this analogy is carried further. Even this springs ultimately and fundamentally from the fact that there is really only one being; the illusion of plurality (Maya), resulting from the forms of external, objective apprehension, could not penetrate right into the inner, simple consciousness; hence this always meets with only one being.

We contemplate perfection in the works of nature, which can never be sufficiently admired, and which, even in the lowest and smallest organisms, e.g., fertilizing parts of plants or the internal structure of insects, is carried out with such infinite care and unwearied labour, as though the work of nature before us had been her only one, on which she was therefore able to lavish all her skill and power. Nevertheless, we find the same thing repeated an infinite number of times in each one of innumerable individuals of every kind, and no less carefully perfected in the one whose dwelling-place is the loneliest and most neglected spot to which no eye has yet penetrated. We now follow out the combination of the parts of every organism as far as we can; and yet we never come across anything that is quite simple and therefore ultimate, not to mention anything that is inorganic. Finally, we lose ourselves in estimating the appropriateness of all those parts of the organism for the stability of the whole, by virtue of which every living thing is perfect and complete in and by itself. At the same time, we reflect that each of these masterpieces, itself of short duration, has already been produced afresh an infinite number of times, and that nevertheless each specimen of its kind, every insect, every flower, every leaf, still appears just as carefully perfected as was the first of its species. We therefore observe that nature by no means wearies or begins to bungle, but that with equally patient master-hand she perfects the last as the first. If we bear all this in mind, we become aware first that all human art or skill is completely different, not merely in degree but in kind, from the creation of nature, and also that the operating, original force, the natura naturans, [4] is immediately present whole and undivided in each of its innumerable works, in the smallest as in the largest, in the last as in the first. From this it follows that the natura naturans, as such and in itself, knows nothing of space and time. Further, we bear in mind that the production of those hyperboles of all the works of skill nevertheless costs nature absolutely nothing, so that, with inconceivable prodigality, she creates millions of organisms that never reach maturity. Every living thing is unsparingly exposed to a thousand different hazards and chances; on the other hand, if favoured by accident or directed by human purpose, it readily affords millions of specimens of a kind of which there was hitherto only one; consequently, millions cost her no more effort than one. All this leads to the insight that the plurality of things has its root in the subject's manner of knowledge, but is foreign to the thing-in-itself, to the inner primary force manifesting itself in things; consequently, that space and time, on which rests the possibility of all plurality, are mere forms of our perception or intuition. In fact, even that wholly inconceivable ingenuity of structure, associated with the most reckless prodigality of the works on which it has been lavished, at bottom springs only from the way in which we apprehend things, since, when the simple and indivisible original striving of the will as thing-in-itself exhibits itself as object in our cerebral knowledge, it must appear as an ingenious concatenation of separate parts, as means and ends of one another, carried out with exceeding perfection.

The unity of that will here alluded to, which lies beyond the phenomenon, and in which we have recognized the inner being of the phenomenal world, is a metaphysical unity. Consequently, knowledge of it is transcendent; that is to say, it does not rest on the functions of our intellect, and is therefore not to be really grasped with them. The result is that this unity opens to the consideration an abyss whose depth no longer grants an entirely clear and systematically connected insight, but only isolated glances that enable us to recognize this unity in this or that relation of things, now in the subjective, now in the objective. In this way new problems are again raised, and I do not undertake to solve all these, but rather appeal here to the words est quadam prodire tenus, [5] more concerned not to set up anything false or arbitrarily invented than to give a thorough account of everything; at the risk of furnishing here only a fragmentary statement.

If we picture to ourselves and clearly go over in our minds the very ingenious theory of the origin of the planetary system, advanced first by Kant and later by Laplace, whose correctness can scarcely be doubted, we see the lowest, crudest, and blindest forces of nature, bound to the most rigid conformity to law, bring about the fundamental framework of the world, the future dwelling-place suitably adapted for innumerable living beings. This they do by means of their conflict in one and the same given matter and of the accidental consequences this conflict produces. This framework of the world is produced as a system of order and harmony at which, the more distinctly and accurately we learn to understand it, the more are we astonished. For example, we see that every planet with its present velocity can maintain itself only exactly where it has its place, since: if it were brought nearer to the sun it would inevitably fall into it, or if placed farther from it would necessarily flyaway from it. Conversely, if we take its place as given, it can remain there only with its present velocity and with no other, since by going more rapidly it would inevitably fly away from the sun, and by going more slowly it would necessarily fall into it; hence we see that only one definite place is suitable to each definite velocity of a planet. We then see this problem solved by the fact that the same physical cause, necessarily and blindly operating, which assigned it its place, at the same time and precisely in this way imparted to it the exact velocity suitable to this place alone, in consequence of the natural law that a body moving in a circle increases its velocity in proportion as that circle becomes smaller. Moreover, we understand finally how an endless duration is assured to the whole system by the fact that all the mutual disturbances that inevitably occur in the course of the planets must in time adjust themselves again. We then see how precisely the irrationality of the periods of revolution of Jupiter and Saturn in respect to each other prevents their mutual perturbations from repeating themselves at one spot, whereby they would become dangerous. The result of this irrationality is that, appearing rarely and always at a different place, such perturbations must again balance each other; this is comparable to the dissonances in music which resolve themselves once more into harmony. By means of such considerations, we recognize a suitability and perfection such as could have been brought about only by the freest arbitrary will guided by the most searching understanding and the keenest and most acute calculation. And yet, under the guidance of that cosmogony of Laplace which is so well thought out and so accurately calculated, we cannot refrain from seeing that wholly blind forces of nature, acting according to immutable natural laws, could, through their conflict and in their purposeless play with one another, produce nothing but just this fundamental framework of the world, which is equal to the work of a hyperbolically enhanced combination. Instead of dragging in here, after the manner of Anaxagoras, the aid of an intelligence, known to us from animal nature alone and calculated only for such a nature, an intelligence that, coming from outside, had cunningly made use of the forces of nature and their laws once existing and given, in order to carry out its aims that are really foreign to these -- we recognize in those lowest natural forces themselves that same one will, which has its first manifestation in them. Already striving towards its goal in this manifestation and through its original laws themselves, the will works towards its final aim; and therefore everything that happens according to blind laws of nature must serve and be in keeping with this aim. Indeed, it cannot turn out otherwise, in so far as everything material is nothing but the phenomenon, the visibility, the objectivity of the will-to-live, which is one. Thus the lowest natural forces themselves are already animated by this same will that afterwards, in individual beings endowed with intelligence, marvels at its own work; just as in the morning the somnambulist is astonished at what he did in his sleep; or, more correctly, like one who is astonished at his own form when he sees it in the mirror. This unity, here demonstrated, of the accidental with the intentional, of the necessary with the free, by virtue of which the blindest chances, resting on universal laws of nature, are, so to speak, the keys on which the world-spirit plays its melodies so fraught with meaning -- this unity, as I have said, is an abyss for our consideration into which not even philosophy can throw a full light, but only a glimmer.

I now turn to a subjective consideration that belongs here; yet I can give even less distinctness to it than to the objective consideration just discussed, for I shall be able to express it only by image and simile. Why is our consciousness brighter and more distinct the farther it reaches outwards, so that its greatest clearness lies in sense perception, which already half belongs to things outside us; and, on the other hand, becomes more obscure as we go inwards, and leads, when followed to its innermost recesses, into a darkness in which all knowledge ceases? Because, I say, consciousness presupposes individuality; but this belongs to the mere phenomenon, since, as the plurality of the homogeneous, it is conditioned by the forms of the phenomenon, time and space. On the other hand, our inner nature has its root in what is no longer phenomenon but thing-in-itself, to which therefore the forms of the phenomenon do not reach; and in this way, the chief conditions of individuality are wanting, and distinct consciousness ceases therewith. In this root-point of existence the difference of beings ceases, just as that of the radii of a sphere ceases at the centre. As in the sphere the surface is produced by the radii ending and breaking off, so consciousness is possible only where the true inner being runs out into the phenomenon. Through the forms of the phenomenon separate individuality becomes possible, and on this individuality rests consciousness, which is on this account confined to phenomena. Therefore everything distinct and really intelligible in our consciousness always lies only outwards on this surface of the sphere. But as soon as we withdraw entirely from this, consciousness forsakes us -- in sleep, in death, and to a certain extent also in magnetic or magic activity; for all these lead through the centre. But just because distinct consciousness, as being conditioned by the surface of the sphere, is not directed towards the centre, it recognizes other individuals certainly as of the same kind, but not as identical, which, however, they are in themselves. Immortality of the individual could be compared to the flying off at a tangent of a point on the surface; but immortality, by virtue of the eternity of the true inner being of the whole phenomenon, is comparable to the return of that point on the radius to the centre, whose mere extension is the surface. The will as thing-in-itself is entire and undivided in every being, just as the centre is an integral part of every radius; whereas the peripheral end of this radius is in the most rapid revolution with the surface that represents time and its content, the other end at the centre where eternity lies, remains in profoundest peace, because the centre is the point whose rising half is no different from the sinking half. Therefore, it is said also in the Bhagavad-Gita: Baud distributum animantibus, et quasi distributum tamen insidens, animantiumque sustentaculum id cognoscendum, edax et rursus genitale (xiii, 16, trans. Schlegel). [6 ]Here, of course, we fall into mystical and metaphorical language, but it is the only language in which anything can be said about this wholly transcendent theme. Thus even this simile also may pass, that the human race can be figuratively represented as an animal compositum, a form of life of which examples are furnished by many polyps, especially those that swim, such as Veretillum, Funiculina, and others. Just as in the case of these, the head portion isolates each individual animal, but the lower portion with the common stomach combines them all into the unity of one life process, so the brain with its consciousness isolates human individuals. On the other hand, the unconscious part, namely the vegetative life with its ganglionic system, into which brain consciousness disappears in sleep, like the lotus nightly submerged in the flood, is a common life of all. By means of it they can even communicate in exceptional cases, as occurs, for example, when dreams are directly communicated, the thoughts of the mesmerizer pass over into the somnambulist, and finally in the magnetic or generally magical influence coming from intentional willing. Thus, when such an influence takes place, it is toto genere different from any other that takes place through the influxus physicus, since it is a real actio in distans, which the will, proceeding indeed from the individual, nevertheless performs in its metaphysical capacity as the omnipresent substratum of the whole of nature. It might also be said that, just as in generatio aequivoca, sometimes and by way of exception there appears a feeble remnant of the will's creative power that has done its work in the existing forms of nature and in these is extinguished, so by way of exception there can become active in such magical influences a surplus, so to speak, of the will's original omnipotence that completes its work, and is used up in the production and maintenance of the organism. I have spoken at length of this magical property of the will in the essay On the Will in Nature; and here I gladly pass over considerations that of necessity refer to uncertain facts, which cannot, however, be entirely ignored or denied.

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Notes:

1. "One and all" [Tr.]

2. "Compulsion, necessity." [Tr.]

3. "Being by and of itself." [Tr.]

4. "Creative nature." [Tr.]

5. "Advance up to a certain limit." [Tr.]

6. "Undivided it dwells in beings, and yet as it were divided; it is to be known as the sustainer, annihilator, and producer of beings." [Tr.]

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CHAPTER XXVI: On Teleology [1]

The universal suitability of organic nature relating to the continued existence of every being, together with the appropriateness of organic nature to inorganic, cannot be easily associated with any philosophical system except that which makes a will the basis of every natural being's existence, a will that accordingly expresses its true being and tendency not merely in the actions, but also in the form and shape, of the organism that appears. In the preceding chapter I merely hinted at the account of this subject which our line of thought suggests, having already discussed it in the passage of volume one referred to below, and with special clearness and fullness in the essay On the Will in Nature under the heading "Comparative Anatomy." To this I now add the following remarks.

The astonished admiration that usually seizes us when we contemplate the endless appropriateness in the structure of organic beings, rests at bottom on the certainly natural yet false assumption that that agreement or harmony of the parts with one another, with the whole of the organism, and with its aims in the external world, as we comprehend and judge of it by means of knowledge, and thus on the path of the representation, has also come into being on the same path; hence that, as it exists for the intellect, it was also brought about through the intellect. We, of course, can bring about something regular and conforming to law, such as is, for example, every crystal, only under the guidance of the law and the rule; in just the same way, we can bring about something appropriate and to the purpose only under the guidance of the concept of an end or aim. We are in no way justified, however, in imputing this limitation of ours to nature; for nature herself is a prius of all intellect, and, as was stated in the previous chapter, her acting differs from ours in its whole manner. She achieves without reflection, and without conception of an end, that which appears so appropriate and so deliberate, because she does so without representation, which is entirely of secondary origin. Let us first consider that which is merely regular, not yet fitted for an end. The six equal radii of a snowflake separating out at equal angles are not measured beforehand by any knowledge; on the contrary, it is the simple tendency of the original will thus exhibiting itself for knowledge, when knowledge supervenes. Now just as the will here brings about the regular figure without mathematics, so does it bring about without physiology the form that is organic and organized with supreme suitability. The regular form in space exists only for perception, the perception-form of which is space; so the appropriateness of the organism exists merely for our knowing faculty of reason, the reflection of which is tied to the concepts of end and means. If a direct insight into the working of nature were possible, we should of necessity recognize that the abovementioned teleological astonishment was analogous to what that savage, whom Kant mentions in his explanation of the ludicrous, felt, when he saw froth irresistibly gushing out of a newly-opened bottle of beer. He expressed his astonishment not at the froth coming out, but at how anyone could have put it into the bottle. For we too assume that the appropriateness of the products of nature has entered on the path on which it comes out for us. Therefore our teleological astonishment can also be compared to that which the first products of the art of printing excited in those who considered them on the supposition that they were works of the pen, and accordingly resorted to the assumption of a devil's assistance in order to explain them. For, let it be said here once more, it is our intellect that by means of its own forms, space, time, and causality, apprehends as object the act of will, in itself metaphysical and indivisible, and exhibiting itself in the phenomenon of an animal; it is our intellect which first produces the plurality and variety of the parts and their functions, and is then struck with amazement at their perfect agreement and conspiracy that result from the original unity; here, then, in a sense, it admires its own work.

If we give ourselves up to the contemplation of the inexpressibly and infinitely ingenious structure of any animal, be it only the commonest insect, and lose ourselves in admiration of it, and it then occurs to us that nature recklessly exposes this exceedingly ingenious and highly complicated organism daily and in thousands to destruction by accident, animal rapacity, and human wantonness, this immense prodigality fills us with amazement. But this amazement rests on an amphiboly of the concepts, since we have in mind here the human work of art which is brought about through the agency of the intellect and by overcoming a foreign and resistant material, and in consequence certainly costs much trouble. On the other hand, nature's works, however ingenious, cost her absolutely no trouble, since here the will to work is the work in itself, for, as already stated, the organism is merely the visibility of the will here existing, which is brought about in the brain.

In consequence of the constitution of organic beings which has been explained, teleology, as the assumption of the suitability of every part, is a perfectly safe guide when we consider the whole of organic nature. On the other hand, in a metaphysical regard, for the explanation of nature beyond the possibility of experience, it can be looked upon as valid only in a secondary and subsidiary manner for confirming principles of explanation established in a different way; for then it belongs to those problems of which an account is to be given. Accordingly, if in an animal a part is found for which we do not see any purpose, we must never venture to presume that nature has produced it aimlessly, perhaps in play and out of mere caprice. At the most, something of the kind could be conceived as possible on the assumption of Anaxagoras that nature had obtained her disposition and structure by means of an organizing and regulating understanding that serves as such a foreign arbitrary will, but not on the assumption that the being-in-itself (in other words, outside our representation) of every organism is simply and solely its own will. For then the existence of every part is conditioned by the fact that, in some way, it serves the will that here underlies it, expresses and realizes some tendency in it, and consequently contributes somehow to the maintenance of this organism. For, apart from the will manifesting itself in it, and apart from the conditions of the external world under which this has voluntarily undertaken to live, and for the conflict with which, therefore, its whole form and structure are already intended, nothing can have had any influence on it, and have determined its form and parts, hence no arbitrary power, no caprice. For this reason, everything in it must be suitable for the purpose; therefore, final causes (causae finales) are the clue to the understanding of organic nature, just as efficient causes (causae efficientes) are to that of inorganic nature. It is due to this that, if in anatomy or zoology we cannot find the end or aim of an existing part, our understanding receives therefrom a shock similar to that which in physics must be given by an effect whose cause remains concealed. We assume as necessary both this cause and that part, and therefore go on looking for it, however often this may have been done in vain. This is so, for instance, as regards the spleen, concerning the purpose of which men never cease to invent hypotheses, until some day one of these proves to be correct. It is just the same with the large, spiral-formed teeth of the babirussa, the horn-shaped excrescences of a few caterpillars, and other things of this kind. Negative cases we also judge according to the same rule; for example, that in a class on the whole so uniform as that of the saurians, so important a part as the bladder is present in many species, while in others it is missing; likewise that dolphins and some cetacea related to them are entirely without olfactory nerves, whereas the remaining cetacea and even fishes have them; this must be determined by some reason or ground.

Actual isolated exceptions to this universal law of suitability in organic nature have certainly been discovered, and with great astonishment; yet the words exceptio firmat regulam [2] find application in those cases, since an account of them can be given in a different way. Thus it is that the tadpoles of the Surinam toad have tails and gills, although they do not swim like all other tadpoles, but await their metamorphosis on the mother's back; that the male kangaroo has a rudiment of the bone which in the female carries the pouch; that even male mammals have nipples; that Mus typhlus, a rat, has eyes, although tiny ones, without an opening for them in the outer skin, which, covered with hair, therefore passes over them; and that the mole of the Apennines and also two kinds of fish, namely Murena caecilia and Gastrobranchus caecus, are in the same case; Proteus anguinus is of the same kind. These rare and surprising exceptions to the rule of nature, otherwise so rigid, these contradictions with herself into which she falls, must be explained from the inner connexion the different kinds of her phenomena have with one another, by virtue of the unity of that which manifests itself in them. In consequence of such connexion, nature must suggest something in one phenomenon, merely because another connected therewith actually has it. Accordingly, the male animal has a rudiment of an organ which in the female is actually present. As the difference of the sexes here cannot abolish the type of the species, so the type of a whole class, of the amphibians for instance, asserts itself where in a particular species (Surinam toad) one of its determinations becomes superfluous. Still less can nature allow a determination (eyes) belonging to the type of a whole fundamental class (Vertebrata), to vanish entirely without a trace, even if it should atrophy in a particular species as being superfluous (Mus typhlus). On the contrary, here also she must indicate, at least in a rudimentary way, what she carries out in all the rest.

Even from this point of view it can be seen to a certain extent on what rests that homology in the skeleton firstly of mammals and in a wider sense of all vertebrates, which has been discussed at such length, especially by Richard Owen in his Osteologie comparee. By virtue of this homology, for example, all mammals have seven cervical vertebrae; every bone of the human hand and arm finds its analogue in the fin of the whale; the skull of the bird in the egg has precisely as many bones as has that of the human foetus, and so on. Thus all this points to a principle that is independent of teleology. Yet this principle is the foundation on which teleology builds, or the material given in advance for its works, and is just what Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire has explained as the "anatomical element." It is the unite de plan, [3] the primary and basic type of the higher animal world, the arbitrarily chosen key, so to speak, on which nature here plays her tune.

The difference between the efficient cause (causa efficiens) and the final cause (causa finalis) has been correctly described by Aristotle (De partibus animalium, I, 1) in these words: [x]. (Duo sunt causae modi: alter cujus gratia, et alter e necessitate; ac potissimum utrumque eruere oportet.) [4] The efficient cause is that by which a thing is; the final cause is that on account of which a thing is. The phenomenon to be explained has in time the former behind it and the latter before it. Merely in the case of the arbitrary actions of animal beings do the two directly coincide, since in them the final cause, the end or aim, appears as motive. Such a motive, however, is always the true and real cause of the action, is wholly and solely the cause that brings about or occasions the action, the change preceding it which calls it into existence, by virtue of which it necessarily appears, and without which it could not happen, as I have shown in my essay on freedom. For whatever we should like to insert physiologically between the act of will and the bodily movement, here the will always remains admittedly that which moves, and what moves it is the motive coming from outside, and thus the causa finalis, that consequently appears here as causa efficiens. Moreover, we know from our previous remarks that the bodily movement is at bottom identical with the act of will, as its mere appearance or phenomenon in cerebral perception. This coincidence of the causa finalis with the efficient cause in the one and only phenomenon intimately known to us, which therefore remains throughout our primary phenomenon, must be firmly retained; for it leads precisely to the conclusion that, at any rate in organic nature, the knowledge of which has throughout final causes for its clue, a will is that which forms or shapes. In fact we cannot clearly conceive a final cause except as an intended aim or end, i.e., as a motive. Indeed, if we carefully consider the final cause in nature, in order to express its transcendent character, we must not shrink from a contradiction, and boldly state that the final cause is a motive that acts on a being by whom it is not known. For the nests of termites are certainly the motive that has called into existence the toothless jaw of the anteater, together with its long, thread-like, and glutinous tongue. The hard egg-shell, holding the chicken a prisoner, is certainly the motive for the horny point with which its beak is provided, in order with it to break through that shell; after this, the chicken casts it off as of no further use. In the same way, the laws of the reflection and refraction of light are the motive for that excessively ingenious and complicated optical instrument, the human eye, which has the transparency of its cornea, the different density of its three aqueous humours, the shape of its lens, the blackness of its choroid, the sensitiveness of its retina, the power of contraction of its pupil, and its muscular system, accurately calculated according to those laws. But those motives already operated before they were apprehended; it is not otherwise, however contradictory it may sound. For here is the transition of the physical into the metaphysical; but the latter we have recognized in the will; therefore we are bound to see that the will that extends the elephant's trunk to an object is also the same will that, anticipating objects, has pushed the trunk forth and shaped it.

It is in conformity with this that, in the investigation of organic nature, we are referred entirely to final causes; we look for these everywhere, and explain everything from them. The efficient causes, on the other hand, here occupy only quite a subordinate position as the mere tools of the final causes, and, just as in the case of the arbitrary movement of the limbs which is admittedly produced by external motives, they are assumed rather than demonstrated. With the explanation of the physiological functions, we certainly look about for efficient causes, though for the most part in vain. But with the explanation of the origin of the parts we no longer look for them at all, but are satisfied with the final causes alone. At most, we have here some such general principle as that the larger a part is to be, the stronger must be the artery that supplies it with blood; but we know absolutely nothing of the really efficient causes that bring about, for example, the eye, the ear, or the brain. In fact, even with the explanation of the mere functions, the final cause is far more important and to the point than is the efficient cause. Therefore, if the former alone is known, we are generally speaking instructed and satisfied; while the efficient cause by itself gives us little help. For example, if we actually knew the efficient cause of blood circulation -- for we really do not, and are still looking for it -- this would afford us little help without the final cause, namely that the blood must go into the lungs for oxidation, and flow back again for the purpose of nutrition. On the other hand, by the final cause, even without the efficient cause, we are greatly enlightened. For the rest, as I have said, I am of opinion that blood circulation has no really efficient cause at all, but that the will is just as directly active in it as it is in muscular movement, where motives determine it by means of nerve-conduction. Therefore here also the movement is immediately called into existence by the final cause, that is, by the need for oxidation in the lungs, that need here acting on the blood to a certain extent as motive, yet in such a way that the mediation of knowledge is wanting, since everything takes place in the interior of the organism. The so-called metamorphosis of plants, an idea lightly sketched by Caspar Wolff, which, under this hyperbolic title, Goethe pompously and with solemn delivery expounds as his own production, belongs to those explanations of the organic from the efficient cause. At bottom, however, he merely states that nature does not in the case of every production begin at the beginning and create out of nothing, but continuing to write, so to speak, in the same style, she adds on to what exists, makes use of previous forms, develops them and raises them to a higher power, to carry her work farther, just as she has done in the ascending series of animals, entirely in accordance with the rule: Natura non facit saltus, et quod commodissimum in omnibus suis operationibus sequitur (Aristotle, De Incessu Animalium, c. 2 and 8). [5] In fact, to explain the blossom by demonstrating in all its parts the form of the leaf seems to me almost like explaining the structure of a house by showing that all its parts, storeys, balconies, and attics are composed only of bricks and are a mere repetition of the original unity of the brick. And not much better, yet much more problematical, seems the explanation of the skull from the vertebrae, though here too it is self-evident that the case or covering of the brain will not be absolutely different and entirely disparate from the case or covering of the spinal cord, of which it is the continuation and terminal knob, but that it will rather be a continuation in the same manner. This whole method of consideration belongs to the abovementioned homology of Richard Owen. But the following explanation of the true nature of the flower from its final cause, attributable to an Italian whose name has slipped my memory, seems to me to give a much more satisfactory account. The aim of the corolla is (1) protection of the pistil and of the stamens; (2) by its means the refined saps are prepared which are concentrated in the pollen and germen; (3) from the glands of its base is separated the essential or volatile oil which, often as a fragrant vapour surrounding anthers and pistil, protects it to some extent from the influence of damp air. It is also one of the advantages of final causes that every efficient cause ultimately rests always on something mysterious and inscrutable, a force of nature, i.e., a qualitas occulta, and can therefore give only a relative explanation, whereas the final cause, within its province, furnishes a satisfactory and complete explanation. We are entirely satisfied, of course, only when we know simultaneously and yet separately the two, namely the efficient cause, also called by Aristotle [x] , [6] and the final cause, [x], [7] as their concurrence, their marvellous conspiracy, surprises us, and by virtue thereof, the best appears as something entirely necessary, and the necessary again as though it were merely the best and not necessary. For there arises in us the instinctive feeling that, however different their origin, the two causes are yet connected in the root, the inner essence of the thing-in-itself. Yet such a twofold knowledge is seldom attainable, in organic nature because the efficient cause is seldom known to us, in inorganic nature because the final cause remains problematical. In the meantime I wish to illustrate this by a couple of examples as good as I can find in the range of my physiological knowledge, for which physiologists may substitute clearer and more striking ones. The louse of the Negro is black; final cause: its own safety. Efficient cause: because its nourishment is the Negro's black rete Malpighi. The extremely varied, brilliant and vivid colouring of the plumage of tropical birds is explained, though only very generally, by the strong effect of light in the tropics, as its efficient cause. As final cause, I would state that those brilliant feathers are the gorgeous uniform in which the individuals of the innumerable species, often belonging to the same genus, recognize one another, so that every male finds his female. The same holds good of the butterflies of different zones and latitudes. It has been observed that consumptive women readily become pregnant in the last stage of their illness, that during pregnancy the disease stops, but that after confinement it appears again worse than before, and often results in death; similarly that consumptive men often beget another child in the last days of their life. The final cause here is that nature, everywhere so anxiously concerned for the maintenance of the species, tries to replace rapidly by a new individual the approaching loss of one in the prime of life. On the other hand, the efficient cause is the unusually excited state of the nervous system which appears in the last period of consumption. From the same final cause is to be explained the analogous phenomenon that (according to Oken, Die Zeugung, p. 65) a fly poisoned with arsenic still mates from an unexplained impulse, and dies in copulation. The final cause of the pubes in both sexes, and of the mons Veneris in the female, is that, even in the case of very slender subjects, the ossa pubis shall not be felt during copulation, for it might excite aversion. The efficient cause, on the other hand, is to be sought in the fact that, wherever the mucous membrane passes over to the outer skin, hair grows in the vicinity; also in the fact that head and genitals are, to a certain extent, opposite poles of each other. They therefore have many different relations and analogies to each other, one of which is that of being covered with hair. The same efficient cause also holds good of men's beards; I imagine that the final cause of the beard is the fact that what is pathognomonic, and thus the rapid change in the features of the face which betrays every hidden movement of the mind, becomes visible mainly in the mouth and its vicinity. Therefore, to conceal this from the prying glance of an adversary as something that is often dangerous in negotiations or in sudden emergencies, nature (knowing that homo homini lupus) gave man the beard. Woman, on the other hand, could dispense with it, for with her dissimulation and self-control (contenance) are inborn. As I have said, it must be possible to find far more apt and striking examples, to show how the completely blind working of nature coincides in the result with the apparently intentional, or, as Kant puts it, the mechanism of nature with her technique. This points to the fact that both have beyond this difference their common origin in the will as thing-in-itself. Much would be achieved for the elucidation of this point of view if, for example, we could find the efficient cause which conveys the driftwood to the treeless polar regions, or even that which has concentrated the dry land of our planet principally in the northern hemisphere, while it is to be regarded as the final cause of this that the winter of that half turns out to be eight days shorter and is thus also milder, because it occurs at the perihelion that accelerates the course of the earth. Yet when inorganic nature is considered, the final cause is always ambiguous, and leaves us in doubt, especially when the efficient cause is found, as to whether it is not a merely subjective view, an aspect of things conditioned by our point of view. But in this respect it is comparable to many works of art, e.g., coarse mosaics, theatre decorations, and the Apennine god at Prato lino near Florence, which is composed of large masses of rock. All these are effective only at a distance, but vanish when we are close to them, since instead of them the efficient cause of their appearance then becomes visible; but yet the forms actually exist and are no mere delusion or fancy. Analogous to this, therefore, are the final causes in inorganic nature, when the efficient causes appear. In fact, whoever has a wide view of things would perhaps admit it, if we added that something similar is the cause with omens.

For the rest, if anyone wishes to misuse the external appropriateness that always remains ambiguous, as I have said, for physico-theological demonstrations, as is still done at the present day, though it is to be hoped only by Englishmen, then there are in this class enough examples in contrarium, thus ateleologies, to upset his conception. One of the strongest is presented to us by the fact that seawater is undrinkable, in consequence of which man is nowhere more exposed to the danger of dying of thirst than in the very midst of the largest mass of water of his planet. Let us ask our Englishman: "For what purpose need the sea be salt?"

In inorganic nature, the final causes withdraw entirely into the background, so that an explanation given from them alone is no longer valid; on the contrary, the efficient causes are indispensable. This depends on the fact that the will, objectifying itself in inorganic nature, no longer appears here in individuals who by themselves constitute a whole, but in natural forces and their action. In this way, end and means are too widely separated for their relation to be clear, and for us to be able to recognize in them a manifestation of will. This already occurs in a certain degree even in organic nature, namely where the appropriateness is an external one, where the end lies in one individual, the means in another. Yet here also it still remains unquestionable, so long as the two belong to the same species; in fact, it then becomes the more striking. Here may be reckoned first of all the mutually adapted organization of the genitals of the two sexes; and then also much that assists procreation, for example, in the case of Lampyris noctiluca (the glow-worm) the circumstance that only the male, which does not emit light, has wings to enable it to seek out the female; on the other hand, as they come out only in the evening, the wingless female possesses phosphorescent light, so that she can be found by the male. Yet in the case of Lampyris italica, both sexes emit light, which is an instance of the natural luxury of the south. However, a striking, because quite special, example of the kind of appropriateness here discussed is afforded by the fine discovery, made by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in the last years of his life, of the more exact nature of the sucking apparatus of the cetacea. Thus, as all sucking demands the activity of respiration, it can take place only in the respirable medium itself, but not under water, where the suckling of the whale nevertheless hangs on to the mother's teats. To meet this, the whole mammary apparatus of the cetacea is so modified that it has become an injection-organ; and, placed in the suckling's mouth, it squirts the milk into it without the young having to suck. On the other hand, where the individual which affords essential help to another belongs to an entirely different species, even another kingdom of nature, we shall doubt this external appropriateness just as we do in the case of inorganic nature, unless the maintenance of the species obviously depends on it. This, however, is the case with many plants, whose fertilization takes place only by means of insects that either bear the pollen to the stigma or bend the stamens to the pistil. The common barberry, many kinds of iris, and Aristolochia clematitis cannot fertilize themselves at all without the help of insects. (C. C. Sprengel, Entdecktes Geheimniss etc., 1793; Wildenow, Grundriss der Krauterkunde, 353.) In the same case are very many dioecia, monoecia, and polygamia, for example cucumbers and melons. The mutual support that plant and insect worlds receive from each other is admirably described in Burdach's large Physiologie, Vol. I, § 263. Very beautifully he adds: "This is no mechanical assistance, no makeshift, as though nature had formed the plants yesterday, and thus made a mistake which through the insect she tried to correct today; on the contrary, it is a more deep-lying sympathy between plant and animal worlds. The identity of the two ought to be revealed. Children of one mother, the two ought to subsist with and through each other." And farther on: "But the organic world is in such a sympathy even with the inorganic," and so on. A proof of this consensus naturae is also given by the observation, communicated in volume 2 of the Introduction into Entomology by Kirby and Spence, that the insect eggs that hibernate attached to the branches of the trees that serve as nourishment for their larvae, are hatched at the very time when the branch buds; thus for example, the aphis of the birch a month earlier than that of the ash; similarly that the insects of perennial plants hibernate on these as eggs, but since those of mere annuals cannot do this, they hibernate in the pupal state.

Three great men have entirely rejected teleology or the explanation from final causes; and many small men have echoed them. These are Lucretius, Bacon, and Spinoza. In the case of all three we know clearly enough the source of this aversion, namely that they regarded teleology as inseparable from speculative theology. But they entertained so great a fear of theology (which Bacon indeed prudently tries to conceal), that they wanted to give it a wide berth. We also find Leibniz labouring entirely under that prejudice, since with characteristic naivety he expresses it as something self-evident in his Lettre a M. Nicaise (Spinoza, Opera, ed. Paulus, Vol. II, p. 672): Les causes finales, ou ce qui est LA MEME CHOSE, la considera tion de la sagesse divine dans l'ordre des choses. [8] (The devil also, meme chose!) Indeed, we find at the same point of view even Englishmen of the present day, namely the Bridgewater Treatise men. Lord Brougham, and so on. In fact, even Richard Owen in his Osteologie comparee thinks exactly as Leibniz does, and I have already censured this in my first volume. To all these teleology is at once also theology, and at every appropriateness or suitability they recognize in nature, instead of thinking and learning to understand nature, they at once break out into a childish cry of "Design! design!" They then strike up the refrain of their old women's philosophy, and stop their ears against all rational arguments such as the great Hume advanced against them. [9] Ignorance of the Kantian philosophy, which now after seventy years is a real disgrace to Englishmen of learning, is mainly responsible for the whole of this miserable and pitiful state of the English. Again, this ignorance depends, at any rate to a great extent, on the deplorable influence of that infamous English clergy, with whom stultification of every kind is a thing after their own hearts, so that they may be able still to keep the English nation, otherwise so intelligent, labouring under the most degrading bigotry. Therefore, inspired by the basest obscurantism, they oppose public instruction, the investigation of nature, in fact the advancement of all human knowledge in general, with all their might. They do this by means of their connexions, as well as by means of their scandalous, unwarrantable wealth that increases the misery of the people. Their influence extends even to university scholars and authors, who accordingly (e.g., Thomas Brown, On Cause and Effect) resort to suppressions and distortions of every kind, simply in order not to oppose, be it only remotely, that "cold superstition" (as Puckler very happily describes their religion), or the current arguments in its favour.

On the other band, as the three great men we are discussing lived long before the dawn of the Kantian philosophy, their fear of teleology, on account of its origin, is pardonable; yet even Voltaire regarded the physico-theological proof as irrefutable. But to go into this somewhat more fully; first of all, the polemic of Lucretius (iv, 824-858) against teleology is so crass and crude, that it refutes itself and convinces us of the opposite. But as to Bacon (De Augmentis Scientiarum, III, 4), in the first place he makes no distinction, with reference to the use of final causes, between organic and inorganic nature (which is the very main point in question), since, in his examples of them, he mixes the two together. He then banishes final causes from physics to metaphysics; but for him, as for many even at the present day, metaphysics is identical with speculative theology. He therefore regards final causes as inseparable from this, and goes so far in this respect as to blame Aristotle, because that philosopher made vigorous use of final causes (a thing which in a moment I shall specially praise), yet without ever connecting them with speculative theology. Finally, Spinoza (Ethics, I, prop. 36, appendix) makes it very clear that he identifies teleology so entirely with physicotheology, against which he expresses himself with bitterness, that he explains: Natura nihil frustra agere: hoc est, quod in usum hominum non sit; similarly: Omnia naturalia tanquam ad suum utile media considerant, et credunt aliquem alium esse, qui illa media paraverit; and also: hinc statuerunt, Deos omnia in usum hominum fecisse et dirigere. [10] On this he then bases his assertion: Natura finem nullum sibi praefixum habere et omnes causas finales nihil nisi humana esse figmenta. [11] He was merely concerned with barring the way to theism; but he had quite rightly recognized the physico-theological proof as its strongest weapon. But it was reserved for Kant actually to refute this proof, and for me to give the correct explanation of its subject-matter; in this way I have satisfied the maxim Est enim verum index sui et falsi. [12]But Spinoza did not know how to help himself except by the desperate stroke of denying teleology itself, thus denying the appropriateness or suitability in the works of nature, an assertion whose monstrous character is at once apparent to anyone who has in any way acquired a more accurate knowledge of organic nature. This limited viewpoint of Spinoza, together with his complete ignorance of nature, is sufficient evidence of his total incompetence in this matter, and of the silliness of those who, on his authority, think they must judge disdainfully of final causes.

Aristotle, who here shows his brilliant side, contrasts very advantageously with these philosophers of modern times. Without prejudice he goes to nature, knows nothing of a physico-theology, such a thing never entered his head, and has never looked at the world to see whether it was something made. In his heart, he is free from all this, for he advances hypotheses (De Generatione Animalium, iii, 11) on the origin of animals and human beings without running into the physico-theological train of thought. He always says [x] (natura facit), never [x] (natura facta est). However, after studying nature honestly and carefully, he finds that everywhere she goes to work appropriately, and he says: [x] (Naturam nihil frustra facere cernimus); [13] De Respiratione, c. 10, and in the books De Partibus Animalium which are a comparative anatomy: [x]. (Nihil supervacaneum, nihil frustra natura facit .... Natura rei alicujus gratia facit omnia .... Rem autem hanc esse illius gratia asserere ubique solemus, quoties finem intelligimus aliquem, in quem motus terminetur: quocirca ejusmodi aliquid esse constat, quod Naturam vocamus .... Est enim corpus instrumentum: nam membrum unumquodque rei alicujus gratia est, tum vero totum ipsum. [14] In more detail on pp. 645 and 663 of the Berlin quarto edition, as also De lncessu Animalium c. 2: [x]. (Natura nihil frustra facit, sed semper ex iis, quae cuique animalium generis essentiae contingunt, id quod optimum est.) [15] But he expressly recommends teleology at the end of the books De Generatione Animalium, and blames Democritus for having denied it; and this is precisely what Bacon in his narrow-mindedness praises in that thinker. But particularly in Physica, ii, 8, p. 198, Aristotle speaks ex professo of final causes, and sets them up as the true principle of the investigation of nature. Indeed, every good and normal mind, when considering organic nature, must hit upon teleology; yet, unless it is determined by preconceived opinions, it will not by any means hit either on physico-theology or on the anthropo-teleology censured by Spinoza. As regards Aristotle generally, I still wish to draw attention here to the fact that his teachings, in so far as they concern inorganic nature, are extremely defective and useless, since in the fundamental concepts of mechanics and physics he subscribes to the crudest errors. This is the less pardonable, as before him the Pythagoreans and Empedoc1es had already been on the right path, and had taught much better. Indeed, as we see from Aristotle's second book De Coelo (i, p. 284 ) Empedocles had already grasped the concept of a tangential force which arises through rotation, and counteracts gravity, a concept which Aristotle in turn rejects. Aristotle's attitude to a consideration of organic nature is quite the opposite; here is his field; here the abundance of his knowledge, his keen observation, and occasionally deep insight, astonish us. Thus, to quote only one instance, he had already recognized in ruminants the antagonism in which the horns and the teeth of the upper jaw stand to each other, by virtue of which the latter are wanting where the former are found, and vice versa (De Partibus Animalium, iii, 2). Hence also his correct estimation of final causes.

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Notes:

1. This and the following chapter refer to § 28 of volume 1.

2. "The exception confirms the rule." [Tr.]

3. "Unity of plan." [Tr.]

4. "There are two kinds of causes, the final cause and the necessary efficient cause; and in what we have to say we must take both into consideration as much as possible." [Tr.]

5. "Nature makes no leaps, and in all her operations follows the most convenient path." [Tr.]

6. "The cause from necessity." [Tr.]

7. "The cause with a view to the better." [Tr.]

8. "The final causes, or what is the same thing, the consideration of the divine wisdom in the order of things." [Tr.]

9. Incidentally, it should here be noted that, to judge from German literature since Kant, we should be obliged to think that the whole of Hume's wisdom consisted in his palpably false scepticism with regard to the law of causality, as this alone is discussed everywhere. To know Hume, we must read his Natural History of Religion and the Dialogues on Natural Religion. There we see him in his greatness, and these, together with Essay 20 On National Character, are the works on account of which -- I can think of nothing better to say for his fame -- he is hated above all by the English clergy even at the present day.

10. "Nature does nothing in vain, in other words, that does not serve the purpose of mankind; . . . they regard all natural things as a means for their benefit, and believe that there is another who has prepared these means; . . . from this they have concluded that the gods have created and directed everything for the benefit of mankind." [Tr.]

11. "Nature has not set herself an aim or end, and all final causes are nothing more than human fictions and inventions." [Tr.]

12. "For the true bears evidence of itself and of the false." [Tr.]

13. "We see that nature does nothing in vain." [Tr.]

14. "Nature does nothing superfluous and nothing in vain .... Nature does everything for the sake of an end. . . . But everywhere we say that this is done for the sake of that, where an end or aim is visible in which the movement terminates, so that it is clear that there is something we call nature. . . . For the body is an instrument; for each of its parts serves an end, and so also does the whole." [Tr.]

15. "Nature does nothing in vain, but always that which is the best of what is possible for each animal species." [Tr.]

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CHAPTER XXVII: On Instinct and Mechanical Tendency

It is as if, in the mechanical tendencies of animals, nature had wished to supply the investigator with an illustrative commentary on her works according to final causes and the admirable appropriateness of her organic productions which is thus brought about. For these mechanical tendencies show us most clearly that creatures can work with the greatest decision and certainty towards an end they do not know, of which, indeed, they have no notion. Such, for instance, is the bird's nest, the spider's web, the ant-lion's pitfall, the very ingenious beehive, the marvellous termite structure, and so on, at any rate for those individual animals that carry out such things for the first time; for neither the form of the work that is to be completed nor its use can be known to them. But it is precisely in this way that organizing nature works; for this reason, I gave in the previous chapter the paradoxical explanation of the final cause, namely that it is a motive that acts without being known. And just as in working from mechanical tendency what is active therein is obviously and admittedly the will, so also it is really the will that is active in the working of organizing nature.

It might be said that the will of animal creatures is set in motion in two different ways, either by motivation or by instinct, and hence from without or from within, by an external occasion or by an inner impulse; the former is explicable, because it lies without, before us, the latter is inexplicable, because it is merely internal. More closely considered, however, the contrast between the two is not so sharp; in fact, ultimately it runs back to a difference of degree. The motive also acts only on the assumption of an inner impulse, that is to say, of a definite disposition or quality of the will, called its character. The motive in each case gives this only a decided direction; individualizes it for the concrete case. In just the same way, although instinct is a decided impulse of the will, it does not act entirely from within, like a spring, but it too waits for an external circumstance necessarily required for this action, and that circumstance determines the moment of the instinct's manifestation. Such is the season of the year for the migratory bird; the fertilization that has occurred and the material at its disposal, for the bird building its nest. For the bee it is, for beginning the structure, the basket or the hollow tree, and for the operations that follow, many circumstances that appear individually. For the spider it is a suitable and convenient corner; for the caterpillar, the suitable leaf; for the egg-laying insect, the place, in most cases very specially determined and often unusual, where the larvae on being hatched will at once find their nourishment; and there are other instances. It follows from this that, in works of mechanical tendency, the instinct is active in the first place, yet the intellect of these animals is also active in a subordinate way. Thus the instinct gives the universal, the rule; the intellect gives the particular, the application, since it directs the detail of the execution in which the work of these animals therefore obviously adapts itself to the circumstances in each case. In accordance with all this, the difference between instinct and mere character is to be settled by saying that instinct is a character set in motion only by a quite specially determined motive, and therefore the action resulting from it proves to be always of exactly the same kind; whereas the character, as possessed by every animal species and every human individual, is certainly also a permanent and unalterable quality of will. Yet this quality can be set in motion by very different motives, and adapts itself to them. For this reason the action resulting from it can, according to its material quality, turn out very different, yet it will always bear the stamp of the same character. It will therefore express and reveal this character; consequently, for the knowledge of this, the material quality of the action in which the character appears is essentially a matter of indifference. Accordingly, we might declare instinct to be an excessively one-sided and strictly determined character. It follows from this statement that to be determined by mere motivation presupposes a certain width of the sphere of knowledge, and consequently a more perfectly developed intellect. It is therefore peculiar to the higher animals, and quite specially to man. On the other hand, to be determined by instinct demands only as much intellect as is necessary to apprehend the one quite specially determined motive that alone and exclusively becomes the occasion for the instinct's manifestation. For this reason, it occurs in the case of an extremely limited sphere of knowledge, and therefore, as a rule and in the highest degree, only in the case of animals of the inferior classes, particularly insects. Accordingly, as the actions of these animals require only an extremely simple and limited motivation from outside, the medium of this, the intellect or brain, is developed in them only feebly, and their external actions are for the most part under the same guidance as are the internal physiological functions occurring on mere stimuli, hence as is the ganglionic system. In them, therefore, this is developed to an exceedingly high degree; their principal nerve-stem runs in the form of two cords under the belly, and with every limb of the body these form a ganglion often only a little inferior in size to the brain. According to Cuvier, this nerve-stem is an analogue not so much of the spinal cord as of the great sympathetic nerve. As a result of all this, instinct and guidance through mere motivation stand in a certain antagonism, in consequence of which the former reaches its maximum in insects, the latter in man. The actuation of all the other animals lies between the two in many different gradations, according as the cerebral or the ganglionic system is predominantly developed in each. If we regard the instinctive actions and skilful operations of insects as coming only from the brain, and try to explain them accordingly, we run into absurdities, in that we then apply a false key, because they are directed mainly from the ganglionic system. But the same circumstance gives to their actions a remarkable similarity to those of somnambulists. Indeed, this is also explained from the fact that, instead of the brain, the sympathetic nerve has taken over the direction of the external actions as well. Accordingly, insects are to a certain extent natural somnambulists. Things that we cannot get at directly must be made intelligible to us through an analogy. The one just touched on will achieve this in a high degree, if we make use here of the fact that in Kieser's Tellurismus (Vol. II, p. 250) a case is mentioned "where the order of the mesmerizer to the somnambulist to perform a definite action in the waking state was carried out by her when she had woken up, without her clearly recalling the order." Thus to her it was as though she had to perform that action without really knowing why. This certainly has the greatest resemblance to what happens in the case of the mechanical tendencies in insects. The young spider feels as if it had to spin its web, although it neither knows nor understands its purpose. Here we are also reminded of the daemon of Socrates, by virtue of which he had the feeling that he must leave undone an action expected of him or lying near him, without his knowing why; for his prophetic dream about it was forgotten. We have quite well-authenticated cases analogous to this in our own day; I therefore call these to mind only briefly. One person had booked his passage in a ship, but when it was about to sail he positively would not go on board, and was not aware of any ground or reason; the ship went down. Another goes with companions to a powder-magazine; when he arrives in its vicinity, he absolutely refuses to go any farther, but quickly turns round; he is seized with fear without knowing why; the magazine blew up. A third person at sea feels induced one evening, without any ground or reason, not to undress. He lies down in his clothes and boots, and even with his spectacles on. In the night the ship catches fire, and he is one of the few who are saved in the boat. All this depends on the dull after-effect of forgotten fatidical dreams, and gives us the key to an analogous understanding of instinct and mechanical tendencies.

On the other hand, as I have said, the mechanical tendencies of insects reflect much light on the working of the will-without-knowledge in the inner mechanism of the organism and its formation. For we can see quite easily and naturally in the ant-hill or in the beehive the picture of an organism explained and brought to the light of knowledge. In this sense, Burdach says (Physiologie, Vol. II, p. 22): "The formation and laying of the eggs is thequeen's part; the insemi nation and care for their development fall to the workers; in the former the ovary, in the latter the uterus, have, so to speak, become individual." In the insect society, as in the animal organism, the vita propria of each part is subordinated to the life of the whole, and the care for the whole precedes that for the particular or specific existence; the latter, in fact, is willed only conditionally, the former unconditionally. Therefore the individuals are occasionally even sacrificed to the whole, just as we have a limb removed in order to save the whole body. Thus, for example, if the way is barred to a column of ants by water, the foremost ants boldly throw themselves in, until their corpses have been heaped up into a dam for those that follow. When the drones have become useless, they are stung to death. Two queens in the hive are surrounded, and must fight with each other until one of them loses its life. The mother-ant bites off her own wings after the business of impregnation is over; they would be only a hindrance to her in the actual business of tending under the earth the new family she is to start. (Kirby and Spence, Vol. I.) The liver will do nothing more than secrete bile for the service of digestion; in fact, it exists merely for this purpose, and every other part is just the same. So also the workers will do nothing more than collect honey, separate wax, and build cells for the brood of the queen; the drones will do nothing more than fertilize, the queen nothing more than lay eggs. Thus all the parts work merely for the continued existence of the whole, which alone is the unconditional aim or end, exactly like the parts of the organism. The difference is merely that in the organism the will acts quite blindly in its primary and original nature; on the other hand, in the insect society the thing goes on in the light of knowledge. But a decided co-operation and even some choice are left to this knowledge only in the accidents of detail, where it gives assistance and adapts to the circumstances what is to be carried out. The insects, however, will the end as a whole without knowing it, just as organic nature works according to final causes. Even the choice of the means as a whole is not left to their knowledge, but only the more detailed ordering of these separately. Yet just on this account their action is by no means mechanical, and this becomes most clearly visible when we put obstacles in the way of their movements. For example, the caterpillar spins itself in leaves without knowing the purpose; but if we destroy the web, it skilfully mends it. To begin with, bees adapt their hive to circumstances as they find them, and subsequent mishaps, such as intentional destruction, are remedied by them in the way most suitable to the particular case. (Kirby and Spence, Introduction to Entomology; Huber, Des abeilles.) Such things excite our admiration, because the apprehension of the circumstances and the adaptation to them are obviously a matter of knowledge, whereas we credit them once for all with the most ingenious foresight for the coming generation and the remote future, well knowing that in this they are not guided by knowledge; for a foresight of this kind proceeding from knowledge demands a brain-activity raised to the level of the faculty of reason. On the other hand, even the intellect of the lower animals is equal to modifying and arranging the individual case according to existing or supervening circumstances, since, guided by instinct, it has only to fill up the gaps left thereby. Thus we see ants drag away their larvae as soon as the place becomes too damp, and again as soon as it becomes too dry. They do not know the purpose of this; hence in this they are not guided by knowledge, but the choice of the moment when the place is no longer suitable for the larvae, and the choice of another place to which they then bring them, are left to their knowledge. Here I wish to mention a fact that someone related to me verbally from his own experience, although I have since found that Burdach quotes it as coming from Gleditsch. To test the burying-beetle (Necrophorus vespillo), the former had tied a dead frog lying on the ground to a string fastened at the upper end to a stick inserted obliquely in the ground. After several burying-beetles had, according to their custom, undermined the frog, it could not sink into the ground, as they expected; after much perplexed running about, they also undermined the stick. In the organism, we find the healing power of nature analogous to this assistance rendered to instinct, and to that repairing of the works of mechanical tendency. This healing power not only closes up and heals wounds, thus replacing even bone and nerve substance, but also, if a connexion is interrupted through loss of a vein branch or nerve branch, opens a new connexion by means of an enlargement of other veins or nerves, possibly even by pushing out new branches. Further, it causes another part or function to take the place of one that is diseased; on the loss of an eye, it sharpens the other, and on the loss of one sense, it sharpens all the rest. Sometimes it closes even an intestinal wound, in itself fatal, by adhesion of the mesentery or the peritoneum; in short, it tries to cope with every injury and disturbance in the most ingenious manner. On the other hand, if the injury is quite incurable, it expedites death, and indeed the more so the higher the species, thus the more sensitive the organism. Even this has its analogue in the instinct of insects; thus wasps who have reared their larvae throughout the whole summer with great trouble and labour on the produce of their plundering, but then see the last generation of these face starvation in October, sting them to death. (Kirby and Spence, Vol. I, p. 374.) In fact, even stranger and more special analogies may be found; for example, if the female bumble-bee (Apis terrestris, bombylius) lays eggs, the working bumble-bees are seized with an urge to devour them. This lasts from six to eight hours, and is satisfied, unless the mother keeps them off, and carefully guards the eggs. After this time, however, the working bumble-bees show absolutely no desire to eat the eggs, even when they are offered to them. On the contrary, they now become the zealous fosterers and sustainers of the larvae that are being hatched. This may be taken quite naturally as an analogue of children's complaints, especially of teething, where it is just the future nourishers of the organism that make on it an attack that so frequently costs it its life. The consideration of all these analogies between organic life and instinct, together with the mechanical tendency of the lower animals, serves to strengthen more and more the conviction that the will is the basis of the one as of the other, since here it also shows the subordinate role of knowledge in the working of the will, a role that is sometimes more restricted, sometimes less, and sometimes entirely wanting.

But in yet another respect instincts and the animal organization mutually illustrate each other, namely through the anticipation of the future which appears in both. By means of instincts and mechanical tendencies, animals provide for the satisfaction of needs they do not yet feel, indeed not only their own needs, but even those of their future offspring. Hence they work for a purpose still unknown to them. As I have illustrated in my work On the Will in Nature, p. 45 (second edition) by the example of the Bombex, this goes to the extent that they pursue and kill in advance the enemies of their future eggs. In just the same way, we see in the whole corporization of an animal its future needs, its prospective aims, anticipated by the organic implements for their attainment and satisfaction. From this there results that perfect fitness of every animal's structure to its mode of life, that equipping of it with the weapons necessary for it to attack its prey and to ward off its enemies, and that calculation of its whole shape and form with regard to the element and environment in which it has to appear as a pursuer. I have fully described this in my work On the Will in Nature under the heading "Comparative Anatomy." All these anticipations, appearing in instinct as well as in the organization of animals, could be brought under the concept of knowledge a priori, if a knowledge in general were the basis of them. But this, as I have shown, is not the case; their origin lies deeper than the sphere of knowledge, namely in the will as the thing-in-itself. This as such remains free even from the forms of knowledge; therefore with reference to it time has no significance, and consequently the future is just as near to it as the present.

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CHAPTER XXVIII: Characterization of the Will-to-Live [1]

Our second book ends with the question as to the aim and purpose of this will that has proved to be the inner nature of all things in the world. The following remarks serve to supplement the answer to this question which is given there in general terms, since they explain the character of that will in general.

Such a characterization is possible, since we have recognized as the inner being of the world something thoroughly actual and empirically given. On the other hand, the name "world-soul," by which many have expressed that inner being, gives, instead of this, a mere ens rationis. For "soul" signifies an individual unity of consciousness which obviously does not belong to that inner being; and generally, since the concept "soul" supposes knowing and willing to be in inseparable connexion, and yet independent of the animal organism, it is not to be justified, and therefore not to be used. The word should never be applied except in a metaphorical sense, for it is by no means as simple and natural as [x] or anima, which mean breath.

Even much more unsuitable is the method of expression of the so-called pantheists; their whole philosophy consists principally in their giving the title "God" to the inner nature of the world which is unknown to them, and by this they imagine they have achieved a great deal. Accordingly, the world would be a theophany. But let us merely look at it; this world of constantly needy creatures who continue for a time merely by devouring one another, pass their existence in anxiety and want, and often endure terrible afflictions, until they fall at last into the arms of death. He who has this clearly in view will allow that Aristotle is right when he says: [x] (natura daemonia est, non divina; [2] De Divinatione, c. 2, p. 463); in fact he will have to admit that a God who should presume to transform himself into such a world would certainly have been inevitably troubled and tormented by the devil. I know quite well that the would-be philosophers of this century emulate Spinoza, and consider themselves justified in so doing. But Spinoza had special reasons for calling his sole and exclusive substance God, namely to preserve at least the word, if not the thing. The stake of Giordano Bruno and Vanini was still fresh in the memory; these also had been sacrificed to that God, in whose honour incomparably more human sacrifices have bled than have been offered on the altars of all the heathen gods of both hemispheres together. Therefore, when Spinoza calls the world God, it is only exactly the same thing as when Rousseau, in the Contrat social, constantly and throughout describes the people by the word souverain. We might also compare it with this, that once a prince, who intended to abolish the nobility in his country, hit on the idea of ennobling all his subjects, in order not to deprive anyone of his property. Those wise men of our day have of course yet another reason for the nomenclature we are speaking of, but it is no more valid: Thus in their philosophizing, they all start not from the world or from our consciousness thereof, but from God as something given and known; he is not their quaesitum but their datum. If they were boys, I would explain to them that this is a petitio principii; but they know this as well as I do. But after Kant had shown that the path of the earlier dogmatism proceeding honestly, namely the path from the world to a God, does not lead there, these gentlemen imagined they had found a fine way out, and did it cunningly. I hope the reader of later times will forgive me for talking about persons with whom he is not acquainted.

Every glance at the world, to explain which is the task of the philosopher, confirms and establishes that the will-to-live, far from being an arbitrary hypostasis or even an empty expression, is the only true description of the world's innermost nature. Everything presses and pushes towards existence, if possible towards organic existence, i.e., life, and then to the highest possible degree thereof. In animal nature, it then becomes obvious that will-to-live is the keynote of its being, its only unchangeable and unconditioned quality. Let us consider this universal craving for life, and see the infinite eagerness, ease, and exuberance with which the will-to-live presses impetuously into existence under millions of forms everywhere and at every moment by means of fertilizations and germs, and indeed, where these are lacking, by means of generatio aequivoca, seizing every opportunity, greedily grasping for itself every material capable of life; and then again, let us cast a glance at its awful alarm and wild rebellion, when in any individual phenomenon it is to pass out of existence, especially where this occurs with distinct consciousness. Then it is precisely the same as if in this single phenomenon the whole world were to be annihilated for ever; and the entire inner nature of a living being thus threatened is at once transformed into the most desperate struggle against, and resistance to, death. Let us see, for example, the incredible anxiety of a person in danger of his life, the quick and serious sympathy of every witness to this, and the boundless rejoicing after he has been saved. Look at the rigid terror with which a sentence of death is heard, the profound dread with which we view the preparations for carrying it out, and the heartrending pity that seizes us at the execution itself. We might then imagine that it was a question of something quite different from merely a few years less of an empty, sad existence embittered by worries and troubles of every kind, and always uncertain. On the contrary, we could not fail to be amazed that it should be of any consequence whether a person reached a few years earlier the place where after an ephemeral existence he has to be for billions of years. Therefore in such phenomena it becomes evident that I have rightly declared the will-to-live to be that which is incapable of further explanation, but is the basis of every explanation; and that, far from being an empty-sounding word, like the Absolute, the infinite, the idea, and other similar expressions, it is the most real thing we know, in fact the kernel of reality itself.

But if we abstract for a while from this interpretation that is drawn from our inner being, and confront nature as strangers, in order to comprehend her objectively, we find that, from the grade of organic life upwards, she has only one purpose, namely that of maintaining all the species. She works towards this through the immense surplus of seeds and germs, through the pressing intensity of the sexual impulse, through the eagerness of this impulse to adapt itself to all circumstances and opportunities, even to the production of bastards, and through that instinctive maternal affection whose strength is so great that in many kinds of animals it outweighs self-love, so that the mother sacrifices her own life in order to save that of her young. On the other hand, the individual has for nature only an indirect value, in so far as it is a means for maintaining the species. Apart from this, its existence is a matter of indifference to nature; in fact, nature herself leads it to destruction as soon as it ceases to be fit for that purpose. For what purpose the individual exists is therefore clear; but for what purpose does the species itself exist? This is a question to which nature makes no reply, when she is considered merely objectively. For when we contemplate her, we try in vain to discover a purpose for this restless bustle and activity, this impetuous pressing into existence, this anxious care for the maintenance of species. The strength and time of individuals are consumed in the effort to procure sustenance for themselves and their young, and they are only just sufficient, sometimes even quite insufficient, for this. But although, here and there, a surplus of strength, and thus of ease and comfort -- and of knowledge also in the case of the one rational species -- remains, this is much too insignificant to be capable of being regarded as the end and purpose of that whole process of nature. Thus regarded purely objectively, and even as extraneous to us, the whole thing looks just as if nature were concerned only that, of all her (Platonic) Ideas, i.e., permanent forms, none should be lost. Accordingly, it looks as if she had so thoroughly satisfied herself in the fortunate invention and combination of these Ideas (for which the three preceding animal populations of the earth's surface were the preliminary practice), that her only concern now was that anyone of these fine fancies might be lost, in other words, that any one of those forms might disappear from time and the causal series. For the individuals are fleeting, like the water in the stream; the Ideas, on the other hand, are permanent, like its eddies; only the drying up of the water would destroy these. We should have to stop at this puzzling view if nature were given to us only from outside, and thus merely objectively; we should have to accept it as it is comprehended by knowledge, also as sprung from knowledge, i.e., in the sphere of the representation, and accordingly should have to keep to this sphere when unravelling nature. But the case is otherwise, and a glance into the interior of nature is certainly granted to us, in so far as this is nothing but our own inner being. It is precisely here that nature, having arrived at the highest stage up to which her activity could work, is immediately found in self-consciousness by the light of knowledge. Here the will shows itself to us as something toto genere different from the representation, in which nature stood out, unfolded to all her (Platonic) Ideas. It now gives us at one stroke the explanation that was never to be found on the merely objective path of the representation. Therefore the subjective here gives the key to the explanation of the objective.

In order to recognize, as something original and unconditioned, that exceedingly strong tendency of all animals and human beings to maintain life and continue it as long as possible -- a tendency that was described above as the characterization of this subjective, or of the will -- we are still required to make it clear that this tendency is by no means the result of any objective knowledge of the value of life, but is independent of all knowledge; or, in other words, that those beings exhibit themselves not as drawn from the front, but as driven from behind.

With this purpose, we first of all review the immense series of animals, and consider the infinite variety of their forms, as they exhibit themselves always differently modified, according to the element and mode of life. At the same time we reflect on the unattainable ingenuity of their structure and mechanism, carried out in each individual with equal perfection. Finally, we take into consideration the incredible expenditure of strength, skill, shrewdness, and activity every animal has to undertake incessantly throughout its life. Going into the matter more closely, for example, we contemplate the restless industry of wretched little ants, the marvellous and ingenious diligence of bees, or observe how a single burying-beetle (Necrophorus vespillo) buries a mole forty times its own size in two days, in order to lay its eggs in it, and to ensure nourishment for the future offspring (Gleditsch, Physik. Bot. Oekon., Art. III, 220). In this connexion, we call to mind how in general the life of most insects is nothing but a restless labour for preparing nourishment and dwelling for the future offspring that will come from their eggs. After the offspring have consumed the nourishment and have turned into the chrysalis stage, they enter into life merely to begin the same task again from the beginning. We then reflect how, in a similar manner, the life of birds is taken up with their distant and wearisome migration, then with the building of the nest and the procuring of food for the offspring, and how these themselves have to play the same role in the following year; and thus all work constantly for the future that afterwards becomes bankrupt. If we consider the foregoing, we cannot help looking round for the reward of all this skill and exertion, for the end or aim which the animals have before their eyes, and to which they aspire so restlessly; in short, we cannot help asking what comes of all this, and what is attained by animal existence that demands such immense preparations. And there is nothing to show but the satisfaction of hunger and sexual passion, and in any case a little momentary gratification, such as falls to the lot of every individual animal, now and then, between its endless needs and exertions. If we put the two together, the inexpressible ingenuity of the preparations, the untold abundance of the means, and the inadequacy of what is thus aimed at and attained, we are driven to the view that life is a business whose returns are far from covering the cost. This becomes most evident in many animals of a particularly simple mode of life. For example, consider that indefatigable worker the mole; to dig strenuously with its enormous shovel-paws is the business of its whole life; permanent night surrounds it; it has its embryo eyes merely to avoid the light. It alone is a true animal nocturnum, not cats, owls, and bats which see by night. What does it attain by this course of life that is full of trouble and devoid of pleasure? Nourishment and procreation, that is, only the means for continuing and beginning again in the new individual the same melancholy course. In such examples it becomes clear that the cares and troubles of life are out of all proportion to the yield or profit from it. The consciousness of the world of perception, however, gives an appearance of objective worth of existence to the life of those animals that see, although such consciousness is with them entirely subjective and limited to the influence of motives. The blind mole, however, with its perfect organization and restless activity, limited to the alternation of insect larvae and starvation, makes obvious the disproportion of the means to the end. In this respect, the consideration of the animal world left to itself in countries uninhabited by human beings is also particularly instructive. A fine picture of such a world, and of the sufferings nature herself prepares for it without the interference of man, is given by Humboldt in his Ansichten der Natur, second edition, pp. 30 seq.; nor does he neglect on page 44 to cast a glance at the analogous suffering of the human race, always and everywhere at variance with itself. But the futility and fruitlessness of the struggle of the whole phenomenon are more readily grasped in the simple and easily observable life of animals. The variety and multiplicity of the organizations, the ingenuity of the means by which each is adapted to its element and to its prey, here contrast clearly with the absence of any lasting final aim. Instead of this, we see only momentary gratification, fleeting pleasure conditioned by wants, much and long suffering, constant struggle, bellum omnium, everything a hunter and everything hunted, pressure, want, need, and anxiety, shrieking and howling; and this goes on in saecula saeculorum, or until once again the crust of the planet breaks. Junghuhn relates that in Java he saw an immense field entirely covered with skeletons, and took it to be a battle-field. However, they were nothing but skeletons of large turtles five feet long, three feet broad, and of equal height. These turtles come this way from the sea, in order to lay their eggs, and are then seized by wild dogs (Canis rutilans); with their united strength, these dogs lay them on their backs, tear open their lower armour, the small scales of the belly, and devour them alive. But then a tiger often pounces on the dogs. Now all this misery is repeated thousands and thousands of times, year in year out. For this, then, are these turtles born. For what offence must they suffer this agony? What is the point of this whole scene of horror? The only answer is that the will-to-live thus objectifies itself. [*] Let us fully consider it, and comprehend it in all its objectifications, and we shall then arrive at an understanding of its true nature and of the world; but we shall not do so, if we frame general concepts and build houses of cards out of these. Comprehending the great drama of the objectification of the will-to-live and the characterization of its true nature certainly demands a somewhat more accurate consideration and greater thoroughness than simply disposing of the world by attributing to it the name of God, or, with a silliness such as only the German Fatherland offers and is able to delight in, by explaining that it is the "Idea in its being otherwise." The simpletons of my time have for twenty years found in this their unutterable delight. According to pantheism or Spinozism, of which those systems of our century are mere travesties, all this of course actually reels itself off without end, straight on through all eternity. For then the world is a God, ens perfectissimum; that is to say, there can be nothing better, nor can anything better be conceived. Hence there is no need of deliverance from it, consequently there is none; but no one has the remotest idea why the whole tragi-comedy exists, for it has no spectators, and the actors themselves undergo endless worry and trouble with little and merely negative enjoyment.

Let us now add a consideration of the human race; the matter indeed becomes more complicated, and assumes a certain seriousness of aspect, yet the fundamental character remains unchanged. Here too life by no means presents itself as a gift to be enjoyed, but as a task, a drudgery, to be worked through. According to this we see, on a large scale as well as on a small, universal need, restless exertion, constant pressure, endless strife, forced activity, with extreme exertion of all bodily and mental powers. Many millions, united into nations, strive for the common good, each individual for his own sake; but many thousands fall a sacrifice to it. Now senseless delusion, now intriguing politics, incite them to wars with one another; then the sweat and blood of the great multitude must flow, to carry through the ideas of individuals, or to atone for their shortcomings. In peace industry and trade are active, inventions work miracles, seas are navigated, delicacies are collected from all the ends of the earth, the waves engulf thousands. All push and drive, some plotting and planning, others acting; the tumult is indescribable. But what is the ultimate aim of it all? To sustain ephemeral and harassed individuals through a short span of time, in the most fortunate case with endurable want and comparative painlessness, yet boredom is at once on the lookout for this; then the propagation of this race and of its activities. With this evident want of proportion between the effort and the reward, the will-to-live, taken objectively, appears to us from this point of view as a fool, or taken subjectively, as a delusion. Seized by this, every living thing works with the utmost exertion of its strength for something that has no value. But on closer consideration, we shall find here also that it is rather a blind urge, an impulse wholly without ground and motive.

As was discussed in § 29 of volume 1, the law of motivation extends only to particular actions, not to willing as a whole and in general. It depends on this that, if we conceive the human race and its activities as a whole and universally, it does not present itself to us, as when we have in view individual actions, like a puppet-show, the dolls of which are pulled by external strings in the ordinary way. On the contrary, from this point of view, it presents itself as puppets that are set in motion by an internal clockwork. For if we compare, as was done just now, the restless, serious, and laborious efforts of men with what they get from them, in fact with what they ever can get, the disproportion we have pointed out becomes apparent, since we recognize that what is to be attained, taken as motive power, is wholly inadequate to explain that movement and that restless activity. Thus, what are a short postponement of death, a small alleviation of need and want, a deferment of pain, a momentary satisfaction of desire, with the frequent and certain victory of death over them all? Taken as actual causes of movement of the human race, what could such advantages achieve? This human race is innumerable through its being constantly renewed; it is incessantly astir, pushes, presses, worries, struggles, and performs the whole tragi-comedy of world-history. In fact, what says more than anything else, everyone perseveres in such a mock existence as long as he possibly can. Obviously, all this is not to be explained, if we look for the moving causes outside the figures, and conceive the human race as striving, in consequence of a rational reflection or of something analogous thereto (as pulling strings), after the good things which are presented to it and whose attainment would be an adequate reward for its restless efforts and troubles. If the matter were taken thus, everyone would rather have said long ago Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle, [3] and would have passed out. On the contrary, everyone guards and protects his life like a precious pledge entrusted to him under a heavy responsibility, under infinite care and daily necessity; and under these life is just tolerable. Naturally, he does not see the why and the wherefore, the reward for this, but has accepted the value of that pledge in good faith and on trust without looking into it; and he does not know in what this value consists. Therefore I have said that those puppets are not pulled from outside, but that each of them bears in itself the clockwork from which its movements result. This is the will-to-live manifesting itself as an untiring mechanism, as an irrational impulse, which does not have its sufficient ground or reason in the external world. It holds the individuals firmly on this scene, and is the primum mobile of their movements; whereas the external objects, the motives, determine merely the direction of these movements in the particular case, otherwise the cause would not be in any way appropriate to the effect. For, just as every manifestation of a force of nature has a cause, but the force of nature itself has none, so has every individual act of will a motive, but the will in general, none; in fact, at bottom these two are one and the same. The will, as the metaphysical, is everywhere the boundary-stone of every investigation, beyond which this cannot go anywhere. From the original and unconditioned nature of the will, which has been demonstrated, it is easy to explain that man loves above everything else an existence which is full of want, misery, trouble, pain, anxiety, and then again full of boredom, and which, were it pondered over and considered purely objectively, he would of necessity abhor; and that he fears above everything else the end of this existence, which is nevertheless for him the one and only thing certain. [4] Accordingly, we often see a miserable figure, deformed and bent with age, want, and disease, appeal to us from the bottom of his heart for help for the prolongation of an existence, whose end would necessarily appear as altogether desirable, if it were an objective judgement that was the determining factor. Therefore, instead of this, it is the blind will appearing as the tendency to life, the love of life, vital energy; it is the same thing that makes the plant grow. This vital energy can be compared to a rope, stretched above the puppet-show of the world of men, on which the puppets hang by means of invisible threads, while they are only apparently supported by the ground beneath them (the objective value of life). But if once this rope becomes weak, the puppet sinks; if it breaks, the puppet must fall, for the ground under it supports it only in appearance; in other words, the weakening of that love of life shows itself as hypochondria, spleen, melancholy; the complete exhaustion of that love of life shows itself as an inclination to suicide. This then occurs on the slightest occasion, in fact on one that is merely imaginary, since the person, so to speak, now picks a quarrel with himself, in order to shoot himself dead, as many a person does to another for a similar purpose; in fact, in an emergency, suicide is resorted to without any special occasion. (Proofs of this are found in Esquirol, Des maladies mentales, 1838.) And as it is with the persistence in life, so is it also with its action and movement. This is not something freely chosen; but whereas everyone would really like to rest, want and boredom are the whips that keep the top spinning. Therefore the whole and each individual bear the stamp of a forced condition. Since everyone is inwardly indolent and longs for rest, but must nevertheless go forward, he is like his planet, that does not fall into the sun only because a force driving it forward does not allow this to happen. Thus everything is in permanent tension and forced movement, and the course of the world goes on, to use an expression of Aristotle (De Coelo, ii, 13), [x] (motu non naturali, sed violento). [5] Only apparently are people drawn from in front; in reality they are pushed from behind. It is not life that entices them on, but want and trouble that drive them forward. Like all causality, the law of motivation is a mere form of the phenomenon. Incidentally, here is to be found the origin of the comical, the burlesque, the grotesque, the ridiculous side of life; for, driven forward against his will, everyone bears himself as best he can, and the resultant perplexity and embarrassment often present a ludicrous effect, however serious may be the care and worry underlying them.

From all these considerations it thus becomes clear to us that the will-to-live is not a consequence of the knowledge of life, is in no way a conclusio ex praemissis, and in general is nothing secondary. On the contrary, it is that which is first and unconditioned, the premiss of all premisses, and for this reason that from which philosophy has to start, since the will-to-live does not appear in consequence of the world, but the world appears in consequence of the will-to-live.

I need hardly draw attention to the fact that the considerations with which we here conclude the second book point forcibly to the serious theme of the fourth. In fact, they would pass directly into that fourth book, if my architectonics did not make it necessary for our third book with its bright and fair contents to come in between as a second consideration of the world as representation. The conclusion of this third book, however, points once more in the same direction.

________________

Notes:

1. This chapter refers to § 29 of volume 1.

2. "Nature is not divine, but demon-like." [Tr.]

* In the Siecle of 10 April 1859 there is a very finely written story of a squirrel that was magically drawn by a snake right into its jaws: "Un voy ageur qui vient de parcourir plusieurs provinces de l'ile de Java cite un exemple remarquable du pouvoir fascinateur des serpens. Le voyageur dont il est question commencait a gravir le Junjind, un des monts appeles par les Hollandais Pepergebergte. Apres avoir penetre dans une epaisse foret, il apercut sur les branches d'un kijatile un ecureuil de Java a tete blanche, folatrant avec la grace et l'agilite qui distinguent cette charmante espece de rongeurs. Un nid spherique, forme de brins flexibles et de mousse, place dans les parties les plus elevees de l'arbre, a l'enfourchure de deux branches et une cavite dans le tronc, semblaient les points de mire de ses yeux. A peine s'en etait-il eloigne qu'il y revenait avec une ardeur extreme. On etait dans le mois de juillet et probablement l'ecureuil avait en haut ses petits, et dans le bas le magasin a fruits. Bientot il fut comme saisi d'effroi, ses mouvemens devinrent desordonnes, on eut dit qu'il cherchait toujours a mettre un obstacle entre lui et certaines parties de l'arbre: puis il se tapit et resta immobile entre deux branches. Le voyageur eut le sentiment d'un danger pour l'innocente bete, mais il ne pouvait deviner lequel. Il approcha, et un examen attentif lui fit decouvrir dans un creux du tronc une couleuvre lien, dardant ses yeux fixes dans la direction de l'ecureuil .... Notre voyageur trembla pour le pauvre ecureuil. -- L'appareil destine a la perception des sons est peu parfait chez les serpens et ils ne paraissent pas avoir l'ouie tres fine. La couleuvre etait d'ailleurs si attentive a sa proie qu'elle ne semblait nullement remarquer la presence d'un homme. Notre voyageur, qui etait arme, aurait donc pu venir en aide a l'infortune rongeur en tuant le serpent. Mais la science l'emporta sur la pitie, et il voulut voir quelle issue aurait le drame. Le denoument fut tragique. L'ecureuil ne tarda point a pousser un cri plaintif qui, pour tous ceux qui le connaissent, denote le voisinage d'un serpent. Il avanfa un peu, essaya de reculer, revint encore en avant, tacha de retourner en arriere, mais s'approcha toujours plus du reptile. La couleuvre, roulee en spirale, la tete au-dessus des anneaux, et immobile comme un morceau de bois, ne le quittait pas du regard. L'ecureuil, de branche en branche, et descendant toujours plus bas, arriva jusqu'a la partie nue du tronc. Alors le pauvre animal ne tenta meme plus de fuir le danger. Attire par une puissance invincible, et comme pousse par le vertige, il se precipita dans la gueule du serpent, qui s'ouvrit tout a coup demesurement pour le recevoir. Autant la couleuvre avait ete inerte jusque la, autant elle devint active des qu'elle fut en possession de sa proie. Deroulant ses anneaux et prenant sa course de bas en haut avec une agilite inconcevable, sa reptation la porta en un clin d'aeil au sommet de l'arbre ou elle alla sans doute digerer et dormir."

["A traveller, who recently journeyed through several provinces of the island of Java, quotes a remarkable instance of the fascinating power of snakes. The traveller in question began to ascend the Junjind, one of the mountains called Pepergebergte by the Dutch. After he had penetrated the dense jungle, he noticed on the branches of a kijatile a Javanese squirrel with a white head. It was sporting and frisking about with the grace and agility that distinguish this charming species of rodents. A spherical nest, formed of flexible twigs and moss and set in the higher part of the tree at the fork of two branches, and a cavity in the trunk, seemed to be the two goals of its eyes. No sooner was it at a distance from them than it returned to them with the greatest eagerness. It was the month of July, and probably the squirrel had its young in the nest and its storehouse of fruit in the cavity. Suddenly it appeared to be seized with terror and its movements became irregular; it was as if it were trying always to place an obstacle between itself and certain parts of the tree. Finally it crouched and remained motionless between two branches. The traveller had the impression that danger threatened the innocent little animal, but he could not tell what was the nature of the peril. He approached, and a careful examination enabled him to discover in a hollow of the trunk a ribbon snake fixing its eyes in the direction of the squirrel. . . . Our traveller trembled for the poor little squirrel. The mechanism intended for the hearing of sounds is little developed in snakes, and they do not appear to have a very fine sense of hearing. Moreover, the snake was so preoccupied with its prey that it did not appear at all to notice the presence of a human being. Our traveller, who was armed, could have come to the assistance of the unfortunate rodent and killed the snake. But science was stronger than pity, and he wanted to see how the drama would end. The outcome was tragic. The squirrel certainly did not fail to utter a plaintive cry which, for all who know it, indicates the presence of a snake. It went forward a step, attempted to retreat, went forward again, and tried to turn back, but came ever nearer to the reptile. The snake, coiled up and with its head above its coils, was as motionless as a piece of wood, and did not take its eyes off the squirrel. The squirrel descended from branch to branch until it reached a bare part of the trunk. The poor animal now made no further attempt to avoid the danger. Attracted by an invincible power and seized as it were by dizziness, it rushed headlong into the jaws of the snake which were suddenly opened as wide as possible in order to receive it. Up till then the snake had been quite motionless, but now it became just as active as soon as it was in possession of its prey. Uncoiling itself and pursuing its course upwards with incredible agility, it reached the top of the tree in an instant, where no doubt it digested its prey and went to sleep." Tr.]

In this example we see what spirit animates nature, since it reveals itself in this, and how very true is the above-quoted saying of Aristotle. This story is important not merely in a magic regard, but also as an argument for pessimism. That an animal is suddenly attacked and devoured by another is bad, yet we can reconcile ourselves to this; but that such a poor innocent squirrel, sitting by its nest with its young, is compelled, step by step, reluctantly, struggling with itself and lamenting, to approach the snake's wide, open jaws and hurl itself consciously into these, is so revolting and atrocious, that we feel how right Aristotle is in saying [x]. How frightful is this nature to which we belong!

3. "The game is not worth the candle." [Tr.]

4. Augustine, The City of God, xi, c. 27, deserves to be compared as an interesting commentary on what is said here.

5. "Not naturally, but violently." [Tr.]

[admin]

SUPPLEMENTS TO THE THIRD BOOK.

Et is similis spectatori est, quod ab omni separatus spectaculum
videt.

-- Oupnekhat, Vol. I, p. 304.

["And he is like a spectator, because, separated from everything, he beholds a drama." -- Tr.]

SUPPLEMENT TO THE THIRD BOOK

CHAPTER XXIX: On Knowledge of the Ideas [1]

The intellect, which hitherto had been considered only in its original and natural condition of servitude under the will, appears in the third book in its deliverance from that servitude. Here, however, it must at once be observed that it is not a question of a lasting emancipation, but merely of a brief hour of rest, of an exceptional, and in fact only momentary, release from the service of the will. As this subject has been dealt with in sufficient detail in volume one, I have to add here only a few supplementary remarks.

Thus, as we explained in § 33 of volume one, the intellect in its activity in the service of the will, that is, in its natural function, really knows mere relations of things, primarily their relations to the will itself, to which it belongs, whereby they become motives of the will, but also, with a view to the completeness of this knowledge, the relations of things to one another. This latter knowledge first appears in some volume and significance in the human intellect; in the case of animals, on the other hand, it appears only within very narrow limits, even where their intellect is already considerably developed. Clearly the apprehension of the relations that things have to one another takes place only indirectly in the service of the will. It therefore forms the transition to the purely objective knowledge that is entirely independent of the will; it is scientific knowledge, the latter being artistic knowledge. Thus, if many and varied relations of an object are immediately apprehended, its peculiar and proper nature then appears from these more and more distinctly, and is thus gradually constructed out of mere relations, although it itself is entirely different from them. With this method of apprehension, the subjection of the intellect to the will at the same time becomes more and more indirect and limited. If the intellect has strength enough to gain the ascendancy, and to abandon entirely the relations of things to the will, in order to apprehend instead of them the purely objective nature of a phenomenon that expresses itself through all relations, then, simultaneously with the service of the will, it also forsakes the apprehension of mere relations, and with this also really that of the individual thing as such. The intellect then freely soars aloft and no longer belongs to a will. In the particular thing, it knows merely the essential, and therefore its whole species; consequently, it now has for its object the Ideas, in my sense, which agrees with the original Platonic meaning, of this grossly misused word. Thus it has the permanent, unchangeable forms, independent of the temporal existence of individual beings, the species rerum, which really constitute the purely objective element of phenomena. An Idea thus apprehended is, of course, not as yet the essence of the thing-in-itself, for the very reason that it has sprung from knowledge of mere relations. Nevertheless, as the result of the sum of all relations, it is the peculiar character of the thing, and thus the complete expression of the essence that exhibits itself to perception as object, apprehended not in relation to an individual will, but as it expresses itself spontaneously. In this way, it determines all its relations which alone were known till then. The Idea is the root point of all these relations, and thus the complete and perfect phenomenon, or, as I have expressed it in the text, the adequate objectivity of the will at this stage of its phenomenal appearance. At bottom, even form and colour, which are what is immediate in the apprehension of the Idea through perception, do not belong to the Idea, but are only the medium of its expression; for, strictly speaking, space is as foreign to it as is time. In this sense, the Neo-Platonist Olympiodorus said in his commentary to Plato's Alcibiades (Kreuzer's edition of Proclus and Olympiodorus, Vol. II, p. 82): [x], in other words, the Idea, in itself unextended, certainly imparted the form to matter, but first assumed extension from it. Hence, as I have said, the Ideas still do not reveal the being-in-itself of things, but only their objective character, and thus always only the phenomenon. And we should not understand even this character, if the inner essence of things were not otherwise known to us, at least obscurely and in feeling. Thus this essence itself cannot be understood from the Ideas, and in general not through any merely objective knowledge; therefore it would remain eternally a secret, unless we had access to it from an entirely different side. Only in so far as every knowing being is at the same time an individual and thus a part of nature, does the approach to the interior of nature stand open to him, namely in his own self-consciousness. Here it manifests itself most immediately, and then, as we found, as will.

Now what the Platonic Idea is, considered as merely objective image, mere form, and thereby lifted out of time as well as out of all The World As Will and Representation [365] relations, is the species or kind taken empirically and in time; this, then, is the empirical correlative of the Idea. The Idea is really eternal, but the species is of endless duration, although its phenomenal appearance on a planet can become extinct. Even the names of the two pass over into each other: [x], species, kind. The Idea is species, but not genus; therefore the species are the work of nature, the genera the work of man; thus they are mere concepts. There are species naturales, but only genera logica. Of manufactured articles there are no Ideas, but mere concepts, therefore genera logica, and their subspecies are species logicae. To what has been said in this respect in volume one, § 41 I wish to add that Aristotle states (Metaphysics, i, 9 and xiii, 5) that the Platonists did not admit any Ideas of manufactured articles, [x] (ut domus et annulus, quorum ideas dari negant). [2] Compare with this the Scholiast, pp. 562, 563 of the Berlin quarto edition. Further, Aristotle says (Metaphysics, xi, 3): [x] (supple [x] (Si quidem ideae sunt, in iis sunt, quae natura fiunt: propter quod non male Plato dixit, quod species eorum sunt, quae natura sunt). [3] On this the Scholiast remarks, p. 800: [x] (Hoc etiam ipsis ideas statuentibus placet: non enim arte factorum ideas dari aiebant, sed natura procreatorum). [4] For the rest, the doctrine of the Ideas came originally from Pythagoras, that is, if we do not propose to question Plutarch's statement in the book De Placitis Philosophorum, i, c. 3.

The individual is rooted in the species, and time in eternity; and just as every individual is such only by its having the essence of its species in itself, so does it have duration in time only by its being simultaneously in eternity. In the following book a special chapter is devoted to the life of the species.

In § 49 of volume one, I sufficiently emphasized the difference between the Idea and the concept. Their similarity, on the other hand, rests on the following. The original and essential unity of an Idea is dispersed into the plurality of individual things by the sensuously and cerebrally conditioned perception of the knowing individual. But that unity is then restored again through the reflection of the faculty of reason, yet only in abstracto, as concept, universale, which is indeed equal to the Idea in extension, but has assumed quite a different form. In this way, however, it has lost perceptibility and thus its general definiteness and distinctness. In this sense (yet in no other) we might, in the language of the scholastics, describe the Ideas as universalia ante rem, and the concepts as universalia post rem. Individual things stand between the two, and even the animal has knowledge thereof. The realism of the scholastics has certainly arisen from the confusion of the Platonic Ideas, to which ad objective, real existence can of course be attributed, as they are at the same time the species, with the mere concepts, to which the Realists wished to attribute such an existence, and thereby brought about the triumphant opposition of Nominalism.

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Notes:

1. This chapter refers to §§ 30-32 of volume 1.

2. "For example, house and ring, of which they do not say there are Ideas." [Tr.]

3. "But if in general Ideas are to be assumed, then this is only of the things of nature; hence Plato was not wrong in saying that there are as many Ideas as there are species in nature." [Tr.]

4. "And those who accept Ideas also teach this; for they said that there are no Ideas of the products of art, but only of the products of nature." [Tr.]

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CHAPTER XXX: On the Pure Subject of Knowing [1]

Apprehension of an Idea, its entry into our consciousness, comes about only by means of a change in us, which might also be regarded as an act of self-denial. To this extent it consists in knowledge turning away entirely from our own will, and thus leaving entirely out of sight the precious pledge entrusted to it, and considering things as though they could never in any way concern the will. For only thus does knowledge become the pure mirror of the objective inner nature of things. A knowledge so conditioned must be the basis of every genuine work of art as its origin. The change in the subject required for this, just because it consists in the elimination of all willing, cannot proceed from the will, and hence cannot be an arbitrary act of will, in other words, cannot rest with us. On the contrary, it springs only from a temporary preponderance of the intellect over the will, or, physiologically considered, from a strong excitation of the brain's perceptive activity, without any excitation of inclinations or emotions. To explain this somewhat more accurately, I remind the reader that our consciousness has two sides; in part it is consciousness of our own selves, which is the will, and in part consciousness of other things, and as such primarily knowledge of the external world through perception, apprehension of objects. Now the more one side of the whole consciousness comes to the front, the more does the other withdraw. Accordingly, the consciousness of other things, or knowledge of perception, becomes the more perfect, in other words the more objective, the less conscious of ourselves we are during it. Here an antagonism actually occurs. The more conscious we are of the object, the less conscious we are of the subject; on the other hand, the more this occupies consciousness, the weaker and less perfect is our perception of the external world. The state required for pure objectivity of perception has in part permanent conditions in the perfection of the brain and of the physiological quality generally favourable to its activity; in part temporary conditions, in so far as this state is favoured by everything that increases the attention and enhances the susceptibility of the cerebral nervous system, yet without the excitation of any passion. Let us not think here of alcoholic drinks or of opium; on the contrary, what is required is a peaceful night's sleep, a cold bath, and everything that furnishes brain-activity with an unforced ascendancy by a calming down of the blood circulation and of the passionate nature. It is especially these natural means of promoting cerebral nervous activity which have the effect, the better, of course, the more developed and energetic the brain is in general, of making the object more and more detached from the subject, and which finally produce that state of pure objectivity of perception. Such a state of itself eliminates the will from consciousness, and in it all things stand before us with enhanced clearness and distinctness, so that we are aware almost alone of them and hardly at all of ourselves. Therefore our whole consciousness is hardly anything more than the medium through which the perceived object appears in the world as representation. Thus pure will-less knowledge is reached by the consciousness of other things being raised to so high a potential that the consciousness of our own selves vanishes. For we apprehend the world purely objectively, only when we no longer know that we belong to it; and all things appear the more beautiful, the more we are conscious merely of them, and the less we are conscious of ourselves. Now as all suffering proceeds from the will that constitutes the real self, all possibility of suffering is abolished simultaneously with the withdrawal of this side of consciousness. In this way, the state of pure objectivity of perception becomes one that makes us feel positively happy. I have therefore shown in it one of the two constituent elements of aesthetic enjoyment. On the other hand, as soon as the consciousness of one's own self, and thus subjectivity, i.e., the will, again obtains the ascendancy, a degree of discomfort or disquiet appears in keeping therewith; of discomfort, in so far as corporeality (the organism that in itself is will) again makes itself felt; of disquiet, in so far as the will, on the intellectual path, again fills our consciousness by desires, emotions, passions, and cares. For the will, as the principle of subjectivity, is everywhere the opposite, indeed the antagonist, of knowledge. The greatest concentration of subjectivity consists in the act of will proper, and in this therefore we have the clearest consciousness of our own selves. All other excitements of the will are only preparations for this; the act itself is for subjectivity what the jumping of the spark is for the electrical apparatus. Every bodily sensation is in itself excitement of the will, and more often indeed of the noluntas than of the voluntas. The excitement of the will on the intellectual path is that which occurs by means of motives; thus subjectivity is here awakened and brought into play by objectivity itself. This occurs the moment any object is no longer apprehended purely objectively, and so disinterestedly, but excites, directly or indirectly, desire or aversion, even if only by means of a recollection; for then it already acts as motive in the widest sense of this word.

Here I observe that abstract thinking and reading, that are connected with words, do indeed belong in the wider sense to the consciousness of other things, and so to the objective employment of the mind, yet only indirectly, namely by means of concepts. These, however, are the artificial product of our faculty of reason, and so are already a work of deliberation. In all abstract employment of the mind, the will is also the ruler. According to its intentions, the will imparts direction to the employment of the mind, and also fixes the attention; therefore this is always associated with some exertion; but such exertion presupposes activity of the will. Therefore complete objectivity of consciousness does not occur with this kind of mental activity in the same way as it accompanies, as its condition, aesthetic contemplation, i.e., a knowledge of the Ideas.

In accordance with the above, the pure objectivity of perception, by virtue of which we know no longer the individual thing as such, but the Idea of its species, is conditioned by the fact that one is conscious no longer of oneself, but only of the perceived objects, hence that one's own consciousness has been left merely as the supporter of the objective existence of those objects. What makes this state difficult and therefore rare is that in it the accident (the intellect), so to speak, subdues and eliminates the substance (the will), although only for a short time. Here also are to be found the analogy and even relationship of this with the denial of the will, discussed at the end of the following book. Thus although, as was shown in the previous book, knowledge has sprung from the will, and is rooted in the phenomenon of the will, that is in the organism, it is nevertheless vitiated by the will, just as the flame is by its combustible material and its smoke. It is due to this that we can apprehend the purely objective inner nature of things, namely the Ideas appearing in them, only when we ourselves have no interest in them, in that they stand in no relation to our will. It arises from this, again, that the Ideas of things appeal to us more easily from the work of art than from reality. For what we behold only in the picture or in the poem stands outside all possibility of any relation to our will; for already in itself it exists merely for knowledge and directly appeals to that alone. On the other hand, apprehension of the Ideas from reality presupposes to a certain extent an abstraction from our own will, an exaltation above its interests, which demands a special energy and elasticity on the part of the intellect. In a high degree and with some duration, this is characteristic only of genius. Genius consists precisely in the existence of a greater measure of the power of knowledge than the service of an individual will requires. This surplus becomes free, and then apprehends the world without reference to the will. Thus the work of art so greatly facilitates the apprehension of the Ideas in which aesthetic enjoyment consists; and this is due not merely to the fact that art presents things more clearly and characteristically by emphasizing the essential and eliminating the inessential, but just as much to the fact that the absolute silence of the will, required for the purely objective apprehension of the true nature of things, is attained with the greatest certainty. Such silence is attained by the perceived object itself lying entirely outside the province of things capable of reference to the will, in that it is nothing actual but a mere picture or image. This holds good not only of the works of plastic and pictorial art, but of poetry also. The effect of this is also conditioned by disinterested, will-less, and thus purely objective apprehension. It is precisely this that causes a perceived object to appear picturesque, and an event of real life to seem poetical, since this alone spreads over the objects of reality the magic gleam that in the case of sensibly perceived objects is called the picturesque, and in the case of those viewed only in the imagination the poetical. When poets sing of a bright morning, of a beautiful evening, of a still moonlight night, and of many such things, the real object of their glorification is, unknown to them, the pure subject of knowing, called forth by those beauties of nature. On its appearance the will vanishes from consciousness, and in this way there enters that peace of heart which is otherwise unattainable in the world. For example, how otherwise could the verse

Nox erat, et coelo fulgebat luna sereno,
Inter minora sidera [2]

affect us so delightfully and beneficially, in fact so enchantingly? Further, the stranger, or the mere passing traveller, feels the effect of the picturesque or poetical from objects unable to produce this effect on those who live among them. This is explained by the fact that even the novelty and strangeness of the objects of such a disinterested and purely objective apprehension is favourable thereto. For example, the sight of a wholly strange town often makes on the traveller an unusually agreeable impression, which is certainly not produced on the person living in the town; for that impression springs from the fact that the traveller, being out of all relation to the town and its inhabitants, perceives it purely objectively. The pleasure of travelling is in part due to this. This also appears to be the reason why attempts are made to enhance the effect of narrative or dramatic works by shifting the scene to distant times and countries, in Germany to Italy and Spain, in Italy to Germany, Poland, and even Holland. Now if wholly objective, intuitive apprehension, purified of all willing, is the condition for the enjoyment of aesthetic objects, even more so is it for their production. Every good painting, every genuine poem, bears the stamp of the frame of mind it depicts. For only what has sprung from perception, indeed from purely objective perception, or is directly stimulated by it, contains the living germ from which genuine and original achievements can result, not only in the plastic and pictorial arts, but also in poetry, and even in philosophy. The punctum saliens of every beautiful work, every great and profound thought, is an entirely objective perception. But such a perception is absolutely conditioned by a complete silencing of the will which leaves the person as pure subject of knowing. The aptitude for the prevalence of this state is simply genius.

With the disappearance of willing from consciousness, the individuality is really abolished also, and with it its suffering and sorrow. I have therefore described the pure subject of knowing, which then remains over as the eternal world-eye. This eye looks out from all living beings, though with very different degrees of clearness, and is untouched by their arising and passing away. It is thus identical with itself, constantly one and the same, and the supporter of the world of permanent Ideas, i.e., of the adequate objectivity of the will. On the other hand, the individual subject, clouded in his knowledge by the individuality that springs from the will, has as object only particular things, and is as transient and fleeting as these themselves are. In the sense here indicated, we can attribute to everyone a twofold existence. As will, and therefore as individual, he is only one, and that one exclusively, which gives him plenty to do and to suffer. As that which makes a purely objective representation he is the pure subject of knowledge, and only in the consciousness of this does the objective world have its existence. As such he is all things, in so far as he perceives them, and in him their existence is without burden and hardship. Thus it is his existence in so far as it exists in his representation; but then it is without will. On the other hand, in so far as it is will, it is not in him. It is well for everyone in that state where he is all things; it is woeful where he is exclusively one. Every state or condition, every person, every scene of life, needs to be apprehended only purely objectively, and made the object of a description or sketch, whether with brush or with words, in order to appear interesting, delightful, and enviable. However, if one is in it, if one is oneself it, then (as is often said) may the devil endure it. Therefore Goethe says:

What in life does us annoy,
We in picture do enjoy.

There was a period in the years of my youth when I was constantly at pains to see myself and my actions from outside, and to picture them to myself; probably in order to make them enjoyable to me.

As the matter here considered has never come under discussion before me, I wish to add a few psychological illustrations of it.

In the immediate perception of the world and of life, we consider things as a rule merely in their relations, and consequently according to their relative, not their absolute, essence and existence. For example, we regard houses, ships, machines, and the like with the idea of their purpose and their suitability therefor; human beings with the idea of their relation to us, if they have any, and then of their relation to one another, whether in their present actions or according to their position and vocation, perhaps judging their fitness for it, and so on. We can pursue such a consideration of the relations more or less to the most distant links of their concatenation. In this way the consideration will gain in accuracy and extent, but remains the same as regards its quality and nature. It is the consideration of things in their relations, in fact by means of these, and hence according to the principle of sufficient reason. In most cases and as a rule, everyone is abandoned to this method of consideration; I believe even that most people are incapable of any other. But if, by way of exception, it happens that we experience a momentary enhancement of the intensity of our intuitive intelligence, we at once see things with entirely different eyes, for we now apprehend them no longer according to their relations, but according to what they are in and by themselves; and then, in addition to their relative existence, we suddenly perceive their absolute existence as well. Every individual at once represents its species; accordingly, we now apprehend the universal in beings. What we know in such a way are the Ideas of things; but from these there now speaks a higher wisdom than that which knows of mere relations. We ourselves have also stepped out of relations, and have thereby become the pure subject of knowing. But what produces this state or condition by way of exception must be internal physiological processes, which purify and enhance the activity of the brain to such a degree that such a sudden spring-tide of this activity arises. This state is conditioned from outside by our remaining wholly foreign to, and detached from, the scene to be contemplated, and not being at all actively involved in it.

In order to see that a purely objective, and therefore correct, apprehension of things is possible only when we consider them without any personal participation in them, and thus under the complete silence of the will, let us picture to ourselves how much every emotion or passion obscures and falsifies knowledge, in fact how every inclination or disinclination twists, colours, and distorts not merely the judgement, but even the original perception of things. Let us recall how, when we are delighted by a successful outcome, the whole world at once assumes a bright colour and a smiling aspect, and on the other hand looks dark and gloomy when care and sorrow weigh on us. Let us then see how even an inanimate thing, which is yet to become the instrument for some event we abhor, appears to have a hideous physiognomy; for example the scaffold, the fortress to which we are taken, the surgeon's case of instruments, the travelling coach of loved ones, and so on; indeed, numbers, letters, seals can grin at us horribly and affect us like fearful monsters. On the other hand, the instruments for fulfilling our wishes immediately look pleasant and agreeable; for example, the old woman with a hump who carries a love-letter, the Jew with the louis d'ors, the rope-ladder for escape, and so on. Now just as here, in the case of decided aversion or affection, the falsification of the representation by the will is unmistakable, so is it present in a lesser degree in the case of every object that has only some remote relation to our will, in other words, to our inclination or disinclination. Only when the will with its interests has forsaken consciousness, and the intellect freely follows its own laws, and as pure subject mirrors the objective world, yet from its own impulse is in the highest state of tension and activity, goaded by no willing, only then do the colour and form of things stand out in their true and full significance. Only from such an apprehension, therefore, can genuine works of art result, whose permanent value and constantly renewed approval spring from the very fact that they alone exhibit what is purely objective. This is the foundation of the various subjective, and thus distorted, perceptions, as that which is common to them all and alone stands fast; it shines through them as the common theme to all those subjective variations. For the nature displayed before our eyes certainly exhibits itself very differently in different minds; and just as each sees it, so alone can he reproduce it whether by brush or chisel, or in words, or through gestures on the stage. Objectivity alone qualifies one for becoming an artist; but it is possible only by the intellect being detached from its root, the will, by its being free to move, and being nevertheless active with the highest degree of energy.

To the youth, whose perceiving intellect still acts with fresh energy, nature often exhibits herself with complete objectivity and therefore in full beauty. But the pleasure of such a glance is sometimes marred by the distressing reflection that the objects present and exhibiting themselves in such beauty do not also stand in a personal relation to him, by virtue of which they could interest and delight him. Thus he expects his life to take the form of an interesting work of fiction. "Behind that prominent cliff there must be waiting the well-mounted band of my friends; at that waterfall my beloved must be resting; this beautifully lighted building must be her dwelling and that ivy-clad window hers; but this beautiful world is for me a desert!" and so on. Melancholy reveries of youth like these really demand something precisely self-contradictory. For the beauty with which those objects present themselves rests precisely on the pure objectivity, Le., disinterestedness, of their perception, and it would therefore be abolished at once by the relation to his own will which the youth painfully misses. Consequently the whole charm which now affords him a pleasure, although alloyed with a mixture of pain, would not exist at all. Moreover, the same thing holds good of every age and in every connexion; the beauty of the objects of a landscape, which now delights us, would have vanished, if we stood to them in personal relations of which we always remain conscious. Everything is beautiful only so long as it does not concern us. (Here it is not a case of the passion of love, but of aesthetic enjoyment.) Life is never beautiful, but only the pictures of it, namely in the transfiguring mirror of art or of poetry, particularly in youth, when we do not yet know it. Many a youth would obtain great composure if one could help him to gain this insight.

Why does the sight of the full moon have such a beneficent, soothing, and exalting effect? Because the moon is an object of perception, never of willing:

The stars not coveted by us
Delight us with their splendour.

-- Goethe

Further, it is sublime, in other words, it induces in us a sublime mood, because, without any reference to us, it moves along eternally foreign to earthly life and activity, and sees everything, but takes part in nothing. Therefore at the sight of it the will, with its constant care and sorrow, vanishes from consciousness, and leaves it behind as a purely knowing consciousness. Possibly there is also mingled a feeling that we share this sight with millions whose individual differences are extinguished in it, so that in this perception they are one, and this likewise enhances the impression of the sublime. Finally, this impression is also increased by the fact that the moon shines without warming; and here certainly is to be found the reason why it has been called chaste and identified with Diana. In consequence of this whole beneficent impression on our feeling, the moon gradually becomes our bosom friend. On the other hand, the sun never does this; it is like a boundless benefactor whom we are quite incapable of looking in the face.

The following remark may find a place here as an addition to what was said in § 38 of volume 1 on the aesthetic enjoyment afforded by light, reflection, and colours. The wholly immediate, unreflective, yet also inexpressible, pleasure that is excited in us by the impression of colours, which is strengthened by metallic lustre, and still more by transparency, as for example in stained glass windows, and even more by means of clouds and their reflection at sunset -- this pleasure, I say, ultimately rests on the fact that in the easiest manner, in a manner that is almost physically necessary, the whole of our interest is here won for knowledge without any excitement of our will. We thus enter into the state of pure knowing, although in the main this consists in this case in a mere sensation of the retina's affection. But as this sensation is in itself wholly free from pain or pleasure, it is without any direct excitement of the will, and thus belongs to pure knowledge.

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Notes:

1.This chapter refers to §§ 33, 34 of volume 1.

2. "It was night, and the moon was shining in the serene heavens garlanded by small stars." [Horace, Epod. 15, 1. Tr.]