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THE WORLD AS WILL AND REPRESENTATION |
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SECOND BOOK: THE WORLD AS WILL. FIRST ASPECT The Objectification of the Will
17. In the first book we considered the representation only as such, and hence only according to the general form. It is true that, so far as the abstract representation, the concept, is concerned, we also obtained a knowledge of it according to its content, in so far as it has all content and meaning only through its relation to the representation of perception, without which it would be worthless and empty. Therefore, directing our attention entirely to the representation of perception, we shall endeavour to arrive at a knowledge of its content, its more precise determinations, and the forms it presents to us. It will be of special interest for us to obtain information about its real significance, that significance, otherwise merely felt, by virtue of which these pictures or images do not march past us strange and meaningless, as they would otherwise inevitably do, but speak to us directly, are understood, and acquire an interest that engrosses our whole nature. We direct our attention to mathematics, natural science, and philosophy, each of which holds out the hope that it will furnish a part of the information desired. In the first place, we find philosophy to be a monster with many heads, each of which speaks a different language. Of course, they are not all at variance with one another on the point here mentioned, the significance of the representation of perception. For, with the exception of the Sceptics and Idealists, the others in the main speak fairly consistently of an object forming the basis of the representation. This object indeed is different in its whole being and nature from the representation, but yet is in all respects as like it as one egg is like another. But this does not help us, for we do not at all know how to distinguish that object from the representation. We find that the two are one and the same, for every object always and eternally presupposes a subject, and thus remains representation. We then recognize also that being-object belongs to the most universal form of the representation, which is precisely the division into object and subject. Further, the principle of sufficient reason, to which we here refer, is also for us only the form of the representation, namely the regular and orderly combination of one representation with another, and not the combination of the whole finite or infinite series of representations with something which is not representation at all, and is therefore not capable of being in any way represented. We spoke above of the Sceptics and Idealists, when discussing the controversy about the reality of the external world. Now if we look to mathematics for the desired more detailed knowledge of the representation of perception, which we have come to know only quite generally according to the mere form, then this science will tell us about these representations only in so far as they occupy time and space, in other words, only in so far as they are quantities. It will state with extreme accuracy the How-many and the How-large; but as this is always only relative, that is to say, a comparison of one representation with another, and even that only from the one-sided aspect of quantity, this too will not be the information for which principally we are looking. Finally, if we look at the wide province of natural science, which is divided into many fields, we can first of all distinguish two main divisions. It is either a description of forms and shapes, which I call Morphology; or an explanation of changes, which I call Etiology. The former considers the permanent forms, the latter the changing matter, according to the laws of its transition from one form into another. Morphology is what we call natural history in its whole range, though not in the literal sense of the word. As botany and zoology especially, it teaches us about the various, permanent, organic, and thus definitely determined forms in spite of the incessant change of individuals; and these forms constitute a great part of the content of the perceptive representation. In natural history they are classified, separated, united, and arranged according to natural and artificial systems, and brought under concepts that render possible a survey and knowledge of them all. There is further demonstrated an infinitely fine and shaded analogy in the whole and in the parts of these forms which runs through them all (unite de plan), [1] by virtue of which they are like the many different variations on an unspecified theme. The passage of matter into those forms, in other words the origin of individuals, is not a main part of the consideration, for every individual springs from its like through generation, which everywhere is equally mysterious, and has so far baffled clear knowledge. But the little that is known of this finds its place in physiology, which belongs to etiological natural science. Mineralogy, especially where it becomes geology, though it belongs mainly to morphology, also inclines to this etiological science. Etiology proper includes all the branches of natural science in which the main concern everywhere is knowledge of cause and effect. These sciences teach how, according to an invariable rule, one state of matter is necessarily followed by another definite state; how one definite change necessarily conditions and brings about another definite change; this demonstration is called explanation. Here we find principally mechanics, physics, chemistry, and physiology. But if we devote ourselves to its teaching, we soon become aware that the information we are chiefly looking for no more comes to us from etiology than it does from morphology. The latter presents us with innumerable and infinitely varied forms that are nevertheless related by an unmistakable family likeness. For us they are representations that in this way remain eternally strange to us, and, when considered merely in this way, they stand before us like hieroglyphics that are not understood. On the other hand, etiology teaches us that, according to the law of cause and effect, this definite condition of matter produces that other condition, and with this it has explained it, and has done its part. At bottom, however, it does nothing more than show the orderly arrangement according to which the states or conditions appear in space and time, and teach for all cases what phenomenon must necessarily appear at this time and in this place. It therefore determines for them their position in time and space according to a law whose definite content has been taught by experience, yet whose universal form and necessity are known to us independently of experience. But in this way we do not obtain the slightest information about the inner nature of anyone of these phenomena. This is called a natural force, and lies outside the province of etiological explanation, which calls the unalterable constancy with which the manifestation of such a force appears whenever its known conditions are present, a law of nature. But this law of nature, these conditions, this appearance in a definite place at a definite time, are all that it knows, or ever can know. The force itself that is manifested, the inner nature of the phenomena that appear in accordance with those laws, remain for it an eternal secret, something entirely strange and unknown, in the case of the simplest as well as of the most complicated phenomenon. For although etiology has so far achieved its aim most completely in mechanics, and least so in physiology, the force by virtue of which a stone falls to the ground, or one body repels another, is, in its inner nature, just as strange and mysterious as that which produces the movements and growth of an animal. Mechanics presupposes matter, weight, impenetrability, communicability of motion through impact, rigidity, and so on as unfathomable; it calls them forces of nature, and their necessary and regular appearance under certain conditions a law of nature. Only then does its explanation begin, and that consists in stating truly and with mathematical precision how, where, and when each force manifests itself, and referring to one of those forces every phenomenon that comes before it. Physics, chemistry, and physiology do the same in their province, only they presuppose much more and achieve less. Consequently, even the most perfect etiological explanation of the whole of nature would never be more in reality than a record of inexplicable forces, and a reliable statement of the rule by which their phenomena appear, succeed, and make way for one another in time and space. But the inner nature of the forces that thus appear was always bound to be left unexplained by etiology, which had to stop at the phenomenon and its arrangement, since the law followed by etiology does not go beyond this. In this respect it could be compared to a section of a piece of marble showing many different veins side by side, but not letting us know the course of these veins from the interior of the marble to the surface. Or, if I may be permitted a facetious comparison, because it is more striking, the philosophical investigator must always feel in regard to the complete etiology of the whole of nature like a man who, without knowing how, is brought into a company quite unknown to him, each member of which in turn presents to him another as his friend and cousin, and thus makes them sufficiently acquainted. The man himself, however, while assuring each person introduced of his pleasure at meeting him, always has on his lips the question: "But how the deuce do I stand to the whole company?" Hence, about those phenomena known by us only as our representations, etiology can never give us the desired information that leads us beyond them. For after all its explanations, they still stand quite strange before us, as mere representations whose significance we do not understand. The causal connexion merely gives the rule and relative order of their appearance in space and time, but affords us no further knowledge of that which so appears. Moreover, the law of causality itself has validity only for representations, for objects of a definite class, and has meaning only when they are assumed. Hence, like these objects themselves, it always exists only in relation to the subject, and so conditionally. Thus it is just as well known when we start from the subject, i.e., a priori, as when we start from the object, i.e., a posteriori, as Kant has taught us. But what now prompts us to make enquiries is that we are not satisfied with knowing that we have representations, that they are such and such, and that they are connected according to this or that law, whose general expression is always the principle of sufficient reason. We want to know the significance of those representations; we ask whether this world is nothing more than representation. In that case, it would inevitably pass by us like an empty dream, or a ghostly vision not worth our consideration. Or we ask whether it is something else, something in addition, and if so what that something is. This much is certain, namely that this something about which we are enquiring must be by its whole nature completely and fundamentally different from the representation; and so the forms and laws of the representation must be wholly foreign to it. We cannot, then, reach it from the representation under the guidance of those laws that merely combine objects, representations, with one another; these are the forms of the principle of sufficient reason. Here we already see that we can never get at the inner nature of things from without. However much we may investigate, we obtain nothing but images and names. We are like a man who goes round a castle, looking in vain for an entrance, and sometimes sketching the facades. Yet this is the path that all philosophers before me have followed. 18. In fact, the meaning that I am looking for of the world that stands before me simply as my representation, or the transition from it as mere representation of the knowing subject to whatever it may be besides this, could never be found if the investigator himself were nothing more than the purely knowing subject (a winged cherub without a body). But he himself is rooted in that world; and thus he finds himself in it as an individual, in other words, his knowledge, which is the conditional supporter of the whole world as representation, is nevertheless given entirely through the medium of a body, and the affections of this body are, as we have shown, the starting-point for the understanding in its perception of this world. For the purely knowing subject as such, this body is a representation like any other, an object among objects. Its movements and actions are so far known to him in just the same way as the changes of all other objects of perception; and they would be equally strange and incomprehensible to him, if their meaning were not unravelled for him in an entirely different way. Otherwise, he would see his conduct follow on presented motives with the constancy of a law of nature, just as the changes of other objects follow upon causes, stimuli, and motives. But he would be no nearer to understanding the influence of the motives than he is to understanding the connexion with its cause of any other effect that appears before him. He would then also call the inner, to him incomprehensible, nature of those manifestations and actions of his body a force, a quality, or a character, just as he pleased, but he would have no further insight into it. All this, however, is not the case; on the contrary, the answer to the riddle is given to the subject of knowledge appearing as individual, and this answer is given in the word Will. This and this alone gives him the key to his own phenomenon, reveals to him the significance and shows him the inner mechanism of his being, his actions, his movements. To the subject of knowing, who appears as an individual only through his identity with the body, this body is given in two entirely different ways. It is given in intelligent perception as representation, as an object among objects, liable to the laws of these objects. But it is also given in quite a different way, namely as what is known immediately to everyone, and is denoted by the word will. Every true act of his will is also at once and inevitably a movement of his body; he cannot actually will the act without at the same time being aware that it appears as a movement of the body. The act of will and the action of the body are not two different states objectively known, connected by the bond of causality; they do not stand in the relation of cause and effect, but are one and the same thing, though given in two entirely different ways, first quite directly, and then in perception for the understanding. The action of the body is nothing but the act of will objectified, i.e., translated into perception. Later on we shall see that this applies to every movement of the body, not merely to movement following on motives, but also to involuntary movement following on mere stimuli; indeed, that the whole body is nothing but the objectified will, i.e., will that has become representation. All this will follow and become clear in the course of our discussion. Therefore the body, which in the previous book and in the essay On the Principle of Sufficient Reason I called the immediate object, according to the one-sided viewpoint deliberately taken there (namely that of the representation), will here from another point of view be called the objectivity of the will. Therefore, in a certain sense, it can also be said that the will is knowledge a priori of the body, and that the body is knowledge a posteriori of the will. Resolutions of the will relating to the future are mere deliberations of reason about what will be willed at some time, not real acts of will. Only the carrying out stamps the resolve; till then, it is always a mere intention that can be altered; it exists only in reason, in the abstract. Only in reflection are willing and acting different; in reality they are one. Every true, genuine, immediate act of the will is also at once and directly a manifest act of the body; and correspondingly, on the other hand, every impression on the body is also at once and directly an impression on the will. As such, it is called pain when it is contrary to the will, and gratification or pleasure when in accordance with the will. The gradations of the two are very different. However, we are quite wrong in calling pain and pleasure representations, for they are not these at all, but immediate affections of the will in its phenomenon, the body; an enforced, instantaneous willing or not-willing of the impression undergone by the body. There are only a certain few impressions on the body which do not rouse the will, and through these alone is the body an immediate object of knowledge; for, as perception in the understanding, the body is an indirect object like all other objects. These impressions are therefore to be regarded directly as mere representations, and hence to be excepted from what has just been said. Here are meant the affections of the purely objective senses of sight, hearing, and touch, although only in so far as their organs are affected in the specific natural way that is specially characteristic of them. This is such an exceedingly feeble stimulation of the enhanced and specifically modified sensibility of these parts that it does not affect the will, but, undisturbed by any excitement of the will, only furnishes for the understanding data from which perception arises. But every stronger or heterogeneous affection of these sense-organs is painful, in other words, is against the will; hence they too belong to its objectivity. Weakness of the nerves shows itself in the fact that the impressions which should have merely that degree of intensity that is sufficient to make them data for the understanding, reach the higher degree at which they stir the will, that is to say, excite pain or pleasure, though more often pain. This pain, however, is in part dull and inarticulate; thus it not merely causes us to feel painfully particular tones and intense light, but also gives rise generally to a morbid and hypochondriacal disposition without being distinctly recognized. The identity of the body and the will further shows itself, among other things, in the fact that every vehement and excessive movement of the will, in other words, every emotion, agitates the body and its inner workings directly and immediately, and disturbs the course of its vital functions. This is specially discussed in The Will in Nature, second edition, p. 27. Finally, the knowledge I have of my will, although an immediate knowledge, cannot be separated from that of my body. I know my will not as a whole, not as a unity, not completely according to its nature, but only in its individual acts, and hence in time, which is the form of my body's appearing, as it is of every body. Therefore, the body is the condition of knowledge of my will. Accordingly, I cannot really imagine this will without my body. In the essay On the Principle of Sufficient Reason the will, or rather the subject of
willing, is treated as a special class of representations or objects. But even there we saw this object coinciding with the subject, in other words, ceasing to be object. We then called this coincidence the miracle
The identity of the will and of the body, provisionally explained, can be demonstrated only as is done here, and that for the first time, and as will be done more and more in the further course of our
discussion. In other words, it can be raised from immediate consciousness, from knowledge in the concrete, to rational knowledge of reason, or be carried over into knowledge in the abstract. On the other hand, by its nature it can never be demonstrated, that is to say,
deduced as indirect knowledge from some other more direct knowledge, for the very reason that it is itself the most direct knowledge. If we do not apprehend it and stick to it as such, in vain shall we expect to obtain it again in some indirect way as derived knowledge. It is a knowledge of quite a peculiar nature, whose truth cannot therefore really be brought under one of the four headings by which I have divided all truth in the essay On the Principle of Sufficient Reason, § 29 seqq., namely, logical, empirical, transcendental, and metalogical. For it is not, like all these, the reference of an abstract
representation to another representation, or to the necessary form of intuitive or of abstract representing, but it is the reference of a judgement to the relation that a representation of perception, namely the body, has to that which is not a representation at all, but is toto genere different therefrom, namely will. I should therefore like to distinguish this truth from every other, and call it philosophical truth
19. Whereas in the first book we were reluctantly forced to declare our own body to be mere representation of the knowing subject, like all the other objects of this world of perception, it has now become clear to us that something in the consciousness of everyone distinguishes the representation of his own body from all others that are in other respects quite like it. This is that the body occurs in consciousness in quite another way, toto genere different, that is denoted by the word will. It is just this double knowledge of our own body which gives us information about that body itself, about its action and movement following on motives, as well as about its suffering through outside impressions, in a word, about what it is, not as representation, but as something over and above this, and hence what it is in itself. We do not have such immediate information about the nature, action, and suffering of any other real objects. The knowing subject is an individual precisely by reason of this special relation to the one body which, considered apart from this, is for him only a representation like all other representations. But the relation by virtue of which the knowing subject is an individual, subsists for that very reason only between him and one particular representation among all his representations. He is therefore conscious of this particular representation not merely as such, but at the same time in a quite different way, namely as a will. But if he abstracts from that special relation, from that twofold and completely heterogeneous knowledge of one and the same thing, then that one thing, the body, is a representation like all others. Therefore, in order to understand where he is in this matter, the knowing individual must either assume that the distinctive feature of that one representation is to be found merely in the fact that his knowledge stands in this double reference only to that one representation; that only into this one object of perception is an insight in two ways at the same time open to him; and that this is to be explained not by a difference of this object from all others, but only by a difference between the relation of his knowledge to this one object and its relation to all others. Or he must assume that this one object is essentially different from all others; that it alone among all objects is at the same time will and representation, the rest, on the other hand, being mere representation, i.e., mere phantoms. Thus, he must assume that his body is the only real individual in the world, i.e., the only phenomenon of will, and the only immediate object of the subject. That the other objects, considered as mere representations, are like his body, in other words, like this body fill space (itself perhaps existing only as representation), and also, like this body, operate in space -- this, I say, is demonstrably certain from the law of causality, which is a priori certain for representations, and admits of no effect without a cause. But apart from the fact that we can infer from the effect only a cause in general, nota similar cause, we are still always in the realm of the mere representation, for which alone the law of causality is valid, and beyond which it can never lead us. But whether the objects known to the individual only as representations are yet, like his own body, phenomena of a will, is, as stated in the previous book, the proper meaning of the question as to the reality of the external world. To deny this is the meaning of theoretical egoism, which in this way regards as phantoms all phenomena outside its own will, just as practical egoism does in a practical respect; thus in it a man regards and treats only his own person as a real person, and all others as mere phantoms. Theoretical egoism, of course, can never be refuted by proofs, yet in philosophy it has never been positively used otherwise than as a sceptical sophism, i.e., for the sake of appearance. As a serious conviction, on the other hand, it could be found only in a madhouse; as such it would then need not so much a refutation as a cure. Therefore we do not go into it any further, but regard it as the last stronghold of scepticism, which is always polemical. Thus our knowledge, bound always to individuality and having its limitation in this very fact, necessarily means that everyone can be only one thing, whereas he can know everything else, and it is this very limitation that really creates the need for philosophy. Therefore we, who for this very reason are endeavouring to extend the limits of our knowledge through philosophy, shall regard this sceptical argument of theoretical egoism, which here confronts us, as a small frontier fortress. Admittedly the fortress is impregnable, but the garrison can never sally forth from it, and therefore we can pass it by and leave it in our rear without danger. The double knowledge which we have of the nature and action of our own body, and which is given in two completely different ways, has now been clearly brought out. Accordingly, we shall use it further as a key to the inner being of every phenomenon in nature. We shall judge all objects which are not our own body, and therefore are given to our consciousness not in the double way, but only as representations, according to the analogy of this body. We shall therefore assume that as, on the one hand, they are representation, just like our body, and are in this respect homogeneous with it, so on the other hand, if we set aside their existence as the subject's representation, what still remains over must be, according to its inner nature, the same as what in ourselves we call will. For what other kind of existence or reality could we attribute to the rest of the material world? From what source could we take the elements out of which we construct such a world? Besides the will and the representation, there is absolutely nothing known or conceivable for us. If we wish to attribute the greatest known reality to the material world, which immediately exists only in our representation, then we give it that reality which our own body has for each of us, for to each of us this is the most real of things. But if now we analyse the reality of this body and its actions, then, beyond the fact that it is our representation, we find nothing in it but the will; with this even its reality is exhausted. Therefore we can nowhere find another kind of reality to attribute to the material world. If, therefore, the material world is to be something more than our mere representation, we must say that, besides being the representation, and hence in itself and of its inmost nature, it is what we find immediately in ourselves as will. I say 'of its inmost nature,' but we have first of all to get to know more intimately this inner nature of the will, so that we may know how to distinguish from it what belongs not to it itself, but to its phenomenon, which has many grades. Such, for example, is the circumstance of its being accompanied by knowledge, and the determination by motives which is conditioned by this knowledge. As we proceed, we shall see that this belongs not to the inner nature of the will, but merely to its most distinct phenomenon as animal and human being. Therefore, if I say that the force which attracts a stone to the earth is of its nature, in itself, and apart from all representation, will, then no one will attach to this proposition the absurd meaning that the stone moves itself according to a known motive, because it is thus that the will appears in man. [4] But we will now prove, establish, and develop to its full extent, clearly and in more detail, what has hitherto been explained provisionally and generally. [5] 20. As the being-in-itself of our own body, as that which this body is besides being object of perception, namely representation, the will, as we have said, proclaims itself first of all in the voluntary movements of this body, in so far as these movements are nothing but the visibility of the individual acts of the will. These movements appear directly and simultaneously with those acts of will; they are one and the same thing with them, and are distinguished from them only by the form of perceptibility into which they have passed, that is to say, in which they have become representation. But these acts of the will always have a ground or reason outside themselves in motives. Yet these motives never determine more than what I will at this time, in this place, in these circumstances, not that I will in general, or what I will in general, in other words, the maxim characterizing the whole of my willing. Therefore, the whole inner nature of my willing cannot be explained from the motives, but they determine merely its manifestation at a given point of time; they are merely the occasion on which my will shows itself. This will itself, on the other hand, lies outside the province of the law of motivation; only the phenomenon of the will at each point of time is determined by this law. Only on the presupposition of my empirical character is the motive a sufficient ground of explanation of my conduct. But if I abstract from my character, and then ask why in general I will this and not that, no answer is possible, because only the appearance or phenomenon of the will is subject to the principle of sufficient reason, not the will itself, which in this respect may be called groundless. Here I in part presuppose Kant's doctrine of the empirical and intelligible characters, as well as my remarks pertinent to this in the Grundprobleme der Ethik, pp. 48-58, and again p. 178 seqq. of the first edition (pp. 46-57 and 174 seqq. of the second). We shall have to speak about this again in more detail in the fourth book. For the present, I have only to draw attention to the fact that one phenomenon being established by another, as in this case the deed by the motive, does not in the least conflict with the essence-in-itself of the deed being will. The will itself has no ground; the principle of sufficient reason in all its aspects is merely the form of knowledge, and hence its validity extends only to the representation, to the phenomenon, to the visibility of the will, not to the will itself that becomes visible. Now if every action of my body is an appearance or phenomenon of an act of will in which my will itself in general and as a whole, and hence my character, again expresses itself under given motives, then phenomenon or appearance of the will must also be the indispensable condition and presupposition of every action. For the will's appearance cannot depend on something which does not exist directly and only through it, and would therefore be merely accidental for it, whereby the will's appearance itself would be only accidental. But that condition is the whole body itself. Therefore this body itself must be phenomenon of the will, and must be related to my will as a whole, that is to say, to my intelligible character, the phenomenon of which in time is my empirical character, in the same way as the particular action of the body is to the particular act of the will. Therefore the whole body must be nothing but my will become visible, must be my will itself, in so far as this is object of perception, representation of the first class. It has already been advanced in confirmation of this that every impression on my body also affects my will at once and immediately, and in this respect is called pain or pleasure, or in a lower degree, pleasant or unpleasant sensation. Conversely, it has also been advanced that every violent movement of the will, and hence every emotion and passion, convulses the body, and disturbs the course of its functions. Indeed an etiological, though very incomplete, account can be given of the origin of my body, and a somewhat better account of its development and preservation. Indeed this is physiology; but this explains its theme only in exactly the same way as motives explain action. Therefore the establishment of the individual action through the motive, and the necessary sequence of the action from the motive, do not conflict with the fact that action, in general and by its nature, is only phenomenon or appearance of a will that is in itself groundless. Just as little does the physiological explanation of the functions of the body detract from the philosophical truth that the whole existence of this body and the sum-total of its functions are only the objectification of that will which appears in this body's outward actions in accordance with motives. If, however, physiology tries to refer even these outward actions, the immediate voluntary movements, to causes in the organism, for example, to explain the movement of a muscle from an affluxion of humours ("like the contraction of a cord that is wet," as Reil says in the Archiv fur Physiologie, Vol. VI, p. 153); supposing that it really did come to a thorough explanation of this kind, this would never do away with the immediately certain truth that every voluntary movement (functiones animales) is phenomenon of an act of will. Now, just as little can the physiological explanation of vegetative life (functiones naturales, vitales), however far it may be developed, ever do away with the truth that this whole animal life, thus developing itself, is phenomenon of the will. Generally then, as already stated, no etiological explanation can ever state more than the necessarily determined position in time and space of a particular phenomenon and its necessary appearance there according to a fixed rule. On the other hand, the inner nature of everything that appears in this way remains for ever unfathomable, and is presupposed by every etiological explanation; it is merely expressed by the name force, or law of nature, or, when we speak of actions, the name character or will. Thus, although every particular action, under the presupposition of the definite character, necessarily ensues with the presented motive, and although growth, the process of nourishment, and all the changes in the animal body take place according to necessarily acting causes (stimuli), the whole series of actions, and consequently every individual act and likewise its condition, namely the whole body itself which performs it, and therefore also the process through which and in which the body exists, are nothing but the phenomenal appearance of the will, its becoming visible, the objectivity of the will. On this rests the perfect suitability of the human and animal body to the human and animal will in general, resembling, but far surpassing, the suitability of a purposely made instrument to the will of its maker, and on this account appearing as fitness or appropriateness, i.e., the teleological accountability of the body. Therefore the parts of the body must correspond completely to the chief demands and desires by which the will manifests itself; they must be the visible expression of these desires. Teeth, gullet, and intestinal canal are objectified hunger; the genitals are objectified sexual impulse; grasping hands and nimble feet correspond to the more indirect strivings of the will which they represent. Just as the general human form corresponds to the general human will, so to the individually modified will, namely the character of the individual, there corresponds the individual bodily structure, which is therefore as a whole and in all its parts characteristic and full of expression. It is very remarkable that even Parmenides expressed this in the following verses, quoted by Aristotle (Metaphysics, iii, 5): (Et enim cuique complexio membrorum flexibilium se habet, ita mens hominibus adest: idem namque est, quod sapit, membrorum natura hominibus, et omnibus et omni: quod enim plus est, intelligentia est.) [6] 21. From all these considerations the reader has now gained in the abstract, and hence in clear and certain terms, a knowledge which everyone possesses directly in the concrete, namely as feeling. This is the knowledge that the inner nature of his own phenomenon, which manifests itself to him as representation both through his actions and through the permanent substratum of these his body, is his will. This will constitutes what is most immediate in his consciousness, but as such it has not wholly entered into the form of the representation, in which object and subject stand over against each other; on the contrary, it makes itself known in an immediate way in which subject and object are not quite clearly distinguished, yet it becomes known to the individual himself not as a whole, but only in its particular acts. The reader who with me has gained this conviction, will find that of itself it will become the key to the knowledge of the innermost being of the whole of nature, since he now transfers it to all those phenomena that are given to him, not like his own phenomenon both in direct and in indirect knowledge, but in the latter solely, and hence merely in a one-sided way, as representation alone. He will recognize that same will not only in those phenomena that are quite similar to his own, in men and animals, as their innermost nature, but continued reflection will lead him to recognize the force that shoots and vegetates in the plant, indeed the force by which the crystal is formed, the force that turns the magnet to the North Pole, the force whose shock he encounters from the contact of metals of different kinds, the force that appears in the elective affinities of matter as repulsion and attraction, separation and union, and finally even gravitation, which acts so powerfully in all matter, pulling the stone to the earth and the earth to the sun; all these he will recognize as different only in the phenomenon, but the same according to their inner nature. He will recognize them all as that which is immediately known to him so intimately and better than everything else, and where it appears most distinctly is called will. It is only this application of reflection which no longer lets us stop at the phenomenon, but leads us on to the thing-in-itself. Phenomenon means representation and nothing more. All representation, be it of whatever kind it may, all object, is phenomenon. But only the will is thing-in-itself; as such it is not representation at all, but toto genere different therefrom. It is that of which all representation, all object, is the phenomenon, the visibility, the objectivity. It is the innermost essence, the kernel, of every particular thing and also of the whole. It appears in every blindly acting force of nature, and also in the deliberate conduct of man, and the great difference between the two concerns only the degree of the manifestation, not the inner nature of what is manifested. 22. Now, if this thing-in-itself (we will retain the Kantian expression as a standing formula) -- which as such is never object, since all object is its mere appearance or phenomenon, and not it itself -- is to be thought of objectively, then we must borrow its name and concept from an object, from something in some way objectively given, and therefore from one of its phenomena. But in order to serve as a point of explanation, this can be none other than the most complete of all its phenomena, i.e., the most distinct, the most developed, the most directly enlightened by knowledge; but this is precisely man's will. We have to observe, however, that here of course we use only a denominatio a potiori, by which the concept of will therefore receives a greater extension than it has hitherto had. Knowledge of the identical in different phenomena and of the different in similar phenomena is, as Plato so often remarks, the condition for philosophy. But hitherto the identity of the inner essence of any striving and operating force in nature with the will has not been recognized, and therefore the many kinds of phenomena that are only different species of the same genus were not regarded as such; they were considered as being heterogeneous. Consequently, no word could exist to describe the concept of this genus. I therefore name the genus after its most important species, the direct knowledge of which lies nearest to us, and leads to the indirect knowledge of all the others. But anyone who is incapable of carrying out the required extension of the concept will remain involved in a permanent misunderstanding. For by the word will, he will always understand only that species of it hitherto exclusively described by the term, that is to say, the will guided by knowledge, strictly according to motives, indeed only to abstract motives, thus manifesting itself under the guidance of the faculty of reason. This, as we have said, is only the most distinct phenomenon or appearance of the will. We must now clearly separate out in our thoughts the innermost essence of this phenomenon, known to us directly, and then transfer it to all the weaker, less distinct phenomena of the same essence, and by so doing achieve the desired extension of the concept of will. From the opposite point of view, I should be misunderstood by anyone who thought that ultimately it was all the same whether we expressed this essence-in-itself of all phenomena by the word will or by any other word. This would be the case if this thing-in-itself were something whose existence we merely inferred, and thus knew only indirectly and merely in the abstract. Then certainly we could call it what we liked; the name would stand merely as the symbol of an unknown quantity. But the word will, which, like a magic word, is to reveal to us the innermost essence of everything in nature, by no means expresses an unknown quantity, something reached by inferences and syllogisms, but something known absolutely and immediately, and that so well that we know and understand what will is better than anything else, be it what it may. Hitherto, the concept of will has been subsumed under the concept of force; I, on the other hand, do exactly the reverse, and intend every force in nature to be conceived as will. We must not imagine that this is a dispute about words or a matter of no consequence; on the contrary, it is of the very highest significance and importance. For at the root of the concept of force, as of all other concepts, lies knowledge of the objective world through perception, in other words, the phenomenon, the representation, from which the concept is drawn. It is abstracted from the province where cause and effect reign, that is, from the representation of perception, and it signifies just the causal nature of the cause at the point where this causal nature is etiologically no longer explicable at all, but is the necessary presupposition of all etiological explanation. On the other hand, the concept of will is of all possible concepts the only one that has its origin not in the phenomenon, not in the mere representation of perception, but which comes from within, and proceeds from the most immediate consciousness of everyone. In this consciousness each one knows and at the same time is himself his own individuality according to its nature immediately, without any form, even the form of subject and object, for here knower and known coincide. Therefore, if we refer the concept of force to that of will, we have in fact referred something more unknown to something infinitely better known, indeed to the one thing really known to us immediately and completely; and we have very greatly extended our knowledge. If, on the other hand, we subsume the concept of will under that of force, as has been done hitherto, we renounce the only immediate knowledge of the inner nature of the world that we have, since we let it disappear in a concept abstracted from the phenomenon, with which therefore we can never pass beyond the phenomenon. 23. The will as thing-in-itself is quite different from its phenomenon, and is entirely free from all the forms of the phenomenon into which it first passes when it appears, and which therefore concern only its objectivity, and are foreign to the will itself. Even the most universal form of all representation, that of object for subject, does not concern it, still less the forms that are subordinate to this and collectively have their common expression in the principle of sufficient reason. As we know, time and space belong to this principle, and consequently plurality as well, which exists and has become possible only through them. In this last respect I shall call time and space the principium individuationis, an expression borrowed from the old scholasticism, and I beg the reader to bear this in mind once and for all. For it is only by means of time and space that something which is one and the same according to its nature and the concept appears as different, as a plurality of coexistent and successive things. Consequently, time and space are the principium individuationis, the subject of so many subtleties and disputes among the scholastics which are found collected in Suarez (Disp. 5, sect. 3). It is apparent from what has been said that the will as thing-in-itself lies outside the province of the principle of sufficient reason in all its forms, and is consequently completely groundless, although each of its phenomena is entirely subject to that principle. Further, it is free from all plurality, although its phenomena in time and space are innumerable. It is itself one, yet not as an object is one, for the unity of an object is known only in contrast to possible plurality. Again, the will is one not as a concept is one, for a concept originates only through abstraction from plurality; but it is one as that which lies outside time and space, outside the principium individuationis, that is to say, outside the possibility of plurality. Only when all this has become quite clear to us through the following consideration of phenomena and of the different manifestations of the will, can we fully understand the meaning of the Kantian doctrine that time, space, and causality do not belong to the thing-in-itself, but are only the forms of our knowing. The groundlessness of the will has actually been recognized where it manifests itself most distinctly, that is, as the will of man; and this has been called free and independent. But as to the groundlessness of the will itself, the necessity to which its phenomenon is everywhere liable has been overlooked, and actions have been declared to be free, which they are not. For every individual action follows with strict necessity from the effect of the motive on the character. As we have already said, all necessity is the relation of the consequent to the ground, and nothing else whatever. The principle of sufficient reason is the universal form of every phenomenon, and man in his action, like every other phenomenon, must be subordinated to it. But because in self-consciousness the will is known directly and in itself, there also lies in this consciousness the consciousness of freedom. But the fact is overlooked that the individual, the person, is not will as thing-in-itself, but is phenomenon of the will, is as such determined, and has entered the form of the phenomenon, the principle of sufficient reason. Hence we get the strange fact that everyone considers himself to be a priori quite free, even in his individual actions, and imagines he can at any moment enter upon a different way of life, which is equivalent to saying that he can become a different person. But a posteriori through experience, he finds to his astonishment that he is not free, but liable to necessity; that notwithstanding all his resolutions and reflections he does not change his conduct, and that from the beginning to the end of his life he must bear the same character that he himself condemns, and, as it were, must play to the end the part he has taken upon himself. I cannot pursue this discussion any further here, for, being ethical, it belongs to another part of this work. Meanwhile, I wish to point out here only that the phenomenon of the will, in itself groundless, is yet subject as such to the law of necessity, that is to say, to the principle of sufficient reason, so that in the necessity with which the phenomena of nature ensue, we may not find anything to prevent us from recognizing in them the manifestations of the will. Hitherto we have regarded as phenomena of the will only those changes that have no other ground than a motive, i.e., a representation. Therefore in nature a will has been attributed only to man, or at most to animals, because, as I have already mentioned elsewhere, knowing or representing is of course the genuine and exclusive characteristic of the animal kingdom. But we see at once from the instinct and mechanical skill of animals that the will is also active where it is not guided by any knowledge. [7] That they have representations and knowledge is of no account at all here, for the end towards which they work as definitely as if it were a known motive remains entirely unknown to them. Therefore, their action here takes place without motive, is not guided by the representation, and shows us first and most distinctly how the will is active even without any knowledge. The one-year-old bird has no notion of the eggs for which it builds a nest; the young spider has no idea of the prey for which it spins a web; the ant-lion has no notion of the ant for which it digs a cavity for the first time. The larva of the stag-beetle gnaws the hole in the wood, where it will undergo its metamorphosis, twice as large if it is to become a male beetle as if it is to become a female, in order in the former case to have room for the horns, though as yet it has no idea of these. In the actions of such animals the will is obviously at work as in the rest of their activities, but is in blind activity, which is accompanied, indeed, by knowledge, but not guided by it. Now if we have once gained insight into the fact that representation as motive is not a necessary and essential condition of the will's activity, we shall more easily recognize the action of the will in cases where it is less evident. For example, we shall no more ascribe the house of the snail to a will foreign to the snail itself but guided by knowledge, than we shall say that the house we ourselves build comes into existence through a will other than our own. On the contrary, we shall recognize both houses as works of the will objectifying itself in the two phenomena, working in us on the basis of motives, but in the snail blindly as formative impulse directed outwards. Even in us the same will in many ways acts blindly; as in all those functions of our body which are not guided by knowledge, in all its vital and vegetative processes, digestion, circulation, secretion, growth, and reproduction. Not only the actions of the body, but the whole body itself, as was shown above, is phenomenon of the will, objectified will, concrete will. All that occurs in it must therefore occur through will, though here this will is not guided by knowledge, not determined according to motives, but acts blindly according to causes, called in this case stimuli. I call cause in the narrowest sense of the word that state or condition of matter which, while it brings about another state with necessity, itself suffers a change just as great as that which it causes. This is expressed by the rule "Action and reaction are equal." Further, in the case of a cause proper, the effect increases in exact proportion to the cause, and hence the counter-effect or reaction also. Thus, if once the mode of operation is known, the degree of the effect can be measured and calculated from the degree of intensity of the cause, and conversely. Such causes, properly so called, operate in all the phenomena of mechanics, chemistry, and so forth; in short, in all the changes of inorganic bodies. On the other hand, I call stimulus that cause which itself undergoes no reaction proportional to its effect, and whose intensity runs by no means parallel with the intensity of the effect according to degree; so that the effect cannot be measured from it. On the contrary, a small increase of the stimulus may cause a very large increase in the effect, or, conversely may entirely eliminate the previous effect, and so forth. Every effect on organized bodies as such is of this kind. Therefore all really organic and vegetative changes in the animal body take place from stimuli, not from mere causes. But the stimulus, like every cause and motive in general, never determines more than the point of entry of the manifestation of every force in time and space, not the inner nature of the force that manifests itself. According to our previous deduction, we recognize this inner nature to be will, and to this therefore we ascribe both the unconscious and the conscious changes of the body. The stimulus holds the mean, forms the transition, between the motive, which is causality that has passed through knowledge, and the cause in the narrowest sense. In particular cases it is sometimes nearer the motive, sometimes nearer the cause, yet it can always be distinguished from both. Thus, for example, the rising of the sap in plants occurs as a result of stimuli, and cannot be explained from mere causes in accordance with the laws of hydraulics or capillary tubes; yet it is certainly aided by these, and in general it approaches very closely to a purely causal change. On the other hand, the movements of Hedysarum gyrans and Mimosa pudica, though still following on mere stimuli, are very similar to those that follow on motives, and seem almost to want to make the transition. The contraction of the pupil of the eye with increased light occurs on stimulus, but passes over, into movement on motive, for it takes place because too strong a light would affect the retina painfully, and to avoid this we contract the pupil. The occasion of an erection is a motive, as it is a representation; yet it operates with the necessity of a stimulus, in other words, it cannot be resisted, but must be put away in order to be made ineffective. This is also the case with disgusting objects which stimulate the desire to vomit. We have just considered the instinct of animals as an actual link of quite a different kind between movement on stimulus and action according to a known motive. We might be tempted to regard respiration as another link of this kind. It has been disputed whether it belongs to the voluntary or the involuntary movements, that is to say, whether it ensues on motive or on stimulus; accordingly, it might possibly be explained as something between the two. Marshall Hall (On the Diseases of the Nervous System, §§ 293 seq.) declares it to be a mixed function, for it is under the influence partly of the cerebral (voluntary), partly of the spinal (involuntary) nerves. However, we must class it ultimately with the manifestations of will following on motive, for other motives, i.e., mere representations, can determine the will to check or accelerate it, and, as with every other voluntary action, it seems that a man might abstain from breathing altogether and freely suffocate. In fact, this could be done the moment some other motive influenced the will so powerfully that it overcame the pressing need for air. According to some, Diogenes is supposed actually to have put an end to his life in this way (Diogenes Laertius, VI, 76). Negroes also are said to have done this (F. B. Osiander, Uber den Selbstmord [1813], pp. 170-180). We might have here a striking example of the influence of abstract motives, i.e., of the superior force of really rational over mere animal willing. That breathing is at any rate in part conditioned by cerebral activity is shown by the fact that prussic acid kills by first of all paralyzing the brain, and hence by indirectly stopping respiration. If, however, the breathing is artificially maintained until the narcotic effect has passed off, death does not occur at all. Incidentally, respiration gives us at the same time the most striking example of the fact that motives act with just as great a necessity as do stimuli and mere causes in the narrowest sense, and that they can be put out of action only by opposite motives, just as pressure is neutralized by counter-pressure. For in the case of breathing, the illusion of being able to abstain is incomparably weaker than in the case of other movements that follow on motives, because with breathing the motive is very pressing, very near, its satisfaction is very easy on account of the untiring nature of the muscles that perform it, nothing as a rule opposes it, and the whole process is supported by the most inveterate habit on the part of the individual. And yet all motives really act with the same necessity. The knowledge that necessity is common to movements following on motives and to movements following on stimuli will make it easier for us to understand that even what takes place in the organic body on stimuli and in complete conformity to law is yet, according to its inner nature, will. This will, never of course in itself, but in all its phenomena, is subject to the principle of sufficient reason, in other words to necessity. [8] Accordingly, we shall not confine ourselves here to recognizing animals as phenomena of will in their actions as well as in their whole existence, bodily structure, and organization, but shall extend also to plants this immediate knowledge of the inner nature of things that is given to us alone. All the movements of plants follow on stimuli, for the absence of knowledge and of the movement on motives conditioned by such knowledge constitutes the only essential difference between animal and plant. Therefore what appears for the representation as plant, as mere vegetation, as blindly urging force, will be taken by us, according to its inner nature, to be will, and it will be recognized by us as that very thing which constitutes the basis of our own phenomenon, as it expresses itself in our actions, and also in the whole existence of our body itself. It only remains for us to take the final step, namely that of extending our method of consideration to all those forces in nature which act according to universal, immutable laws, in conformity with which there take place the movements of all those bodies, such bodies being entirely without organs, and having no susceptibility to stimulus and no knowledge of motive. We must therefore also apply the key for an understanding of the inner nature of things, a key that only the immediate knowledge of our own inner nature could give us, to these phenomena of the inorganic world, which are the most remote of all from us. Now let us consider attentively and observe the powerful, irresistible impulse with which masses of water rush downwards, the persistence and determination with which the magnet always turns back to the North Pole, the keen desire with which iron flies to the magnet, the vehemence with which the poles of the electric current strive for reunion, and which, like the vehemence of human desires, is increased by obstacles. Let us look at the crystal being rapidly and suddenly formed with such regularity of configuration; it is obvious that this is only a perfectly definite and precisely determined striving in different directions constrained and held firm by coagulation. Let us observe the choice with which bodies repel and attract one another, unite and separate, when set free in the fluid state and released from the bonds of rigidity. Finally, we feel directly and immediately how a burden, which hampers our body by its gravitation towards the earth, incessantly presses and squeezes this body in pursuit of its one tendency. If we observe all this, it will not cost us a great effort of the imagination to recognize once more our own inner nature, even at so great a distance. It is that which in us pursues its ends by the light of knowledge, but here, in the feeblest of its phenomena, only strives blindly in a dull, one-sided, and unalterable manner. Yet, because it is everywhere one and the same -- just as the first morning dawn shares the name of sunlight with the rays of the full midday sun -- it must in either case bear the name of will. For this word indicates that which is the being-in-itself of every thing in the world, and is the sole kernel of every phenomenon. However, the remoteness, in fact the appearance of a complete difference between the phenomena of inorganic nature and the will, perceived by us as the inner reality of our own being, arises principally from the contrast between the wholly determined conformity to law in the one species of phenomenon, and the apparently irregular arbitrariness in the other. For in man individuality stands out powerfully; everyone has a character of his own, and hence the same motive does not have the same influence on all, and a thousand minor circumstances, finding scope in one individual's wide sphere of knowledge but remaining unknown to others, modify its effect. For this reason an action cannot be predetermined from the motive alone, since the other factor, namely an exact acquaintance with the individual character, and with the knowledge accompanying that character, is wanting. On the other hand, the phenomena of the forces of nature show the other extreme in this respect. They operate according to universal laws, without deviation, without individuality, in accordance with openly manifest circumstances, subject to the most precise predetermination; and the same force of nature manifests itself in its million phenomena in exactly the same way. To explain this point, to demonstrate the identity of the one and indivisible will in all its very varied phenomena, in the feeblest as in the strongest, we must first of all consider the relation between the will as thing-in-itself and its phenomenon, i.e., between the world as will and the world as representation. This will open up for us the best way to a more thorough and searching investigation of the whole subject dealt with in this second book. [9] 24. We have learnt from the great Kant that time, space, and causality are present in our consciousness according to their whole conformity to rule and the possibility of all their forms, quite independently of the objects that appear in them and form their content; or, in other words, they can be found just as well when we start from the subject as when we start from the object. Therefore we can with equal reason call them modes of perception or intuition of the subject, or qualities of the object in so far as it is object (with Kant, phenomenon, appearance), in other words, representation. We can also regard these forms as the indivisible boundary between object and subject. Therefore every object must of course appear in them, but the subject, independently of the appearing object, also possesses and surveys them completely. Now if the objects appearing in these forms are not to be empty phantoms, but are to have a meaning, they must point to something, must be the expression of something, which is not, like themselves, object, representation, something existing merely relatively, namely for a subject. On the contrary, they must point to something that exists without such dependence on something that stands over against it as its essential condition, and on its forms, in other words, must point to something that is not a representation, but a thing-in-itself. Accordingly, it could at any rate be asked: Are those representations, those objects, something more than and apart from representations, objects of the subject? Then what would they be in this sense? What is that other side of them that is toto genere different from the representation? What is the thing-in-itself? Our answer has been the will; but for the present I leave this answer aside. Whatever the thing-in-itself may be, Kant rightly concluded that time, space, and causality (which we later recognized as forms of the principle of sufficient reason, this principle being the universal expression of the forms of the phenomenon) could not be its properties, but could come to it only after, and in so far as, it had become representation, in other words, belonged only to its phenomenon or appearance, not to it itself. For as the subject completely knows and constructs them out of itself, independently of all object, they must adhere to representation-existence as such, not to that which becomes representation. They must be the form of the representation as such, but not qualities of what has assumed that form. They must be already given with the mere contrast of subject and object (not in the concept but in the fact); consequently, they must be only the closer determination of the form of knowledge in general, the most universal determination whereof is that very contrast. Now what in turn is conditioned in the phenomenon, in the object, by time, space, and causality, since it can be represented only by their means, namely plurality through coexistence and succession, change and duration through the law of causality, and matter which is capable of being represented only on the assumption of causality, and finally everything again that can be represented only by their means -- all this as a whole does not really belong to what appears, to what has entered the form of the representation, but only to this form itself. Conversely, however, that which in the phenomenon is not conditioned by time, space, and causality, cannot be referred to them, and cannot be explained according to them, will be precisely that in which the thing that appears, the thing-in-itself, becomes immediately manifest. It follows from this that the most complete capacity for being known, in other words, the greatest clearness, distinctness, and susceptibility to exhaustive investigation, will necessarily belong to what is peculiar to knowledge as such, and hence to the form of knowledge, not to that which in itself is not representation, not object, but which has become knowable only by entering these forms, in other words, has become representation or object. Hence only that which depends solely on being known, on being representation in general and as such (not on what becomes known and has only become representation), and which therefore belongs without distinction to all that is known, and on that account is found just as well when we start from the subject as when we start from the object -- this alone will be able to afford us without reserve a sufficient, exhaustive knowledge that is clear to the very foundation. But this consists in nothing but those forms of every phenomenon of which we are a priori conscious, and which can be commonly expressed as the principle of sufficient reason. The forms of this principle relating to knowledge through perception (with which exclusively we are here concerned) are time, space, and causality. The whole of pure mathematics and pure natural science a priori are based on these alone. Therefore in these sciences only does knowledge meet with no obscurity; in these it does not encounter the unfathomable (the groundless, i.e., the will), that which cannot be further deduced. It is in this respect that Kant wanted, as we have said, to call those branches of knowledge, together with logic, specially and exclusively science. On the other hand, these branches of knowledge show us nothing more than mere connexions, relations, of one representation to another, form without any content. All content received by them, every phenomenon that fills those forms, contains something no longer completely knowable according to its whole nature, something no longer entirely explicable by something else, and thus something groundless, whereby knowledge at once loses its evidence and complete lucidity. But this thing that withdraws from investigation is precisely the thing-in-itself, that which is essentially not representation, not object of knowledge; but only by entering that form has it become knowable. The form is originally foreign to it, and it can never become completely one therewith, can never be referred to the mere form, and, as this form is the principle of sufficient reason, can therefore never be completely fathomed. Therefore, although all mathematics gives us exhaustive knowledge of that which in phenomena is quantity, position, number, in short, spatial and temporal relation; although etiology tells us completely about the regular conditions under which phenomena, with all their determinations, appear in time and space, yet, in spite of all this, teaches us nothing more than why in each case every definite phenomenon must appear just at this time here and just at this place now, we can never with their assistance penetrate into the inner nature of things. There yet remains something on which no explanation can venture, but which it presupposes, namely the forces of nature, the definite mode of operation of things, the quality, the character of every phenomenon, the groundless, that which depends not on the form of the phenomenon, not on the principle of sufficient reason, that to which this form in itself is foreign, yet which has entered this form, and now appears according to its law. This law, however, determines only the appearing, not that which appears, only the How, not the What of the phenomenon, only its form, not its content. Mechanics, physics, chemistry teach the rules and laws by which the forces of impenetrability, gravitation, rigidity, fluidity, cohesion, elasticity, heat, light, elective affinities, magnetism, electricity, and so on operate, in other words, the law, the rule, observed by these forces in regard to their entry into space and time in each case. But whatever we may do, the forces themselves remain qualitates occultae. For it is just the thing-in-itself which, by appearing, exhibits those phenomena. It is entirely different from the phenomena themselves, yet in its manifestation it is wholly subject to the principle of sufficient reason as the form of the representation, but it can never itself be referred to this form, and hence can never be thoroughly explained etiologically, or completely and ultimately fathomed. It is wholly comprehensible in so far as it has assumed this form, in other words, in so far as it is phenomenon, but its inner nature is not in the least explained by its thus being comprehensible. Therefore, the more necessity any knowledge carries with it, the more there is in it of what cannot possibly be otherwise thought or represented in perception -- as, for example, space-relations; hence the clearer and more satisfying it is, the less is its purely objective content, or the less reality, properly so called, is given in it. And conversely, the more there is in it that must be conceived as purely accidental, the more it impresses us as given only empirically, then the more that is properly objective and truly real is there in such knowledge, and also at the same time the more that is inexplicable, in other words, the more that cannot be further derived from anything else. Of course at all times an etiology, unmindful of its aim, has striven to reduce all organized life to chemistry or electricity, all chemistry, i.e., quality, in turn to mechanism (effect through the shape of the atoms), and this again sometimes to the object of phoronomy, i.e., time and space united for the possibility of motion, sometimes to the object of mere geometry, i.e., position in space (much in the same way as we rightly work out in a purely geometrical way the diminution of an effect according to the square of the distance and the theory of the lever). Finally, geometry can be resolved into arithmetic, which by reason of its unity of dimension is the most intelligible, comprehensible, and completely fathomable form of the principle of sufficient reason. Proofs of the method generally indicated here are the atoms of Democritus, the vortex of Descartes, the mechanical physics of Lesage which, towards the end of the eighteenth century, attempted to explain chemical affinities as well as gravitation mechanically from impact and pressure, as may be seen in detail from Lucrece Neutonien; Reil's form and combination as the cause of animal life also tend in this direction. Finally, crude materialism, raked up once more in the middle of the nineteenth century and from ignorance fancying itself to be original, is entirely of this nature. First of all, stupidly denying vital force, it tries to explain the phenomena of life by physical and chemical forces, and these in turn by the mechanical operation of matter, the position, form, and motion of imagined atoms. Thus it would like to reduce all the forces of nature to thrust and counter-thrust as its "thing-in-itself." According to it, even light is supposed to be the mechanical vibration or undulation of an imaginary ether postulated for this purpose. When this ether reaches the retina, it beats on it, and, for example, four hundred and eighty-three thousand million beats a second give red, seven hundred and twenty-seven thousand million beats violet, and so on. So those who are colour-blind are those who cannot count the beats, I suppose! Such crass, mechanical, Democritean, ponderous, and truly clumsy theories are quite worthy of people who, fifty years after the appearance of Goethe's theory of colours, still believe in Newton's homogeneous light, and are not ashamed to say so. They will learn that what is condoned in the child (Democritus) will not be forgiven in the man. One day they might even come to an ignominious end, but then everyone would slink away and pretend he had had nothing to do with them. Soon we shall have more to say about this false reduction of original natural forces to each other; but for the moment this is enough. Suppose this were feasible, then of course everything would be explained and cleared up, and in fact would be reduced in the last resort to an arithmetical problem; and that would then be the holiest thing in the temple of wisdom, to which the principle of sufficient reason would at last have happily conducted us. But all content of the phenomenon would have vanished, and mere form would remain. The "what appears" would be referred to the "how it appears," and this "how" would be the a priori knowable, and so entirely dependent on the subject, and hence only for the subject, and so finally mere phantom, representation and form of the representation through and through; one could not ask for a thing-in-itself. Suppose this were feasible, then in actual fact the whole world would be derived from the subject, and that would be actually achieved which Fichte by his humbug sought to seem to achieve. But this will not do; phantasies, sophistications, castles in the air, have been brought into being in this way, but not science. The many and multifarious phenomena in nature have been successfully referred to particular original forces, and whenever this has been done, a real advance has been made. Several forces and qualities, at first regarded as different, have been derived from one another (e.g., magnetism from electricity), and thus their number has been reduced. Etiology will have attained its object when it has recognized and exhibited all the original forces of nature as such, and established their methods of operation, in other words, the rule by which, following the guidance of causality, their phenomena appear in time and space, and determine their position with regard to one another. But there will always remain over original forces; there will always remain, as an insoluble residuum, a content of the phenomenon which cannot be referred to its form, and which thus cannot be explained from something else in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason. For in everything in nature there is something to which no ground can ever be assigned, for which no explanation is possible, and no further cause is to be sought. This something is the specific mode of the thing's action, in other words, the very manner of its existence, its being or true essence. Of course, of each particular effect of the thing a cause can be demonstrated, from which it follows that it was bound to act at that particular time and place, but never a cause of its acting in general and precisely in the given way. If it has no other qualities, if it is a mote in a sunbeam, it still exhibits that unfathomable something, at any rate as weight and impenetrability. But this, I say, is to the mote what man's will is to a man; and, like the human will, it is in its inner nature not subject to explanation; indeed, it is in itself identical with this will. Of course, for every manifestation of the will, for every one of its individual acts at such a time and in such a place, a motive can be shown, upon which the act was necessarily bound to ensue on the presupposition of the man's character. But no reason can ever be stated for his having this character, for his willing in general, for the fact that, of several motives, just this one and no other, or indeed any motive, moves his will. That which for man is his unfathomable character, presupposed in every explanation of his actions from motives, is for every inorganic body precisely its essential quality, its manner of acting, whose manifestations are brought about by impressions from outside, while it itself, on the other hand, is determined by nothing outside it, and is thus inexplicable. Its particular manifestations, by which alone it becomes visible, are subject to the principle of sufficient reason; it itself is groundless. In essence this was correctly understood by the scholastics, who described it as forma substantialis. (Cf. Suarez, Disputationes Metaphysicae, disp. XV, sect. 1.) It is an error as great as it is common that the most frequent, universal, and simple phenomena are those we best understand; on the contrary, they are just those phenomena which we are most accustomed to see, and about which we are most usually ignorant. For us it is just as inexplicable that a stone falls to the ground as that an animal moves itself. As mentioned above, it was supposed that, starting from the most universal forces of nature (e.g., gravitation, cohesion, impenetrability), we could explain from them those forces which operate more rarely and only under a combination of circumstances (e.g., chemical quality, electricity, magnetism), and finally from these could understand the organism and life of animals, and even the knowing and willing of man. Men tacitly resigned themselves to starting from mere qualitates occultae, whose elucidation was entirely given up, for the intention was to build upon them, not to undermine them. Such a thing, as we have said, cannot succeed; but apart from this, such a structure would always stand in the air. What is the use of explanations that ultimately lead back to something just as unknown as the first problem was? In the end, do we understand more about the inner nature of these natural forces than about the inner nature of an animal? Is not the one just as hidden and unexplored as the other? Unfathomable, because it is groundless, because it is the content, the what of the phenomenon, which can never be referred to the form of the phenomenon, to the how, to the principle of sufficient reason. But we, who are here aiming not at etiology but at philosophy, that is to say, not at relative but at unconditioned knowledge of the nature of the world, take the opposite course, and start from what is immediately and most completely known and absolutely familiar to us, from what lies nearest to us, in order to understand what is known to us only from a distance, one-sidedly, and indirectly. From the most powerful, most significant, and most distinct phenomenon we seek to learn to understand the weaker and less complete. With the exception of my own body, only one side of all things is known to me, namely that of the representation. Their inner nature remains sealed to me and is a profound secret, even when I know all the causes on which their changes ensue. Only from a comparison with what goes on within me when my body performs an action from a motive that moves me, with what is the inner nature of my own changes determined by external grounds or reasons, can I obtain an insight into the way in which those inanimate bodies change under the influence of causes, and thus understand what is their inner nature. Knowledge of the cause of this inner nature's manifestation tells me only the rule of its appearance in time and space, and nothing more. I can do this, because my body is the only object of which I know not merely the one side, that of the representation, but also the other, that is called will. Thus, instead of believing that I would better understand my own organization, and therefore my knowing and willing, and my movement on motives, if only I could refer them to movement from causes through electricity, chemistry, and mechanism, I must, in so far as I am looking for philosophy and not for etiology, first of all learn to understand from my own movement on motives the inner nature of the simplest and commonest movements of an inorganic body which I see ensuing on causes. I must recognize the inscrutable forces that manifest themselves in all the bodies of nature as identical in kind with what in me is the will, and as differing from it only in degree. This means that the fourth class of representations laid down in the essay On the Principle of Sufficient Reason must become for me the key to the knowledge of the inner nature of the first class, and from the law of motivation I must learn to understand the law of causality in its inner significance. Spinoza (Epist. 62) says that if a stone projected through the air had consciousness, it would imagine it was flying of its own will. I add merely that the stone would be right. The impulse is for it what the motive is for me, and what in the case of the stone appears as cohesion, gravitation, rigidity in the assumed condition, is by its inner nature the same as what I recognize in myself as will, and which the stone also would recognize as will, if knowledge were added in its case also. In this passage Spinoza has his eye on the necessity with which the stone flies, and he rightly wants to transfer this to the necessity of a person's particular act of will. On the other hand, I consider the inner being that first imparts meaning and validity to all necessity (i.e., effect from cause) to be its presupposition. In the case of man, this is called character; in the case of the stone, it is called quality; but it is the same in both. Where it is immediately known, it is called will, and in the stone it has the weakest, and in man the strongest, degree of visibility, of objectivity. With the right touch, St. Augustine recognized in the tendency of all things this identity with our willing, and I cannot refrain from recording his naive account of the matter: Si pecora essemus, carnalem vitam et quod secundum sensum ejusdem est amaremus, idque esset sufficiens bonum nostrum, et secundum hoc si esset nobis bene, nihil aliud quaereremus. Item, si arbores essemus, nihil quidem sentientes motu amare possemus: verumtamen id quasi APPETERE videremur, quo feracius essemus, uberiusque fructuosae. Si essemus lapides, aut fluctus, aut ventus, aut flamma, vel quid ejusmodi, sine ullo quidem sensu atque vita, non tamen nobis deesset quasi quidam nostrorum locorum atque ordinis APPETITUS. Nam velut AMORES corporum momenta sunt ponderum, sive deorsum gravitate, sive sursum levitate nitantur: ita enim corpus pondere, sicut animus AMORE fertur quocunque fertur [Google translate: If we were cattle, according to the flesh is of the same according to the sense that life and love, our good and that was sufficient, and in this respect if it were us well, nothing else to find one. Again, if we were trees, nothing it is true motion sensing we were able to love: but yet it as it were GRASP seem, by which we were fruitful, fruitful uberiusque. If we were stones, or waves, or the wind, or flame, or what such a one, without feeling and, indeed, any life, not wanting to us, however, as it were, geographically and order some of our appetite. For as the LOVE are the moments of the weights of bodies, downward or gravity, or up to strive to lightness: for so it the weight of the body, as the mind It is said that wherever he is said to have LOVE] (De Civitate Dei [The City of God], XI, 28). [10] Further, it is worth noting that Euler saw that the inner nature of gravitation must ultimately be reduced to an "inclination and desire" (hence will) peculiar to bodies (in the 68th letter to the Princess). In fact, it is just this that makes him averse to the conception of gravitation as found in Newton, and he is inclined to try a modification of it in accordance with the earlier Cartesian theory, and thus to derive gravitation from the impact of an ether on bodies, as being "more rational and suitable for those who like clear and intelligible principles." He wants to see attraction banished from physics as a qualitas occulta. This is only in keeping with the dead view of nature which, as the correlative of the immaterial soul, prevailed in Euler's time. However, it is noteworthy in regard to the fundamental truth advanced by me, which even at that time this fine mind saw glimmering from a distance. He hastened to turn back in time, and then in his anxiety at seeing all the prevalent fundamental views endangered, sought refuge in old and already exploded absurdities. 25. We know that plurality in general is necessarily conditioned by time and space, and only in these is conceivable, and in this respect we call them the principium individuationis. But we have recognized time and space as forms of the principle of sufficient reason, and in this principle all our knowledge a priori is expressed. As explained above, however, this a priori knowledge, as such, applies only to the knowableness of things, not to the things themselves, i.e., it is only our form of knowledge, not a property of the thing-in-itself. The thing-in-itself, as such, is free from all forms of knowledge, even the most universal, namely that of being object for the subject; in other words, it is something entirely different from the representation. Now if this thing-in-itself, as I believe I have sufficiently proved and made clear, is the will, then, considered as such and apart from its phenomenon, it lies outside time and space, and accordingly knows no plurality, and consequently is one. Yet, as has been said already, it is not one as an individual or a concept is, but as something to which the condition of the possibility of plurality, that is, the principium individuationis, is foreign. Therefore, the plurality of things in space and time that together are the objectivity of the will, does not concern the will, which, in spite of such plurality, remains indivisible. It is not a case of there being a smaller part of will in the stone and a larger part in man, for the relation of part and whole belongs exclusively to space, and has no longer any meaning the moment we have departed from this form of intuition or perception. More and less concern only the phenomenon, that is to say, the visibility, the objectification. There is a higher degree of this objectification in the plant than in the stone, a higher degree in the animal than in the plant; indeed, the will's passage into visibility, its objectification, has gradations as endless as those between the feeblest twilight and the brightest sunlight, the loudest tone and the softest echo. Later on, we shall come back to a consideration of these degrees of visibility that belong to the objectification of the will, to the reflection of its inner nature. But as the gradations of its objectification do not directly concern the will itself, still less is it concerned by the plurality of the phenomena at these different grades, in other words, the multitude of individuals of each form, or the particular manifestations of each force. For this plurality is directly conditioned by time and space, into which the will itself never enters. The will reveals itself just as completely and just as much in one oak as in millions. Their number, their multiplication in space and time, has no meaning with regard to the will, but only with regard to the plurality of the individuals who know in space and time, and who are themselves multiplied and dispersed therein. But that same plurality of these individuals again applies not to the will, but only to its phenomenon. Therefore it could be asserted that if, per impossible, a single being, even the most insignificant, were entirely annihilated, the whole world would inevitably be destroyed with it. The great mystic Angelus Silesius feels this when he says:
Men have attempted in various ways to bring the immeasurable greatness of the universe nearer to the power of comprehension of each one of us, and have then seized the opportunity to make edifying observations. They have referred perhaps to the relative smallness of the earth, and indeed of man; then again, in contrast to this, they have spoken of the greatness of the mind of this man who is so small, a mind that can decipher, comprehend, and even measure the greatness of this universe, and so on. Now this is all very well, yet to me, when I consider the vastness of the world, the most important thing is that the essence in itself, the phenomenon whereof is the world -- be it whatever else it may -- cannot have its true self stretched out and dispersed in such fashion in boundless space, but that this endless extension belongs simply and solely to its phenomenon or appearance. On the other hand, the inner being itself is present whole and undivided in everything in nature, in every living being. Therefore we lose nothing if we stop at any particular thing, and true wisdom is not to be acquired by our measuring the boundless world, or, what would be more appropriate, by our personally floating through endless space. On the contrary, it is acquired by thoroughly investigating any individual thing, in that we try thus to know and understand perfectly its true and peculiar nature. Accordingly, what follows, and this has already impressed itself as a matter of course on every student of Plato, will be in the next book the subject of a detailed discussion. Those different grades of the will's objectification, expressed in innumerable individuals, exist as the unattained patterns of these, or as the eternal forms of things. Not themselves entering into time and space, the medium of individuals, they remain fixed, subject to no change, always being, never having become. The particular things, however, arise and pass away; they are always becoming and never are. Now I say that these grades of the objectification of the will are nothing but Plato's Ideas. I mention this here for the moment, so that in future I can use the word Idea in this sense. Therefore with me the word is always to be understood in its genuine and original meaning, given to it by Plato; and in using it we must assuredly not think of those abstract productions of scholastic dogmatizing reason, to describe which Kant used the word wrongly as well as illegitimately, although Plato had already taken possession of it, and used it most appropriately. Therefore, by Idea I understand every definite and fixed grade of the will's objectification, in so far as it is
thing-in-itself and is therefore foreign to plurality. These grades are certainly related to individual things as their eternal forms, or as their prototypes. Diogenes Laertius (III, 12) gives us the shortest and most concise statement of this famous Platonic dogma:
26. The most universal forces of nature exhibit themselves as the lowest grade of the will's objectification. In part they appear in all matter without exception, as gravity and impenetrability, and in part have shared out among themselves the matter generally met with. Thus some forces rule over this piece of matter, others over that, and this constitutes their specific difference, as rigidity, fluidity, elasticity, electricity, magnetism, chemical properties, and qualities of every kind. In themselves they are immediate phenomena of the will, just as is the conduct of man; as such, they are groundless, just as is the character of man. Their particular phenomena alone are subject to the principle of sufficient reason, just as are the actions of men. On the other hand, they themselves can never be called either effect or cause, but are the prior and presupposed conditions of all causes and effects through which their own inner being is unfolded and revealed. It is therefore foolish to ask for a cause of gravity or of electricity; they are original forces, whose manifestations certainly take place according to cause and effect, so that each of their particular phenomena has a cause. This cause itself, again, is just such a particular phenomenon, and determines that this force was bound to manifest itself here and to appear in time and space. But the force itself is by no means effect of a cause, or cause of an effect. It is therefore wrong to say that "gravity is the cause of a stone's falling"; the cause is rather the nearness of the earth, since it attracts the stone. Take away the earth, and the stone will not fall, although gravity remains. The force itself lies entirely outside the chain of causes and effects, which presupposes time, since it has meaning only in reference thereto; but the force lies also outside time. The individual change always has as its cause yet another change just as individual, and not the force of which it is the expression. For that which always endows a cause with efficacy, however innumerable the times of its appearance may be, is a force of nature. As such, it is groundless, i.e., it lies entirely outside the chain of causes, and generally outside the province of the principle of sufficient reason, and philosophically it is known as immediate objectivity of the will, and this is the in-itself of the whole of nature. In etiology, however, in this case physics, it is seen as an original force, i.e., a qualitas occulta. At the higher grades of the will's objectivity, we see individuality standing out prominently, especially in man, as the great difference of individual characters, i.e., as complete personality, outwardly expressed by strongly marked individual physiognomy, which embraces the whole bodily form. No animal has this individuality in anything like such a degree; only the higher animals have a trace of it, but the character of the species completely predominates over it, and for this reason there is but little individual physiognomy. The farther down we go, the more completely is every trace of individual character lost in the general character of the species, and only the physiognomy of the species remains. We know the psychological character of the species, and from this know exactly what is to be expected from the individual. On the other hand, in the human species every individual has to be studied and fathomed by himself, and this is of the greatest difficulty, if we wish to determine beforehand with some degree of certainty his course of action, on account of the possibility of dissimulation which makes its first appearance with the faculty of reason. It is probably connected with this difference between the human species and all others, that the furrows and convolutions of the brain, entirely wanting in birds and still very weakly marked in rodents, are even in the higher animals far more symmetrical on both sides, and more constantly the same in each individual, than they are in man. [12] It is further to be regarded as a phenomenon of this peculiar individual character, distinguishing man from all the animals, that, in the case of the animals, the sexual impulse seeks its satisfaction without noticeable selection, whereas in the case of man this selection, in an instinctive manner independent of all reflection, is carried to such heights that it rises to a powerful passion. Therefore, while every person is to be regarded as a specially determined and characterized phenomenon of the will, and even to a certain extent as a special Idea, in the animals this individual character as a whole is lacking, since the species alone has a characteristic significance. This trace of the individual character fades away more and more, the farther we go from man. Finally, plants no longer have any individual characteristics save those that can be fully explained from the favourable or unfavourable external influences of soil, climate, and other contingencies. Finally, in the inorganic kingdom of nature all individuality completely disappears. Only the crystal can still to some extent be regarded as individual; it is a unity of the tendency in definite directions, arrested by coagulation, which makes the trace of this tendency permanent. At the same time, it is an aggregate from its central form, bound into unity by an Idea, just as the tree is an aggregate from the individual shooting fibre showing itself in every rib of the leaf, in every leaf, in every branch. It repeats itself, and to a certain extent makes each of these appear as a growth of its own, nourishing itself parasitically from the greater, so that the tree, resembling the crystal, is a systematic aggregate of small plants, although only the whole is the complete presentation of an indivisible Idea, in other words, of this definite grade of the will's objectification. But the individuals of the same species of crystal can have no other difference than what is produced by external contingencies; indeed we can even at will make any species crystallize into large or small crystals. But the individual as such, that is to say, with traces of an individual character, is certainly not to be found at all in inorganic nature. All its phenomena are manifestations of universal natural forces, in other words, of those grades of the will's objectification which certainly do not objectify themselves (as in organic nature) by means of the difference of individualities partially expressing the whole of the Idea, but exhibit themselves only in the species, and manifest this in each particular phenomenon absolutely without any deviation. As time, space, plurality, being-conditioned by cause do not belong to the will or to the Idea (the grade of the will's objectification), but only to their individual phenomena, such a force of nature as, e.g., gravity or electricity, must manifest itself as such in precisely the same way in all its millions of phenomena, and only the external circumstances can modify the phenomenon. This unity of its inner being in all its phenomena, this unchangeable constancy of its appearance, as soon as the conditions are present for this under the guidance of causality, is called a law of nature. If such a law is once known through experience, the phenomenon of that natural law whose character is expressed and laid down in it can be accurately predetermined and calculated. But it is just this conformity to law of the phenomena of the lower grades of the will's objectification which gives them an aspect so different from the phenomena of the same will at the higher grades of its objectification. These grades are more distinct, and we see them in animals, in men and their actions, where the stronger or weaker appearance of the individual character and susceptibility to motives, which often remain hidden from the observer because they reside in knowledge, have resulted in the identical aspect of the inner nature of both kinds of phenomena being until now entirely overlooked. The infallibility of the laws of nature contains something astonishing, indeed at times almost terrible, when we start from knowledge of the individual thing, and not from that of the Idea. It might astonish us that nature does not even once forget her laws. For instance, when once it is according to a natural law that, if certain materials are brought together under definite conditions, a chemical combination will occur, gas will be evolved, or combustion will take place; then, if the conditions come about, either through our own agency or by pure chance, today just as much as a thousand years ago, the definite phenomenon appears at once and without delay. (In the case of pure chance, the promptness and accuracy are the more astonishing, because unexpected.) We are most vividly impressed by this marvellous fact in the case of rare phenomena which occur only in very complex circumstances, but whose occurrence in such circumstances has been previously foretold to us. For example, certain metals, arranged alternately in a fluid containing an acid, are brought into contact; silver leaf brought between the extremities of this series is inevitably consumed suddenly in green flames; or, under certain conditions, the hard diamond is transformed into carbonic acid. It is the ghostly omnipresence of natural forces which then astonishes us, and we notice here something that in the case of ordinary everyday phenomena no longer strikes us, namely how the connexion between cause and effect is really just as mysterious as that which we imagine between a magical formula and the spirit that necessarily appears when invoked thereby. On the other hand, if we have penetrated into the philosophical knowledge that a force of nature is a definite grade of the objectification of the will, in other words, a definite grade of what we recognize in ourselves as our innermost being; if we have attained to the knowledge that this will, in itself and apart from its phenomenon and the forms thereof, lies outside time and space, and thus that the plurality conditioned by these does not belong to it or directly to the grade of the will's objectification, i.e., to the Idea, but only to their phenomena; and if we remember that the law of causality has significance only in relation to time and space, since it determines the position therein of the many and varied phenomena of the different Ideas in which the will manifests itself, regulating the order in which they must appear; then, I say, the inner meaning of Kant's great doctrine has dawned on us in this knowledge. It is the doctrine that space, time, and causality belong not to the thing-in-itself, but only to the phenomenon, that they are only the forms of our knowledge, not qualities of the thing-in-itself. If we have grasped this, we shall see that this astonishment at the conformity to law and the accuracy of operation of a natural force, the complete sameness of all its millions of phenomena, and the infallibility of its appearance, is in fact like the astonishment of a child or of a savage who, looking for the first time at some flower through a many-faceted glass, marvels at the complete similarity of the innumerable flowers that he sees, and counts the leaves of each separately. Therefore every universal, original force of nature is, in its inner essence, nothing but the objectification of the will at a low grade, and we call every such grade an eternal Idea in Plato's sense. But the law of nature is the relation of the Idea to the form of its phenomenon. This form is time, space, and causality, having a necessary and inseparable connexion and relation to one another. Through time and space the Idea multiplies itself into innumerable phenomena, but the order in which these enter into those forms of multiplicity is definitely determined by the law of causality. This law is, so to speak, the norm of the extreme points of those phenomena of different Ideas, according to which space, time, and matter are assigned to them. This norm is, therefore, necessarily related to the identity of the whole of existing matter which is the common substratum of all these different phenomena. If all these were not referred to that common matter, in the possession of which they have to be divided, there would be no need for such a law to determine their claims. They might all at once and together fill endless space throughout an endless time. Therefore only because all those phenomena of the eternal Ideas are referred to one and the same matter must there be a rule for their appearance and disappearance, otherwise one would not make way for another. Thus the law of causality is essentially bound up with that of the persistence of substance; each reciprocally obtains significance from the other. Again, space and time are related to them in just the same way. For time is the mere possibility of opposed states in the same matter; space is the mere possibility of the persistence of the same matter in all kinds of opposed states. Therefore in the previous book we declared matter to be the union of time and space, and this union shows itself as fluctuation of the accidents with persistence of the substance, the universal possibility of which is precisely causality or becoming. Therefore we said also that matter is through and through causality. We declared the understanding to be the subjective correlative of causality, and said that matter (and hence the whole world as representation) exists only for the understanding; the understanding is its condition, its supporter, as its necessary correlative. All this is here mentioned only in passing, to remind the reader of what was said in the first book. For a complete understanding of these two books, we are required to observe their inner agreement; for that which is inseparably united in the actual world as its two sides, namely will and representation, has been torn apart in these two books, so that we may recognize each of them more clearly in isolation. Perhaps it may not be superfluous to make even clearer, by an example, how the law of causality has meaning only in relation to time and space, and to matter which consists in the union of the two. This law determines the limits according to which the phenomena of the forces of nature are distributed in the possession of matter. The original natural forces themselves, however, as immediate objectification of the will, that will as thing-in-itself not being subject to the principle of sufficient reason, lie outside those forms. Only within these forms has any etiological explanation validity and meaning, and for this reason if can never lead us to the inner reality of nature. For this purpose let us imagine some kind of machine constructed according to the laws of mechanics. Iron weights begin its movement by their gravity; copper wheels resist through their rigidity, thrust and raise one another and the levers by virtue of their impenetrability, and so on. Here gravity, rigidity, and impenetrability are original, unexplained forces; mechanics tells us merely the conditions under which, and the manner in which, they manifest themselves, appear, and govern a definite matter, time and place. Now a powerful magnet can affect the iron of the weights, and overcome gravity; the movement of the machine stops, and the matter is at once the scene of a quite different force of nature, namely magnetism, of which etiological explanation again tells us nothing more than the conditions of its appearance. Or let the copper discs of that machine be laid on zinc plates, and an acid solution be introduced between them. The same matter of the machine is at once subject to another original force, galvanism, which now governs it according to its own laws, and reveals itself in that matter through its phenomena. Again, etiology can tell us nothing more about these than the circumstances under which, and the laws by which, they manifest themselves. Now let us increase the temperature and add pure oxygen; the whole machine bums, in other words, once again an entirely different natural force, the chemical, has an irresistible claim to that matter at this time and in this place, and reveals itself in this matter as Idea, as a definite grade of the will's objectification. The resulting metallic oxide now combines with an acid, and a salt is produced; crystals are formed. These are the phenomenon of another Idea that in turn is itself quite unfathomable, whereas the appearance of its phenomenon depends on those conditions that etiology is able to state. The crystals disintegrate, mix with other materials, and a vegetation springs from them, a new phenomenon of will. And thus the same persistent matter could be followed ad infinitum, and we would see how first this and then that natural force obtained a right to it. and inevitably seized it, in order to appear and reveal its own inner nature. The law of causality states the condition of this right, the point of time and space where it becomes valid, but the explanation based on this law goes only thus far. The force itself is phenomenon of the will, and, as such, is not subject to the forms of the principle of sufficient reason, that is to say, it is groundless. It lies outside all time, is omnipresent, and, so to speak, seems constantly to wait for the appearance of those circumstances under which it can manifest itself and take possession of a definite piece of matter, supplanting the forces that have hitherto governed it. All time exists only for the phenomenon of the force, and is without significance for the force itself. For thousands of years chemical forces slumber in matter, till contact with the reagents sets them free; then they appear, but time exists only for this phenomenon or appearance, not for the forces themselves. For thousands of years galvanism slumbers in copper and zinc, and they lie quietly beside silver, which must go up in flames as soon as all three come into contact under the required conditions. Even in the organic kingdom, we see a dry seed preserve the slumbering force for three thousand years, and with the ultimate appearance of favourable circumstances grow up as a plant. [13] If from this discussion we now clearly understand the difference between the force of nature and all its phenomena; if we have clearly seen that the former is the will itself at this definite stage of its objectification, but that plurality comes to phenomena only through time and space, and that the law of causality is nothing but the determination in time and space of the position of the individual phenomena, then we shall also recognize the perfect truth and deep meaning of Malebranche's doctrine of occasional causes. It is well worth while to compare this doctrine of his, as he explains it in the Recherches de la Verite, especially in the third chapter of the second part of the sixth book, and in the eclaircissements [14] appended to that chapter, with my present description, and to observe the perfect agreement of the two doctrines, in spite of so great a difference in the trains of thought. Indeed, I must admire how Malebranche, though completely involved in the positive dogmas inevitably forced on him by the men of his time, nevertheless, in such bonds and under such a burden, hit on the truth so happily, so correctly, and knew how to reconcile it with those very dogmas, at any rate in their language. For the power of truth is incredibly great and of unutterable endurance. We find frequent traces of it again in all, even the most bizarre and absurd, dogmas of different times and countries, often indeed in strange company, curiously mixed up but yet recognizable. It is then like a plant that germinates under a heap of large stones, but yet climbs up towards the light, working itself through with many deviations and windings, disfigured, bleached, stunted in growth -- but yet towards the light. In any case, Malebranche is right; every natural cause is only an occasional cause. It gives only the opportunity, the occasion, for the phenomenon of that one and indivisible will which is the in-itself of all things, and whose graduated objectification is this whole visible world. Only the appearing, the becoming visible, in such a place and at such a time, is brought about by the cause, and is to that extent dependent on it, but not the whole of the phenomenon, not its inner nature. This is the will itself, to which the principle of sufficient reason has no application, and which is therefore groundless. Nothing in the world has a cause of its existence absolutely and generally, but only a cause from which it exists precisely here and now. That a stone exhibits now gravity, now rigidity, now electricity, now chemical properties, depends on causes, on external impressions, and from these is to be explained. But those properties themselves, and hence the whole of its inner being which consists of them, and consequently manifests itself in all the ways mentioned, and thus in general that the stone is such as it is, that it exists generally -- all this has no ground, but is the becoming visible of the groundless will. Thus every cause is an occasional cause. We have found it in nature-without-knowledge, but it is also precisely the same where motives, and not causes or stimuli, determine the point of entry of the phenomena, and hence in the actions of animals and of human beings. For in both cases it is one and the same will that appears, extremely different in the grades of its manifestation, multiplied in their phenomena, and, in regard to them, subject to the principle of sufficient reason, but in itself free from all this. Motives do not determine man's character, but only the phenomenon or appearance of that character, that is, the deeds and actions, the external form of the course of his life, not its inner significance and content. These proceed from the character which is the immediate phenomenon of the will, and is therefore groundless. That one man is wicked and another good does not depend on motives and external influences such as teaching and preaching; and in this sense the thing is absolutely inexplicable. But whether a wicked man shows his wickedness in petty injustices, cowardly tricks, and low villainy, practised by him in the narrow sphere of his surroundings, or as a conqueror oppresses nations, throws a world into misery and distress, and sheds the blood of millions, this is the outward form of his phenomenon or appearance, that which is inessential to it, and it depends on the circumstances in which fate has placed him, on the surroundings, on external influences, on motives. But his decision on these motives can never be explained from them; it proceeds from the will, whose phenomenon this man is. We shall speak of this in the fourth book. The way in which the character discloses its qualities can be fully compared with the way in which every body in nature-without-knowledge reveals its qualities. Water remains water with the qualities inherent in it. But whether as a calm lake it reflects its banks, or dashes in foam over rocks, or by artificial means spouts into the air in a tall jet, all this depends on external causes; the one is as natural to it as is the other. But it will always show one or the other according to the circumstances; it is equally ready for all, yet in every case it is true to its character, and always reveals that alone. So also will every human character reveal itself under all circumstances, but the phenomena proceeding from it will be in accordance with the circumstances. 27. If, from all the foregoing remarks on the forces of nature and their phenomena, we have come to see clearly how far explanation from causes can go, and where it must stop, unless it is to lapse into the foolish attempt to reduce the content of all phenomena to their mere form, when ultimately nothing but form would remain, we shall now be able to determine in general what is to be demanded of all etiology. It has to search for the causes of all phenomena in nature, in other words, for the circumstances under which they always appear. Then it has to refer the many different phenomena having various forms in various circumstances, to what operates in every phenomenon and is presupposed with the cause, namely to original forces of nature. It must correctly distinguish whether a difference of the phenomenon is due to a difference of the force, or only to a difference in the circumstances in which the force manifests itself. With equal care it must guard against regarding as phenomenon of different forces what is merely manifestation of one and the same force under different circumstances, and conversely against regarding as manifestations of one force what belongs originally to different forces. Now this directly requires the power of judgement; hence it is that so few are capable of broadening our insight into physics, but all are able to enlarge experience. Indolence and ignorance make us disposed to appeal too soon to original forces. This is seen with an exaggeration resembling irony in the entities and quiddities of the scholastics. Nothing is farther from my desire than to favour their reintroduction. We are as little permitted to appeal to the objectification of the will, instead of giving a physical explanation, as to appeal to the creative power of God. For physics demands causes, but the will is never a cause. Its relation to the phenomenon is certainly not in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason; but that which in itself is will, exists on the other hand as representation, that is to say, is phenomenon. As such, it follows the laws that constitute the form of the phenomenon. For example, although every movement is always phenomenon of will, it must nevertheless have a cause from which it is to be explained with reference to a definite time and place, in other words, not in general according to its inner nature, but as a particular phenomenon. In the case of the stone, this cause is mechanical; in the case of a man's movement, it is a motive; but it can never be absent. On the other hand, the universal, the common reality, of all phenomena of a definite kind, that which must be presupposed if explanation from the cause is to have sense or meaning, is the universal force of nature, which in physics must remain a qualitas occulta, just because etiological explanation here ends and the metaphysical begins. But the chain of causes and effects is never interrupted by an original force to which appeal has to be made. It does not run back to this force, as if it were the first link, but the nearest link of the chain, as well as the remotest, presupposes the original force, and could otherwise explain nothing. A series of causes and effects can be the phenomenon of the most various kinds of forces; the successive entry of such forces into visibility is conducted through the series, as I have illustrated above by the example of a metal machine. But the variety of these original forces, that cannot be derived from one another, in no way interrupts the unity of that chain of causes, and the connexion between all its links. The etiology and the philosophy of nature never interfere with each other; on the contrary, they go hand in hand, considering the same object from different points of view. Etiology gives an account of the causes which necessarily produce the particular phenomenon to be explained. It shows, as the basis of all its explanations, the universal forces that are active in all these causes and effects. It accurately determines these forces, their number, their differences, and then all the effects in which each force appears differently according to the difference of the circumstances, always in keeping with its own peculiar character. It discloses this character in accordance with an infallible rule that is called a law of nature. As soon as physics has achieved all this completely in every respect, it has attained perfection. In inorganic nature there is then no longer any force unknown, and there is no longer any effect which has not been shown to be the phenomenon of one of those forces under definite circumstances according to a law of nature. However, a law of nature remains merely the observed rule by which nature proceeds every time, as soon as certain definite circumstances arise. Therefore we can certainly define a law of nature as a fact generally expressed, un fait generalise. Accordingly, a complete statement of all the laws of nature would be only a complete catalogue of facts. The consideration of the whole of nature is then completed by morphology, which enumerates, compares, and arranges all the enduring forms of organic nature. It has little to say about the cause of the appearance of individual beings, for this in the case of all is procreation, the theory of which is a separate matter; and in rare cases it is generatio aequivoca. But to this last belongs, strictly speaking, the way in which all the lower grades of the will's objectivity, that is, physical and chemical phenomena, appear in detail, and it is precisely the task of etiology to state the conditions for the appearance of these. On the other hand, philosophy everywhere, and hence in nature also, considers the universal alone. Here the original forces themselves are its object, and it recognizes in them the different grades of the objectification of the will that is the inner nature, the in-itself, of this world. When it regards the world apart from will, it declares it to be the mere representation of the subject. But if etiology, instead of paving the way for philosophy and supplying its doctrines with application by examples, imagines that its aim is rather to deny all original forces, except perhaps one, the most universal, e.g., impenetrability, which it imagines that it thoroughly understands, and to which it consequently tries to refer by force all the others, then it withdraws from its own foundation, and can only give us error instead of truth. The content of nature is now supplanted by the form; everything is ascribed to the circumstances working from outside, and nothing to the inner nature of things. If we could actually succeed in this way, then, as we have said already, an arithmetical sum would ultimately solve the riddle of the world. But this path is followed if, as already mentioned, it is thought that all physiological effects ought to be referred to form and combination, thus possibly to electricity, this again to chemical force, and chemical force to mechanism. The mistake of Descartes, for instance, and of all the Atomists, was of this last description. They referred the movement of heavenly bodies to the impact of a fluid, and the qualities to the connexion and form of the atoms. They endeavoured to explain all the phenomena of nature as mere phenomena of impenetrability and cohesion. Although this has been given up, the same thing is done in our day by the electrical, chemical, and mechanical physiologists who obstinately try to explain the whole of life and all the functions of the organism from the "form and combination" of its component parts. In Meckel's Archiv fur Physiologie, 1820, Vol. V, p. 185, we still find it stated that the aim of physiological explanation is the reduction of organic life to the universal forces considered by physics. In his Philosophie zoologique (Vol. II, chap. 3) Lamarck also declares life to be a mere effect of heat and electricity: le calorique et la matiere electrique suffisent parfaitement pour composer ensemble cette cause essentielle de la vie (p. 16). [15] Accordingly, heat and electricity would really be the thing-in-itself, and the animal and plant worlds its phenomenon. The absurdity of this opinion stands out glaringly on pages 306 seqq. of that work. It is well known that all those views, so often exploded, have again appeared with renewed audacity in recent times. If we examine the matter closely, then ultimately at the basis of these views is the presupposition that the organism is only an aggregate of phenomena of physical, chemical, and mechanical forces that have come together in it by chance, and have brought about the organism as a freak of nature without further significance. Accordingly, the organism of an animal or of a human being would be, philosophically considered, not the exhibition of a particular Idea, in other words, not itself immediate objectivity of the will at a definite higher grade, but there would appear in it only those Ideas that objectify the will in electricity, chemistry, and mechanism. Hence the organism would be just as fortuitously put together from the chance meeting of these forces as are the forms of men and animals in clouds or stalactites; and hence in itself it would be no more interesting. However, we shall see immediately to what extent this application of physical and chemical methods of explanation to the organism may still, within certain limits, be permissible and useful, for I shall explain that the vital force certainly avails itself of and uses the forces of inorganic nature. Yet these forces· in no way constitute the vital force, any more than a hammer and an anvil constitute a blacksmith. Therefore, not even the simplest plant life can ever be explained from them, say from capillary attraction and endosmosis, much less animal life. The following observations will prepare for us the way to this somewhat difficult discussion. From all that has been said, it follows that it is indeed a mistake of natural science for it to try to refer the higher grades of the will's objectivity to lower ones. Failing to recognize and denying original and self-existing natural forces is just as unsound as is the groundless assumption of characteristic forces, where what occurs is only a particular kind of manifestation of something already known. Therefore Kant is right when he says that it is absurd to hope for the Newton of a blade of grass, in other words, for the man who would reduce the blade of grass to phenomena of physical and chemical forces, of which it would be a chance concretion, and so a mere freak of nature. In such a freak no special and characteristic Idea would appear, that is to say, the will would not directly reveal itself in it at a higher and special grade, but only as in the phenomena of inorganic nature, and by chance in this form. The scholastics, who would certainly not have allowed such things, would have said quite rightly that it would be a complete denial of the forma substantialis, and a degrading of it to the mere forma accidentalis. For Aristotle's forma substantialis denotes exactly what I call the degree of the will's objectification in a thing. On the other hand, it must not be overlooked that in all Ideas, that is to say, in all the forces of inorganic and in all the forms of organic nature, it is one and the same will that reveals itself, i.e., enters the form of representation, enters objectivity. Therefore, its unity must make itself known also through an inner relationship between all its phenomena. Now this reveals itself at the higher grades of the will's objectivity, where the whole phenomenon is more distinct, and thus in the plant and animal kingdoms, through the universally prevailing analogy of all forms, namely the fundamental type recurring in all phenomena. This has therefore become the guiding principle of the admirable zoological systems begun by the French in the nineteenth century, and is most completely established in comparative anatomy as l'unite de plan, l'uniformite de l'element anatomique. [16] To discover this fundamental type has been the main concern, or certainly at any rate the most laudable endeavour, of the natural philosophers of Schelling's school. In this respect they have much merit, although in many cases their hunting for analogies in nature degenerates into mere facetiousness. However, they have rightly shown the universal relationship and family likeness even in the Ideas of inorganic nature, for instance between electricity and magnetism, the identity of which was established later; between chemical attraction and gravitation, and so on. They drew special attention to the fact that polarity, that is to say, the sundering of a force into two qualitatively different and opposite activities striving for reunion, a sundering which also frequently reveals itself spatially by a dispersion in opposite directions, is a fundamental type of almost all the phenomena of nature, from the magnet and the crystal up to man. Yet in China this knowledge has been current since the earliest times in the doctrine of the contrast of Yin and Yang. Indeed, since all things in the world are the objectivity of one and the same will, and consequently identical according to their inner nature, there must be between them that unmistakable analogy, and in everything less perfect there must be seen the trace, outline, and plan of the next more perfect thing. Moreover, since all these forms belong only to the world as representation, it can even be assumed that, in the .most universal forms of the representation, in this peculiar framework of the appearing phenomenal world, and thus in space and time, it is already possible to discover and establish the fundamental type, outline, and plan of all that fills the forms. It seems to have been an obscure discernment of this that was the origin of the Kabbala and of all the mathematical philosophy of the Pythagoreans, as well as of the Chinese in the I Ching. Also in the school of Schelling we find, among their many different efforts to bring to light the analogy between all the phenomena of nature, many attempts, although unfortunate ones, to derive laws of nature from the mere laws of space and time. However, we cannot know how far the mind of a genius will one day realize both endeavours. Now the difference between phenomenon and thing-in-itself is never to be lost sight of, and therefore the identity of the will objectified in all Ideas (because it has definite grades of its objectivity) can never be distorted into an identity of the particular Ideas themselves in which the will appears; thus, for example, chemical or electrical attraction can never be reduced to attraction through gravitation, although their inner analogy is known, and the former can be regarded, so to speak, as higher powers of the latter. Just as little does the inner analogy in the structure of all animals justify us in mixing and identifying the species, and in declaring the more perfect to be variations of the less perfect. Finally, although the physiological functions are likewise never to be reduced to chemical or physical processes, yet, in justification of this method of procedure, we can, within certain limits, assume the following as highly probable. If several of the phenomena of will at the lower grades of its objectification, that is, in inorganic nature, come into conflict with one another, because each under the guidance of causality wants to take possession of the existing matter, there arises from this conflict the phenomenon of a higher Idea. This higher Idea subdues all the less perfect phenomena previously existing, yet in such a way that it allows their essential nature to continue in a subordinate manner, since it takes up into itself an analogue of them. This process is intelligible only from the identity of the will apparent in all the Ideas, and from its striving for higher and higher objectification. Thus, for example, we see in the solidifying of bones an unmistakable analogy of crystallization, which originally controlled the lime, although ossification is never to be reduced to crystallization. This analogy appears more feebly in flesh becoming firm. The combination of humours in the animal body and secretion are also an analogue of chemical combination and separation. Indeed, the laws of chemistry continue to operate here, but are subordinated, much modified, and subdued by a higher Idea. Hence mere chemical forces outside the organism will never furnish such humours, but
The more perfect Idea, resulting from such a victory over several lower Ideas or objectifications of the will, gains an entirely new character just by taking up into itself from each of the subdued Ideas an analogue of higher power. The will is objectified in a new and more distinct way. There arise originally through generatio aequivoca, subsequently through assimilation to the existing germ, organic humour, plant, animal, man. Thus from the contest of lower phenomena the higher one arises, swallowing up all of them, but also realizing in the higher degree the tendency of them all. Accordingly, the law Serpens, nisi serpentem comederit, non fit draco [Google translate: The serpent, unless it shall eat the serpent, the dragon does not take place] [17] already applies here. I wish it had been possible for me by clearness of explanation to dispel the obscurity that clings to the subject-matter of these thoughts. But I see quite well that the reader's own observation must help me a great deal, if I am not to remain uncomprehended or misunderstood. According to the view I have put forth, we shall certainly find in the organism traces of chemical and physical modes of operation, but we shall never explain the organism from these, because it is by no means a phenomenon brought about by the united operation of such forces, and therefore by accident, but a higher Idea that has subdued these lower ones through overwhelming assimilation. For the one will, that objectifies itself in all Ideas, strives for the highest possible objectification, and in this case gives up the low grades of its phenomenon after a conflict, in order to appear in a higher grade that is so much the more powerful. No victory without struggle; since the higher Idea or objectification of will can appear only by subduing the lower Ideas, it endures the opposition of these. Although these lower Ideas have been brought into subjection, they still constantly strive to reach an independent and complete expression of their inner nature. The magnet that has lifted a piece of iron keeps up a perpetual struggle with gravitation which, as the lowest objectification of the will, has a more original right to the matter of that iron. In this constant struggle, the magnet even grows stronger, since the resistance stimulates it, so to speak, to greater exertion. In the same way, every phenomenon of the will, and even that which manifests itself in the human organism, keeps up a permanent struggle against the many chemical and physical forces that, as lower Ideas, have a prior right to that matter. Thus a man's arm falls which he held upraised for a while by overcoming gravity. Hence the comfortable feeling of health which expresses the victory of the Idea of the organism, conscious of itself, over the physical and chemical laws which originally controlled the humours of the body. Yet this comfortable feeling is so often interrupted, and in fact is always accompanied by a greater or lesser amount of discomfort, resulting from the resistance of those forces; through such discomfort the vegetative part of our life is constantly associated with a slight pain. Thus digestion depresses all the animal functions, because it claims the whole vital force for overcoming by assimilation the chemical forces of nature. Hence also generally the burden of physical life, the necessity of sleep, and ultimately of death; for at last, favoured by circumstances, those subdued forces of nature win back from the organism, wearied even by constant victory, the matter snatched from them, and attain to the unimpeded expression of their being. It can therefore be said that every organism represents the Idea of which it is the image or copy, only after deduction of that part of its force which is expended in overcoming the lower Ideas that strive with it for the matter. This seems to have been present in the mind of Jacob Boehme, when he says somewhere that all the bodies of men and animals, and even all plants, are really half dead. Now, according as the organism succeeds more or less in subduing those natural forces that express the lower grades of the will's objectivity, it becomes the more or less perfect expression of its Idea, in other words, it stands nearer to or farther from the Ideal to which beauty in its species belongs. Thus everywhere in nature we see contest, struggle, and the fluctuation of victory, and later on we shall recognize in this more distinctly that variance with itself essential to the will. Every grade of the will's objectification fights for the matter, the space, and the
time of another. Persistent matter must constantly change the form, since, under the guidance of causality, mechanical, physical, chemical, and organic phenomena, eagerly striving to appear, snatch the matter from one another, for each wishes to reveal its own Idea. This contest can be followed through the whole of nature; indeed only through it does nature exist:
Here we see at the very lowest grade the will manifesting itself as a blind impulse, an obscure, dull urge, remote from all direct knowableness. It is the simplest and feeblest mode of its objectification. But it appears as such a blind urge and as a striving devoid of knowledge in the whole of inorganic nature, in all the original forces. It is the business of physics and chemistry to look for these forces and to become acquainted with their laws. Each of these forces manifests itself to us in millions of exactly similar and regular phenomena, showing no trace of individual character, but is merely multiplied through time and space, i.e., through the principium individuationis, just as a picture is multiplied through the facets of a glass. Objectifying itself more distinctly from grade to grade, yet still completely without knowledge as an obscure driving force, the will acts in the plant kingdom. Here not causes proper, but stimuli, are the bond or its phenomena. Finally, it also acts in the vegetative part of the animal phenomenon, in the production and formation of every animal, and in the maintenance of its interior economy, where mere stimuli still always determine its phenomenon. The higher and higher grades of the will's objectivity lead ultimately to the point where the individual expressing the Idea could no longer obtain its food for assimilation through mere movement consequent on stimuli. Such a stimulus must be waited for; but here the food is of a kind that is more specially determined, and with the ever-growing
multiplicity of the phenomena, the crowd and confusion have become so great that they disturb one another, and the chance event from which the individual moved by mere stimuli has to expect its food would be too unfavourable. The food must therefore be sought and selected, from the point where the animal has delivered itself from the egg or the womb in which it vegetated without knowledge. Thus movement consequent on motives and, because of this, knowledge, here become necessary; and hence knowledge enters as an expedient,
Thus knowledge in general, rational knowledge as well as mere knowledge from perception, proceeds originally from the will itself, belongs to the inner being of the higher grades of the will's
objectifications as a mere
28. We have considered the great multiplicity and diversity of the phenomena in which the will objectifies itself; indeed, we have seen their endless and implacable struggle with one another. Yet, in pursuit of the whole of our discussion so far, the will itself, as thing-in-itself, is by no means included in that plurality, that change. The diversity of the (Platonic) Ideas, i.e., gradations of objectification, the multitude of individuals in which each of them manifests itself, the struggle of the forms for matter -- all this does not concern it, but is only the manner of its objectification, and only through such objectification has all this an indirect relation to the will, by virtue of which it belongs to the expression of the inner nature of the will for the representation. Just as a magic lantern shows many different pictures, but it is only one and the same flame that makes them all visible, so in all the many different phenomena which together fill the world or supplant one another as successive events, it is only the one will that appears, and everything is its visibility, its objectivity; it remains unmoved in the midst of this change. It alone is the thing-in-itself; every object is phenomenon, to speak Kant's language, or appearance. Although in man, as (Platonic) Idea, the will finds its most distinct and perfect objectification, this alone could not express its true being. In order to appear in its proper significance, the Idea of man would need to manifest itself, not alone and tom apart, but accompanied by all the grades downwards through all the forms of animals, through the plant kingdom to the inorganic. They all supplement one another for the complete objectification of the will. They are as much presupposed by the Idea of man as the blossoms of the tree presuppose its leaves, branches, trunk, and root. They form a pyramid, of which the highest point is man. If we are fond of similes, we can also say that their appearance or phenomenon accompanies that of man as necessarily as the full light of day is accompanied by all the gradations of partial shadow through which it loses itself in darkness. Or we can also call them the echo of man, and say that animal and plant are the descending fifth and third of man, the inorganic kingdom being the lower octave. The full truth of this last simile will become clear to us only when, in the next book, we attempt to fathom the deep significance of music. There we shall see how the connected melody, progressing in high, light, and quick notes, is to be regarded in a certain sense as expressing the life and efforts of man, connected by reflection. The ripienos and the heavily moving bass, on the other hand, from which arises the harmony necessary for the perfection of the music, are a copy of the rest of animal nature and of nature-without-knowledge. But of this in its proper place, where it will no longer sound so paradoxical. But we also find that the inner necessity of the gradation of the will's phenomena, inseparable from the adequate objectivity of the will, is expressed by an outer necessity in the whole of these phenomena themselves. By virtue of such necessity, man needs the animals for his support, the animals in their grades need one another, and also the plants, which again need soil, water, chemical elements and their combinations, the planet, the sun, rotation and motion round the sun, the obliquity of the ecliptic, and so on. At bottom, this springs from the fact that the will must live on itself, since nothing exists besides it, and it is a hungry will. Hence arise pursuit, hunting, anxiety, and suffering. Knowledge of the unity of the will as thing-in-itself, amid the endless diversity and multiplicity of the phenomena, alone affords us the true explanation of that wonderful, unmistakable analogy of all nature's productions, of that family likeness which enables us to regard them as variations on the same ungiven theme. In like measure, through the clearly and thoroughly comprehended knowledge of that harmony, of that essential connexion of all the parts of the world, of that necessity of their gradation that we have just been considering, there will be revealed to us a true and sufficient insight into the inner being and meaning of the undeniable suitability or appropriateness of all the organic productions of nature, which we even presupposed a priori when considering and investigating them. This suitability is of a twofold nature; it is sometimes an inner one, that is to say, an agreement of all the parts of an individual organism so ordered that the maintenance of the individual and of its species results therefrom, and thus manifests itself as the purpose of that arrangement. But sometimes the suitability is an external one, namely a relation of inorganic to organic nature in general, or of the individual parts of organic nature to one another, which renders possible the maintenance of the whole of organic nature, or even of individual animal species, and thus presents itself to our judgement as the means to this end. Inner suitability becomes connected with our discussion in the following way. If, according to what has so far been said, all variety of forms in nature and all plurality of individuals belong not to the will, but only to its objectivity and to the form thereof, it necessarily follows that the will is indivisible and is wholly present in every phenomenon, although the degrees of its objectification, the (Platonic) Ideas, are very different. For easier understanding, we may regard these different Ideas as individual, and in themselves simple, acts of will, in which its inner being expresses itself more or less. But the individuals again are phenomena of the Ideas, and hence of those acts, in time, space, and plurality. Now at the lowest grades of objectivity, such an act (or Idea) retains its unity even in the phenomenon; whereas, to appear at the higher grades, it requires a whole series of states and developments in time, all of which, taken together, first achieve the expression of its true being. Thus, for example, the Idea that reveals itself in some universal force of nature has always only a simple expression, although this presents itself differently according to the external relations; otherwise its identity could not be established at all, for this is done simply by abstracting the diversity that springs merely from the external relations. In the same way, the crystal has only one manifestation of life, namely its formation, which afterwards has its fully adequate and exhaustive expression in the coagulated form, in the corpse of that momentary life. The plant, however, does not express the Idea of which it is the phenomenon all at once and through a simple manifestation, but in a succession of developments of its organs in time. The animal develops its organism not only in the same way in a succession of forms often very different (metamorphosis), but this form itself, although objectivity of the will at this grade, does not reach the complete expression of its Idea. On the contrary, this is first completed through the animal's actions, in which its empirical character, the same in the whole species, expresses itself and is first the complete revelation of the Idea, and this presupposes the definite organism as fundamental condition. In the case of man, the empirical character is peculiar to every individual (indeed, as we shall see in the fourth book, even to the complete elimination of the character of the species, namely through the self-elimination of the whole will). That which is known as the empirical character, through the necessary development in time and the division into separate actions conditioned by time, is, with the abstraction of this temporal form of the phenomenon, the intelligible character, according to Kant's expression. In establishing this distinction and describing the relation between freedom and necessity, that is to say, between the will as thing-in-itself and its phenomenon, Kant brilliantly reveals his immortal merit. [22] Thus the intelligible character coincides with the Idea, or more properly with the original act of will that reveals itself in the Idea. Therefore to this extent, not only the empirical character of every person, but also that of every animal species, nay, of every plant species, and even of every original force of inorganic nature, is to be regarded as phenomenon or manifestation of an intelligible character, in other words, of an indivisible act of will that is outside time. Incidentally, I should like here to draw attention to the naivety with which every plant expresses and lays open its whole character through its mere form, and reveals its whole being and willing. That is why the various physiognomies of plants are so interesting. On the other hand, to know an animal according to its Idea, we must observe its action and behaviour, and to know man, we must fully investigate and test him, for his faculty of reason makes him capable of a high degree of dissimulation. The animal is just as much more naive than man as the plant is more naive than the animal. In the animal we see the will-to-live more naked, as it were, than in man, where it is clothed in so much knowledge, and, moreover, is so veiled by the capacity for dissimulation that its true nature only comes to light almost by chance and in isolated cases. In the plant it shows itself quite nakedly, but also much more feebly, as mere blind impulse to exist without end and aim. For the plant reveals its whole being at the first glance and with complete innocence. This does not suffer from the fact that it carries its genitals exposed to view on its upper surface, although with all animals these have been allotted to the most concealed place. This innocence on the part of the plant is due to its want of knowledge; guilt is to be found not in willing, but in willing with knowledge. Every plant tells us first of all about its native place, the climate found there, and the nature of the soil from which it has sprung. Therefore even the person with little experience easily knows whether an exotic plant belongs to the tropical or temperate zone, and whether it grows in water, in marshy country, on mountains or moorland. Moreover, every plant expresses the special will of its species, and says something that cannot be expressed in any other language. But now let us apply what has been said to the teleological consideration of the organisms, in so far as it concerns their inner suitability. In inorganic nature the Idea, to be regarded everywhere as a single act of will, also reveals itself only in a particular and always similar manifestation, and thus it can be said that the empirical character here directly partakes of the unity of the intelligible. It coincides with it, so to speak, so that no inner suitability can show itself. On the other hand, all organisms express their Idea through a succession of developments one after another, conditioned by a multiplicity of coexisting parts. Hence the sum of the manifestations of their empirical character is first the collective expression of the intelligible character. Now this necessary coexistence of the parts and succession of development do not eliminate the unity of the appearing Idea, of the self-manifesting act of will. On the contrary, this unity now finds its expression in the necessary relation and concatenation of those parts and developments with one another, according to the law of causality. Since it is the one indivisible will, which for this reason is wholly in agreement with itself, and reveals itself in the whole Idea as in an act, its phenomenon, though broken up into a variety of different parts and conditions, must yet again show that unity in a thorough harmony of these. This takes place through a necessary relation and dependence of all the parts on one another, whereby the unity of the Idea is also re-established in the phenomenon. Accordingly, we now recognize those different parts and functions of the organism reciprocally as means and end of one another, and the organism itself as the ultimate end of all. Consequently, neither the breaking up of the Idea, in itself simple, into the plurality of the parts and conditions of the organism, on the one hand, nor, on the other, the re-establishment of its unity through the necessary connexion of those parts and functions arising from the fact that they are cause and effect, and hence means and end, of one another, is peculiar and essential to the appearing will as such, to the thing-in-itself, but only to its phenomenon in space, time, and causality (mere modes of the principle of sufficient reason, the form of the phenomenon). They belong to the world as representation, not to the world as will; they belong to the way in which the will becomes object, i.e., representation at this grade of its objectivity. Whoever has penetrated into the meaning of this rather difficult discussion, will now properly understand Kant's doctrine that both the suitability of the organic and the conformity to law of the inorganic are brought into nature first of all by our understanding; hence that both belong only to the phenomenon, not to the thing-in-itself. The above-mentioned admiration caused by the infallible constancy of the conformity to law in inorganic nature is essentially the same as that excited by the suitability in organic nature. For in both cases what surprises us is only the sight of the original unity of the Idea which for the phenomenon has assumed the form of plurality and diversity. [23] Now, as regards the second kind of suitability, namely the external, to follow the division made above, this shows itself not in the inner economy of the organisms, but in the support and assistance they receive from outside, both from inorganic nature and from one another. This second kind finds its explanation in general in the discussion just given, since the whole world with all its phenomena is the objectivity of the one and indivisible will, the Idea, which is related to all the other Ideas as harmony is to the individual voices. Therefore that unity of the will must also show itself in the agreement of all its phenomena with one another. But we can raise this insight to very much greater clearness, if we go somewhat more closely into the phenomena of that outer suitability to and agreement with one another of the different parts of nature, a discussion that will at the same time throw light on the foregoing remarks. We shall best attain this end, however, by considering the following analogy. The character of each individual man, in so far as it is thoroughly individual and not entirely included in that of the species, can be regarded as a special Idea, corresponding to a particular act of objectification of the will. This act itself would then be his intelligible character, and his empirical character would be its phenomenon. The empirical character is entirely determined by the intelligible that is groundless, that is to say, will as thing-in-itself, not subject to the principle of sufficient reason (the form of the phenomenon). The empirical character must in the course of a lifetime furnish a copy of the intelligible character, and cannot turn out differently from what is demanded by the latter's inner nature. But this disposition extends only to what is essential, not to what is inessential, in the course of the life that accordingly appears. To this inessential belongs the detailed determination of the events and actions which are the material in which the empirical character shows itself. These are determined by external circumstances, furnishing the motives on which the character reacts according to its nature. As they can be very different, the outward form of the empirical character's phenomenon, and so the definite actual or historical shape of the course of life, will have to adjust itself to their influence. Possibly this will turn out very differently, although the essential of this phenomenon, its content, remains the same. Thus, for example, it is not essential whether a man plays for nuts or for crowns; but whether in play a man cheats or goes about it honestly, this is what is essential. The latter is determined by the intelligible character, the former by external influence. As the same theme can be presented in a hundred variations, so the same character can be expressed in a hundred very different courses of life. But however varied the outer influence may be, the empirical character, expressing itself in the course of life, must yet, however it may turn out, accurately objectify the intelligible character, since it adapts its objectification to the previously found material of actual circumstances. We have now to assume something analogous to that influence of outer circumstances on the course of life that is determined essentially by the character, if we wish to conceive how the will, in the original act of its objectification, determines the different Ideas in which it objectifies itself, in other words, the different forms of natural existence of every kind. It distributes its objectification among these forms, and these, therefore, must necessarily have in the phenomenon a relation to one another. We must assume that, between all these phenomena of the one will, there took place a universal and reciprocal adaptation and accommodation to one another. But here, as we shall soon see more clearly, all time-determination is to be left out, for the Idea lies outside time. Accordingly, every phenomenon has had to adapt itself to the environment into which it entered, but again the environment also has had to adapt itself to the phenomenon, although it occupies a much later position in time; and this consensus naturae we see everywhere. Therefore, every plant is well adapted to its soil and climate, every animal to its element and to the prey that is to become its food, that prey also being protected to a certain extent against its natural hunter. The eye is well adapted to light and its refrangibility, the lungs and the blood to air, the air-bladder of fishes to water, the eye of the seal to the change of its medium, the water-containing cells in the camel's stomach to the drought of the African desert, the sail of the nautilus to the wind that is to drive its tiny ship, and so on down to the most special and astonishing outward instances of suitability. [24] But we must abstract here from all time-relations, as these can concern only the phenomenon of the Idea, not the Idea itself. Accordingly, this kind of explanation is also to be used retrospectively, and it is not merely to be assumed that every species adapted itself to the circumstances previously found, but that these circumstances themselves, which preceded it in time, had just as much regard for the beings that at some future time were to arrive. For it is indeed one and the same will that objectifies itself in the whole world; it knows no time, for that form of the principle of sufficient reason does not belong to it, or to its original objectivity, namely the Ideas, but only to the way in which these are known by the individuals who are themselves transitory, in other words, to the phenomenon of the Ideas. Therefore as concerns our present discussion, time-sequence is entirely without significance for the way in which the objectification of the will is distributed among the Ideas. The Ideas, the phenomena of which entered the time-sequence earlier according to the law of causality to which they as such are subject, have thus no advantage over those whose phenomenon enters later. On the contrary, these last are precisely the most perfect objectifications of the will, to which the earlier phenomena had to adapt themselves, just as much as they had to adapt themselves to the earlier. Thus the course of the planets, the obliquity of the ecliptic, the rotation of the earth, the separation of dry land and sea, the atmosphere, light, heat, and all similar phenomena that are in nature what the ground bass is in harmony, accommodated themselves full of presentiment of the coming species of living beings, of which they were to become the supporter and sustainer. In the same way, the soil adapted itself to the nutrition of plants, plants to the nutrition of animals, animals to the nutrition of other animals, just as, conversely, all these again adapted themselves to the soil. All the parts of nature accommodate themselves to one another, since it is one will that appears in them all, but the time-sequence is quite foreign to its original and only adequate objectivity, namely the Ideas (the following book explains this expression). Even now, when the species have only to maintain themselves and no longer to come into existence, we see here and there such a foresight of nature, extending to the future and, so to speak, really abstracting from the time-sequence, a self-adaptation of what exists according to what is yet to come. Thus the bird builds the nest for the young it does not yet know; the beaver erects a dam, whose purpose is unknown to it; the ant, the marmot, and the bee collect stores for the winter that is unknown to them; the spider and the ant-lion build, as if with deliberate cunning, snares for the future prey unknown to them; insects lay their eggs where the future brood will find future nourishment. In the flowering season the female flower of the dioecian Vallisneria unwinds the spirals of its stem, by which it was hitherto held at the bottom of the water, and by that means rises to the surface. Just then the male flower, growing on a short stem at the bottom of the water, breaks away therefrom, and so, at the sacrifice of its life, reaches the surface, where it swims about in search of the female flower. The female, after fertilization, then withdraws to the bottom again by contracting its spirals, and there the fruit is developed. [26] Here I must refer once more to the larva of the male stag-beetle which gnaws the hole in the wood for its metamorphosis twice as large as does the female, in order to obtain room for its future horns. Therefore the instinct of animals generally gives us the best explanation for the remaining teleology of nature. For just as an instinct is an action, resembling one according to a concept of purpose, yet entirely without such concept, so are all formation and growth in nature like that which is according to a concept of purpose, and yet entirely without this. In outer as well as in inner teleology of nature, what we must think of as means and end is everywhere only the phenomenon of the unity of the one will so far in agreement with itself, which has broken up into space and time for our mode of cognition. However, the reciprocal adaptation and adjustment of the phenomena springing from this unity cannot eradicate the inner antagonism described above, which appears in the universal conflict of nature, and is essential to the will. That harmony goes only so far as to render possible the continuance of the world and its beings, which without it would long since have perished. Therefore it extends only to the continuance of the species and of the general conditions of life, but not to that of individuals. Accordingly, as, by reason of that harmony and accommodation, the species in the organic, and the universal natural forces in the inorganic, continue to exist side by side and even mutually to support one another, so, on the other hand, the inner antagonism of the will, objectified through all those Ideas, shows itself in the never-ending war of extermination of the individuals of those species, and in the constant struggle of the phenomena of those natural forces with one another, as was stated above. The scene of action and the object of this conflict is matter that they strive to wrest from one another, as well as space and time, the union of which through the form of causality is really matter, as was explained in the first book. [26] 29. Here I conclude the second main part of my discussion in the hope that, as far as is possible in the case of the very first communication of an idea that has never previously existed and therefore cannot be entirely free from those traces of individuality in which it originated, I have succeeded in conveying to the reader the clear certainty that this world in which we live and have our being is, by its whole nature, through and through will, and at the same time through and through representation. This representation as such already presupposes a form, namely object and subject; consequently it is relative; and if we ask what is left after the elimination of this form and of all the forms subordinate to it and expressed by the principle of sufficient reason, the answer is that, as something toto genere different from the representation, this cannot be anything but will, which is therefore the thing-in-itself proper. Everyone finds himself to be this will, in which the inner nature of the world consists, and he also finds himself to be the knowing subject, whose representation is the whole world; and this world has an existence only in reference to the knowing subject's consciousness as its necessary supporter. Thus everyone in this twofold regard is the whole world itself, the microcosm; he finds its two sides whole and complete within himself. And what he thus recognizes as his own inner being also exhausts the inner being of the whole world, of the macrocosm. Thus the whole world, like man himself, is through and through will and through and through representation, and beyond this there is nothing. So here we see that the philosophy of Thales, concerned with the macrocosm, and that of Socrates, concerned with the microcosm, coincide, since the object of both proves to be the same. But the whole of the knowledge communicated in the first and second books will gain greater completeness, and thus greater certainty, from the two books that follow. In these it is hoped that many a question that may have been raised distinctly or indistinctly in the course of our discussion so far, will find its adequate answer. In the meantime, one such question may be particularly discussed, as, properly speaking, it can be raised only so long as we have not yet fully penetrated into the meaning of the foregoing discussion, and to this extent it can serve as an illustration thereof. It is the following. Every will is a will directed to something; it has an object, an aim of its willing; what then does it ultimately will, or what is that will which is shown to us as the being-in-itself of the world striving after? Like so many others, this question rests on the confusion of the thing-in-itself with the phenomenon. The principle of sufficient reason, of which the law of motivation is also a form, extends only to the phenomenon, not to the thing-in-itself. Everywhere a ground can be given only of phenomena as such, only of individual things, never of the will itself, or of the Idea in which it adequately objectifies itself. Thus of every particular movement, or generally of every change in nature, a cause, in other words, a condition or state that necessarily produced it, is to be sought, but never a cause of the natural force itself that is revealed in that phenomenon and in innumerable similar phenomena. Therefore it is really a misunderstanding, arising from a want of thoughtfulness, to ask for a cause of gravity, of electricity, and so on. Only if it had been somehow shown that gravity and electricity were not original characteristic forces of nature, but only the modes of appearance of a more universal natural force already known, could one ask about the cause that makes this natural force produce the phenomenon of gravity or electricity in a given case. All this has been discussed in detail already. In the same way, every particular act of will on the part of a knowing individual (which itself is only phenomenon of the will as thing-in-itself) necessarily has a motive, without which that act would never take place. But just as the material cause contains merely the determination that at such a time, in such a place, and in such a matter, a manifestation of this or that natural force must take place, so also the motive determines only the act of will of a knowing being, at such a time, in such a place, and in such and such circumstances, as something quite individual; it by no means determines that that being wills in general and wills in this way. That is the expression of his intelligible character, which, as the will itself, the thing-in-itself, is groundless, for it lies outside the province of the principle of sufficient reason. Therefore every person invariably has purposes and motives by which he guides his conduct; and he is always able to give an account of his particular actions. But if he were asked why he wills generally, or why in general he wills to exist, he would have no answer; indeed, the question would seem to him absurd. This would really be the expression of his consciousness that he himself is nothing but will, and that the willing in general of this will is therefore a matter of course, and requires a more particular determination through motives only in its individual acts at each point of time. In fact, absence of all aim, of all limits, belongs to the essential nature of the will in itself, which is an endless striving. This was touched on above, when centrifugal force was mentioned. It also reveals itself in the simplest form of the lowest grade of the will's objectivity, namely gravitation, the constant striving of which we see, although a final goal for it is obviously impossible. For if, according to its will, all existing matter were united into a lump, then within this lump gravity, ever striving towards the centre, would still always struggle with impenetrability as rigidity or elasticity. Therefore the striving of matter can always be impeded only, never fulfilled or satisfied. But this is precisely the case with the striving of all the will's phenomena. Every attained end is at the same time the beginning of a new course, and so on ad infinitum. The plant raises its phenomenon from the seed through stem and leaf to blossom and fruit, which is in turn only the beginning of a new seed, of a new individual, which once more runs through the old course, and so through endless time. Such also is the life course of the animal; procreation is its highest point, and after this has been attained, the life of the first individual quickly or slowly fades, while a new life guarantees to nature the maintenance of the species, and repeats the same phenomenon. Indeed, the constant renewal of the matter of every organism can also be regarded as the mere phenomenon of this continual pressure and change, and physiologists are now ceasing to regard such renewal as the necessary reparation of the substance consumed in movement. The possible wearing out of the machine cannot in any way be equivalent to the constant inflow through nourishment. Eternal becoming, endless flux, belong to the revelation of the essential nature of the will. Finally, the same thing is also seen in human endeavours and desires that buoy us up with the vain hope that their fulfilment is always the final goal of willing. But as soon as they are attained, they no longer look the same, and so are soon forgotten, become antiquated, and are really, although not admittedly, always laid aside as vanished illusions. It is fortunate enough when something to desire and to strive for still remains, so that the game may be kept up of the constant transition from desire to satisfaction, and from that to a fresh desire, the rapid course of which is called happiness, the slow course sorrow, and so that this game may not come to a standstill, showing itself as a fearful, life-destroying boredom, a lifeless longing without a definite object, a deadening languor. According to all this, the will always knows, when knowledge enlightens it, what it wills here and now, but never what it wills in general. Every individual act has a purpose or end; willing as a whole has no end in view. In the same way, every individual phenomenon of nature is determined by a sufficient cause as regards its appearance in such a place and at such a time, but the force manifesting itself in this phenomenon has in general no cause, for such a force is a stage of appearance of the thing-in-itself, of the groundless will. The sole self-knowledge of the will as a whole is the representation as a whole, the whole world of perception. It is the objectivity, the revelation, the mirror of the will. What it expresses in this capacity will be the subject of our further consideration. [27] _______________ Notes: 1. "Unity of plan." [Tr.] 2. "par excellence." [Tr.] 3. Cf. chap. 18 of volume 2. 4. Thus we cannot in any way agree with Bacon when he (De Augmentis Scientiarum, 1. 4 in fine) thinks that all mechanical and physical movements of bodies ensue only after a preceding perception in these bodies, although a glimmering of truth gave birth even to this false proposition. This is also the case with Kepler's statement, in his essay De Planeta Martis, that the planets must have knowledge in order to keep to their elliptical courses so accurately, and to regulate the velocity of their motion, so that the triangles of the plane of their course always remain proportional to the time in which they pass through their bases. 5. Cf. chap. 19 of volume 2. 6. "Just as everyone possesses the complex of flexible limbs, so does there dwell in men the mind in conformity with this. For everyone mind and complex of limbs are always the same; for intelligence is the criterion." [Tr.] Cf. chap. 20 of volume 2; also my work Uber den Willen in der Natur, under the heads "Physiology" and "Comparative Anatomy," where the subject, here merely alluded to, has received a full and thorough treatment. 7. This is specially dealt with in chap. 27 of volume 2. 8. This knowledge is fully established by my essay On the Freedom of the Will, in which therefore (pp. 30-44 of the Grundprobleme der Ethik, 2nd ed., pp. 29-41) the relation between cause, stimulus, and motive has been discussed in detail. 9. Cf. chap. 23 of volume 2, and also in my work Uber den Willen in der Natur the chapter on "Physiology of Plants" and that on "Physical Astronomy," which is of the greatest importance for the kernel of my metaphysics. 10. "If we were animals, we should love carnal life and what conforms to its meaning. For us this would be enough of a good, and accordingly we should demand nothing more, if all was well for us. Likewise, if we were trees, we should not feel or aspire to anything by movement, but yet we should seem to desire that by which we should be more fertile and bear more abundant fruits. If we were stones, or floods, or wind, or flame, or anything of the kind, without any consciousness and life, we should still not lack, so to speak, a certain longing for our position and order. For it is, so to speak, a desire that is decisive for the weight of bodies, whether by virtue of heaviness they tend downwards, or by virtue of lightness upwards. For the body is driven whither it is driven by its weight, precisely as the spirit is impelled by desire." [Tr.] 11. "Plato teaches that the Ideas exist in nature, so to speak, as patterns or prototypes, and that the remainder of things only resemble them, and exist as their copies." [Tr.] 12. Wenzel, De Structura Cerebri Hominis et Brutorum (1812), ch. 3; Cuvier, Lecons d'anatomie comparee, lecon 9, arts. 4 and 5; Vicq d'Azyr, Histoire de l'Academie des Sciences de Paris (1783), pp. 470 and 483. 13. On 16 September 1840, at a lecture on Egyptian Antiquities given at the Literary and Scientific Institute of London, Mr. Pettigrew exhibited some grains of wheat, found by Sir G. Wilkinson in a grave at Thebes, in which they must have been lying for three thousand years. They were found in a hermetically sealed vase. He had sown twelve grains, and from them had a plant which had grown to a height of five feet, whose seeds were now perfectly ripe. From The Times, 21 September 1840. In the same way, in 1830, Mr. Haulton produced at the Medical Botanical Society in London a bulbous root that had been found in the hand of an Egyptian mummy. It may have been put there from religious considerations, and was at least two thousand years old. He had planted it in a flower-pot, where it had at once grown up and was flourishing. This is quoted from the Medical Journal of 1830 in the Journal of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, October 1830, p. 196. "In the garden of Mr. Grimstone, of the Herbarium, Highgate, London, there is now a pea-plant, producing a full crop of peas, that came from a pea taken from a vase by Mr. Pettigrew and officials of the British Museum. This vase had been found in an Egyptian sarcophagus where it must have been lying for 2,844 years." From The Times, 16 August 1844. Indeed, the living toads found in limestone lead to the assumption that even animal life is capable of such a suspension for thousands of years, if this is initiated during hibernation and maintained through special circumstances. 14. "Explanatory statements." [Tr.] 15. "Heat and electric matter are wholly sufficient to make up this essential cause of life." [Tr.] 16. "Unity of plan, uniformity of the anatomical element." [Tr.] 17. "The serpent can become the dragon only by swallowing the serpent." [Bacon, Sermones Fideles 38. -- Tr.] 18. "For, as Empedocles says, if strife did not rule in things, then all would be a unity." [Tr.] 19. "Man is a wolf for man." [Plautus, Asinaria. -- Tr.] 20. Cf. chap. 22 of volume 2, also my work Uber den Willen in der Natur, pp. 54 seqq. and 70-79 of the first edition, or pp. 46 seqq. and 63-72 of the second. 21. "The scholastics therefore said quite rightly: Causa finalis movet non secundum suum esse reale, sed secundum esse cognitum. See Suarez, Disp. Metaph., disp. XXIII, sect. 7 et 8. ("The final cause operates not according to its real being, but only according to its being as that is known." [Tr.] 22. See Critique of Pure Reason, "Solution of the Cosmological Ideas of the Totality of the Deduction of World Events." pp. 560-586 of the fifth edition, and pp. 532 seqq. of the first edition; and Critique of Practical Reason, fourth edition, pp. 169-179; Rosenkranz's edition, pp. 224 seqq. Cf. my essay On the Principle of Sufficient Reason, § 43. 23. Cf. Uber den Willen in der Natur, at the end of the section on "Comparative Anatomy." 24. See Uber den Willen in der Natur, the section on "Comparative Anatomy." 25. Chatin, "Sur la Valisneria Spiralis," in the Comptes Rendus de l'Academie des Sciences, No. 13, 1855. 26. Cf. chaps. 26 and 27 of volume 2. 27. Cf. chap. 28 of volume 2. |
