Itself.
Even the merely empirical consideration of nature recognises a constant
transition from the simplest and most necessary manifestation of a
universal force of nature up to the life and consciousness of man himself,
through gentle gradations, and with only relative, and for the most part
fluctuating, limits. Reflection, following this view, and penetrating
somewhat more deeply into it, will soon be led to the conviction that in
all these phenomena, the inner nature, that which manifests itself, that
which appears, is one and the same, which comes forth ever more
distinctly; and accordingly that what exhibits itself in a million forms
of infinite diversity, and so carries on the most varied and the strangest
play without beginning or end, this is one being which is so closely
disguised behind all these masks that it does not even recognise itself,
and therefore often treats itself roughly. Thus the great doctrine of the
ἑν και παν early appeared both in the east and in the west, and, in spite
of all contradiction, has asserted itself, or at least constantly revived.
We, however, have now entered even deeper into the secret, since by what
has already been said we have been led to the insight that when in any
phenomenon a _knowing consciousness_ is added to that inner being which
lies at the foundation of all phenomena, a consciousness which when
directed inwardly becomes _self‐consciousness_, then that inner being
presents itself to this self‐consciousness as that which is so familiar
and so mysterious, and is denoted by the word _will_. Accordingly we have
called that universal fundamental nature of all phenomena _the will_,
after that manifestation in which it unveils itself to us most fully; and
by this word nothing is further from our intention than to denote an
unknown _x_; but, on the contrary, we denote that which at least on one
side is infinitely better known and more intimate than anything else.
Let us now call to mind a truth, the fullest and most thorough proof of
which will be found in my prize essay on the freedom of the will—the truth
that on account of the absolutely universal validity of the law of
causality, the conduct or the action of all existences in this world is
always strictly _necessitated_ by the causes which in each case call it
forth. And in this respect it makes no difference whether such an action
has been occasioned by causes in the strictest sense of the word, or by
stimuli, or finally by motives, for these differences refer only to the
grade of the susceptibility of the different kinds of existences. On this
point we must entertain no illusion: the law of causality knows no
exception; but everything, from the movement of a mote in a sunbeam to the
most deeply considered action of man, is subject to it with equal
strictness. Therefore, in the whole course of the world, neither could a
mote in a sunbeam describe any other line in its flight than it has
described, nor a man act any other way than he has acted; and no truth is
more certain than this, that all that happens, be it small or great,
happens with absolute _necessity_. Consequently, at every given moment of
time, the whole condition of all things is firmly and accurately
determined by the condition which has just preceded it, and so is it with
the stream of time back to infinity and on to infinity. Thus the course of
the world is like that of a clock after it has been put together and wound
up; thus from this incontestable point of view it is a mere machine, the
aim of which we cannot see. Even if, quite without justification, nay, at
bottom, in spite of all conceivability and its conformity to law, one
should assume a first beginning, nothing would thereby be essentially
changed. For the arbitrarily assumed first condition of things would at
its origin have irrevocably determined and fixed, both as a whole and down
to the smallest detail, the state immediately following it; this state,
again, would have determined the one succeeding it, and so on _per secula
seculorum_, for the chain of causality, with its absolute strictness—this
brazen bond of necessity and fate—introduces every phenomenon irrevocably
and unalterably, just as it is. The difference merely amounts to this,
that in the case of the one assumption we would have before us a piece of
clockwork which had once been wound up, but in the case of the other a
perpetual motion; the necessity of the course, on the other hand, would
remain the same. In the prize essay already referred to I have irrefutably
proved that the action of man can make no exception here, for I showed how
it constantly proceeds with strict necessity from two factors—his
character and the motives which come to him. The character is inborn and
unalterable; the motives are introduced with necessity under the guidance
of causality by the strictly determined course of the world.
Accordingly then, from one point of view, which we certainly cannot
abandon, because it is established by the objective laws of the world,
which are _a priori_ valid, the world, with all that is in it, appears as
an aimless, and therefore incomprehensible, play of an eternal necessity,
an inscrutable and inexorable Αναγκη. Now, what is objectionable, nay,
revolting, in this inevitable and irrefutable view of the world cannot be
thoroughly done away with by any assumption except this, that as in one
aspect every being in the world is a phenomenon, and necessarily
determined by the laws of the phenomenon, in another aspect it is in
itself _will_, and indeed absolutely _free will_, for necessity only
arises through the forms which belong entirely to the phenomenon, through
the principle of sufficient reason in its different modes. Such a will,
then, must be self‐dependent, for, as free, _i.e._, as a thing in itself,
and therefore not subject to the principle of sufficient reason, it cannot
depend upon another in its being and nature any more than in its conduct
and action. By this assumption alone will as much _freedom_ be supposed as
is needed to counterbalance the inevitable strict _necessity_ which
governs the course of the world. Accordingly one has really only the
choice either of seeing that the world is a mere machine which runs on of
necessity, or of recognising a free will as its inner being whose
manifestation is not directly the action but primarily the _existence and
nature_ of things. This freedom is therefore transcendental, and consists
with empirical necessity, in the same way as the transcendental ideality
of phenomena consists with their empirical reality. That only under this
assumption the action of a man, in spite of the necessity with which it
proceeds from his character and the motives, is yet _his own_ I have shown
in my prize essay on the freedom of the will; with this, however, self‐
dependency is attributed to his nature. The same relation holds good of
all things in the world. The strictest _necessity_, carried out honestly
with rigid consistency, and the most perfect _freedom_, rising to
omnipotence, had to appear at once and together in philosophy; but,
without doing violence to truth, this could only take place by placing the
whole _necessity_ in the _acting and doing_ (_Operari_), and the whole
_freedom_ in the _being and nature_ (_Esse_). Thereby a riddle is solved
which is as old as the world, simply because it has hitherto always been
held upside down and the freedom persistently sought in the _Operari_, the
necessity in the _Esse_. I, on the contrary, say: Every being without
exception _acts_ with strict necessity, but it _exists_ and is what it is
by virtue of its _freedom_. Thus with me freedom and necessity are to be
met with neither more nor less than in any earlier system; although now
one and now the other must be conspicuous according as one takes offence
that _will_ is attributed to processes of nature which hitherto were
explained from necessity, or that the same strict necessity is recognised
in motivation as in mechanical causality. The two have merely changed
places: freedom has been transferred to the _Esse_, and necessity limited
to the _Operari_.
In short, _Determinism_ stands firm. For fifteen hundred years men have
wearied themselves in vain to shake it, influenced by certain crotchets,
which are well known, but dare scarcely yet be called by their name. Yet
in accordance with it the world becomes a mere puppet‐show, drawn by wires
(motives), without it being even possible to understand for whose
amusement. If the piece has a plan, then fate is the director; if it has
none, then blind necessity. There is no other deliverance from this
absurdity than the knowledge that the _being and nature_ of all things is
the manifestation of a really _free will_, which knows itself in them; for
their _doing and acting_ cannot be delivered from necessity. To save
freedom from fate and chance, it had to be transferred from the action to
the existence.
As now necessity only affects the phenomenon, not the thing in itself,
_i.e._, the true nature of the world, so also does _multiplicity_. This is
sufficiently explained in § 25 of the first volume. I have only to add
here one remark in confirmation and illustration of this truth.
Every one knows only _one_ being quite immediately—his own will in self‐
consciousness. Everything else he knows only indirectly, and then judges
it by analogy with this; a process which he carries further in proportion
to the grade of his reflective powers. Even this ultimately springs from
the fact that there really is _only one being_; the illusion of
multiplicity (_Maja_), which proceeds from the forms of external,
objective comprehension, could not penetrate to inner, simple
consciousness; therefore this always finds before it only one being.
If we consider the perfection of the works of nature, which can never be
sufficiently admired, and which even in the lowest and smallest organisms,
for example, in the fertilising parts of plants or in the internal
construction of insects, is carried out with as infinite care and
unwearied labour as if each work of nature had been its only one, upon
which it was therefore able to expend all its art and power; if we yet
find this repeated an infinite number of times in each one of innumerable
individuals of every kind, and not less carefully worked out in that one
whose dwelling‐place is the most lonely, neglected spot, to which, till
then, no eye had penetrated; if we now follow the combination of the parts
of every organism as far as we can, and yet never come upon one part which
is quite simple, and therefore ultimate, not to speak of one which is
inorganic; if, finally, we lose ourselves in calculating the design of all
those parts of the organism for the maintenance of the whole by virtue of
which every living thing is complete in and for itself; if we consider at
the same time that each of these masterpieces, itself of short duration,
has already been produced anew an innumerable number of times, and yet
every example of a species, every insect, every flower, every leaf, still
appears just as carefully perfected as was the first of its kind; thus
that nature by no means wearies and begins to bungle, but, with equally
patient master‐hand, perfects the last like the first: then we become
conscious, first of all, that all human art is completely different, not
merely in degree, but in kind, from the works of nature; and, next, that
the working force, the _natura naturans_, in each of its innumerable
works, in the least as in the greatest, in the last as in the first, _is
immediately present whole and undivided_, from which it follows that, as
such and in itself, it knows nothing of space and time. If we further
reflect that the production of these hyperboles of all works of art costs
nature absolutely nothing, so that, with inconceivable prodigality, she
creates millions of organisms which never attain to maturity, and without
sparing exposes every living thing to a thousand accidents, yet, on the
other hand, if favoured by chance or directed by human purpose, readily
affords millions of examples of a species of which hitherto there was only
one, so that millions cost her no more than one; this also leads us to see
that the multiplicity of things has its root in the nature of the
knowledge of the subject, but is foreign to the thing in itself, _i.e._,
to the inner primary force which shows itself in things; that consequently
space and time, upon which the possibility of all multiplicity depends,
are mere forms of our perception; nay, that even that whole inconceivable
ingenuity of structure associated with the reckless prodigality of the
works upon which it has been expended ultimately springs simply from the
way in which things are apprehended by us; for when the simple and
indivisible original effort of the will exhibits itself as object in our
cerebral knowledge, it must appear as an ingenious combination of separate
parts, as means and ends of each other, accomplished with wonderful
completeness.
The _unity of that will_, here referred to, which lies beyond the
phenomenon, and in which we have recognised the inner nature of the
phenomenal world, is a metaphysical unity, and consequently transcends the
knowledge of it, _i.e._, does not depend upon the functions of our
intellect, and therefore can not really be comprehended by it. Hence it
arises that it opens to the consideration an abyss so profound that it
admits of no thoroughly clear and systematically connected insight, but
grants us only isolated glances, which enable us to recognise this unity
in this and that relation of things, now in the subjective, now in the
objective sphere, whereby, however, new problems are again raised, all of
which I will not engage to solve, but rather appeal here to the words _est
quadam prodire tenus_, more concerned to set up nothing false or
arbitrarily invented than to give a thorough account of all;—at the risk
of giving here only a fragmentary exposition.
If we call up to our minds and distinctly go through in thought the
exceedingly acute theory of the origin of the planetary system, first put
forth by Kant and later by Laplace, a theory of which it is scarcely
possible to doubt the correctness, we see the lowest, crudest, and
blindest forces of nature bound to the most rigid conformity to law, by
means of their conflict for one and the same given matter, and the
accidental results brought about by this produce the framework of the
world, thus of the designedly prepared future dwelling‐place of
innumerable living beings, as a system of order and harmony, at which we
are the more astonished the more distinctly and accurately we come to
understand it. For example, if we see that every planet, with its present
velocity, can only maintain itself exactly where it actually has its
place, because if it were brought nearer to the sun it would necessarily
fall into it, or if placed further from it would necessarily fly away from
it; how, conversely, if we take the place as given, it can only remain
there with its present velocity and no other, because if it went faster it
would necessarily fly away from the sun, and if it went slower it would
necessarily fall into it; that thus only one definite place is suitable to
each definite velocity of a planet; and if we now see this solved by the
fact that the same physical, necessary, and blindly acting cause which
appointed it its place, at the same time and just by doing so, imparted to
it exactly the only velocity suitable for this place, in consequence of
the law of nature that a revolving body increases its velocity in
proportion as its revolution becomes smaller; and, moreover, if finally we
understand how endless permanence is assured to the whole system, by the
fact that all the mutual disturbances of the course of the planets which
unavoidably enter, must adjust themselves in time; how then it is just the
irrationality of the periods of revolution of Jupiter and Saturn to each
other that prevents their respective perturbations from repeating
themselves at one place, whereby they would become dangerous, and brings
it about that, appearing seldom and always at a different place, they must
sublate themselves again, like dissonances in music which are again
resolved into harmony. By means of such considerations we recognise a
design and perfection, such as could only have been brought about by the
freest absolute will directed by the most penetrating understanding and
the most acute calculation. And yet, under the guidance of that cosmogony
of Laplace, so well thought out and so accurately calculated, we cannot
prevent ourselves from seeing that perfectly blind forces of nature,
acting according to unalterable natural laws, through their conflict and
aimless play among themselves, could produce nothing else but this very
framework of the world, which is equal to the work of an extraordinarily
enhanced power of combination. Instead now, after the manner of
Anaxagoras, of dragging in the aid of an _intelligence_ known to us only
from animal nature, and adapted only to its aims, an intelligence which,
coming from without, cunningly made use of the existing forces of nature
and their laws in order to carry out its ends, which are foreign to
these,—we recognise in these lowest forces of nature themselves that same,
one will, which indeed first manifests itself in them, and already in this
manifestation striving after its goal, through its original laws
themselves works towards its final end, to which therefore all that
happens according to blind laws of nature must minister and correspond.
And this indeed cannot be otherwise, because everything material is
nothing but just the phenomenal appearance, the visibility, the
objectivity of the will to live which is one. Thus even the lowest forces
of nature themselves are animated by that same will, which afterwards, in
the individual beings provided with intelligence, marvels at its own work,
as the somnambulist wonders in the morning at what he has done in his
sleep; or, more accurately, which is astonished at its own form which it
beholds in the mirror. This unity which is here proved of the accidental
with the intentional, of the necessary with the free, on account of which
the blindest chances, which, however, rest upon universal laws of nature,
are as it were the keys upon which the world‐spirit plays its melodies so
full of significance,—this unity, I say, is, as has already been remarked,
an abyss in the investigation into which even philosophy can throw no full
light, but only a glimmer.
But I now turn to a _subjective_ consideration belonging to this place, to
which, however, I am able to give still less distinctness than to the
objective consideration which has just been set forth; for I shall only be
able to express it by images and similes. Why is our consciousness
brighter and more distinct the further it extends towards without, so that
its greatest clearness lies in sense perception, which already half
belongs to things outside us,—and, on the other hand, grows dimmer as we
go in, and leads, if followed to its inmost recesses, to a darkness in
which all knowledge ceases? Because, I say, consciousness presupposes
_individuality_; but this belongs to the mere phenomenon, for it is
conditioned by the forms of the phenomenon, space and time, as
multiplicity of the similar. Our inner nature, on the other hand, has its
root in that which is no longer phenomenon, but thing in itself, to which,
therefore, the forms of the phenomenon do not extend; and thus the chief
conditions of individuality are wanting, and with these the distinctness
of consciousness falls off. In this root of existence the difference of
beings ceases, like that of the radii of a sphere in the centre; and as in
the sphere the surface is produced by the radii ending and breaking off,
so consciousness is only possible where the true inner being runs out into
the phenomenon, through whose forms the separate individuality becomes
possible upon which consciousness depends, which is just on that account
confined to phenomena. Therefore all that is distinct and thoroughly
comprehensible in our consciousness always lies without upon this surface
of the sphere. Whenever, on the contrary, we withdraw entirely from this,
consciousness forsakes us,—in sleep, in death, to a certain extent also in
magnetic or magic influences; for these all lead through the centre. But
just because distinct consciousness, being confined to the surface of the
sphere, is not directed towards the centre, it recognises other
individuals certainly as of the same kind, but not as identical, which yet
in themselves they are. Immortality of the individual might be compared to
a point of the surface flying off at a tangent. But immortality, by virtue
of the eternal nature of the inner being of the whole phenomenon, may be
compared to the return of that point, on the radius, to the centre, of
which the whole surface is just the extension. The will as the thing in
itself is whole and undivided in every being, as the centre is an integral
part of every radius; while the peripherical end of this radius is in the
most rapid revolution, with the surface, which represents time and its
content, the other end, at the centre, which represents eternity, remains
in the profoundest peace, because the centre is the point of which the
rising half is not different from the sinking. Therefore in the Bhagavad‐
gita it is said: “_Haud distributum animantibus, et quasi distributum
tamen insidens, animantiumque sustentaculum id cognoscendum, edax et
rursus genitale_” (Lect. 13, 16 vers. Schlegel). Certainly we fall here
into mystical and figurative language, but it is the only language in
which anything can be said on this entirely transcendent theme. So this
simile also may pass. The human race may be imagined as an _animal
compositum_, a form of life of which many polypi, especially those which
swim, such as _Veretillum_, _Funiculina_, and others, afford examples. As
in these the head isolates each individual animal, and the lower part,
with the common stomach, combines them all in the unity of one life
process, so the brain with its consciousness isolates the human
individual, while the unconscious part, the vegetative life with its
ganglion system, into which in sleep the brain‐consciousness disappears,
like a lotus which nightly sinks in the flood, is a common life of all, by
means of which in exceptional cases they can even communicate, as, for
example, occurs when dreams communicate themselves directly, the thoughts
of the mesmeriser pass into the somnambulist, and finally also in the
magnetic or generally magical influence proceeding from intentional
willing. Such an influence, if it occurs, is _toto genere_ different from
every other on account of the _influxus physicus_ which takes place, for
it is really an _actio in distans_ which the will, certainly proceeding
from the individual, yet performs in its metaphysical quality as the
omnipresent substratum of the whole of nature. One might also say that as
in the _generatio æquivoca_ there sometimes and as an exception appears a
weak residue of the original _creative power_ of the will, which in the
existing forms of nature has already done its work and is extinguished, so
there may be, exceptionally, acting in these magical influences, as it
were, a surplus of its original _omnipotence_, which completes its work
and spends itself in the construction and maintenance of the organisms. I
have spoken fully of this magical property of the will in “The Will in
Nature,” and I gladly omit here discussions which have to appeal to
uncertain facts, which yet cannot be altogether ignored or denied.