The intellect, which has hitherto only been considered in its original and
natural condition of servitude under the will, appears in the third book
in its deliverance from that bondage; with regard to which, however, it
must at once be observed that we have not to do here with a lasting
emancipation, but only with a brief hour of rest, an exceptional and
indeed only momentary release from the service of the will. As this
subject has been treated with sufficient fulness in the first volume, I
have here only to add a few supplementary remarks.
As, then, was there explained, the intellect in its activity in the
service of the will, thus in its natural function, knows only the mere
_relations_ of things; primarily to the will itself, to which it belongs,
whereby they become motives of the will; but then also, just for the sake
of the completeness of this knowledge, the relations of things to each
other. This last knowledge first appears in some extent and importance in
the human intellect; in the case of the brutes, on the other hand, even
where the intellect is considerably developed, only within very narrow
limits. Clearly even the apprehension of the relations which things have
to each other only takes place, _indirectly_, in the service of the will.
It therefore forms the transition to the purely objective knowledge, which
is entirely independent of the will; it is scientific knowledge, the
latter is artistic knowledge. If many and various relations of an object
are immediately apprehended, from these the peculiar and proper nature of
the object appears ever more distinctly, and gradually constructs itself
out of mere relations: although it itself is entirely different from them.
In this mode of apprehension the subjection of the intellect to the will
at once becomes ever more indirect and less. If the intellect has strength
enough to gain the preponderance, and let go altogether the relations of
things to the will, in order to apprehend, instead of them, the purely
objective nature of a phenomenon, which expresses itself through all
relations, it also forsakes, along with the service of the will, the
apprehension of mere relations, and thereby really also that of the
individual thing as such. It then moves freely, no longer belonging to a
will. In the individual thing it knows only the _essential_, and therefore
its whole _species_; consequently it now has for its object the _Ideas_,
in my sense, which agrees with the original, Platonic meaning of this
grossly misused word; thus the permanent, unchanging forms, independent of
the temporal existence of the individuals, the _species rerum_, which
really constitute what is purely objective in the phenomena. An Idea so
apprehended is not yet indeed the essence of the thing in itself, just
because it has sprung from knowledge of mere relations; yet, as the result
of the sum of all the relations, it is the peculiar _character_ of the
thing, and thereby the complete expression of the essence which exhibits
itself as an object of perception, comprehended, not in relation to an
individual will, but as it expresses itself spontaneously, whereby indeed
it determines all its relations, which till then alone were known. The
Idea is the root point of all these relations, and thereby the complete
and perfect phenomenon, or, as I have expressed it in the text, the
adequate objectivity of the will at this grade of its manifestation. Form
and colour, indeed, which in the apprehension of the Idea by perception
are what is immediate, belong at bottom not to the Idea itself, but are
merely the medium of its expression; for, strictly speaking, space is as
foreign to it as time. In this sense the Neo‐Platonist Olympiodorus
already says in his commentary on Plato’s Alcibiades (Kreuzer’s edition of
Proclus and Olympiodorus, vol. ii. p. 82): “το ειδος μεταδεδωκε μεν της
μορφης τῃ ὑλῃ αμερες δε ον μετελαβεν εξ αυτης του δεαστατου:” _i.e._, the
Idea, in itself unextended, imparted certainly the form to the matter, but
first assumed extension from it. Thus, as was said, the Ideas reveal not
the thing in itself, but only the objective character of things, thus
still only the phenomenon; and we would not even understand this character
if the inner nature of things were not otherwise known to us at least
obscurely and in feeling. This nature itself cannot be understood from the
Ideas, nor in general through any merely _objective_ knowledge; therefore
it would remain an eternal secret if we were not able to approach it from
an entirely different side. Only because every knowing being is also an
individual, and thereby a part of nature, does the approach to the inner
being of nature stand open to him in his own self‐consciousness, where, as
we have found, it makes itself known in the most immediate manner as will.
Now what the Platonic Idea is, regarded as a merely objective image, mere
form, and thereby lifted out of time and all relations—that, taken
empirically and in time, is the _species_ or kind. This, then, is the
empirical correlative of the Idea. The Idea is properly eternal, but the
species is of endless duration, although its appearance upon one planet
may become extinct. Even the names of the two pass over into each other:
ιδεα, ειδος, _species_, kind. The Idea is the species, but not the genus:
therefore the _species_ are the work of nature, the _genera_ the work of
man; they are mere conceptions. There are _species __ naturales_, but only
_genera logica_. Of manufactured articles there are no Ideas, but only
conceptions; thus _genera logica_, and their subordinate classes are
_species logicæ_. To what is said in this reference in vol. i. § 41, I
will add here that Aristotle also (_Metaph._ i. 9 and xiii. 5) says that
the Platonists admitted no ideas of manufactured articles: “ὁιον οικια,
και δακτυλιος, ὡν ου φασιν ειναι ειδη” (_Ut domus et annulus, quorum ideas
dari negant_). With which compare the Scholiast, p. 562, 563 of the Berlin
quarto edition. Aristotle further says (_Metaph._ xi. 3): “αλλ ειπερ
(Supple., ειδῃ εστι) επι των φυσει (εστι) διο δη ου κακως ὁ Πλατων εφη,
ὁτι ειδη εστι ὁποσα φυσει” (_Si quidem ideæ sunt, in iis sunt, quæ natura
fiunt: propter quod non male Plato dixit, quod species eorum sunt, quæ
natura sunt_). On which the Scholiast remarks, p. 800: “και τουτο αρεσκει
και αυτοις τοις τας ιδεας θεμενοις; των γαρ ὑπο τεχνης γινομενων ιδεας
ειναι ουκ ελεγον, αλλα των ὑπο φυσεως” (_Hoc etiam ipsis ideas
statuentibus placet: non enim arte factorum ideas dari ajebant, sed natura
procreatorum_). For the rest, the doctrine of Ideas originated with the
Pythagoreans, unless we distrust the assertion of Plutarch in the book,
_De placitis philosophorum_, L. i. c. 3.
The individual is rooted in the species, and time in eternity. And as
every individual is so only because it has the nature of its species in
itself, so also it has only temporal existence because it is in eternity.
In the following book a special chapter is devoted to the life of the
species.
In § 49 of the first volume I have sufficiently brought out the difference
between the Idea and the conception. Their resemblance, on the other hand,
rests upon the following ground: The original and essential unity of an
Idea becomes broken up into the multiplicity of individual things through
the perception of the knowing individual, which is subject to sensuous and
cerebral conditions. But that unity is then restored through the
reflection of the reason, yet only _in abstracto_, as a concept,
_universale_, which indeed is equal to the Idea in extension, but has
assumed quite a different _form_, and has thereby lost its perceptible
nature, and with this its thorough determinateness. In this sense (but in
no other) we might, in the language of the Scholastics, describe the Ideas
as _universalia ante rem_, the conceptions as _universalia post rem_.
Between the two stand the individual things, the knowledge of which is
possessed also by the brutes. Without doubt the realism of the Scholastics
arose from the confusion of the Platonic Ideas, to which, since they are
also the species, an objective real being can certainly be attributed,
with the mere concepts to which the Realists now wished to attribute such
a being, and thereby called forth the victorious opposition of Nominalism.