ideas, etiology can never give us the desired information that shall carry
us beyond this point. For, after all its explanations, they still remain
quite strange to us, as mere ideas whose significance we do not
understand. The causal connection merely gives us the rule and the
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 only validity for ideas, for objects of a definite class, and
it has meaning only in so far as it presupposes them. Thus, like these
objects themselves, it always exists only in relation to a subject, that
is, conditionally; and so it is known just as well if we start from the
subject, _i.e._, _a priori_, as if we start from the object, _i.e._, _a
posteriori_. Kant indeed has taught us this.
But what now impels us to inquiry is just that we are not satisfied with
knowing that we have ideas, that they are such and such, and that they are
connected according to certain laws, the general expression of which is
the principle of sufficient reason. We wish to know the significance of
these ideas; we ask whether this world is merely idea; in which case it
would pass by us like an empty dream or a baseless vision, not worth our
notice; or whether it is also something else, something more than idea,
and if so, what. Thus much is certain, that this something we seek for
must be completely and in its whole nature different from the idea; that
the forms and laws of the idea must therefore be completely foreign to it;
further, that we cannot arrive at it from the idea under the guidance of
the laws which merely combine objects, ideas, among themselves, and which
are the forms of the principle of sufficient reason.
Thus we see already that we can never arrive at the real nature of things
from without. However much we investigate, we can never reach anything but
images and names. We are like a man who goes round a castle seeking in
vain for an entrance, and sometimes sketching the façades. And yet this is
the method that has been followed by all philosophers before me.
§ 18. In fact, the meaning for which we seek of that world which is
present to us only as our idea, or the transition from the world as mere
idea of the knowing subject to whatever it may be besides this, would
never be found if the investigator himself were nothing more than the pure
knowing subject (a winged cherub without a body). But he is himself rooted
in that world; he finds himself in it as an _individual_, that is to say,
his knowledge, which is the necessary supporter of the whole world as
idea, is yet always given through the medium of a body, whose affections
are, as we have shown, the starting-point for the understanding in the
perception of that world. His body is, for the pure knowing subject, an
idea like every other idea, an object among objects. Its movements and
actions are so far known to him in precisely the same way as the changes
of all other perceived objects, and would be just as strange and
incomprehensible to him if their meaning were not explained for him in an
entirely different way. Otherwise he would see his actions follow upon
given motives with the constancy of a law of nature, just as the changes
of other objects follow upon causes, stimuli, or motives. But he would not
understand the influence of the motives any more than the connection
between every other effect which he sees and its cause. He would then call
the inner nature of these manifestations and actions of his body which he
did not understand a force, a quality, or a character, as he pleased, but
he would have no further insight into it. But all this is not the case;
indeed the answer to the riddle is given to the subject of knowledge who
appears as an individual, and the answer is _will_. This and this alone
gives him the key to his own existence, reveals to him the significance,
shows him the inner mechanism of his being, of his action, of his
movements. The body is given in two entirely different ways to the subject
of knowledge, who becomes an individual only through his identity with it.
It is given as an idea in intelligent perception, as an object among
objects and subject to the laws of objects. And it is also given in quite
a different way as that which is immediately known to every one, and is
signified by the word _will_. Every true act of his will is also at once
and without exception a movement of his body. The act of will and the
movement of the body are not two different things objectively known, which
the bond of causality unites; they do not stand in the relation of cause
and effect; they are one and the same, but they are given in entirely
different ways,—immediately, and again in perception for the
understanding. The action of the body is nothing but the act of the will
objectified, _i.e._, passed into perception. It will appear later that
this is true of every movement of the body, not merely those which follow
upon motives, but also involuntary movements which follow upon mere
stimuli, and, indeed, that the whole body is nothing but objectified will,
_i.e._, will become idea. All this will be proved and made quite clear in
the course of this work. In one respect, therefore, I shall call the body
the _objectivity of will_; as in the previous book, and in the essay on
the principle of sufficient reason, in accordance with the one-sided point
of view intentionally adopted there (that of the idea), I called it _the
immediate object_. Thus in a certain sense we may also say that will is
the knowledge _a priori_ of the body, and the body is the knowledge _a
posteriori_ of the will. Resolutions of the will which relate to the
future are merely deliberations of the reason about what we shall will at
a particular time, not real acts of will. Only the carrying out of the
resolve stamps it as will, for till then it is never more than an
intention that may be changed, and that exists only in the reason _in
abstracto_. It is only in reflection that to will and to act are
different; in reality they are one. Every true, genuine, immediate act of
will is also, at once and immediately, a visible act of the body. And,
corresponding to this, every impression upon the body is also, on the
other hand, at once and immediately an impression upon the will. As such
it is called pain when it is opposed to the will; gratification or
pleasure when it is in accordance with it. The degrees of both are widely
different. It is quite wrong, however, to call pain and pleasure ideas,
for they are by no means ideas, but immediate affections of the will in
its manifestation, the body; compulsory, instantaneous willing or
not-willing of the impression which the body sustains. There are only a
few impressions of the body which do not touch the will, and it is through
these alone that the body is an immediate object of knowledge, for, as
perceived by the understanding, it is already an indirect object like all
others. These impressions are, therefore, to be treated directly as mere
ideas, and excepted from what has been said. The impressions we refer to
are the affections of the purely objective senses of sight, hearing, and
touch, though only so far as these organs are affected in the way which is
specially peculiar to their specific nature. This affection of them is so
excessively weak an excitement of the heightened and specifically modified
sensibility of these parts that it does not affect the will, but only
furnishes the understanding with the data out of which the perception
arises, undisturbed by any excitement of the will. But every stronger or
different kind of affection of these organs of sense is painful, that is
to say, against the will, and thus they also belong to its objectivity.
Weakness of the nerves shows itself in this, that the impressions which
have only such a degree of strength as would usually be sufficient to make
them data for the understanding reach the higher degree at which they
influence the will, that is to say, give pain or pleasure, though more
often pain, which is, however, to some extent deadened and inarticulate,
so that not only particular tones and strong light are painful to us, but
there ensues a generally unhealthy and hypochondriacal disposition which
is not distinctly understood. The identity of the body and the will shows
itself further, among other ways, in the circumstance that every vehement
and excessive movement of the will, _i.e._, every emotion, agitates the
body and its inner constitution directly, and disturbs the course of its
vital functions. This is shown in detail in “Will in Nature,” p. 27 of the
second edition and p. 28 of the third.
Lastly, the knowledge which I have of my will, though it is immediate,
cannot be separated from that which I have of my body. I know my will, not
as a whole, not as a unity, not completely, according to its nature, but I
know it only in its particular acts, and therefore in time, which is the
form of the phenomenal aspect of my body, as of every object. Therefore
the body is a condition of the knowledge of my will. Thus, I cannot really
imagine this will apart from 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 ideas or objects. But even there we saw this object
become one with the subject; that is, we saw it cease to be an object. We
there called this union the miracle κατ᾽ εξοχην, and the whole of the
present work is to a certain extent an explanation of this. So far as I
know my will specially as object, I know it as body. But then I am again
at the first class of ideas laid down in that essay, _i.e._, real objects.
As we proceed we shall see always more clearly that these ideas of the
first class obtain their explanation and solution from those of the fourth
class given in the essay, which could no longer be properly opposed to the
subject as object, and that, therefore, we must learn to understand the
inner nature of the law of causality which is valid in the first class,
and of all that happens in accordance with it from the law of motivation
which governs the fourth class.
The identity of the will and the body, of which we have now given a
cursory explanation, can only be proved in the manner we have adopted
here. We have proved this identity for the first time, and shall do so
more and more fully in the course of this work. By “proved” we mean raised
from the immediate consciousness, from knowledge in the concrete to
abstract knowledge of the reason, or carried over into abstract knowledge.
On the other hand, from its very nature it can never be demonstrated, that
is, deduced as indirect knowledge from some other more direct knowledge,
just because it is itself the most direct knowledge; and if we do not
apprehend it and stick to it as such, we shall expect in vain to receive
it again in some indirect way as derivative knowledge. It is knowledge of
quite a special kind, whose truth cannot therefore properly be brought
under any of the four rubrics under which I have classified all truth in
the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 29, the logical, the
empirical, the metaphysical, and the metalogical, for it is not, like all
these, the relation of an abstract idea to another idea, or to the
necessary form of perceptive or of abstract ideation, but it is the
relation of a judgment to the connection which an idea of perception, the
body, has to that which is not an idea at all, but something _toto genere_
different, will. I should like therefore to distinguish this from all
other truth, and call it κατ᾽ εξοχην _philosophical truth_. We can turn
the expression of this truth in different ways and say: My body and my
will are one;—or, What as an idea of perception I call my body, I call my
will, so far as I am conscious of it in an entirely different way which
cannot be compared to any other;—or, My body is the _objectivity_ of my
will;—or, My body considered apart from the fact that it is my idea is
still my will, and so forth.(27)
§ 19. In the first book we were reluctantly driven to explain the human
body as merely idea of the subject which knows it, like all the other
objects of this world of perception. But it has now become clear that what
enables us consciously to distinguish our own body from all other objects
which in other respects are precisely the same, is that our body appears
in consciousness in quite another way _toto genere_ different from idea,
and this we denote by the word _will_; and that it is just this double
knowledge which we have of our own body that affords us information about
it, about its action and movement following on motives, and also about
what it experiences by means of external impressions; in a word, about
what it is, not as idea, but as more than idea; that is to say, what it is
_in itself_. None of this information have we got directly with regard to
the nature, action, and experience of other real objects.
It is just because of this special relation to one body that the knowing
subject is an individual. For regarded apart from this relation, his body
is for him only an idea like all other ideas. But the relation through
which the knowing subject is an _individual_, is just on that account a
relation which subsists only between him and one particular idea of all
those which he has. Therefore he is conscious of this _one_ idea, not
merely as an idea, but in quite a different way as a will. If, however, he
abstracts from that special relation, from that twofold and completely
heterogeneous knowledge of what is one and the same, then that _one_, the
body, is an idea like all other ideas. Therefore, in order to understand
the matter, the individual who knows must either assume that what
distinguishes that one idea from others is merely the fact that his
knowledge stands in this double relation to it alone; that insight in two
ways at the same time is open to him only in the case of this one object
of perception, and that this is to be explained not by the difference of
this object from all others, but only by the difference between the
relation of his knowledge to this one object, and its relation to all
other objects. Or else he must assume that this object is essentially
different from all others; that it alone of all objects is at once both
will and idea, while the rest are only ideas, _i.e._, only 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 other objects, considered merely as _ideas_, are like his
body, that is, like it, fill space (which itself can only be present as
idea), and also, like it, are causally active in space, is indeed
demonstrably certain from the law of causality which is _a priori_ valid
for ideas, and which admits of no effect without a cause; but apart from
the fact that we can only reason from an effect to a cause generally, and
not to a similar cause, we are still in the sphere of mere ideas, in which
alone the law of causality is valid, and beyond which it can never take
us. But whether the objects known to the individual only as ideas are yet,
like his own body, manifestations of a will, is, as was said in the First
Book, the proper meaning of the question as to the reality of the external
world. To deny this is _theoretical egoism_, which on that account regards
all phenomena that are outside its own will as phantoms, just as in a
practical reference exactly the same thing is done by practical egoism.
For in it a man regards and treats himself alone as a person, and all
other persons as mere phantoms. Theoretical egoism can never be
demonstrably refuted, yet in philosophy it has never been used otherwise
than as a sceptical sophism, _i.e._, a pretence. As a serious conviction,
on the other hand, it could only be found in a madhouse, and as such it
stands in need of a cure rather than a refutation. We do not therefore
combat it any further in this regard, but treat it as merely the last
stronghold of scepticism, which is always polemical. Thus our knowledge,
which is always bound to individuality and is limited by this
circumstance, brings with it the necessity that each of us can only _be
one_, while, on the other hand, each of us can _know all_; and it is this
limitation that creates the need for philosophy. We therefore who, for
this very reason, are striving to extend the limits of our knowledge
through philosophy, will treat this sceptical argument of theoretical
egoism which meets us, as an army would treat a small frontier fortress.
The fortress cannot indeed be taken, but the garrison can never sally
forth from it, and therefore we pass it by without danger, and are not
afraid to have it in our rear.
The double knowledge which each of us has of the nature and activity of
his own body, and which is given in two completely different ways, has now
been clearly brought out. We shall accordingly make further use of it as a
key to the nature of every phenomenon in nature, and shall judge of all
objects which are not our own bodies, and are consequently not given to
our consciousness in a double way but only as ideas, according to the
analogy of our own bodies, and shall therefore assume that as in one
aspect they are idea, just like our bodies, and in this respect are
analogous to them, so in another aspect, what remains of objects when we
set aside their existence as idea of the subject, must in its inner nature
be the same as that in us which we call _will_. For what other kind of
existence or reality should we attribute to the rest of the material
world? Whence should we take the elements out of which we construct such a
world? Besides will and idea nothing is known to us or thinkable. If we
wish to attribute the greatest known reality to the material world which
exists immediately only in our idea, we give it the reality which our own
body has for each of us; for that is the most real thing for every one.
But if we now analyse the reality of this body and its actions, beyond the
fact that it is idea, we find nothing in it except the will; with this its
reality is exhausted. Therefore we can nowhere find another kind of
reality which we can attribute to the material world. Thus if we hold that
the material world is something more than merely our idea, we must say
that besides being idea, that is, in itself and according to its inmost
nature, it is that which we find immediately in ourselves as _will_. I say
according to its inmost nature; but we must first come to know more
accurately this real nature of the will, in order that we may be able to
distinguish from it what does not belong to itself, but to its
manifestation, 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 shall see farther
on, this does not belong to the real nature of will, but merely to its
distinct manifestation as an animal or a human being. If, therefore, I
say,—the force which attracts a stone to the earth is according to its
nature, in itself, and apart from all idea, will, I shall not be supposed
to express in this proposition the insane opinion that the stone moves
itself in accordance with a known motive, merely because this is the way
in which will appears in man.(28) We shall now proceed more clearly and in
detail to prove, establish, and develop to its full extent what as yet has
only been provisionally and generally explained.(29)
§ 20. As we have said, the will proclaims itself primarily in the
voluntary movements of our own body, as the inmost nature of this body, as
that which it is besides being object of perception, idea. For these
voluntary movements are nothing else than the visible aspect of the
individual acts of will, with which they are directly coincident and
identical, and only distinguished through the form of knowledge into which
they have passed, and in which alone they can be known, the form of idea.
But these acts of will have always a ground or reason outside themselves
in motives. Yet these motives never determine more than what I will at
_this_ time, in _this_ place, and under _these_ circumstances, not _that_
I will in general, or _what_ I will in general, that is, the maxims which
characterise my volition generally. Therefore the inner nature of my
volition cannot be explained from these motives; but they merely determine
its manifestation at a given point of time: they are merely the occasion
of my will showing itself; but the will itself lies outside the province
of the law of motivation, which determines nothing but its appearance at
each point of time. It is only under the presupposition of my empirical
character that the motive is a sufficient ground of explanation of my
action. But if I abstract from my character, and then ask, why, in
general, I will this and not that, no answer is possible, because it is
only the manifestation of the will that is subject to the principle of
sufficient reason, and not the will itself, which in this respect is to be
called _groundless_. At this point I presuppose Kant’s doctrine of the
empirical and intelligible character, and also my own treatment of the
subject in “The Fundamental Problems of Ethics,” pp. 48, 58, and 178, _et
seq._, of first edition (p. 174, _et seq._, of second edition). I shall
also have to speak more fully on the question in the Fourth Book. For the
present, I have only to draw attention to this, that the fact of one
manifestation being established through another, as here the deed through
the motive, does not at all conflict with the fact that its real nature is
will, which itself has no _ground_; for as the principle of sufficient
reason in all its aspects is only the form of knowledge, its validity
extends only to the idea, to the phenomena, to the visibility of the will,
but not to the will itself, which becomes visible.