the part of natural science to seek to refer the higher grades of the
objectification of will to the lower; for the failure to recognise, or the
denial of, original and self-existing forces of nature is just as wrong as
the groundless assumption of special forces when what occurs is merely a
peculiar kind of manifestation of what is already known. Thus Kant rightly
says that it would be absurd to hope for a blade of grass from a Newton,
that is, from one who reduced the blade of grass to the manifestations of
physical and chemical forces, of which it was the chance product, and
therefore a mere freak of nature, in which no special Idea appeared,
_i.e._, the will did not directly reveal itself in it in a higher and
specific grade, but just as in the phenomena of unorganised nature and by
chance in this form. The schoolmen, who certainly would not have allowed
such a doctrine, would rightly have said that it was a complete denial of
the _forma substantialis_, and a degradation of it to the _forma
accidentalis_. For the _forma substantialis_ of Aristotle denotes exactly
what I call the grade of the objectification of will in a thing. On the
other hand, it is not to be overlooked that in all Ideas, that is, in all
forces of unorganised, and all forms of organised nature, it is _one and
the same_ will that reveals itself, that is to say, which enters the form
of the idea and passes into _objectivity_. Its unity must therefore be
also recognisable through an inner relationship between all its phenomena.
Now this reveals itself in the higher grades of the objectification of
will, where the whole phenomenon is more distinct, thus in the vegetable
and animal kingdoms, through the universally prevailing analogy of all
forms, the fundamental type which recurs in all phenomena. This has,
therefore, become the guiding principle of the admirable zoological system
which was originated by the French in this century, and it is most
completely established in comparative anatomy as _l’unité de plan_,
_l’uniformité de l’élément anatomique_. To discover this fundamental type
has been the chief concern, or at any rate the praiseworthy endeavour, of
the natural philosophers of the school of Schelling, who have in this
respect considerable merit, although in many cases their hunt after
analogies in nature degenerated into mere conceits. They have, however,
rightly shown that that general relationship and family likeness exists
also in the Ideas of unorganised nature; for example, between electricity
and magnetism, the identity of which was afterwards established; between
chemical attraction and gravitation, and so forth. They specially called
attention to the fact that _polarity_, that is, the sundering of a force
into two qualitatively different and opposed activities striving after
reunion, which also shows itself for the most part in space as a
dispersion in opposite directions, is a fundamental type of almost all the
phenomena of nature, from the magnet and the crystal to man himself. Yet
this knowledge has been current in China from the earliest times, in the
doctrine of opposition of Yin and Yang. Indeed, since all things in the
world are the objectification of one and the same will, and therefore in
their inner nature identical, it must not only be the case that there is
that unmistakable analogy between them, and that in every phenomenon the
trace, intimation, and plan of the higher phenomenon that lies next to it
in point of development shows itself, but also because all these forms
belong to the world as _idea_, it is indeed conceivable that even in the
most universal forms of the idea, in that peculiar framework of the
phenomenal world space and time, it may be possible to discern and
establish the fundamental type, intimation, and plan of what fills the
forms. It seems to have been a dim notion of this that was the origin of
the Cabala and all the mathematical philosophy of the Pythagoreans, and
also of the Chinese in Y-king. In the school of Schelling also, to which
we have already referred, we find, among their efforts to bring to light
the similarity among the phenomena of nature, several attempts (though
rather unfortunate ones) to deduce laws of nature from the laws of pure
space and time. However, one can never tell to what extent a man of genius
will realise both endeavours.
Now, although the difference between phenomenon and thing-in-itself is
never lost sight of, and therefore the identity of the will which
objectifies itself in all Ideas can never (because it has different grades
of its objectification) be distorted to mean identity of the particular
Ideas themselves in which it appears, so that, for example, chemical or
electrical attraction can never be reduced to the attraction of
gravitation, although this inner analogy is known, and the former may be
regarded as, so to speak, higher powers of the latter, just as little does
the similarity of the construction of all animals warrant us in mixing and
identifying the species and explaining the more developed as mere
variations of the less developed; and although, finally, the physiological
functions are never to be reduced to chemical or physical processes, yet,
in justification of this procedure, within certain limits, we may accept
the following observations as highly probable.
If several of the phenomena of will in the lower grades of its
objectification—that is, in unorganised nature—come into conflict because
each of them, under the guidance of causality, seeks to possess a given
portion of matter, there arises from the conflict the phenomenon of a
higher Idea which prevails over all the less developed phenomena
previously there, yet in such a way that it allows the essence of these to
continue to exist in a subordinate manner, in that it takes up into itself
from them something which is analogous to them. This process is only
intelligible from the identity of the will which manifests itself in all
the Ideas, and which is always striving after higher objectification. We
thus see, for example, in the hardening of the bones, an unmistakable
analogy to crystallisation, as the force which originally had possession
of the chalk, although ossification is never to be reduced to
crystallisation. The analogy shows itself in a weaker degree in the flesh
becoming firm. The combination of humours in the animal body and secretion
are also analogous to chemical combination and separation. Indeed, the
laws of chemistry are still strongly operative in this case, but
subordinated, very much modified, and mastered by a higher Idea; therefore
mere chemical forces outside the organism will never afford us such
humours; but
“Encheiresin naturæ nennt es die Chemie,
Spottet ihrer selbst und weiss nicht wie.”
The more developed Idea resulting from this victory over several lower
Ideas or objectifications of will, gains an entirely new character by
taking up into itself from every Idea over which it has prevailed a
strengthened analogy. The will objectifies itself in a new, more distinct
way. It originally appears in _generatio æquivoca_; afterwards in
assimilation to the given germ, organic moisture, plant, animal, man. Thus
from the strife of lower phenomena the higher arise, swallowing them all
up, but yet realising in the higher grade the tendency of all the lower.
Here, then, already the law applies—_Serpens nisi serpentem comederit non
fit draco._
I wish it had been possible for me to dispel by clearness of explanation
the obscurity which clings to the subject of these thoughts; but I see
very well that the reader’s own consideration of the matter must
materially aid me if I am not to remain uncomprehended or misunderstood.
According to the view I have expressed, the traces of chemical and
physical modes of operation will indeed be found in the organism, but it
can never be explained from them; because it is by no means a phenomenon
even accidentally brought about through the united actions of such forces,
but a higher Idea which has overcome these lower ideas by _subduing
assimilation_; for the _one_ will which objectifies itself in all Ideas
always seeks the highest possible objectification, and has therefore in
this case given up the lower grades of its manifestation after a conflict,
in order to appear in a higher grade, and one so much the more powerful.
No victory without conflict: since the higher Idea or objectification of
will can only appear through the conquest of the lower, it endures the
opposition of these lower Ideas, which, although brought into subjection,
still constantly strive to obtain an independent and complete expression
of their being. The magnet that has attracted a piece of iron carries on a
perpetual conflict with gravitation, which, as the lower objectification
of will, has a prior right to the matter of the iron; and in this constant
battle the magnet indeed grows stronger, for the opposition excites it, as
it were, to greater effort. In the same way every manifestation of the
will, including that which expresses itself in the human organism, wages a
constant war against the many physical and chemical forces which, as lower
Ideas, have a prior right to that matter. Thus the arm falls which for a
while, overcoming gravity, we have held stretched out; thus the pleasing
sensation of health, which proclaims the victory of the Idea of the
self-conscious organism over the physical and chemical laws, which
originally governed the humours of the body, is so often interrupted, and
is indeed always accompanied by greater or less discomfort, which arises
from the resistance of these forces, and on account of which the
vegetative part of our life is constantly attended by slight pain. Thus
also digestion weakens all the animal functions, because it requires the
whole vital force to overcome the chemical forces of nature by
assimilation. Hence also in general the burden of physical life, the
necessity of sleep, and, finally, of death; for at last these subdued
forces of nature, assisted by circumstances, win back from the organism,
wearied even by the constant victory, the matter it took from them, and
attain to an unimpeded expression of their being. We may therefore say
that every organism expresses the Idea of which it is the image, only
after we have subtracted the part of its force which is expended in
subduing the lower Ideas that strive with it for matter. This seems to
have been running in the mind of Jacob Böhm when he says somewhere that
all the bodies of men and animals, and even all plants, are really half
dead. According as the subjection in the organism of these forces of
nature, which express the lower grades of the objectification of will, is
more or less successful, the more or the less completely does it attain to
the expression of its Idea; that is to say, the nearer it is to the
_ideal_ or the further from it—the _ideal_ of beauty in its species.
Thus everywhere in nature we see strife, conflict, and alternation of
victory, and in it we shall come to recognise more distinctly that
variance with itself which is essential to the will. Every grade of the
objectification of will fights for the matter, the space, and the time of
the others. The permanent matter must constantly change its form; for
under the guidance of causality, mechanical, physical, chemical, and
organic phenomena, eagerly striving to appear, wrest the matter from each
other, for each desires to reveal its own Idea. This strife may be
followed through the whole of nature; indeed nature exists only through
it: ει γαρ μη ην το νεικος εν τοις πραγμασιν, ἑν αν ην ἁπαντα, ὡς φησιν
Εμπεδοκλης; (nam si non inesset in rebus contentio, unum omnia essent, ut
ait Empedocles. Aris. Metaph., B. 5). Yet this strife itself is only the
revelation of that variance with itself which is essential to the will.
This universal conflict becomes most distinctly visible in the animal
kingdom. For animals have the whole of the vegetable kingdom for their
food, and even within the animal kingdom every beast is the prey and the
food of another; that is, the matter in which its Idea expresses itself
must yield itself to the expression of another Idea, for each animal can
only maintain its existence by the constant destruction of some other.
Thus the will to live everywhere preys upon itself, and in different forms
is its own nourishment, till finally the human race, because it subdues
all the others, regards nature as a manufactory for its use. Yet even the
human race, as we shall see in the Fourth Book, reveals in itself with
most terrible distinctness this conflict, this variance with itself of the
will, and we find _homo homini lupus_. Meanwhile we can recognise this
strife, this subjugation, just as well in the lower grades of the
objectification of will. Many insects (especially ichneumon-flies) lay
their eggs on the skin, and even in the body of the larvæ of other
insects, whose slow destruction is the first work of the newly hatched
brood. The young hydra, which grows like a bud out of the old one, and
afterwards separates itself from it, fights while it is still joined to
the old one for the prey that offers itself, so that the one snatches it
out of the mouth of the other (Trembley, Polypod., ii. p. 110, and iii. p.
165). But the bulldog-ant of Australia affords us the most extraordinary
example of this kind; for if it is cut in two, a battle begins between the
head and the tail. The head seizes the tail with its teeth, and the tail
defends itself bravely by stinging the head: the battle may last for half
an hour, until they die or are dragged away by other ants. This contest
takes place every time the experiment is tried. (From a letter by Howitt
in the W. Journal, reprinted in Galignani’s Messenger, 17th November
1855.) On the banks of the Missouri one sometimes sees a mighty oak the
stem and branches of which are so encircled, fettered, and interlaced by a
gigantic wild vine, that it withers as if choked. The same thing shows
itself in the lowest grades; for example, when water and carbon are
changed into vegetable sap, or vegetables or bread into blood by organic
assimilation; and so also in every case in which animal secretion takes
place, along with the restriction of chemical forces to a subordinate mode
of activity. This also occurs in unorganised nature, when, for example,
crystals in process of formation meet, cross, and mutually disturb each
other to such an extent that they are unable to assume the pure
crystalline form, so that almost every cluster of crystals is an image of
such a conflict of will at this low grade of its objectification; or
again, when a magnet forces its magnetism upon iron, in order to express
its Idea in it; or when galvanism overcomes chemical affinity, decomposes
the closest combinations, and so entirely suspends the laws of chemistry
that the acid of a decomposed salt at the negative pole must pass to the
positive pole without combining with the alkalies through which it goes on
its way, or turning red the litmus paper that touches it. On a large scale
it shows itself in the relation between the central body and the planet,
for although the planet is in absolute dependence, yet it always resists,
just like the chemical forces in the organism; hence arises the constant
tension between centripetal and centrifugal force, which keeps the globe
in motion, and is itself an example of that universal essential conflict
of the manifestation of will which we are considering. For as every body
must be regarded as the manifestation of a will, and as will necessarily
expresses itself as a struggle, the original condition of every world that
is formed into a globe cannot be rest, but motion, a striving forward in
boundless space without rest and without end. Neither the law of inertia
nor that of causality is opposed to this: for as, according to the former,
matter as such is alike indifferent to rest and motion, its original
condition may just as well be the one as the other, therefore if we first
find it in motion, we have just as little right to assume that this was
preceded by a condition of rest, and to inquire into the cause of the
origin of the motion, as, conversely, if we found it at rest, we would
have to assume a previous motion and inquire into the cause of its
suspension. It is, therefore, not needful to seek for a first impulse for
centrifugal force, for, according to the hypothesis of Kant and Laplace,
it is, in the case of the planets, the residue of the original rotation of
the central body, from which the planets have separated themselves as it
contracted. But to this central body itself motion is essential; it always
continues its rotation, and at the same time rushes forward in endless
space, or perhaps circulates round a greater central body invisible to us.
This view entirely agrees with the conjecture of astronomers that there is
a central sun, and also with the observed advance of our whole solar
system, and perhaps of the whole stellar system to which our sun belongs.
From this we are finally led to assume a general advance of fixed stars,
together with the central sun, and this certainly loses all meaning in
boundless space (for motion in absolute space cannot be distinguished from
rest), and becomes, as is already the case from its striving and aimless
flight, an expression of that nothingness, that failure of all aim, which,
at the close of this book, we shall be obliged to recognise in the
striving of will in all its phenomena. Thus boundless space and endless
time must be the most universal and essential forms of the collective
phenomena of will, which exist for the expression of its whole being.
Lastly, we can recognise that conflict which we are considering of all
phenomena of will against each other in simple matter regarded as such;
for the real characteristic of matter is correctly expressed by Kant as
repulsive and attractive force; so that even crude matter has its
existence only in the strife of conflicting forces. If we abstract from
all chemical differences in matter, or go so far back in the chain of
causes and effects that as yet there is no chemical difference, there
remains mere matter,—the world rounded to a globe, whose life, _i.e._,
objectification of will, is now constituted by the conflict between
attractive and repulsive forces, the former as gravitation pressing from
all sides towards the centre, the latter as impenetrability always
opposing the former either as rigidity or elasticity; and this constant
pressure and resistance may be regarded as the objectivity of will in its
very lowest grade, and even there it expresses its character.
We should see the will express itself here in the lowest grade as blind
striving, an obscure, inarticulate impulse, far from susceptible of being
directly known. It is the simplest and the weakest mode of its
objectification. But it appears as this blind and unconscious striving in
the whole of unorganised nature, in all those original forces of which it
is the work of physics and chemistry to discover and to study the laws,
and each of which manifests itself to us in millions of phenomena which
are exactly similar and regular, and show no trace of individual
character, but are mere multiplicity through space and time, _i.e._,
through the _principium individuationis_, as a picture is multiplied
through the facets of a glass.
From grade to grade objectifying itself more distinctly, yet still
completely without consciousness as an obscure striving force, the will
acts in the vegetable kingdom also, in which the bond of its phenomena
consists no longer properly of causes, but of stimuli; and, finally, also
in the vegetative part of the animal phenomenon, in the production and
maturing of the animal, and in sustaining its inner economy, in which the
manifestation of will is still always necessarily determined by stimuli.
The ever-ascending grades of the objectification of will bring us at last
to the point at which the individual that expresses the Idea could no
longer receive food for its assimilation through mere movement following
upon stimuli. For such a stimulus must be waited for, but the food has now
come to be of a more special and definite kind, and with the
ever-increasing multiplicity of the individual phenomena, the crowd and
confusion has become so great that they interfere with each other, and the
chance of the individual that is moved merely by stimuli and must wait for
its food would be too unfavourable. From the point, therefore, at which
the animal has delivered itself from the egg or the womb in which it
vegetated without consciousness, its food must be sought out and selected.
For this purpose movement following upon motives, and therefore
consciousness, becomes necessary, and consequently it appears as an agent,
μηχανη, called in at this stage of the objectification of will for the
conservation of the individual and the propagation of the species. It
appears represented by the brain or a large ganglion, just as every other
effort or determination of the will which objectifies itself is
represented by an organ, that is to say, manifests itself for the idea as
an organ.(36) But with this means of assistance, this μηχανη, the _world
as idea_ comes into existence at a stroke, with all its forms, object and
subject, time, space, multiplicity, and causality. The world now shows its
second side. Till now _mere will_, it becomes also _idea_, object of the
knowing subject. The will, which up to this point followed its tendency in
the dark with unerring certainty, has at this grade kindled for itself a
light as a means which became necessary for getting rid of the
disadvantage which arose from the throng and the complicated nature of its
manifestations, and which would have accrued precisely to the most perfect
of them. The hitherto infallible certainty and regularity with which it
worked in unorganised and merely vegetative nature, rested upon the fact
that it alone was active in its original nature, as blind impulse, will,
without assistance, and also without interruption, from a second and
entirely different world, the world as idea, which is indeed only the
image of its own inner being, but is yet of quite another nature, and now
encroaches on the connected whole of its phenomena. Hence its infallible
certainty comes to an end. Animals are already exposed to illusion, to
deception. They have, however, merely ideas of perception, no conceptions,
no reflection, and they are therefore bound to the present; they cannot
have regard for the future. It seems as if this knowledge without reason
was not in all cases sufficient for its end, and at times required, as it
were, some assistance. For the very remarkable phenomenon presents itself,
that the blind working of the will and the activity enlightened by
knowledge encroach in a most astonishing manner upon each other’s spheres
in two kinds of phenomena. In the one case we find in the very midst of
those actions of animals which are guided by perceptive knowledge and its
motives one kind of action which is accomplished apart from these, and
thus through the necessity of the blindly acting will. I refer to those
mechanical instincts which are guided by no motive or knowledge, and which
yet have the appearance of performing their work from abstract rational
motives. The other case, which is opposed to this, is that in which, on
the contrary, the light of knowledge penetrates into the workshop of the
blindly active will, and illuminates the vegetative functions of the human
organism. I mean clairvoyance. Finally, when the will has attained to the
highest grade of its objectification, that knowledge of the understanding
given to brutes to which the senses supply the data, out of which there
arises mere perception confined to what is immediately present, does not
suffice. That complicated, many-sided, imaginative being, man, with his
many needs, and exposed as he is to innumerable dangers, must, in order to
exist, be lighted by a double knowledge; a higher power, as it were, of
perceptive knowledge must be given him, and also reason, as the faculty of
framing abstract conceptions. With this there has appeared reflection,
surveying the future and the past, and, as a consequence, deliberation,
care, the power of premeditated action independent of the present, and
finally, the full and distinct consciousness of one’s own deliberate
volition as such. Now if with mere knowledge of perception there arose the
possibility of illusion and deception, by which the previous infallibility
of the blind striving of will was done away with, so that mechanical and
other instincts, as expressions of unconscious will, had to lend their
help in the midst of those that were conscious, with the entrance of
reason that certainty and infallibility of the expressions of will (which
at the other extreme in unorganised nature appeared as strict conformity
to law) is almost entirely lost; instinct disappears altogether;
deliberation, which is supposed to take the place of everything else,
begets (as was shown in the First Book) irresolution and uncertainty; then
error becomes possible, and in many cases obstructs the adequate
objectification of the will in action. For although in the character the
will has already taken its definite and unchangeable bent or direction, in
accordance with which volition, when occasioned by the presence of a
motive, invariably takes place, yet error can falsify its expressions, for
it introduces illusive motives that take the place of the real ones which
they resemble;(37) as, for example, when superstition forces on a man
imaginary motives which impel him to a course of action directly opposed
to the way in which the will would otherwise express itself in the given
circumstances. Agamemnon slays his daughter; a miser dispenses alms, out
of pure egotism, in the hope that he will some day receive an
hundred-fold; and so on.
Thus knowledge generally, rational as well as merely sensuous, proceeds
originally from the will itself, belongs to the inner being of the higher
grades of its objectification as a mere μηχανη, a means of supporting the
individual and the species, just like any organ of the body. Originally
destined for the service of the will for the accomplishment of its aims,
it remains almost throughout entirely subjected to its service: it is so
in all brutes and in almost all men. Yet we shall see in the Third Book
how in certain individual men knowledge can deliver itself from this
bondage, throw off its yoke, and, free from all the aims of will, exist
purely for itself, simply as a clear mirror of the world, which is the
source of art. Finally, in the Fourth Book, we shall see how, if this kind
of knowledge reacts on the will, it can bring about self-surrender,
_i.e._, resignation, which is the final goal, and indeed the inmost nature
of all virtue and holiness, and is deliverance from the world.