phenomena in which the will objectifies itself, and we have seen their
endless and implacable strife with each other. Yet, according to the whole
discussion up to this point, the will itself, as thing-in-itself, is by no
means included in that multiplicity and change. The diversity of the
(Platonic) Ideas, _i.e._, grades of objectification, the multitude of
individuals in which each of these expresses itself, the struggle of forms
for matter,—all this does not concern it, but is only the manner of its
objectification, and only through this has an indirect relation to it, by
virtue of which it belongs to the expression of the nature of will for the
idea. As the magic-lantern shows many different pictures, which are all
made visible by one and the same light, so in all the multifarious
phenomena which fill the world together or throng after each other as
events, only _one will_ manifests itself, of which everything is the
visibility, the objectivity, and which remains unmoved in the midst of
this change; it alone is thing-in-itself; all objects are manifestations,
or, to speak the language of Kant, phenomena. Although in man, as
(Platonic) Idea, the will finds its clearest and fullest objectification,
yet man alone could not express its being. In order to manifest the full
significance of the will, the Idea of man would need to appear, not alone
and sundered from everything else, but accompanied by the whole series of
grades, down through all the forms of animals, through the vegetable
kingdom to unorganised nature. All these supplement each other in the
complete objectification of will; they are as much presupposed by the Idea
of man as the blossoms of a tree presuppose leaves, branches, stem, and
root; they form a pyramid, of which man is the apex. If fond of similes,
one might also say that their manifestations accompany that of man as
necessarily as the full daylight is accompanied by all the gradations of
twilight, through which, little by little, it loses itself in darkness; or
one might call them the echo of man, and say: Animal and plant are the
descending fifth and third of man, the inorganic kingdom is the lower
octave. The full truth of this last comparison will only become clear to
us when, in the following book, we attempt to fathom the deep significance
of music, and see how a connected, progressive melody, made up of high,
quick notes, may be regarded as in some sense expressing the life and
efforts of man connected by reflection, while the unconnected complemental
notes and the slow bass, which make up the harmony necessary to perfect
the music, represent the rest of the animal kingdom and the whole of
nature that is without knowledge. But of this in its own place, where it
will not sound so paradoxical. We find, however, that the _inner
necessity_ of the gradation of its manifestations, which is inseparable
from the adequate objectification of the will, is expressed by an _outer
necessity_ in the whole of these manifestations themselves, by reason of
which man has need of the beasts for his support, the beasts in their
grades have need of each other as well as of plants, which in their turn
require the ground, water, chemical elements and their combinations, the
planet, the sun, rotation and motion round the sun, the curve of the
ellipse, &c., &c. At bottom this results from the fact that the will must
live on itself, for there exists nothing beside it, and it is a hungry
will. Hence arise eager pursuit, anxiety, and suffering.
It is only the knowledge of the unity of will as thing-in-itself, in the
endless diversity and multiplicity of the phenomena, that can afford us
the true explanation of that wonderful, unmistakable analogy of all the
productions of nature, that family likeness on account of which we may
regard them as variations on the same ungiven theme. So in like measure,
through the distinct and thoroughly comprehended knowledge of that
harmony, that essential connection of all the parts of the world, that
necessity of their gradation which we have just been considering, we shall
obtain a true and sufficient insight into the inner nature and meaning of
the undeniable _teleology_ of all organised productions of nature, which,
indeed, we presupposed _a priori_, when considering and investigating
them.
This _teleology_ is of a twofold description; sometimes an _inner
teleology_, that is, an agreement of all the parts of a particular
organism, so ordered that the sustenance of the individual and the species
results from it, and therefore presents itself as the end of that
disposition or arrangement. Sometimes, however, there is an _outward
teleology_, a relation of unorganised to organised nature in general, or
of particular parts of organised nature to each other, which makes the
maintenance of the whole of organised nature, or of the particular animal
species, possible, and therefore presents itself to our judgment as the
means to this end.
_Inner teleology_ is connected with the scheme of our work in the
following way. If, in accordance with what has been said, all variations
of form in nature, and all multiplicity of individuals, belong not to the
will itself, but merely to its objectivity and the form of this
objectivity, it necessarily follows that the will is indivisible and is
present as a whole in every manifestation, although the grades of its
objectification, the (Platonic) Ideas, are very different from each other.
We may, for the sake of simplicity, regard these different Ideas as in
themselves individual and simple acts of the will, in which it expresses
its nature more or less. Individuals, however, are again manifestations of
the Ideas, thus of these acts, in time, space, and multiplicity. Now, in
the lowest grades of objectivity, such an act (or an Idea) retains its
unity in the manifestation; while, in order to appear in higher grades, it
requires a whole series of conditions and developments in time, which only
collectively express its nature completely. Thus, for example the Idea
that reveals itself in any general force of nature has always one single
expression, although it presents itself differently according to the
external relations that are present: otherwise its identity could not be
proved, for this is done by abstracting the diversity that arises merely
from external relations. In the same way the crystal has only _one_
manifestation of life, crystallisation, which afterwards has its fully
adequate and exhaustive expression in the rigid form, the corpse of that
momentary life. The plant, however, does not express the Idea, whose
phenomenon it is, at once and through a single manifestation, but in a
succession of developments of its organs in time. The animal not only
develops its organism in the same manner, in a succession of forms which
are often very different (metamorphosis), but this form itself, although
it is already objectivity of will at this grade, does not attain to a full
expression of its Idea. This expression must be completed through the
actions of the animal, in which its empirical character, common to the
whole species, manifests itself, and only then does it become the full
revelation of the Idea, a revelation which presupposes the particular
organism as its first 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 extent of supplanting entirely the character of
the species, through the self-surrender of the whole will). That which is
known as the empirical character, through the necessary development in
time, and the division into particular actions that is conditioned by it,
is, when we abstract from this temporal form of the manifestation the
_intelligible character_, according to the expression of Kant, who shows
his undying merit especially in establishing this distinction and
explaining the relation between freedom and necessity, _i.e._, between the
will as thing-in-itself and its manifestations in time.(38) Thus the
intelligible character coincides with the Idea, or, more accurately, with
the original act of will which reveals itself in it. So far then, not only
the empirical character of every man, but also that of every species of
animal and plant, and even of every original force of unorganised nature,
is to be regarded as the manifestation of an intelligible character, that
is, of a timeless, indivisible act of will. I should like here to draw
attention in passing to the naïveté with which every plant expresses and
lays open its whole character in its mere form, reveals its whole being
and will. This is why the physiognomy of plants is so interesting; while
in order to know an animal in its Idea, it is necessary to observe the
course of its action. As for man, he must be fully investigated and
tested, for reason makes him capable of a high degree of dissimulation.
The beast is as much more naïve than the man as the plant is more naïve
than the beast. In the beast we see the will to live more naked, as it
were, than in the man, in whom it is clothed with so much knowledge, and
is, moreover, so veiled through the capacity for dissimulation, that it is
almost only by chance, and here and there, that its true nature becomes
apparent. In the plant it shows itself quite naked, but also much weaker,
as mere blind striving for existence without end or aim. For the plant
reveals its whole being at the first glance, and with complete innocence,
which does not suffer from the fact that it carries its organs of
generation exposed to view on its upper surface, though in all animals
they have been assigned to the most hidden part. This innocence of the
plant results from its complete want of knowledge. Guilt does not lie in
willing, but in willing with knowledge. Every plant speaks to us first of
all of its home, of the climate, and the nature of the ground in which it
has grown. Therefore, even those who have had little practice easily tell
whether an exotic plant belongs to the tropical or the temperate zone, and
whether it grows in water, in marshes, on mountain, or on moorland.
Besides this, however, every plant expresses the special will of its
species, and says something that cannot be uttered in any other tongue.
But we must now apply what has been said to the teleological consideration
of the organism, so far as it concerns its inner design. If in unorganised
nature the Idea, which is everywhere to be regarded as a single act of
will, reveals itself also in a single manifestation which is always the
same, and thus one may say that here the empirical character directly
partakes of the unity of the intelligible, coincides, as it were, with it,
so that no inner design can show itself here; if, on the contrary, all
organisms express their Ideas through a series of successive developments,
conditioned by a multiplicity of co-existing parts, and thus only the sum
of the manifestations of the empirical character collectively constitute
the expression of the intelligible character; this necessary co-existence
of the parts and succession of the stages of development does not destroy
the unity of the appearing Idea, the act of will which expresses itself;
nay, rather this unity finds its expression in the necessary relation and
connection of the parts and stages of development with each other, in
accordance with the law of causality. Since it is the will which is one,
indivisible, and therefore entirely in harmony with itself, that reveals
itself in the whole Idea as in act, its manifestation, although broken up
into a number of different parts and conditions, must yet show this unity
again in the thorough agreement of all of these. This is effected by a
necessary relation and dependence of all the parts upon each other, by
means of which the unity of the Idea is re-established in the
manifestation. In accordance with this, we now recognise these different
parts and functions of the organism as related to each other reciprocally
as means and end, but the organism itself as the final end of all.
Consequently, neither the breaking up of the Idea, which in itself is
simple, into the multiplicity of the parts and conditions of the organism,
on the one hand, nor, on the other hand, the re-establishment of its unity
through the necessary connection of the parts and functions which arises
from the fact that they are the cause and effect, the means and end, of
each other, is peculiar and essential to the appearing will as such, to
the thing-in-itself, but only to its manifestation in space, time, and
causality (mere modes of the principle of sufficient reason, the form of
the phenomenon). They belong to the world as idea, not to the world as
will; they belong to the way in which the will becomes object, _i.e._,
idea at this grade of its objectivity. Every one who has grasped the
meaning of this discussion—a discussion which is perhaps somewhat
difficult—will now fully understand the doctrine of Kant, which follows
from it, that both the design of organised and the conformity to law of
unorganised nature are only introduced by our understanding, and therefore
both belong only to the phenomenon, not to the thing-in-itself. The
surprise, which was referred to above, at the infallible constancy of the
conformity to law of unorganised nature, is essentially the same as the
surprise that is excited by design in organised nature; for in both cases
what we wonder at is only the sight of the original unity of the Idea,
which, for the phenomenon, has assumed the form of multiplicity and
diversity.(39)
As regards the second kind of teleology, according to the division made
above, the _outer_ design, which shows itself, not in the inner economy of
the organisms, but in the support and assistance they receive from
without, both from unorganised nature and from each other; its general
explanation is to be found in the exposition we have just given. For the
whole world, with all its phenomena, is the objectivity of the one
indivisible will, the Idea, which is related to all other Ideas as harmony
is related to the single voice. Therefore that unity of the will must show
itself also in the agreement of all its manifestations. But we can very
much increase the clearness of this insight if we go somewhat more closely
into the manifestations of that outer teleology and agreement of the
different parts of nature with each other, an inquiry which will also
throw some light on the foregoing exposition. We shall best attain this
end by considering the following analogy.
The character of each individual man, so far as it is thoroughly
individual, and not entirely included in that of the species, may be
regarded as a special Idea, corresponding to a special act of the
objectification of will. This act itself would then be his intelligible
character, and his empirical character would be the manifestation of it.
The empirical character is entirely determined through the intelligible,
which is without ground, _i.e._, as thing-in-itself is not subordinated to
the principle of sufficient reason (the form of the phenomenon). The
empirical character must in the course of life afford us the express image
of the intelligible, and can only become what the nature of the latter
demands. But this property extends only to the essential, not to the
unessential in the course of life to which it applies. To this unessential
belong the detailed events and actions which are the material in which the
empirical character shows itself. These are determined by outward
circumstances, which present the motives upon which the character reacts
according to its nature; and as they may be very different, the outward
form of the manifestation of the empirical character, that is, the
definite actual or historical form of the course of life, will have to
accommodate itself to their influence. Now this form may be very
different, although what is essential to the manifestation, its content,
remains the same. Thus, for example it is immaterial whether a man plays
for nuts or for crowns; but whether a man cheats or plays fairly, that is
the real matter; the latter is determined by the intelligible character,
the former by outward circumstances. As the same theme may be expressed in
a hundred different variations, so the same character may be expressed in
a hundred very different lives. But various as the outward influence may
be, the empirical character which expresses itself in the course of life
must yet, whatever form it takes, accurately objectify the intelligible
character, for the latter adapts its objectification to the given material
of actual circumstances. We have now to assume something analogous to the
influence of outward circumstances upon the life that is determined in
essential matters by the character, if we desire to understand how the
will, in the original act of its objectification, determines the various
Ideas in which it objectifies itself, that is, the different forms of
natural existence of every kind, among which it distributes its
objectification, and which must therefore necessarily have a relation to
each other in the manifestation. We must assume that between all these
manifestations of the _one_ will there existed a universal and reciprocal
adaptation and accommodation of themselves to each other, by which,
however, as we shall soon see more clearly, all time-determination is to
be excluded, for the Idea lies outside time. In accordance with this,
every manifestation must have adapted itself to the surroundings into
which it entered, and these again must have adapted themselves to it,
although it occupied a much later position in time; and we see this
_consensus naturæ_ everywhere. Every plant is therefore adapted to its
soil and climate, every animal to its element and the prey that will be
its food, and is also in some way protected, to a certain extent, against
its natural enemy: the eye is adapted to the light and its refrangibility,
the lungs and the blood to the air, the air-bladder of fish to water, the
eye of the seal to the change of the medium in which it must see, the
water-pouch in the stomach of the camel to the drought of the African
deserts, the sail of the nautilus to the wind that is to drive its little
bark, and so on down to the most special and astonishing outward
adaptations.(40) We must abstract however here from all temporal
relations, for these can only concern the manifestation of the Idea, not
the Idea itself. Accordingly this kind of explanation must also be used
retrospectively, and we must not merely admit that every species
accommodated itself to the given environment, but also that this
environment itself, which preceded it in time, had just as much regard for
the being that would some time come into it. For it is one and the same
will that objectifies itself in the whole world; it knows no time, for
this form of the principle of sufficient reason does not belong to it, nor
to its original objectivity, the Ideas, but only to the way in which these
are known by the individuals who themselves are transitory, _i.e._, to the
manifestation of the Ideas. Thus, time has no significance for our present
examination of the manner in which the objectification of the will
distributes itself among the Ideas, and the Ideas whose _manifestations_
entered into the course of time earlier, according to the law of
causality, to which as phenomena they are subject, have no advantage over
those whose manifestation entered later; nay rather, these last are the
completest objectifications of the will, to which the earlier
manifestations must adapt themselves just as much as they must adapt
themselves to the earlier. Thus the course of the planets, the tendency to
the ellipse, the rotation of the earth, the division of land and sea, the
atmosphere, light, warmth, and all such phenomena, which are in nature
what bass is in harmony, adapted themselves in anticipation of the coming
species of living creatures of which they were to become the supporter and
sustainer. In the same way the ground adapted itself to the nutrition of
plants, plants adapted themselves to the nutrition of animals, animals to
that of other animals, and conversely they all adapted themselves to the
nutrition of the ground. All the parts of nature correspond to each other,
for it is _one_ will that appears in them all, but the course of time is
quite foreign to its original and only _adequate objectification_ (this
expression will be explained in the following book), the Ideas. Even now,
when the species have only to sustain themselves, no longer to come into
existence, we see here and there some such forethought of nature extending
to the future, and abstracting as it were from the process of time, a
self-adaptation of what is to what is yet to come. The bird builds the
nest for the young which it does not yet know; the beaver constructs a dam
the object of which is unknown to it; ants, marmots, and bees lay in
provision for the winter they have never experienced; the spider and the
ant-lion make snares, as if with deliberate cunning, for future unknown
prey; insects deposit their eggs where the coming brood finds future
nourishment. In the spring-time the female flower of the diœcian
valisneria unwinds the spirals of its stalk, by which till now it was held
at the bottom of the water, and thus rises to the surface. Just then the
male flower, which grows on a short stalk from the bottom, breaks away,
and so, at the sacrifice of its life, reaches the surface, where it swims
about in search of the female. The latter is fructified, and then draws
itself down again to the bottom by contracting its spirals, and there the
fruit grows.(41) I must again refer here to the larva of the male
stag-beetle, which makes the hole in the wood for its metamorphosis as big
again as the female does, in order to have room for its future horns. The
instinct of animals in general gives us the best illustration of what
remains of teleology in nature. For as instinct is an action, like that
which is guided by the conception of an end, and yet is entirely without
this; so all construction of nature resembles that which is guided by the
conception of an end, and yet is entirely without it. For in the outer as
in the inner teleology of nature, what we are obliged to think as means
and end is, in every case, _the manifestation of the unity of the one will
so thoroughly agreeing with itself_, which has assumed multiplicity in
space and time for our manner of knowing.
The reciprocal adaptation and self-accommodation of phenomena that springs
from this unity cannot, however, annul the inner contradiction which
appears in the universal conflict of nature described above, and which is
essential to the will. That harmony goes only so far as to render possible
the duration of the world and the different kinds of existences in it,
which without it would long since have perished. Therefore it only extends
to the continuance of the species, and the general conditions of life, but
not to that of the individual. If, then, by reason of that harmony and
accommodation, the _species_ in organised nature and the _universal
forces_ in unorganised nature continue to exist beside each other, and
indeed support each other reciprocally, on the other hand, the inner
contradiction of the will which objectifies itself in all these ideas
shows itself in the ceaseless internecine war of the _individuals_ of
these species, and in the constant struggle of the _manifestations_ of
these natural forces with each other, as we pointed out above. The scene
and the object of this conflict is matter, which they try to wrest from
each other, and also space and time, the combination of which through the
form of causality is, in fact, matter, as was explained in the First
Book.(42)