The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 3 of 3)

Matter is accordingly the will itself, but no longer in itself, but so far as it is perceived, i. e., assumes the form of the objective idea. Thus what objectively is matter is subjectively will. Exactly corresponding to this, as was proved above, our body is just the visibility, objectivity of our will, and so also every body is the objectivity of the will at some one of its grades. Whenever the will exhibits itself to objective knowledge it enters into the forms of perception of the intellect, time, space, and causality. But on account of this it exists at once as a material object. We can present to our minds form without matter, but not the reverse; because matter deprived of form would be the will itself, and the will only becomes objective by entering the forms of perception of our intellect, and therefore only by means of the assumption of form. Space is the form of perception of matter because the latter is the substance (Stoff) of mere form, but matter can appear only in form.

Since the will becomes objective, i. e., passes over into the idea, matter is the universal substratum of this objectification, or rather it is this objectification itself taken abstractly, i. e., regarded apart from all form. Matter is accordingly the visibility of the will in general, while the character of its definite manifestations has its expression in form and quality. Hence what in the manifestation, i. e., for the idea, is matter is in itself will. Therefore, under the conditions of experience and perception, everything holds good of it that holds good of the will in itself, and it repeats all the relations and properties of the will in temporal images. Accordingly it is the substance of the world of perception, as the will is the inner nature of all things. The forms are innumerable, the matter is one; just as the will is one in all its objectifications. As the will never objectifies itself as general, i. e., as absolute will, but always as particular, i. e., under special determinations and a given character, so matter never appears as such, but always in connection with some particular form and quality. In the manifestation or objectification of the will matter represents its totality, it itself, which in all is one, as matter is one in all bodies. As the will is the inmost kernel of all phenomenal beings, so matter is the substance which remains after all the accidents have been taken away. As the will is that which is absolutely indestructible in all existence, so matter is that which is imperishable in time and permanent through all changes. That matter for itself, thus separated from form, cannot be perceived or presented in imagination depends upon the fact that in itself, and as the pure substantiality of bodies, it is really the will itself. But the will cannot be apprehended objectively, or perceived in itself, but only under all the conditions of the idea, and therefore only as phenomenon. Under these conditions, however, it exhibits itself at once as body, i. e., as matter clothed in form and quality. But form is conditioned by space, and quality or power of acting by causality; thus both depend upon the functions of the intellect. Matter without them would just be the thing in itself, i. e., the will itself. Therefore, as has been said, Plotinus and Giordano Bruno could only be brought by a completely objective path to the assertion that matter in and for itself is without extension, consequently without spatial properties, consequently incorporeal.

Because, then, matter is the visibility of the will, and every force in itself is will, no force can appear without a material substratum, and conversely no body can be without forces dwelling in it which constitute its quality. Therefore a body is the union of matter and form which is called substance (Stoff). Force and substance are inseparable because at bottom they are one; for, as Kant has shown, matter itself is given us only as the union of two forces, the force of expansion and that of attraction. Thus there is no opposition between force and substance, rather they are precisely one.

Led by the course of our consideration to this standpoint, and having attained to this metaphysical view of matter, we will confess without reluctance that the temporal origin of forms, shapes, or species cannot reasonably be sought elsewhere than in matter. Some time or other they must have come forth from it, just because it is the mere visibility of the will which constitutes the inner nature of all phenomena. In that the will manifests itself, i. e., presents itself objectively to the intellect, matter, as its visibility, assumes form by means of the functions of the intellect. Hence the Schoolmen said: “Materia appetit formam.” That such was the origin of all forms of life cannot be doubted: we cannot even conceive it otherwise. Whether, however, now, since the paths to the perpetuation of the forms stand open, and are secured and sustained by nature with boundless care and jealousy, generatio œquivoca still takes place, can only be decided by experience; especially since the saying, Natura nihil facit frustra, might, with reference to the paths of regular propagation, be used as a valid argument against it. Yet in spite of the most recent objections to it, I hold that at very low grades generatio œquivoca is very probable, and primarily indeed in the case of entozoa and epizoa, particularly such as appear in consequence of special cachexia of the animal organism. For the conditions of their life only appear exceptionally; consequently their species cannot propagate itself in the regular manner, and therefore has always to arise anew whenever opportunity offers. Therefore as soon as the conditions of life of epizoa have appeared in consequence of certain chronic diseases, or cachexia, and in accordance with them, pediculus capitis or pubis or corporis appears entirely of itself, and without any egg; and this notwithstanding the complex structure of these insects, for the putrefaction of a living animal body affords material for higher productions than that of hay in water, which only produces infusoria. Or is it thought more likely that the eggs of the epizoa are constantly floating about in the air in expectation? (Fearful to think of!) Let us rather remember the disease of phthiriasis, which occurs even now. An analogous case takes place when through special circumstances the conditions of life appear of a species which up till then was foreign to that place. Thus August St. Hilaire saw in Brazil, after the burning of a primitive forest, as soon as ever the ashes had cooled, a number of plants grow up out of them, the species of which was not to be found far and wide; and quite recently Admiral Petit-Thouars informed the Académie des sciences that upon the growing coral islands in Polynesia a soil gradually deposits itself which is now dry, now lies in water, and which vegetation soon takes possession of, bringing forth trees which are absolutely peculiar to these islands (Comptes rendus, 17th Jan. 1859, p. 147). Whenever putrefaction takes place mould, fungi, and in liquids infusoria appear. The assumption now in favour that spores and eggs of the innumerable species of all those kinds of animal life are everywhere floating in the air, and wait through long years for a favourable opportunity, is more paradoxical than that of generatio œquivoca. Putrefaction is the decomposition of an organised body, first into its more immediate chemical constituents. Since now these are more or less the same in all living beings, the omnipresent will to live can possess itself of them, in order, in accordance with the circumstances, to produce new existences from them; and these forming themselves according to design, i. e., objectifying the volition of the will at the time, solidify out of the chemical elements as the chicken out of the fluidity of the egg. When, however, this does not take place, the putrefying matter is resolved into its ultimate constituent parts, which are the chemical elements, and now passes over again into the great course of nature. The war which has been waged for the last ten or fifteen years against generatio œquivoca, with its premature shouts of victory, was the prelude to the denial of the vital force, and related to it. Let no one, however, be deceived by dogmatic assertions and brazen assurances that the questions are decided, settled, and generally recognised. On the contrary, the whole mechanical and atomistic view of nature is approaching its bankruptcy, and its defenders have to learn that something more is concealed behind nature than action and reaction. The reality of generatio œquivoca and the folly of the extraordinary assumption that in the atmosphere, everywhere and always, billions of seeds of all possible kinds of fungi, and eggs of all possible kinds of infusoria, are floating about, till now one and then another by chance finds its suitable medium, has quite recently (1859) been thoroughly and victoriously shown by Pouchet before the French Academy, to the great vexation of the other members.

Our wonder at the origin of forms in matter is at bottom like that of the savage who looks for the first time in a mirror and marvels at his own image which he sees there. For our own inner nature is the will, whose mere visibility is matter. Yet matter never appears otherwise than with the visible, i. e., under the outer shell of form and quality, and therefore is never directly apprehended, but always merely added in thought as that which is identical in all things, under all differences of quality and form. On this account it is more a metaphysical than a physical principle of explanation of things, and to make all existences arise from it is really to explain them from something which is very mysterious; which all know it to be except those who confound attacking with comprehending. In truth, the ultimate and exhaustive explanation of things is by no means to be sought in matter, although certainly the temporal origin both of unorganised forms and of organised beings is to be sought in it. Yet it seems that the origination of organised forms, the production of the species themselves, is almost as difficult for nature to accomplish as it is for us to comprehend. This is indicated by the entirely extravagant provision which nature always makes for maintaining the species which once exist. Yet on the present surface of this planet the will to live has gone through the scale of its objectification three times, quite independently of each other, in a different modulation, and also with great difference of perfection and fulness. The old world, America, and Australia have, it is well known, each their peculiar independent fauna, entirely different from that of the other two. Upon each of these great continents the species are throughout different, but yet, because all three belong to the same planet, they have a thorough analogy with each other running parallel through them; therefore the genera are for the most part the same. In Australia this analogy can only be very imperfectly followed because its fauna is very poor in mammalia, and contains neither beasts of prey nor apes. On the other hand, between the old world and America it is obvious, and in the following manner. In mammals America always produces the inferior analogue, but in birds and reptiles the better. Thus it has the advantage in the condor, the macaw, the humming-bird, and the largest batrachia and ophidia; but, for example, instead of the elephant it has only the tapir, instead of the lion the puma, instead of the tiger the jaguar, instead of the camel the lama, and instead of apes proper only monkeys. Even from this last defect it may be concluded that in America nature was not able to rise to man; for even from the nearest grade below man, the chimpanzee and the orang-outang or pongo, the step to man was still an excessively great one. Correspondingly we find that the three races of men which, both upon physiological and linguistic grounds, are undoubtedly equally original, the Caucasian, the Mongolian, and the Ethiopian, are only at home in the old world; while America, on the other hand, is peopled by a mixed or climatically modified Mongolian race, which must have come over from Asia. On the surface of the earth which immediately preceded the present surface apes were reached here and there, but not men.

From this standpoint of our consideration, which shows us matter as the direct visibility of the will which manifests itself in all things, nay, indeed, for the merely physical investigation which follows the guidance of time and causality, lets it pass as the origin of things, we are easily led to the question whether even in philosophy we could not just as well start from the objective as from the subjective side, and accordingly set up as the fundamental truth the proposition: “There is in general nothing but matter and its indwelling forces.” But, with regard to these “indwelling forces” here so easily used, we must remember that their assumption leads every explanation back to a completely incomprehensible miracle, and then leaves it beside it, or rather leaves it to begin from it. For every definite, inexplicable force of nature which lies at the foundation of the most different kinds of effects of an unorganised body, not less than the vital force which manifests itself in every organised body, is such an incomprehensible miracle, as I have fully explained in chap. 17, and have also shown that physics can never be set upon the throne of metaphysics, just because it leaves quite untouched the assumption referred to and also many others; whereby from the beginning it renounces all claim to give an ultimate explanation of things. I must further remind the reader here of the proof of the insufficiency of materialism, which is given towards the end of the first chapter, because, as was said there, it is the philosophy of the subject which forgets itself in its calculation. But all these truths rest upon the fact that everything objective, everything external, since it is always only something apprehended, something known, remains also always indirect and secondary, therefore absolutely never can become the ultimate ground of explanation of things or the starting-point of philosophy. Philosophy necessarily requires what is absolutely immediate for its starting-point. But clearly only that which is given in self-consciousness fulfils this condition, that which is within, the subjective. And hence it is so eminent a merit of Descartes that he first made philosophy start from self-consciousness. Since then, upon this path, the genuine philosophers, especially Locke, Berkeley, and Kant, have gone even further, each in his own manner, and in consequence of their investigations I was led to recognise and make use, not of one, but of two completely different data of immediate knowledge in self-consciousness, the idea and the will, by the combined application of which one can go further in philosophy, in the same proportion as in the case of an algebraical problem one can accomplish more if two known quantities are given than if only one is given.

In accordance with what has been said, the ineradicable falseness of materialism primarily consists in the fact that it starts from a petitio principii, which when more closely considered turns out indeed to be a πρωτον φευδος. It starts from the assumption that matter is something absolutely and unconditionally given, something existing independently of the knowledge of the subject, thus really a thing in itself. It attributes to matter (and consequently also to its presuppositions time and space) an absolute existence, i. e., an existence independent of the perceiving subject; this is its fundamental error. Then, if it will go honestly to work, it must leave the qualities inherent in the given materials, i. e., in the substances, together with the natural forces which manifest themselves in these, and finally also the vital force, unexplained, as unfathomable qualitates occultæ, and start from them; as physics and physiology actually do, because they make no claim to be the ultimate explanation of things. But just to avoid this, materialism – at least as it has hitherto appeared – has not proceeded honestly. It denies all those original forces, for it pretends and seems to reduce them all, and ultimately also the vital force, to the mere mechanical activity of matter, thus to manifestations of impenetrability, form, cohesion, impulsive power, inertia, gravity, &c., qualities which certainly have least that is inexplicable in themselves, just because they partly depend upon what is known a priori, consequently on the forms of our own intellect, which are the principle of all comprehensibility. But the intellect as the condition of all objects, and consequently of the whole phenomenal world, is entirely ignored by materialism. Its plan is now to refer everything qualitative to something merely quantitative, for it attributes the former to mere form in opposition to matter proper. To matter it leaves, of the properly empirical qualities, only gravity, because it already appears as something quantitative, the only measure of the quantity of the matter. This path necessarily leads it to the fiction of atoms, which now become the material out of which it thinks to construct the mysterious manifestations of all original forces. But here it has really no longer to do with empirically given matter, but with a matter which is not to be found in rerum natura, but is rather a mere abstraction of that real matter, a matter which would absolutely have no other than those mechanical qualities which, with the exception of gravity, can be pretty well construed a priori, just because they depend upon the forms of space, time, and causality, and consequently upon our intellect; to this poor material, then, it finds itself reduced for the construction of its castle in the air.

In this way it inevitably becomes atomism; as happened to it already in its childhood in the hands of Leucippus and Democritus, and happens to it again now that it has come to a second childhood through age; with the French because they have never known the Kantian philosophy, and with the Germans because they have forgotten it. And indeed it carries it further in this its second childhood than in its first. Not merely solid bodies are supposed to consist of atoms, but liquids, water, air, gas, nay, even light, which is supposed to be the undulations of a completely hypothetical and altogether unproved ether, consisting of atoms, the difference of the rapidity of these undulations causing colours. This is an hypothesis which, like the earlier Newtonian seven-colour theory, starts from an analogy with music, entirely arbitrarily assumed, and then violently carried out. One must really be credulous to an unheard-of degree to let oneself be persuaded that the innumerable different ether vibrations proceeding from the infinite multiplicity of coloured surfaces in this varied world could constantly, and each in its own time, run through and everywhere cross each other without ever disturbing each other, but should rather produce through such tumult and confusion the profoundly peaceful aspect of illumined nature and art. Credat Judæus Apella! Certainly the nature of light is to us a secret; but it is better to confess this than to bar the way of future knowledge by bad theories. That light is something quite different from a mere mechanical movement, undulation, or vibration and tremor, indeed that it is material, is shown by its chemical effects, a beautiful series of which was recently laid before the Académie des sciences by Chevreul, who let sunlight act upon different coloured materials. The most beautiful thing in these experiments is, that a white roll of paper which has been exposed to the sunlight exhibits the same effects, nay, does so even after six months, if during this time it has been secured in a firmly closed metal tube. Has, then, the tremulation paused for six months, and does it now fall into time again? (Comptes rendus of 20th December 1858.) This whole hypothesis of vibrating ether atoms is not only a chimera, but equals in awkward crudeness the worst of Democritus, and yet is shameless enough, at the present day, to profess to be an established fact, and has thus brought it about that it is orthodoxly repeated by a thousand stupid scribblers of all kinds, who are devoid of all knowledge of such things, and is believed in as a gospel. But the doctrine of atoms in general goes still further: it is soon a case of Spartam, quam nactus es, orna! Different perpetual motions are then ascribed to all the atoms, revolving, vibrating, &c., according to the office of each; in the same way every atom has its atmosphere of ether, or something else, and whatever other similar fancies there may be. The fancies of Schelling's philosophy of nature and its disciples were for the most part ingenious, lofty, or at least witty; but these, on the contrary, are clumsy, insipid, paltry, and awkward, the production of minds which, in the first place, are unable to think any other reality than a fabulous, qualityless matter, which is also an absolute object, i. e., an object without a subject; and secondly can think of no other activity than motion and impact: these two alone are comprehensible to them, and that everything runs back to these is their a priori assumption; for these are their thing in itself. To attain this end the vital force is reduced to chemical forces (which are insidiously and unjustifiably called molecular forces), and all processes of unorganised nature to mechanism, i. e., to action and reaction. And thus at last the whole world and everything in it becomes merely a piece of mechanical ingenuity, like the toys worked by levers, wheels, and sand, which represent a mine or the work on a farm. The source of the evil is, that through the amount of hand-work which experimenting requires the head-work of thinking has been allowed to get out of practice. The crucible and the voltaic pile are supposed to assume its functions; hence also the profound abhorrence of all philosophy.

But the matter might be put in this way. One might say that materialism, as it has hitherto appeared, has only failed because it did not adequately know the matter out of which it thought to construct the world, and therefore was dealing, not with matter itself, but with a propertyless substitute for it. If, on the contrary, instead of this, it had taken the actual and empirically given matter (i. e., material substance, or rather substances), endowed as it is with all physical, chemical, electrical properties, and also with the power of spontaneously producing life out of itself, thus the true mater rerum, from the obscurity of whose womb all phenomena and forms come forth, to fall back into it some time again; from this, i. e., from matter fully comprehended and exhaustively known, a world might have been constructed of which materialism would not need to be ashamed. Quite true: only the trick would then consist in this, that the Quæsita had been placed in the Data, for professedly what was taken as given, and made the starting-point of the deduction, was mere matter, but really it included all the mysterious forces of nature which cling to it, or more correctly, by means of it become visible to us, much the same as if under the name of the dish we understand what lies upon it. For in fact, for our knowledge, matter is really merely the vehicle of the qualities and natural forces, which appear as its accidents, and just because I have traced these back to the will I call matter the mere visibility of the will. Stripped of all these qualities, matter remains behind as that which is without qualities, the caput mortuum of nature, out of which nothing can honestly be made. If, on the contrary, in the manner referred to, one leaves it all these properties, one is guilty of a concealed petitio principii, for one has assumed the Quæsita beforehand as Data. But what is accomplished with this will no longer be a proper materialism, but merely naturalism, i. e., an absolute system of physics, which, as was shown in chap. 17 already referred to, can never assume and fill the place of metaphysics, just because it only begins after so many assumptions, thus never undertakes to explain things from the foundation. Mere naturalism is therefore essentially based simply upon qualitates occultæ, which one can never get beyond except, as I have done, by calling in the aid of the subjective source of knowledge, which then certainly leads to the long and toilsome round-about path of metaphysics, for it presupposes the complete analysis of self-consciousness and of the intellect and will given in it. However, the starting from what is objective, at the foundation of which lies external perception, so distinct and comprehensible, is a path so natural and which presents itself of its own accord to man, that naturalism, and consequently, because this cannot satisfy as it is not exhaustive, materialism, are systems to which the speculative reason must necessarily have come, nay, must have come first of all. Therefore at the very beginning of the history of philosophy we meet naturalism, in the systems of the Ionic philosophers, and then materialism in the teaching of Leucippus and Democritus, and also later we see them ever appear anew from time to time.

Chapter XXV. Transcendent Considerations Concerning The Will As Thing In 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.

Chapter XXVI.[4 - This chapter and the following one are connected with § 28 of the first volume.] On Teleology

The universal teleology or design of organised nature relative to the continuance of every existing being, together with the adaptation of organised to unorganised nature, cannot without violence enter into the connection of any philosophical system except that one which makes a will the basis of the existence of every natural being; a will which accordingly expresses its nature and tendency not merely in the actions, but already in the form of the phenomenal organism. In the preceding chapter I have merely indicated the account which our system of thought gives of this subject, since I have already expounded it in the passage of the first volume referred to below, and with special clearness and fulness in “The Will in Nature,” under the rubric “Comparative Anatomy.”

The astounding amazement which is wont to take possession of us when we consider the endless design displayed in the construction of organised beings ultimately rests upon the certainly natural but yet false assumption that that adaptation of the parts to each other, to the whole of the organism and to its aims in the external world, as we comprehend it and judge of it by means of knowledge, thus upon the path of the idea, has also come into being upon the same path; thus that as it exists for the intellect, it was also brought about by the intellect. We certainly can only bring about something regular and conforming to law, such, for example, as every crystal is, under the guidance of the law and the rule; and in the same way, we can only bring about something designed under the guidance of the conception of the end; but we are by no means justified in imputing this limitation of ours to nature, which is itself prior to all intellect, and whose action is entirely different in kind from ours, as was said in the preceding chapter. It accomplishes that which appears so designed and planned without reflection and without conception of an end, because without idea, which is of quite secondary origin. Let us first consider what is merely according to rule, not yet adapted to ends. The six equal radii of a snowflake, separating at equal angles, are measured beforehand by no knowledge; but it is the simple tendency of the original will, which so exhibits itself to knowledge when knowledge appears. As now here the will brings about the regular figure without mathematics, so also without physiology does it bring about the form which is organised and furnished with organs evidently adapted to special ends. The regular form in space only exists for the perception, the perceptive form of which is space; so the design of the organism only exists for the knowing reason, the reflection of which is bound to the conceptions of end and means. If direct insight into the working of nature was possible for us, we would necessarily recognise that the wonder excited by teleology referred to above is analogous to that which that savage referred to by Kant in his explanation of the ludicrous felt when he saw the froth irresistibly foaming out of a bottle of beer which had just been opened, and expressed his wonder not that it should come out, but that any one had ever been able to get it in; for we also assume that the teleology of natural productions has been put in the same as it comes out for us. Therefore our astonishment at design may likewise be compared to that which the first productions of the art of printing excited in those who considered them under the supposition that they were works of the pen, and therefore had to resort to the assumption of the assistance of a devil in order to explain them. For, let it be said again, it is our intellect which by means of its own forms, space, time, and causality, apprehends as object the act of will, in itself metaphysical and indivisible, which exhibits itself in the phenomenon of an animal, – it is our intellect which first produces the multiplicity and diversity of the parts, and is then struck with amazement at their perfect agreement and conspiring together, which proceeds from the original unity; whereby then, in a certain sense, it marvels at its own work.

If we give ourselves up to the contemplation of the indescribably and infinitely ingenious construction of any animal, even if it were only the commonest insect, lose ourselves in admiration of it, and it now occurs to us that nature recklessly exposes even this exceedingly ingenious and highly complicated organism daily and by thousands to destruction by accident, animal rapacity, and human wantonness, this wild prodigality fills us with amazement; but our amazement is based upon an ambiguity of the conceptions, for we have in our minds the human work of art which is accomplished by the help of the intellect and by overcoming a foreign and resisting material, and therefore certainly costs much trouble. Nature's works, on the contrary, however ingenious they may be, cost her absolutely no trouble; for here the will to work is already the work itself, since, as has already been said, the organism is merely the visibility of the will which is here present, brought about in the brain.

In consequence of the nature of organised beings which has been set forth, teleology, as the assumption of the adaptation of every part to its end, is a perfectly safe guide in considering the whole of organised nature; on the other hand, in a metaphysical regard, for the explanation of nature beyond the possibility of experience, it must only be regarded as valid in a secondary and subsidiary manner for the confirmation of principles of explanation which are otherwise established: for here it belongs to the problems which have to be given account of. Accordingly, if in some animal a part is found of which we do not see any use, we must never venture the conjecture that nature has produced it aimlessly, perhaps trifling, or out of mere caprice. Certainly it is possible to conceive something of this kind under the Anaxagorean assumption that the disposition of nature has been brought about by means of an ordering understanding, which, as such, obeys a foreign will; but not under the assumption that the true inner being (i. e., outside of our idea) of every organism is simply and solely its own will; for then the existence of every part is conditioned by the circumstance that in some way it serves the will which here lies at its foundation, expresses and realises some tendency of it, and consequently in some way contributes to the maintenance of this organism. For apart from the will which manifests itself in it, and the conditions of the external world under which this has voluntarily undertaken to live, for the conflict with which its whole form and disposition is already adapted, nothing can have influenced it and determined its form and parts, thus no arbitrary power, no caprice. On this account everything in it must be designed; and therefore final causes (causæ finales) are the clue to the understanding of organised nature, as efficient causes (causæ efficientes) are the clue to the understanding of unorganised nature. It depends upon this, that if in anatomy or zoology, we cannot find the end or aim of an existing part, our understanding receives a shock similar to that which it receives in physics from an effect whose cause remains concealed; and as we assume the latter as necessary, so also we assume the former, and therefore go on searching for it, however long we may already have done so in vain. This is, for example, the case with the spleen, as to the use of which men never cease inventing hypotheses, till some day one shall have proved itself correct. So is it also with the large spiral-formed teeth of the babyroussa, the horn-shaped excrescences of certain caterpillars, and more of the like. Negative cases are also judged by us according to the same rule; for example, that in a class which, as a whole, is so uniform as that of lizards, so important a part as the bladder is present in many species, while it is wanting in others; similarly that dolphins and certain cetacea related to them are entirely without olfactory nerves, while the rest of the cetacea and even fishes have them: there must be a reason which determines this.

Individual real exceptions to this universal law of design in organised nature have indeed been discovered, and with great surprise; but in these cases that exceptio firmat regulam applies, since they can be accounted for upon other grounds. Such, for example, is the fact that the tadpoles of the pipa toad have tails and gills, although, unlike all other tadpoles, they do not swim, but await their metamorphosis on the back of the mother; that the male kangaroo has the marsupial bones which in the female carry the pouch; that male mammals have breasts; that the Mus typhlus, a rat, has eyes, although very small ones, without any opening for them in the outer skin, which thus covers them, clothed with hair; and that the moles of the Apennines, and also two fishes —Murena cœcilia and Gastrobrauchus cœcus– are in the same case; of like kind is the Proteus anguinus. These rare and surprising exceptions to the rule of nature, which is otherwise so rigid, these contradictions with itself into which it falls, we must explain from the inner connection which the different kinds of phenomena have with each other, by virtue of the unity of that which manifests itself in them, and in consequence of which nature must hint at some thing in one, simply because another of the same type actually has it. Accordingly the male animal has a rudimentary form of an organ which is actually present in the female. As now here the difference of the sex cannot abolish the type of the species, so also the type of a whole order – for example, of the batrachia – asserts itself even where in one particular species (pipa) one of its determinations is superfluous. Still less can nature allow a determination (eyes) which belongs to the type of a whole division (Vertebrata) to vanish entirely without a trace, even if it is wanting in some particular species (Mus typhlus) as superfluous; but here also it must at least indicate in a rudimentary manner what it carries out in all the others.

Even from this point of view it is to some extent possible to see upon what depends that homology in the skeleton primarily of mammals, and in a wider sense of all vertebrates, which has been so fully explained, especially by Richard Owen in his “Ostéologie comparée,” and on account of which, for example, all mammals have seven cervical vertebræ, every bone of the human hand and arm finds its analogue in the fin of the whale, the skull of the bird in the egg has exactly as many bones as that of the human fœtus, &c. All this points to a principle which is independent of teleology, but which is yet the foundation upon which teleology builds, or the already given material for its works, and just that which Geoffroy St. Hilaire has explained as the “anatomical element.” It is the unité de plan, the fundamental type of the higher animal world, as it were the arbitrarily chosen key upon which nature here plays.

Aristotle has already correctly defined the difference between the efficient cause (causa efficiens) and the final cause (causa finalis) in these words: “Δυο τροποι της αιτιας, το οὑ ἑνεκα και το εξ αναγκης, και δει λεγοντας τυγχανειν μαλιστα μεν αμφοιν.” (Duo sunt causæ modi: alter cujus gratia, et alter e necessitate; ac potissimum utrumque eruere oportet.) De part. anim., i. 1. The efficient cause is that whereby something is, the final cause that on account of which it is; the phenomenon to be explained has, in time, the former behind it, and the latter before it. Only in the case of the voluntary actions of animal beings do the two directly unite, for here the final cause, the end, appears as the motive; a motive, however, is always the true and proper cause of the action, is wholly and solely its efficient cause, the change preceding it which calls it forth, by virtue of which it necessarily appears, and without which it could not happen; as I have shown in my prize essay upon freedom. For whatever of a physiological nature one might wish to insert between the act of will and the corporeal movement, the will always remains here confessedly that which moves, and what moves it is the motive coming from without, thus the causa finalis; which consequently appears here as causa efficiens. Besides, we know from what has gone before that the bodily movement is one with the act of will, for it is merely its phenomenal appearance in cerebral perception. This union of the causa finalis with the efficient cause in the one phenomenon intimately known to us, which accordingly remains throughout our typical phenomenon, is certainly to be firmly retained; for it leads precisely to the conclusion that at least in organised nature, the knowledge of which has throughout final causes for its clue, a will is the forming power. In fact, we cannot otherwise distinctly think a final cause except as an end in view, i. e., a motive. Indeed, if we carefully consider the final causes in nature in order to express their transcendent nature, we must not shrink from a contradiction, and boldly say: the final cause is a motive which acts upon a being, by which it is not known. For certainly the termite nests are the motive which has produced the toothless muzzle of the ant-bear, and also its long extensile, glutinous tongue: the hard egg-shell which holds the chicken imprisoned is certainly the motive for the horny point with which its beak is provided in order to break through that shell, after which it throws it off as of no further use. And in the same way the laws of the reflection and refraction of light are the motive for the wonderfully ingenious and complex optical instrument, the human eye, which has the transparency of its cornea, the different density of its three humours, the form of its lens, the blackness of its choroid, the sensitiveness of its retina, the contracting power of its pupil, and its muscular system, accurately calculated according to those laws. But those motives acted before they were apprehended; it is not otherwise, however contradictory it may sound. For here is the transition of the physical into the metaphysical. But the latter we have already recognised in the will; therefore we must see that the will which extends an elephant's trunk towards an object is the same will which has also called it forth and formed it, anticipating objects.

It is in conformity with this that in the investigation of organised nature we are entirely referred to final causes, everywhere seek for these and explain everything from them. The efficient causes, on the contrary, here assume only a quite subordinate position as the mere tools of the final causes, and, just as in the case of the voluntary movement of the limbs, which is confessedly effected by external motives, they are rather assumed than pointed out. In explaining the physiological functions we certainly look about for the efficient causes, though for the most part in vain; but in explaining the origin of the parts we again look for them no more, but are satisfied with the final causes alone. At the most we have here some such general principle as that the larger the part is to be the stronger must be the artery that conducts blood to it; but of the actually efficient causes which bring about, for example, the eye, the ear, the brain, we know absolutely nothing. Indeed, even in explaining the mere functions the final cause is far more important and more to the point than the efficient; therefore, if the former alone is known we are instructed and satisfied with regard to the principal matter, while, on the other hand, the efficient cause alone helps us little. For example, if we really knew the efficient cause of the circulation of the blood, as we do not, but still seek it, this would help us little unless we knew the final cause, that the blood must go into the lungs for the purpose of oxidation, and again flow back for the purpose of nourishing; but by the knowledge of this, even without the knowledge of the efficient cause, we have gained much light. Moreover, I am of opinion, as was said above, that the circulation of the blood has no properly efficient cause, but that the will is here as immediately active as in muscular movement where motives determine it by means of nerve conduction, so that here also the movement is called forth directly by the final cause; thus by the need of oxidation in the lungs, which here to a certain extent acts as a motive upon the blood, yet so that the mediation of knowledge is in this case wanting, because everything takes place in the interior of the organism. The so-called metamorphosis of plants, a thought lightly thrown out by Kaspar Wolf, which, under this hyperbolic title, Goethe pompously and with solemn delivery expounds as his own production, belongs to the class of explanations of organic nature from the efficient cause; although ultimately he only says that nature does not in the case of every production begin from the beginning and create out of nothing, but as it were, writing on in the same style, adds on to what already exists, makes use of the earlier forms, developed, and raised to higher power, to carry its work further: just as it has done in the ascending series of animals entirely in accordance with the law: Natura non facit saltus, et quod commodissimum in omnibus suis operationibus sequitur (Arist. de incessu animalium, c. 2 et 8). Indeed, to explain the blossom by pointing out in all its parts the form of the leaf seems to me almost the same as explaining the structure of a house by showing that all its parts, storeys, balconies, and garrets, are only composed of bricks and mere repetitions of the original unity of the brick. And not much better, though much more problematical, seems to me the explanation of the skull from vertebræ, although even here also it is a matter of course that the covering or case of the brain will not be absolutely different and entirely disparate from that of the spinal cord, of which it is the continuation and terminal knob, but will rather be a carrying out of the same kind of thing. This whole method of consideration belongs to the Homology of Richard Owen referred to above. On the other hand, it seems to me that the following explanation of the nature of the flower from its final cause, suggested by an Italian whose name has escaped me, is a far more satisfactory account to give. The end of the corolla is – (1.) Protection of the pistil and the stamina; (2.) by means of it the purified saps are prepared, which are concentrated in the pollen and germs; (3.) from the glands of its base the essential oil distils which, for the most part as a fragrant vapour, surrounding the anthers and pistil, protects them to a certain extent from the influence of the damp air. It is also one of the advantages of final causes that every efficient cause always ultimately rests upon something that cannot be fathomed, a force of nature, i. e., a qualitas occulta, and, therefore, it can only give a relative explanation; while the final cause within its sphere affords a sufficient and perfect explanation. It is true we are only perfectly content when we know both the efficient cause, also called by Aristotle ἡ αιτια εξ αναγκης, and the final cause, ἡ χαριν του βελτιονος, at once and yet separately, as their concurrence, their wonderful working together, then surprises us, and on account of it the best appears as the absolutely necessary, and the necessary again as if it were merely the best and not necessary; for then arises in us the dim perception that both causes, however different may be their origin, are yet connected in the root, in the nature of the thing in itself. But such a twofold knowledge is seldom attainable; in organised nature, because the efficient cause is seldom known to us; in unorganised nature, because the final cause remains problematical. However, I will illustrate this by a couple of examples as good as I find within the range of my physiological knowledge, for which physiologists may be able to substitute clearer and more striking ones. The louse of the negro is black. Final cause: its own safety. Efficient cause: because its nourishment is the black rete Malpighi of the negro. The multifarious, brilliant, and gay colouring of the plumage of tropical birds is explained, although only very generally, from the strong effect of the light in the tropics, as its efficient cause. As the final cause I would assign that those brilliant feathers are the gorgeous uniform in which the individuals of the innumerable species there, often belonging to the same genus, may recognise each other; so that each male may find his female. The same holds good of butterflies of different zones and latitudes. It has been observed that consumptive women, in the last stage of their illness, readily become pregnant, that the disease stops during pregnancy, but after delivery appears again worse than before, and now generally results in death: similarly that consumptive men generally beget another child in the last days of their life. The final cause here is that nature, always so anxiously concerned for the maintenance of the species, seeks to replace by a new individual the approaching loss of one in the prime of life; the efficient cause, on the other hand, is the unusually excited state of the nervous system which occurs in the last period of consumption. From the same final cause is to be explained the analogous phenomenon that (according to Oken, Die Zeugung, p. 65) flies poisoned with arsenic still couple, and die in the act of copulation. The final cause of the pubes in both sexes, and of the Mons Veneris in the female, is that even in the case of very thin subjects the Ossa pubis shall not be felt, which might excite antipathy; the efficient cause, on the other hand, is to be sought in the fact that wherever the mucous membrane passes over to the outer skin, hair grows in the vicinity; and, secondly, also that the head and the genitals are to a certain extent opposite poles of each other, and therefore have various relations and analogies between them, among which is that of being covered with hair. The same efficient cause holds good also of the beard of the man; the final cause of it, I suppose, lies in the fact that the pathogonomic signs, thus the rapid alterations of the countenance betraying every movement of the mind, are principally visible in the mouth and its vicinity; therefore, in order to conceal these from the prying eye of the adversary, as something dangerous in bargaining, or in sudden emergencies, nature gave man the beard (which shows that homo homini lupus). The woman, on the other hand, could dispense with this; for with her dissimulation and command of countenance are inborn. As I have said, there must be far more apt examples to be found to show how the completely blind working of nature unites in the result with the apparently intentional, or, as Kant calls it, the mechanism of nature with its technic; which points to the fact that both have their common origin beyond their difference in the will as the thing in itself. Much would be achieved for the elucidation of this point of view, if, for example, we could find the efficient cause which carries the driftwood to the treeless polar lands, or that which has concentrated the dry land of our planet principally in the northern half of it; while it is to be regarded as the final cause of this that the winter of that half, because it occurs in the perihelion which accelerates the course of the earth, is eight days shorter, and hereby is also milder. Yet in considering unorganised nature the final cause is always ambiguous, and, especially when the efficient cause is found, leaves us in doubt whether it is not a merely subjective view, an aspect conditioned by our point of view. In this respect, however, it may be compared to many works of art; for example, to coarse mosaics, theatre decorations, and to the god Apennine at Pratolino, near Florence, composed of large masses of rock, all of which only produce their effect at a distance, and vanish when we come near, because instead of them the efficient cause of their appearance now becomes visible: but the forms are yet actually existent, and are no mere imagination. Analogous to this, then, are the final causes in unorganised nature, if the efficient causes appear. Indeed, those who take a wide view of things would perhaps allow it to pass if I added that something similar is the case with omens.

For the rest, if any one desires to misuse the external design, which, as has been said, always remains ambiguous for physico-theological demonstrations, which is done even at the present day, though it is to be hoped only by Englishmen, there are in this class enough examples in contrarium, thus ateleological instances, to derange his conception. One of the strongest is presented by the unsuitableness of sea-water for drinking, in consequence of which man is never more exposed to the danger of dying of thirst than in the midst of the greatest mass of water on his planet. “Why, then, does the sea need to be salt?” let us ask our Englishman.

That in unorganised nature the final causes entirely withdraw into the background, so that an explanation from them alone is here no longer valid, but the efficient causes are rather indispensably required, depends upon the fact that the will which objectifies itself here also no longer appears in individuals which constitute a whole for themselves, but in forces of nature and their action, whereby end and means are too far separated for their relation to be clear and for us to recognise a manifestation of will in it. This already occurs in organised nature, in a certain degree, when the design is an external one, i. e., the end lies in one individual and the means in another. Yet even here it remains unquestionable so long as the two belong to the same species, indeed it then becomes the more striking. Here we have first to count the reciprocally adapted organisation of the genitals of the two sexes, and then also many circumstances that assist the propagation of the species, for example, in the case of the Lampyris noctiluca (the glowworm) the circumstance that only the male, which does not shine, has wings to enable it to seek out the female; the wingless female, on the other hand, since it only comes out in the evening, possesses the phosphorescent light, so that the male may be able to find it. Yet in the case of the Lampyris Italica both sexes shine, which is an instance of the natural luxury of the South. But a striking, because quite special, example of the kind of design we are speaking of is afforded by the discovery made by Geoffroy St. Hilaire, in his last years, of the more exact nature of the sucking apparatus of the cetacea. Since all sucking requires the action of respiration, it can only take place in the respirable medium itself, and not under water, where, however, the sucking young of the whale hangs on to the teats of the mother; now to meet this the whole mammary apparatus of the cetacea is so modified that it has become an injecting organ, and placed in the mouth of the young injects the milk into it without it requiring to suck. When, on the contrary, the individual that affords essential help to another belongs to an entirely different species, and even to another kingdom of nature, we will doubt this external design just as in unorganised nature; unless it is evident that the maintenance of the species depends upon it. But this is the case with many plants whose fructification only takes place by means of insects, which either bear the pollen to the stigma or bend the stamina to the pistil. The common barberry, many kinds of iris, and Aristolochia Clematitis cannot fructify themselves at all without the help of insects (Chr. Cour. Sprengel, Entdecktes Geheimniss, &c., 1793; Wildenow, Grundriss der Kräuterkunde, 353). Very many diœcia, monœcia, and polygamia are in the same position. The reciprocal support which the plant and the insect worlds receive from each other will be found admirably described in Burdach's large Physiology, vol. i. § 263. He very beautifully adds: “This is no mechanical assistance, no make-shift, as if nature had made the plants yesterday, and had committed an error which she tries to correct to-day through the insect; it is rather a deep-lying sympathy between the plant and the animal worlds. It ought to reveal the identity of the two. Both, children of one mother, ought to subsist with each other and through each other.” And further on: “But the organised world stands in such a sympathy with the unorganised world also,” &c. A proof of this consensus naturæ is also afforded by the observation communicated in the second volume of the “Introduction into Entomology” by Kirby and Spence, that the insect eggs that pass the winter attached to the twigs of the trees, which serve as nourishment for their larvæ, are hatched exactly at the time at which the twig buds; thus, for example, the aphis of the birch a month earlier than that of the ash. Similarly, that the insects of perennial plants pass the winter upon these as eggs; but those of mere annuals, since they cannot do this, in the state of pupæ.

Three great men have entirely rejected teleology, or the explanation from final causes, and many small men have echoed them. These three are, Lucretius, Bacon of Verulam, and Spinoza. But in the case of all three we know clearly enough the source of this aversion, namely, that they regarded it as inseparable from speculative theology, of which, however, they entertained so great a distrust (which Bacon indeed prudently sought to conceal) that they wanted to give it a wide berth. We find Leibnitz also entirely involved in this prejudice, for, with characteristic naïveté, he expresses it as something self-evident in his Lettre à M. Nicaise (Spinozæ op. ed Paulus, vol. ii. p. 672): “Les causes finales, ou ce qui est la même chose, la consideration de la sagesse divine dans l'ordre des choses.” (The devil also même chose!) At the same point of view we find, indeed, Englishmen even at the present day. The Bridgewater-Treatise-men – Lord Brougham, &c. – nay, even Richard Owen also, in his “Ostéologie Comparée,” thinks precisely as Leibnitz, which I have already found fault with in the first volume. To all these teleology is at once also theology, and at every instance of design recognised in nature, instead of thinking and learning to understand nature, they break at once into the childish cry, “Design! design!” then strike up the refrain of their old wives' philosophy, and stop their ears against all rational arguments, such as, however, the great Hume has already advanced against them.[5 - Let me here remark in passing that, judging from the German literature since Kant, one would necessarily believe that Hume's whole wisdom had consisted in his obviously false scepticism with regard to the law of causality, for this alone is everywhere referred to. In order to know Hume one must read his “Natural History of Religion” and his “Dialogues on Natural Religion.” There one sees him in his greatness, and these, together with Essay 21 “Of National Characters,” are the writings on account of which – I know of nothing that says more for his fame – even to the present day, he is everywhere hated by the English clergy.]

The ignorance of the Kantian philosophy now, after seventy years, which is really a disgrace to Englishmen of learning, is principally responsible for this whole outcast position of the English; and this ignorance, again, depends, at least in great measure, upon the nefarious influence of the detestable English clergy, with whom stultification of every kind is a thing after their own hearts, so that only they may be able still to hold the English nation, otherwise so intelligent, involved in the most degrading bigotry; therefore, inspired by the basest obscurantism, they oppose with all their might the education of the people, the investigation of nature, nay, the advancement of all human knowledge in general; and both by means of their connections and by means of their scandalous, unwarrantable wealth, which increases the misery of the people, they extend their influence even to university teachers and authors, who accordingly (for example, Th. Brown, “On Cause and Effect”) resort to suppressions and perversions of every kind simply in order to avoid opposing even in a distant manner that “cold superstition” (as Pückler very happily designates their religion, or the current arguments in its favour).

But, on the other hand, the three great men of whom we are speaking, since they lived long before the dawn of the Kantian philosophy, are to be pardoned for their distrust of teleology on account of its origin; yet even Voltaire regarded the physico-theological proof as irrefutable. In order, however, to go into this somewhat more fully: first of all, the polemic of Lucretius (iv. 824-858) against teleology is so crude and clumsy that it refutes itself and convinces us of the opposite. But as regards Bacon (De augm. scient., iii. 4), he makes, in the first place, no distinction with reference to the use of final causes between organised and unorganised nature (which is yet just the principal matter), for, in his examples of final causes, he mixes the two up together. Then he banishes final causes from physics to metaphysics; but the latter is for him, as it is still for many at the present day, identical with speculative theology. From this, then, he regards final causes as inseparable, and goes so far in this respect that he blames Aristotle because he has made great use of final causes, yet without connecting them with speculative theology (which I shall have occasion immediately especially to praise). Finally, Spinoza (Eth. i. prop. 36, appendix) makes it abundantly clear that he identifies teleology so entirely with physico-theology, against which he expresses himself with bitterness, that he explains Natura nihil frustra agere: hoc est, quod in usum hominum non sit: similarly, Omnia naturalia tanquam ad suum utile media considerant, et credunt aliquem alium esse, qui illa media paraverit; and also: Hinc statuerunt, Deos omnia in usum hominum fecisse et dirigere. Upon this, then, he bases his assertion: Naturam finem nullum sibi præfixum habere et omnes causas finales nihil, nisi humana esse figmenta. His aim merely was to block the path of theism; and he had quite rightly recognised the physico-theological proof as its strongest weapon. But it was reserved for Kant really to refute this proof, and for me to give the correct exposition of its material, whereby I have satisfied the maxim: Est enim verum index sui et falsi. But Spinoza did not know how else to help himself but by the desperate stroke of denying teleology itself, thus design in the works of nature – an assertion the monstrosity of which is at once evident to every one who has gained any accurate knowledge of organised nature. This limited point of view of Spinoza, together with his complete ignorance of nature, sufficiently prove his entire incompetence in this matter, and the folly of those who, upon his authority, believe they must judge contemptuously of final causes.

Aristotle, who just here shows his brilliant side, contrasts very advantageously with these modern philosophers. He goes unprejudiced to nature, knows of no physico-theology – such a thing has never entered his mind, – and he has never looked at the world for the purpose of seeing whether it was a bungled piece of work. He is in his heart pure from all this, for he also sets up hypotheses as to the origin of animals and men (De generat. anim., iii. 11) without lighting upon the physico-theological train of thought. He always says: “ἡ φυσις ποιει (natura facit), never ἡ φυσις πεποιηται” (natura facta est). But after he has truly and diligently studied nature, he finds that it everywhere proceeds teleologically, and he says: “ματην ὁρωμεν ουδεν ποιουσαν την φυσιν” (naturam nihil frustra facere cernimus), De respir., c. 10; and in the books, De partibus animalium, which are a comparative anatomy: “Ουδε περιεργον ουδεν, ουτε ματην ἡ φυσις ποιει. – Ἡ φυσις ἑνεκα του ποιει παντα. – Πανταχου δε λεγομεν τοδε τουδε ἑνεκα, ὁπου αν φαινηται τελος τι, προς ὁ ἡ κινησις περαινει; ὡστε ειναι φανερον, ὁτι εστι τι τοιουτον, ὁ δη και καλουμεν φυσιν. Επει το σωμα οργανον; ἑνεκα τινος γαρ ἑκαστον των μοριων, ομοιως τε και το ὁλον.” (Nihil supervacaneum, nihil frustra natura facit. – Natura rei alicujus gratia facit omnia. – Rem autem hanc esse illius gratia asserere ubique solemus, quoties finem intelligimus aliquem, in quem motus terminetur; quocirca ejusmodi aliquid esse constat, quod Naturam vocamus. Est enim corpus instrumentum: nam membrum unumquodquerei alicujus gratia est, tum vero totum ipsum.) At greater length, p. 633 and 645 of the Berlin quarto edition, and also De incessu animalium, c. 2: “Ἡ φυσις ουδεν ποιει ματην, αλλ᾽ αει, εκ των ενδεχομενων τῃ ουσιᾳ, περι ἑκαστον γενος ζωου το αριστον.” (Natura nihil frustra facit, sed semper ex iis, quæ cuique animalium generis essentiæ contingunt, id quod optimum est.) But he expressly recommends teleology at the end of the books De generatione animalium, and blames Democritus for having denied it, which is just what Bacon, in his prejudice, praises in him. Especially, however, in the “Physica,” ii. 8, p. 198, Aristotle speaks ex professo of final causes, and establishes them as the true principle of the investigation of nature. In fact, every good and regular mind must, in considering organised nature, hit upon teleology, but unless it is determined by the preconceived opinions, by no means either upon physico-theology or upon the anthropo-teleology condemned by Spinoza. With regard to Aristotle generally, I wish further to draw attention to the fact here, that his teaching, so far as it concerns unorganised nature, is very defective and unserviceable, as in the fundamental conceptions of mechanics and physics he accepts the most gross errors, which is the less pardonable, since before him the Pythagoreans and Empedocles had been upon the right path and had taught much better. Empedocles indeed, as we learn from Aristotle's second book, De cœlo (c. 1, p. 284), had already grasped the conception of a tangential force arising from rotation, and counteracting gravity, which Aristotle again rejects. Quite the reverse, however, is Aristotle's relation to the investigation of organised nature. This is his field; here the wealth of his knowledge, the keenness of his observation, nay, sometimes the depth of his insight, astonish us. Thus, to give just one example, he already knew the antagonism in which in the ruminants the horns and the teeth of the upper jaw stand to each other, on account of which, therefore, the latter are wanting where the former are found, and conversely (De partib. anim., iii. 2). Hence then, also his correct estimation of final causes.

Chapter XXVII. On Instinct And Mechanical Tendency

It is as if nature had wished, in the mechanical tendencies of animals, to give the investigator an illustrative commentary upon her works, according to final causes and the admirable design of her organised productions which is thereby introduced. For these mechanical tendencies show most clearly that creatures can work with the greatest decision and definiteness towards an end which they do not know, nay, of which they have no idea. Such, for instance, is the bird's nest, the spider's web, the ant-lion's pitfall, the ingenious bee-hive, the marvellous termite dwelling, &c., at least for those individual animals that carry them out for the first time; for neither the form of the perfected work nor the use of it can be known to them. Precisely so, however, does organising nature work; and therefore in the preceding chapter I gave the paradoxical explanation of the final cause, that it is a motive which acts without being known. And as in working from mechanical tendency that which is active is evidently and confessedly the will, so is it also really the will which is active in the working of organising nature.

One might say, the will of animal creatures is set in motion in two different ways: either by motivation or by instinct; thus from without, or from within; by an external occasion, or by an internal tendency; the former is explicable because it lies before us without, the latter is inexplicable because it is merely internal. But, more closely considered, the contrast between the two is not so sharp, indeed ultimately it runs back into a difference of degree. The motive also only acts under the assumption of an inner tendency, i. e., a definite quality of will which is called its character. The motive in each case only gives to this a definite direction – individualises it for the concrete case. So also instinct, although a definite tendency of the will, does not act entirely, like a spring, from within; but it also waits for some external circumstance necessarily demanded for its action, which at least determines the time of its manifestation; such is, for the migrating bird, the season of the year; for the bird that builds its nest, the fact of pregnancy and the presence of the material for the nest; for the bee it is, for the beginning of the structure, the basket or the hollow tree, and for the following work many individually appearing circumstances; for the spider, it is a well-adapted corner; for the caterpillar, the suitable leaf; for egg-laying insects, the for the most part very specially determined and often rare place, where the hatched larvæ will at once find their nourishment, and so on. It follows from this that in works of mechanical tendency it is primarily the instinct of these animals that is active, yet subordinated also to their intellect. The instinct gives the universal, the rule; the intellect the particular, the application, in that it directs the detail of the execution, in which therefore the work of these animals clearly adapts itself to the circumstances of the existing case. According to all this, the difference between instinct and mere character is to be fixed thus: Instinct is a character which is only set in motion by a quite specially determined motive, and on this account the action that proceeds from it is always exactly of the same kind; while the character which is possessed by every species of animal and every individual man is certainly a permanent and unalterable quality of will, which can yet be set in motion by very different motives, and adapts itself to these; and on account of this the action proceeding from it may, according to its material quality, be very different, but yet will always bear the stamp of the same character, and will therefore express and reveal this; so that for the knowledge of this character the material quality of the action in which it appears is essentially a matter of indifference. Accordingly we might explain instinct as a character which is beyond all measure one-sided and strictly determined. It follows from this exposition that being determined by mere motivation presupposes a certain width of the sphere of knowledge, and consequently a more fully developed intellect: therefore it is peculiar to the higher animals, quite pre-eminently, however, to man; while being determined by instinct only demands as much intellect as is necessary to apprehend the one quite specially determined motive, which alone and exclusively becomes the occasion for the manifestation of the instinct. Therefore it is found in the case of an exceedingly limited sphere of knowledge, and consequently, as a rule, and in the highest degree, only in animals of the lower classes, especially insects. Since, accordingly, the actions of these animals only require an exceedingly simple and small motivation from without, the medium of this, thus the intellect or the brain, is very slightly developed in them, and their outward actions are for the most part under the same guidance as the inner, follow upon mere stimuli, physiological functions, thus the ganglion system. This is, then, in their case excessively developed; their principal nerve-stem runs under the belly in the form of two cords, which at every limb of the body form a ganglion little inferior to the brain in size, and, according to Cuvier, this nerve-stem is an analogue not so much of the spinal cord as of the great sympathetic nerve. According to all this, instinct and action through mere motivation, stand in a certain antagonism, in consequence of which the former has its maximum in insects, and the latter in man, and the actuation of other animals lies between the two in manifold gradations according as in each the cerebral or the ganglion system is preponderatingly developed. Just because the instinctive action and the ingenious contrivances of insects are principally directed from the ganglion system, if we regard them as proceeding from the brain alone, and wish to explain them accordingly, we fall into absurdities, because we then apply a false key. The same circumstance, however, imparts to their action a remarkable likeness to that of somnambulists, which indeed is also explained as arising from the fact that, instead of the brain, the sympathetic nerve has undertaken the conduct of the outward actions also; insects are accordingly, to a certain extent, natural somnambulists. Things which we cannot get at directly we must make comprehensible to ourselves by means of an analogy. What has just been referred to will accomplish this in a high degree when assisted by the fact that in Kieser's “Tellurismus” (vol. ii. p. 250) a case is mentioned “in which the command of the mesmerist to the somnambulist to perform a definite action in a waking state was carried out by him when he awoke, without remembering the command.” Thus it was as if he must perform that action without rightly knowing why. Certainly this has the greatest resemblance to what goes on in the case of mechanical instincts in insects. The young spider feels that it must spin its web, although it neither knows nor understands the aim of it. We are also reminded here of the dæmon of Socrates, on account of which he had the feeling that he must leave undone some action expected of him, or lying near him, without knowing why – for his prophetic dream about it was forgotten. We have in our own day quite well-authenticated cases analogous to this; therefore I only briefly call these to mind. One had taken his passage on a ship, but when it was about to sail he positively would not go on board without being conscious of a reason; – the ship went down. Another goes with companions to a powder magazine; when he has arrived in its vicinity he absolutely will not go any further, but turns hastily back, seized with anxiety he knows not why; – the magazine blows up. A third upon the ocean feels moved one night, without any reason, not to undress, but lays himself on the bed in his clothes and boots, and even with his spectacles on; – in the night the ship goes on fire, and he is among the few who save themselves in the boat. All this depends upon the dull after-effect of forgotten fatidical dreams, and gives us the key to an analogous understanding of instinct and mechanical tendencies.

On the other hand, as has been said, the mechanical tendencies of insects reflect much light upon the working of the unconscious will in the inner functions of the organism and in its construction. For without any difficulty we can see in the ant-hill or the beehive the picture of an organism explained and brought to the light of knowledge. In this sense Burdach says (Physiologie, vol. ii. p. 22): “The formation and depositing of the eggs is the part of the queen-bee, and the care for the cultivation of them falls to the workers; thus in the former the ovary, and in the latter the uterus, is individualised.” In the insect society, as in the animal organism, the vita propria of each part is subordinated to the life of the whole, and the care for the whole precedes that for particular existence; indeed the latter is only conditionally willed, the former unconditionally; therefore the individuals are even sacrificed occasionally for the whole, as we allow a limb to be taken off in order to save the whole body. Thus, for example, if the path is closed by water against the march of the ants, those in front boldly throw themselves in until their corpses are heaped up into a dam for those that follow. When the drones have become useless they are stung to death. Two queens in the hive are surrounded, and must fight with each other till one of them loses its life. The ant-mother bites its own wings off after it has been impregnated, for they would only be a hindrance to it in the work that is before it of tending the new family it is about to found under the earth (Kirby and Spence, vol. i.) As the liver will do nothing more than secrete gall for the service of the digestion, nay, will only itself exist for this end – and so with every other part – the working bees also will do nothing more than collect honey, secrete wax, and make cells for the brood of the queen; the drones nothing more than impregnate; the queen nothing but deposit eggs; thus all the parts work only for the maintenance of the whole which alone is the unconditional end, just like the parts of the organism. The difference is merely that in the organism the will acts perfectly blindly in its primary condition; in the insect society, on the other hand, the thing goes on already in the light of knowledge, to which, however, a decided co-operation and individual choice is only left in the accidents of detail, where it gives assistance and adopts what has to be carried out to the circumstances. But the insects will the end as a whole without knowing it; just like organised nature working according to final causes; even the choice of the means is not as a whole left to their knowledge, but only the more detailed disposition of them. Just on this account, however, their action is by no means automatic, which becomes most distinctly visible if one opposes obstacles to their action. For example, the caterpillar spins itself in leaves without knowing the end; but if we destroy the web it skilfully repairs it. Bees adapt their hive at the first to the existing circumstances, and subsequent misfortunes, such as intentional destruction, they meet in the way most suitable to the special case (Kirby and Spence, Introduc. to Entomol.; Huber, Des abeilles). Such things excite our astonishment, because the apprehension of the circumstances and the adaptation to these is clearly a matter of knowledge; while we believe them capable once for all of the most ingenious preparation for the coming race and the distant future, well knowing that in this they are not guided by knowledge, for a forethought of that kind proceeding from knowledge demands an activity of the brain rising to the level of reason. On the other hand, the intellect even of the lower animals is sufficient for the modifying and arranging of the particular case according to the existing or appearing circumstances; because, guided by instinct, it has only to fill up the gaps which this leaves. Thus we see ants carry off their larvæ whenever the place is too damp, and bring them back again when it becomes dry. They do not know the aim of this, thus are not guided in it by knowledge; but the choice of the time at which the place is no longer suitable for the larvæ, and also of the place to which they now bring them, is left to their knowledge. I wish here also to mention a fact which some one related to me verbally from his own experience, though I have since found that Burdach quotes it from Gleditsch. The latter, in order to test the burying-beetle (Necrophorus vespillo), had tied a dead frog lying upon the ground to a string, the upper end of which was fastened to a stick stuck obliquely in the ground. Now after several burying-beetles had, according to their custom, undermined the frog, it could not, as they expected, sink into the ground; after much perplexed running hither and thither they undermined the stick also. To this assistance rendered to instinct, and that repairing of the works of mechanical tendency, we find in the organism the healing power of nature analogous, which not only heals wounds, replacing even bone and nerve substance, but, if through the injury of a vein or nerve branch a connection is interrupted, opens a new connection by means of enlargement of other veins or nerves, nay, perhaps even by producing new branches; which further makes some other part or function take the place of a diseased part or function; in the case of the loss of an eye sharpens the other, or in the case of the loss of one of the senses sharpens all the rest; which even sometimes closes an intestinal wound, in itself fatal, by the adhesion of the mesentery or the peritoneum; in short, seeks to meet every injury and every disturbance in the most ingenious manner. If, on the other hand, the injury is quite incurable, it hastens to expedite death, and indeed the more so the higher is the species of the organism, thus the greater its sensibility. Even this has its analogue in the instinct of insects. The wasps, for instance, who through the whole summer have with great care and labour fed their larvæ on the produce of their plundering, but now, in October, see the last generation of them facing starvation, sting them to death (Kirby and Spence, vol. i. p. 374). Nay, still more curious and special analogies may be found; for example, this: if the female humble-bee (Apis terrestris, bombylius) lays eggs, the working humble-bees are seized with a desire to devour them, which lasts from six to eight hours and is satisfied unless the mother keeps them off and carefully guards the eggs. But after this time the working humble-bees show absolutely no inclination to eat the eggs even when offered to them; on the contrary, they now become the zealous tenders and nourishers of the larvæ now being hatched out. This may without violence be taken as an analogue of children's complaints, especially teething, in which it is just the future nourishers of the organism making an attack upon it which so often costs it its life. The consideration of all these analogies between organised life and the instinct, together with the mechanical tendencies of the lower animals, serves ever more to confirm the conviction that the will is the basis of the one as of the other, for it shows here also the subordinate rôle of knowledge in the action of the will, sometimes more, sometimes less, confined, and sometimes wanting altogether.

But in yet another respect instincts and the animal organisation reciprocally illustrate each other: through the anticipation of the future which appears in both. By means of instincts and mechanical tendencies animals care for the satisfaction of wants which they do not yet feel, nay, not only for their own wants, but even for those of the future brood. Thus they work for an end which is as yet unknown to them. This goes so far, as I have illustrated by the example of the Bombex in “The Will in Nature” (second edit. p. 45, third edit. p. 47), that they pursue and kill in advance the enemies of their future eggs. In the same way we see the future wants of an animal, its prospective ends, anticipated in its whole corporisation by the organised implements for their attainment and satisfaction; from which, then, proceeds that perfect adaptation of the structure of every animal to its manner of life, that equipment of it with the needful weapons to attack its prey and to ward off its enemies, and that calculation of its whole form with reference to the element and the surroundings in which it has to appear as a pursuer, which I have fully described in my work on the will in nature under the rubric “Comparative Anatomy.” All these anticipations, both in the instinct and in the organisation of animals, we might bring under the conception of a knowledge a priori, if knowledge lay at their foundation at all. But this is, as we have shown, not the case. Their source lies deeper than the sphere of knowledge, in the will as the thing in itself, which as such remains free even from the forms of knowledge; therefore with reference to it time has no significance, consequently the future lies as near it as the present.

Chapter XXVIII.[6 - This chapter is connected with § 29 of the first volume.] Characterisation Of The Will To Live

Our second book closed with the question as to the goal and aim of that will which had shown itself to be the inner nature of all things in the world. The following remarks may serve to supplement the answer to this question given there in general terms, for they lay down the character of the will as a whole.

Such a characterisation is possible because we have recognised as the inner nature of the world something thoroughly real and empirically given. On the other hand, the very name “world-soul,” by which many have denoted that inner being, gives instead of this a mere ens rationis; for “soul” signifies an individual unity of consciousness which clearly does not belong to that nature, and in general, since the conception “soul” supposes knowing and willing in inseparable connection and yet independent of the animal organism, it is not to be justified, and therefore not to be used. The word should never be applied except in a metaphorical sense, for it is much more insidious than ψυχη or anima, which signify breath.

Much more unsuitable, however, is the way in which so-called pantheists express themselves, whose whole philosophy consists chiefly in this, that they call the inner nature of the world, which is unknown to them, “God;” by which indeed they imagine they have achieved much. According to this, then, the world would be a theophany. But let one only look at it: this world of constantly needy creatures, who continue for a time only by devouring one another, fulfil their existence in anxiety and want, and often suffer terrible miseries, till at last they fall into the arms of death; whoever distinctly looks upon this will allow that Aristotle was right in saying: “ἡ φυσις δαιομονια, αλλ᾽ ου θεια εστι” (Natura dæmonia est, non divina), De divinat., c. 2, p. 463; nay, he will be obliged to confess that a God who could think of changing Himself into such a world as this must certainly have been tormented by the devil. I know well that the pretended philosophers of this century follow Spinoza in this, and think themselves thereby justified. But Spinoza had special reasons for thus naming his one substance, in order, namely, to preserve at least the word, although not the thing. The stake of Giordano Bruno and of Vanini was still fresh in the memory; they also had been sacrificed to that God for whose honour incomparably more human sacrifices have bled than on the altars of all heathen gods of both hemispheres together. If, then, Spinoza calls the world God, it is exactly the same thing as when Rousseau in the “Contrat social,” constantly and throughout denotes the people by the word le souverain; we might also compare it with this, that once a prince who intended to abolish the nobility in his land, in order to rob no one of his own, hit upon the idea of ennobling all his subjects. Those philosophers of our day have certainly one other ground for the nomenclature we are speaking of, but it is no more substantial. In their philosophising they all start, not from the world or our consciousness of it, but from God, as something given and known; He is not their quæsitum, but their datum. If they were boys I would then explain to them that this is a petitio principii, but they know this as well as I do. But since Kant has shown that the path of the earlier dogmatism, which proceeded honestly, the path from the world to a God, does not lead there, these gentlemen now imagine they have found a fine way of escape and made it cunningly. Will the reader of a later age pardon me for detaining him with persons of whom he has never heard.

Every glance at the world, to explain which is the task of the philosopher, confirms and proves that will to live, far from being an arbitrary hypostasis or an empty word, is the only true expression of its inmost nature. Everything presses and strives towards existence, if possible organised existence, i. e., life, and after that to the highest possible grade of it. In animal nature it then becomes apparent that will to live is the keynote of its being, its one unchangeable and unconditioned quality. Let any one consider this universal desire for life, let him see the infinite willingness, facility, and exuberance with which the will to live presses impetuously into existence under a million forms everywhere and at every moment, by means of fructification and of germs, nay, when these are wanting, by means of generatio æquivoca, seizing every opportunity, eagerly grasping for itself every material capable of life: and then again let him cast a glance at its fearful alarm and wild rebellion when in any particular phenomenon it must pass out of existence; especially when this takes place with distinct consciousness. Then it is precisely the same as if in this single phenomenon the whole world would be annihilated for ever, and the whole being of this threatened living thing is at once transformed into the most desperate struggle against death and resistance to it. Look, for example, at the incredible anxiety of a man in danger of his life, the rapid and serious participation in this of every witness of it, and the boundless rejoicing at his deliverance. Look at the rigid terror with which a sentence of death is heard, the profound awe with which we regard the preparations for carrying it out, and the heartrending compassion which seizes us at the execution itself. We would then suppose there was something quite different in question than a few less years of an empty, sad existence, embittered by troubles of every kind, and always uncertain: we would rather be amazed that it was a matter of any consequence whether one attained a few years earlier to the place where after an ephemeral existence he has billions of years to be. In such phenomena, then, it becomes visible that I am right in declaring that the will to live is that which cannot be further explained, but lies at the foundation of all explanations, and that this, far from being an empty word, like the absolute, the infinite, the idea, and similar expressions, is the most real thing we know, nay, the kernel of reality itself.

But if now, abstracting for a while from this interpretation drawn from our inner being, we place ourselves as strangers over against nature, in order to comprehend it objectively, we find that from the grade of organised life upwards it has only one intention – that of the maintenance of the species. To this end it works, through the immense superfluity of germs, through the urgent vehemence of the sexual instinct, through its willingness to adapt itself to all circumstances and opportunities, even to the production of bastards, and through the instinctive maternal affection, the strength of which is so great that in many kinds of animals it even outweighs self-love, so that the mother sacrifices her life in order to preserve that of the young. The individual, on the contrary, has for nature only an indirect value, only so far as it is the means of maintaining the species. Apart from this its existence is to nature a matter of indifference; indeed nature even leads it to destruction as soon as it has ceased to be useful for this end. Why the individual exists would thus be clear; but why does the species itself exist? That is a question which nature when considered merely objectively cannot answer. For in vain do we seek by contemplating her for an end of this restless striving, this ceaseless pressing into existence, this anxious care for the maintenance of the species. The strength and time of the individuals are consumed in the effort to procure sustenance for themselves and their young, and are only just sufficient, sometimes even not sufficient, for this. Even if here and there a surplus of strength, and therefore of comfort – in the case of the one rational species also of knowledge – remains, this is much too insignificant to pass for the end of that whole process of nature. The whole thing, when regarded thus purely objectively, and indeed as extraneous to us, looks as if nature was only concerned that of all her (Platonic) Ideas, i. e., permanent forms, none should be lost. Accordingly, as if she had so thoroughly satisfied herself with the fortunate discovery and combination of these Ideas (for which the three preceding occasions on which she stocked the earth's surface with animals were only the preparation), that now her only fear is lest any one of these beautiful fancies should be lost, i. e., lest any one of these forms should disappear from time and the causal series. For the individuals are fleeting as the water in the brook; the Ideas, on the contrary, are permanent, like its eddies: but the exhaustion of the water would also do away with the eddies. We would have to stop at this unintelligible view if nature were known to us only from without, thus were given us merely objectively, and we accepted it as it is comprehended by knowledge, and also as sprung from knowledge, i. e., in the sphere of the idea, and were therefore obliged to confine ourselves to this province in solving it. But the case is otherwise, and a glance at any rate is afforded us into the interior of nature; inasmuch as this is nothing else than our own inner being, which is precisely where nature, arrived at the highest grade to which its striving could work itself up, is now by the light of knowledge found directly in self-consciousness. Here the will shows itself to us as something toto genere different from the idea, in which nature appears unfolded in all her (Platonic) Ideas; and it now gives us, at one stroke, the explanation which could never be found upon the objective path of the idea. Thus the subjective here gives the key for the exposition of the objective. In order to recognise, as something original and unconditioned, that exceedingly strong tendency of all animals and men to retain life and carry it on as long as possible – a tendency which was set forth above as characteristic of the subjective, or of the will – it is necessary to make clear to ourselves that this is by no means the result of any objective knowledge of the worth of life, but is independent of all knowledge; or, in other words, that those beings exhibit themselves, not as drawn from in front, but as impelled from behind.

If with this intention we first of all review the interminable series of animals, consider the infinite variety of their forms, as they exhibit themselves always differently modified according to their element and manner of life, and also ponder the inimitable ingenuity of their structure and mechanism, which is carried out with equal perfection in every individual; and finally, if we take into consideration the incredible expenditure of strength, dexterity, prudence, and activity which every animal has ceaselessly to make through its whole life; if, approaching the matter more closely, we contemplate the untiring diligence of wretched little ants, the marvellous and ingenious industry of the bees, or observe how a single burying-beetle (Necrophorus vespillo) buries a mole of forty times its own size in two days in order to deposit its eggs in it and insure nourishment for the future brood (Gleditsch, Physik. Bot. Œkon. Abhandl., iii. 220), at the same time calling to mind how the life of most insects is nothing but ceaseless labour to prepare food and an abode for the future brood which will arise from their eggs, and which then, after they have consumed the food and passed through the chrysalis state, enter upon life merely to begin again from the beginning the same labour; then also how, like this, the life of the birds is for the most part taken up with their distant and laborious migrations, then with the building of their nests and the collecting of food for the brood, which itself has to play the same rôle the following year; and so all work constantly for the future, which afterwards makes bankrupt; – then we cannot avoid looking round for the reward of all this skill and trouble, for the end which these animals have before their eyes, which strive so ceaselessly – in short, we are driven to ask: What is the result? what is attained by the animal existence which demands such infinite preparation? And there is nothing to point to but the satisfaction of hunger and the sexual instinct, or in any case a little momentary comfort, as it falls to the lot of each animal individual, now and then in the intervals of its endless need and struggle. If we place the two together, the indescribable ingenuity of the preparations, the enormous abundance of the means, and the insufficiency of what is thereby aimed at and attained, the insight presses itself upon us that life is a business, the proceeds of which are very far from covering the cost of it. This becomes most evident in some animals of a specially simple manner of life. Take, for example, the mole, that unwearied worker. To dig with all its might with its enormous shovel claws is the occupation of its whole life; constant night surrounds it; its embryo eyes only make it avoid the light. It alone is truly an animal nocturnum; not cats, owls, and bats, who see by night. But what, now, does it attain by this life, full of trouble and devoid of pleasure? Food and the begetting of its kind; thus only the means of carrying on and beginning anew the same doleful course in new individuals. In such examples it becomes clear that there is no proportion between the cares and troubles of life and the results or gain of it. The consciousness of the world of perception gives a certain appearance of objective worth of existence to the life of those animals which can see, although in their case this consciousness is entirely subjective and limited to the influence of motives upon them. But the blind mole, with its perfect organisation and ceaseless activity, limited to the alternation of insect larvæ and hunger, makes the disproportion of the means to the end apparent. In this respect the consideration of the animal world left to itself in lands uninhabited by men is also specially instructive. A beautiful picture of this, and of the suffering which nature prepares for herself without the interference of man, is given by Humboldt in his “Ansichten der Natur” (second edition, p. 30 et seq.); nor does he neglect to cast a glance (p. 44) at the analogous suffering of the human race, always and everywhere at variance with itself. Yet in the simple and easily surveyed life of the brutes the emptiness and vanity of the struggle of the whole phenomenon is more easily grasped. The variety of the organisations, the ingenuity of the means, whereby each is adapted to its element and its prey contrasts here distinctly with the want of any lasting final aim; instead of which there presents itself only momentary comfort, fleeting pleasure conditioned by wants, much and long suffering, constant strife, bellum omnium, each one both a hunter and hunted, pressure, want, need, and anxiety, shrieking and howling; and this goes on in secula seculorum, or till once again the crust of the planet breaks. Yunghahn relates that he saw in Java a plain far as the eye could reach entirely covered with skeletons, and took it for a battlefield; they were, however, merely the skeletons of large turtles, five feet long and three feet broad, and the same height, which come this way out of the sea in order to lay their eggs, and are then attacked by wild dogs (Canis rutilans), who with their united strength lay them on their backs, strip off their lower armour, that is, the small shell of the stomach, and so devour them alive. But often then a tiger pounces upon the dogs. Now all this misery repeats itself thousands and thousands of times, year out, year in. For this, then, these turtles are born. For whose guilt must they suffer this torment? Wherefore the whole scene of horror? To this the only answer is: it is thus that the will to live objectifies itself.[7 - In the Siècle, 10th April 1859, there appears, very beautifully written, the story of a squirrel that was magically drawn by a serpent into its very jaws: “Un voyageur qui vient de parcourir plusieurs provinces de l'ile de Java cite un exemple remarqueable du pouvoir facinateur des serpens. Le voyageur dont il est question commençait à gravir Junjind, un des monts appelés par les Hollandais Pepergebergte. Après avoir pénétré dans une épaisse forêt, il aperçut sur les branches d'un kijatile un écureuil de Java à tête blanche, folâtrant avec la grâce et l'agilité qui distinguent cette charmante espèce de rongeurs. Un nid sphérique, formé de brins flexible et de mousse, placé dans les parties les plus élevées de l'arbre, a l'enfourchure de deux branches, et une cavité dans le tronc, semblaient les points de mire de ses jeux. A peine s'en était-il éloigné qu'il y revenait avec une ardeur extrême. On était dans le mois de Juillet, et probablement l'écureuil avait en haut ses petits, et dans le bas le magasin à fruits. Bientôt il fut comme saisi d'effroi, ces mouvemens devinrent désordonnés, on eut dit qu'il cherchait toujours à mettre un obstacle entre lui et certaines parties de l'arbre: puis il se tapit et resta immobile entre deux branches. Le voyageur eut le sentiment d'un danger pour l'innocente bête, mais il ne pouvait deviner lequel. Il approcha, et un examen attentif lui fit découvrir dans un creux du tronc une couleuvre lieu, dardant ses yeux fixes dans la direction de l'écureuil. Notre voyageur trembla pour le pauvre écureuil. La couleuvre était si attentive à sa proie qu'elle ne semblait nullement remarquer la présence d'un homme. Notre voyageur, qui était armé, aurait donc prevenir en aide à l'infortuné rongeur en tuant le serpent. Mais la science l'emporta sur la pitié, et il voulut voir quelle issue aurait le drame. Le dénoûment fut tragique. L'écureuil ne tarda point à pousser un cri plaintif qui, pour tous ceux qui le connaissent, dénote le voisinage d'un serpent. Il avança un peu, essaya de reculer, revint encore en avant, tâche de retourner en arrière. Mais s'approcha toujours plus du reptile. La couleuvre, roulée en spirale, la tête au dessus des anneaux, et immobile comme un morceau de bois, ne le quittait pas du regard. L'écureuil, de branche en branche, et descendant toujours plus bas, arriva jusqu'à la partie nue du tronc. Alors le pauvre animal ne tenta même plus de fuir le danger. Attiré par une puissance invincible, et comme poussé par le vertige, il se précipita dans la gueule du serpent, qui s'ouvrit tout à coup démesurément pour le recevoir. Autant la couleuvre avait été inerte jusque là autant elle devint active dès qu'elle fut en possession de sa proie. Déroulant ses anneaux et prenant sa course de bas en haut avec une agilité inconcevable, sa reptation la porta en un clin d'œil au sommet de l'arbre, où elle alla sans doute digérer et dormir.”In this example we see what spirit animates nature, for it reveals itself in it, and how very true is the saying of Aristotle quoted above (p. 106). This story is not only important with regard to fascination, but also as an argument for pessimism. That an animal is surprised and attacked by another is bad; still we can console ourselves for that; but that such a poor innocent squirrel sitting beside its nest with its young is compelled, step by step, reluctantly, battling with itself and lamenting, to approach the wide, open jaws of the serpent and consciously throw itself into them is revolting and atrocious. What monstrous kind of nature is this to which we belong!] Let one consider it well and comprehend it in all its objectifications; and then one will arrive at an understanding of its nature and of the world; but not if one frames general conceptions and builds card houses out of them. The comprehension of the great drama of the objectification of the will to live, and the characterisation of its nature, certainly demands somewhat more accurate consideration and greater thoroughness than the dismissal of the world by attributing to it the title of God, or, with a silliness which only the German fatherland offers and knows how to enjoy, explaining it as the “Idea in its other being,” in which for twenty years the simpletons of my time have found their unutterable delight. Certainly, according to pantheism or Spinozism, of which the systems of our century are mere travesties, all that sort of thing reels itself off actually without end, straight on through all eternity. For then the world is a God, ens perfectissimum, i. e., nothing better can be or be conceived. Thus there is no need of deliverance from it; and consequently there is none. But why the whole tragi-comedy exists cannot in the least be seen; for it has no spectators, and the actors themselves undergo infinite trouble, with little and merely negative pleasure.

Let us now add the consideration of the human race. The matter indeed becomes more complicated, and assumes a certain seriousness of aspect; but the fundamental character remains unaltered. Here also life presents itself by no means as a gift for enjoyment, but as a task, a drudgery to be performed; and in accordance with this we see, in great and small, universal need, ceaseless cares, constant pressure, endless strife, compulsory activity, with extreme exertion of all the powers of body and mind. Many millions, united into nations, strive for the common good, each individual on account of his own; but many thousands fall as a sacrifice for it. Now senseless delusions, now intriguing politics, incite them to wars with each other; then the sweat and the blood of the great multitude must flow, to carry out the ideas of individuals, or to expiate their faults. In peace industry and trade are active, inventions work miracles, seas are navigated, delicacies are collected from all ends of the world, the waves engulf thousands. All strive, some planning, others acting; the tumult is indescribable. But the ultimate aim of it all, what is it? To sustain ephemeral and tormented individuals through a short span of time in the most fortunate case with endurable want and comparative freedom from pain, which, however, is at once attended with ennui; then the reproduction of this race and its striving. In this evident disproportion between the trouble and the reward, the will to live appears to us from this point of view, if taken objectively, as a fool, or subjectively, as a delusion, seized by which everything living works with the utmost exertion of its strength for something that is of no value. But when we consider it more closely, we shall find here also that it is rather a blind pressure, a tendency entirely without ground or motive.

The law of motivation, as was shown in § 29 of the first volume, only extends to the particular actions, not to willing as a whole and in general. It depends upon this, that if we conceive of the human race and its action as a whole and universally, it does not present itself to us, as when we contemplate the particular actions, as a play of puppets who are pulled after the ordinary manner by threads outside them; but from this point of view, as puppets which are set in motion by internal clockwork. For if, as we have done above, one compares the ceaseless, serious, and laborious striving of men with what they gain by it, nay, even with what they ever can gain, the disproportion we have pointed out becomes apparent, for one recognises that that which is to be gained, taken as the motive-power, is entirely insufficient for the explanation of that movement and that ceaseless striving. What, then, is a short postponement of death, a slight easing of misery or deferment of pain, a momentary stilling of desire, compared with such an abundant and certain victory over them all as death? What could such advantages accomplish taken as actual moving causes of a human race, innumerable because constantly renewed, which unceasingly moves, strives, struggles, grieves, writhes, and performs the whole tragi-comedy of the history of the world, nay, what says more than all, perseveres in such a mock-existence as long as each one possibly can? Clearly this is all inexplicable if we seek the moving causes outside the figures and conceive the human race as striving, in consequence of rational reflection, or something analogous to this (as moving threads), after those good things held out to it, the attainment of which would be a sufficient reward for its ceaseless cares and troubles. The matter being taken thus, every one would rather have long ago said, “Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle,” and have gone out. But, on the contrary, every one guards and defends his life, like a precious pledge intrusted to him under heavy responsibility, under infinite cares and abundant misery, even under which life is tolerable. The wherefore and the why, the reward for this, certainly he does not see; but he has accepted the worth of that pledge without seeing it, upon trust and faith, and does not know what it consists in. Hence I have said that these puppets are not pulled from without, but each bears in itself the clockwork from which its movements result. This is the will to live, manifesting itself as an untiring machine, an irrational tendency, which has not its sufficient reason in the external world. It holds the individuals firmly upon the scene, and is the primum mobile of their movements; while the external objects, the motives, only determine their direction in the particular case; otherwise the cause would not be at all suitable to the effect. For, as every manifestation of a force of nature has a cause, but the force of nature itself none, so every particular act of will has a motive, but the will in general has none: indeed at bottom these two are one and the same. The will, as that which is metaphysical, is everywhere the boundary-stone of every investigation, beyond which it cannot go. From the original and unconditioned nature of the will, which has been proved, it is explicable that man loves beyond everything else an existence full of misery, trouble, pain, and anxiety, and, again, full of ennui, which, if he considered and weighed it purely objectively, he would certainly abhor, and fears above all things the end of it, which is yet for him the one thing certain.[8 - “Augustini de civit. Dei,” L. xi. c. 27, deserves to be compared as an interesting commentary on what is said here.] Accordingly we often see a miserable figure, deformed and shrunk with age, want, and disease, implore our help from the bottom of his heart for the prolongation of an existence, the end of which would necessarily appear altogether desirable if it were an objective judgment that determined here. Thus instead of this it is the blind will, appearing as the tendency to life, the love of life, and the sense of life; it is the same which makes the plants grow. This sense of life may be compared to a rope which is stretched above the puppet-show of the world of men, and on which the puppets hang by invisible threads, while apparently they are supported only by the ground beneath them (the objective value of life). But if the rope becomes weak the puppet sinks; if it breaks the puppet must fall, for the ground beneath it only seemed to support it: i. e., the weakening of that love of life shows itself as hypochondria, spleen, melancholy: its entire exhaustion as the inclination to suicide, which now takes place on the slightest occasion, nay, for a merely imaginary reason, for now, as it were, the man seeks a quarrel with himself, in order to shoot himself dead, as many do with others for a like purpose; – indeed, upon necessity, suicide is resorted to without any special occasion. (Evidence of this will be found in Esquirol, Des maladies mentales, 1838.) And as with the persistence in life, so is it also with its action and movement. This is not something freely chosen; but while every one would really gladly rest, want and ennui are the whips that keep the top spinning. Therefore the whole and every individual bears the stamp of a forced condition; and every one, in that, inwardly weary, he longs for rest, but yet must press forward, is like his planet, which does not fall into the sun only because a force driving it forward prevents it. Therefore everything is in continual strain and forced movement, and the course of the world goes on, to use an expression of Aristotle's (De cœlo, ii. 13), “ου φυσει, αλλα βιᾳ” (Motu, non naturali sed violento). Men are only apparently drawn from in front; really they are pushed from behind; it is not life that tempts them on, but necessity that drives them forward. The law of motivation is, like all causality, merely the form of the phenomenon. We may remark in passing that this is the source of the comical, the burlesque, the grotesque, the ridiculous side of life; for, urged forward against his will, every one bears himself as best he can, and the straits that thus arise often look comical enough, serious as is the misery which underlies them.

In all these considerations, then, it becomes clear to us that the will to live is not a consequence of the knowledge of life, is in no way a conclusio ex præmissis, and in general is nothing secondary. Rather, it is that which is first and unconditioned, the premiss of all premisses, and just on that account that from which philosophy must start, for the will to live does not appear in consequence of the world, but the world in consequence of the will to live.