Chapter XXI

. Retrospect and More General View.

If the _intellect_ were not of a subordinate nature, as the two preceding chapters show, then everything which takes place without it, _i.e._, without intervention of the idea, such as reproduction, the development and maintenance of the organism, the healing of wounds, the restoration or vicarious supplementing of mutilated parts, the salutary crisis in diseases, the works of the mechanical skill of animals, and the performances of instinct would not be done so infinitely better and more perfectly than what takes place with the assistance of intellect, all conscious and intentional achievements of men, which compared with the former are mere bungling. In general _nature_ signifies that which operates, acts, performs without the assistance of the intellect. Now, that this is really identical with what we find in ourselves as _will_ is the general theme of this second book, and also of the essay, “_Ueber den Willen in der Natur_.” The possibility of this fundamental knowledge depends upon the fact that _in us_ the will is directly lighted by the intellect, which here appears as self‐consciousness; otherwise we could just as little arrive at a fuller knowledge of it _within us_ as without us, and must for ever stop at inscrutable forces of nature. We have to abstract from the assistance of the _intellect_ if we wish to comprehend the nature of the will in itself, and thereby, as far as is possible, penetrate to the inner being of nature.

On this account, it may be remarked in passing, my direct antipode among philosophers is Anaxagoras; for he assumed arbitrarily as that which is first and original, from which everything proceeds, a νους, an intelligence, a subject of ideas, and he is regarded as the first who promulgated such a view. According to him the world existed earlier in the mere idea than in itself; while according to me it is the unconscious _will_ which constitutes the reality of things, and its development must have advanced very far before it finally attains, in the animal consciousness, to the idea and intelligence; so that, according to me, thought appears as the very last. However, according to the testimony of Aristotle (_Metaph._, i. 4), Anaxagoras himself did not know how to begin much with his νους, but merely set it up, and then left it standing like a painted saint at the entrance, without making use of it in his development of nature, except in cases of need, when he did not know how else to help himself. All physico‐theology is a carrying out of the error opposed to the truth expressed at the beginning of this chapter—the error that the most perfect form of the origin of things is that which is brought about by means of an _intellect_. Therefore it draws a bolt against all deep exploration of nature.

From the time of Socrates down to our own time, we find that the chief subject of the ceaseless disputations of the philosophers has been that _ens rationis_, called _soul_. We see the most of them assert its immortality, that is to say, its metaphysical nature; yet others, supported by facts which incontrovertibly prove the entire dependence of the intellect upon the bodily organism, unweariedly maintain the contrary. That soul is by all and before everything taken as _absolutely simple_; for precisely from this its metaphysical nature, its immateriality and immortality were proved, although these by no means necessarily follow from it. For although we can only conceive the destruction of a formed body through breaking up of it into its parts, it does not follow from this that the destruction of a simple existence, of which besides we have no conception, may not be possible in some other way, perhaps by gradually vanishing. I, on the contrary, start by doing away with the presupposed simplicity of our subjectively conscious nature, or the _ego_, inasmuch as I show that the manifestations from which it was deduced have two very different sources, and that in any case the intellect is physically conditioned, the function of a material organ, therefore dependent upon it, and without it is just as impossible as the grasp without the hand; that accordingly it belongs to the mere phenomenon, and thus shares the fate of this,—that the _will_, on the contrary, is bound to no special organ, but is everywhere present, is everywhere that which moves and forms, and therefore is that which conditions the whole organism; that, in fact, it constitutes the metaphysical substratum of the whole phenomenon, consequently is not, like the intellect, a _Posterius_ of it, but its _Prius_; and the phenomenon depends upon it, not it upon the phenomenon. But the body is reduced indeed to a mere idea, for it is only the manner in which the _will_ exhibits itself in the perception of the intellect or brain. The _will_, again, which in all other systems, different as they are in other respects, appears as one of the last results, is with me the very first. The _intellect_, as mere function of the brain, is involved in the destruction of the body, but the _will_ is by no means so. From this heterogeneity of the two, together with the subordinate nature of the intellect, it becomes conceivable that man, in the depths of his self‐ consciousness, feels himself to be eternal and indestructible, but yet can have no memory, either _a parte ante_ or _a parte post_, beyond the duration of his life. I do not wish to anticipate here the exposition of the true indestructibility of our nature, which has its place in the fourth book, but have only sought to indicate the place where it links itself on.

But now that, in an expression which is certainly one‐sided, yet from our standpoint true, the body is called a mere idea depends upon the fact than an existence in space, as something extended, and in time, as something that changes, and more closely determined in both through the causal‐ nexus, is only possible in the _idea_, for all those determinations rest upon its forms, thus in a brain, in which accordingly such an existence appears as something objective, _i.e._, foreign; therefore even our own body can have this kind of existence only in a brain. For the knowledge which I have of my body as extended, space‐occupying, and movable, is only _indirect_: it is a picture in my brain which is brought about by means of the senses and understanding. The body is given to me _directly_ only in muscular action and in pain and pleasure, both of which primarily and directly belong to the _will_. But the combination of these two different kinds of knowledge of my own body afterwards affords the further insight that all other things which also have the objective existence described, which is primarily only in my brain, are not therefore entirely non‐ existent apart from it, but must also ultimately _in themselves_ be that which makes itself known in self‐consciousness as _will_.

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