The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp
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The translator’s English as printed (R. B. Haldane & J. Kemp). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
every time the experiment is tried. (From a letter by Howitt in the W. Journal, reprinted in Galignani’s Messenger, lyth November 1855.) On the banks of the Missouri one sometimes sees a mighty oak the stem and blanches of which are so encircled, fettered, and interlaced by a gigantic wild vine, that it withers as if choked.
The same thing shows itself in the lowest grades ; for example, when water and carbon are changed into vegetable sap, or vegetables or bread into blood by organic assimilation; and so also in every case in which animal secretion takes place, along with the restriction of chemical forces to a subordinate mode of activity.
This also occurs in unorganised nature, when, for example, crystals in process of formation meet, cross, and mutually disturb each other to such an extent that they are unable to assume the pure crystalline form, so that almost every cluster of crystals is an image of such a conflict of will at this low grade of its objectification; or again, when a magnet forces its magnetism upon iron, in order to express its Idea in it ; or when galvanism overcomes chemical affinity, decomposes the closest combinations, and so entirely suspend.^ the laws of chemistry that the acid of a decomposed salt at the negative pole must pass to the positive pole without combining with the alkalies through which it goes on its way, or turning red the litmus paper that touches it.
On a large scale it shows itself in the relation between tiie central body and the planet, for although the planet is in absolute dependence, yet it always resists, just like the chemical forces in the organism ; hence arises the constant tension between centripetal and centrifugal force, which keeps the globe in motion, and is itself an example of that universal essential conflict of the manifestation of will which we are considering.
For as every body must be regarded as the manifestation of a will, and as will necessarily expresses itself as a struggle, the original condition of every world that is formed into a globe cannot be rest, but motion, a striving forward in boundless space without rest and without end.
Neither the law of inertia nor that of causality is opposed to this : for as, according to the former, matter as such is alike indifferent to rest and motion, its original condition may just as well be the one as the other, therefore if we first find it in motion, we have just as little right to assume that this was preceded by a condition of rest, and to inquire into the cause of the origin of the motion, as, conversely, if we found it at rest, we would have to assume a previous motion and inquire into the cause of its suspension.
It is, therefore, not needful to seek for a first impulse for centrifugal force, for, according to the hypothesis of Kant and Laplace, it is, in the case of the planets, the residue of the origiiial rotation of the central body, from which the planets have separated themselves as it contracted.
But to this central body itself motion is essential; it always continues its rotation, and at the same time rushes forward in endless space, or perhaps circulates round a greater central body invisible to us. This view entirely agrees with the conjecture of astronomers that there is a central sun, and also with the observed advance of our whole solar system, and perhaps of the whole stellar system to which our sun belongs.
From this we are finally led to assume a general advance of fixed stars, together with the central sun, and this certainly loses all meaning in boundless space (for motion in absolute space cannot be distinguished from rest), and becomes, as is ^ready the case from its striving and aimless flight, an expression of that nothingness, that failure of all aim, which, at the close of this book, we shall be obliged to recognise in the striving of will in all its phenomena.
Thus boundless space and endless time must be the most universal and essential forms of the collective phenomena of will, which e^t for the expression of its whole being. Lastly, we can recognise that conflict which we are considering of all phenomena of will against each other in simple matter regarded as such ; for the real characterTHE OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL.
istic of matter is correctly expressed by Kant as repulsive and attractive force ; so that even crude matter has its existence only in the strife of conflicting^ forces. If we abstract from all chemical diff'crences in matter, or go so far back in the chain of causes and effects that as yet there is no chemical difference, there remains mere matter, — the world rounded to a globe, whose life, i.e., objectification of will, is now constituted by the conflict between attractive and repulsive forces, the former as gravitation pressing from all sides towards the centre, the latter as impenetrability always opposing the former either as rigidity or elasticity ; and this constant pressure and resistance may be regarded as the objectivity of will in its very lowest grade, and even there it expresses its character.
We should see the will express itself here in the lowest grade as blind striving, an obscure, inarticulate impulse, far from susceptible of being directly known. It is the simplest and the weakest mode of its objectification. But it appears as this blind and unconscious striving iif the whole of unorganised nature, in all those original forces of which it is the work of physics and chemistry to discover and to study the laws, and each of which manifests itself to us in millions of phenomena which are exactly similar and regular, and show no trace of individual character, but are mere multiplicity through space and time, i.e., through the priTicipium indiv-idvutionis, as a picture is multiplied through the facets of a glass.
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