The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp

From grade to grade objectifying itself more distinctly, yet still completely without consciousness as an obscure striving force, the will acts in the vegetable kingdom also, in which the bond of its phenomena consists no longer properly of causes, hut of stimuli; and, finally, also in the vegetative part of the animal phenomenon, in the production and maturing of the animal, and in sustaining its inner economy, in which the manifestation of

p. 196

THE WORLD AS WILL.

BK. II.

will is still always necessarily determined by stimuli.

The ever-ascending grades of the objectification of will bring us at last to the point at which the individual that expresses the Idea could no longer receive food for its assimilation through mere movement following upon stimuli For such a stimulus must be waited for, but the food has now come to be of a more special and definite kind, and with the ever-increasing multiplicity of the individual phenomena, the crowd and confusion has become so great that they interfere with each other, and the chance of the individual that is moved merely by stimuli and must wait for its food would be too unfavourable.

From the point, therefore, at which the animal has delivered itself from the egg or the womb in which it vegetated without consciousness, its food must be sought out. and selected.

For this purpose movement following upon motives, and therefore consciousness, becomes necessary, and consequently it appears as an agent, called in at this stage of the objectification of will for the conservation of the individual and the propagation of the speciea It appears represented by the brain or a large ganglion, just as every other effort or determination of the will which objectifies itself is represented by an organ, that is to say, manifests itself for the idea as an organ.* But with this means of assistance, this fi‘fy)(avrj, the world as idea comes into existence at a stroke, with all its forms, object and subject, time, space, multiplicity, and causality.

The world now shows its second side. Tdl now mere will, it becomes also idea, object of the knowing subject The will, which up to this point followed its tendency in the dark with unerring certainty, has at this grade kindled for itself a light as a means which became necessary for getting rid of the disadvantage which arose from the throng and the complicated

1 Cf. Chap. xxii. of the Supplement, 46 et seq., and pp. 63-72 of the and also my work “Ueber den Willen second, or p. 48 et seq.^ and pp. in der Natur,*’ p. 54 et seq., and 69-77 of the third edition, pp. 70-79 of the first edition, or p.

THE OBJECTIFICATION OP THE WILL.

>97