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

This teleology is of a twofold description ; sometimes an inner teleology, that is, an agreement of aU the parts of a particular organism, so ordered that the sustenance of the individual and the species results from it, and therefore presents itself as the end of that disposition or arrangement. Sometimes, however, there is an outward ideology, a relation of unorganised to organised nature in general, or of particular parts of organised nature to each

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THE WORLD ^5 WILL.

BK. II.

other, which makes the maintenance of the whole of organised nature, or of the particular animal species, possible, and therefore presents itself to our judgment as the means to this end.

Inner teleology is connected with the scheme of our work in the following way.

If, in accordance with what has been said, all variations of form in nature, and all multiplicity of individuals, belong not to the will itself,, but merely to its objectivity and the form of this objectify, it n^essarily follows that the will is indivisible an3~Is present as a whole in every ma^nifestation, althou^ the grades bn ts objectification, the (Platonic) Ideas, are very different from each other.

We may, for the sake of smipTfcity, regard these different Ideas as in themselves individual and simple acts of the will, in which it expresses its nature more or less. Individuals, however, are again manifestations of the Ideas, thus of these acts, in time, space, and multiplicity.

Now, in the lowest grades of objectivity, such an act (or an Idea) retains its unity in the manifestation ; while, in order to appear in higher grades, it requires a whole series of conditions and developments in time, which only collectively express its nature completely.

Thus, for example the Idea that reveals itself in any general force of nature has always one single expression, although it presents itself differently according to the external relations that are present: otherwise its identity could not be proved, for this is done by abstracting the diversity that arises merely from external relations.

In the same way the crystal has only one manifestation of life, crystallisation, which afterwards has its fully adequate and exhaustive expression in the rigid form, the corpse of that momentary life. The plant, however, does not express the Idea, whose phenomenon it is, at once and through a single manifestation, but in a succession of developments of its organs in time. The animal not only develops its organism in the same manner, in a succession of forms which are often very different

(metamorphosis), but this form itself, although it is already objectivity of will at this grade, does not attain to a full expression of its Idea. This expression must be completed through the actions of the animal, in which its empirical character, common to the whole species, manifests itself, and only then does it become the full revelation of the Idea, a revelation which presupposes the particular organism as its first condition.

In the case of man, the empirical character is peculiar to every individual (indeed, as we shall see in the Fourth Book, even to the extent of supplanting entirely the character of the species, through the self-surrender of the whole will).

That which is known as the empirical character, through the necessary development in time, and the division into particular actions that is conditioned by it, is, when we abstract from this temporal form of the manifestation the intellif/iUe character, according to the expression of Kant, wbo shows his undying merit especially in establishing this distinction and explaining the relation between freedom and necessity, i.e., between the will as thingin-itself and its manifestations in time.^ Thus the intelligible character coincides with the Idea, or, more accurately, with the original act of will which reveals itself in it.

So far then, not only the empirical character of every man, but also that of every species of animal and plant, and even of every original force of unorganised nature, is to be regarded as the manifestation of an intelligible character, that is, of a timeless, indivisible act of will.

I should like here to draw attention in passing to the naivete with which every plant expresses and lays open its whole character in its mere form, reveals its whole being and will. This is