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

The double knowledge which each of us has of the nature and activity of his own body, and which is given in two completely different ways, has now been clearly brought out.

We shall accordingly make further use of it as a key to the nature of every phenomenon in nature, and shall judge of all objects wliich are not our own bodies, and are consequently not given to our consciousness in a double way but only as ideas, according to the analogy of our own bodies, and shall therefore assume that as in one aspect they are idea, just like our bodies, and in this respect are analogous to them, so in another aspect, what remains of objects when we set aside their existence as idea of the subject, must in its inner nature be the same as that in us which we call will.

For what other kind of existence or reality should we attribute to the rest of the material world ? Whence should we take the elements out of which we construct such a world ? Besides will and idea nothing is known to us or thinkable.

If we wish to attribute the greatest known reality to the material world which exists immediately only in our idea, we give it the reality which our own body has for each of us ; for that is the most real thing for every one. But if we now analyse the reality of this body and its actions, beyond the fact that it is idea, we find nothing in it except the will ; with this its reality is exhausted.

Therefore we can nowhere find another kind of reality which we can attribute to the material world. Thus if we hold that the material world is something more than merely our idea, we must say that besides being idea, that is, in itself and according to its inmost nature, it is that which we find immediately in ourselves as will. I say according to its inmost nature; but we must first come

THE OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL.

p. 137

to know more accurately this real nature of the will, in order that we may be able to distinguish from it what does not belong to itself, but to its manifestation, which has many grades. Such, for example, is the circumstance of its being accompanied by knowledge, and the determination by motives which is conditioned by this knowledge. As we shall see farther on, this does not belong to the real nature of will, but merely to its distinct manifestation as an animal or a human being. If, therefore, I say, — the force which attracts a stone to the earth is according to its nature, in itself, and apart from all idea, will, I shall not be supposed to express in this proposition the insane opinion that the stone moves itself in accordance with a known motive, merely because this is the way in which will appears in man.^ We shall now proceed more clearly and in detail to prove, establish, and develop to its full extent what as yet has only been provisionally and generally explained.^

§ 20. As we have said, the will proclaims itself primarily in the voluntary movements of our own body, as the inmost nature of this body, as that which it is besides being object of perception, idea. For these voluntary movements are nothing else than the visible aspect of the individual acts of will, with which they are directly coincident and identical, and only distinguished through the form of knowledge into which they have passed, and in which alone they can be kno'^n„ the form of idea.

But these acts of will have always a ground or reason outside themselves in motives. Yet these motives never determine more than what I will at this time, in this

^ We can thus by no means agree Planeta Martis^ that the planets with Bacon if he (DeAugni. Scicnt., must have knowledge in order to L. iv. in fine.) thinks that all me- keep their elliptical courses so corchanical and jihysical movement of rectly, and to regulate the velocity bodies has always been preceded of their motion so that the triangle by perception in these bodies; though of the plane of their course always % glimmering of truth lies at the remains proportional to the time in bottom of this false proposition, which they pass through its base. This is also the case with Kepler’s * Cf. Ch. xix. of the Supplement opinion, expressed in his essay De

«38

THE WORLD ^5 WILL.

BK. II