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

itself known to him in a direct manner, in which he does not quite clearly distinguish subject and object, yet is not known as a whole to the individual himself, but only in its particular acts, — whoever, I say, has with me gained this conviction will find that of itself it affords him the key to the knowledge of the inmost being of the whole of nature ; for he now transfers it to all those ^lenomeua which are not given to him, like his own phenomenal existence, both in direct and indirect knowledge, but only in the latter, thus merely onesidedly as idea alone.

He will recognise this will of which we are speaking not only in those phenoinenal existences which exactly resemble his own, in men and animals as their inmost nature, _but the course of reflection wiU lead him to recognise the force which germinates and vegetates in the plant, and indeed the toce through whidi the crystal is formed, that by which the magnet turns to the north pole, the force whose sh'ock~Iie" experiences from the contact of two dillerent kinds of metals, the force which appears in the elective affinities of matter as repulsion and attraction, decomposition and combination, and, lastly, even gravitation, ^ich acts so powerfully throughout matter, draws the stone to the earth and the earth to the sun, — all these, I say, he will recognise as different only in their phenomena existence, but in theii- inner nature as identical, as that which is directly known to him so intimately and so much better than anj-thing else, and which in its most distinct manifestation is called wiU. iTis this application of reflection alone that prevents us from remaining any longer at the phenomenon, and leads us to the thing in itself, yienomenal existence is idea and nothing more.

All idea, of wha^ver kind it may be,jill oTyexi, is phenomenal existence, but the will alone is a thin^ in itself. As such, it is throughout not idea, but to^ genera different from it ; it is that of which all idea, air object, is the phenomenal appearance, the visibility”

THE OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL.

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the objectification. It is the inmost nature, the kernel, of every particular thing, and also~'6T~the' wEHeT I t appears in every Hin0rTdfce“6r nature ahJ~aIsb the preconsidered~“actioii oT' man ; _and the ^eat differ^ce between tl^se two is merely in the degree of the manifestation, not in the nature of wKat manifests itself.

§ 2 2. Now, if we are to think as an object this thingin-itself (we wish to retain the Kantian expression as a standing formula), which, as such, is never object, because all object is its mere manifestation, and therefore cannot be it itself, we must borrow for it the name and concept of an object, of something in some way objectively given, consequently of one of its own manifestations. But in order to serve as a clue for the understanding, this can be no other than the most complete of all its manifestations, i.e., the most distinct, the most developed, and directly enlightened by knowledge. Now this is the human will. It is, however, well to observe that here, at any rate, we only make use of a denominatio a potiori, through which, therefore, the concept of will receives a greater extension than it has hitherto had. Knowledge of the idenUcal in different plienomena, and of difference in siinilai phenomena, is, as Plato, so often remarks, a sine gua non of philosophy. ;^it hitherto it was not recognised that every kind of active and operating force in nature is essentially identical with will, and therefore the multifarioiis kinds of phenomena were not seen to be merely different species of the same genus, but were treated as heterogeneous. Consequently there could he no word to denote the concept of this genus. 1 therefore name the genus after its most important species, the direct knowledge of which lies nearer to us and guides us to the indirect knowledge of all other species. But whoever is incapable of carrying out the required extension of the concept will remain involved in a permanent misunderstanding. For by the word vMl he imderstands only that species of it which has hitherto been exclusively

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THE WORLD AS WILL.

BK. IL