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

and the same force what originally belongs to different forces. Now this is the direct work of the faculty of judgment, and that is why so few men are capable of increasing our insight in physics, while all are able to enlarge experience. Indolence and ignorance make us disposed to appeal too soon to original forces. This is exemplified with an exaggeration that savours of irony in the entities and quidities of the schoolmen.

Nothing is further from my desire than to favour their resuscitation. We have just as little right to appeal to the objectification of will, instead of giving a physical explanation, as we have to appeal to the creative power of_ God. For physics demands causes, and the will is never a'Siuse. Its whole relation to the phenomenon is not in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason.

But that which in itself is the will exists in another aspect as idea; that is to say, is phenomenon. As such, it obeys the laws which constitute the form of the phenomenon. Every movement, for example, although it is always a manifestation of will, must yet have a cause from which it is to be explained in relation to a particular time and space; that is, not in general in its inner nature, but as a particular phenomenon.

In the case of the stone, this is a mechanical cause ; in that of the movement of a man, it is a motive ; but in no case can it be wanting.

On the other hand, the universal common nature of all phenomena of one particular kind, that which must be presupposed if the explanation from causes is to have any sense and meaning, is the general force of nature, which, in physics, must remain a gy/dUa» occulta, because with it the etiological explanation ends and the metaphysical begins.

But the chain of causes and effectsls never broken by an original force to which it has been necessary to appeal It does not run back to such a force as if it were its first link, but the nearest link, as well as the remotest, presupposes the original force, and could otherwise explain nothing. A series of 2causes and effects may be the manifestation of the most different kinds of forces, whose successive visible appearances are conducted through it, as I have illustrated above by the example of a metal machine. But the difference of these original forces, which cannot be referred to each other, by no means breaks the unity of that chain of causes, and the connection between all its links.

The etiology and the philosophy of nature never do violence to each other, but go hand in hand, regarding the same object from different points of view. Etiology gives an account of the causes which necessarily produce the particular phenomenon to be explained. It exhibits, as the foundation of all its explanations, the universal forces which are active in all these causes and effects.

It accurately defines, enumerates, and distinguishes these forces, and then indicates all the different effects in which each force appears, regulated by the difference of the circumstances, always in accordance with its own peculiar character, which it discloses in obedience to an invariable rule, called a law of nature. When all this has been thoroughly accomplished by physics in every particular, it will be complete, and its work will be done.

There will then remain no unknown force in unorganised nature, nor any effect, which has not been proved to be the manifestation of one of these forces under definite circumstances, in accordance with a law of nature. Yet a law of nature remains merely the observed rule according to which nature invariably proceeds whenever certain definite circumstances occur.

Therefore a law of nature may be defined as a fact expressed generally — vm fait gin6ralis6 — and thus a complete enumeration of edl the laws of nature would only be a complete register of facts. The consideration of nature as a whole is thus completed in morphology, which enumerates, compares, and arranges all the enduring forms of organised nature.

Of the causes of the appearance of the individual creature it has little to say, for in all cases this is procreation (the theory of 3which is a separate matter), and in rare cases the generatio eequivoca. But to this last belongs, strictly speaking, the manner in which all the lower grades of the objectification of will, that is to say, physical and chemical phenomena, appear as individual, and it is precisely the task of etiology to point out the conditions of this appearance.

Philosophy, on the other hand, concerns itself only with the universal, in nature as everywhere else. The original forces themselves are here its object, and it recognises in them the different grades of the objectivity of will, which is the inner nature, the “in-itself” of this world ; and when it regards the world apart from will, it explains it as merely the idea of the subject.

But if etiology, instead of preparing the way for philosophy, and supplying its doctrines with practical application by means of instances, supposes that its aim is rather to deny the existence of all original forces, except perhaps one, the most general, for example, impenetrability, which it imagines it thoroughly understands, and consequently seeks forcibly to refer all the others to it — it forsakes its own province and can only give us error instead of truth.

The content of nature is supplanted by its form, everything is ascribed to the circumstances which work from without, and nothing to the inner nature of the thing. Now if it were possible to succeed by this method, a problem in arithmetic would ultimately, as we have already remarked, solve the riddle of the universe.

But this is the method adopted by those, referred to above, who think that all physiological effects ought to be reduced to form and combination, this, perhaps, to electricity, and this again to chemism, and cheinism to mechanism. The misteke qjf DescarteSj for example, and of all the Atomists, was of this last description.

They referred the mbvements " of the globe' to the impact of a fluid, and the ^alities of matter to the connection and form pf_the atom8,"andlâence tfiey Tajfcure^ to explain aU the pheno;^ mena "oT nature" as merely manifestations of impenetraTHE OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL. 185