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

bility and cohesion. Although this has been given up, precisely the same error is committed in our own day by the electrical, chemical, and mechanical physiologists, who obstinately attempt to explain the whole of life smd all the functions of the organism from “ form and combination.

In Meckel’s “Archiv fur Physiologie ” (1820, vol. v. p. 185) we still find it stated that the aim of physiological explanation is the reduction of organio life to the universal forces with wK^ physics deals. Lamarck also, in his" PhUosophie Zoologique" explains life as merely the effect of warmth and electricity lemlorique ei laHidftefe electrique suffisent parfaitement pour composer evsemhle cette cause essentielle de la vie (p. 1 6).

According to this, warmth and electricity would be the “ thing-in-itself,” and the world of animals and plants its phenomenal appearance. The absurdity of this opinion becomes glaringly apparent at the 306th and following pages of that work. It is well known that all these opinions, that have been so often refuted, have reappeared quite recently with renewed confidence.

If we carefully examine the foundation of these views, we shall find that they ultimately involve the presupposition that the organism is merely an aggregate of phenomena of physical, chemical, and mechanical forces, which have come together here by chance, and produced the organism as a freak of nature without further significance.

The organism of an animal or of a human being would therefore be, if considered philosophically, not the exhibition of a special Idea, that is, not itself immediate objectivity of the will at a definite higher grade, but in it would appear only those Ideas which objectify the will in electricity, in chemism, and in mechanism.

Thus the organism would be as fortuitously constructed by the concurrence of these forces as the forms of men and beasts in clouds and stalactites, and would therefore in itself be no more interesting than they are. However, we shall see immediately how far the application of physical and chemical modes of explanai86

THE WORLD AS WILL.

6K. II.

tion to the organism may yet, within certain limits, be allowable and useful ; for I shall explain that the vital force certainly avails itself of and uses the forces of unorganised nature ; yet these forces no more constitute the vital force than anTamrneF and anvU make a blacksffiQn . Therefore even the most simple example of plant life can never be explained from these forces by any theory of capillary attraction and endosmose, much less animal life. The following observations will prepare the way for this somewhat difficult discussion.

It follows from all that has been said that it is certainly an error on the part of natural science to seek to refer the higher grades of the objectification of will to the lower ; for the failure to recognise, or the denial of, original and self-existing forces of nature is just as wrong as the groundless assumption of special forces when what occurs is merely a peculiar kind of manifestation of what is already known. Thus Kant rightly says that it would be absurd to hope for a blade of grass from a Newton, that is, from one who reduced the blade of grass to the mauifestions of physical and chemical forces, of which it was the chance product, and therefore a mere freak of nature, in which no special Idea appeared, i.e., the will did not directly reveal itself in it in a higher and specific grade, but just as in the phenomena of unorganised nature and by chance in this form. The schoolmen, who certainly would not have allowed such a doctrine, would rightly have said that it was a complete denial of the forma svistanfialis, and a degradation of it to the forma cuxidentalis. For the forma suhstantialis of Aristotle denotes exactly what I call the grade of the objectification of will in a thing. On the other hand, it is not to be overlooked that in all Ideas, that is, in all forces of unorganised, and all forms of organised nature, R is one and the same will that reveals itself, that is to say, which enters the form of the idea and passes into ol^eetivitif. Its unity must therefore be also recognisable

THE OBJECTIFICA nON OF THE WILL. 187