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

THE OBjfECTIFICATION OF THE WILL.

igt the body, is so often interrupted, and is indeed always accompanied by greater or less discomfort, which arises from the resistance of these forces, and on account of which the vegetative part of our life is constantly attended by slight pain. Thus also digestion weakens all the animal functions, because it requires the whole vital force to overcome the chemical forces of nature by assimilation. Hence also in general the burden of physical life, the necessity of sleep, and, finally, of death ; for at last these subdued forces of nature, assisted by circumstances, win back from the organism, wearied even by the constant victory, the matter it took from them, and attain to an unimpeded expression of their being. We may therefore say that every organism expresses the Idea of which it is the image, only after we have subtracted the part of its force which is expended in subduing the lower Ideas that strive with it for matter. This seems to have been running in the mind of Jacob Bohm when he says somewhere that all the bodies of men and animals, and even all plants, are really half dead. According as the subjection in the organism of these forces of nature, which express the lower grades of the objectification of will, is more or less successful, the more or the less completely does it attain to the expression of its Idea ; that is to say, the nearer it is to the ideal or the further from it — the ideal of beauty in its species.

Thus everywhere in nature we see strife, conflict, and alternation of victory, and in it we shall come to recognise more distinctly that variance with itself which is essential to the will. Every grade of the objectification of wiH lights for the matter, the space, and the time of the others. The permanent matter must constantly change its form ; for” under the guidance of causality, mechanical, physical, chemical, and organic phenomena, eagerly striving to appear, wrest the matter from each other, for each_desir^ to reveal its own Idea, ^is sti*ife.may be followed through the whole of nature ; indeed nature exists only through it ;

p. 193

THE WORLD AS WILL.

BK. II.

ei yap /xij rfv to vftKo<i ep tow 'irpaypaaiv, €v av ‘tjv dnavra, m ^<Tiv Ep.'ireBoKXrj’i' (nam si non iuesset in rebus contentio, unum omnia essent, ut ait Empedocles. ^Aria Metaph., B. S). Yet this strife itself is only the revelation of that variance with itself which is essential to the will. This universal conflict becomes most distinctly visible in the animal kingdom.

For animals have the whole of the vegetable kingdom for their food, and even within the animal kingdom every beast is the prey and the food of another ; that is, the matter in which its Idea expresses itself must yield itself to the expression of another Idea, for each animal can only maintain its existence by the constant destruction of some other.

Thus the will to live everywhere preys upon itself, and in different forms is its own nourishment, till Anally the human mce, because it subdues all the others, regards nature as a manufactory for its use. Yet even the human race, as we shall see in the Fourth Book, reveals in itself with most terrible distinctness this conflict, this variance with itself of the will, and we And homo homini lupus.

Meanwhile we can recognise this strife, this subjugation, just as well in the lower grades of the objectiflcation of will. Many insects (especially ichneumon-flies) lay their eggs on the skin, and even in the body of the larvae of other insects, whose slow destruction is the flrst work of the newly hatched brood.

The young hydra, which grows like a bud out of the old one, and afterwards separates itself from it, flghts while it is still joined to the old one for the prey that offers itself, so that the one snatches it out of the mouth of the other (Trembl^j Polypod., ii. p. I lo, and ill. p. 165).

But tlm^bulldog-ant of Australia affords us the most extraordinary example of this kind ; for if it is cut in two, a battle begins between the head and the tail. The head seizes the tail with its teeth, and the tail defends itself bravely by stinging the head : the battle may last for half an hour, until they die or are dragged away by other ants. This contest takes place