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

nence, and excites astonishment. This consideration makes Jf< s it clear that in all animal natures the trill is what is primary and substantial, the intellect again is secondary. ( adventitious, indeed a mere tool for the service of the ) former, and is more or less complete and complicated, ( according to the demands of this service. As a species of animals is furnished with hoofs, claws, hands, wings, horns, or teeth according to the aims of its will, so also is it furnished with a more or less developed brain, whose function is the intelligence necessary for its endurance. The more complicated the organisation becomes, in the ascending series of animals, the more numerous also are its wants, and the more varied and specially determined the objects which are capable of satisfying them ; hence the more complicated and distant the paths by which these are to be obtained, which must now be all known and found : therefore in the same proportion the ideas of the animal must be more versatile, accurate, definite, and connected, and also its attention must be more highly strung, more sustained, and more easily roused, consequently its intellect must be more developed and perfect. Accordingly we see the organ of intelligence, the cerebral system, together

* with all the organs of sense, keep pace with the increasing wants and the complication of the organism ; and the increase of the part of consciousness that has to do with ideas (as opposed to the willing part) exhibits itself in a

* bodily form in the ever-increasing proportion of the brain in general to the rest of the nervous system, and of the cerebrum to the cerebellum ; for (according to Flourens) the former is the workshop of ideas, while the latter is the disposer and orderer of movements. The last step which nature has taken in this respect is, however, disproportionately great. For in man not only does the faculty of ideas of perception, which alone existed hitherto, reach the highest degree of perfection, but the abstract idea, thought, i.e., reason, and with it reflection, is added,

» Through this important advance of the intellect, thus

**'

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of the secondary part of consciousness, it now gains a preponderance over the primary part, in so far as it becomes henceforward the predominantly active part.

While in the brute the immediate sense of its satisfied or unsatisfied desire constitutes by far the most important part of its consciousness, and the more so indeed the lower the grade of the animal, so that the lowest animals are only distinguished from plants by the addition of a dull idea, in man the opposite is the case.

Vehement as are his desires, even more vehement than those of any brute, rising to the level of passions, yet his consciousness remains continuously and predominantly occupied and filled with ideas and thoughts.

Without doubt this has been the principal occasion of that fundamental error of all philosophers on account of which they make thought that which is essential and primary in the so-called soul, ie., in the inner or spiritual life of man, always placing it • first, but will, as a mere product of thought, they regard yjt % as only a subordinate addition and consequence of it. ^v^ But if willing merely proceeded from knowing, how could the brutes, even the lower grades of them, with so very little knowledge, often show such an unconquerable and vehement will?

Accordingly, since that fundamental error of the philosophers makes, as it were, the accident the substance, it leads them into mistaken paths, which there is afterwards no way of getting out of.

Now this relative predominance of the knowing consciousness over the desiring, consequently of the secondary part over the primary, which appears in man, may, in particular exceptionally favoured individuals, go so far that at the 1 moments of its highest ascendancy, the secondary or : knowing part of consciousness detaches itself altogether [ from the willing part, and passes into free activity for itself, I ie., untouched by the will, and consequently no longer serving it.

Thus it becomes purely objective, and the clear mirror of the world, and from it the conceptions of genius then arise, which are the subject of our third book. VOL. n. 2D