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

4i 8 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

3. If we run through the series of grades of animals downwards, we see the intellect always becoming weaker and less perfect, but we by no means observe a corre-

« sponding degradation of the will. Rather it retains everywhere its identical nature and shows itself in the form of great attachment to life, care for the individual and the species, egoism and regardlessness of all others, together with the emotions that spring from these. Even in the smallest insect the will is present, complete and entire ; it wills what it wills as decidedly and completely as the ^/ * man. The difference lies merely in what it wills, i.e., in the motives, which, however, are the affair of the intellect.

m lt~inareed, as the secondary part of consciousness, and bound to the bodily organism, has innumerable degrees of completeness, and is in general essentially limited and

» imperfect. The will, on the contrary, as original and the thing in itself, can never be imperfect, but every act of will is all that it can be. On account of the simplicity which belongs to the will as the thing in itself, the metaphysical in the phenomenon, its nature admits of no degrees, but is always completely itself. Only its excitement has degrees, from the weakest inclination to the passion, and also its susceptibility to excitement, thus its vehemence from the phlegmatic to the choleric temperament. The intellect, on the other hand, has not merely degrees of excitement, from sleepiness to being in the vein, and inspiration, but also degrees of its nature, of the completeness of this, which accordingly rises gradually from the lowest animals, which can only obscurely apprehend, up to man, and here again from the fool to the genius.

< The will alone is everywhere completely itself. For its function is of the utmost simplicity ; it consists in willing

• and not willing, which goes on with the greatest ease, without effort, and requires no practice. Knowing, on the contrary, has multifarious functions, and never takes place entirely without effort, which is required to fix the attention and to maKe clear the object, and at a highe

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3tage is certainly needed for thinking and deliberation ;

;herefore it is also capable of great improvement through jxercise and education. If the intellect presents a simple,

3erceptible object to the will, the latter expresses at once ts approval or disapproval of it, and this even if the nteilect has laboriously inquired and pondered, in order rom numerous data, by means of difficult combinations, iltimately to arrive at the conclusion as to which of the wo seems to be most in conformity with the interests of he will. The latter has meanwhile been idly resting, and vhen the conclusion is arrived at it enters, as the Sultan nters the Divan, merely to express again its monotonous pproval or disapproval, which certainly may vary in

;egree, but in its nature remains always the same.

! This fundamentally different nature of the will and the atellect, the essential simplicity and originality of the ormer, in contrast to the complicated and secondary charcter of the latter, becomes still more clear to us if we bserve their remarkable interaction within us, and now onsider in the particular case, how the images and loughts which arise in the intellect move the will, and ow entirely separated and different are the parts which jae two play. We can indeed perceive this even in

3tual events which excite the will in a lively manner, hile primarily and in themselves they are merely objects

I the intellect. But, on the one hand, it is here not so rident that this reality primarily existed only in the tellect; and, on the other hand, the change does not merally take place so rapidly as is necessary if the thing

1 to be easily surveyed, and thereby become thoroughly

>mprehensible. Both of these conditions, however, are lulled if it is merely thoughts and phantasies which we

Wow to act on the will. If, for example, alone with our-

;lves, we think over our personal circumstances, and now jrhaps vividly present to ourselves the menace of an stually present danger and the possibility of an unfortul.te issue, anxiety at once compresses the heart, and the

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