The World as Will and Idea, Vol. II — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp
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p. 462
of the intellect, but our will to live is a prius of the intellect. Thus this consideration also, which will be fullydiscussed in chapter 28, confirms the primacy of the will in self-consciousness.
12. On the other hand, nothing proves more clearly the secondary, dependent, conditioned nature of the intellect than its periodical intermittance. In deep sleep all knowing and forming of ideas ceases.
But the kernel of our nature, the metaphysical part of it which the organic functions necessarily presuppose as their primum mobile, must never pause if life is not to cease, and, moreover, as something metaphysical and therefore incorporeal, it requires no rest.
Therefore the philosophers who set up a soul as this metaphysical kernel, i.e., an originally and essentially knowing being, see themselves forced to the assertion that this soul is quite untiring in its perceiving and knowing, therefore continues these even in deep sleep ; only that we have no recollection of this when we awake.
The falseness of this assertion, however, was easy to see whenever one had rejected that soul in consequence of Kant's teaching. For sleep and waking prove to the unprejudiced mind in the clearest manner that knowing is a secondary function and conditioned by the organism, just like any other.
Only the heart is untiring, because its beating and the circulation of the blood are not directly conditioned by nerves, but are just the original manifestation of the will.
Also all other physiological functions governed merely by ganglionic nerves, which have only a very indirect and distant conuection with the brain, are carried on during sleep, although the secretions take place more slowly ; the beating of the heart itself, on account of its dependence upon respiration, which is conditioned by the cerebral system (medulla oblongata), becomes with it a little slower.
The stomach is perhaps most active in sleep, which is to be attributed to its special consensus with the now resting brain, which occasions mutual disturbances. The brain alone, and with it knowing, pauses entirely in deep sleep. For it is merely the minister of foreign affairs, ' as the ganglion system is the minister of the interior. The brain, with its function of knowing, is only a vedette established by the will for its external ends, which, up in the watch-tower of the head, looks round through the windows of the senses and marks where mischief threatens and where advantages are to be looked for, and in accordance with whose report the will decides.
This vedette, like every one engaged on active service, is then in a condition of strain and effort, and therefore it is glad when, after its watch is completed, it is again withdrawn, as every watch gladly retires from its post.
This withdrawal is going to sleep, which is therefore so sweet and agreeable, and to which we are so glad to yield ; on the other hand, being roused from sleep is unwelcome, because it recalls the vedette suddenly to its post. One generally feels also after the beneficent systole the reappearance of the difficult diastole, the reseparation of the intellect from the will.
A so-called soul, which was originally and radically a knowing being, would, on the contrary, necessarily feel on awaking like a fish put back into water.
In sleep, when merely the vegetative life is carried on, the will works only according to its original and essential nature, undisturbed from without, with no diminution of its power through the activity of the brain and the exertion of knowing, which is the heaviest organic function, yet for the organism merely a means, not an end ; therefore, in sleep the whole power of the will is directed to the maintenance and, where it is necessary, the improvement of the 1 organism.
Hence all healing, all favourable crises, take I place in sleep ; for the vis naturce medicatrix has free play i only when it is delivered from the burden of the function ' of knowledge. The embryo which has still to form the body therefore sleeps continuously, and the new-born i child the greater part of its time. In this sense Burdach I (Physiologie, vol. iii. p. 484) quite rightly declares sleep : to be the original state.
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