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

1 SpaManzani, Ritultati di espe- Societa Italiana, Tom. i. p. 581.

rienze sopra la riproduzione della Voltaire, Les colimacont du rivirend testa nelle lumache terrestri : in the pere I'escarbotier. Memorie di matematica efisica della47© SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XX. snail that has had its head cut off remains alive, and after some weeks a new head grows on, together with horns ; with this consciousness and ideas again appear ; while till then the snail had only given evidence of blind will through unregulated movements. Thus here also we find the will as the substance which is permanent, the intellect, on the contrary, conditioned by its organ, as the changing accident. It may be defined as the regulator of the will.

It was perhaps Tiedemann who first compared the cerebral nervous system to a parasite {Tiedemann und Trevirann's Journal fur Physiologic, Bd. i. § 62). The comparison is happy ; for the brain, together with the spinal cord and nerves which depend upon it, is, as it were, implanted in the organism, and is nourished by it without on its part directly contributing anything to the support of the economy of the organism ; therefore there can be life without a brain, as in the case of brainless abortions, and also in the case of tortoises, which live for three weeks after their heads have been cut off; only the medidla oblongata, as the organ of respiration, must be spared. Indeed a hen whose whole brain Flourens had cut away lived for ten months and grew. Even in the case of men the destruction of the brain does not produce death directly, but only through the medium of the lungs, and then of the heart (Bichat, Sur la Vie et la Mort, Part ii., art. ii. § 1). On the other hand, the brain controls the relations to the external world; this alone is its office, and hereby it discharges its debt to the organism which nourishes it, since its existence is conditioned by the external relations. Accordingly the brain alone of all the parts requires sleep, because its activity is completely distinct from its support; the former only consumes both strength and substance, the latter is performed by the rest of the organism as the nurse of the brain : thus because its activity contributes nothing to its continued existence it becomes exhausted, and only when it pauses in sleep does its nourishment go on unhindered.

0BJECTIF1CATI0N OF THE WILL. 47i

The second part of our thesis, stated above, will require a fuller exposition even after all that I have said about it in the writings referred to. I have shown above, in chapter 1 8, that the thing in itself, which must lie at the foundation of every phenomenon, and therefore of our own phenomenal existence also, throws off in self-consciousness one of its phenomenal forms — space, and only retains the other — time.

On this account it presents itself here more immediately than anywhere else, and we claim it as will, according to its most undisguised manifestation. But no permanent substance, such as matter is, can present itself in time alone, because, as § 4 of the first volume showed, such a substance is only possible through the intimate union of space and time.

Therefore, in self-consciousness the will is not apprehended as the enduring substratum of its impulses, therefore is not perceived as a permanent substance ; but only its individual acts, such as purposes, wishes, and emotions, are known successively and during the time they last, directly, yet not perceptibly.

The knowledge of the will in self -consciousness is accordingly not a perception of it, but a perfectly direct becoming aware of its successive impulses.

On the other hand, for the knowledge which is directed outwardly, brought about by the senses and perfected in the understanding, which, besides time, has also space for its form, which two it connects in the closest manner by means of the function of the understanding, causality, whereby it really becomes perception — this knowledge presents to itself perceptibly what in inner immediate apprehension was conceived as will, as organic body, whose particular movements visibly present to us the acts, and whose parts and forms visibly present to us the sustained efforts, the fundamental character, of the individually given will, nay, whose pain and comfort are perfectly immediate affections of this will itself.