The World as Will and Idea, Vol. II — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp
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The translator’s English as printed (R. B. Haldane & J. Kemp). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
nerves), of the larynx (from N. vagus) if food passes over it or carbonic acid tries to enter ; also swallowing, from the pharynx, yawning and sneezing, respiration, entirely in sleep and partly when awake ; and, lastly, the erection, ejaculation, as also conception, and many more.
Some, again, are abnormal and pathological ; such are stammering, hiccoughing, vomiting, also cramps and convulsions of every kind, especially in epilepsy, tetanus, in hydrophobia and otherwise ; finally, the convulsive movements produced by galvanic or other stimuli, and which take place without feeling or consciousness in paralysed limbs, i.e., in limbs which are out of connection with the brain, also the convulsions of beheaded animals, and, lastly, all movements and actions of children born without brains.
All cramps are a rebellion of the nerves of the limbs against the sovereignty of the brain ; the normal reflex movements, on the other hand, are the legitimate autocracy of the subordinate officials. These movements are thus all involuntary, because they do not proceed from the brain, and therefore do not take place in accordance with motives, but follow upon mere stimuli.
The stimuli which occasion them extend only to the spinal cord or the medulla oblongata, and from there the reaction directly takes place which effects the movement The spinal cord has the same relation to these involuntary movements as the brain has to motive and action, and what the sentient and voluntary nerve is for the latter the incident and motor nerve is for the former.
That yet, in the one as in the other, that which really moves is the will is brought all the more clearly to light because the involuntarily moved muscles are for the most part the same which, under other circumstances, are moved from the brain in the voluntary actions, in which their primum mobile is intimately known to us through self-consciousness as the will.
Marshall Hall's excellent book " On the Diseases of the Nervous System is peculiarly fitted to bring out clearly the difference beOBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL. 485 tween volition and will, and to confirm the truth of my fundamental doctrine.
For the sake of illustrating all that has been said, let us now call to mind that case of the origination of an organism which is most accessible to our observation. Who makes the chicken in the egg? Some power and skill coming from without, and penetrating through the shell ? Oh no ! The chicken makes itself, and the force which carries out and perfects this work, which is complicated, well calculated, and designed beyond all expression, breaks through the shell as soon as it is ready, and now performs the outward actions of the chicken, under the name of 'will. It cannot do both at once; previously occupied with the perfecting of the organism, it had no care for without. But after it has completed the former, the latter appears, under the guidance of the brain and its feelers, the senses, as a tool prepared beforehand for this end, the service of which only begins when it grows up in selfconsciousness as intellect, which is the lantern to the steps of the will, its rp/e^oviKov, and also the supporter of the objective external world, however limited the horizon of this may be in the consciousness of a hen. But what the hen is now able to do in the external world, through the medium of this organ, is, as accomplished by means of something secondary, infinitely less important than what it did in its original form, for it made itself.
We became acquainted above with the cerebral nervous system as an assistant organ of the will, in which it therefore objectifies itself in a secondary manner. As thus the cerebral system, although not directly coming within the sphere of the life-functions of the organism, but only governing its relations to the outer world, has yet the organism as its basis, and is nourished by it in return for its services ; and as thus the cerebral or animal life is to be regarded as the production of the organic life, the brain and its function, knowledge, thus the intellect, belong indirectlv and in a subordinate manner to the manifesta486
SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XX.
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