in consequence of our subjective
forms of thought--neither determination by causes or ends, nor plurality:
it stands outside the law of causality, as also outside space and time,
which form the _principium individuationis_. The primal will is groundless,
blind stress, unconscious impulse toward existence; it is one, the one
and all, [Greek: en nai pan]. That which manifests itself as gravity, as
magnetic force, as the impulse to growth, as the _vis medicatrix naturae_,
is only this one world-will, whose unity (not conscious character!) shows
itself in the purposiveness of its embodiments. The essence of each thing,
its hidden quality, at which empirical explanation finds its limit, is its
will: the essence of the stone is its will to fall; that of the lungs is
the will to breathe; teeth, throat, and bowels are hunger objectified.
Those qualities in which the universal will gives itself material
manifestation form a series with grades of increasing perfection, a realm
of unchangeable specific forms or eternal Ideas, which (with a real value
difficult to determine) stand midway between the one primal will and
the numberless individual beings. That the organic individual does not
perfectly correspond to the ideal of its species, but only approximates
this more or less closely, is grounded in the fact that the stadia in the
objectification of the will, or the Ideas, contend, as it were, for matter;
and whatever of force is used up in the victory of the higher Ideas over
the lower is lost for the development of the examples of the former. The
higher the level on which a being stands the clearer the expression of its
individuality. The most general forces of nature, which constitute the raw
mass, play the fundamental bass in the world-symphony, the higher stages
of inorganic nature, with the vegetable and animal worlds, the harmonious
middle parts, and man the guiding treble, the significant melody. With the
human brain the world as idea is given at a stroke; in this organ the will
has kindled a torch in order to throw light upon itself and to carry out
its designs with careful deliberation; it has brought forth the intellect
as its instrument, which, with the great majority of men, remains in a
position of subservience to the will. Brain and thought are the same; the
former is nothing other than the will to know, as the stomach is will
to digest. Those only talk of an immaterial soul who import into
philosophy--where such idea