COMPARATIVE ANATOMY.
Now, from my proposition: that the Will is what Kant calls the "thing in itself"[211] or the ultimate substratum of every phenomenon, I had however not only deduced that the will is the agent in all inner, unconscious functions of the body, but also that the organism itself is nothing but the will which has entered the region of representation, the will itself, perceived in the cognitive form of Space. I had accordingly said that, just as each single momentary act of willing presents itself at once directly and infallibly in the outer perception of the body as one of its actions, so also must the collective volition of each animal, the totality[212] of its efforts, be faithfully portrayed in its whole body, in the constitution of its organism; and that the means supplied by its organisation for attaining the aims of its will must as a whole exactly correspond to those aims—in short, that the same relation must exist between the whole character of its volition and the shape and nature of its body, as between each single act of its will and the single bodily action which carries it out. Even this too has recently been recognised as a fact, and accordingly been confirmed à posteriori, by thoughtful zootomists and physiologists from their own point of view and independently of my doctrine: their judgments on this point make Nature testify even here to the truth of my theory.
In Pander and d'Alton's admirable illustrated work[213] we find: "Just as all that is characteristic in the formation of bones springs from the character of the animals, so does that character, on the other hand, develop out of their tendencies and desires. These tendencies and desires of animals, which are so vividly expressed in their whole organisation and of which that organisation only appears to be the medium, cannot be explained by special primary forces, since we can only deduce their inner reason from the general life of Nature." By this last turn the author shows indeed that he has arrived at the point where, like all other investigators of Nature, he is brought to a standstill by the metaphysical; but he also shows, that up to this point beyond which Nature eludes investigation, tendencies and desires (i.e. will) were the utmost thing knowable. The shortest expression for his last conclusion about animals would be "As they will, so they are."
The learned and thoughtful Burdach,[214] when treating of the ultimate reason of the genesis of the embryo in his great work on Physiology, bears witness no less explicitly to the truth of my view. I must not, unfortunately, conceal the fact that in a weak moment, misled Heaven knows by what or how, this otherwise excellent man brings in just here a few sentences taken from that utterly worthless, tyrannically imposed pseudo-philosophy, about 'thought' being what is primary (it is just what is last and most conditioned of all) yet 'no representation' (that is to say, a wooden iron). Immediately after however, under the returning influence of his own better self, he proclaims the real truth (p. 710): "The brain curves itself outwards to the retina, because the central part of the embryo desires to take in the impressions of the activity of the world; the mucous membrane of the intestinal canal develops into the lung, because the organic body desires to enter into relation with the elementary substances of the universe; organs of generation spring from the vascular system, because the individual only lives in the species, and because the life which has commenced in the individual desires to multiply." This assertion of Burdach's, which so entirely agrees with my doctrine, reminds me of a passage in the ancient Mahabharata, which it is really difficult not to regard as a mythical version of the same truth. It is in the third Canto of "Sundas and Upasunda" in Bopp's "Ardschuna's Reise zu Indra's Himmel"[215] (1824); Brahma has just created Tilottama, the fairest of women, who is walking round the circle of the assembled gods. Shiva conceives so violent a longing to gaze at her as she turns successively round the circle, that four faces arise in him according to her different positions, that is, according to the four cardinal points. This may account for Shiva being represented with five heads, as Pansh Mukhti Shiva. Countless eyes arise on every part of Indra's body likewise on the same occasion.[216] In fact, every organ must be looked upon as the expression of a universal manifestation of the will, i.e. of one made once for all, of a fixed longing, of an act of volition proceeding, not from the individual, but from the species. Every animal form is a longing of the will to live which is roused by circumstances; for instance, the will is seized with a longing to live on trees, to hang on their branches, to devour their leaves, without contention with other animals and without ever touching the ground: this longing presents itself throughout endless time in the form (or Platonic Idea) of the sloth. It can hardly walk at all, being only adapted for climbing; helpless on the ground, it is agile on trees and looks itself like a moss-clad bough in order to escape the notice of its pursuers. But now let us consider the matter from a somewhat more methodical and less poetical point of view.
The manifest adaptation of each animal for its mode of life and outward means of subsistence, even down to the smallest detail, together with the exceeding perfection of its organisation, form abundant material for teleological contemplation, which has always been a favourite occupation of the human mind, and which, extended even to inanimate Nature, has become the argument of the Physico-theological Proof. The universal fitness for their ends, the obviously intentional design in all the parts of the organism of the lower animals without exception, proclaim too distinctly for it ever to have been seriously questioned, that here no forces of Nature acting by chance and without plan have been at work, but a will. Now, that a will should act otherwise than under the guidance of knowledge was inconceivable, according to empirical science and views. For, up to my time, as has been shown in the last chapter, will and intellect had been regarded as absolutely inseparable, nay, the will was looked upon as a mere operation of the intellect, that presumptive basis of all that is spiritual. Accordingly wherever the will acted, knowledge must have been its guide; consequently it must have been its guide here also. But the mediation of knowledge, which, as such, is exclusively directed towards the outside, brings with it, that a will acting by means of it, can only act outwardly, that is, only from one being upon another. Therefore the will, of which unmistakable traces had been found, was not sought for where these were discovered, but was removed to the outside, and the animal became the product of a will foreign to it, guided by knowledge, which must have been very clear knowledge indeed, nay, the deeply excogitated conception of a purpose; and this purpose must have preceded the animal's existence, and, together with the will, whose product the animal is, have lain outside that animal. According to this, the animal would have existed in representation before existing in reality. This is the basis of the train of thought on which the Physico-theological Proof is founded. But this proof is no mere scholastic sophism, like the Ontological Proof: nor does it contain an untiring natural opponent within itself, like the Cosmological Proof, in that very same law of causality to which it owes its existence. On the contrary, it is, in reality, for the educated, what the Keraunological Proof[217] is for the vulgar,[218] and its plausibility is so great, so potent, that the most eminent and at the same time least prejudiced minds have been deeply entangled in it. Voltaire, for instance, who, after all sorts of other doubts, always comes back to it, sees no possibility of getting over it and even places its evidence almost on a level with that of a mathematical demonstration. Even Priestley too declares it to be irrefutable.[219] Hume's reflection and acumen alone stood the test, even in this case; in his "Dialogues on Natural Religion,"[220] which are so well worth reading, this true precursor of Kant calls attention to the fact, that there is no resemblance at all between the works of Nature and those of an Art which proceeds according to a design. Now it is precisely where he cuts asunder the nervus probandi of this extremely insidious proof, as well as that of the two others—in his Critique of Judgment and in his Critique of Pure Reason—that Kant's merit shines most brilliantly. A very brief summary of this Kantian refutation of the Physico-theological Proof may be found in my chief work.[221] Kant has earned for himself great merit by it; for nothing stands so much in the way of a correct insight into Nature and into the essence of things as this view, by which they are looked upon as having been made according to a preconceived plan. Therefore, if a Duke of Bridgewater offers a prize of high value for the confirmation and perpetuation of such fundamental errors, let it be our task, following in the footsteps of Hume and Kant, to work undauntedly at their destruction, without any other reward than truth. Truth deserves respect: not what is opposed to it. Nevertheless here, as elsewhere, Kant has confined himself to negation; but a negation only takes full effect when it has been completed by a correct affirmation, this alone giving entire satisfaction and in itself dislodging and superseding error, according to the words of Spinoza: Sicut lux se ipsa et tenebras manifestat, sic veritas norma sui et falsi est. First of all therefore we say: the world is not made with the help of knowledge, consequently also not from the outside, but from the inside; and next we endeavour to point out the punctum saliens[222] of the world-egg. The physico-theological thought, that Nature must have been regulated and fashioned by an intellect, however well it may suit the untutored mind, is nevertheless fundamentally wrong. For the intellect is only known to us in animal nature, consequently as an absolutely secondary and subordinate principle in the world, a product of the latest origin; it can never therefore have been the condition of the existence of that world.[223] Now the will on the contrary, being that which fills every thing and manifests itself immediately in each—thus showing each thing to be its phenomenon—appears everywhere as that which is primary. It is just for this reason, that the explanation of all teleological facts is to be found in the will of the being itself in which they are observed.
Besides, the Physico-theological Proof may be simply invalidated by the empirical observation, that works produced by animal instinct, such as the spider's web, the bee's honeycomb and its cells, the white ant's constructions, &c. &c., are throughout constituted as if they were the result of an intentional conception, of a wide-reaching providence and of rational deliberation; whereas they are evidently the work of a blind impulse, i.e. of a will not guided by knowledge. From this it follows, that the conclusion from such and such a nature to such and such a mode of coming into being, has not the same certainty as the conclusion from a consequent to its reason, which is in all cases a sure one. I have devoted the twenty-seventh chapter of the second volume of my chief work to a detailed consideration of the mechanical instincts of animals, which may be used, together with the preceding one on Teleology, to complete the whole examination of this subject in the present chapter.
Now, if we enter more closely into the above-mentioned fitness of every animal's organisation for its mode of life and means of subsistence, the question that first presents itself is, whether that mode of life has been adapted to the organisation, or vice versa. At first sight, the former assumption would seem to be the more correct one; since, in Time, the organisation precedes the mode of life, and the animal is thought to have adopted the mode of existence for which its structure was best suited, making the best use of the organs it found within itself: thus, for instance, we think that the bird flies because it has wings, and that the ox butts because it has horns; not conversely. This view is shared by Lucretius, (always an ominous sign for an opinion):
"Nil ideo quoniam natum est in corpore, ut uti
Possemus; sed, quod natum est, id procreat usum."[224]
Only this assumption does not explain how, collectively, the quite different parts of an animal's organism so exactly correspond to its way of life; how no organ interferes with another, each rather assisting the others and none remaining unemployed; also that no subordinate organ would be better suited to another mode of existence, while the life which the animal really leads is determined by the principal organs alone, but, on the contrary, each part of the animal not only corresponds to every other part, but also to its mode of life: its claws, for instance, are invariably adapted for seizing the prey which its teeth are suited to tear and break, and its intestinal canal to digest: its limbs are constructed to convey it where that prey is to be found, and no organ ever remains unemployed. The ant-bear, for instance, is not only armed with long claws on its fore-feet, in order to break into the nests of the white ant, but also with a prolonged cylindrical muzzle, in order to penetrate into them, with a small mouth and a long, threadlike tongue, covered with a glutinous slime, which it inserts into the white ants' nests and then withdraws covered with the insects that adhere to it: on the other hand it has no teeth, because it does not want them. Who can fail to see that the ant-bear's form stands in the same relation to the white ants, as an act of the will to its motive? The contradiction between the powerful fore-feet and long, strong, curved claws of the ant-bear and its complete lack of teeth, is at the same time so extraordinary, that if the earth ever undergoes a fresh transformation, the newly arising race of rational beings will find it an insoluble enigma, if white ants are unknown to them. The necks of birds, as of quadrupeds, are generally as long as their legs, to enable them to reach down to the ground where they pick up their food; but those of aquatic birds are often a good deal longer, because they have to fetch up their nourishment from under the water while swimming.[225] Moor-fowl have exceedingly long legs, to enable them to wade without drowning or wetting their bodies, and a correspondingly long neck and beak, this last being more or less strong, according to the things (reptiles, fishes or worms) which have to be crushed; and the intestines of these animals are invariably adapted likewise to this end. On the other hand, moor-fowl are provided neither with talons, like birds of prey, nor with web-feet, like ducks: for the lex parsimoniæ naturæ admits of no superfluous organ. Now, it is precisely this very law, added to the circumstance, that no organ required for its mode of life is ever wanting in any animal, and that all, even the most heterogeneous, harmonize together and are, as it were, calculated for a quite specially determined way of life, for the element in which the prey dwells, for the pursuit, the overcoming, the crushing and digesting of that prey,—all this, we say, proves, that the animal's structure has been determined by the mode of life by which the animal desired to find its sustenance, and not vice versa. It also proves, that the result is exactly the same as if a knowledge of that mode of life and of its outward conditions had preceded the structure, and as if therefore each animal had chosen its equipment before it assumed a body; just as a sportsman before starting chooses his whole equipment, gun, powder, shot, pouch, hunting-knife and dress, according to the game he intends chasing. The latter does not take aim at the wild boar because he happens to have a rifle: he took the rifle with him and not a fowling-piece, because he intended to hunt the wild boar; and the ox does not butt because it happens to have horns: it has horns because it intends to butt. Now, to render this proof complete, we have the additional circumstance, that in many animals, during the time they are growing, the effort of the will to which a limb is destined to minister, manifests itself before the existence of the limb itself, its employment thus anticipating its existence. Young he-goats, rams, calves, for instance, butt with their bare polls before they have any horns; the young boar tries to gore on either side, before its tusks are fully developed which would respond to the intended effect, while on the other hand, it neglects to use the smaller teeth it already has in its mouth and with which it might really bite. Thus its mode of defending itself does not adapt itself to the existing weapons, but vice versa. This had already been noticed by Galenus[226] and by Lucretius[227] before him. All these circumstances give us complete certainty, that the will does not, as a supplementary thing proceeding from the intellect, employ those instruments which it may happen to find, or use the parts because just they and no others chance to be there; but that what is primary and original, is the endeavour to live in this particular way, to contend in this manner, an endeavour which manifests itself not only in the employment, but even in the existence of the weapon: so much so indeed, that the use of the weapon frequently precedes its existence, thus denoting that it is the weapon which arises out of the existence of the endeavour, not, conversely, the desire to use it out of the existence of the weapon. Aristotle expressed this long ago, when he said, with reference to insects armed with stings:[228] διὰ τὸ θυμὸν ἔχειν ὅπλον ἔχει (quia iram habent, arma habent), and further on, generally speaking:[229] Τὰ δ' ὄργανα πρὸς τὸ ἔργον ἡ φύσις ποιεῖ, ἀλλ' οὐ τὸ ἔργον πρὸς τὰ ὄργανα (Natura enim instrumenta ad officium, non officium ad instrumenta accommodat). From which it follows, that the structure of each animal is adapted to its will.