Now here however I must say, as Abélard once did: si omnes patres sic, at ego non sic: for, in opposition to this principle, however great may be its antiquity and universality, my doctrine maintains, that there are not two origins of movement differing fundamentally from one another; that movement does not proceed either from inside, when it is ascribed to the will, or from outside, when it is brought about by causes; but that both things are inseparable and take place simultaneously with every movement made by a body. For movement which is admitted to arise from the will, always presupposes a cause also: this cause, in beings that have knowledge, is a motive; but without it, even in these beings, movement is impossible. On the other hand, the movement of a body which is admitted to have been brought about by an outward cause, is nevertheless in itself a manifestation of the will of that body which has only been evoked by that cause. Accordingly there is only one, uniform, universal and exceptionless principle of all movement, whose inner condition is will and whose outer occasion is cause, which latter may also take the form of a stimulus or of a motive, according to the nature of the thing moved.
All that is known to us of things in a merely empirical or à posteriori, way, is in itself will; whereas, so far as they can be determined à priori, things belong exclusively to representation, to mere phenomenon. Natural phenomena therefore become proportionately less easy to comprehend, the more distinctly the will manifests itself in them, i.e. the higher they stand on the scale of beings; whereas, they become more and more comprehensible the smaller the amount of their empirical content, because they remain more and more within the sphere of mere representation, the forms of which, known to us à priori, are the principle of comprehensibility. Accordingly, it is only so long as we limit ourselves to this sphere—that is to say, only when we have before us mere representation, mere form without empirical content—that our comprehension is complete and thorough: that is, in the à priori sciences, Arithmetic, Geometry, Phoronomy and Logic. Here everything is in the highest degree comprehensible; our insight is quite clear and satisfactory: it leaves nothing to be desired, since we are even unable to conceive that anything could be otherwise than it is. This comes from our having here exclusively to do with the forms of our own intellect. Thus the more we are able to comprehend in a relation, the more it consists of mere phenomenon and the less it has to do with the thing in itself. Applied Mathematics, Mechanics, Hydraulics, &c. &c., deal with the lowest degrees of objectification of the will, in which the largest part still remains within the sphere of mere representation; nevertheless even here there is already an empirical element which stands in the way of entire comprehension, which makes the transparency less complete, and in which the inexplicable shows itself. For the same reason, only few departments of Physics and of Chemistry continue to admit of a mathematical treatment; whereas higher up in the scale of beings this has to be entirely done away with, precisely because of the preponderance of content over form in these phenomena. This content is will, the à posteriori, the thing in itself, the free, the causeless. Under the heading "Physiology of Plants," I have shown how—in beings that live and have knowledge—motive and act of will, representation and volition, separate and detach themselves more and more distinctly one from the other, the higher we ascend in the scale of beings. Now, in inorganic Nature also, the cause separates itself from the effect in just the same proportion, and the purely empirical—which is precisely phenomenon of the will—detaches itself more and more prominently; but, just with this, comprehensibility diminishes. This point merits fuller investigation, and I request my readers to give their whole and undivided attention to what I am about to say, as it is calculated to place the leading thought of my doctrine in the strongest possible light, both as to comprehensibility and cogency. But this is all I can do; for it is beyond my power to induce my contemporaries to prefer thoughts to verbiage; I can only console myself for not being the man of the age.
On the lowest step of the scale of Nature, cause and effect are quite homogeneous and quite equivalent. Here therefore we have perfect comprehension of the causal connection: for instance, the cause of the movement of one ball propelled by impact, is the movement of another, which loses just as much movement as the first one receives. Here causality is in the highest degree intelligible. What notwithstanding still remains mysterious, is restricted to the possibility of the passage of movement—of a thing incorporeal—from one body to another. The receptivity of bodies in this mode is so slight, that the effect to be produced has to pass over completely from its cause. The same holds good of all purely mechanical influences; and if they are not all just as instantaneously understood, it is either because they are hidden from us by accessory circumstances, or because we are confused by the complicated connection of many causes and effects. In itself, mechanical causality is everywhere equally, that is, in the highest degree, comprehensible; because cause and effect do not differ here as to quality, and because where they differ as to quantity, as in the lever, mere Space and Time relations suffice to make the thing clear. But as soon as weights come also into play, a second mysterious element supervenes, gravity: and, where elastic bodies are concerned, elasticity also.—Things change as soon as we begin to ascend in the scale of phenomena. Heat, considered as cause, and expansion, liquefaction, volatilization or crystallization, as effects, are not homogeneous; therefore their causal connection is not intelligible. The comprehensibility of causality has diminished: what a lower degree of heat caused to liquefy, a higher degree makes evaporate: that which crystallizes with less heat, melts when the heat is augmented. Warmth softens wax and hardens clay; light whitens wax and blackens chloride of silver. And, to go still further, when two salts are seen to decompose each other mutually and to form two new ones, elective affinity presents itself to us as an impenetrable mystery, and the properties of the two new bodies are not a combination of the properties of their separate elements. Nevertheless we are still able to follow the process and to indicate the elements out of which the new bodies are formed; we can even separate what has been united and restore the original quantities. Thus noticeable heterogeneousness and incommensurability between cause and effect have here made their appearance: causality has become more mysterious. And this becomes still more apparent when we compare the effects of electricity or of the Voltaic pile with their causes, i.e. with the friction of glass, or the piling and oxidation of the plates. Here all similarity between cause and effect at once vanishes; causality becomes shrouded in a thick veil, which men like Davy, Faraday and Ampère have strenuously endeavoured to lift. The only thing now discernible through that veil, are the laws ruling its mode of action, which may be brought into a schema such as + E - E, communication, distribution, shock, ignition, analysis, charging, isolation, discharging, electric current, &c. &c., to this schema we are able to reduce and even to direct the effect; but of the process itself we know nothing: that remains an x. Here therefore cause and effect are completely heterogeneous, their connection is unintelligible, and we see bodies show great susceptibility to causal influences, the nature of which remains a secret for us. Moreover in proportion as we mount higher in the scale, the effect seems to contain more, the cause less. When we reach organic Nature therefore, in which the phenomenon of life presents itself, this is the case in a far higher degree still. If, as is done in China, we fill a pit with decaying wood, cover it with leaves from the same tree as the wood, and pour a solution of sulphur repeatedly over it, an abundant crop of edible mushrooms will spring up. A world of rapidly moving infusoria will arise from a little hay well watered. What a difference lies here between effect and cause! How much more does the former seem to contain than the latter! When we compare the seed, sometimes centuries, nay even thousands of years old, with the tree, or the soil with the specifically and strikingly different juices of innumerable plants—some healthy, some poisonous, some again nutritious—which spring from the same earth, upon which the same sun shines and the same rain falls, all resemblance ceases, and with it all comprehensibility for us. For here causality already appears in increased potency: that is, as stimulus and as susceptibility for stimulus. The schema of cause and effect alone has remained; we know that this is cause, that effect; but we know nothing whatever of the nature and disposition of causality. Between cause and effect there is not only no qualitative resemblance, but no quantitative relation: the relatively greater importance of the effect as compared with its cause increases more and more; the effect of the stimulus too does not augment in proportion with the enhancement of that stimulus; in fact just the contrary often takes place. Finally, when we come to the sphere of beings which have knowledge, there is no longer any sort of resemblance or relation between the action performed and the object which, as representation, evokes it. Animals, however, as they are restricted to perceptible representations, still need the presence of the object acting as a motive, which action is then immediate and infallible (if we leave training, i.e. habit enforced by fear, out of the question). For animals are unable to carry about with them conceptions that might render them independent of present impressions, enable them to reflect, and qualify them for deliberate action. Man can do this. Therefore when at last we come to rational beings, the motive is even no longer a present, perceptible, actually existing, real thing, but a mere conception having its present existence only in the brain of the person who acts, but which is extracted from many multifarious perceptions, from the experience of former years, or has been handed down in words. Here the separation between cause and effect is so wide, the effect has grown so much stronger as compared with the cause, that the vulgar mind no longer perceives the existence of a cause at all, and the acts of the will appear to it to be unconditioned, causeless: that is to say, free. This is just why, when we reflect upon them from outside, the movements of our own body present themselves as if they took place without cause, or to speak more properly, by a miracle. Experience and reflection alone teach us that these movements, like all others, are only possible as the effects of causes, here called motives, and that, on this ascending scale, it is only as to material reality that the cause has failed to keep pace with the effect; whereas it has kept pace with it as to dynamical reality, energy.—At this degree of the scale therefore—the highest in Nature—causality has become less intelligible to us than ever. Nothing but the bare schema, taken in a quite general sense, now remains, and the ripest reflection is needed to recognise its applicability and the necessity that schema brings with it everywhere.
In the Grotto of Pausilippo, darkness continues to augment as we advance towards the interior; but when once we have passed the middle, day-light again appears at the other end and shows us the way; so also in this case: just at the point where the outwardly directed light of the understanding with its form of causality, gradually yielding to increasing darkness, had been reduced to a feeble, flickering glimmer, behold! we are met by a totally different light proceeding from quite another quarter, from our own inner self, through the chance circumstance, that we, the judges, happen here to be the very objects that are to be judged. The growing difficulty of the comprehension of the causal nexus, at first so clear, had now become so great for perception and for the understanding—the agent in it—that, in animal actions, the very existence of that nexus seemed almost doubtful and those actions appeared to be a sort of miracle. But, just at this point, the observer receives from his own inner self the direct information that the agent in them is the will—that very will, which he knows better and more intimately than anything that external perception can ever supply. This knowledge alone must be the philosopher's key to an insight into the heart of all those processes in unconscious Nature, concerning which causal explanation—although, here, to be sure, more satisfactory than in the processes last considered, and the clearer, the farther those processes were removed from these—nevertheless had still left an unknown x, and could never quite illumine the inside of the process, even in a body propelled by impact or attracted by gravity. This x had continued expanding till finally, on the highest degrees of the scale, it had wholly repelled causal explanation. But then, just when the power of causal explanation had been reduced to a minimum, that x revealed itself as the will—reminding us of Mephistopheles when, yielding to Faust's learned exorcisms, he steps forth out of the huge grown poodle whose kernel he was. In consequence of the considerations I have here set forth at length, we can surely hardly avoid recognising the identity of this x, even on the lowest degrees of the scale, where it was but faintly perceptible; then higher up, where it extended its obscurity more and more; and finally on the highest degrees, where it cast a shadow upon all things—till, at the very top, it reveals itself to our consciousness in our own phenomenal being, as the will. The two primarily different sources of our knowledge, that is to say the inward and the outward source, have to be connected together at this point by reflection. It is quite exclusively out of this connection that our comprehension of Nature, and of our own selves arises; but then the inner side of Nature is disclosed to our intellect, which by itself alone can never reach further than to the mere outside; and the mystery which philosophy has so long tried to solve, lies open before us. For then indeed we clearly see what the Real and the Ideal (the thing in itself and the phenomenon) properly are; and this settles the principal question which has engaged the attention of philosophers since Descartes: that is to say, the question as to the relation between these two, whose complete diversity Kant had shown most thoroughly and with unexampled depth, yet whose absolute identity was immediately afterwards proclaimed by humbugs on the credit of intellectual intuition. But if we decline to avail ourselves of this insight, which is really the one strait gate to truth, we can never acquire comprehension of the intrinsic essence of Nature, to which absolutely no other road leads; for then indeed we fall into an irremovable error. Then, as I have already said, we maintain the view, that motion has two radically different primary principles with a solid partition-wall between them: i.e. movement by means of causes, and movement by means of the will. The first of these must then remain for ever incomprehensible as to its innermost essence, because, after all its explanations, there is still left that unknown x which contains the more, the higher the object under consideration stands in the scale of beings; while the second, movement by the will, presents itself as entirely disconnected from the principle of causality; as without reason; as freedom in individual actions: in other words, as completely opposed to Nature and utterly unexplainable. On the other hand, if the above-mentioned union of our external and internal knowledge has once been accomplished at the point where both meet, we then recognise two identities in spite of all accidental differences. That is to say, we recognise the identity of causality with itself on every degree of the scale of beings, and the identity of the x, which at first was unknown (i.e. of physical forces and vital phenomena), with the will which is within us. We recognise, I say, firstly the essential identity of causality under the various forms it is forced to assume on the different degrees of the scale, as it may manifest itself, now as a mechanical, chemical, or physical cause, now as a stimulus, and again as a perceptible or an abstract motive: we know it to be one and the same, not only when a propelling body loses as much movement as it imparts by impact, but also when in the combats of thought against thought, the victorious one, as the more powerful motive, sets Man in motion, a motion which follows with no less necessity than that of the ball which is struck. Where we ourselves are the things set in motion, where therefore the kernel of the process is well and intimately known to us, instead of allowing ourselves to be dazzled and confused by this light and thereby losing sight of the causal connection as it lies before us everywhere else in the whole of Nature; instead of shutting out this insight for ever, we now apply the new knowledge we have acquired from within as a key to the knowledge of things outside us, and then we recognise the second identity, that of our will with the hitherto mysterious x that remains over after all causal explanation as an insoluble residue. Consequently we then say: even in cases in which the effect is brought about by the most palpable cause, the mysterious x in the process, the real innermost core of it, the true agent, the in-itself of all phenomena—which, after all, is only given us as representation and according to the forms and laws of representation—is essentially one and the same with what is known to us immediately and intimately as the will in the actions of our own body, which body is likewise given us as intuition and representation.—This is (say what you will) the basis of true philosophy, and if the present age does not see this, many following ages will. Tempo è galant' uomo! (se nessun altro).—Thus, just as, on the one hand, the essence of causality, which appears most clearly only on the lowest degree of the objectification of the will, is recognised by us again at every ascending step, even at the highest; so also, on the other hand, is the essence of the will recognised by us at every descending step in that ladder, even at the lowest, although this knowledge is only immediately acquired at the very highest. The old error asserts, that where there is will, there is no causality; and that where there is causality, there is no will. But we say: everywhere where there is causality, there is will; and no will acts without causality. The punctum controversiæ therefore, is, whether will and causality can and must subsist together in one and the same process at the same time. What makes the knowledge, that this is indeed the case, so difficult, is the circumstance, that we know causality and will in two fundamentally different ways: causality entirely from outside, quite indirectly, quite through the understanding; will entirely from inside, quite directly; and that accordingly the clearer the knowledge of the one in each given instance, the less clear is the knowledge of the other. Therefore we recognise the essence of the will least readily, where causality is most intelligible; and, where the will is most unmistakably evident, causality becomes so obscured, that the vulgar mind could venture to deny its existence altogether.—Now, as Kant has taught us, causality is nothing but the form of the understanding itself, knowable à priori: that is, the essence of representation, as such, which is one side of the world; the other side is will: which is the thing in itself. That relative increase and decrease of clearness in inverse proportion of causality and of the will, that mutual advancing and receding of both, depends consequently upon the fact, that the more a thing is given us as mere phenomenon, i.e. as representation, the more clearly does the à priori form of representation, i.e. causality, manifest itself: this is the case in inanimate Nature; conversely, the more immediate our knowledge of the will, the more does the form of representation recede into the background: this is the case with ourselves. That is: the nearer one side of the world approaches to us, the more do we lose sight of the other.
LINGUISTIC.
All that I have to record under this head is an observation of my own, made within the last few years, which seems hitherto to have escaped notice. Yet, that it is worthy of consideration, is attested by Seneca's utterance:[273] Mira in quibusdam rebus verborum proprietas est, et consuetudo sermonis antiqui quædam efficacissimis notis signat. Lichtenberg too says: "If one thinks much oneself, one finds a good deal of wisdom deposited in language. It is hardly likely that we have laid it all there ourselves, but rather that a great deal of wisdom really lies there."
In many, perhaps in all, languages, the action even of those bodies which are without intellect, nay of inanimate bodies, is expressed by the words to will, so that the existence of a will in these bodies is thus taken for granted; but they are never credited with a faculty for knowing, representing, perceiving or thinking: I know of no expression which conveys this.
Seneca, when speaking of lightning shot down from heaven, says:[274] "In his, ignibus accidit, quod arboribus: quarum cacumina, si tenera sunt, ita deorsum trahi possunt, ut etiam terram attingant; sed quum permiseris, in locum suum exsilient. Itaque non est quod eum spectes cujusque rei habitum, qui illi non ex voluntate est. Si ignem permittis ire quo velit, cœlum repetet." In a more general sense Pliny says: nec quærenda in ulla parte naturæ ratio, sed voluntas.[275] Nor do we find Greek less fertile in instances. Aristotle, when explaining gravity, says: μικρὸν μὲν μόριον τῆς γῆς, ἐὰν μετεωρισθὲν ἀφεθῇ, φέρεται, καὶ μένειν οὐκ ἐθέλει (parva quædam terræ pars, si elevata dimittitur, neque vult manere).[276] And: Δεῖ δὲ ἕκαστον λέγειν τοιοῦτον εἶναι, ὃ φύσει βούλεται εἶναι, καὶ ὃ ὑπάρχει, ἀλλὰ μὴ ὃ βίᾳ καὶ παρὰ φύσιν (unumquodque autem tale dicere oportet, quale naturâ suâ esse vult, et quod est; sed non id quod violentiâ et præter naturam est).[277] Of great and more than merely linguistic importance is what Aristotle says in his "Ethica magna,"[278] where not only animals, but inanimate beings (fire striving upwards and earth downwards) are explicitly in question, and he asserts that they may be obliged to do something contrary to their nature or their will: παρὰ φύσιν τι, ἢ παρ' ἃ βούλονται ποιεῖν,—and therefore rightly places παρ' ἃ βούλονται as a paraphrase of παρὰ φύσιν.—Anacreon, in his 29th Ode, εἰς Βάθυλλον, in ordering the portrait of his lady-love, says of her hair: Ἕλικας δ' ἐλευθέρους μοι πλοκάμων, ἄτακτα συνθείς, ἄφες, ὡς θέλωσι, κεῖσθαι (capillorum cirros incomposite jungens, sine utut volunt jacere).[279] In German, Bürger says: "hinab will der Bach, nicht hinan" (the brook will go downwards not upwards). In daily life we constantly hear: "the water boils, it will run over,"—"the glass will break,"—"the ladder will not stand;"—"le feu ne veut pas brûler."—"la corde, une fois tordue, veut toujours se retordre."—In English, the verb 'to will' is even the auxiliary of the future of all the other verbs, thus expressing the notion, that there lies a will at the bottom of every action. In English moreover, the endeavours of all inanimate and unconscious things, are expressly designated by the word want, which denotes every sort of human desire or endeavour: "the water wants to get out,"—"the steam wants to find an issue."—In Italian too we have "vuol piovere;" "quest' orologio non vuol andare."—The conception of willing is besides so deeply rooted in this last language, that it seems to indicate everything that is requisite or necessary: "ci vuol un contrappeso;" "ci vuol pazienza."
A very striking instance of this is to be found even in Chinese—a language which differs fundamentally from all those belonging to the Sanskrit family—it is in the commentary to the Y-King,[280] accurately rendered by Peter Regis as follows: "Yang, seu materia cœlestis, vult rursus ingredi, vel (ut verbis doctoris Tsching-tse utar) vult rursus esse in superiore loco; scilicet illius naturæ ratio ita fert, seu innata lex."