Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/269

 PHYSIOLOGY AND PATHOLOGY. 237

and organs. As the actions of our body are only acts of volition portraying themselves in representation, so likewise is their substratum, the shape of that body, in the main the portrait of the will: so that, in all the organic functions of our body, the will is just as much the agent as in its external actions. True Physiology, at its highest, shows the spiritual (the intellectual) in man to be the product of the physical in him, and no one has done this so thoroughly as Cabanis; but true Metaphysic teaches us, that the physical in man is itself mere product, or rather phenomenon, of a spiritual (the will); nay, that Matter itself is conditioned by representation, in which alone it exists. Perception and reflection will more and more find their explanation through the organism; but not the will, by which conversely the organism is explained, as I shall show in the following chapter. First of all therefore I place the will, as thing–in–itself and quite primary; secondly, its mere visibility, its objectification: i.e. the body; thirdly, the intellect, as a mere function of one part of that body. This part is itself the objectified will–to–know (the will–to–know having entered into representation), since the will needs knowledge to attain its own ends. Now the entire world as representation, to gether with the body itself therefore, inasmuch as it is a perceptible object, nay, Matter in general as existing only in representation, all this, I say, is again conditioned by that function; for, duly considered, we cannot possibly conceive an objective world without a Subject, in whose consciousness it is present. Thus knowledge and matter (Subject and Object) exist only relatively one for the other and constitute phenomenon. The whole thing there fore, owing to the radical change made by me, stands in a different light from that in which it has hitherto been regarded.

As soon as it is directed outwardly and acts upon a