Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/283

 PHYSIOLOGY AND PATHOLOGY. 251

foxes, apes, oxen, asses, pigs, nowhere was there a man! They only made out after a time that the few existing human beings, in order to hide themselves and not to witness what was going on, had retired to those desert places which ought to have been the dwellings of wild beasts." The same reason indeed accounts for the peculiar inclination of all men of genius for solitude, to which they are driven by their difference from the rest, and for which their own inner wealth qualifies them. For, with humanity it is as with diamonds, the extraordinarily great ones alone are fitted to be solitaires, while those of ordinary size have to be set in clusters to produce any effect.

Even the three Gunas, or fundamental qualities of the Hindoos, tally with the three physiological fundamental forces. Tamas-Guna, obtuseness, stupidity, corresponds to reproductive power; Rajas-Guna, passionateness, to irritability; and Sattwa-Guna, wisdom and virtue, to sensibility. When, however, they add to this, that Tamas-Guna is the fate of animals, Rajas-Guna the fate of man, and Sattwa-Guna that of the Gods, this is to be taken in a mythological, rather than physiological sense.

In Chapter 20th of the 2nd Vol. of my chief work entitled "Objectification of the Will in the Animal Organism," I have likewise treated the argument of the present chapter; therefore I advise my readers to read it after this, as a complement to what is here given. 1

I may observe that the passages I have quoted from pp. 14 and 15 of my Essay on Colours, refer to the first edition.

1 In my Parerga, § 94 of the 2nd vol. (§ 96 in the 2nd edition) belongs also to the above.