Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/290

 THE WILL IN NATURE.

but from the inside; and next we endeavour to point out the punctum saliens [salient point] l 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. 2 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

1 The point at which the life-spark is kindled. [Tr.]

2 Nor can a mundus intelligibilis [world of the mind] precede a mundus sensibilis [world of the senses]; since the former receives its material from the latter alone. It is not an intellect which has brought forth Nature; it is, on the contrary, Nature which has brought forth the intellect. [Add. to 3rd ed.]

COMPARATIVE