Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/304

 THE WILL IN NATURE.

Everywhere indeed intelligence depends in the first instance upon the cerebral system, and this stands in a necessary relation to the rest of the organism; therefore cold blooded animals are greatly inferior to warm-blooded ones, and invertebrate animals to vertebrata. But the organism is precisely nothing but the will become visible, to which, as that which is absolutely prius [earlier], everything constantly refers. The needs and aims of that will give in each phenomenon the rule for the means to be employed, and these means must harmonize with one another. Plants have no self-consciousness because they have no power of locomotion; for of what use would self-consciousness be to them unless it enabled them to seek what was salutary and flee what was noxious to them ? And conversely, of what use could power of locomotion be to them, as they have no self-consciousness with which to guide it. The inseparable duality of Sensibility and Irritability does not yet appear therefore in the plant; they continue slumbering in the reproductive force which is their fundament, and in which alone the will here objectifies itself. The sun-flower, and every other plant, wills for light; but as yet their movement towards light is not separate from their apprehension of it, and both coincide with their growth. Human understanding, which is so superior to that of all other beings, and is assisted by Reason (the faculty for non-perceptible representations, i.e. for concepts; reflection, thinking faculty), is nevertheless only just proportionate, partly to Man's requirements, which greatly surpass those of animals and multiply to infinity; partly to his entire lack of all natural weapons and covering, and to his relatively weaker muscular strength, which is greatly inferior to that of monkeys of his own size; l lastly also, to the slowness with which his

1 As is likewise his capacity for escaping from his pursuers; for in this respect all the four-footed mammalia surpass him. [Add. to 3rd ed.]

COMPARATIVE