Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/335

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the vegetable kingdom, stimuli, call forth, the effect, the causal connection is so simple, that there is not even the slightest semblance of freedom. But already in animal life, where that which till then had manifested itself as cause or as stimulus, now appears as a motive and a new world, that of representation, consequently presents itself, and cause and effect lie in different spheres the causal connection between both, and with it the necessity, are less evident than they were in plants and in inorganic Nature. Nevertheless they are still unmistakable in animals, whose merely intuitive representation stands midway between organic functions induced by stimuli and the deliberate acts of Man. The animal's actions infallibly follow as soon as the perceptible motive is present, unless counteracted by some equally perceptible counter-motive or by training; yet here representation is already distinct from the act of volition and comes separately into consciousness. But in Man whose representation has enhanced itself even to abstract conception and who now derives motives and counter-motives for his actions from a whole invisible thought-world which he carries about with him in his brain and which makes him independent of presence and of perceptible surroundings this connection no longer exists at all for observation from outside, and even for inward observation it is only knowable through abstract and mature reflection. For these abstract motives, when observed from outside, give an impress of deliberation to all his movements, by which they acquire a semblance of independence that manifestly distinguishes them from those of animals, yet which after all only bears evidence to the fact, that Man is actuated by a class of representations in which animals do not share. Then again, in self-consciousness, the act of volition is known to us in the most immediate way, but the motive in most cases very indirectly, being often even intentionally veiled, out of consideration for

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