Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 2.djvu/491

Rh in the series of animals blood appears much earlier in the form of a pure plasma." The blood of invertebrate animals never assumes the red colour; but we do not therefore, with Aristotle, deny that they have any. It is well worthy of note that, according to the account of Justinus Kerner (Geschichte zweier Somnambulen, § 78), a somnambulist of a very high degree of clairvoyance, says: "I am as deep in myself as ever a man can be led; the force of my mortal life seems to me to have its source in the blood, whereby, through the circulation in the veins, it communicates itself, by means of the nerves, to the whole body, and to the brain, which is the noblest part of the body, and above the blood itself."

From all this it follows that the will objectifies itself most immediately in the blood as that which originally makes and forms the organism, perfects it by growth, and afterwards constantly maintains it, both by the regular renewal of all the parts and by the extraordinary restoration of any part that may have been injured. The first productions of the blood are its own vessels, and then the muscles, in the irritability of which the will makes itself known to self-consciousness; but with this also the heart, which is at once vessel and muscle, and therefore is the true centre and primum mobile of the whole life. But for the individual life and subsistence in the external world the will now requires two assistant systems: one to govern and order its inner and outer activity, and another for the constant renewal of the mass of the blood; thus a controller and a sustainer. It therefore makes for itself the nervous and the intestinal systems; thus the functiones animales and the functiones naturales associate themselves in a subsidiary manner with the functiones vitales, which are the most original and essential. In the nervous system, accordingly, the will only objectifies itself in an indirect and secondary way; for this system appears as a mere auxiliary organ, as a contrivance by means of which the will attains to a knowledge of those occasions, internal and external,