Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/30

14 the sphere of its existence beyond the limits of its own body. This takes place through knowledge. It has a dim apprehension of its immediate surroundings, out of which the motives for its action with a view to its own maintenance arise. Thus accordingly the medium of motives appears, and this is – the world existing objectively in time and space, the world as idea, however weak, obscure, and dimly dawning this first and lowest example of it may be. But it imprints itself ever more and more distinctly, ever wider and deeper, in proportion as in the ascending scale of animal organisations the brain is ever more perfectly produced. This progress in the development of the brain, thus of the intellect, and of the clearness of the idea, at each of these ever higher grades is, however, brought about by the constantly increasing and more complicated wants of this phenomenon of the will. This must always first afford the occasion for it, for without necessity nature (i.e., the will which objectifies itself in it) produces nothing, least of all the hardest of its productions – a more perfect brain: in consequence of its lex parsimoniæ: natura nihil agit frustra et nihil facit supervacaneum. It has provided every animal with the organs which are necessary for its sustenance and the weapons necessary for its conflict, as I have shown at length in my work, "Ueber den Willen in der Natur," under the heading, "Vergleichende Anatomie." According to this measure, therefore, it imparts to each the most important of those organs concerned with what is without, the brain, with its function the intellect. The more complicated, through higher development, its organisation became, the more multifarious and specially determined did its wants also become, and consequently the more difficult and the more dependent upon opportunity was the provision of what would satisfy them. Thus there was needed here a wider range of sight, a more accurate comprehension, a more correct distinction of things in the external world, in all their circumstances and relations. Accordingly we see the faculty of forming ideas, and its