Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/74

58 this analogy can only be very imperfectly followed because its fauna is very poor in mammalia, and contains neither beasts of prey nor apes. On the other hand, between the old world and America it is obvious, and in the following manner. In mammals America always produces the inferior analogue, but in birds and reptiles the better. Thus it has the advantage in the condor, the macaw, the humming-bird, and the largest batrachia and ophidia; but, for example, instead of the elephant it has only the tapir, instead of the lion the puma, instead of the tiger the jaguar, instead of the camel the lama, and instead of apes proper only monkeys. Even from this last defect it may be concluded that in America nature was not able to rise to man; for even from the nearest grade below man, the chimpanzee and the orang-outang or pongo, the step to man was still an excessively great one. Correspondingly we find that the three races of men which, both upon physiological and linguistic grounds, are undoubtedly equally original, the Caucasian, the Mongolian, and the Ethiopian, are only at home in the old world; while America, on the other hand, is peopled by a mixed or climatically modified Mongolian race, which must have come over from Asia. On the surface of the earth which immediately preceded the present surface apes were reached here and there, but not men.

From this standpoint of our consideration, which shows us matter as the direct visibility of the will which manifests itself in all things, nay, indeed, for the merely physical investigation which follows the guidance of time and causality, lets it pass as the origin of things, we are easily led to the question whether even in philosophy we could not just as well start from the objective as from the subjective side, and accordingly set up as the fundamental truth the proposition: "There is in general nothing but matter and its indwelling forces." But, with regard to these "indwelling forces" here so easily used, we must remember that their assumption leads every explanation