Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/92

76 sinks in the flood, is a common life of all, by means of which in exceptional cases they can even communicate, as, for example, occurs when dreams communicate themselves directly, the thoughts of the mesmeriser pass into the somnambulist, and finally also in the magnetic or generally magical influence proceeding from intentional willing. Such an influence, if it occurs, is toto genere different from every other on account of the influxus physicus which takes place, for it is really an actio in distans which the will, certainly proceeding from the individual, yet performs in its metaphysical quality as the omnipresent substratum of the whole of nature. One might also say that as in the generatio æquivoca there sometimes and as an exception appears a weak residue of the original creative power of the will, which in the existing forms of nature has already done its work and is extinguished, so there may be, exceptionally, acting in these magical influences, as it were, a surplus of its original omnipotence, which completes its work and spends itself in the construction and maintenance of the organisms. I have spoken fully of this magical property of the will in "The Will in Nature," and I gladly omit here discussions which have to appeal to uncertain facts, which yet cannot be altogether ignored or denied.