Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/94

78 regular and conforming to law, such, for example, as every crystal is, under the guidance of the law and the rule; and in the same way, we can only bring about something designed under the guidance of the conception of the end; but we are by no means justified in imputing this limitation of ours to nature, which is itself prior to all intellect, and whose action is entirely different in kind from ours, as was said in the preceding chapter. It accomplishes that which appears so designed and planned without reflection and without conception of an end, because without idea, which is of quite secondary origin. Let us first consider what is merely according to rule, not yet adapted to ends. The six equal radii of a snowflake, separating at equal angles, are measured beforehand by no knowledge; but it is the simple tendency of the original will, which so exhibits itself to knowledge when knowledge appears. As now here the will brings about the regular figure with out mathematics, so also without physiology does it bring about the form which is organised and furnished with organs evidently adapted to special ends. The regular form in space only exists for the perception, the perceptive form of which is space; so the design of the organism only exists for the knowing reason, the reflection of which is bound to the conceptions of end and means. If direct insight into the working of nature was possible for us, we would necessarily recognise that the wonder excited by teleology referred to above is analogous to that which that savage referred to by Kant in his explanation of the ludicrous felt when he saw the froth irresistibly foaming out of a bottle of beer which had just been opened, and expressed his wonder not that it should come out, but that any one had ever been able to get it in; for we also assume that the teleology of natural productions has been put in the same as it comes out for us. Therefore our astonishment at design may likewise be compared to that which the first productions of the art of printing excited in those who considered them under the supposition that