Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/99

Rh animal beings do the two directly unite, for here the final cause, the end, appears as the motive; a motive, however, is always the true and proper cause of the action, is wholly and solely its efficient cause, the change preceding it which calls it forth, by virtue of which it necessarily appears, and without which it could not happen; as I have shown in my prize essay upon freedom. For whatever of a physiological nature one might wish to insert between the act of will and the corporeal movement, the will always remains here confessedly that which moves, and what moves it is the motive coming from without, thus the causa finalis; which consequently appears here as causa efficiens. Besides, we know from what has gone before that the bodily movement is one with the act of will, for it is merely its phenomenal appearance in cerebral perception. This union of the causa finalis with the efficient cause in the one phenomenon intimately known to us, which accordingly remains throughout our typical phenomenon, is certainly to be firmly retained; for it leads precisely to the conclusion that at least in organised nature, the knowledge of which has throughout final causes for its clue, a will is the forming power. In fact, we cannot otherwise distinctly think a final cause except as an end in view, i.e., a motive. Indeed, if we carefully consider the final causes in nature in order to express their transcendent nature, we must not shrink from a contradiction, and boldly say: the final cause is a motive which acts upon a being, by which it is not known. For certainly the termite nests are the motive which has produced the toothless muzzle of the ant-bear, and also its long extensile, glutinous tongue: the hard egg-shell which holds the chicken imprisoned is certainly the motive for the horny point with which its beak is provided in order to break through that shell, after which it throws it off as of no further use. And in the same way the laws of the reflection and refraction of light are the motive for the wonderfully ingenious and complex optical instrument, the human eye, which has the transparency