THE WILL IN NATURE.
Finally I will not omit to observe, that even so early an authority as Plato 1 had attributed desires, Επιδυμιας, i.e. will, to plants. In my chief work, 2 however, I have entered into the doctrines of the Ancients on this point, and the chapter there which treats of this subject may on the whole serve to complete the present one.
The reluctance and reserve with which we see the authors here quoted make up their minds to acknowledge the will, which nevertheless undoubtedly manifests itself in plants, comes from their being still hampered by the old opinion, that consciousness is a requisite and condition of the will: now it is evident that plants have no consciousness. The thought never entered into the heads of these naturalists, that the will might be the prius [earlier] and therefore independent of the intellect, with which, as the posterius [later], consciousness first makes its appearance. As for knowledge or representation, plants have something merely analogous to it, a mere substitute for it; whereas they really have the will itself quite directly: for, as the thing–in–itself, it is the substratum of their phenomenal being as well as of every other. Taking a realistic view, starting accordingly from the objective, the matter might even be stated as follows: That which lives and moves in plant-nature and in the animal organism,
1 Plato, Timaeus, p. 403. Biponti edition
2 The World as Will and Representation, vol. ii. chap. 23.
PHYSIOLOGY
