THE OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL. 137
to know more accurately this real nature of the will, in order that we may be able to distinguish from it what does not belong to itself, but to its manifestation, which has many grades. Such, for example, is the circumstance of its being accompanied by knowledge, and the determination by motives which is conditioned by this knowledge. As we shall see farther on, this does not belong to the real nature of will, but merely to its distinct manifestation as an animal or a human being. If, therefore I say, — the force which attracts a stone to the earth is according to its nature, in itself, and apart from all idea, will, I shall not be supposed to express in this proposition the insane opinion that the stone moves itself in accordance with a known motive, merely because this is the way in which will appears in man.[1] We shall now proceed more clearly and in detail to prove, establish, and develop to its full extent what as yet has only been provisionally and generally explained.[2]
§ 20. As we have said, the will proclaims itself primarily in the voluntary movements of our own body, as the inmost nature of this body, as that which it is besides being object of perception, idea. For these voluntary movements are nothing else than the visible aspect of the individual acts of will, with which they are directly coincident and identical, and only distinguished through the form of knowledge into which they have passed, and in which alone they can be known, the form of idea.
But these acts of will have always a ground or reason I outside themselves in motives. Yet these motives never determine more than what I will at this time, in this
- ↑ We can thus by no means agree with Bacon if he (De Augm. Scient., L. iv. in fine.) thinks that all mechanical and physical movement of bodies has always been preceded by perception in these bodies; though a glimmering of truth lies at the bottom of this false proposition. This is also the case with Kepler's opinion, expressed in his essay De Planeta Martis, that the planets must have knowledge in order to keep their elliptical courses so correctly, and to regulate the velocity of their motion so that the triangle of the plane of their course always remains proportional to the time in which they pass through its base.
- ↑ Cf. Ch. xix. of the Supplement.
