CHAPTER XXIII.[1]
ON THE OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL IN UNCONSCIOUS NATURE.
That the will which we find within us does not proceed, as philosophy has hitherto assumed, first from knowledge, and indeed is a mere modification of it, thus something secondary, derived, and, like knowledge itself, conditioned by the brain; but that it is the prius of knowledge, the kernel of our nature, and that original force itself which forms and sustains the animal body, in that it carries out both its unconscious and its conscious functions; – this is the first step in the fundamental knowledge of my metaphysics. Paradoxical as it even now seems to many that the will in itself is without knowledge, yet the scholastics in some way already recognised and confessed it; for Jul. Cæs. Vaninus (that well-known sacrifice to fanaticism and priestly fury), who was thoroughly versed in their philosophy, says in his "Amphitheatro," p. 181: "Voluntas potentia cæca est, ex scholasticorum opinione." That, further, it is that same will which in the plant forms the bud in order to develop the leaf and the flower out of it; nay, that the regular form of the crystal is only the trace which its momentary effort has left behind, and that in general, as the true and only (
Greek characters), in the proper sense of the word, it lies at the foundation of all the forces of unorganised nature, plays, acts, in all their multifarious phenomena, imparts power to their laws, and even in the crudest mass manifests itself as gravity; – this insight is the second step in that fundamental knowledge, and is
1 This chapter is connected with § 23 of the first volume.
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