brought about by further reflection. But it would be the grossest misunderstanding to suppose that this is a mere question of a word to denote an unknown quantity. It is rather the most real of all real knowledge which is here expressed in language. For it is the tracing back of that which is quite inaccessible to our immediate knowledge, and therefore in its essence foreign and unknown to us, which we denote by the words force of nature, to that which is known to us most accurately and intimately, but which is yet only accessible to us in our own being and directly, and must therefore be carried over from this to other phenomena. It is the insight that what is inward and original in all the changes and movements of bodies, however various they may be, is in its nature identical; that yet we have only one opportunity of getting to know it more closely and directly, and that is in the movements of our own body. In consequence of this knowledge we must call it will. It is the insight that that which acts and strives in nature, and exhibits itself in ever more perfect phenomena, when it has worked itself up so far that the light of knowledge falls directly upon it, i.e., when it has attained to the state of self-consciousness – exists as that will, which is what is most intimately known to us, and therefore cannot be further explained by anything else, but rather affords the explanation of all other things. It is accordingly the thing in itself so far as this can ever be reached by knowledge. Consequently it is that which must express itself in some way in everything in the world, for it is the inner nature of the world and the kernel of all phenomena.
As my essay, "Ueber den Willen in der Natur," specially refers to the subject of this chapter, and also adduces the evidence of unprejudiced empiricists in favour of this important point of my doctrine, I have only to add now to what is said there a few supplementary remarks, which are therefore strung together in a somewhat fragmentary manner.
