We have considered the great multiplicity and diversity of the phenomena in which the will objectifies itself; indeed, we have seen their endless and implacable struggle with one another. Yet, in pursuit of the whole of our discussion so far, the will itself, as thing-in-itself, is by no means included in that plurality, that change. The diversity of the (Platonic) Ideas, i.e., gradations of objectification, the multitude of individuals in which each of them manifests itself, the struggle of the forms for matter—all this does not concern it, but is only the manner of its objectification, and only through such objectification has all this an indirect relation to the will, by virtue of which it belongs to the expression of the inner nature of the will for the representation. Just as a magic lantern shows many different pictures, but it is only one and the same flame that makes them all visible, so in all the many different phenomena which together fill the world or supplant one another as successive events, it is only the one will that appears, and everything is its visibility, its objectivity; it remains unmoved in the midst of this change. It alone is the thing-in-itself; every object is phenomenon, to speak Kant’s language, or appearance. Although in man, as (Platonic) Idea, the will finds its most distinct and perfect objectification, this alone could not express its true being. In order to appear in its proper significance, the Idea of man would need to manifest itself, not alone and torn apart, but accompanied by all the grades downwards through all the forms of animals, through the plant kingdom to the inorganic. They all supplement one another for the complete objectification of the will. They are as much presupposed by the Idea of man as the blossoms of the tree presuppose its leaves, branches, trunk, and root. They form a pyramid, of which the highest point is man. If we are fond of similes, we can also say that their appearance or phenomenon accompanies that of man as necessarily as the full light of day is accompanied by all the gradations of partial shadow through which it loses itself in darkness. Or we can also call them the echo of man, and say that animal and plant are the descending fifth and third of man, the inorganic kingdom being the lower octave. The full truth of this last simile will become clear to us only when, in the next book, we attempt to fathom the deep significance of music. There we shall see how the connected melody, progressing in high, light, and quick notes, is to be regarded in a certain sense as expressing the life and efforts of man, connected by reflection. The ripienos and the heavily moving bass, on the other hand, from which arises the harmony necessary for the perfection of the music, are a copy of the rest of animal nature and of nature-without-knowledge. But of this in its proper place, where it will no longer sound so paradoxical. But we also find that the inner necessity of the gradation of the will’s phenomena, inseparable from the adequate objectivity of the will, is expressed by an outer necessity in the whole of these phenomena themselves. By virtue of such necessity, man needs the animals for his support, the animals in their grades need one another, and also the plants, which again need soil, water, chemical elements and their combinations, the planet, the sun, rotation and motion round the sun, the obliquity of the ecliptic, and so on. At bottom, this springs from the fact that the will must live on itself, since nothing exists besides it, and it is a hungry will. Hence arise pursuit, hunting, anxiety, and suffering.
Knowledge of the unity of the will as thing-in-itself, amid the endless diversity and multiplicity of the phenomena, alone affords us the true explanation of that wonderful, unmistakable analogy of all nature’s productions, of that family likeness which enables us to regard them as variations on the same ungiven theme. In like measure, through the clearly and thoroughly comprehended knowledge of that harmony, of that essential connexion of all the parts of the world, of that necessity of their gradation that we have just been considering, there will be revealed to us a true and sufficient insight into the inner being and meaning of the undeniable suitability or appropriateness of all the organic productions of nature, which we even presupposed a priori when considering and investigating them.
This suitability is of a twofold nature; it is sometimes an inner one, that is to say, an agreement of all the parts of an individual organism so ordered that the maintenance of the individual and of its species results therefrom, and thus manifests itself as the purpose of that arrangement. But sometimes the suitability is an external one, namely a relation of inorganic to organic nature in general, or of the individual parts of organic nature to one another, which renders possible the maintenance of the whole of organic nature, or even of individual animal species, and thus presents itself to our judgement as the means to this end.
Inner suitability becomes connected with our discussion in the following way. If, according to what has so far been said, all variety of forms in nature and all plurality of individuals belong not to the will, but only to its objectivity and to the form thereof, it necessarily follows that the will is indivisible and is wholly present in every phenomenon, although the degrees of its objectification, the (Platonic) Ideas, are very different. For easier understanding, we may regard these different Ideas as individual, and in themselves simple, acts of will, in which its inner being expresses itself more or less. But the individuals again are phenomena of the Ideas, and hence of those acts, in time, space, and plurality. Now at the lowest grades of objectivity, such an act (or Idea) retains its unity even in the phenomenon; whereas, to appear at the higher grades, it requires a whole series of states and developments in time, all of which, taken together, first achieve the expression of its true being. Thus, for example, the Idea that reveals itself in some universal force of nature has always only a simple expression, although this presents itself differently according to the external relations; otherwise its identity could not be established at all, for this is done simply by abstracting the diversity that springs merely from the external relations. In the same way, the crystal has only one manifestation of life, namely its formation, which afterwards has its fully adequate and exhaustive expression in the coagulated form, in the corpse of that momentary life. The plant, however, does not express the Idea of which it is the phenomenon all at once and through a simple manifestation, but in a succession of developments of its organs in time. The animal develops its organism not only in the same way in a succession of forms often very different (metamorphosis), but this form itself, although objectivity of the will at this grade, does not reach the complete expression of its Idea. On the contrary, this is first completed through the animal’s actions, in which its empirical character, the same in the whole species, expresses itself and is first the complete revelation of the Idea, and this presupposes the definite organism as fundamental condition. In the case of man, the empirical character is peculiar to every individual (indeed, as we shall see in the fourth book, even to the complete elimination of the character of the species, namely through the self-elimination of the whole will). That which is known as the empirical character, through the necessary development in time and the division into separate actions conditioned by time, is, with the abstraction of this temporal form of the phenomenon, the intelligible character, according to Kant’s expression. In establishing this distinction and describing the relation between freedom and necessity, that is to say, between the will as thing-in-itself and its phenomenon, Kant brilliantly reveals his immortal merit.74 Thus the intelligible character coincides with the Idea, or more properly with the original act of will that reveals itself in the Idea. Therefore to this extent, not only the empirical character of every person, but also that of every animal species, nay, of every plant species, and even of every original force of inorganic nature, is to be regarded as phenomenon or manifestation of an intelligible character, in other words, of an indivisible act of will that is outside time. Incidentally, I should like here to draw attention to the naïvety with which every plant expresses and lays open its whole character through its mere form, and reveals its whole being and willing. That is why the various physiognomies of plants are so interesting. On the other hand, to know an animal according to its Idea, we must observe its action and behaviour, and to know man, we must fully investigate and test him, for his faculty of reason makes him capable of a high degree of dissimulation. The animal is just as much more naive than man as the plant is more naive than the animal. In the animal we see the will-to-live more naked, as it were, than in man, where it is clothed in so much knowledge, and, moreover, is so veiled by the capacity for dissimulation that its true nature only comes to light almost by chance and in isolated cases. In the plant it shows itself quite nakedly, but also much more feebly, as mere blind impulse to exist without end and aim. For the plant reveals its whole being at the first glance and with complete innocence. This does not suffer from the fact that it carries its genitals exposed to view on its upper surface, although with all animals these have been allotted to the most concealed place. This innocence on the part of the plant is due to its want of knowledge; guilt is to be found not in willing, but in willing with knowledge. Every plant tells us first of all about its native place, the climate found there, and the nature of the soil from which it has sprung. Therefore even the person with little experience easily knows whether an exotic plant belongs to the tropical or temperate zone, and whether it grows in water, in marshy country, on mountains or moorland. Moreover, every plant expresses the special will of its species, and says something that cannot be expressed in any other language. But now let us apply what has been said to the teleological consideration of the organisms, in so far as it concerns their inner suitability. In inorganic nature the Idea, to be regarded everywhere as a single act of will, also reveals itself only in a particular and always similar manifestation, and thus it can be said that the empirical character here directly partakes of the unity of the intelligible. It coincides with it, so to speak, so that no inner suitability can show itself. On the other hand, all organisms express their Idea through a succession of developments one after another, conditioned by a multiplicity of coexisting parts. Hence the sum of the manifestations of their empirical character is first the collective expression of the intelligible character. Now this necessary coexistence of the parts and succession of development do not eliminate the unity of the appearing Idea, of the self-manifesting act of will. On the contrary, this unity now finds its expression in the necessary relation and concatenation of those parts and developments with one another, according to the law of causality. Since it is the one indivisible will, which for this reason is wholly in agreement with itself, and reveals itself in the whole Idea as in an act, its phenomenon, though broken up into a variety of different parts and conditions, must yet again show that unity in a thorough harmony of these. This takes place through a necessary relation and dependence of all the parts on one another, whereby the unity of the Idea is also re-established in the phenomenon. Accordingly, we now recognize those different parts and functions of the organism reciprocally as means and end of one another, and the organism itself as the ultimate end of all. Consequently, neither the breaking up of the Idea, in itself simple, into the plurality of the parts and conditions of the organism, on the one hand, nor, on the other, the re-establishment of its unity through the necessary connexion of those parts and functions arising from the fact that they are cause and effect, and hence means and end, of one another, is peculiar and essential to the appearing will as such, to the thing-in-itself, but only to its phenomenon in space, time, and causality (mere modes of the principle of sufficient reason, the form of the phenomenon). They belong to the world as representation, not to the world as will; they belong to the way in which the will becomes object, i.e., representation at this grade of its objectivity. Whoever has penetrated into the meaning of this rather difficult discussion, will now properly understand Kant’s doctrine that both the suitability of the organic and the conformity to law of the inorganic are brought into nature first of all by our understanding; hence that both belong only to the phenomenon, not to the thing-in-itself. The above-mentioned admiration caused by the infallible constancy of the conformity to law in inorganic nature is essentially the same as that excited by the suitability in organic nature. For in both cases what surprises us is only the sight of the original unity of the Idea which for the phenomenon has assumed the form of plurality and diversity.75
Now, as regards the second kind of suitability, namely the external, to follow the division made above, this shows itself not in the inner economy of the organisms, but in the support and assistance they receive from outside, both from inorganic nature and from one another. This second kind finds its explanation in general in the discussion just given, since the whole world with all its phenomena is the objectivity of the one and indivisible will, the Idea, which is related to all the other Ideas as harmony is to the individual voices. Therefore that unity of the will must also show itself in the agreement of all its phenomena with one another. But we can raise this insight to very much greater clearness, if we go somewhat more closely into the phenomena of that outer suitability to and agreement with one another of the different parts of nature, a discussion that will at the same time throw light on the foregoing remarks. We shall best attain this end, however, by considering the following analogy.
The character of each individual man, in so far as it is thoroughly individual and not entirely included in that of the species, can be regarded as a special Idea, corresponding to a particular act of objectification of the will. This act itself would then be his intelligible character, and his empirical character would be its phenomenon. The empirical character is entirely determined by the intelligible that is groundless, that is to say, will as thing-in-itself, not subject to the principle of sufficient reason (the form of the phenomenon). The empirical character must in the course of a lifetime furnish a copy of the intelligible character, and cannot turn out differently from what is demanded by the latter’s inner nature. But this disposition extends only to what is essential, not to what is inessential, in the course of the life that accordingly appears. To this inessential belongs the detailed determination of the events and actions which are the material in which the empirical character shows itself. These are determined by external circumstances, furnishing the motives on which the character reacts according to its nature. As they can be very different, the outward form of the empirical character’s phenomenon, and so the definite actual or historical shape of the course of life, will have to adjust itself to their influence. Possibly this will turn out very differently, although the essential of this phenomenon, its content, remains the same. Thus, for example, it is not essential whether a man plays for nuts or for crowns; but whether in play a man cheats or goes about it honestly, this is what is essential. The latter is determined by the intelligible character, the former by external influence. As the same theme can be presented in a hundred variations, so the same character can be expressed in a hundred very different courses of life. But however varied the outer influence may be, the empirical character, expressing itself in the course of life, must yet, however it may turn out, accurately objectify the intelligible character, since it adapts its objectification to the previously found material of actual circumstances. We have now to assume something analogous to that influence of outer circumstances on the course of life that is determined essentially by the character, if we wish to conceive how the will, in the original act of its objectification, determines the different Ideas in which it objectifies itself, in other words, the different forms of natural existence of every kind. It distributes its objectification among these forms, and these, therefore, must necessarily have in the phenomenon a relation to one another. We must assume that, between all these phenomena of the one will, there took place a universal and reciprocal adaptation and accommodation to one another. But here, as we shall soon see more clearly, all time-determination is to be left out, for the Idea lies outside time. Accordingly, every phenomenon has had to adapt itself to the environment into which it entered, but again the environment also has had to adapt itself to the phenomenon, although it occupies a much later position in time; and this consensus naturae we see everywhere. Therefore, every plant is well adapted to its soil and climate, every animal to its element and to the prey that is to become its food, that prey also being protected to a certain extent against its natural hunter. The eye is well adapted to light and its refrangibility, the lungs and the blood to air, the air-bladder of fishes to water, the eye of the seal to the change of its medium, the water-containing cells in the camel’s stomach to the drought of the African desert, the sail of the nautilus to the wind that is to drive its tiny ship, and so on down to the most special and astonishing outward instances of suitability.76 But we must abstract here from all time-relations, as these can concern only the phenomenon of the Idea, not the Idea itself. Accordingly, this kind of explanation is also to be used retrospectively, and it is not merely to be assumed that every species adapted itself to the circumstances previously found, but that these circumstances themselves, which preceded it in time, had just as much regard for the beings that at some future time were to arrive. For it is indeed one and the same will that objectifies itself in the whole world; it knows no time, for that form of the principle of sufficient reason does not belong to it, or to its original objectivity, namely the Ideas, but only to the way in which these are known by the individuals who are themselves transitory, in other words, to the phenomenon of the Ideas. Therefore as concerns our present discussion, time-sequence is entirely without significance for the way in which the objectification of the will is distributed among the Ideas. The Ideas, the phenomena of which entered the time-sequence earlier according to the law of causality to which they as such are subject, have thus no advantage over those whose phenomenon enters later. On the contrary, these last are precisely the most perfect objectifications of the will, to which the earlier phenomena had to adapt themselves, just as much as they had to adapt themselves to the earlier. Thus the course of the planets, the obliquity of the ecliptic, the rotation of the earth, the separation of dry land and sea, the atmosphere, light, heat, and all similar phenomena that are in nature what the ground bass is in harmony, accommodated themselves full of presentiment of the coming species of living beings, of which they were to become the supporter and sustainer. In the same way, the soil adapted itself to the nutrition of plants, plants to the nutrition of animals, animals to the nutrition of other animals, just as, conversely, all these again adapted themselves to the soil. All the parts of nature accommodate themselves to one another, since it is one will that appears in them all, but the time-sequence is quite foreign to its original and only adequate objectivity, namely the Ideas (the following book explains this expression). Even now, when the species have only to maintain themselves and no longer to come into existence, we see here and there such a foresight of nature, extending to the future and, so to speak, really abstracting from the time-sequence, a self-adaptation of what exists according to what is yet to come. Thus the bird builds the nest for the young it does not yet know; the beaver erects a dam, whose purpose is unknown to it; the ant, the marmot, and the bee collect stores for the winter that is unknown to them; the spider and the ant-lion build, as if with deliberate cunning, snares for the future prey unknown to them; insects lay their eggs where the future brood will find future nourishment. In the flowering season the female flower of the dioecian Vallisneria unwinds the spirals of its stem, by which it was hitherto held at the bottom of the water, and by that means rises to the surface. Just then the male flower, growing on a short stem at the bottom of the water, breaks away therefrom, and so, at the sacrifice of its life, reaches the surface, where it swims about in search of the female flower. The female, after fertilization, then withdraws to the bottom again by contracting its spirals, and there the fruit is developed.77 Here I must refer once more to the larva of the male stag-beetle which gnaws the hole in the wood for its metamorphosis twice as large as does the female, in order to obtain room for its future horns. Therefore the instinct of animals generally gives us the best explanation for the remaining teleology of nature. For just as an instinct is an action, resembling one according to a concept of purpose, yet entirely without such concept, so are all formation and growth in nature like that which is according to a concept of purpose, and yet entirely without this. In outer as well as in inner teleology of nature, what we must think of as means and end is everywhere only the phenomenon of the unity of the one will so far in agreement with itself, which has broken up into space and time for our mode of cognition.
However, the reciprocal adaptation and adjustment of the phenomena springing from this unity cannot eradicate the inner antagonism described above, which appears in the universal conflict of nature, and is essential to the will. That harmony goes only so far as to render possible the continuance of the world and its beings, which without it would long since have perished. Therefore it extends only to the continuance of the species and of the general conditions of life, but not to that of individuals. Accordingly, as, by reason of that harmony and accommodation, the species in the organic, and the universal natural forces in the inorganic, continue to exist side by side and even mutually to support one another, so, on the other hand, the inner antagonism of the will, objectified through all those Ideas, shows itself in the never-ending war of extermination of the individuals of those species, and in the constant struggle of the phenomena of those natural forces with one another, as was stated above. The scene of action and the object of this conflict is matter that they strive to wrest from one another, as well as space and time, the union of which through the form of causality is really matter, as was explained in the first book.78