Chapter 27 Book II The World as a Preliminary Treatise on the Will §27

If we now, from all these considerations of natural forces and their phenomena, see how far an explanation from causes can go, and where it must stop—if this explanation is not to degenerate into that stupid Attempting to reduce the content of all phenomena to some naked forms of phenomena, so that in the end there is nothing but the forms——then, we can roughly define what is required to be causal.The task of etiology is to find out the causes of all phenomena in nature, that is, to find out the situations in which these phenomena occur at all times, and then to reduce the phenomena that have been complicated in many cases to the conditions in which they occur. That which is at work in all appearances, and which has been assumed in indicating the cause, is reduced to the original forces in nature, and at the same time it is right to distinguish whether the differences of appearances are due to differences in the forces, or to the circumstances in which the forces appear. different from each other, and it is necessary to prevent the phenomenon of the same kind of force but manifested in different situations from being regarded as a phenomenon of different kinds of force, and it is also necessary not to conversely treat a phenomenon that originally belongs to a different kind of force as a kind of force. [Different] performance of .This immediately requires judgment; this is why in physics only such a few people can extend [our] insights, but anyone can extend experience.The predisposition of laziness and ignorance in physics to a premature invocation of primordial forces is expressed in exaggeration, almost ironic, in the very existence and nature of the scholastics.The last thing I want is to promote a reinvention of these things. Instead of proposing a physical explanation, people resort to the objectification of the will or the creativity of God, which is not allowed.It turns out that what physics requires is a cause, but will is by no means a cause.The relation of will to appearance does not follow the law of sufficient reason at all, but is [originally] what is will in itself, and on the other hand it exists as representation, that is, appearance.As a phenomenon, it obeys the laws of the forms which constitute it; for example, every movement, although it is each time the manifestation of will, must still have a cause; Not in general, not in its inner nature, but as individual phenomena, and this movement is explained by this cause.This reason is a mechanical reason in stone, and a motive in human action, but this reason must never be absent.On the other hand, that which is in general, the essence which is common to all phenomena of a certain kind, that is to say, without which the explanation from causes would be meaningless and meaningless,—this is the universal force of nature.This natural force cannot but remain a hidden property in physics, precisely because this is where the etiological explanation ends and the metaphysical explanation [therefore] begins.The chain of cause and the chain of effect are never broken by the original force to which one appeals, nor do they return to it, nor do they return to it as the first link [of the chain] ; but that [all the links,] of the chain, the nearest as well as the furthest, presuppose the original Force, otherwise nothing can be explained.The series of many causes and many effects can be the phenomenon of very different "forces" which successively become visible under the guidance of the series of causes and effects, as I have shown before in the example of the metal machine.But these primordial forces, which cannot be induced from each other, though different, do not in the least break the unity of the chain of causes, the connection between all the links in this chain. The etiology of "nature" and the philosophy of "nature" never harm each other, but examine the same object from different perspectives, parallel and not contradictory.Etiology demonstrates the causes which necessarily lead to individual phenomena to be explained, points out the universal forces at work in all these causes and effects as the basis for all explanations of etiology, and precisely determines these forces and determines them. the number, difference; and then determine all the actions of each force in each case, as they occur in each case.Every force appears according to its own character, and this character is exhibited according to a rule that [never] does not make mistakes, and this rule is called the law of nature.Physics has accomplished all these [tasks] at every point, and has reached its consummation, so that in inorganic nature there will be no unknown force, no action which has not yet been discovered. The proof is that a certain force among those forces appears under certain circumstances in accordance with a natural law.However, the laws of nature are still only the rules recorded from observing the natural world. As long as certain situations arise, nature will follow this rule every time. Therefore, people can define the law of nature as follows: a law of nature is a generally manifested fact. , is "a generalized and summarized fact." Accordingly, a complete list of all natural laws is nothing more than a complete journal of facts. ——Then, the investigation of the whole nature is to be completed by morphology, which refers to all the invariable forms in the organic nature, and compares and sorts them out.Morphology has little to say about the cause of the appearance of individual organisms, since in any organism the cause is procreation, and the theory of procreation is another matter, which in rare cases is ambiguous. double way.Strictly speaking, the manner in which the lower levels of the objectivity of the will, i.e., the physical and chemical phenomena, appear separately also belongs to morphology, and it is the task of etiology to point out the conditions of this appearance.Philosophy, on the other hand, considers everywhere, and therefore also in nature, only the universal; here the primordial force itself is the object of philosophy.Philosophy recognizes these primordial forces as degrees of objectification of the will, which is the inner essence of the world, the world in itself; as for the world, philosophy, apart from the essence, interprets it as the subject's 201 Simple appearance. —But now if etiology does not do something to open the way for philosophy, using examples to provide [possibility] for the application of philosophical doctrines, but thinks that its own goal is to negate all original "forces" until only One remains, the most general one, such as impenetrability, to which it thinks it can fully understand, and so savagely reduces all other forces to this one; If it is at the foot of its own wall, what it proposes can only be fallacies instead of truth.In this way, the content of nature is squeezed out by the form, everything is pushed to the situation that works from the outside, and nothing comes from the inner essence of things.If it really succeeds in this way, then, as already said, the last formula will solve the mystery of the universe.But if, as already said, one reduces physiological actions to forms and combinations [actions], say, to electricity, which again reduces to chemical actions, which in turn reduce to mechanical actions, then one is on the way. Following this path.Such was the error of Descartes and all atomists.They have reduced the movement of the heavenly bodies to the impetus of a fluid body, and the properties of matter to the relations and forms of atoms: the direction of their endeavor is to explain all the phenomena of nature as mere manifestations of impenetrability and cohesion. .Although they have generally recanted from these claims, they are still being followed in our day by those electrical, chemical, and mechanical physiologists who are still obstinately trying to start from the "form and composition" of the constituent parts of organisms. Use" to describe the whole life and all the functions of the organism.This statement is also found on page 185 of the fifth volume of 1820 in the "Compendium of Physiological Materials" edited by Michael. It is believed that the explanation of physiology is aimed at reducing organic life to those general [natural] forces considered by physics. .Lamarck, in the third chapter of the second volume of his "Philosophy of Animals", also declares that life is only the action of heat and electricity; Animal Philosophy p. 16).According to this, heat and electricity have to be counted as things-in-itself, and the animal kingdom and vegetable kingdom are the phenomena or manifestations of this thing-in-itself.The absurdity of this statement is laid bare on page 306 of the book.As you all know, in recent times all those so-called disproved claims have returned to the market with arrogance.All these statements, if one looks carefully, are ultimately based on the assumption that an organism is nothing but a collection of phenomena of physical, chemical, mechanical forces which happen to come together here. Together they make the organism successful; [but] making it successful is only a game of nature, and nothing more.From a philosophical point of view, according to this statement, the animal or human organism is not the expression of a special idea, that is, the organism itself is not directly the objectivity of the will on a higher level, but rather What appears in the organism is only those ideas which objectify the will electrically, chemically, and mechanically; and the organism is blown together by chance by the confluence of these forces, as if the human and animal bodies were only Made of improvised clouds or stalactites, there is nothing more interesting in the organism itself.However, we will also see to what extent it is permissible and useful to apply the explanation method of physicochemistry to organisms, because I will explain that the life force is certainly used and uses some of the inorganic nature. "Forces" are not made of these "forces", any more than a blacksmith is made of hammer and anvil.Therefore, even the simplest plant life can never be explained by capillary action and osmosis, let alone animal life.Discussing this point is rather difficult, and the following examination can pave the way for us.

From all that has been said, it is of course an error of natural science to reduce the higher order of the objectivity of the will to a lower order, since the error of misrecognizing and denying the primordial and independent forces of nature, It is tantamount to assuming some special force without any basis, but it is not an original force, but just another special manifestation of the known force.Therefore, Kant was quite right when he said: The wrong thing is to hope for a Newton for a grass stalk, that is, to hope that there is such a person who reduces the grass stalk to the phenomenon of physical and chemical forces. The stem is a fortuitous collection of these forces, and is therefore only a game of nature; there is no manifestation of a particular idea in it, that is, the will is not directly exhibited on a higher and particular level, but just with it. As in the phenomena of inorganic nature, chance appears in this form.The scholastics, who would not tolerate this at all, will be quite right when they say that the essential form is totally negated and reduced to an accidental form.It turns out that the form of Aristotle's essence refers to the degree to which I have called the objectification of the will in all things. —So don't overlook the other side, too, that in all ideas, that is, in all forces of inorganic nature, in all forms of organic nature, it is only the same will that manifests itself there and reveals itself. That is to enter into the form of representation, into objectivity.The unity of the will, therefore, must also be seen from an inner kinship between all its phenomena.This kinship is in the higher order of the objectivity of the will, where the whole phenomenon is also clearer, that is, in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, by the resemblance that permeates all forms in general, by the recurrence in all phenomena. The base type reveals itself.This basic type has thus become the preeminent guiding principle of the zoological system pioneered by the French in this century, and in comparative anatomy as "unity of design", as "unity of anatomical factors". Sex" has obtained the most complete proof.The discovery of this archetype was also the chief task, and certainly at least their most praiseworthy endeavor, of the natural philosophers of Schelling's school; They also have some credit.But where they did right, they showed that also in the idea of ​​inorganic nature there are general kinships and similarities between species; —, [there is such a relationship] between chemical attraction and gravity, and so on.They also emphasized [opposite and complementary] "polarity," the splitting of a force into [two] activities of different nature, opposite in direction, and tending toward reunification—a split most often manifested in space. Running counter to the opposite direction——is almost a basic type of all natural phenomena, from magnets and crystals to people.However, since ancient times, this kind of view has been popular in the Chinese theory of the opposition of yin and yang. —Just because everything in the world is the objectivity of the same will, and thus [is] the same in its inner essence; so it is necessary not only that there be a non-negligible resemblance between things, Traces, traces, rough embryos of higher and more complete things already appear in imperfect things, and since all those forms belong only to the world as representation, it may even be admitted that even in the most general form of representation In this basic framework—space and time—that is characteristic of the phenomenal world, there is already to be found this basic type, this sign, [this] rough embryo, that designates everything that populates these forms.Regarding this point, there seems to have been a vague understanding in the past, and this understanding constitutes the origin of the Jewish Gabala Esotericism, all the mathematical philosophy of the Pythagorean School, and Chinese writings.Also in the Schelling school, we also see that they are trying to reveal the similarity between all natural phenomena in many ways, and at the same time there are some attempts to extend the laws of nature from the simple laws of space and time.These were, of course, unfortunate attempts.But it is impossible to know how far a gifted mind can carry out these two endeavors at one time.

Although the distinction between appearance and thing-in-itself must never be ignored, and therefore the identity of the will objectified in all Ideas (for the objectivity of will has its definite degree) must not be perverted into the appearance of will in An identity of the individual Ideas themselves in them, such as chemical or electric attraction, can never be reduced to attraction due to gravitation, although their inner similarity has been recognized and the former can be regarded as equal to the latter. The existence of degrees; likewise, the inherent similarity in the constitution of the bodies of all animals in no way serves as a reason for confusing species for identity, nor for a more complete [species] to be interpreted as a less complete [species] Finally, although physiological functions are by no means reducible to chemical and physical processes, it may nevertheless be justified, within certain limits, by admitting that the following facts have a great deal of probability.

If, at the lower level of the objectification of the will, that is, in the inorganic body, several of the phenomena of the will fall into conflict with each other, each contends on the thread of causality to occupy the present at hand. substance.From this conflict, then, arises [among them] the phenomenon of a higher Idea, which subdues all the earlier less complete phenomena, and which, having subdued them, still allows their essence to exist in a higher order. The lower states continue to exist, when the overcoming phenomena absorb from them something like them.This process can only be understood in terms of the same will manifested in all Ideas and its constant impulse towards higher objectification.In the hardening of the bones, for example, we find an unmistakable analogue of crystallization, since this ossification dominates the calcareous matter, but the ossification can never be reduced to crystallization.In the hardening of muscles the analogy is even weaker.In the same way the mixing and secretion of the various juices in the animal body is analogous to chemical compounding and fractionation, and the laws of chemistry continue to operate, but in a secondary order, greatly limited, by a higher Conquered by ideas.Therefore the mere forces of chemistry, if not in an organism, would never produce such bodily juices; but [something]

I don't know chemistry, what's the benefit of ridicule? "Essence of nature", I think the definition. The more perfect Idea which emerges from the triumph over some lower Idea or from the lower objectification of the will, is precisely because it absorbs in itself a higher analogue from each subdued Idea. Gained a brand new feature.The will objectifies itself in a new and clearer way.Originally by ambiguous double means, later by assimilation to ready-made seeds, organic sap, plant, animal, man.So the higher phenomenon arises out of the conflict of lower phenomena, which devours them all and yet realizes in a higher degree the upward impulse of them all.So here is already dominated by the law of "snakes don't eat snakes, they can't become dragons".

I thought that the clarity of [my] exposition would enable me to overcome the obscurity attached to these thoughts in [their] subject matter, but I have seen clearly that if I do not want to remain incomprehensible or misunderstood, then, The readers' own research will have to help me a lot. — From what has been advanced, it is possible to point out in organisms the signs of various physical and chemical actions, but these signs should never be used to explain organisms; for organisms are not in any way produced by the united action of these forces Phenomena, and therefore not accidental phenomena, but a higher Idea which descends with overwhelming assimilation to those lower Ideas; [and this is] because the That will in the Idea, in its striving towards the highest possible objectification, here relinquishes, after a conflict, its lower phenomena, in order to appear more powerfully on a higher level.There is no victory that does not come through conflict. .The higher Ideas, or the higher objectification of the will, which can only arise by condescending the lower Ideas, encounter resistance from these lower Ideas.Relegated to driveable status, these ideas always struggle to gain independent and complete expression of their free essence.A magnet which attracts a piece of iron is in constant struggle with gravity, [for] gravity, as the lowest objectification of the will, has a more primordial right to the matter of iron.In this constant struggle, the magnet also strengthens itself, as resistance seems to stimulate it to greater effort.Like the magnet, every phenomenon of will, including that manifested in the human organism, is in constant struggle against a multitude of physical and chemical forces; Matter also has antecedent rights.So the human arm, after holding it up for a while by overcoming gravity, still falls.So healthy comfort [although] represents a triumph of the idea of ​​the organism self-conscious of this comfort over the physical and chemical laws that originally governed the bodily fluids.However, this sense of comfort is often interrupted, and often accompanied by a greater or lesser sense of discomfort due to the resistance of those physical and chemical forces, so that the part of our life that operates ignorantly has already It is often associated with a mild pain.Digestion, therefore, also depresses all animal functions, because digestion takes all the vital energy in order to overcome the chemical forces of nature by assimilation.It is therefore fundamentally due to these forces of nature that there is the burden of physical life, the necessity of sleep, and finally the inevitability of death.In death those subdued forces of nature, facilitated by favorable circumstances, are able to wrest back from the weary organism [the hands] of their plundered matter and their essence can again express itself unhindered.It may therefore also be said that each organism expresses an idea, of which the organism is a copy, only after depriving it of that part of its power which is used to subdue the lower ideas which compete with it for matter.Jaeger Pym seems to have seen this vaguely. He said in one place that all the bodies of human beings and animals, and even plants, are really half-dead.Then, as the organism subjugates those natural forces which express the lower levels of the objectivity of the will, according to their success, the organism becomes a more or less complete expression of its idea, that is to say, Nearer or farther from the ideal ideal; and in the organic species beauty belongs to this type.

Thus everywhere in nature we see strife, strife, and the inconsistency of victory and defeat; .Each level of objectification of the will competes with the other for matter, space, and time.Perpetual matter must constantly change [its own] form, and in changing forms, mechanical, physical, chemical, organic phenomena greedily rush to appear under the thread of causality, robbing each other of matter, because each Every phenomenon must reveal its idea.This scramble is traced throughout nature, and yes, nature is nature only because of this scramble: "For if conflict and strife were not in things, all would be One, like Empidus. Kles said." (Aristotle: B.5) It turns out that the conflict itself is only the appearance of a division of the ego which is of essential importance to the will.This general struggle reaches its most marked degree in the animal kingdom, which depends on plants for its nourishment.In the animal kingdom itself, each animal is the captive and food of the other animal, that is to say, each animal has to give up the matter in which it expresses its ideas, so that the other idea can be used as the basis for its expression. Useful, since each animal can only maintain its own existence by continually canceling the existence of the other.Thus the will to live has always been eating itself, feeding itself in different forms, all the way down to man, who has subdued all other species and regards nature as a product for his use.Yet it is in the human species, as we shall see in Book IV, that man exposes that struggle, that self-division of the will, to the most horribly obvious degree, and "man becomes wolf to man". "Are.At the same time we see this same struggle, the same [one thing] over [one thing], at the lower level of the objectivity of the will.Many insects (especially Hymenoptera) lay their eggs on the skin or even inside the pupae of other insects, and the slow destruction of these pupae is the first thing the newly hatched larva does. Work.The branch-growing larvae grow out of the adults, like branches on a tree, and then separate from the adults; when the larvae are still growing firmly on the adults, they are already competing with the adults for the food they have brought up, and unexpectedly It can be said to snatch these things from each other's mouths (Chun Bailie [Trembley]: "Century" II, p. 110, IV, p. 165).The bulldog ant in Australia provides the most striking example of this kind of struggle: when it is cut off, a battle begins between the head and the tail, the head bites the tail with the upper and lower jaws, and the tail stabs the head and kills it. [initiate] brave self-defense.The fight often lasts for as long as half an hour, until both sides die or are dragged away by other ants. [Each trial,] the same process takes place each time (Quoted from a letter by Holwitt in the English w. Magazine, reproduced in Gallagherney's Post, Nov. 1855 17).From time to time, on both sides of the Missouri River, people saw towering rafter trees being entangled by huge wild vines, binding and binding the big tree, so that the tree had to suffocate and wither.The same is seen even at the lowest orders, as water and carbon are transformed into vegetable sap, and vegetable or bread into blood, by organic assimilation; Where lower operations are in progress and animal secretions are in progress, such changes occur everywhere.Secondly, it is also the case in inorganic nature, when, for example, the forming crystals encounter each other, intersect and interfere with each other, so that their complete crystalline form cannot be expressed, so that almost any crystal cluster will be at the level of its objectification. Conflicting copies.Either the magnetism manifests its idea in the iron, when it imposes its magnetism on the iron, or the chemical electric discharge overcomes the various chemical affinities, and breaks down the firm compounds and so severely inhibits the chemical affinities. Law, so that the acid of a salt that is decomposed at the cathode has to go to the anode, but it cannot be combined with the alkali that it must pass through halfway.In the macroscopic [cosmos], the same situation is manifested in the relationship between the stars and the planets.Planetary stars are categorically attached [to the star], but they are still resisting [the star] like some chemical forces in the organism, thus creating an eternal tension between centripetal force and centrifugal force.This tension [not only] keeps the cosmic bodies in motion, but is itself an expression of the general, essential struggle of the phenomena of will that we are examining.Since any object must be seen as a phenomenon of will, and will must be expressed as an upward impulse; then, the original natural state of any spherical celestial body cannot be static, but dynamic. , but endlessly, aimlessly, striding forward in infinite space.This is neither against the law of inertia nor against the law of causality.Because according to the law of inertia, matter as matter has no preference for motion and stillness, so the natural state of matter can be either motion or static.Therefore, if we find it in motion, we have no right to assume that it has previously experienced a state of rest, and to inquire into the cause of the motion; It is the same when the state of motion is over, and there is no right to inquire about the reason why the motion stops.It is therefore nowhere to be found the original impetus for the centrifugal force, since the centrifugal force in the planet, according to the hypothesis of Kant and Laplace, is a remnant of the original rotational motion of the star, and because the planet Separated from the star when shrinking.But motion is an essential [thing] for the star, which is still constantly spinning, and at the same time flies through infinite space, or revolves around a larger star, which we cannot see.This view is completely consistent with the theory of the central star conjectured by astronomers, and it is also consistent with the discovered fact that our entire solar system is moving; perhaps the entire group of stars to which our sun belongs is moving, and finally it can be deduced to all stars. Universal movement including the central star, and this movement in infinite space has of course lost any meaning [because movement in absolute space cannot be distinguished from rest].This forward movement in infinite space, just because of the loss of meaning, directly due to aimless striving and flight, appears to us at the end of the book as [total] of the striving of the will in all its phenomena. That nihility, that lack of ultimate purpose.Therefore, infinite space and endless time must be the most general and basic form of all phenomena of will, and the whole essence of will exists in order to appear as phenomena. —Finally, even in mere matter, seen as matter, we can already see that the inclusion [here] of Examined, all phenomena of will struggle against each other.So matter already exists only in the struggle of opposing forces.If we abstract away all chemical differences of matter, or imagine in the causal chain all the way back to when no chemical differences existed, then we are left with pure matter, leaving the world as a projectile, and The life of the pellet, the objectification of the will, is constituted by that struggle between the attraction and the repulsion; Either solidity or elasticity resists the former.This eternal thrusting and resisting action can be regarded as the objectivity of will on the lowest level, and at this level it already expresses the characteristics of will.

So here we are, on this lowest level, as if we see the will presenting itself as a blind impulse, as a dim, obstinate restlessness, remote from all possibility of immediate knowledge.This is the simplest and weakest kind of objectification of the will. But also in the whole of inorganic nature, in all the primitive "forces," will appears as this blind impulse and ignorant struggle; the business of physical chemistry is to find out, these primitive "forces" and to know the laws governing them. .Each of these primordial "forces" manifests itself before us in a million identical, lawful phenomena, without revealing a trace of individual character, but only by time and space, That is to say, it is reproduced by the principle of individuation, just like a picture is reproduced by many facets of a prism.

The objectification of the will is more and more obvious, but in the vegetable kingdom, although the bond that connects the phenomena of will is no longer the cause but the stimulus, the will is still an operation of complete ignorance, an impulse of ignorance; The part of the natural operation in any animal, in the reproduction and growth of any animal, in the maintenance of the internal nutrition of the animal, is still only a phenomenon that inevitably determines the will, and the will is still blind.The level of objectivity of the will rises, until at last a point is reached at which the individual expressing the idea can no longer obtain the nourishment it is to assimilate by mere action following the spur, for the spur must wait It comes from itself, and here, the nutrients are specially prescribed. When the phenomenon becomes more and more complicated, the congestion and chaos will be intensified, so that these phenomena interfere with each other, so the individual activated by the thorn must From chance to wait for food, that would be a disadvantage.Therefore, the animal grows ignorantly in the egg or the mother's body. From the moment it leaves the egg or the mother's body, food must be searched and selected.It is for this reason that action is necessarily motivated by motives, and for these motives knowledge is necessary; knowledge is therefore at the level of the objectification of the will an auxiliary tool required for the preservation of the individual and the continuation of the race, [ A] "device" and appeared.The emergence of knowledge is represented by the brain or a larger ganglion, just as every other claim or determination of the will which objectifies itself is represented by an organ, that is, expresses itself for the sake of representation. for an organ. —But thanks to this auxiliary tool, this "apparatus," at the flip of a finger, the world as representation appears, with all its forms incidentally: object and subject, time, space, multiplicity, and causality sex.This is when the world reveals [its] second side.The world, which hitherto was only will, is now at the same time representation, the object of the knowing subject, until here the will follows its impulses in the dark with unmistakable precision; He lit a lamp for himself.This lamp is an indispensable tool in order to eliminate the defect which even the most complete phenomena cannot avoid arising from the congestion and complexity of its phenomena.Hitherto the will was able to act with an infallible certainty and regularity in inorganic and purely vegetative nature, because it alone in its primordial essence, as blind impulse, as The will acts without other assistance, but without interference from a second, quite different world, from the world of appearances.作为表象的世界虽然只是它自己的本质的写照，但却是完全另一性质，现在却要插手在它那些现象的联系之中了。于是，它那些现象的决不失误的妥当性就从此告终了。动物就已经不免为假象，幻觉所迷误。动物还只有直观的表象，没有概念，没有反省思维：因此它们是束缚在“现在”上的，不能顾及将来。 ——看起来，这种没有理性的认识好象不是在一切场合都足以达到它的目的似的，有时候好象也需要一种帮助似的。原来还有这样一种值得注意的现象摆在我们面前，就是说盲目的意志作用和由认识照明的作用这两种作用，在两类[不同的］现象之中[每]以非常出乎意料的方式互相侵入对方的范围。一面我们看到在动物那些由直观认识和动机来指导的作为之中，就有一种不带这些认识和动机的作为，也就是以盲目地起作用的意志的必然性来完成的作为。这种作为可以在动物的制作本能中看得出来，这种本能既无动机，又无认识的指导，然而看起来甚至好象是按抽象的、理性的动机来完成它们那些工作的。和这相反的另一情况是反其道而行之，认识之光侵入了盲目地起作用的意志的工地里去了，把人类有机体的纯生理机能照明了：在磁性催眠术中就是这样。 ——最后在意志达到了它客体化的最高程度时，发生于动物的那种悟性的认识，由于是感官为它提供资料，而从这些资料产生的[又]只是局限于眼前的直观，所以就不敷应用了。人，这复杂的、多方面的、有可塑性的、需求最多的、难免不受到无数伤害的生物，为了能够生存，就必须由双重认识来照明，等于是直观认识之上加上比直观认识更高级次的能力，加上反映直观认识的思维，亦即加上具有抽象概念能力的理性。与理性俱来的是思考，囊括着过去和未来的全景，从而便有考虑、忧虑，有事先筹划的能力，有不以当前为转移的行为，最后还有对于自己如此这般的意志决断完全明晰的意识。假象和幻觉的可能性既已随单纯的直观认识而俱来，于是，前此在意志无知的冲动中的可靠性就被取消了，因此本能和制作冲动，作为无知的意志之表出而杂在那些由认识指导的意志之表出中，就必须出而助以一臂之力；所以说和理性出现的同时，[前此]意志之表出的那种可靠性和准确性（在另一极端、在无机自然界，甚至现为严格的规律性）就丧失殆尽了。本能[既]几乎完全引退，势欲取一切而代之的思考（如在第一篇里论列的）就产生了摇摆不定和踟蹰不决，于是谬误有了可能，并且在好些场合还以行动妨碍着意志恰如其分的客体化。这是因为意志虽在性格中已拿定了它固定不变的方向，而欲求本身又少不了要在动机的促使之下按此方向而出现；然而由于幻想的动机如同真实的动机一样插手其间，取消了真实动机，谬误就能把意志的表出加以篡改；例如迷信在不知不党中带进了幻想的动机，强制一个人进行某种行为，和他的意志在原来情况之下没有这种强制时会要表出的行为方式恰恰相反：[所以]阿格梅姆隆杀了他的女儿；吝啬鬼出于纯粹自私，希望将来获得百倍的酬报也要布施，如此等等。

所以认识，从根本上看来，不管是理性的认识也好，或只是直观的认识也好，本来都是从意志自身产生的。作为仅仅是一种辅助工具，一种“器械”，认识和身体的任何器官一样，也是维系个体存在和种族存在的工具之一。作为这种工具，认识[原]是属于意志客体化较高级别的本质的。认识本来是命定为意志服务的，是为了达成意志的目的的，所以它也几乎始终是驯服而胜任的，在所有的动物，差一些儿在所有的人，都是如此的。然而在［本书］第三篇我们就会看到在某些个别的人，认识躲避了这种劳役，打开了自己的枷锁；自由于欲求的一切目的之外，它还能纯粹自在地，仅仅只作为这世界的一面镜子而存在。艺术就是从这里产生的。最后在第四篇里，我们将看到如何由于这种［自在的］认识，当它口过头来影响意志的时候，又能发生意志的自我扬弃。这就叫作无欲。无欲是[人生的]最后目的，是的，它是一切美德和神圣性的最内在本质，也是从尘世得到解脱。