Description
Chapter XXI. Retrospect and More General View.
If the _intellect_ were not of a subordinate nature, as the two preceding chapters show, then everything which takes place without it, _i.e._, without intervention of the idea, such as reproduction, the development and maintenance of the organism, the healing of wounds, the restoration or vicarious supplementing of mutilated parts, the salutary crisis in diseases, the works of the mechanical skill of animals, and the performances of instinct would not be done so infinitely better and more perfectly than what takes place with the assistance of intellect, all conscious and intentional achievements of men, which compared with the former are mere bungling.
In general _nature_ signifies that which operates, acts, performs without the assistance of the intellect. Now, that this is really identical with what we find in ourselves as _will_ is the general theme of this second book, and also of the essay, “_Ueber den Willen in der Natur_.” The possibility of this fundamental knowledge depends upon the fact that _in us_ the will is directly lighted by the intellect, which here appears as self‐consciousness; otherwise we could just as little arrive at a fuller knowledge of it _within us_ as without us, and must for ever stop at inscrutable forces of nature. We have to abstract from the assistance of the _intellect_ if we wish to comprehend the nature of the will in itself, and thereby, as far as is possible, penetrate to the inner being of nature.
On this account, it may be remarked in passing, my direct antipode among philosophers is Anaxagoras; for he assumed arbitrarily as that which is first and original, from which everything proceeds, a νους, an intelligence, a subject of ideas, and he is regarded as the first who promulgated such a view. According to him the world existed earlier in the mere idea than in itself; while according to me it is the unco
Product ID: 9781776830008
Sku: S4-0O33-DV2Q
