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. First, then, with reference to plant life, I draw attention to the remarkable first two chapters of Aristotle’s work upon plants. What is most interesting in them, as is so often the case with Aristotle, are the opinions of earlier profound philosophers quoted by him. We see there that Anaxagoras and Empedocles quite rightly taught that plants have the motion of their growth by virtue of their indwelling _desires_ (επιθυμια); nay, that they also attributed to them pleasure and pain, therefore sensation. But Plato only ascribed to them desires, and that on account of their strong appetite for nutrition (_cf._ Plato in the “_Timœus_,” p. 403, Bip.) Aristotle, on the other hand, true to his customary method, glides on the surface of things, confines himself to single characteristics and conceptions fixed by current expressions, and asserts that without sensation there can be no desires, and that plants have not sensation. He is, however, in considerable embarrassment, as his confused language shows, till here also, “where fails the comprehension, a word steps promptly in as deputy,” namely, το θρεπτικον, the faculty of nourishing. Plants have this, and thus a part of the so‐called soul, according to his favourite division into _anima vegetativa_, _sensitiva_, and _intellectiva_. This, however, is just a scholastic _Quidditas_, and signifies _plantœ nutriuntur quia habent facultatem nutritivam_. It is therefore a bad substitute for the more profound research of his predecessors, whom he is criticising. We also see, in the second chapter,