On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and On the Will in Nature: Two Essays (revised edition)
Schopenhauer · en
[236] The most intelligent birds are also birds of prey, wherefore
many of them, especially falcons, are highly susceptible of
training. [Add. to 3rd ed.]
[237] That the negroes should have become the special victims of
the slave-trade, is evidently a consequence of the inferiority of
their intelligence compared with that of other human races; though
this by no means justifies the fact. [Add. to 3rd ed.]
Everywhere indeed intelligence depends in the first instance upon the
cerebral system, and this stands in a necessary relation to the rest
of the organism; therefore cold-blooded animals are greatly inferior
to warm-blooded ones, and invertebrate animals to _vertebrata_. But
the organism is precisely nothing but the will become visible, to
which, as that which is absolutely _prius_, everything constantly
refers. The needs and aims of that will give in each phenomenon the
rule for the means to be employed, and these means must harmonize
with one another. Plants have no self-consciousness because they have
no power of locomotion; for of what use would self-consciousness be
to them unless it enabled them to seek what was salutary and flee
what was noxious to them? And conversely, of what use could power of
locomotion be to them, as they have no self-consciousness with which
to guide it. The inseparable duality of Sensibility and Irritability
does not yet appear therefore in the plant; they continue slumbering
in the reproductive force which is their fundament, and in which alone
the will here objectifies itself. The sun-flower, and every other
plant, wills for light; but as yet their movement towards light is not
separate from their apprehension of it, and both coincide with their
growth.--Human understanding, which is so superior to that of all other
beings, and is assisted by Reason (the faculty for non-perceptible
representations, _i.e._ for conceptions; reflection, thinking faculty),
is nevertheless only just proportionate, partly to Man's requirements,
which greatly surpass those of animals and multiply to infinity; partly
to his entire lack of all natural weapons and covering, and to his
relatively weaker muscular strength, which is greatly inferior to that
of monkeys of his own size;[238] lastly also, to the slowness with
which his race multiplies and the length of his childhood and life,
which demand secure preservation of the individual. All these great
requirements had to be satisfied by means of intellectual powers,
which, for this reason, predominate in him. But we find the intellect
secondary and subordinate everywhere, and destined exclusively to serve
the purposes of the will. As a rule too, it always remains true to
its destiny and subservient to the will. How nevertheless, it frees
itself in particular instances from this bondage through an abnormal
preponderance of cerebral life, whereby purely objective cognition
becomes possible which may be enhanced to genius, I have shown at