No other explanation or assumption enables us nearly as well to understand either the complete suitableness to purpose and to the external conditions of existence I have here shown in the skeleton, or the admirable harmony and fitness of internal mechanism in the structure of each animal, as the truth I have elsewhere firmly established: that the body of an animal is precisely nothing but the _will itself_ of that animal brought to cerebral perception as representation--through the forms of Space, Time and Causality--in other words, the mere visibility, objectivity of Will. For, if this is once pre-supposed, everything in and belonging to that body must conspire towards the final end: the life of this animal. Nothing superfluous, nothing deficient, nothing inappropriate, nothing insufficient or incomplete of its kind, can therefore be found in it; on the contrary, all that is required must be there, and just in the proportion needed, never more. For here artist, work and materials are one and the same. Each organism is therefore a consummate master-piece of exceeding perfection. Here the will did not first cherish the intention, first recognise the end and then adapt the means to it and conquer the material; its willing was rather immediately the aim and immediately the attainment of that aim; no foreign appliances needing to be overcome were wanted--willing, doing and attaining were here one and the same. Thus the organism presents itself as a miracle which admits of no comparison with any work of human artifice wrought by the lamplight of knowledge.[243] [243] The appearance of every animal therefore presents a totality, a unity, a perfection and a rigidly carried out harmony in all its parts which is so entirely based upon a single fundamental thought, that even the strangest animal shape seems to the attentive observer as if it were the only right, nay, only possible form of existence, and as if there could be no other than just this very one. The expression "natural" used to denote that a thing is a matter of course, and that it cannot be otherwise, is in its deepest foundation based upon this. Göthe himself was struck by this unity when contemplating whelks and crabs at Venice, and it caused him to exclaim: "How delightful, how glorious is a living thing! how well adapted for its condition; how true, how real!" ("Life," vol. iv. p. 223). No artist therefore, who has not made it his business to study such forms for years and to penetrate into their meaning and comprehension, can rightly imitate them. Without this study his work will seem as if it were pasted together: the parts no doubt will be there, but the bond which unites them and gives them cohesion, the spirit, the idea, which is the objectivity of the primary act of the will presenting itself as this or that particular species, will be wanting. [Add. to 3rd ed.]