On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and On the Will in Nature: Two Essays (revised edition)
Schopenhauer · en
stimulus and physical agency present themselves as substitutes for
knowledge, therefore as mere analogues to it. Plants cannot properly
be said to perceive light and the sun; yet we see them sensitive in
various ways to the presence or absence of both. We see them incline
and turn towards the light; and though this movement no doubt generally
coincides with their growth, just as the moon's rotation on its axis
coincides with its movement round the earth, it nevertheless exists,
as well as that of the moon, and the direction of that growth is
determined and systematically modified by light, just as an action
is determined by a motive, and as the direction of the growth of
creeping and clinging plants is determined by the shape and position
of the supports they may chance to find. Thus because plants on the
whole, still have wants, though not such wants as demand the luxury
of a sensorium and an intellect, something analogous has to take the
place of these, in order to enable the will to lay hold of, if not to
seek out, the satisfactions which offer themselves to it. Now, this
analogous substitute is susceptibility for stimuli, and I would express
the difference between knowledge and this susceptibility as follows:
in knowledge, the motive which presents itself as representation and
the act of volition which follows from it, _remain distinctly separate
one from the other_, this separation moreover being the more distinct,
the greater the perfection of the intellect;--whereas, in mere
susceptibility for stimuli, the feeling of the stimulus can no longer
be distinguished from the volition it occasions, and they coalesce. In
inorganic nature finally, even susceptibility for stimuli, the analogy
of which to knowledge is unmistakable, ceases, but the diversity of
reaction of each body upon divers kinds of action remains; now, when
the matter is considered, as we are doing, in the descending scale,
this reaction still presents itself, even here, as a substitute for
knowledge. If a body reacts differently, it must have been acted upon
differently and that action must have roused a different sensation in
it, which with all its dullness has nevertheless a distant analogy
to knowledge. Thus when water that is shut up finds an outlet of
which it eagerly avails itself, rushing vehemently in that direction,
it certainly does not recognise that outlet any more than the acid
perceives the alkali approaching it which will induce it to abandon
its combination with a metal, or than the strip of paper perceives
the amber which attracts it after being rubbed; yet we cannot help
admitting that what brings about such sudden changes in all these
bodies, bears a certain resemblance to that which takes place within
us, when an unexpected motive presents itself. In former times I have
availed myself of such considerations as these in order to point out
the will in all things; I now employ them to indicate the sphere to