at bottom tertiary, for it presupposes the organism, and the organism presupposes the will. I admit that all that is said here is really only an image and a figure, and in part also hypothetical; but we stand at a point to which thought can scarcely reach, not to speak of proof. I therefore request the reader to compare with this what I have adduced at length on this subject in chapter 20. Now, although the true being of everything that exists consists in its will, and knowledge together with consciousness are only added at the higher grades of the phenomenon as something secondary, yet we find that the difference which the presence and the different degree of consciousness places between one being and another is exceedingly great and of important results. The subjective existence of the plant we must think of as a weak analogue, a mere shadow of comfort and discomfort; and even in this exceedingly weak degree the plant knows only of itself, not of anything outside of it. On the other hand, even the lowest animal standing next to it is forced by increased and more definitely specified wants to extend the sphere of its existence beyond the limits of its own body. This takes place through knowledge. It has a dim apprehension of its immediate surroundings, out of which the motives for its action with a view to its own maintenance arise. Thus accordingly the _medium of motives_ appears, and this is—the world existing objectively in time and space, _the world as idea_, however weak, obscure, and dimly dawning this first and lowest example of it may be. But it imprints itself ever more and more distinctly, ever wider and deeper, in proportion as in the ascending scale of animal organisations the brain is ever more perfectly produced. This progress in the development of the brain, thus of the intellect, and of the clearness of the idea, at each of these ever higher grades is, however, brought about by the constantly increasing and more complicated _wants_ of this phenomenon of the will. This must always first afford the occasion for it, for without necessity nature (_i.e._, the will which objectifies itself in it) produces nothing, least of all the hardest of its productions—a more perfect brain: in consequence of its _lex parsimoniæ_: _natura nihil agit frustra et nihil facit supervacaneum_. It has provided every animal with the organs which are necessary for its sustenance and the weapons necessary for its conflict, as I have shown at length in my work, “_Ueber den Willen in der Natur_,” under the heading, “_Vergleichende Anatomie_.” According to this measure, therefore, it imparts to each the most important of those organs concerned with what is without, the brain, with its function the intellect. The more complicated, through higher development, its organisation became, the more multifarious and specially determined did its wants also become, and consequently the more difficult and the more dependent upon opportunity was the provision