But without myth or symbol, the vehemence of the sexual impulse, the keen intentness and profound seriousness with which every animal, including man, pursues its concerns, shows that it is through the function which serves it that the animal belongs to that in which really and principally its true being lies, the _species_; while all other functions and organs directly serve only the individual, whose existence is at bottom merely secondary. In the vehemence of that impulse, which is the concentration of the whole animal nature, the consciousness further expresses itself that the individual does not endure, and therefore all must be staked on the maintenance of the species, in which its true existence lies. To illustrate what has been said, let us now imagine a brute in rut, and in the act of generation. We see a seriousness and intentness never known in it at any other time. Now what goes on in it? Does it know that it must die, and that through its present occupation a new individual, which yet entirely resembles itself, will arise in order to take its place? Of all this it knows nothing, for it does not think. But it is as intently careful for the continuance of the species in time as if it knew all that. For it is conscious that it desires to live and exist, and it expresses the highest degree of this volition in the act of generation; this is all that then takes place in its consciousness. This is also quite sufficient for the permanence of the kind; just because the will is the radical and knowledge the adventitious. On this account the will does not require to be guided by knowledge throughout; but whenever in its primitive originality it has resolved, this volition will objectify itself of its own accord in the world of the idea. If now in this way it is that definite animal form which we have thought of that wills life and existence, it does not will life and existence in general, but in this particular form. Therefore it is the sight of its form in the female of its species that stimulates the will of the brute to the act of generation. This volition of the brute, when regarded from without and under the form of time, presents itself as such an animal form maintained through an infinite time by the constantly repeated replacement of one individual by another, thus by the alternation of death and reproduction, which so regarded appear only as the pulse‐beats of that form (ιδεα, εἰδος, _species_) which endures through all time. They may be compared to the forces of attraction and repulsion in which matter consists. That which is shown here in the brute holds good also of man; for although in him the act of generation is accompanied by complete knowledge of its final cause, yet it is not guided by this knowledge, but proceeds directly from the will to live as its concentration. It is accordingly to be reckoned among instinctive actions. For in reproduction the brute is just