knowledge. According to what has been said, the rise of intelligence, from the obscurest animal consciousness up to that of man, is a progressive _loosening of the intellect from the will_, which appears complete, although only as an exception, in the _genius_. Therefore genius may be defined as the highest grade of the _objectivity_ of knowledge. The condition of this, which so seldom occurs, is a decidedly larger measure of intelligence than is required for the service of the will, which constitutes its basis; it is accordingly this free surplus which first really properly comes to know the world, _i.e._, comprehends it perfectly _objectively_, and now paints pictures, composes poems, and thinks in accordance with this comprehension. Chapter XXIII.(3)On The Objectification Of The Will In Unconscious Nature. That the will which we find within us does not proceed, as philosophy has hitherto assumed, first from knowledge, and indeed is a mere modification of it, thus something secondary, derived, and, like knowledge itself, conditioned by the brain; but that it is the _prius_ of knowledge, the kernel of our nature, and that original force itself which forms and sustains the animal body, in that it carries out both its unconscious and its conscious functions;—this is the first step in the fundamental knowledge of my metaphysics. Paradoxical as it even now seems to many that the will in itself is without knowledge, yet the scholastics in some way already recognised and confessed it; for Jul. Cæs. Vaninus (that well‐ known sacrifice to fanaticism and priestly fury), who was thoroughly versed in their philosophy, says in his “_Amphitheatro_,” p. 181: “_Voluntas potentia cœca est, ex scholasticorum opinione_.” That, further, it is that same will which in the plant forms the bud in order to develop the leaf and the flower out of it; nay, that the regular form of the crystal is only the trace which its momentary effort has left behind, and that in general, as the true and only αυτοματον, in the proper sense of the word, it lies at the foundation of all the forces of unorganised nature, plays, acts, in all their multifarious phenomena, imparts power to their laws, and even in the crudest mass manifests itself as gravity;—this insight is the second step in that fundamental knowledge, and is brought about by further reflection. But it would be the grossest misunderstanding to suppose that this is a mere question of a word to denote an unknown quantity. It is rather the most real of all real knowledge which is here expressed in language. For it is the tracing back of that which is quite inaccessible to our immediate knowledge, and therefore in its essence foreign and unknown to us, which we denote by the words _force of nature_, to that which is known to us most accurately and intimately, but which is yet only accessible to us in our own being and directly, and must therefore be carried over from this to other phenomena. It is the insight