As, then, was there explained, the intellect in its activity in the service of the will, thus in its natural function, knows only the mere _relations_ of things; primarily to the will itself, to which it belongs, whereby they become motives of the will; but then also, just for the sake of the completeness of this knowledge, the relations of things to each other. This last knowledge first appears in some extent and importance in the human intellect; in the case of the brutes, on the other hand, even where the intellect is considerably developed, only within very narrow limits. Clearly even the apprehension of the relations which things have to each other only takes place, _indirectly_, in the service of the will. It therefore forms the transition to the purely objective knowledge, which is entirely independent of the will; it is scientific knowledge, the latter is artistic knowledge. If many and various relations of an object are immediately apprehended, from these the peculiar and proper nature of the object appears ever more distinctly, and gradually constructs itself out of mere relations: although it itself is entirely different from them. In this mode of apprehension the subjection of the intellect to the will at once becomes ever more indirect and less. If the intellect has strength enough to gain the preponderance, and let go altogether the relations of things to the will, in order to apprehend, instead of them, the purely objective nature of a phenomenon, which expresses itself through all relations, it also forsakes, along with the service of the will, the apprehension of mere relations, and thereby really also that of the individual thing as such. It then moves freely, no longer belonging to a will. In the individual thing it knows only the _essential_, and therefore its whole _species_; consequently it now has for its object the _Ideas_, in my sense, which agrees with the original, Platonic meaning of this grossly misused word; thus the permanent, unchanging forms, independent of the temporal existence of the individuals, the _species rerum_, which really constitute what is purely objective in the phenomena. An Idea so apprehended is not yet indeed the essence of the thing in itself, just because it has sprung from knowledge of mere relations; yet, as the result of the sum of all the relations, it is the peculiar _character_ of the thing, and thereby the complete expression of the essence which exhibits itself as an object of perception, comprehended, not in relation to an individual will, but as it expresses itself spontaneously, whereby indeed it determines all its relations, which till then alone were known. The Idea is the root point of all these relations, and thereby the complete and perfect phenomenon, or, as I have expressed it in the text, the adequate objectivity of the will at this grade of its manifestation. Form and colour, indeed, which in the apprehension of the Idea by perception