MENO MALE CHE SCHOPENHAUER CE (Italian Edition)

But now I see that even if DL which I generally think is great should get things a bit wonky here, the crowd will teach me a lot. I knew this phrase "meno male" reminded me of something. Then I remembered this, which supports the DL translation at least in some instances. So may be useful for learning other phrases, as well as various cleansing medical procedures. Oh deary, deary me! I will never forget this phrase now, it is seared into my memory thanks to that large chunk of fromaggio. Thanks silkwarrior, it was funny. What a pity that the parodies have no subtitles and we beginners can't fully enjoy their authors' wit yet.

I imagine that those who had offered Berlusconi such a present quickly understood how wrong the idea was. I fear they didn't littlebluebee - he was extremely popular for a long long time. Very big approval ratings. A wise prof once said that real change only comes from outside italy. Take a look at the circumstances of his departure. I came to the forums for a literal translation.

It feels like many people overlook how helpful literal translations are. There is one native Italian on this discussion thread see above. He said the expression is used in Italy as English speakers use "Thank goodness! Meno, alone, was "less". As soon as I added male, the translation was "Thank God!

The literal translation is "less bad", that is true, but I believe actual usage by Italians in Italy is reflected by Duo in the translation given: Therefore, in this instance, the literal translation is misleading. You would not use male meno for "well, at least It's an idiom which expresses relief. The suggestion for "meno" is wrong, because all the expression has that meaning. The translation is wrong.. I had a hard time figuring out how "less bad" could mean "thank goodness", but this clarifies it. I shared the article on Facebook, and am waiting to see what my granddaughter and her Italian husband say about it.

This article gives a thorough explanation of both the meaning of the idiom and the reason why there is so much discussion about it in this thread! I believe in some cases, yes.

On the Basis of Morality/Part III

But the key to "meno male" is that you were expecting something bad, and it came "less bad". You would use "meno male" when you receive a relatively high grade, but you were expecting a bad grade. So it was a relief. You wouldn't use "meno male" when you simply receive a relatively high grade without expecting something worse. But in this case you could still use "not so bad".

And it means the exact same thing No, I don't think that expresses relief that something is less bad. I think it should be "Not so bad! That does not signify the same thing at all. That would mean "It is all just as good as the other. One person says "I have Spanish for my class instead of French. Either language is good.

You can learn French at home and now learn Spanish as well. It certainly would not be confused with "Thank God" or "Thank goodness", because there is no relief to express. Can you give examples of its use from your friends in Italy? This is an idiom, the direct translation less bad doesn't have to have anything to do with the meaning. On the other hand, we could soothe someone by saying "There, there, it's not so bad. Yet, everywhere I go to look for more info. There is even a pizza place in Washington, D. Oh, this site has the lyrics in Italian and translated to English: I asked my friends in Italy for how they'd translate it to English and they told me 'just as well' is correct depending on the context of course.

I live in italy, and rest of the time it's used as "At least", sometimes as "could've been worse" or "than it's not that bad", but never ever as "thank goodness". Thank goodness could also be translated as "Grazie a Dio". I am Italian and for me they are interchangeable. I didn't study but I passed an exam: Remember, however, that between these 2 expressions there are very little differences; also the other 3 meanings of "meno male" you mentioned aren't that different from each other: Not bad is an appraisal or an appreciation in English.

When saying "menos mal" , we were expecting some bad result or some bad happening, and then we discovered it was not that bad, "thank goodnes". It iIs basically a literal translation from italian into portuguese. I was answering to Limitd, he asked about "Not bad". And "not bad" could be translated with "nada mal".

Full text of "The wisdom of Schopenhauer : as revealed in some of his principal writings"

I think the phrase 'thank goodness' has become watered down from its original literal meaning, at least in common US practice. But i generally think of it as a grateful expression for having avoided some less desirable outcome. DL has used this expression, while the Italian phrase instead describes a personal evaluation of the situation. In any event, both phrase seem to describe a similar personal response to some situation. So, in short, could be worse!

I guessed "Thank goodness" and got it correct. There really isn't an equivalent expression in English. Although I have heard people use the expression "Thank goodness for small miracles" which is a bit satirical and facetious giving it a similar connotation. American from the Deep South here I don't think "silver lining" would be a good translation here. Silver lining indicates there's a bright spot in a bad thing that has already happened.

As in "look at the bright side" or "look for the silver lining". Just "adding my two cents". Thank goodness actually works better for the context. This translation as well as many others are not at all how they are used or even close to the actual translation. Meno male is more used as an oh well, not so bad, and the actual translation But after spending 3 years there, it was never used as thank goodness, or thank god Come-on duolingo, you guys are fun to use, but slipping in your actual translations.

Lately you are making me want to find new outlets. Sorry, but do you really think that after 3 years in Italy you know Italian better than dictionaries and Italians themselves? I have always enjoyed the amount of positive constructive criticism that has been consciously followed on this platform.

However yours is very harsh, sarcastic, and demeaning I have in no way implied that I know better then a dictionary, nor do I even know how to correctly pit myself against the entire Italian populous.

Thus your remark was incredibly defensive. This is what I do know The, now 11, local Italians with in whom I have shown this curiosity to, have all agreed without any leading, to the notion that this is not how this phrase is used, in slang or not. So, this leads me back to my original post, which indicates this phenomenon. Not to mention that it seems that the vast majority of all the posts toward this phrase are all in confusion. This is not the first time this has occurred with Duo, and it seems that there is a fair amount of gaps as to what is and is not actually used.

If you have any constructive feed back, that would be great, and much appreciated. But your standing response is merely defensive and adds zero help Your defensiveness makes me wonder if you are involved with Duo? I do admit that I may have overreacted: Timid animals, which will to find their safety in flight and not in battle, have, instead of weapons, light swift feet and sharp hearing — which in the most timid of them all, the hare, has even necessi- tated an extraordinary prolongation of the outer ear.

To the external structure the internal corresponds: Each particular striving of the Will exhibits itself in a particular modification of form. Hence the form of the pursuer is determined by the place which the prey inhabits: To extract the seeds from the scales of the fir-cone, comes the crossbill Loxia curvirostra , with its abnormally- shaped beak. To find the reptiles in their swamps, come marsh-birds, with exaggeratedly long legs, necks, and bills — the strangest figures.

To dig out termites, comes the four-feet-long ant-bear, with its short legs, powerful claws, and long narrow muzzle, toothless but provided with a thread-shaped viscous tongue. The pelican goes 1 That property of muscle which makes it respond to stimulus. To fall upon the sleepers of the night, out fly the owls, with enormously large pupils, enabling them to see in the dark, and with quite soft feathers, so that their flight may be noiseless and not waken the sleepers. The Silurus, Gymnotus, and Torpedo have brought with them a complete electrical apparatus, to stun their prey before they can secure it, and also to act as a defence against their pursuers.

For wherever a living thing breathes, straightway there comes another to devour it, 1 and each of these is furnished with peculiar means intended and exactly calculated, as it were, for the destruction of some other creature. In the insect world, for example, ichneumons deposit their eggs, for the future sustenance of their young, in the bodies of certain caterpillars and similar larvae, which they pierce for this purpose with their ovipositors.

Now those which lay their eggs in larvae which crawl about openly have quite short ovipositors of about one-eighth of an inch ; whereas Pimpla manifestator, which specially affects Chelostoma maxillosa, whose larva lies hidden deep in old timber into which it cannot penetrate, has one of two inches in length ; and almost as long is that of Ichneumon strobile, which deposits its eggs in larvae inhabiting fir- cones.

With this instrument they reach the larva, pierce it and lay an egg in the wound, which egg on hatching devours the larva Kirby and Spence's Introcl. No less plainly does the "Will-to-escape- 1 So convinced was R. Owen of this truth that after attentive examina- tion of the many fossil marsupials of Australia, some of which are as big as a rhinoceros, he came, as early as the year , to the correct con- clusion that there must have been a contemporary species of large carni- vore.

This has since been confirmed ; for in he received a portion of the fossil skull of a carnivore as big as a lion, which he has named Thylacoleo, i. Pouch-lion, for it is a marsupial also. Hedge- hogs and porcupines raise aloft a forest of spears. Clad in armour from head to foot, and inaccessible to tooth, beak, and claw, appear armadillos, pangolins, tortoises, and likewise upon a small scale the whole class of crus- taceans.

Others have sought to defend themselves, not by physical resistance but by baffling the pursuer: True, our flea is black too, but it trusted to its prodigious and erratic leaps, when it devoted to them an apparatus of such unexampled power. But the anticipation found to exist in all these preparations will become comprehensible to us when we examine that which manifests itself in mechani- cal instinct.

Stratigraphy of Andromeda: Giorgio de Chirico, Alberto Savinio, Origins, and Originality

The young spider and ant-lion have as yet no knowledge of the prey for which they construct their first traps. And so of defensive measures: In such anticipations is once more confirmed the ideality of time, which invariably comes to the fore whenever the Will as thing-in-itself is in question. In the matters here touched upon, and in many others as well, the mechanical instinct of animals and the physiological functions throw light upon each other, because in both Will without know- ledge is at work.

The intellect is accordingly destined solely for the service of the Will, to which it is always exactly suited. Carnivores needed it more, and have evidently far more of it, than herbivores. The elephant, and to a certain extent the horse also, are exceptions ; but the marvellous intelligence of the elephant was necessary because, with its life-term of two hundred years and its very slow rate of increase, provision had to be made for the longer safeguarding of the individual — and that in countries which swarm with the greediest, sturdiest, and most active beasts of prey.

The horse, too, has a longer term of life and a slower rate of increase than the ruminants: The extraordinary intelligence of apes was necessary, partly because, with a duration of life that even in those of moderate size reaches to fifty years, they have a slow rate of increase, producing only a single young one at a time ; but mainly because they have hands, which had to be directed by an intellect that knew how to use them properly, both for defence by means of extraneous weapons such as sticks and stones, and also for the procuring of food, which necessitates all sorts of artificial devices, chief among which stands an elaborately-organised system of robbery, in which they aid each other, passing the stolen fruit from hand to hand, posting sentries, etc.

It should be observed that this intelligence belongs chiefly to their period of youth, in which the muscular powers are still undeveloped: This applies to all apes: Speaking generally, there is a gradual rise of intelligence in mammals from the rodents, who in this respect occupy the lowest place, through the pachyderms and carnivores, to the quadrumana, who stand highest ; and this result of empirical observation is confirmed by anatomy, which shows accordingly Flourens and Cuvier that the gradual development of the brain follows the same order.

Of reptiles, snakes are the most intelligent, and they can even be trained: As in regard to physical weapons, so also in respect of intelligence we everywhere find the Will to be the prius, and its tool, the Intellect, the posterius. Carnivores do not hunt, nor do foxes steal, because they have more intelligence ; but it is because they willed to live by hunting and stealing that they possess not only stronger teeth and claws, but also more intelligence.

The fox has more than made up for his deficiency in power of muscle and strength of teeth by exceeding acuteness of intellect. We have a peculiar illustration of our theme in the Dodo Didus ineptus , a bird which used to live in the island of Mauritius, and which has died out, as everyone knows: In this case it seems that for once Nature carried her lex parsimonice 1 Among birds, too, none are so intelligent as the birds of prey, many of which — falcons especially — are susceptible of a high degree of train- ing.

If anyone should be led to ask whether Nature should not have given insects as much intelligence as might suffice at least to keep them from rushing into the flame of the candle,jthe answer is: The organism, however, is simply the Will become visible ; to which Will, as the absolute primary, everything constantly points back: The plant has no apperception, 3 because it has no loco- motivity ; for of what use would apperception have been if it did not enable it to seek the beneficial and shun the noxious? Therefore in the plant we do not yet find the inseparable dyad of Sensibility and Irritability; but it slumbers in its groundwork, the reproductive faculty, 4 in which alone the Will here objectifies itself.

The sun- flower, and every flower, desires light ; but its movement towards the light is not yet separated from its perception 1 Nature does nothing in vain. In man the Understanding, 1 which in him is so greatly superior to that of all other beings, is fortified by the addition of Reason the faculty of non-perceptual presentments, i. All these important require- ments had to be covered by intellectual powers, and it is for this reason that they are so preponderant in man.

But everywhere we find the Intellect to be secondary and subordinate, its vocation being merely to serve the ends of the Will. Faithful to this vocation, it remains as a rule always in the service of the Will. In particular cases, however, an abnormal preponderance of cerebral life makes it break away from this service, and there ensues pure objective knowing, which may rise even to genius, as I have described at length in the Third Book the aesthetic portion of my chief work, and later in the Parerga, ii.

If now, after all these observations on the complete agreement between the Will and the bodily structure of every animal, we go through a well-arranged osteological collection from this point of view, we shall seem to see one and the same being Lamarck's aboriginal animal — more properly, the Will-to-live changing its form in 1 That faculty of the mind which apprehends outer objects. This number and arrangement of bones, which Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire Principes de philosophie zoologique, calls the 14 anatomical element," remains in all essential points — as he has exhaustively proved — unchanged throughout the whole series of vertebrates: To this point I shall return presently.

In conjunction with this invariability of order and arrangement, however, we find the greatest variability, plasticity, and ductility of these same bones, as well in regard to size and shape as to the ends to which they are applied — all this being determined, as we see, with aboriginal power and free- dom by the Will, in conformity with the ends prescribed to it by external conditions: If it wills to clamber on trees as an ape, it forthwith seizes the boughs with four hands, and in so doing stretches the ulna and radius very considerably ; at the same time lengthening the ox coccygis to an ell-long prehensile tail, with which to hang on the boughs and swing from one to another.

Contrariwise, it shortens these arm-bones out of all recognition, if it wills to crawl as a crocodile in the mud, or to swim as a seal, or to dig as a mole — in which last case it broadens out the metacaipus and phalanges into enormous shovel-paws at the expense of all the other bones. But if it wills to traverse the air as a bat, not only are the os humeri, radius, and ulna prodigiously prolonged, but the carpus, metacarpus, and phalanges 46 THE WILL IN NATUEE digitorum, which in other animals are quite small and subordinate, extend themselves, as in the vision of St.

Anthony, to a monstrous length exceeding that of the creature's body, and are bespread with a wing-mem- brane. Or if, in order to browse as a giraffe on the crowns of Africa's trees, it places itself on immensely high fore-legs, those same invariable seven cervical vertebrae, which in the mole were so crowded up together as to be unrecognisable, are now prolonged to such an extent that here too, as always, the length of the neck equals that of the fore-legs, so that the animal can reach down to drink. When, however, it appears as an elephant, a long neck could not possibly bear the weight of the enormous massive head, with its added burden of fathom- long tusks, and so this member remains exceptionally short and it helps itself out with a trunk, which it lets down to the earth to draw up food and water, and also rears to the tops of trees.

In harmony with all these changes we see the skull, the receptacle of the intellect, expanding, developing, arching, in proportion as the more or less difficult way in which the animal procures its subsistence requires more or less intelligence ; and the practised eye can clearly determine its different degrees of intellect from the amount of arching.

Now it must be admitted that this " anatomical element," which I spoke of above as being firmly fixed and unchangeable, remains a puzzle, inasmuch as it does not fall within the province of teleological explanation, which cannot begin until we take this element for granted ; for in many cases the organ under observation would have served its purpose equally well with a different number and arrangement of bones.

We perfectly under- stand, for instance, why the human cranium is composed of eight bones, viz. We must therefore assume that this anatomical element depends partly upon the unity and identity of the Will-to-live in general, and partly upon the circumstance that the primary forms of animals have proceeded one from the other Parerga, ii. Aristotle's expression for this anatomical element is " necessary Nature," and the variability of its forms according to the ends in view he calls " Nature guided by reason " see the close of his De partibus animalium, iii.

There is no hypothesis which explains the exact corre- spondence of the osseous structure of the animal to its aims and outer conditions of life, and also the amazing adaptation and harmony in the mechanism of its inner economy, half so well, as the truth which has been already established by me elsewhere that the body of the animal is nothing but its Will itself viewed as presentment — consequently under the forms of space, time, and causality — in the brain ; that is, the mere visibility, objectivity, of the Will.

For under this sup- position everything in and about it must conspire to the ultimate aim, the life of this animal. Thus nothing use- less, nothing superfluous, nothing deficient, nothing ill adapted, nothing insufficient or imperfect of its kind, will be found in it ; but everything necessary must exist, just so far as it is necessary, but no farther.

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For here artist, work, and material are one and the same. Therefore every organism is an exceedingly perfect masterpiece. Therefore the organism stands there as a marvel, and is not to be compared with any human work elabo- rated by the lamplight of knowledge. Our wonderment at the infinite perfection and suit- ability to their purpose displayed in the works of Nature comes in reality from our regarding them from the point of view of our own works. In these the Will-to-work and the work are two separate things, to begin with ; next, between these two lie two other things, 1 the medium of presentment, which is foreign to the Will as such, and through which the Will has to.

This material must first be overcome, and, no matter how deeply the artificial form may have penetrated, it will continue to struggle against it within. With the works of Nature all is quite different ; for they are not, like ours, a mediate, but an immediate manifestation of the Will. Here the Will is acting in its original condition, i. Will and work are separated by no mediating present- ment ; they are one. And the very material is one with them; for Matter is the mere visibility of the Will.

That even here [in Nature's works] we separate them, as we do in a work of art, is a mere abstraction. Pure absolute matter, devoid of form and quality, which we conceive as the material from which Nature's product is made, is a mere figment of the mind and can be present in no experience; whereas the material of a work of art is empirical i. Identity of form and matter is the distinguishing mark of the product of Nature; diversity of these, that of the product of art. That is a great truth which Bruno De immenso et innumerabili, 8, 10 proclaims: Art deals with matter from without ; Nature is within matter.

The true essence of every animal form is an act of Will outside the presentment, and consequently outside its forms Space and Time — an act which for this very reason knows no succession and concomitancy, but has indivisible unity. But if that form is appre- hended by our cerebral perceivance, and its interior parts dissected with the scalpel, there then comes to the light of knowledge that which, though originally and in- itself foreign to the mind and its laws, must needs now present itself there — of course in accordance with the mind's forms and laws. The original unity and indivisi- bility of this act of Will, of this truly metaphysical being, now appears lengthened out into a concomitancy of parts and a succession of functions, which nevertheless exhibit themselves as strictly bound one to the other, mutually helping and supporting each other as means and end.

The understanding that apprehends this is amazed at the 50 THE WILL IN NATUKE marvellous tief durchdachte arrangement of parts and combination of functions, because, when it perceives how the restoration of the original unity from the multiplicity which its own knowledge-forms first introduced is effected, it cannot help concluding that this animal-form arose in the same manner.

We now see the meaning of the great Kantian doctrine, that the suitableness of things to their end is first brought into Nature by the understanding, which accordingly stands amazed before a miracle of its own creating. If I may venture to explain so deep a matter by a trivial simile, the understanding is here in the position of a mind which is astonished at finding that, on adding the digits of all multiples of 9, it gets 9 again or a number whose digits added together come to 9, although it has prepared this marvel for itself in the decimal system. The physico-theological argument holds that the world existed in an intellect before it really existed: But I say with Kant: A world that exists as presentment must look as if means were adapted to ends ; and this notion of adaptation arises first in our intellect.

It follows, of course, from my doctrine, that every being is its own work. Nature, which can never lie and is as naive as genius, says the same thing straight out ; for every being can only kindle the spark of life in another being which is exactly like it, and then makes itself before our eyes, taking the material for this being from without, and the form and motion from itself: But we do not under- stand Nature's speech, because it is too simple.

It never occurred to them that the Will is the primary, and therefore independent of knowledge, with which, as the secondary, consciousness first enters. Of knowledge, presentment, plants have merely an analogon, a surro- gate ; whereas Will they have actually and quite imme- diately, for it, as thing-in-itself, is the substratum of their, as of every appearance. Proceeding realistically, and therefore starting from the objective, we may also say: When that which lives and moves in vegetable Nature and the animal organism has gradually climbed to a point, in the hierarchy of beings, at which the light of knowledge falls immediately upon it, it exhibits itself, in the consciousness that now arises, as Will, and is here more immediately, and consequently better known than anywhere else ; and this knowledge must therefore supply the key to the understanding of every being that stands lower on the scale ; for in this knowledge the thing-in-itself is veiled by no other form save the single one of the most immediate perception.

This immediate perception of our own willing has been called the " inner sense. As the world would be dark notwithstanding the sun, if there were no bodies to reflect its light ; or, as the 52 THE WILL IN NATURE vibration of a string requires air, and even some kind of resonance-box, in order to become sound ; so does the Will first become conscious of itself by the advent of knowledge — Knowledge being, as it were, the resonance- box of the Will, and Consciousness the resulting tone. This coming of the Will to a consciousness of itself has been ascribed to the so-called "inner sense," because it is our first and most immediate knowledge.

The only things cognisable by this inner sense are the various affections of our own Will: Hence simple mental-picturing direct perceiving is related to thinking proper, i. Therefore perfectly clear and distinct consciousness, both of our own existence and of that of other beings, enters first with Reason the faculty of concepts , which raises man as high above the animal as the merely perceptual faculty of presentment of the animal raises it above the plant.

Now that which, like the plant, has no presentment we call unconscious, and we regard it as differing but little from the non- existent ; for its existence 1 is really only in the conscious- ness of some other being, whose presentment it is. It, however, does not lack the primary of existence, the Will, but only the secondary ; yet without this the primary, which nevertheless is the being of the thing in-itself, seems to us to pass over into nothingness. Immediately we cannot clearly distinguish an unconscious existence from non - existence, although we have an empirical example of it in deep sleep.

Therefore, as I have often said, knowledge is, on account of its being that which conditions movement in response to motives, the true and essentially distinguishing charac- teristic of animality. Where animality ceases, knowledge proper, whose nature is so well known to us from our own experience, disappears, and we can henceforth only make comprehensible to ourselves by analogy that which inter- venes between the influence of the outside world and the movements of beings, 1 while the Will, which we have recognised as the basis and kernel of every being, always and everywhere remains one and the same.

At the lower grade of the plant-world, as also of the vegetative life in the animal organism, the place of knowledge is taken by Stimulus, which now determines the particular manifesta- tions of this omnipresent Will, and becomes the mediator between the outside world and the changes of the being in question [i. Thus Stimulus in the first case, and, in the second, Physical Influence of some kind, exhibits itself — when we look, as we do here, from above to below — as a surrogate of know- ledge, and consequently as something analogous thereto.

We cannot say that plants really perceive light and sun: Since, then, the plant has needs, although not such as make the paraphernalia of a sensorium and intellect necessary, it must have, in place of this, something analogous thereto which shall enable the Will, if not to seek, at any rate to grasp the satisfaction offered to it. Such a thing is the susceptibility to stimulus, whose difference from know- ledge I should like to express as follows: In knowledge the motive that appears as presentment, and the conse- quent volition, remain distinctly separate one from the other, and all the more distinctly the more perfect the intellect is ; whereas, in mere susceptibility to stimulus, perception of the stimulus is no longer distinguishable from the willing excited by it, and both melt into one.

Finally, in inorganic Nature, susceptibility to stimulus, the analogy of which to knowledge is not to be mistaken, also ceases: If the body reacts in a different way, it can only be that the influence is different and provokes a different affection in it, which, notwithstanding its indistinctness, has yet a distant analogy to knowledge.

Considerations such as these have hitherto served me as evidence of the Will in all things ; but I now employ them as showing the sphere to which Knowledge proves itself to belong when regarded, not in the usual manner from within, but realistically as a foreign object from an out- side standpoint, i. The same office which is performed for animals and men by knowledge as the medium of motives, is performed for plants by sensibility to stimulus, and for inorganic bodies by susceptibility to causes of every kind ; and in each case the difference is, strictly speaking, one of degree only.

For it is only because the animal's needs have raised its susceptibility to outer impressions to a point at which a nervous system and brain must perforce develop themselves for the satis- faction of these needs, that there arises, as a function of this brain, consciousness, and in it the objective world, 1 I. We thus find know- ledge to be originally calculated entirely for the subjec- tive — to be determined merely for the service of the Will, and consequently of a quite secondary and subordinate character ; nay, as if it only entered per accidens, so to speak, as the condition of the influence of bare motives instead of stimuli — this influence becoming necessary at the stage of animality.

The picture of the world in space and time which now comes into being, is merely a field on which motives exhibit themselves as ends: But what a leap it would be to take this picture of the world which thus accidentally arises in the intellect, i. Surely this assumption would seem to be in the highest degree over-hasty and presumptuous, and yet it is the foundation whereon all the systems of nre - Kantian Dogmatism are reared ; for it is taken for granted in all their ontology, cosmology, and theology, as well as in the ceterna veritates to which these appeal.

But this leap was always taken tacitly and unconsciously: For the latter takes the subjective for its standpoint, and regards consciousness as given ; but from consciousness itself and its a priori ordering, the conclusion is reached that all that takes place in it can be nothing but mere appearance. We, on the contrary, from our outside realistic standpoint, which takes the objective, the beings in Nature, as the absolutely given, see what the intellect is so far as its aims and origin are concerned, and to what class of phenomena it belongs ; and hence we know a priori that it must be confined to mere appearances, and that what exhibits itself in it can never be other than something which in the main is subjectively conditioned, i.

For in the system of Nature we have found the faculty of knowledge to be a conditioned thing, and its statements can for this very reason never have unconditioned validity. On rising from the perusal of the Critique of Pure Reason, to which our standpoint is essentially foreign, the student who has understood it will, however, still feel as if Nature had purposely designed the intellect for a puzzle-glass, and as though she were playing hide and seek with us.

But we, on our realistic-objective path, i. Our objective standpoint is a realistic and therefore condi- tioned one, inasmuch as, taking the beings in Nature as given, it omits to take account of the fact that their objec- tive existence presupposes an intellect whose presentment they are in the first instance ; but Kant's subjective and idealistic standpoint is likewise conditioned, inasmuch as with him a start is made from the intelligence, which, however, itself presupposes Nature, for it is only in con- sequence of having pushed development so far as to reach animal existences that intelligence was able to enter.

Holding fast to this realistic-objective stand- point of ours, we may say of Kant's doctrine that after Locke, in order to know things-in-themselves, had with- drawn from things-as-they-appear the contribution made by the functions of sense, the secondary qualities as he called them, Kant with far greater acumen withdrew that much more considerable contribution made by the cere- bral function, viz. For instance, I said above that where knowledge exists, the motive that appears as presentment and the resulting volition are distinguished one from the other the more distinctly the more perfect the intellect is, i.

In explanation of this I would say: In the lowest animal intelligences of all, such as the Radiaria, Acalepha, and Acephala, etc. Consequently the sense- organs are here very imperfect and incomplete, for they only have to afford to an embryonic understanding exces- sively few perceptual data. As we ascend in the series of animals, the senses become more numerous and more perfect, until we get all five: To this develop- ment of the senses corresponds that of the brain, and its function, the understanding: Still, apprehension never goes beyond what is required for the service of the Will: Even the cleverer animals see in objects only that which concerns them, i.

But to everything else they are insusceptible: Only in the very cleverest animals, that have been educated by taming, do we sometimes see the first weak traces of disinterested contemplation of their surroundings: But not until we come to man is there complete separation between motive and action, presentment and Will. This, however, does not at once abolish the servitude of the intellect to the Will. The ordinary man still clearly apprehends in things only that which directly or indirectly has some connexion with him, interest for him: Whatever he may do, he remains a stranger to philosophic wonderment and artistic rapture ; at bottom everything appears to him to be a matter of course.

The pure objectivity and distinctness with which things present themselves in perceivance that fundamental and most essential kind of knowledge is always in inverse propor- tion to the interest taken in these things by the Will, and will-less knowing is the condition — nay, the very essence of all aesthetic apprehension. Why is this landscape by an ordinary painter so bad, notwithstanding all the trouble he has taken with it? Because to his eyes it is not more beautiful. And why is that? Because his intellect is not sufficiently separated from his Will. The amount of this separation sets great intellectual differences between man and man ; for knowledge is the purer, and conse- quently the more objective and correct, just in proportion as it has freed itself from the Will ; as that fruit is best which has no taste of the soil in which it grew.

So important and interesting is this matter that it is worth while to make it plainer by casting our eye over the whole scale of beings, thus representing to ourselves the gradual transition from the unconditionally subjec- tive to the highest degree of objectivity of the intellect. We have the unconditionally subjective in inorganic Nature, in which there is as yet not the smallest trace of any consciousness of the outside world.

Stones, stocks, blocks of ice, even if they fall upon one another, or knock or rub against each other, have no consciousness of each other or of an external world. And yet they too experi- ence an influence from without, which varies according to their position and movement, and may therefore be regarded as the first step towards consciousness. Again, though plants have no consciousness of the external world, and the mere analogon of a consciousness that is present in them can only be conceived as a dim feeling of self-enjoyment ; yet we see them all seeking the light, many of them daily turning their flowers or leaves to 62 THE WILL IN NATURE the sun, climbers making their way to a support which is not in contact with them, and some species exhibiting even a kind of irritability.

Unquestionably, therefore, there is a connective relation between their environment even when they are not in actual contact with it and their movements, and this relation we must accordingly recognise as a weak analogue of perception. Not, how- ever, until we come to animals do we find decided percep- tion, i. This is the distinguishing charac- teristic of animality as contrasted with plant-nature. In the lowest classes of animals this consciousness of the outside world is very limited and dim: But even here the clearness of consciousness still has innumerable grades, ranging from that of the stupidest blockhead to that of the genius.

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In ordinary minds the objective perception of external objects has still a considerable tinge of subjec- tivity, and knowing continues to show that it exists merely for the behoof of willing. The more eminent the mind, the more it loses this trace of subjectivity, and the more purely objective is the presentation of the outside world, until at last in the genius it reaches perfect objectivity, by means of which the Platonic ideas emerge from the particular things, because that which apprehends them has now risen to be pure subject of knowing.

It is no doubt from contemplation of the two extremes of the long ladder of intelligence, as here set forth, that the hyperbolical expression " block " or " blockhead" Klotz , as applied to men, has arisen. But this separation of intellect from Will, and conse- quently of motive from action — a separation which first appears distinctly in man — leads to a consequence of another kind, viz. When causes produce their effect in inorganic objects, and when stimuli produce theirs in plants, the causal nexus is so simple that there is not the smallest appearance of freedom. But in animal life — where that which up to now was cause or stimulus appears as motive, and consequently a second world, the world of presentment, comes into existence, and the cause lies in one sphere, the effect in another — the causal nexus between the two, and with it the necessity, is no longer so evident as it was in the other cases.

Nevertheless in the animal, whose merely perceptual presentment lies midway between the organic functions proceeding from stimulus and the deliberate action of man, it is still always unmistakable: For to observation from without this motivation by concepts stamps all his movements with the impress of intention, and they thus win an appearance of independence which manifestly distin- guishes them from those of the animal — though the only proper conclusion to draw from this testimony is, that man is actuated by a class of presentments not shared by animals: All this, to which must be added the consciousness of that genuine freedom that attaches to the Will as thing-in-itself and outside the appearance, makes it look as if the particular volition were itself entirely independent and free, i.

Intra duo cibi distanti e moventi 1 The reference is to Buridan'a ass placed between two bundles of hay. All the more gratifying, then, was it to me to find that a distinguished empiricist, vanquished by the might of Truth, had even been led to proclaim this paradoxical proposition in a dissertation on his own science. The empiricist in question is Sir John Herschel, and the book his Treatise on Astronomy, which appeared in and was republished in an enlarged form in with the title Outlines of Astronomy. Herschel, then — who, as an astronomer, knows gravity not merely from the one-sided and really crude part it plays on earth, but from the nobler role it assumes in infinite space, where heavenly bodies sport with each other, betray inclination, and as it were exchange amorous glances, though never driving matters so far as coarse contact, but, keeping due distance, decorously dance their minuet to the music of 1 Betwixt wo meats that equally invite, And placed at equal distance, a free man Would die of hunger ere he stretched a hand To either.

All bodies with which we are acquainted, when raised into the air and quietly abandoned, descend to the earth's surface in lines perpendicular to it. They are therefore urged thereto by a force or effort, the direct or indirect result of a consciousness and a Will existing somewhere, though beyond our power to trace, which force we term Gravity. Herschel evidently saw that if we are not to explain Gravity in Descartes' way as an impulse from without, nothing is left for us but to assume a Will dwelling in bodies.

He justly remarks that here there is evidently no reference to the Will of Almighty God, the creator of matter with all its proper- ties, and altogether refuses to allow the statement, saying that it does not follow from the preceding section, from which Herschel professes to derive it. I am of opinion that it certainly would follow from this section because the origin of a concept determines its content , although the proposition contained therein is false. For it asserts that the concept of causality originates in experience, and in that particular kind of experience which we have when we act upon external bodies by an effort of our own.

Only in countries like England, where the day of the Kantian philosophy has not yet dawned — I leave out of account the [German] Professors of philosophy, who fling Kant's 1 There is no third supposition possible. This proof differs from Kant's in toto, and is based upon the fact that know- ledge of causality is the necessary antecedent condition of our perceivance of the outside world, which perceivance is due solely to the understanding passing from the sensa- tion in the organ of sense to its cause, which then exhibits itself as an object in Space, this Space itself being also immediately perceived a priori.

Now as the perceivance of objects must precede our conscious operation upon them, experience of this operation cannot originate the concept of causality ; for before I operate on things, they must have operated on me, as motives. The whole of this subject has been discussed at length in the fourth chapter of the Supplements to my chief work, pp. But even empirically this hypo- thesis may be refuted, for it would follow from it that a person born without arms or legs could obtain no informa- tion about causality, and would consequently have no per- ceivance of the outside world: In what he said, therefore, Herschel only shows once more that a true conclusion may follow from false premisses: Owing to the complete mobility of all its parts, fluid matter affords a more immediate manifestation of gravity in each of them than can solid matter.

That we may share the apergu which was the true source of Herschel's pronouncement, let us therefore attentively watch the downward rush of a stream over rocks, and ask ourselves whether this decided striving and raging can go on without effort, and whether an effort without Will is con- ceivable. And just so, wherever we perceive an original and independent primary force, we are compelled to think of its inner essence as Will. This much is certain: For the rest, Herschel, like the majority of those empiricists, is here still labouring under the delusion that Will is inseparable from consciousness ; but as I have already sufficiently expatiated on this error and its correction by my doctrine, I need say no more about it.

Since the beginning of this century repeated attempts have been made to attribute life to the inorganic, but quite wrongly. Living and organic are interchangeable concepts, and with death the organic ceases to be organie. In the whole of Nature no line is so sharply drawn as that between organic and inorganic, i. On the other hand, I was the first to say that a Will must be attributed to the lifeless, the inorganic. For with me Will is not, as had hitherto been thought, an accident of knowledge and consequently of life ; but life itself is an appearance of the Will ; whereas knowledge is really an accident of life, and this of Matter.

But Matter is itself merely the perceptibility of the Will's appearances. We have therefore to recognise a willing in every striving which proceeds from — I ought rather to say, constitutes — the nature of a material being, or which manifests itself phenomenally through this nature ; and there is there- fore no Matter without manifestation of Will. The lowest, and on that account most universal manifestation of Will is gravity, which has therefore been termed a fundamental force essential to matter. In the view usually taken of Nature it is assumed that there are two radically different principles of movement, and that the movement of a body may therefore originate in two different way 8, viz.

For the movement which confessedly proceeds from the Will always presupposes a cause: On the other hand, the movement of a body admittedly resulting from an external cause is in itself nevertheless a manifestation of its Will, which is simply called forth by the cause. Accordingly there is only one single, uniform, universal, and unexceptive principle of all movement: All that element in things which is known only empirically, only a posteriori, is in itself Will ; whereas, so far as things are determinable a priori, they belong to the presentment alone, to the mere appearance.

Hence the appearances in Nature are the less intelligible in proportion as the Will manifests itself more plainly in them, i. Accordingly we only have perfect and thorough understanding of things so long as we keep entirely to this sphere, i. In these all is in the highest degree comprehensible, our insight into them is perfectly clear and sufficient and leaves nothing to be desired ; for it is impossible even to conceive that things might be otherwise — all this being the result of our having to do here solely with the forms of our own intellect.

Thus the more intelligible things are, the more do they consist in the mere appearance, and the less have they to do 1 The science which treats of matter as the movable in space. Applied Mathematics — i. For the same reason certain parts only of Physics and Chemistry admit of mathe- matical treatment, and higher up in the scale of being8 Mathematics has to be entirely discarded, just because the content of the appearance here outweighs the form. This content is Will, the a posteriori, 1 the thing-in-itself, the free, the underived. In the chapter on the Physio- logy of Plants I have shown how, in living and percipient beings, motive and volition, mental-picturing and willing, are ever more clearly separated as we rise in the hierarchy of beings.

And just so in the inorganic kingdom the cause separates itself ever more from the effect in pro- portion as the purely empirical, which is just the appear- ance of the Will, comes ever more plainly to the front ; but as it does so, intelligibility gets ever less. This subject merits closer investigation, and I beg the reader to give his undivided attention to what follows ; for it is calculated to place the fundamental thought of my doctrine in the clearest light both in respect of compre- hensibility and conclusiveness. This is all that I can do ; but to lead my contemporaries to prefer thought to verbiage is not in my power ; my consolation lies, how- ever, in this — that I am not the man of my time [but of the future].

At the lowest grade of Nature cause and effect are entirely homogeneous and similar, and for this reason we here get the most complete understanding of causal 1 I. For instance, the movement of a ball that is struck is caused by the movement of another ball, which loses as much motion as the other receives. Here causality is at its plainest, and the only mystery is the possibility of the transference of motion — an incorporeal thing — from one body to another. The susceptibility of bodies in this mode is so small that the effect to be produced must pass over entirely from the cause.

This is true of all purely mechanical effects, and if we do not understand them all as instantaneously as we do in the case just given, it is only because coincident circum- stances hide them from us, or because we are puzzled by the complex conjunction of many causes and effects: But the moment weights are introduced, there is added a second mysterious element, Gravity ; and if we are dealing with elastic bodies, a third, viz. As we ascend somewhat on the scale of appearances, things already assume a different aspect.

A raised temperature as cause, and, as effect, expansion, lique- faction, evaporation, or crystallisation, are not homo- geneous: A substance liquefied by a slight degree of heat will, with a greater, be volatilatised ; another, which under slight heat will be crystallised, will be melted if more is applied. Heat makes wax soft ; clay, hard. Light makes wax white ; chloride of silver, black. Further, if two salts decompose one another and two new ones are formed, the elective affinity that here displays itself is a deep mystery to us, and the qualities of the two new PHYSICAL ASTRONOMY 73 bodies are not an amalgam of those of their constituents taken by themselves, though we can still follow their combination and show what the new bodies came from, and can also separate the combined substances again and get back the same quantity of each.

Thus we here encounter marked heterogeneity and incommensurability between cause and effect ; causality has become more mysterious. Still more is this the case when we compare the effects of electricity, or of the Voltaic pile, with their causes — the friction of glass in the first case, and the superimposition and oxidation of plates in the second.

Here all similarity between cause and effect has dis- appeared: Only the laws of electrical effects can be discovered and tabulated: Here, then, cause and effect are com- pletely heterogeneous, their connexion is unintelligible, and all that we know is that bodies show great suscepti- bility to a causal influence whose inner nature remains a secret. It seems as though the higher we rise on the scale, the more there is in the effect and the less in the cause. Still more will this be the case when we rise to the organic kingdom, with its phenomenon of life.

If, as they do in China, we dig a trench, fill it with decaying wood, and cover this with leaves from the same tree, pouring in a solution of saltpetre every now and then, the result is a large crop of edible mushrooms. Hay soaked in water produces a world of rapidly-moving infusoria.

Between the seed, hundreds and even thousands of years old, and the tree ; between the mould of the earth and the specific and so marvellously differ- ing saps of the countless plants — wholesome, poisonous, nutritious — which one soil bears, one sun warms, one rain waters, there is no longer any similarity, and we are at a loss to understand it all. For causality here appears at a higher power, viz. Only the schema 1 of cause and effect remains: And not only is there here no qualitative resemblance between cause and effect, but there is no quantitative relation either: When at last we come to the sphere of knowing beings, there is no resemblance or relation whatever between the action and the object which, as presentment, provokes it.

Meanwhile in the animal, which is confined to perceptual presentments, the presence of the object that acts as motive is necessary, and this object then — training, i. This man can do. In the rational being the motive is no longer something present, perceptual, existing, real, but a mere concept, having its present existence only in the brain of the agent, though drawn from many perceivances of different kinds, from the 1 General outline. The separation between cause and effect has now become so immensely wide, and the effect in relation to the cause has grown so great, that it seems to the untutored understanding as if there were no longer any cause present — as if the act of Will depended on nothing, were groundless, i.

It is just this that makes the movements of our body, when we con- template them reflectively from without, look as if they were uncaused and wear the appearance of an actual miracle. It is only experience and reflection that teach us that these movements, like all others, are impossible without a cause, here called " motive," and that, in our ascent through the scale of beings, the cause has only remained behind the effect in material reality, whereas in dynamical reality, in energy, it has kept even step with it.

Thus at this grade, the highest in Nature, we have less understanding of causality than ever. Nothing now remains but the mere general schema, whose applicability and necessity here as elsewhere can only be recognised by the ripest reflec- tion. But as the passenger through the grotto of Posilipo 1 plunges deeper and deeper into the darkness, until, after passing the middle of the tunnel, the gleam from the further end begins to lighten his steps ; so here, just when the outwardly directed light of the understanding with its form of causality , overborne ever more and more by darkness, diffuses at last nothing but a feeble and uncertain glimmer, it is met by an illumination of quite another kind from an altogether different quarter, from our own breast, through the accidental circumstance 1 A tunnel through a hill on the outskirts of Naples, through which the roadway passes.

For outer perceivance, and for the understanding whose function this perceivance is, the increasing difficulty of comprehending the causal connexion, which at first was so clear, had gradually become so great that in the actions of the animal we had at last been almost in doubt whether such a con- nexion existed, and had been tempted to regard them as a kind of miracle ; but just at this moment there comes from quite another quarter, from the very self of the observer, the immediate information that the agent in such actions is the Will — that Will which to him is better and more familiarly known than anything that outer perceivance can ever furnish.

This knowledge alone it is that affords the philosopher insight into the essence of all those processes of unconscious Nature, in which the causal explanation was, it is true, more satisfy- ing than in those last considered, and clearer in propor- tion to the lowness of grade of the thing contemplated, although in the lowest there still remained an unknown x ; and even in the body moved by impact, or drawn downwards by gravity, the essence of the process was never quite clear.

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But as we went up the scale of beings this x loomed ever larger, and finally, at the highest grade, drove the causal explanation completely away ; when lo! After this thorough exposition the reader can hardly fail to recognise the identity of this x at all stages — whether in the lowest where it is so unob- trusive, or higher up where its shadow creeps more and more over things, or in the highest where it darkens everything and we reach at last the final point where in PHYSICAL ASTRONOMY 77 our own appearance 1 it announces itself to self-conscious- ness as Will.

The two aboriginally different sources of our knowledge, the outer and the inner, must be conjoined at this point by reflection. Only by such conjunction can Nature and our own self be understood ; but, when effected, the inner essence of Nature is dis- closed to our intellect, which by itself can only appre- hend external things, and the secret which Philosophy has so long been seeking lies open. For then we see clearly what is properly the real the thing-in-itself , and what the ideal the appearance ; and thus is settled the chief question round which Philosophy has revolved since the days of Descartes — the question as to the relation of those two things whose total diversity Kant's incomparable wisdom so conclusively demonstrated, and whose absolute identity was immediately afterwards proclaimed by windbags on the faith of "intellectual intuition.

People will have it, as I said above, that there are two fundamentally different original principles of movement, between which a great gulf is set — movement from causes and move- ment from Will. On this supposition the former remains, as to its inmost essence, for ever unintelligible ; for no explanation can eliminate that insoluble x, which becomes greater as the object contemplated stands higher on the scale of beings; while the latter, the 1 Erscheinung ; phenomenon or object of sense, as opposed to noumenon or thing-in-itself; sensibly-perceived object; empirically-given object; thing as existing for us.

First, I say, we recognise the essence of causality as identical in the various forms it has to assume at different grades, wherein it shows itself 1 as mechanical, chemical, and physical cause, 2 as stimulus, 3 as perceptual motive, 4 as abstract or purely mental motive: Where we ourselves are the thing moved, where therefore the inner nature of the process is intimately and thoroughly known — instead of being dazzled and bewildered by this inner light, thus becoming blind to the causal connexion that lies before us in all the other departments of Nature and debarred for ever from gaining insight into it, we shall employ the new knowledge derived from within and use it as a key to outer phenomena, and so recognise the second identity, the identity of our Will with that hitherto unknown x which remains over in all causal explanation.

And we shall then say: Even where the effect is the result of the most palpable cause, the mysterious x which is even there present, the real inner essence of the process, the true agent, the in-itself of PHYSICAL ASTRONOMY 79 this appearance — which, after all, is given to us as nothing but presentment and according to the forms and laws of the presentment — is essentially identical with that which in the actions of our body — a thing likewise given to us as perceivance and presentment — is inti- mately and immediately known to us as Will.

This — little as you may relish being told so [, ye Pro- fessors of philosophy] — is the basis of true philosophy: Tempo e galantuomo se nessan' altro I 1 As then, on the one hand, we recognise the essence of causality — which is plainest only at the lowest grades of the Will's objectification i. The old error says: Where there is Will, there is no longer any causality, and where there is causality, there is no Will.

Wherever there is causality, there is Will, and no Will acts without causality.