THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

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THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
stretches within and \\ithout. ... As the human body generally corresponds
to the human will generally, so the Individual bodily structure corresponds to
the incli\ iclualK modified will, the character of the individual. 42
The intellect tires, the will never; the intellect needs sleep, but the
will works even in bleep. Fatigue, like pain, has its seat in the brain:
xnusck-s not connected with the cerebrum '.like the heart) never tire. 43
In sleep the brain feeds; but the will requires no food. Hence the need
for is bleep greatest in brain-workers. (This fact, however, "must not mislead
a> into extending sleep unduly; for then it loses in . . . intensity and
'" becomes mere loss of time." In ; sleep the life of man sinks to the vegetative
level, and then *"the will works according to its original and essential
nature, undisturbed from without, with no diminution of its power
which is
through the activity of the brain and the exertion of knowing,
the heaviest organic function; . . . therefore in sleep the whole power
of the will li directed to the maintenance and improvement of the organkm.
Hence all healing, all favorable crises, take place in sleep." 45 Burdach
was right \\lv-n he declared sleep to be the original state. The embryo
sleep? almost continuously, and the infant most of the time. Life is "a
struct* againt bljep: at first we win ground from it, which in the end
it recovers. Sleep is a morse! of death borrowed to keep up and renew
that part cf life \\hich ha* been exhausted by the day." 40 It is our eternal
foe: even when we are a-vake it possesses us partly. After all, what is to
be expected of heads even the wisest of which is even- night the scene
of the strangest and the most senseless dreams, and which has to take up
its meditations again on awakening from them?" 47
Will, then, is the essence of man. Now what if it is also the essence of
life in all its forms, and even of "inanimate" matter? What if will is the
long-sought-for, the long-despaired-of, "thing-in-itself," the ultimate
inner reality and secret essence of all things?
Let us try, then, to interpret the external world in terms of will. And
let us go at once to the bottom; where others have said that will is a form
of force let us say that force is a form of will. 48 To Hume's question
What is causality? we shall answer. Will. As will is the universal cause
in ourselves, so is it in things ; and unless we so understand cause as will,
causality will remain only a magic and mystic formula, really meaning-
less. Without this secret we are driven to mere occult qualities like "force,**
or "gravity," or "affinity"; we do not know what these forces are, but we
know at least a little more clearly what will is; let us say, then, that
"I, 130-141 ; II, 482. Cf. Spinoza, EMcs, III, a.
**II, 424. But is there no such thing as the satiation or exhaustion of desire? b
profound fatigue or sickness even the will to live fades.
"11,468. *H,46s.
"""Counsels and Maxims," essay "On Our Relations to Ourselves."