THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

SCHOPENHAUER 239
repulsion and attraction, combination and decomposition, magnetism and
electricity, gravity and crystallization, are Will 43 Goethe expressed this
idea in the title of one of his novels, when he called the irresistible attrac-
tion of lovers die Wakluerwandschaften "elective affinities." The force
which draws the lover, and the force which draws the planet, are one.
So in plant life. The lower we go among the forms of life the smaller
we find the role of intellect; but not so with will.
That which in us pursues its ends by the light of knowledge, but here . . .
only strives blindly and dumbly in a one-sided and unchangeable manner,
must yet in both cases come under the name of Will. . . . Unconsciousness
is the original and natural condition of all things, and therefore also the
basis from which, in particular species of beings, consciousness results as their
highest efflorescence; wherefore even then unconsciousness always continues
to predominate. Accordingly, most existences are without consciousness; but
yet they act according to the laws of their nature, i. e., of their will.
Plants have at most a very weak analogue of consciousness; the lowest species
of animals only the dawn of it. But even after it has ascended through the
whole series of animals to man and his reason, the unconsciousness of plants,
from which it started, still remains the foundation, and may be traced in
the necessity for sleep. 50
Aristotle was right: there is a power within that moulds every form, in
plants and planets, in animals and men. "The instinct of animals in general
gives us the best illustration of what remains of teleology in nature.
For as instinct is an action similar to that which is guided by the conception
of an end, and yet is entirely without this; so all construction in
nature resembles that which is guided by the conception of an end, and
yet is entirely without it." 51 The marvelous mechanical skill of animals
shows how prior the will is to the intellect. An elephant which had been
led through Europe, and had crossed hundreds of bridges, refused to ad-
horses and men
vance upon a weak bridge, though it had seen many
crossing it. A young dog fears to jump down from the table; it foresees
the effect of the fall not by reasoning (for it has no experience of such a
fall) but by instinct. Orang-outangs warm themselves by a fire which they
find, but they do not feed the fire; obviously, then, such actions are in-
stinctive, and not the result of reasoning; they are the expression not of
intellect but of will. 52
The will, of course, is a will to live, and a will to maximum life. How
dear life is to all living things! and with what silent it patience will bide
its time! "For thousands of years galvanism slumbered in copper and zinc,
and they lay quietly beside silver, which must be consumed in flame as
soon as all three are brought together under the required conditions. Even
in the organic kingdom we see a dry seed preserve the slumbering force of
life through three thousand years, and A when at last the favorable circum-