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236 THE WILL IN NATURE.
1 "
and dignity as a visitor at the house of the body. Truth
lies at the bottom of a well," said Democritus ; and the
centuries with a sigh, have repeated his words. But small
wonder, if it gets a rap on the knuckles as soon as it tries
to come out !
The fundamental truth of my doctrine, which places
that doctrine in opposition with all others that have ever
existed, is the complete separation between the will and
the intellect, which all philosophers before me had looked
upon as inseparable ; or rather, I ought to say that they
had regarded the will as conditioned by, nay, mostly even
as a mere function of, the intellect, assumed by them to be
the fundamental substance of our spiritual being. But this
separation, this analysis into two heterogeneous elements,
of the ego or soul, which had so long been deemed an indi
visible unity, is, for philosophy, what the analysis of water
has been for chemistry, though it may take time to be ac
knowledged. With me, that which is eternal and inde
structible in man, therefore, that which constitutes his vital
principle, is not the soul, but if I may use a chemical term
its radical : and this is the will. The so-called soul is
already a compound
intellect (VOVQ). This intellect is the secondary element, the
: it is the union of the will and the
posterius of the organism and, as a mere cerebral function,
is conditioned by the organism ; whereas the will is what is
primary, the prius of the organism,
which is conditioned
by it. For the will is that tiling in itself, which only be
comes apparent as an organic body in our representation
(that mere function of the brain) : it is only through the
forms of knowledge (or cerebral function), that is, only in
our representation not apart from that representation, not
immediately in our self-consciousness that our body is
given to each of us as a thing which has extension, limbs
1 Iii which it is lodged in the garret. [Add. to 3rd ed.]