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238 THE WILL IN NATURE.
recognised object, as soon therefore as it has passed
through the medium of knowledge, we all recognise the
will at once to "be the active principle, and call it by its
right name. Yet it is no less active in those inner pro
cesses which have preceded such outward actions as their
conditions : in those, for instance, which create and main
tain organic life and its substratum ; and the circulation
of the blood, secretion, digestion, &c. &c., are its work
likewise. But just because the will was only recognised
as the active principle in those cases in which it abandons
the individual whence it proceeds, in order to direct itself
towards the outer world now presenting itself pre
cisely for this end, as perception knowledge has been
taken for its essential condition, its sole element, nay,
as the substance of which it consists : and hereby was
perpetrated the been.
greatest varepov Trporepov that has ever
But before all things we must learn to distinguish will
[TFiZZe] (voluntas) from free-will [Willkulir] (arbttrium) 1
and to understand that the former can subsist without the
latter; this however presupposes my whole philosophy.
The will is called free-will when it is illumined by know
ledge, therefore when the causes which move it are motives :
that is, representations. Objectively speaking this means:
when the influence from outside which causes the act,
has a brain for its mediator. A motive may be defined
1
By this Schopenhauer means the distinction between the will in its
widest sense, regarded as the fundamental essence of all that happens,
even where there is no choice, even where it is unconscious, and
conscious will, implying deliberation and choice, commonly called free
will. We must however carefully guard against confounding this relative
free-will, with absolute free-will (libcmm arbitrium indiffcrentics), which
Schopenhauer declares to be inadmissible. The sense in which I have
used the expression free-will throughout this treatise, is that of rela
tive freedom, i.e. power to choose between different motives, free of all
outward restraint ( Willkuhr). (Tr.)