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COMPARATIVE ANATOMY. 265
know the circumstances in which it has to live and from
that knowledge arise its desires, i.e. its will, from which
again spring its organs or definite embodiment ; this last
indeed with the help of generation and therefore in bound
less Time. If De Lamarck had had the courage to carry
out his theory fully, he ought to have assumed a primary
animal l
which, to be consistent, must have originally had
neither shape nor organs, and then proceeded to trans
form itself according to climate and local conditions into
myriads of animal shapes of all sorts, from the gnat to
the elephant. But this primary animal is in truth the
will to live ; as such however, it is metaphysical, not phy
sical. Most certainly the shape and organisation of each
animal species has been determined by its own will accord
ing to the circumstances in which it wished to live ; not
however as a thing physical in Time, but on the contrary
as a thing metaphysical outside Time. The will did not
proceed from the intellect, nor did the intellect exist,
together with the animal, before the will made its appear
ance as a mere accident, a secondary, or rather tertiary,
thing. It is on the contrary the will which is the prius,
the thing in itself : its phenomenon (mere representation
in the cognitive intellect and its forms of Space and Time)
is the animal, fully equipped with all its organs which
represent the will to live in those particular circumstances.
Among these organs is the intellect also knowledge itself
which, like the rest of those organs, is exactly adapted to
the mode of life of each animal; whereas, according to
De Lamarck, it is the will which arises out of knowledge.
Behold the countless varieties of animal shapes how en
;
tirely is each of them the mere image of its volition, the
evident expression of the strivings of the will which con
stitute its character ! Their difference in shape is only the
portrait of their difference in character. Ferocious animals,
1 Urthier.