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272 THE WILL IN NATURE.
Everywhere indeed intelligence depends in the first in
stance upon the cerebral system, and this stands in a ne
cessary relation to the rest of the organism ;
therefore cold
blooded animals are greatly inferior to warm-blooded ones,
and invertebrate animals to vertebrata. But the organism is
precisely nothing but the will become visible, to which, as
that which is absolutely prius, everything constantly refers.
The needs and aims of that will give in each phenomenon
the rule for the means to be employed, and these means
must harmonize with one another. Plants have no self-
consciousness because they have no power of locomotion ;
for of what use would self-consciousness be to them unless
it enabled them to seek what was salutary and flee what
was noxious to them ? And conversely, of what use could
power of locomotion be to them, as they have no self-con
sciousness with which to guide it. The inseparable duality
of Sensibility and Irritability does not yet appear there
fore in the plant ; they continue slumbering in the repro
ductive force which is their fundament, and in which alone
the will here objectifies itself. The sun-flower, and every
but as yet their movement to
other plant, wills for light ;
wards light is not separate from their apprehension of it,
and both coincide with their growth. Human understand
ing, which is so superior to that of all other beings, and is
assisted by Eeason (the faculty for non-perceptible repre
sentations, i.e. for conceptions ;
reflection, is nevertheless only just
thinking faculty),
proportionate, partly to Man s
requirements, which greatly surpass those of animals and
multiply to infinity ; partly to his entire lack of all natural
weapons and covering, and to his relatively weaker mus
cular strength, which is greatly inferior to that of monkeys
l
of his own size ; lastly also, to the slowness with which his
gence compared with that of other human races j though this by no means
justifies the fact. [Add. to 3rd ed.]
1 As is likewise his capacity for escaping from his pursuers ; fbr in