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292 THE WILL IN NATURE.
as the merely intuitive faculty of representation raises the
brute above the plant. Now beings which, like plants,
have no faculty for representation, are called unconscious,
and we conceive this condition as only slightly differing
from non-existence ; since the only existence such beings
have, is in the consciousness of others, as the representation
of those others. They are nevertheless not wanting in
what is primary in existence, the will, but only in what is
secondary ; still, what is primary and this is after all the
existence of the thing in itself appears to us, without
that secondary element, to pass over into nullity. We are*
unable directly and clearly to distinguish unconscious exis
tence from non-existence, although we have our own ex
perience of it in deep sleep.
Bearing in mind, according
to the contents of the last
chapter, that the faculty of knowing, like every other organ,
has only arisen for the purpose of self-preservation, and
that it therefore stands in a precise relation, admitting
of countless gradations, to the requirements of each
animal species; we shall understand that plants, having
so very much fewer requirements than animals, no
longer need any knowledge at all. On this account pre
cisely, as I have often said, knowledge is the true charac
teristic which denotes the limits of animality, because of the
movement induced by motives which it conditions. Where
animal life ceases, there knowledge proper, with whose
essence our own experience has made us familiar, disap
pears ; and henceforth analogy is our only way of making
that which mediates between the influence of the outer world
and the movements of beings intelligible to us. The will,
on the other hand, which we have recognised as being the
basis and kernel of every existing thing, remains one and
the same at all times and in all places. Now, in the lower
degree occupied by plant-life and by the vegetative life of
animal organisms, it is the stimulus which takes the place