We have then in this chapter obtained the following results:—Instinct is not the result of conscious reflection—not a consequence of bodily organisation—not mere result of a mechanism founded in the organisation of the brain—not the effect of a dead, and essentially foreign mechanism, externally adhering to the mind—but the individual’s own activity, springing from his inmost nature and character. The end, to which a definite kind of instinctive action is subservient, is not conceived once for all by a mind standing outside the individual like a providence, and the necessity to act conformably thereto externally thrust upon the individual as something foreign to him; but the end of the instinct is in each single case unconsciously willed and imagined by the individual, and the choice of means suitable to each special case unconsciously made. Frequently the knowledge of the purpose of the unconscious cognition is not at all ascertainable by sense-perception. Then the characteristic attribute of the Unconscious is shown in the clairvoyant intuition, of which there is an echo in Consciousness as presentiment, either feeble and evanescent, or, as in the case of man in particular, more or less distinct; whilst the instinctive action itself, the adoption of the means to the unconscious end, is always vividly realised in consciousness, because otherwise correct execution would be impossible. Lastly, clairvoyance is manifested also in the co-operation of several individuals for a common unconscious end.
Clairvoyance has hitherto been an incomprehensible empirical fact, and it might be objected: “I would rather put up with instinct as an incomprehensible fact.” To this it is replied, firstly, that we find clairvoyance also apart from Instinct (especially in man); secondly, that clairvoyance is far from occurring in all instincts; that thus instinct and clairvoyance are empirically given as two distinct facts, in which perhaps clairvoyance may serve to explain instinct, but not conversely; and, lastly, in the third place, that the clairvoyance of the individual will not be found to be so incomprehensible a fact, but will, in the sequel of the investigation, receive a sufficient explanation, whereas the comprehension of instinct in every other way must be foregone.
The conception here worked out is the only one which enables us to comprehend instinct as the inmost core of every being; that it really is so is shown by the impulse of self-preservation and race-maintenance, which pervades the whole creation, by the heroic spirit of sacrifice, with which the well-being of the individual, nay, life itself, is offered as a sacrifice to instinct. Look at the caterpillar, which continues to mend its web till it succumbs through weakness; at the bird, which dies of exhaustion in laying its eggs; at the restlessness and grief of all migratory animals when prevented from migrating. An imprisoned cuckoo always dies in the winter from despair at not being able to depart; the vineyard snail, also, if denied its winter sleep. The weakest animal, when a mother, accepts the struggle with the strongest opponent, and cheerfully suffers death for its young; an unsuccessful human lover becomes crazed, or commits suicide, as is evidenced by ever-fresh victims. A woman, on whom the Cæsarean section had once been successfully performed, was so little deterred from further sexual intercourse by the certain prospect of a repetition of this fearful and generally fatal operation, that she afterwards thrice underwent the same operation. And we are to believe that such a demonic power is exercised by something engrafted on the mind as a mechanism foreign to our being’s core, or through a conscious reflection which rarely advances beyond a bald egoism, and which is altogether incapable of such sacrifices for the race as are exemplified in the procreative and maternal instincts!
In conclusion, we have still to consider the question how it happens that instincts are so uniform within an animal species, a circumstance which has not a little contributed to strengthen the view of the engrafted spiritual mechanism. It is, however, evident that like causes have like effects, whence such a phenomenon is explained of itself. For in any animal species the fundamental corporeal structure is the same, also the faculties and development of the conscious understanding (which is not the case with man, nor to a certain extent with the highest animals, to which their greater individuality is in part due). The external conditions of life are likewise tolerably the same, and so far as they are essentially different, the instincts also are different—a point which hardly requires any illustration (cf. pp. 79, 80). But from similar mental and bodily constitutions (under which like cerebral and ganglionic predispositions are comprehended) and similar external circumstances there necessarily follow, as a logical consequence, similar life-purposes; from like aims and like inner and outer circumstances follows, however, like choice of means, i.e., like instincts. The last two steps would not be granted without any limitation if one were dealing with conscious reflection, but since these logical consequences are drawn by the Unconscious, which unfailingly adopts the right course without hesitation or delay, they also always directly result from like premises. Thus even the last point which might be urged in support of opposite views is explained by our conception of instinct.
I conclude this chapter with the words of Schelling (I. vol. vii. p. 455): “There is no better touchstone of a genuine philosophy than the phenomena of animal instinct, which must be ranked among the very greatest by every thoughtful human being.”
1 When such a motive in the form of an actual perception is entirely wanting, there is wanting also the occasion for the manifestation of the premonitory instinct. Thus, e.g., when birds of passage at the usual time leave their winter quarters for the far north, they may on their arrival suffer distress by an unusually late spring, of which, of course, in a spot many hundreds of miles away, they could not have had even the slightest intimation through atmospheric influences.
IV.
THE UNION OF WILL AND IDEA.
IN every volition the change into another state than the present is willed. A present state is always given, even if it be pure rest; from this present state alone, however, willing could never arise unless there were the possibility, at least the ideal possibility, of something else. The one state, which should really and ideally allow of nothing else, would be complete in itself, without being able to pass out of itself, even idealiter, for this passing out of itself would be already its otherness. That volition also, which wills the persistence of the present state, is only possible through the idea of the cessation of such state, which is held in aversion, thus through a double negation; without the idea of cessation, willing of persistence would be impossible. The position is impregnable, then, that for volition two things especially are necessary, of which the one is the present state, and that, too, as starting-point. The other, the end or goal of volition, cannot be the now present state, for we always possess the present out and out. Thus it would be absurd still to will it; it can at the most produce satisfaction or dissatisfaction, but not willing. It cannot, then, be an existing, but merely a non-existing state which is willed, and willed, moreover, in the form of existence. The state can only pass from non-being into being through the becoming, and if it arrives at being through the becoming, the moment hitherto called present is past, and a new present has arrived, which looked at from the former moment is still future. This former moment is, however, that of willing, consequently it is a future state, whose presentness is willed. This future state must then be contained in willing as the otherness of the now present state, and furnish volition with its end or goal, without which it is not thinkable. But now, as this future state without present existence cannot be realiter in the present act of willing, and yet must be therein in order to be possible, it must necessarily be contained in it idealiter, i.e., as representation; for the ideal is exactly the same as the real, only without reality, as conversely reality in things is that unique somewhat in them which cannot be brought about by thinking, and which exceeds their ideal content (cf. Schilling’s Works, div. i. vol. iii. p. 364). In the same way, too, the (positively thought) present state can only become the starting-point of volition so far as it enters into the idea (in the widest sense of the word). We have, th
en, in willing, two ideas—that of a present state as starting-point, that of a future state as ultimate point or goal; the former is conceived as idea of a present reality, the latter as idea of a reality still to be procured. Now will is the endeavour to procure reality, or the endeavour to pass from the state represented by the former into that represented by the latter idea. This endeavour itself does not admit of description and definition, because we are confined to the sphere of ideas, and the endeavour is, per se, something heterogeneous to the idea; one can only say of it that it is the immediate cause of change. This endeavour is the ever-identical empty form of volition, which awaits replenishing with the most varied content of imagination; and as every empty form is an abstraction without any other reality than that which it obtains by its content, so likewise this. Volition is existential or actual only through the relation between the idea of the present and future state; if this relation be abstracted, the conception, which cannot be found without it, is deprived of reality, of existence. No one can in reality merely will, without willing this or that: a will which does not will something, is not; only through the definite content does the will obtain the possibility of existence, and this content (not to be confused with motive) is, as we have seen, Idea. Therefore, NO VOLITION WITHOUT MENTAL OBJECT, as Aristotle said long ago (De An. iii. 10, 433, b. 27): .
One must, at the same time, guard against the false conclusion that, whenever one thing is proved to be contained in another thing without being contained in it realiter, the assertion is implicitly made that it must be contained in it idealiter. This would be, in fact, a logically incorrect conversion of the true proposition that the ideal is the same as the real, only without reality. That I am far from making this faulty conversion I have already given evidence, in seeking to explain memory and character by latent tendencies of the brain to particular molecular vibrations, and in that I look upon volition as actual manifestation of power, that is, of the will. The former, namely, are quiescent material states (definitely related positions of atoms), which may perhaps be looked upon as the realisation of an idea implicitly containing future states within it, but can never themselves be called ideal (cf. Ges. philos. Abhandlungen, No. II. pp. 35–37); the latter, on the contrary (the potentiality of volition), is only the formal condition of actuality in general without any definite content. Volition, abstracted from its content, is potentially possible, but thus it is also only the purely formal side of the definite act of will. The content itself of this act of will is never to be conceived otherwise than as representation or idea; for volition is not anything material, in whose stationary parts future differences might be predetermined by certain spatial relations, but it is something immaterial, and the not yet existent future to be realised by it must consequently be contained in it in an immaterial manner. But further, the content of will is always thoroughly definite, only in this way and not otherwise attaining realisation, thus not to be characterised as potentiality, which would only express the formal condition of realisation in general, but not the definite “What” of such realisation. Without a fully determinate content of the yet non-existent reality, no realisation would be possible, because infinitely diverse possibilities remain open. This determinateness of content of a something not yet really existing, which at the same time is to be given immaterially, is now by no means to be thought otherwise than as ideal determinateness, i.e., as representation. This condition is immediately known to us in conscious volition, and introspection can at any moment assure us that that which is willed is before its realisation nothing else than idea of an object.
But the naturalness and self-evidence of this relation between will and idea (as the two poles about which the whole life of the mind turns), and the impossibility of finding any substitute for the idea as content of will (i.e., as immaterial, not yet realised determinateness of volition), constrain us to assume that the whole content of will is idea, no matter whether the will and idea be conscious or unconscious. In assuming will we assume idea as its determining and distinguishing content, and whoever refuses to recognise the ideal (unconscious) content of representation as the What and How determinative of action must, to be consistent, also refuse to speak of an unconscious will as the inner cause of the phenomenon. This simple consideration exposes the singular defectiveness of the system of Schopenhauer, in which the Idea is by no means recognised as the sole and exclusive content of Will, but a false and subordinate position is assigned it, whilst the maimed and blind Will nevertheless altogether comports itself as if it had a notional or ideal content.1 But whoever, like Bahnsen, e.g., denies that the will as potentiality of volition is something purely formal and absolutely empty—whoever sees in it, instead of an attribute of the all-one substance common to all beings, an individual essence subsisting and existing a se and per se—has only the alternative (if discontented with a postulated nondescript defying human comprehension), either to define the characteristic essence of this individual potency itself as ideal determination (thus merely needlessly transferring the completing idea from volition to the pure Will), or to go over entirely to Materialism, i.e., to surrender the will as metaphysical principle, and to make it identical with the parts of the brain prearranged in this or that way, whose function then would be volition.
It may be advisable to touch here, at least by way of suggestion, on a few points which are adapted to confirm the proposition, that no kind of volitional activity is possible without ideal content of representation.
First of all, it would be a gross error to deny the ideal content of volition because volition is strictly necessitated. This argument would before all things prove too much; for, in the first place, it would just as much destroy the activity of volition as the ideality of the content, if it in fact reduced the necessitated event to a dead passivity, purely outwardly determined and deprived of every self-determination from within; and, secondly, would place conscious volition in precisely the same category as the unconscious volition of a falling stone, since on the one hand the former is just as strictly determined and necessitated as the latter; on the other hand, however, the falling stone, if it had consciousness, would (according to the well-known declaration of Spinoza) believe it acted freely. The objection simply ignores the truth that there is no purely passive necessitation at all, that rather all necessitation includes autonomous activity,—autonomous because, in the way in which anything reacts against the forces influencing it, it follows the immanent laws of its own nature. This holds good of the force of gravitation of the stone which reacts on the terrestrial mass, or of the elasticity of the billiard-ball reacting against the inertia of the cushion, just as well as of the human character reacting against the conscious motives. If now we view the physical forces as will-forces, we cannot avoid regarding as an ideal determination the internal determination of the same by the immanent laws of the particular stage of the objectified will, which in every case is the necessary prius of real activity, i.e., the content of volition before completed realisation, in this case also as Presentation (cf. C. Chap. v.)
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