From all this it follows that the will objectifies itself most immediately in the blood as that which originally makes and forms the organism, perfects it by growth, and afterwards constantly maintains it, both by the regular renewal of all the parts and by the extraordinary restoration of any part that may have been injured. The first productions of the blood are its own vessels, and then the muscles, in the irritability of which the will makes itself known to self-consciousness; but with this also the heart, which is at once vessel and muscle, and therefore is the true centre and primum mobile of the whole life. But for the individual life and subsistence in the external world the will now requires two assistant systems: one to govern and order its inner and outer activity, and another for the constant renewal of the mass of the blood; thus a controller and a sustainer. It therefore makes for itself the nervous and the intestinal systems; thus the functiones animales and the functiones naturals associate themselves in a subsidiary manner with the functiones vitales, which are the most original and essential. In the nervous system, accordingly, the will only objectifies itself in an indirect and secondary way; for this system appears as a mere auxiliary organ, as a contrivance by means of which the will attains to a knowledge of those occasions, internal and external, upon which, in conformity with its aims, it must express itself; the internal occasions are received by the plastic nervous system, thus by the sympathetic nerve, this cerebrum abdominale, as mere stimuli, and the will thereupon reacts on the spot without the brain being conscious; the outward occasions are received by the brain, as motives, and the will reacts through conscious actions directed outwardly. Therefore the whole nervous system constitutes, as it were, the antenn? of the will, which it stretches towards within and without. The nerves of the brain and spinal cord separate at their roots into sensory and motory nerves. The sensory nerves receive the knowledge from without, which now accumulates in the thronging brain, and is there worked up into ideas, which arise primarily as motives. But the motory nerves bring back, like couriers, the result of the brain function to the muscle, upon which it acts as a stimulus, and the irritability of which is the immediate manifestation of the will. presumably the plastic nerves also divide into sensory and motory, although on a subordinate scale. The part which the ganglia play in the organism we must think of as that of a diminutive brain, and thus the one throws light upon the other. The ganglia lie wherever the organic functions of the vegetative system require care. It is as if there the will was not able by its direct and simple action to carry out its aims, but required guidance, and consequently control; just as when in some business a man's own memory is not sufficient, and he must constantly take notes of what he does. For this end mere knots of nerves are sufficient for the interior of the organism, because everything goes on within its own compass. For the exterior, on the other hand, a very complicated contrivance of the same kind is required. This is the brain with its feelers, which it stretches into the outer world, the nerves of sense. But even in the organs which are in communication with this great nerve centre, in very simple cases the matter does not need to be brought before the highest authority, but a subordinate one is sufficient to determine what is needed; such is the spinal cord, in the reflex actions discovered by Marshall Hall, such as sneezing, yawning, vomiting, the second half of swallowing, &c. &c. The will itself is present in the whole organism, since this is merely its visible form; the nervous system exists everywhere merely for the purpose of making the direction of an action possible by a control of it, as it were to serve the will as a mirror, so that it may see what it does, just as we use a mirror to shave by. Hence small sensoria arise within us for special, and consequently simple, functions, the ganglia; but the chief sensorium, the brain, is the great and skilfully contrived apparatus for the complicated and multifarious functions which have to do with the ceaselessly and irregularly changing external world. Wherever in the organism the nerve threads run together in a ganglion, there, to a certain extent, an animal exists for itself and shut off, which by means of the ganglion has a kind of weak knowledge, the sphere of which is, however, limited to the part from which these nerves directly come. But what actuates these parts to such quasi knowledge is clearly the will; indeed we are utterly unable to conceive it otherwise. Upon this depends the vita propria of each part, and also in the case of insects, which, instead of a spinal cord, have a double string of nerves, with ganglia at regular intervals, the capacity of each part to continue alive for days after being severed from the head and the rest of the trunk; and finally also the actions which in the last instance do not receive their motives from the brain, i.e., instinct and natural mechanical skill. Marshall Hall, whose discovery of the reflex movements I have mentioned above, has given us in this the theory of involuntary movements. Some of these are normal or physiological; such are the closing of the places of ingress to and egress from the body, thus of the sphincteres vesic? et ani(proceeding from the nerves of the spinal cord); the closing of the eyelids in sleep (from the fifth pair of nerves), of the larynx (from N. vagus) if food passes over it or carbonic acid tries to enter; also swallowing, from the pharynx, yawning and sneezing, respiration, entirely in sleep and partly when awake; and, lastly, the erection, ejaculation, as also conception, and many more. Some, again, are abnormal and pathological; such are stammering, hiccoughing, vomiting, also cramps and convulsions of every kind, especially in epilepsy, tetanus, in hydrophobia and otherwise; finally, the convulsive movements produced by galvanic or other stimuli, and which take place without feeling or consciousness in paralysed limbs, i. e., in limbs which are out of connection with the brain, also the convulsions of beheaded animals, and, lastly, all movements and actions of children born without brains. All cramps are a rebellion of the nerves of the limbs against the sovereignty of the brain; the normal reflex movements, on the other hand, are the legitimate autocracy of the subordinate officials. These movements are thus all involuntary, because they do not proceed from the brain, and therefore do not take place in accordance with motives, but follow upon mere stimuli. The stimuli which occasion them extend only to the spinal cord or the medulla oblongata, and from there the reaction directly takes place which effects the movement. The spinal cord has the same relation to these involuntary movements as the brain has to motive and action, and what the sentient and voluntary nerve is for the latter the incident and motor nerve is for the former. That yet, in the one as in the other, that which really moves is the will is brought all the more clearly to light because the involuntarily moved muscles are for the most part the same which, under other circumstances, are moved from the brain in the voluntary actions, in which their primum mobile is intimately known to us through selfconsciousness as the will. Marshall Hall's excellent book "On the diseases of the nervous System" is peculiarly fitted to bring out clearly the difference between volition and will, and to confirm the truth of my fundamental doctrine.
For the sake of illustrating all that has been said, let us now call to mind that case of the origination of an organism which is most accessible to our observation. Who makes the chicken in the egg? Some power and skill coming from without, and penetrating through the shell? Oh no! The chicken makes itself, and the force which carries out and perfects this work, which is complicated, well calculated, and designed beyond all expression, breaks through the shell as soon as it is ready, and now performs the outward actions of the chicken, under the name of will. It cannot do both at once; previously occupied with the perfecting of the organism, it had no care for without. But after it has completed the former, the latter appears, under the guidance of the brain and its feelers, the senses, as a tool prepared beforehand for this end, the service of which only begins when it grows up in self-consciousness as intellect, which is the lantern to the steps of the will, its ?γεμονικον, and also the supporter of the objective external world, however limited the horizon of this may be in the consciousness of a hen. But what the hen is now able to do in the external world, through the medium of this organ, is, as accomplished by means of something secondary, infinitely less important than what it did in its original form, for it made itself.
We became acquainted above with the cerebral nervous system as an assistant organ of the will, in which it therefore objectifies itself in a secondary manner. As thus the cerebral system, although not directly coming within the sphere of the lifefunctions of the organism, but only governing its relations to the outer world, has yet the organism as its basis, and is nourished by it in return for its services; and as thus the cerebral or animal life is to be regarded as the production of the organic life, the brain and its function, knowledge, thus the intellect, belong indirectly and in a subordinate manner to the manifestation of the will. The will objectifies itself also in it, as will to apprehend the external world, thus as will to know. Therefore great and fundamental as is the difference in us between willing and knowing, the ultimate substratum of both is yet the same, the will, as the real inner nature of the whole phenomenon. But knowing, the intellect, which presents itself in selfconsciousness entirely as secondary, is to be regarded not only as the accident of the will, but also as its work, and thus, although in a circuitous manner, is yet to be referred to it. As the intellect presents itself physiologically as the function of an organ of the body, metaphysically it is to be regarded as a work of the will, whose objectification or visible appearance is the whole body. Thus the will to know, objectively perceived, is the brain; as the will to go, objectively perceived, is the foot; the will to grasp, the hand; the will to digest, the stomach; the will to beget, the genitals, &c. This whole objectification certainly ultimately exists only for the brain, as its perception: in this the will exhibits itself as organised body. But so far as the brain knows, it is itself not known, but is the knower, the subject of all knowledge. So far, however, as in objective perception, i.e., in the consciousness of other things, thus secondarily, it is known, it belongs, as an organ of the body, to the objectification of the will. For the whole process is the self-knowledge of the will; it starts from this and returns to it, and constitutes what Kant has called the phenomenon in opposition to the thing in itself. Therefore that which is known, that which is idea, is the will; and this idea is what we call body, which, as extended in space and moving in time, exists only by means of the functions of the brain, thus only in it. That, on the other hand, which knows, which has that idea, is the brain, which yet does not know itself, but only becomes conscious of itself subjectively as intellect, i.e., as the knower. That which when regarded from within is the faculty of knowledge is when regarded from without the brain. This brain is a part of that body, just because it itself belongs to the objectification of the will, the will's will to know is objectified in it, its tendency towards the external world. Accordingly the brain, and therefore the intellect, is certainly conditioned immediately by the body, and this again by the brain, yet only indirectly, as spatial and corporeal, in the world of perception, not in itself, i.e., as will. Thus the whole is ultimately the will, which itself becomes idea, and is that unity which we express by I. The brain itself, so far as it is perceived—thus in the consciousness of other things, and hence secondarily—is only idea. But in itself, and so far as it perceives, it is the will, because this is the real substratum of the whole phenomenon; its will to know objectifies itself as brain and its functions. We may take the voltaic pile as an illustration, certainly imperfect, but yet to some extent throwing light upon the nature of the human phenomenon, as we here regard it. The metals, together with the fluid, are the body; the chemical action, as the basis of the whole effect, is the will, and the electric current resulting from it, which produces shock and spark, is the intellect. But omne simile claudicat.
Quite recently the physiatrica point of view has at last prevailed in pathology. According to it diseases are themselves a curative process of nature, which it introduces to remove, by overcoming its causes, a disorder which in some way has got into the organism. Thus in the decisive battle, the crisis, it is either victorious and attains its end, or else is defeated. This view only gains its full rationality from our standpoint, which shows the will in the vital force, that here appears as vis natur? medicatrix, the will which lies at the foundation of all organic functions in a healthy condition, but now, when disorder has entered, threatening its whole work, assumes dictatorial power in order to subdue the rebellious forces by quite extraordinary measures and entirely abnormal operations (the disease), and bring everything back to the right track. On the other hand, that the will itself is sick, as Brandis repeatedly expresses himself in his book, "Ueber die Anwendung der K?lte," which I have quoted in the first part of my essay, "Ueber den Willen in der Natur," is a gross misunderstanding. When I weigh this, and at the same time observe that in his earlier book, "Ueber die Lebenskraft," of 1795, Brandis betrayed no suspicion that this force is in itself the will, but, on the contrary, says there, page 13: "It is impossible that the vital force can be that which we only know through our consciousness, for most movements take place without our consciousness. The assertion that this, of which the only characteristic known to us is consciousness, also affects the body without consciousness is at the least quite arbitrary and unproved;" and page 14: "Haller's objections to the opinion that all living movements are the effect of the soul are, as I believe, quite unanswerable;" when I further reflect that he wrote his book, "Ueber die Anwendung der K?lte," in which all at once the will appears so decidedly as the vital force, in his seventieth year, an age at which no one as yet has conceived for the first time original fundamental thoughts; when, lastly, I bear in mind that he makes use of my exact expressions, "will and idea," and not of those which are far more commonly used by others, "the faculties of desire and of knowledge," I am now convinced, contrary to my earlier supposition, that he borrowed his fundamental thought from me, and with the usual honesty which prevails at the present day in the learned world, said nothing about it. The particulars about this will be found in the second (and third) edition of my work, "Ueber den Willen in der Natur," p. 14.
nothing is more fitted to confirm and illustrate the thesis with which we are occupied in this chapter than Bichat's justly celebrated book, "Sur la vie et la mort." His reflections and mine reciprocally support each other, for his are the physiological commentary on mine, and mine are the philosophical commentary on his, and one will best understand us both by reading us together. This refers specially to the first half of his work, entitled "Recherches physiologiques sur la vie." He makes the foundation of his expositions the opposition of the organic to the animal life, which corresponds to mine of the will to the intellect. Whoever looks at the sense, not at the words, will not allow himself to be led astray by the fact that he ascribes the will to the animal life; for by will, as is usual, he only understands conscious volition, which certainly proceeds from the brain, where, however, as was shown above, it is not yet actual willing, but only deliberation upon and estimation of the motives, the conclusion or product of which at last appears as the act of will. All that I ascribe to the will proper he ascribes to the organic life, and all that I conceive as intellect is with him the animal life: the latter has with him its seat in the brain alone, together with its appendages: the former, again, in the whole of the remainder of the organism. The complete opposition in which he shows that the two stand to each other corresponds to that which with me exists between the will and the intellect. As anatomist and physiologist he starts from the objective, that is, from the consciousness of other things; I, as a philosopher, start from the subjective, self-consciousness; and it is a pleasure to see how, like the two voices in a duet, we advance in harmony with each other, although each expresses something different. Therefore, let every one who wishes to understand me read him; and let every one who wishes to understand him, better than he understood himself, read me. Bichat shows us, in article 4, that the organic life begins earlier and ends later than the animal life; consequently, since the latter also rests in sleep, has nearly twice as long a duration; then, in articles 8 and 9, that the organic life performs everything perfectly, at once, and of its own accord; the animal life, on the other hand, requires long practice and education. But he is most interesting in the sixth article, where he shows that the animal life is completely limited to the intellectual operations, therefore goes on coldly and indifferently, while the emotions and passions have their seat in the organic life, although the occasions of them lie in the animal, i.e., the cerebral, life. Here he has ten valuable pages which I wish I could quote entire. On page 50 he says: "Il est sans doute étonnant, que les passions n'ayent jamais leur terme ni leur origine dans les divers organs de la vie animale; qu'au contraire les parties servant aux fonctions internes, soient constamment affectées par elles, et même les déterminent suivant l'état où elles se trouvent. Tel est cependant ce que la stricte observation nous prouve. Je dis d'abord que l'effet de toute espèce de passion, constamment étranger à la vie animale, est de faire na?tre un changement, une altération quelconque dans la vie organique." Then he shows in detail how anger acts on the circulation of the blood and the beating of the heart, then how joy acts, and lastly how fear; next, how the lungs, the stomach, the intestines, the liver, glands, and pancreas are affected by these and kindred emotions, and how grief diminishes the nutrition; and then how the animal, that is, the brain life, is untouched by all this, and quietly goes on its way. He refers to the fact that to signify intellectual operations we put the hand to the head, but, on the contrary, we lay it on the heart, the stomach, the bowels, if we wish to express our love, joy, sorrow, or hatred; and he remarks that he must be a bad actor who when he spoke of his grief would touch his head, and when he spoke of his mental effort would touch his heart; and also that while the learned make the so-called soul reside in the head, the common people always indicate the well-felt difference between the affections of the intellect and the will by the right expression, and speak, for example, of a capable, clever, fine head; but, on the other hand, say a good heart, a feeling heart, and also "Anger boils in my veins," "Stirs my gall," "My bowels leap with joy," "Jealousy poisons my blood," &c. "Les chants sont le langage des passions, de la vie organique, comme la parole ordinaire est celui de l'entendement, de la vie animale: la déclamation, tient le milieu, elle anime la langue froide du cerveau par la langue expressive des organes intérieurs, du c?ur, du foie, de l'estomac," &c. His conclusion is: "La vie organique est le terme où aboutissent, et le centre d'où partent les passions." nothing is better fitted than this excellent and thorough book to confirm and bring out clearly that the body is only the embodied (i.e., perceived by means of the brain functions, time, space, and causality) will itself, from which it follows that the will is the primary and original, the intellect, as mere brain function, the subordinate and derived. But that which is most worthy of admiration, and to me most pleasing, in Bichat's thought is, that this great anatomist, on the path of his purely physiological investigations, actually got so far as to explain the unalterable nature of the moral character from the fact that only the animal life, thus the functions of the brain, are subject to the influence of education, practice, culture, and habit, but the moral character belongs to the organic life, i.e., to all the other parts, which cannot be modified from without. I cannot refrain from giving the passage; it occurs in article 9, § 2: "Telle est donc la grande différence des deux vies de l'animal" (cerebral or animal and organic life) "par rapport à l'inégalité de perfection des divers systèmes de fonctions, dont chacune résulte; savoir, que dans l'une la prédominance ou l'infériorité d'un système relativement aux autres, tient presque toujours à l'activité ou à l'inertie plus grandes de ce système, à l'habitude d'agir ou de ne pas agir; que dans l'autre, au contraire, cette prédominance ou cette infériorité sont immédiatement liées a la texture des organes, et jamais à leur éducation. Voilà pourquoi le tempérament physique et le charactère moral ne sont point susceptible de changer par l'éducation, qui modifie si prodigieusement les actes de la vie animale; car, comme nous l'avons vu, tous deux appartiennent à la vie organique. La charactère est, si je puis m'exprimer ainsi, la physionomie des passions; le tempérament est celle des fonctions internes: or les unes et les autres étant toujours les mêmes, ayant une direction que l'habitude et l'exercice ne dérangent jamais, il est manifeste que le tempérament et le charactère doivent être aussi soustraits à l'empire de l'éducation. Elle peut modérer l'influence du second, perfectionner assez le jugement et la réflection, pour rendre leur empire supérieur au sien, fortifier la vie animal afin qu'elle résiste aux impulsions de l'organique. Mais vouloir par elle dénaturer le charactère, adoucir ou exalter les passions dont il est l'expression habituelle, agrandir ou resserrer leur sphère, c'est une entreprise analogue a celle d'un médecin qui essaierait d'élever ou d'abaisser de quelque degrés, et pour toute la vie, la force de contraction ordinaire au c?ur dans l'état de santé, de précipiter ou de ralentir habituellement le mouvement naturel aux artères, et qui est nécessaire à leur action, etc. Nous observerions à ce médecin, que la circulation, la respiration, etc., ne sont point sous le domaine de la volonté (volition), quelles ne peuvent être modifiées par l'homme, sans passer à l'état maladif, etc. Faisons la même observation à ceux qui croient qu'on change le charactère, et par-là, même les passions, puisque celles-ci sont un produit de l'action de tous les organes internes, ou qu'elles y ont au moins spécialement leur siège." The reader who is familiar with my philosophy may imagine how great was my joy when I discovered, as it were, the proof of my own convictions in those which were arrived at upon an entirely different field, by this extraordinary man, so early taken from the world.
A special authentication of the truth that the organism is merely the visibility of the will is also afforded us by the fact that if dogs, cats, domestic cocks, and indeed other animals, bite when violently angry, the wounds become mortal; nay, if they come from a dog, may cause hydrophobia in the man who is bitten, without the dog being mad or afterwards becoming so. For the extremest anger is only the most decided and vehement will to annihilate its object; this now appears in the assumption by the saliva of an injurious, and to a certain extent magically acting, power, and springs from the fact that the will and the organism are in truth one. This also appears from the fact that intense vexation may rapidly impart to the mother's milk such a pernicious quality that the sucking child dies forthwith in convulsions (Most, Ueber sympathetische Mittel, p. 16).
