METAPHYSICS Scientific inquiry, so long as it restricts its concern to ideas, leaves us unsatisfied ‘We wish to know the significance of these ideas; we ask whether this world is merely idea; in which case it would pass by us like an empty dream or a baseless vision, not worth our notice; or whether it is also something else, something more than idea, and if so what’ (WWI 99) We would never be able to get any further if we were mere knowing subjects— winged cherubs without a body But each of us is rooted in the world because of our embodiment My knowledge of the world is given me through my body, but my body is not just a medium of information, one object among others; it is an active agent of whose power I am directly conscious It is my will that gives me the key to my own existence and shows me the inner mechanism of my actions The movements of my body are not effects of which my will is the cause: the act and the will are identical ‘Every true act of a man’s will is also at once and without exception a movement of his body.’ Conversely, impressions upon the body are also impacts on the will—pleasant, if in accordance with the will, painful if contrary to the will Each of us knows himself both as an object and as a will; and this is the key to the understanding of the essence of every phenomenon in nature [We shall] judge of all objects which are not our own bodies, and are consequently not given to our consciousness in a double way but only as ideas, according to the analogy of our own bodies, and shall therefore assume that as in one aspect they are idea, just like our bodies, and in this respect are analogous to them, so in another aspect, what remains of objects when we set aside their existence as idea of the subject must in its inner nature be the same as that in us which we call will For what other kind of existence or reality should we attribute to the rest of the material world? Whence should we take the elements out of which we construct such a world? Besides will and idea nothing is known to us or thinkable (WWI 105) The force by which the crystal is formed, the force by which the magnet turns to the pole, the force which germinates and vegetates in the plant— all these forces, so different in their phenomenal existence, are identical in their inner nature with that which in us is the will Phenomenal existence is mere idea, but the will is a thing in itself The word ‘will’ is like a magic spell that discloses to us the inmost being of everything in nature This does not mean—Schopenhauer quickly insists—that a falling stone has consciousness or desires Deliberation about motives is only the form that will takes in human beings; it is not part of the essence of will, 171