for particular existence; indeed the latter is only conditionally willed, the former unconditionally; therefore the individuals are even sacrificed occasionally for the whole, as we allow a limb to be taken off in order to save the whole body. Thus, for example, if the path is closed by water against the march of the ants, those in front boldly throw themselves in until their corpses are heaped up into a dam for those that follow. When the drones have become useless they are stung to death. Two queens in the hive are surrounded, and must fight with each other till one of them loses its life. The ant-mother bites its own wings off after it has been impregnated, for they would only be a hindrance to it in the work that is before it of tending the new family it is about to found under the earth (Kirby and Spence, vol. i.) As the liver will do nothing more than secrete gall for the service of the digestion, nay, will only itself exist for this end – and so with every other part – the working bees also will do nothing more than collect honey, secrete wax, and make cells for the brood of the queen; the drones nothing more than impregnate; the queen nothing but deposit eggs; thus all the parts work only for the maintenance of the whole which alone is the unconditional end, just like the parts of the organism. The difference is merely that in the organism the will acts perfectly blindly in its primary condition; in the insect society, on the other hand, the thing goes on already in the light of knowledge, to which, however, a decided co-operation and individual choice is only left in the accidents of detail, where it gives assistance and adopts what has to be carried out to the circumstances. But the insects will the end as a whole without knowing it; just like organised nature working according to final causes; even the choice of the means is not as a whole left to their knowledge, but only the more detailed disposition of them. Just on this account, however, their action is by no means automatic, which becomes most distinctly visible if one opposes obstacles to their action. For example, the caterpillar spins itself in leaves without knowing the end; but if we destroy the web it skilfully repairs it. Bees adapt their hive at the first to the existing circumstances, and subsequent misfortunes, such as intentional destruction, they meet in the way most suitable to the special case (Kirby and Spence,
Introduc. to Entomol.; Huber,
Des abeilles). Such things excite our astonishment, because the apprehension of the circumstances and the adaptation to these is clearly a matter of knowledge; while we believe them capable once for all of the most ingenious preparation for the coming race and the distant future, well knowing that in this they are not guided by knowledge, for a forethought of that kind proceeding from knowledge demands an activity of the brain rising to the level of reason. On the other hand, the intellect even of the lower animals is sufficient for the modifying and arranging of the particular case according to the existing or appearing circumstances; because, guided by instinct, it has only to fill up the gaps which this leaves. Thus we see ants carry off their larvæ whenever the place is too damp, and bring them back again when it becomes dry. They do not know the aim of this, thus are not guided in it by knowledge; but the choice of the time at which the place is no longer suitable for the larvæ, and also of the place to which they now bring them, is left to their knowledge. I wish here also to mention a fact which some one related to me verbally from his own experience, though I have since found that Burdach quotes it from Gleditsch. The latter, in order to test the burying-beetle (
Necrophorus vespillo), had tied a dead frog lying upon the ground to a string, the upper end of which was fastened to a stick stuck obliquely in the ground. Now after several burying-beetles had, according to their custom, undermined the frog, it could not, as they expected, sink into the ground; after much perplexed running hither and thither they undermined the stick also. To this assistance rendered to instinct, and that repairing of the works of mechanical tendency, we find in the organism the
healing power of nature analogous, which not only heals wounds, replacing even bone and nerve substance, but, if through the injury of a vein or nerve branch a connection is interrupted, opens a new connection by means of enlargement of other veins or nerves, nay, perhaps even by producing new branches; which further makes some other part or function take the place of a diseased part or function; in the case of the loss of an eye sharpens the other, or in the case of the loss of one of the senses sharpens all the rest; which even sometimes closes an intestinal wound, in itself fatal, by the adhesion of the mesentery or the peritoneum; in short, seeks to meet every injury and every disturbance in the most ingenious manner. If, on the other hand, the injury is quite incurable, it hastens to expedite death, and indeed the more so the higher is the species of the organism, thus the greater its sensibility. Even this has its analogue in the instinct of insects. The wasps, for instance, who through the whole summer have with great care and labour fed their larvæ on the produce of their plundering, but now, in October, see the last generation of them facing starvation, sting them to death (Kirby and Spence, vol. i. p. 374). Nay, still more curious and special analogies may be found; for example, this: if the female humble-bee (
Apis terrestris, bombylius) lays eggs, the working humble-bees are seized with a desire to devour them, which lasts from six to eight hours and is satisfied unless the mother keeps them off and carefully guards the eggs. But after this time the working humble-bees show absolutely no inclination to eat the eggs even when offered to them; on the contrary, they now become the zealous tenders and nourishers of the larvæ now being hatched out. This may without violence be taken as an analogue of children's complaints, especially teething, in which it is just the future nourishers of the organism making an attack upon it which so often costs it its life. The consideration of all these analogies between organised life and the instinct, together with the mechanical tendencies of the lower animals, serves ever more to confirm the conviction that the
will is the basis of the one as of the other, for it shows here also the subordinate rôle of knowledge in the action of the will, sometimes more, sometimes less, confined, and sometimes wanting altogether.
But in yet another respect instincts and the animal organisation reciprocally illustrate each other: through the anticipation of the future which appears in both. By means of instincts and mechanical tendencies animals care for the satisfaction of wants which they do not yet feel, nay, not only for their own wants, but even for those of the future brood. Thus they work for an end which is as yet unknown to them. This goes so far, as I have illustrated by the example of the Bombex in “The Will in Nature” (second edit. p. 45, third edit. p. 47), that they pursue and kill in advance the enemies of their future eggs. In the same way we see the future wants of an animal, its prospective ends, anticipated in its whole corporisation by the organised implements for their attainment and satisfaction; from which, then, proceeds that perfect adaptation of the structure of every animal to its manner of life, that equipment of it with the needful weapons to attack its prey and to ward off its enemies, and that calculation of its whole form with reference to the element and the surroundings in which it has to appear as a pursuer, which I have fully described in my work on the will in nature under the rubric “Comparative Anatomy.” All these anticipations, both in the instinct and in the organisation of animals, we might bring under the conception of a knowledge a priori, if knowledge lay at their foundation at all. But this is, as we have shown, not the case. Their source lies deeper than the sphere of knowledge, in the will as the thing in itself, which as such remains free even from the forms of knowledge; therefore with reference to it time has no significance, consequently the future lies as near it as the present.
Chapter XXVIII.6 Characterisation Of The Will To Live
Our second book closed with the question as to the goal and aim of that will which had shown itself to be the inner nature of all things in the world. The following remarks may serve to supplement the answer to this question given there in general terms, for they lay down the character of the will as a whole.
Such a characterisation is possible because we have recognised as the inner nature of the world something thoroughly real and empirically given. On the other hand, the very name “world-soul,” by which many have denoted that inner being, gives instead of this a mere ens rationis; for “soul” signifies an individual unity of consciousness which clearly does not belong to that nature, and in general, since the conception “soul” supposes knowing and willing in inseparable connection and yet independent of the animal organism, it is not to be justified, and therefore not to be used. The word should never be applied except in a metaphorical sense, for it is much more insidious than ψυχη or anima, which signify breath.
Much more unsuitable, however, is the way in which so-called pantheists express
