must be thrust on it from without; consequently the condition of the origin of consciousness is fulfilled in the startling of the will at something not issuing from itself, and yet really existing and making itself felt, the partial compulsion to yield on the collision with another will, and the contrast of this rebound with the goal striven after; and experience corresponds to it entirely, in that nothing speaks more emphatically to consciousness than painpain conceived also as freed from the nearer determinations belonging to the idea.

The feeling of pleasure or the satisfaction of the will cannot be conscious in and for itself, for while the will realises its content, and thereby brings on its own satisfaction, nothing takes place which could come into opposition with the will; and since all compulsion from without is wanting, and the will only gives place to its own consequences, it can arrive at no consciousness. Otherwise does the matter appear when a consciousness has already established itself, which collects and compares observations and experiences. This soon learns from the many nonsatisfactions to know the resistances which oppose every will in the external world, as well as the external conditions which are necessary if the realisation of the will is to succeed. As soon as it is compelled to acknowledge these external conditions of success, and therewith satisfaction as something partially or wholly conditioned from without, consciousness appertains to pleasure also.-All this is thoroughly confirmed by experience.

One sees especially in infants that they give very expressive signs of pain for weeks before the slightest trace of pleasure is legible in their countenances and gestures. Clear confirmation is afforded by the case of pampered children, who are wont always to get their way, and who accordingly do not know what to make of it when for once their wish is not complied with. These children have, in fact, as good as no enjoyment at all from the satisfaction of their desires; however, the latter remain, for

the most part, unconscious. About the only enjoyment they have is from satisfaction of the senses (eating of sweetmeats), because the solicitude of the environment cannot here save them disagreeable comparisons. How much, however, our assertion fits even the case of adults, doubtless every observer of his race will admit; for any kind of satisfaction which permanently recurs without interruption by non-satisfaction ceases to be a conscious satisfaction, i.e., a conscious enjoyment, as soon as one begins to think: it must be so indeed, and cannot be at all otherwise. On the other hand, even a slight satisfaction enters into consciousness as pleasure, the more vividly the more distinctly it is seen that we owe it to external circumstances, because, in spite of its being always willed, one has rarely been able to procure it.

3. The Unconsciousness of the Will.-Now as concerns the Will itself, we have hitherto called it conscious when it has a conscious, unconscious, when it has an unconscious idea for its content. It is, however, easy to see that this is only a figurative expression, since it only refers to the content of the will; but the will itself can never become conscious, because it can never contradict itself. There may very well be several desires at variance with one another, but volition at any moment is in truth only the 7 resultant of all the simultaneous desires, consequently can always be only conformable to itself. If now consciousness is an accident which the will bestows upon that of which it is compelled to recognise not itself, but something foreign as its cause, in short, what enters into opposition with it, the will can never impart consciousness to itself, because here the thing to be compared and the standard of comparison are one and the same; they can never be different or at all at variance with one another. The will also never gets so far as to recognise something else as its cause; rather the appearance of its spontaneity is indestructible, since it is the primal actuality, and all that lies behind it potential, that is, unreal. Whilst dis

pleasure, then, must always become conscious, and pleasure can become so under certain circumstances, the will is said never to be able to become conscious. This latter result perhaps appears unexpected, yet experience fully confirms it.

We have seen in A. Chap. vii. that only a conscious idea is able to excite the unconscious will to any movement or action, even without a motive proper being contained in the idea. But if the idea contains a motive at all, a proper ground of excitement, the excitation of the unconscious desire must certainly follow. If, now, the man has the conscious idea of a movement, and thereupon sees himself execute this movement with the certainty of not being necessitated from outside, he instinctively concludes that the cause of the movement lies in himself, and this inner unknown cause of movement he calls will. That the conception thus attained only rests on causality just as little detracts from the instinctive apprehension of its reality, as it detracts from that of the external objects, that we possess them only as unknown external causes of our sense-impressions, and as it detracts from the subject. of ideation or the intellectual ego that we know it only as unknown internal cause of ideation. The one as the other we fancy we directly apprehend because we do not attain it by conscious reflection, but through unconscious processes, and philosophic contemplation must first teach us that all these notions are for us intangible essences, whose only hold on our thought lies in their causality, without this knowledge being detrimental to the immediate instinctive certainty of their direct possession. In the same way a writer thinks he has the feeling directly in the point of the pen itself, whilst the simplest consideration teaches him that he has it only in his fingers, and unconsciously applies the principle of causality without being able to avoid the unconscious illusion of his tactile sense, only that here the correction succeeds much sooner than in those deeply rooted psychological illusions.

VOL. II.

G

When a man has once in the way indicated grasped the conception of will (albeit by a process of unconscious thinking), he very soon observes that ordinary ideas rarely draw after them phenomena of motion, but always such as contain the feeling of a pleasure or displeasure, and that, too, according as actions are persistent and in themselves attractive, or repellent. From this he becomes acquainted empirically with the law of motivation, according to which each representation of pleasure excites positive desire, each idea of displeasure negative or repellent desire. This law is exceptionless, and all instances to the contrary rest on an error; e.g., when a past enjoyment is represented, and yet not again desired or wished over again, it follows from that that it would now no more be enjoyment. If other opposed desires, which simultaneously arise, suppress the emergence of this desire, so much force is consumed in the suppression as the desire would have had had it arisen. When, now, the man has perceived this law of motivation to be exceptionless, he knows that every time a desire is united with the representation of a feeling of pleasure or displeasure, and supposing other desires or external circumstances not to hinder the execution of the corresponding movement, he sees the latter ensue. This process, again, goes on unconsciously, and whereas the man before only possessed the notion of volition as cause of an effect, he has it now as effect of a cause. With that, however, he has the possibility of perceiving it also then in himself, if its effect, the execution, is prevented by other desires or external circumstances.

Further, the man sees a gradual proportion between the sensuous vividness of the presentation and the magnitude of the presented pleasure and displeasure, on the one hand, and the violence of the movements, the energy of the action, the duration of the attempts at action, on the other, and concludes therefrom that also the link intermediate between the two ends of the causal chain must stand in a proportional relation to each of them; hereby he obtains a

measure of the intensity of the will.-The points mentioned would certainly suffice for mediate knowledge and the appearance of a direct cognition of the will; however, they are still somewhat of an external nature, and the illusion becomes still much greater through other accompanying circumstances. It is, namely, only in the very rarest cases that the desire can obtain satisfaction at the very moment of its arising; there always elapses a shorter or longer time before realisation takes place, and so long lasts a feeling of non-satisfaction, of unpleasant expectation and deprivation (tension, impatience, longing, yearning), certainly for the most part sweetened by hope, which either is prolonged until the gradual disappearance of the desire, or induces by a perception of impossibility and destruction of hope the full non-satisfaction and displeasure (with an undiminished persisting violent desire despair), or finally passes into satisfaction and pleasure. These feelings are the constant attendants or successors of desire, and can only arise through it. They also enter into consciousness, and are here the proper and most immediate representatives of the desire, which it is true one can again only properly apprehend as cause of the same, but which one thinks to grasp immediately through the above-mentioned illusion. Just as desire in general is perceived in the feelings spoken of, so every special kind of desire is perceived through the special and peculiar kind of the feelings accompanying it. The constant connection of the two hereby becomes visible, that the special kind of desire is indeed already deterinined for consciousness by the kind of motive and the kind of ensuing actions. Yet the possibility of error still remains open, especially in the cases where the accompanying feelings (longing and hope in general) are the sole signs of the presence of the will. Then the mistake easily occurs of seeking the desire giving rise to these feelings in other well-known desires, whereas the same are entirely guiltless thereof.

This case, for example, occurs in the instincts, most