the animal is only a phenomenon in time, space, and causality, which are
conditions of our perception, not the thing-in-itself. So the individual
as we see it at this particular moment will pass away, without any
possibility of our knowing the thing-in-itself, for the knowledge of
that is beyond our faculties, and would require another kind of
knowledge than that which is possible for us through our understanding.

Thus do these two greatest philosophers of the West differ. The
thing-in-itself must, according to Kant, be free from all forms
associated with knowing. On the contrary, the Platonic idea is
necessarily object, something known and thus different from the
thing-in-itself, which cannot be apprehended. Yet Kant and Plato tend to
agree, because the thing-in-itself is, after all, that which lays aside
all the subordinate forms of phenomena, and has retained the first and
most universal form, that of the idea in general, the form of being
object for a subject. Plato attributes actual being only to the Ideas,
and concedes only an illusive, dream-like existence to things in space
and time, the real world for the individual.

_IV.--The World as Will. Second Aspect_

The last and most serious part of our consideration relates to human
action and is of universal importance. Human nature tends to relate
everything else to action. The world as idea is the perfect mirror of
the will, in which it recognizes itself in graduating scales of
distinctness and completeness. The highest degree of this consciousness
is man, whose nature only completely expresses itself in the whole
connected series of his actions.

Will is the thing-in-itself, the essence of the world. Life is only the
mirror of the will. Life accompanies the will as the shadow the body. If
will exists, so will life. So long as we are actuated by the will to
live, we need have no fear of ceasing to live, even in the presence of
death. True, we see the individual born and passing away; but the
individual is merely phenomenal. Neither the will, nor the subject of
cognition, is at all affected by birth or death.

It is not the individual, but only the species, that Nature cares for.
She provides for the species with boundless prodigality through the
incalculable profusion of seed and the great strength of fructification.
She is ever ready to let the individual fall when it had served its end
of perpetuating the species. Thus does Nature artlessly express the
g