On the other hand, it is easy to understand his aversion from purely
empirical, evolutionist, or transformist doctrines, such as those set
forth in the works of Lamarck and Darwin which came to his notice.
Judging Darwin's theory solely by an extensive extract in _The Times_,
he described it, in a letter to Adam Louis von Doss (March 1, 1860), as
"downright empiricism" _(platter Empirismus)_. In fact, for a
voluntarist like Schopenhauer, a theory so sanely and cautiously
empirical and rational as that of Darwin left out of account the inward
force, the essential motive, of evolution. For what is, in effect, the
hidden force, the ultimate agent, which impels organisms to perpetuate
themselves and to fight for their persistence and propagation?
Selection, adaptation, heredity, these are only external conditions.
This inner, essential force has been called will on the supposition that
there exists also in other beings that which we feel in ourselves as a
feeling of will, the impulse to be everything, to be others as well as
ourselves yet without ceasing to be what we are. And it may be said
that this force is the divine in us, that it is God Himself who works in
us because He suffers in us.
And sympathy teaches us to discover this force, this aspiration towards
consciousness, in all things. It moves and activates the most minute
living creatures; it moves and activates, perhaps, the very cells of our
own bodily organism, which is a confederation, more or less solidary, of
living beings; it moves the very globules of our blood.
Pages:
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233