Moreover, if we descend through the series of grades of animals, we see the intellect growing weaker and weaker and more and more imperfect, but we certainly do not observe a corresponding degradation of the Wille. In fact the case is rather contrary to that because the Wille everywhere retains its identical nature, and with vehemence clings on to life by a great attachment and care for the individual, thus the species, and displays egoism and lack of consideration for all others. The smallest insect wills what it wills as decidedly and completely as does man, with the only difference in the motives of its respective willing. Every act of the Wille is wholly what it can be and is as manifest just as the intellect has innumerable degrees of perfection and is generally wont with limitations. Degrees of the completeness of its real nature accordingly rises gradually from the lowest animal up to man; where its pinnacle is attained in genius. Plants are embodied Wille without any knowledge.

The Intellect is delegated responsibility of the Wille and acts in servitude to fit the requirements of the Wille willing itself. The Wille alone is everywhere entirely itself, for its function is operated out of the greatest simplicity, which is in its willing and not-willing. This is carried out flawlessly, with the greatest ease, and without effort or need for practice. Knowing, on the other hand, has many functions and does not take place without effort. It requires fixing of the attention to an object to be grasped, and at a higher degree, for thinking and deliberation, and is therefore capable of great improvement through practice and training. The intellect's laborious rumination is up to the Wille's approval or disapproval, and its results are always furnished to comply with the interests of the Wille. This relationship of the bondsman to its sovereign remains always the same in essence.

Nature signifies that which operates, urges, and creates without the intervention of the intellect. The possibility of this fundamental knowledge of the Wille rests on the fact that the same thing is immediately illuminated in us by the intellect appearing as self-consciousness. To penetrate into nature's inner being and thus comprehend the true essence of the Wille-inItself as much as possible, the intellect must reach a point of rest which, however momentarily, can negate the individuality so the individual Wille may become aware of willing itself. Thus the Thing-in-Itself, which for us is the Wille, can come into consciousness directly, by it itself being conscious of itself.

Anaxagoras arbitrarily assumed a Nous, the supreme intelligence, or a creator of appearances, as the first and primal thing from which existence has proceeded, and is considered to be the first to have advanced such a view. His philosophy is the antipode to Schopenhauer's because for Anaxagoras the world had existed earlier in its mere representation alone than in itself, although there was no eye to see it. Aristotle (Metaphysics, i, 4) has recognised his folly and admits Anaxagoras himself did not know very well how to begin with Nous, that he merely set it up and then left it standing, like a glorified figurehead who points to the well of gold, when in fact, in it is nothing but air. He played with the idea of Nous like is in the nature of an impetuous child who buys a telescope to discard it but the next moment of the setting sun.

The Wille constitutes the metaphysical substratum of the whole of phenomena, and thus is not, like the intellect, a posterius, but the prius, of the phenomenon. The phenomenon depends on it, not it on the phenomenon. All other things are too, in themselves, the Wille.