It is important to note, that Schopenhauer's use of the word "will" is far wider than that of common usage. It includes not only conscious desire, but also unconscious instinct, and the forces of inorganic nature. He recognises will not only in the existences which resemble our own, in men and animals, but also in the force which germinates and vegetates in the plant, the force through which the crystal is formed, that by which the magnet turns to the north pole, the force which appears in the elective affinities of matter as repulsion and attraction, decomposition and combination, and lastly even as gravitation, which draws the stone to the earth and the earth to the sun. All these in their inner nature are identical. It is the same force in every manifestation of nature, as in each preconsidered action of man. The difference is merely one of degree.
The body is the most real thing for everyone. If we analyse the reality of this body, we find nothing but the will. With this its reality is exhausted. The word { 40} will, like a magic spell, he says, reveals the inmost being of all nature. Spinoza says, that if a stone, which has been projected through the air, had consciousness, it would believe that it was moving of its own will. Schopenhauer adds that the stone would be right. The impulse given it, is for the stone what the motive is for us. All blindly impelling force, all forces which act in nature in accordance with universal laws, are equally in their inner nature to be recognised as will. It is everywhere one and the same, "just as the first dim light of dawn must share the name of sunlight with the rays of the full midday."
Now the will expresses itself necessarily as a struggle. Everywhere in nature we see strife, conflict, and alternation of victory. Every grade of will fights for the matter, the space, and the time of the others. For each desires to express its own inmost nature. Nature exists only through such struggle. This universal conflict is most distinctly visible in the animal kingdom. For animals have the whole of the vegetable kingdom for their food, and even within the animal kingdom every beast is the prey and the food of another. Each animal can maintain its existence only by the constant destruction of some other life.