§ 15. The Decline of the Will through Decentralization

§ 15. The Decline of the Will through Decentralization.

Zeus is the hurler of lightning; the ego is Zeus, the lightning is the will; if Zeus vanishes, the lightning vanishes, and without the ego there is no will. None of the powers of the spirit within the dream-sphere presents so bleak a spectacle as the will.

The faculty of will possesses, by nature, a structure different from that of the cognitive power organized, together with it, in peripheral-central fashion, that is, different from thought-cognition. Cognition is that substantial movement of the spirit which continually proceeds from the periphery toward the center of the spirit, toward selfhood; will, by contrast, is that energy which continually carries and moves the life of the soul's substance from within outward. The one is therefore centripetal energy, the other centrifugal energy. Since, now, the centripetal energy of cognition takes its rise from the periphery, in order to move toward the center, while the centrifugal energy of will, conversely, springs immediately from the ego itself, in order thence to stream forth toward the periphery, cognition, although, as energy of the ego, it shares its center of gravity together with will within the ego itself, is nonetheless, in its outward origin, far more independent of the ego than is will; the energy of will, however, presupposes, in its inward origin, for its own self-exertion, the energy of the ego far more than cognition does. Nevertheless, cognition does have an encounter with will, despite this preponderance of egoic origin on the side of will, in that it burdens itself with the energy of will and charges itself, within its own centripetal movement, toward a centrifugal energy, that is, toward spontaneous thinking; and, conversely, the centrifugal energy of will receives, from cognition become centripetal, that is, from thought, its own steady centripetal movement back into itself, in that will charges and clarifies itself with thoughts, plans, intentions, and the rationally calculated means of action, wherefore will, in respect of clarity, is so nearly akin to thought. Yet neither does that absorbed centrifugality of cognition, whereby it became thought, abolish the centripetal nature of cognition, nor does the absorbed centripetality of thought within will abolish the centrifugal nature of will; rather, cognition remains, as a selfish fundamental power of the soul, centripetal or receptive, will, as an equally selfish fundamental power, centrifugal or spontaneous; will, accordingly, retains its primordial origin in the centrality of the ego, cognition its innate rise from the periphery of subjectivity.