The only true being is the idea, which embodies itself in that animal. That is to say, the idea of the animal alone has true being and is the object of real knowledge. Thus do these two greatest philosophers of the West differ. 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. THE last and most serious part of our consideration relates to human action.
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. Life is only the mirror of the will. Life accompanies the will as the shadow the body. If will exists, so will life.