The intellect, which we have so far considered only in its original and natural condition of servitude to the will, emerges in the Third Book free from this servitude; although we must note at once that this is not a permanent emancipation but rather merely a brief respite, an exceptional and indeed only momentary disengagement from its servitude to the will. – Since this topic was treated in sufficient detail in the First Volume, I have only a few further points to add here.

As I explained in the First Volume (§ 33), the intellect in the service of the will, which is to say active in its natural function, cognizes only relations between things, and above all their relations to that will to which the intellect belongs, through which those things become motives for the will – but also, for the sake of the completeness of this cognition, it cognizes the relations things bear to each other. This latter cognition only appears to any extent and with any significance in the human intellect; with animals, by contrast, even where it is already considerably developed, 416 it appears only within very narrow limits. A grasp of the relations things have to each other is clearly only indirectly in the service of the will. As such, it constitutes the transition to a purely objective cognition that is entirely independent of the will: the former is scientific where the latter is artistic. The object's own essence emerges with increasing clarity when we directly grasp its multiple and diverse relations, and this essence gradually establishes itself from these relations alone, even though it is itself entirely different from these relations. When things are grasped in this manner, the intellect's servitude to the will becomes more and more indirect and limited. If the intellect is strong enough to gain the upper hand and to ignore completely the relation of things to the will so as to grasp instead the purely objective essence of an appearance as it expresses itself through all relations, then just as it leaves behind its servitude to the will, it also leaves behind the grasp of mere relations; and with that, it also leaves behind the grasp of particular things as such.