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VOLUME 2 SUPPLEMENTS TO THE FIRST BOOK.
THE WORLD AS WILL AND REPRESENTATION, VOLUME II To the First Book
The Doctrine of the Representation of Perception (Through § 1-7 of Volume 1) CHAPTER I: On the Fundamental View of Idealism In endless space countless luminous spheres, round each of which some dozen smaller illuminated ones revolve, hot at the core and covered over with a hard cold crust; on this crust a mouldy film has produced living and knowing beings: this is empirical truth, the real, the world. Yet for a being who thinks, it is a precarious position to stand on one of those numberless spheres freely floating in boundless space, without knowing whence or whither, and to be only one of innumerable similar beings that throng, press, and toil, restlessly and rapidly arising and passing away in beginningless and endless time. Here there is nothing permanent but matter alone, and the recurrence of the same varied organic forms by means of certain ways and channels that inevitably exist as they do. All that empirical science can teach is only the more precise nature and rule of these events. But at last the philosophy of modern times, especially through Berkeley and Kant, has called to mind that all this in the first instance is only phenomenon of the brain, and is encumbered by so many great and different subjective conditions that its supposed absolute reality vanishes, and leaves room for an entirely different world-order that lies at the root of that phenomenon, in other words, is related to it as is the thing-in-itself to the mere appearance. "The world is my representation" is, like the axioms of Euclid, a proposition which everyone must recognize as true as soon as he understands it, although it is not a proposition that everyone understands as soon as he hears it. To have brought this proposition to consciousness and to have connected it with the problem of the relation of the ideal to the real, in other words, of the world in the head to the world outside the head, constitutes, together with the problem of moral freedom, the distinctive characteristic of the philosophy of the moderns. For only after men had tried their hand for thousands of years at merely objective philosophizing did they discover that, among the many things that make the world so puzzling and precarious, the first and foremost is that, however immeasurable and massive it may be, its existence hangs nevertheless on a single thread; and this thread is the actual consciousness in which it exists. This condition, with which the existence of the world is irrevocably encumbered, marks it with the stamp of ideality, in spite of all empirical reality, and consequently with the stamp of the mere phenomenon. Thus the world must be recognized, from one aspect at least, as akin to a dream, indeed as capable of being put in the same class with a dream. For the same brain-function that conjures up during sleep a perfectly objective, perceptible, and indeed palpable world must have just as large a share in the presentation of the objective world of wakefulness. Though different as regards their matter, the two worlds are nevertheless obviously moulded from one form. This form is the intellect, the brain-function. Descartes was probably the first to attain the degree of reflection demanded by that fundamental truth; consequently, he made that truth the starting-point of his philosophy, although provisionally only in the form of sceptical doubt. By his taking cogito ergo sum [1] as the only thing certain, and provisionally regarding the existence of the world as problematical, the essential and only correct starting-point, and at the same time the true point of support, of all philosophy was really found. This point, indeed, is essentially and of necessity the subjective, our own consciousness. For this alone is and remains that which is immediate; everything else, be it what it may, is first mediated and conditioned by consciousness, and therefore dependent on it. It is thus rightly considered that the philosophy of the modems starts from Descartes as its father. Not long afterwards, Berkeley went farther along this path, and arrived at idealism proper; in other words, at the knowledge that what is extended in space, and hence the objective, material world in general, exists as such simply and solely in our representation, and that it is false and indeed absurd to attribute to it, as such, an existence outside all representation and independent of the knowing subject, and so to assume a matter positively and absolutely existing in itself. But this very correct and deep insight really constitutes the whole of Berkeley's philosophy; in it he had exhausted himself. Accordingly, true philosophy must at all costs be idealistic; indeed, it must be so merely to be honest. For nothing is more certain than that no one ever came out of himself in order to identify himself immediately with things different from him; but everything of which he has certain, sure, and hence immediate knowledge, lies within his consciousness. Beyond this consciousness, therefore, there can be no immediate certainty; but the first principles of a science must have such a certainty. It is quite appropriate to the empirical standpoint of all the other sciences to assume the objective world as positively and actually existing; it is not appropriate to the standpoint of philosophy, which has to go back to what is primary and original. Consciousness alone is immediately given, hence the basis of philosophy is limited to the facts of consciousness; in other words, philosophy is essentially idealistic. Realism, which commends itself to the crude understanding by appearing to be founded on fact, starts precisely from an arbitrary assumption, and is in consequence an empty castle in the air, since it skips or denies the first fact of all, namely that all that we know lies within consciousness. For that the objective existence of things is conditioned by a representer of them, and that consequently the objective world exists only as representation, is no hypothesis, still less a peremptory pronouncement, or even a paradox put forward for the sake of debate or argument. On the contrary, it is the surest and simplest truth, and a knowledge of it is rendered more difficult only by the fact that it is indeed too simple, and that not everyone has sufficient power of reflection to go back to the first elements of his consciousness of things. There can never be an existence that is objective absolutely and in itself; such an existence, indeed, is positively inconceivable. For the objective, as such, always and essentially has its existence in the consciousness of a subject; it is therefore the representation of this subject, and consequently is conditioned by the subject, and moreover by the subject's forms of representation, which belong to the subject and not to the object. That the objective world would exist even if there existed no knowing being at all, naturally seems at the first onset to be sure and certain, because it can be thought in the abstract, without the contradiction that it carries within itself coming to light. But if we try to realize this abstract thought, in other words, to reduce it to representations of perception, from which alone (like everything abstract) it can have content and truth; and if accordingly we attempt to imagine an objective world without a knowing subject, then we become aware that what we are imagining at that moment is in truth the opposite of what we intended, namely nothing but just the process in the intellect of a knowing being who perceives an objective world, that is to say, precisely that which we had sought to exclude. For this perceptible and real world is obviously a phenomenon of the brain; and so in the assumption that the world as such might exist independently of all brains there lies a contradiction. The principal objection to the inevitable and essential ideality of every object, the objection which arises distinctly or indistinctly in everyone, is certainly as follows: Even my own person is object for another, and is therefore that other's representation, and yet I know certainly that I should exist even without that other representing me in his mind. But all other objects also stand in the same relation to his intellect as I stand; consequently, they too would exist without his representing them in his mind. The answer to this is as follows: That other being, whose object I am now considering my person to be, is not absolutely the subject, but is in the first instance a knowing individual. Therefore, if he too did not exist, in fact, even if there existed in general no other knowing being except myself, this would still by no means be the elimination of the subject in whose representation alone all objects exist. For I myself am in fact that subject, just as is every knowing being. Consequently, in the case here assumed, my person would certainly still exist, but again as representation, namely in my own knowledge. For even by myself it is always known only indirectly, never directly, since all existence as representation is an indirect existence. Thus as object, in other words as extended, filling space, and acting, I know my body only in the perception of my brain. This perception is brought about through the senses, and on their data the perceiving understanding carries out its function of passing from the effect to the cause. In this way, by the eye seeing the body, or the hands touching it, the understanding constructs the spatial figure that presents itself in space as my body. In no way, however, are there given to me directly, in some general feeling of the body or in inner self-consciousness, any extension, shape, and activity that would coincide with my inner being itself, and that inner being accordingly requires no other being in whose knowledge it would manifest itself, in order so to exist. On the contrary, that general feeling, just like self-consciousness, exists directly only in relation to the will, namely as comfortable or uncomfortable, and as active in the acts of will, which exhibit themselves for external perception as actions of the body. It follows from this that the existence of my person or of my body as an extended and acting thing always presupposes a knowing being different from it, since it is essentially an existence in the apprehension, in the representation, and hence an existence for another being. In fact, it is a phenomenon of the brain, no matter whether the brain in which it exhibits itself belongs to my own person or to another's. In the first case, one's own person is then split up into the knowing and the known, into object and subject, and here, as everywhere, these two face each other inseparable and irreconcilable. Therefore, if my own person, in order to exist as such, always requires a knower, this will apply at any rate just as much to all other objects; and to vindicate for these an existence independent of knowledge and of the subject of knowledge was the aim of the above objection. However, it is evident that the existence conditioned through a knowing being is simply and solely existence in space, and hence that of a thing extended and acting. This alone is always a known thing, and consequently an existence for another being. At the same time, everything that exists in this way may still have an existence for itself, for which it requires no subject. This existence by itself, however, cannot be extension and activity (together space-occupation), but is necessarily another kind of being, namely that of a thing-in-itself, which, purely as such, can never be object. This, therefore, is the answer to the principal objection stated above, and accordingly this objection does not overthrow the fundamental truth that the objectively present and existing world can exist only in the representation, and so only for a subject. It is also to be noted here that even Kant, at any rate so long as he remained consistent, cannot have thought of any objects among his things-in-themselves. For this follows already from the fact that he proved space as well as time to be a mere form of our intuition or perception, which in consequence does not belong to the things-in-themselves. What is not in space or in time cannot be object; therefore the being or existence of things-in-themselves can no longer be objective, but only of quite a different kind, namely a metaphysical being or existence. Consequently, there is already to be found in that Kantian principle also the proposition that the objective world exists only as representation. In spite of all that may be said, nothing is so persistently and constantly misunderstood as idealism, since it is interpreted as meaning that the empirical reality of the external world is denied. On this rests the constant return of the appeal to common sense, which appears in many different turns and guises, for example, as "fundamental conviction" in the Scottish school, or as Jacobi's faith or belief in the reality of the external world. The external world by no means gives itself, as Jacobi explains, merely on credit; nor is it accepted by us on faith and trust. It gives itself as what it is, and performs directly what it promises. It must be remembered that Jacobi set up such a credit system of the world, and was lucky enough to impose it on a few professors of philosophy, who for thirty years went on philosophizing about it extensively and at their ease; and that it was this same Jacobi who once denounced Lessing as a Spinozist, and later Schelling as an atheist, and received from the latter the well-known and well-merited reprimand. In accordance with such zeal, by reducing the external world to a matter of faith, be wanted merely to open a little door for faith in general, and to prepare the credit for that which was afterwards actually to be offered on credit; just as if, to introduce paper money, we tried to appeal to the fact that the value of the ringing coin depended merely on the stamp the State put on it. In his philosopheme on the reality of the external world assumed on faith, Jacobi is precisely the "transcendental realist playing the part of the empirical idealist," whom Kant censured in the Critique of Pure Reason, first edition, p. 369. True idealism, on the other hand, is not the empirical, but the transcendental. It leaves the empirical reality of the world untouched, but adheres to the fact that all object, and hence the empirically real in general, is conditioned by the subject in a twofold manner. In the first place it is conditioned materially, or as object in general, since an objective existence is conceivable only in face of a subject and as the representation of this subject. In the second place, it is conditioned formally, since the mode and manner of the object's existence, in other words, of its being represented (space, time, causality), proceed from the subject, and are predisposed in the subject. Therefore immediately connected with simple or Berkeleian idealism, which concerns the object in general, is Kantian idealism, which concerns the specially given mode and manner of objective existence. This proves that the whole of the material world with its bodies in space, extended and, by means of time, having causal relations with one another, and everything attached to this -- all this is not something existing independently of our mind, but something that has its fundamental presuppositions in our brain-functions, by means of which and in which alone is such an objective order of things possible. For time, space, and causality, on which all those real and objective events rest, are themselves nothing more than functions of the brain; so that, therefore, this unchangeable order of things, affording the criterion and the clue to their empirical reality, itself comes first from the brain, and has its credentials from that alone. Kant has discussed this thoroughly and in detail; though he does not mention the brain, but says "the faculty of knowledge." He has even attempted to prove that that objective order in time, space, causality, matter, and so on, on which all the events of the real world ultimately rest, cannot even be conceived, when closely considered, as a self-existing order, i.e., an order of things-in-themselves, or as something absolutely objective and positively existing; for if we attempt to think it out to the end, it leads to contradictions. To demonstrate this was the purpose of the antinomies; in the appendix to my work, [2] however, I have demonstrated the failure of the attempt. On the other hand, the Kantian teaching, even without the antinomies, leads to the insight that things and their whole mode and manner of existence are inseparably associated with our consciousness of them. Therefore he who has clearly grasped this soon reaches the conviction that the assumption that things exist as such, even outside and independently of our consciousness, is really absurd. Thus are we so deeply immersed in time, space, causality, and in the whole regular course of experience resting on these; we (and in fact even the animals) are so completely at home, and know how to find our way in experience from the very beginning. This would not be possible if our intellect were one thing and things another; but it can be explained only from the fact that the two constitute a whole; that the intellect itself creates that order, and exists only for things, but that things also exist only for it. But even apart from the deep insight and discernment revealed only by the Kantian philosophy, the inadmissible character of the assumption of absolute realism, clung to so obstinately, can indeed be directly demonstrated, or at any rate felt, by the mere elucidation of its meaning through considerations such as the following. According to realism, the world is supposed to exist, as we know it, independently of this knowledge. Now let us once remove from it all knowing beings, and thus leave behind only inorganic and vegetable nature. Rock, tree, and brook are there, and the blue sky; sun, moon, and stars illuminate this world, as before, only of course to no purpose, since there exists no eye to see such things. But then let us subsequently put into the world a knowing being. That world then presents itself once more in his brain, and repeats itself inside that brain exactly as it was previously outside it. Thus to the first world a second has been added, which, although completely separated from the first, resembles it to a nicety. Now the subjective world of this perception is constituted in subjective, known space exactly as the objective world is in objective, infinite space. But the subjective world still has an advantage over the objective, namely the knowledge that that external space is infinite; in fact, it can state beforehand most minutely and accurately the full conformity to law of all the relations in that space which are possible and not yet actual, and it does not need to examine them first. It can state just as much about the course of time, as also about the relation of cause and effect which governs the changes in outer space. I think that, on closer consideration, all this proves absurd enough, and thus leads to the conviction that that absolutely objective world outside the head, independent of it and prior to all knowledge, which we at first imagined we had conceived, was really no other than the second world already known subjectively, the world of the representation, and that it is this alone which we are actually capable of conceiving. Accordingly the assumption is automatically forced on us that the world, as we know it, exists only for our knowledge, and consequently in the representation alone, and not once again outside that representation. * In keeping with this assumption, then, the thing-in-itself, in other words, that which exists independently of our knowledge and of all knowledge, is to be regarded as something quite different from the representation and all its attributes, and hence from objectivity in general. What this is, will afterwards be the theme of our second book. On the other hand, the controversy about the reality of the external world, considered in § 5 of our first volume, rests on the assumption, just criticized, of an objective and a subjective world both in space, and on the impossibility, arising in the case of this presupposition, of a transition, a bridge, between the two. On this controversy I have to make the following remarks. Subjective and objective do not form a continuum. That of which we are immediately conscious is bounded by the skin, or rather by the extreme ends of the nerves proceeding from the cerebral system. Beyond this lies a world of which we have no other knowledge than that gained through pictures in our mind. Now the question is whether and to what extent a world existing independently of us corresponds to these pictures. The relation between the two could be brought about only by means of the law of causality, for this law alone leads from something given to something quite different from it. This law itself, however, has first of all to substantiate its validity. Now it must be either of objective or of subjective origin; but in either case it lies on one bank or the other, and therefore cannot serve as a bridge. If, as Locke and Hume assumed, it is a posteriori, and hence drawn from experience, it is of objective origin; it then itself belongs to the external world in question, and therefore cannot vouch for the reality of that world. For then, according to Locke's method, the law of causality would be demonstrated from experience, and the reality of experience from the law of causality. If, on the other hand, it is given a priori, as Kant more correctly taught, then it is of subjective origin; and so it is clear that with it we always remain in the subjective. For the only thing actually given empirically in the case of perception is the occurrence of a sensation in the organ of sense. The assumption that this sensation, even only in general, must have a cause rests on a law that is rooted in the form of our knowledge, in other words, in the functions of our brain. The origin of this law is therefore just as subjective as is that sensation itself. The cause of the given sensation, assumed as a result of this law, immediately manifests itself in perception as object, having space and time as the form of its appearance. But again, even these forms themselves are of entirely subjective origin, for they are the mode and manner of our faculty of perception. That transition from the sensation to its cause, which, as I have repeatedly shown, lies at the foundation of all sense-perception, is certainly sufficient for indicating to us the empirical presence in space and time of an empirical object, and is therefore fully satisfactory for practical life. But it is by no means sufficient for giving us information about the existence and real inner nature of the phenomena that arise for us in such a way, or rather of their intelligible substratum. Therefore, the fact that, on the occasion of certain sensations occurring in my organs of sense, there arises in my head a perception of things extended in space, permanent in time, and causally operative, by no means justifies me in assuming that such things also exist in themselves, in other words, that they exist with such properties absolutely belonging to them, independently of my head and outside it. This is the correct conclusion of the Kantian philosophy. It is connected with an earlier result of Locke which is just as correct, and very much easier to understand. Thus, although, as is allowed by Locke's teaching, external things are positively assumed to be the causes of the sensations, there cannot be any resemblance at all between the sensation, in which the effect consists, and the objective nature or quality of the cause that gives rise to this sensation. For the sensation, as organic function, is above all determined by the very artificial and complicated nature of our sense-organs; thus it is merely stimulated by the external cause, but is then perfected entirely in accordance with its own laws, and hence is wholly subjective. Locke's philosophy was the criticism of the functions of sense; but Kant has furnished the criticism of the functions of the brain. But to all this we still have to add the result of Berkeley, which has been revised by me, namely that every object, whatever its origin, is, as object, already conditioned by the subject, and thus is essentially only the subject's representation. The aim of realism is just the object without subject; but it is impossible even to conceive such an object clearly. From the whole of this discussion it follows with certainty and distinctness that it is absolutely impossible to arrive at a comprehension of the inner nature of things on the path of mere knowledge and representation, since this knowledge always comes to things from without, and must therefore remain eternally outside them. This purpose could be attained only by our finding ourselves in the inside of things, so that this inside would be known to us directly. My second book considers to what extent this is actually the case. However, so long as we stop, as in this first book we do, at objective comprehension, and hence at knowledge, the world is and remains for us a mere representation, since no path is here possible which leads beyond this. But in addition to this, adherence to the
idealistic point of view is a necessary counterpoise to the materialistic. Thus the controversy over the real and the ideal can also be regarded as one concerning the existence of matter. For it is ultimately the reality or ideality of matter which is the point in question. Is matter as such present merely in our representation, or is it also independent thereof? In the latter case, it would be the thing-in-itself; and he who assumes a matter existing in itself must also consistently be a materialist, in other words, must make matter the principle of explanation of all things. On the other hand, he who denies it to be a thing-in-itself is eo ipso an idealist. Among the modems only Locke has asserted positively and straightforwardly the reality of matter; therefore his teaching, through the instrumentality of Condillac, led to the
sensualism and materialism of the French. Berkeley alone has denied matter positively and without modifications. Therefore the complete antithesis is that of idealism and materialism, represented in its
extremes by Berkeley and the French materialists (Holbach). Fichte is not to be mentioned here; he deserves no place among real
philosophers, those elect of mankind who with deep earnestness seek not their own affairs, but the truth. They must therefore not be confused with those who under this pretext have only their personal advancement in view. Fichte is the father of sham philosophy, of the underhand method that by ambiguity in the use of words, incomprehensible talk, and sophisms, tries to deceive, to impress by an air of importance, and thus to befool those eager to learn. After this method had been applied by Schelling, it reached its height, as is well known, in Hegel, with whom it ripened into real charlatanism. But whoever in all seriousness even mentions that Fichte along with Kant shows that he has no notion of what Kant is. On the other hand, materialism also has its justification. It is just as true that the knower is a product of matter as that matter is a mere
representation of the knower; but it is also just as one-sided. For materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself. Therefore, against the assertion that I am a mere modification of matter, it must also be asserted that all matter exists merely in my representation, and this assertion is no less right. An as yet obscure knowledge of these relations appears to have evoked the Platonic saying
Realism, as I have said, necessarily leads to
materialism. For while empirical perception gives us things-in-themselves, as they exist independently of our knowledge, experience also gives us the order of things-in-themselves, in other words, the true and only world-order. But this way leads to the assumption that there is only one thing-in-itself, namely matter, of which everything else is a
modification; for the course of nature is the absolute and only world-order. To avoid these consequences, spiritualism was set up along with realism, so long as the latter was in undisputed authority; thus the assumption was made of a second substance, outside and along with matter, namely an immaterial substance. This dualism and spiritualism, devoid equally of experience, proofs, and
comprehensibility, was denied by Spinoza, and shown to be false by Kant, who ventured to do this because at the same time he established idealism in its rights. For with realism, materialism, as the counterpoise to which spiritualism had been devised, falls to the ground of its own accord, since matter and the course of nature then become mere phenomenon, conditioned by the intellect; for the phenomenon has its existence only in the representation of the intellect. Accordingly, spiritualism is the specious and false safeguard against materialism; but the real and true safeguard is idealism. By making the objective world dependent on us, idealism gives the necessary counterpoise to the dependence on the objective world in which we are placed by the course of nature. The world, from which I part at death, is, on the other hand, only my representation. The centre of gravity of existence falls back into the subject. What is proved is not, as in spiritualism, the knower's independence of matter, but the dependence of all matter on the knower. Of course, this is not so easy to understand and so convenient to handle as is spiritualism with its two substances; but In opposition to the subjective starting-point, namely "the world is my representation," there certainly is at the moment with equal justification the objective starting-point, namely "the world is matter," or "matter alone positively exists" (as it alone is not liable to becoming and to passing away), or "all that exists is matter." This is the starting-point of Democritus, Leucippus, and Epicurus. More closely considered, however, starting from the subject retains a real advantage; it has the advantage of one perfectly justified step, for consciousness alone is what is immediate. We skip this, however, when we go straight to matter and make that our starting-point. On the other hand, it would be possible to construct the world from matter and its properties, if these were correctly, completely, and exhaustively known (and many of them we still lack). For everything that has come into existence has become actual through causes, that were able to operate and come together only in consequence of the fundamental forces of matter. But these must be capable of complete demonstration at least objectively, even if we shall never get to know them subjectively. But such an explanation and construction of the world would always have as its foundation not only the assumption of an existence-in-itself of matter (whereas in truth such existence is conditioned by the subject), but it would also have to let all the original properties in this matter remain in force, and yet be absolutely inexplicable, that is, be qualitates occultae. (See §§ 26, 27 of the first volume.) For matter is only the bearer of these forces, just as the law of causality is only the regulator of their phenomena. Consequently, such an explanation of the world would still be only relative and conditioned, really the work of a physical science that at every step longed for a metaphysic. On the other hand, even the subjective starting-point and axiom, "the world is my representation," has something inadequate about it, firstly inasmuch as it is one-sided, for the world is much more besides this (namely thing-in-itself, will); in fact, being representation is to a certain extent accidental to it; secondly also inasmuch as it expresses merely the object's being conditioned by the subject without at the same time stating that the subject as such is also conditioned by the object. For the proposition that "the subject would nevertheless be a knowing being, even if it had no object, in other words, no representation at all" is just as false as is the proposition of the crude understanding to the effect that "the world, the object, would still exist, even if there were no subject." A consciousness without object is no consciousness at all. A thinking subject has concepts for its object; a sensuously perceiving subject has objects with the qualities corresponding to its organization. Now if we deprive the subject of all the particular determinations and forms of its knowing, all the properties in the object also disappear, and nothing but matter without form and quality is left. This matter can occur in experience as little as can the subject without the forms of its knowledge, yet it remains opposed to the bare subject as such, as its reflex, which can only disappear simultaneously with it. Although materialism imagines that it postulates nothing more than this matter -- atoms for instance -- yet it unconsciously adds not only the subject, but also space, time, and causality, which depend on special determinations of the subject. The world as representation, the objective world, has thus, so to speak, two poles, namely the knowing subject plain and simple without the forms of its knowing, and crude matter without form and quality. Both are absolutely unknowable; the subject, because it is that which knows; matter, because without form and quality it cannot be perceived. Yet both are the fundamental conditions of all empirical perception. Thus the knowing subject, merely as such, which is likewise a presupposition of all experience, stands in opposition, as its clear counterpart, to crude, formless, quite dead (i.e., will-less) matter. This matter is not given in any experience, but is presupposed in every experience. This subject is not in time, for time is only the more direct form of all its representing. Matter, standing in opposition to the subject, is accordingly eternal, imperishable, endures through all time; but properly speaking it is not extended, since extension gives form, and hence it is not spatial. Everything· else is involved in a constant arising and passing away, whereas these two constitute the static poles of the world as representation. We can therefore regard the permanence of matter as the reflex of the timelessness of the pure subject, that is simply taken to be the condition of every object. Both belong to the phenomenon, not to the thing-in-itself; but they are the framework of the phenomenon. Both are discovered only through abstraction; they are not given immediately, pure and by themselves. The fundamental mistake of all systems is the failure to recognize this truth, namely that the intellect and matter are correlatives, in other words, the one exists only for the other; both stand and fall together; the one is only the other's reflex. They are in fact really one and the same thing, considered from two opposite points of view; and this one thing -- here I am anticipating -- is the phenomenon of the will or of the thing-in-itself. Consequently, both are secondary, and therefore the origin of the world is not to be looked for in either of them. But in consequence of their failure to recognize this, all systems (with the possible exception of Spinoza's) have sought the origin of all things in one of those two. Thus some of them suppose an intellect,
As an impressive conclusion to this important and difficult discussion, I will now personify those two abstractions, and introduce them into a dialogue, after the manner of Prabodha Chandro Daya. [5] We may also compare it with a similar dialogue between matter and form in Raymond Lull's Duodecim Principia Philosophiae, c. 1 and 2. The Subject. I am, and besides me there is nothing. For the world is my representation. Matter. Presumptuous folly! I am, and besides me there is nothing: For the world is my fleeting form. You are a mere result of a part of this form, and quite accidental. The Subject. What silly conceit! Neither you nor your form would exist without me; you are conditioned through me. Whoever thinks me away, and then believes he can still think of you, is involved in a gross delusion; for your existence outside my representation is a direct contradiction, a wooden-iron. You are, simply means you are represented by me. My representation is the locality of your existence; I am therefore its first condition. Matter. Fortunately the boldness of your assertion will soon be refuted in a real way, and not by mere words. A few more moments, and you -- actually are no more; with all your boasting and bragging, you have sunk into nothing, floated past like a shadow, and suffered the fate of every one of my fleeting forms. But I, I remain intact and undiminished from millennium to millennium, throughout endless time, and behold unmoved the play of my changing forms. The Subject. This endless time, to live through which is your boast, is, like the endless space you fill, present merely in my representation; in fact, it is the mere form of my representation which I carry already prepared within me, and in which you manifest yourself. It receives you, and in this way do you first of all exist. But the annihilation with which you threaten me does not touch me, otherwise you also would be annihilated. On the contrary, it concerns merely the individual which for a short time is my bearer, and which, like everything else, is my representation. Matter. Even if I grant you this, and go so far as to regard your existence, which is inseparably linked to that of these fleeting individuals, as something existing by itself, it nevertheless remains dependent on mine. For you are subject only in so far as you have an object; and that object is I. I am its kernel and content, that which is permanent in it, that which holds it together, without which it would be as incoherent and as wavering and unsubstantial as the dreams and fancies of your individuals, that have borrowed even their fictitious content from me. The Subject. You do well to refrain from disputing my existence on account of its being linked to individuals; for just as inseparably as I am tied to these, so are you tied to form, your sister, and you have never yet appeared without her. No eye has yet seen either you or me naked and isolated; for we are both only abstractions. At bottom it is one entity that perceives itself and is perceived by itself, but its being-in-itself cannot consist either in perceiving or in being perceived, as these are divided between us. Both. So we are inseparably connected as necessary parts of one whole, which includes us both and exists through us both. Only a misunderstanding can set up the two of us as enemies in opposition to each other, and lead to the false conclusion that the one contests the existence of the other, with which its own existence stands and falls. *** This whole, including both, is the world as representation, or the phenomenon. After this is taken away, there remains only the purely metaphysical, the thing-in-itself, which in the second book we shall recognize as the will. CHAPTER II: On the Doctrine of Knowledge of Perception or Knowledge of the Understanding In spite of all transcendental ideality, the objective world retains empirical reality. It is true that the object is not the thing-in-itself; but as empirical object it is real. It is true that space is only in my head; but empirically my head is in space. The law of causality, of course, can never enable us to set aside idealism by forming a bridge between things-in-themselves and our knowledge of them, and thus assuring absolute reality to the world that manifests itself in consequence of the application of that law. But this by no means does away with the causal relation of objects to one another, and thus the relation that unquestionably occurs between every knower's own body and all other material objects. But the law of causality unites only phenomena; it does not, on the other hand, lead beyond them. With this law we are and remain in the world of objects, in other words, of phenomena, and thus really in the world of representations. Yet the whole of such a world of experience remains conditioned first by the knowledge of a subject in general as its necessary presupposition, and then by the special forms of our perception and apprehension; therefore it belongs necessarily to the mere phenomenon, and has no claim to pass for the world of things-in-themselves. Even the subject itself (in so far as it is merely knowing) belongs to the mere phenomenon, and constitutes the complementary half thereof. Without the application of the law of causality, however, we could never arrive at the perception of an objective world, for, as I have explained, this perception is essentially a matter of the intellect, and not merely of the senses. The senses give us mere sensation, which is still far from being perception. The share of the sensation of the senses in perception was separated out by Locke under the name of secondary qualities, which he rightly denied to things-in-themselves. But Kant, carrying Locke's method farther, also separated out and denied to things-in-themselves what belongs to the elaboration of that material (the sensation of the senses) through the brain. The result was that included in this was all that Locke had left to things-in-themselves as primary qualities, namely extension, shape, solidity, and so on, and in this way the thing-in-itself becomes with Kant a wholly unknown quantity x. So with Locke the thing-in-itself is something indeed without colour, sound, smell, taste, neither warm nor cold, neither soft nor hard, neither smooth nor rough; yet it remains something that is extended, has form, is impenetrable, is at rest or in motion, and has measure and number. With Kant, on the other hand, the thing-in-itself has laid aside even all these last qualities also, because they are possible only through time, space, and causality. These latter, however, spring from our intellect (brain) just as do colours, tones, smells, and so on from the nerves of the sense-organs. With Kant the thing-in-itself has become spaceless, unextended, and incorporeal. Thus what the mere senses supply to perception, in which the objective world exists, is related to what is supplied to perception by the brain-functions (space, time, causality) as the mass of the sense-nerves is to the mass of the brain, after deduction of that part of the latter which is moreover applied to thinking proper, in other words, to making abstract representations, and which in animals is therefore lacking. For while the nerves of the sense-organs invest the appearing objects with colour, sound, taste, smell, temperature, and so on, the brain imparts to them extension, form, impenetrability, mobility, and so on, in short, all that can be represented in perception only by means of time, space, and causality. How small the share of the senses is in perception compared with that of the intellect is proved also by comparing the nerve-apparatus for receiving impressions with that for elaborating them. for the mass of the nerves of sensation of all the sense-organs is very small compared with the mass of the brain, even in the case of animals, whose brain, since they do not really think in the abstract, serves merely to produce perception, and yet where this is perfect, as in the case of mammals, has a considerable mass. This is so even after the deduction of the cerebellum, whose function is the regulated control of movement. Thomas Reid's excellent book, Inquiry into the Human Mind (first edition 1764, sixth edition 1810), as a corroboration of the Kantian truths in the negative way, affords us a very thorough conviction of the inadequacy of the senses for producing the objective perception of things, and also of the non-empirical origin of the intuition of space and time. Reid refutes Locke's teaching that perception is a product of the senses. This he does by a thorough and acute demonstration that the collective sensations of the senses do not bear the least resemblance to the world known through perception, and in particular by showing that Locke's five primary qualities (extension, figure, solidity, movement, number) cannot possibly be supplied to us by any sensation of the senses. Accordingly, he abandons the question of the mode of origination and the source of perception as completely insoluble. Thus, although wholly unacquainted with Kant, he furnishes, so to speak, according to the regula falsi, a thorough proof of the intellectual nature of perception (which I was really the first to expound in consequence of the Kantian doctrine), and of the a priori source, discovered by Kant, of the constituent elements of perception, namely space, time, and causality, from which those primary qualities of Locke first arise, but by whose means they can easily be constructed. Thomas Reid's book is very instructive and well worth reading, ten times more so than all the philosophical stuff which has been written since Kant put together. Another indirect proof of the same doctrine, though on the path of error, is afforded by the French philosophers of sensualism. Since Condillac followed in the footsteps of Locke, these philosophers have laboured actually to show that the whole of our making of representations and our thinking go back to mere sensations of the senses (penser c'est sentir), [1] which, after the manner of Locke, they call idees simples. [2] Through the coming together and comparison of these idees, the whole of the objective world is supposed to be constructed in our head. These gentlemen certainly have des idees bien simples. [3] It is amusing to see how, lacking the depth of the German philosopher and the honesty of the English, they turn that wretched material of the sensation of the senses this way and that, and try to make it important, in order to construct out of it the deeply significant phenomenon of the world of representation and of thought. But the man constructed by them would inevitably be, speaking anatomically, an Anencephalus, a tete de crapaud, [4] with sense-organs only and without brain. To quote, by way of example, only a couple of the better attempts of this kind from among innumerable others, I mention Condorcet at the beginning of his book, Des progres de l'esprit humain, and Tourtual on vision in the second volume of the Scriptores Ophthalmologici Minores, published by Justus Radius (1828). The feeling of inadequacy of a merely sensualistic explanation of perception shows itself likewise in an assertion made shortly before the Kantian philosophy appeared. This is that we not only have representations of things stimulated by sensation of the senses, but that we directly perceive and apprehend the things themselves, although they lie outside us, which of course is inconceivable. And this was not meant in some idealistic sense, but was said from the ordinary realistic point of view. The celebrated Euler expresses this assertion well and to the point in his Briefe an eine Deutsche Prinzessin, vol. II, p. 68: "I therefore believe that the sensations (of the senses) still contain something more than the philosophers imagine. They are not merely empty perceptions of certain impressions made in the brain. They give to the soul not merely Ideas (ldeen) of things, but actually place before it objects that exist outside it, although how this really happens we cannot conceive." This opinion is explained from what follows. Although, as I have adequately demonstrated, perception is brought about by the application of the law of causality, of which we are a priori conscious, nevertheless in vision the act of the understanding, by means of which we pass from the effect to the cause, certainly does not enter into distinct consciousness. Therefore the sensation of the senses is not separated from the representation that is first formed by the understanding out of that sensation as raw material. Still less can there enter into consciousness a distinction, which generally does not take place, between object and representation, but we perceive quite directly the things themselves, and indeed as lying outside us, although it is certain that what is immediate can be only the sensation; and this is confined to the sphere beneath our skin. This can be explained from the fact that outside us is an exclusively spatial determination, but space itself is a form of our faculty of perception, in other words, a function of our brain. Therefore the "outside us" to which we refer objects on the occasion of the sensation of sight, itself resides inside our head, for there is its whole scene of action; much the same as in the theatre we see mountains, forest, and sea, yet everything remains within the house. From this we can understand that we perceive things with the determination "outside," and yet quite directly, but that we do not have within us a representation of the things lying outside us which is different from them. For things are in space and consequently outside us only in so far as we represent them. Therefore these things that we perceive directly in such a manner and not some mere image or copy of them, are themselves also only our representations, and as such exist only in our head. Therefore we do not, as Euler says, directly perceive the things themselves lying outside us; on the contrary, the things perceived by us as lying outside us are only our representations, and consequently are something we immediately perceive or apprehend. Therefore the whole of the correct observation given above in Euler's words affords a fresh corroboration of Kant's Transcendental Aesthetic, and of my theory of perception based thereon, as well as of idealism generally. The directness and unconsciousness above mentioned, with which in perception we make the transition from the sensation to its cause, can be illustrated by an analogous occurrence when we make abstract representations or think. Thus when we read or listen, we receive mere words, but from these we pass over to the concepts denoted by them so immediately, that it is as if we received the concepts immediately; for we are in no way conscious of the transition to them. Therefore on occasion we do not know what was the language in which we yesterday read something which we remember. Nevertheless, that such a transition takes place every time becomes apparent when once it is omitted, in other words, when we are distracted or diverted, and read without thinking; then we become aware that we have taken in all the words indeed, but no concept. Only when we pass from abstract concepts to pictures of the imagination do we become aware of the transposition. Moreover, with empirical apprehension, the unconsciousness with which the transition from the sensation to its cause is brought about really occurs only with perception in the narrowest sense, with vision or sight. On the other hand, with every other perception or apprehension of the senses the transition occurs with more or less clear consciousness; thus in the case of apprehension through the four coarser senses, the reality of the transition can be directly observed as a fact. In the dark we touch a thing on all sides for a long time, until from its different effects on our hands we are able to construct their cause as a definite shape. Further, if something feels smooth, we sometimes reflect as to whether we have fat or oil on our hands; and also when something feels cold, we wonder whether we have very warm hands. In the case of a sound, we sometimes doubt whether it was a merely inner affection of hearing or one that actually comes from outside; whether it sounded near and weak or far off and strong; from what direction it came; finally, whether it was the voice of a human being, of an animal, or the sound of an instrument. We therefore investigate the cause in the case of a given effect. With smell and taste, uncertainty as to the nature of the objective cause of the felt effect is of daily occurrence, so distinctly are they separated in this case. The fact that in the case of seeing the transition from the effect to the cause occurs quite unconsciously, and thus the illusion arises that this kind of perception is perfectly direct and consists only in the sensation of sense without the operation of the understanding -- this fact is due partly to the great perfection of the organ, and partly to the exclusively rectilinear action of light. In virtue of this action, the impression itself leads to the place of the cause, and as the eye has the capacity of experiencing most delicately and at a glance all the nuances of light, shade, colour, and outline, as well as the data by which the understanding estimates distance, the operation of the understanding, in the case of impressions on this sense, takes place with a rapidity and certainty that no more allow it to enter consciousness than they allow spelling to do so in the case of reading. In this way, therefore, the illusion arises that the sensation itself gives us the objects directly. Nevertheless, it is precisely in vision that the operation of the understanding, which consists in knowing the cause from the effect, is most significant. By virtue of this operation, what is doubly felt with two eyes is singly perceived; by means of it, the impression arrives on the retina upside down, in consequence of the crossing of the rays in the pupil; and when its cause is pursued back in the same direction, the impression is corrected, or, as it is expressed, we see things upright, although their image in the eye is inverted and reversed. Finally, by virtue of that operation of the understanding, we estimate magnitude and distance in immediate perception from the five different data very clearly and beautifully described by Thomas Reid. I expounded all this, as well as the proofs which irrefutably establish the intellectual nature of perception, in 1816 in my essay On Vision and Colours (second edition 1854), and with important additions fifteen years later in the improved Latin version. This version appears with the title Theoria Colorum physiologica eademque primaria in the third volume of the Scriptores Ophthalmologici Minores published by Justus Radius in 1830. But all this has been most fully and thoroughly discussed in the second edition of my essay On the Principle of Sufficient Reason, § 21. Therefore on this important subject I refer to these works so as not to extend the present discussions still further. On the other hand, an observation which comes within the province of the aesthetic may find place here. By virtue of the demonstrated intellectual nature of perception, the sight of beautiful objects, a beautiful view for example, is also a phenomenon of the brain. Therefore its purity and perfection depend not merely on the object, but also on the quality and constitution of the brain, that is on its form and size, the fineness of its texture, and the stimulation of its activity through the energy of the pulse of the brain-arteries. Accordingly, the picture of the same view appears in different heads, even when the eyes are equally keen, as differently as, say, the first and last impression from a much-used copperplate. To this is due the great difference in the capacity to enjoy the beauties of nature, and consequently to copy them, in other words, to produce the same phenomenon of the brain by means of an entirely different kind of cause, namely dabs of colour on a canvas. Moreover, the apparent immediacy of perception, resting on its entirely intellectual nature, by virtue of which, as Euler says, we apprehend the things themselves as lying outside us, has an analogy in the way in which we feel the parts of our own body, especially when they experience pain, as is generally the case as soon as we feel them. Thus, just as we imagine we perceive things directly where they are, whereas in fact we do so in the brain, so do we also believe we feel the pain of a limb in the limb itself, whereas this pain also is felt in the brain to which it is guided by the nerve of the affected part. Therefore only the affections of those parts whose nerves go to the brain are felt, but not those whose nerves belong to the ganglionic system. It may happen, of course, that an unusually strong affection of these parts penetrates by roundabout ways as far as the brain. Usually, however, it makes itself known there only as a dull discomfort, and always without precise determination of its locality. Therefore we do not feel injuries to a limb whose nerve-trunk is severed or ligatured. Finally, a man who has lost a limb still sometimes feels pain in it, because the nerves going to the brain still exist. Thus, in the two phenomena here compared, what occurs in the brain is apprehended as outside the brain; in the case of perception, by means of the understanding extending its feelers into the external world; in the case of a sensation in the limbs, by means of the nerves. To repeat what others have said is not the purpose of my works; here, therefore, I give only isolated remarks of my own concerning the senses. The senses are merely the brain's outlets through which it receives material from outside (in the form of sensation); this material it elaborates into the representation of perception. Those sensations that are to serve mainly for the objective apprehension of the external world must not be in themselves either agreeable or disagreeable. This really means that they must leave the will entirely unaffected; otherwise the sensation itself would absorb our attention, and we should pause at the effect, instead of passing at once to the cause, as is intended. This is occasioned by the decided mastery that the will, for our consideration, everywhere has over the mere representation, and we turn to the latter only when the will is silent. Accordingly colours and sounds are in themselves, and so long as their impression does not go beyond the normal degree, neither painful nor agreeable sensations, but appear with that indifference that makes them suitable to be the material of purely objective perceptions or intuitions. This is the case in so far as it possibly could be in general in a body that is in itself through and through will; and it is precisely in this respect that it is worthy of admiration. Physiologically it rests on the fact that, in the organs of the nobler senses, sight and hearing, those nerves which have to receive the specific outward impression are in no way susceptible to any sensation of pain, but know no sensation other than that which is specifically peculiar to them and serves mere perception. Accordingly, the retina, and the optic nerve as well, are insensitive to every injury; and it is just the same with the auditory nerve. In both organs pain is felt only in their other parts, in the surroundings of the nerve of sense which is peculiar to them, never in that nerve itself. In the case of the eye, the pain is mainly in the conjunctiva; in the case of the ear, in the auditory meatus. Even with the brain it is just the same, since if it is cut into directly, from above, it has no sensation of this. Thus only on account of this indifference, peculiar to them, with reference to the will do the eye's sensations become capable of supplying the understanding with such manifold and finely shaded data. From these the understanding constructs in our mind the marvellous objective world by the application of the law of causality and on the basis of the pure intuitions of space and time. It is precisely that want of effect on the will which enables colour-sensations, when their strength is enhanced by transparence, as in the case of the sunset glow, of coloured windows, and so on, to put us very easily into the state of purely objective, will-less perception. As I have shown in the third book, such perception forms a principal element of the aesthetic impression. It is just this indifference with regard to the will which makes sounds suitable for supplying the material to express the endless multiplicity and variety of the concepts of reason (Vernunft). Since the outer sense, in other words receptivity for external impressions as pure data for the understanding, is divided into five senses, these conform to the four elements, in other words, to the four conditions or states of aggregation, together with that of imponderability. Thus the sense for the firm (earth) is touch, for the fluid (water) is taste, for the vaporous, i.e., the volatile (vapour, exhalation) is smell, for the permanently elastic (air) is hearing, for the imponderable (fire, light) is sight. The second imponderable, namely heat, is really an object not of the senses, but of general feeling; hence it always affects the will directly as pleasant or unpleasant. From this classification the relative dignity of the senses also follows. Sight has the highest rank, inasmuch as its sphere is the most far-reaching, and its receptivity and susceptibility the keenest. This is due to the fact that what stimulates it is an imponderable, in other words, something hardly corporeal, something quasi-spiritual. Hearing has the second place, corresponding to air. Touch, however, is a thorough, versatile, and well-informed sense. For whereas each of the other senses gives us only an entirely one-sided account of the object, such as its sound or its relation to light, touch, which is closely bound up with general feeling and muscular power, supplies the understanding with data regarding simultaneously the form, size, hardness, smoothness, texture, firmness, temperature, and weight of bodies; and it does all this with the least possibility of illusion and deception, to which all the other senses are far more liable. The two lowest senses, smell and taste, are not free from a direct stimulation of the will; thus they are always agreeably or disagreeably affected, and so are more subjective than objective. Perceptions through hearing are exclusively in time; hence the whole nature of music consists in the measure of time, and on this depends not only the quality or pitch of tones by means of vibrations, but also their quantity or duration by means of the beat or time. The perceptions of sight, on the other hand, are primarily and predominantly in space; but secondarily, through their duration, they are in time also. Sight is the sense of the understanding that perceives; hearing is the sense of the faculty of reason that thinks and comprehends. Visible signs only imperfectly take the place of words; therefore I doubt whether a deaf and dumb person, able to read but with no conception of the sound of the words, operates as readily in his thinking with the merely visible concept-signs as we do with the actual, i.e., audible words. If he cannot read, he is, as is well known, almost like an irrational animal; whereas the man born blind is from the beginning an entirely rational being. Sight is an active, hearing a passive sense. Therefore, sounds affect our mind in a disturbing and hostile manner, the more so indeed, the more active and developed the mind. They can destroy all ideas, and instantly shatter the power of thought. On the other hand there is no analogous disturbance through the eye, no immediate effect of what is seen as such on the activity of thinking (for naturally it is not a question here of the influence of the perceived objects on the will), but the most varied multiplicity of things before our eyes admits of entirely unhindered and undisturbed thinking. Accordingly, the thinking mind lives in eternal peace with the eye, and at eternal war with the ear. This antagonism of the two senses is also confirmed by the fact that deaf-mutes, when cured by galvanism, become deadly pale with terror at the first sound they hear (Gilbert's Annalen der Physik, Vol. X, p. 382); on the other hand, blind persons operated on behold the first light with great joy, and only with reluctance do they allow the bandages to be put over their eyes again. However, all that has been mentioned can be explained from the fact that hearing takes place by virtue of a mechanical percussion on the auditory nerve which is at once transmitted to the brain; whereas vision is a real action of the retina, which is merely stimulated and brought about by light and its modifications, as I have shown in detail in my physiological theory of colours. On the other hand, the whole of this antagonism clashes with the coloured-ether drum-beating theory so shamelessly served up everywhere at the present time. This theory tries to degrade the eye's sensation of light to a mechanical percussion such as the sensation of hearing actually is; whereas nothing can be more heterogeneous than the placid, gentle effect of light and the alarm-drum of hearing. If we also associate with this the special circumstance that, although we hear with two ears, whose sensitiveness is often very different, we never hear a sound doubly, as we often see double with two eyes, we are led to the conjecture that the sensation of hearing does not originate in the labyrinth or in the cochlea, but only deep down in the brain where the two auditory nerves meet, through which the impression becomes single. But this is where the pons Varolii encloses the medulla oblongata, and thus at the absolutely lethal spot, by injury to which any animal is instantly killed, and from which the auditory nerve has only a short course to the labyrinth, the seat of the acoustic percussion. It is just because its source is here, in this dangerous place, from which all movement of limbs also arises, that we start at a sudden bang. This does not occur at all with a sudden illumination, e.g., a flash of lightning. On the other hand, the optic nerve proceeds much farther forward from its thalami (although perhaps its primary source lies behind these), and throughout its course it is covered by the anterior lobes of the brain, though always separated from them, until, having got right outside the brain, it is extended into the retina. On the retina the sensation arises first of all on the occasion of the light-stimulus, and there it actually has its seat, as is shown in my essay On Vision and Colours. From this origin of the auditory nerve is also explained the great disturbance that the power of thought suffers through sounds. Because of this disturbance, thinking minds, and people of great intellect generally, are without exception absolutely incapable of enduring any noise. For it disturbs the constant stream of their thoughts, interrupts and paralyses their thinking, just because the vibration of the auditory nerve is transmitted so deeply into the brain. The whole mass of the brain trembles and feels the vibrations and oscillations set up by the auditory nerve, because the brains of such persons are much more easily moved than are those of ordinary heads. On the same great agility and power of transmission of their brains depends precisely the fact that, with them, every thought so readily evokes all those that are analogous or related to it. In this way the similarities, analogies, and relations of things in general come so rapidly and readily into their minds, that the same occasion that millions of ordinary people had before them brings them to the thought, to the discovery. Other men are subsequently surprised at not having made the discovery, because they are certainly able to think afterwards, but not before. Thus the sun shone on all statues, but only the statue of Memnon emitted a sound. Accordingly Kant, Goethe, and Jean-Paul were highly sensitive to every noise, as their biographies testify.* In the last years of his life Goethe bought a dilapidated house close to his own, merely in order that he might not have to endure the noise made in repairing it. So it was in vain that he had followed the drum in his youth, in order to harden himself to noise. It is not a matter of habit. On the other hand, the truly stoical indifference of ordinary persons to noise is amazing; no noise disturbs them in their thinking, reading, writing, or other work, whereas the superior mind is rendered quite incapable by it. But that very thing which makes them so insensitive to noise of every kind also makes them insensitive to the beautiful in the plastic arts, and to profound thought and fine expression in the rhetorical arts, in short, to everything that does not touch their personal interest. The following remark of Lichtenberg can be applied to the paralysing effect that noise has on highly intellectual persons: "It is always a good sign when artists can be prevented by trifles from exercising their art. F.... stuck his fingers into sulphur when he wanted to play the piano.... Such things do not hinder the mediocre head;... it acts, so to speak, like a coarse sieve." (Vermischte Schriften, Vol. I, p. 398.) Actually, I have for a long time been of opinion that the quantity of noise anyone can comfortably endure is in inverse proportion to his mental powers, and may therefore be regarded as a rough estimate of them. Therefore, when I hear dogs barking unchecked for hours in the courtyard of a house, I know what to think of the mental powers of the inhabitants. The man who habitually slams doors instead of shutting them with the hand, or allows this to be done in his house, is not merely ill-mannered, but also coarse and narrow-minded. That "sensible" in English also means "intelligent," "judicious" (verstandig), accordingly rests on an accurate and fine observation. We shall be quite civilized only when our ears are no longer outlawed, and it is no longer anyone's right to cut through the consciousness of every thinking being within a circuit of a thousand yards, by means of whistling, howling, bellowing, hammering, whip-cracking, letting dogs bark, and so on. The Sybarites banished all noisy trades from their city; the venerable sect of the Shakers in North America tolerate no unnecessary noise in their villages, and the same thing is reported of the Moravian brotherhood. A few more remarks on this subject are to be found in chapter 30 of the second volume of the Parerga and Paralipomena. The effect of music on the mind, so penetrating, so immediate, so unfailing, and also the after-effect that sometimes follows it, consisting in a specially sublime frame of mind, are explained by the passive nature of hearing just described. The vibrations of the tones following in combined, rational, numerical relations, set the brain-fibres themselves vibrating in a similar way. On the other hand, from the active nature of vision, the very opposite of hearing, we can understand why for the eye there can be nothing analogous to music, and why the colour-organ was a ludicrous error. Further, it is just by reason of the active nature of the sense of sight that it is exceedingly keen in the case of hunting animals, that is, beasts of prey, just as conversely the passive sense, hearing, is keenest in the case of hunted, fleeing, timid animals, so that it may give them timely warning of the pursuer hurrying or creeping towards them. Just as in sight or vision we have recognized the sense of the understanding, and in hearing that of the faculty of reason, so smell might be called the sense of memory, because it recalls to our mind more directly than anything else the specific impression of an event or an environment, even from the most remote past. CHAPTER IV: On Knowledge a Priori From the fact that we can of ourselves state and define the laws of relations in space, without needing experience to do so, Plato inferred (Meno [81 D], p. 353, Bip.) that all learning is merely a recollecting. Kant, on the contrary, inferred that space is subjectively conditioned, and is merely a form of the faculty of knowledge. How far, in this respect, Kant stands above Plato! Cogito, ergo sum
[1] is an analytical judgement; Parmenides, in fact, held it to be an identical judgement:
Kant very properly puts his investigations on time and space at the head of all the others. These questions above all force themselves on the speculative mind: What is time? What is this entity consisting of mere movement without anything that moves? and, What is space, this omnipresent nothing out of which no thing can emerge without ceasing to be something? That time and space belong to the subject, are the mode and manner in which the process of objective apperception is carried out in the brain, has already a sufficient proof in the absolute impossibility of thinking away time and space, whereas we very easily think away everything that appears in them. The hand can let go of everything, but not of itself. I wish here to illustrate the more detailed proofs of this truth given by Kant by a few examples and deductions, not for the refutation of silly objections, but for the use of those who in future will have to lecture on Kant's teachings. "A right-angled equilateral triangle" contains no logical contradiction, for the predicates by no means eliminate the subject, nor are they inconsistent with each other. Only with the construction of their object in pure intuition or perception does their incompatibility in it appear. Now if on that account we wished to regard this as a contradiction, every physical impossibility discovered only after centuries would also be a contradiction, for example, the composition of a metal from its elements, or a mammal with more or less than seven cervical vertebrae, [5] or the coexistence of horns and upper incisors in the same animal. But only logical impossibility, not physical, is a contradiction; and mathematical just as little. Equilateral and right-angled do not contradict each other (they coexist in the square); nor does either of them contradict the triangle. Therefore the incompatibility of these concepts can never be known through mere thinking, but results only from perception. But this perception is such that no experience, no real object, is required for it; thus it is a merely mental perception. Here we may refer to the proposition of Giordano Bruno, to be found also in Aristotle: "An infinitely large body is necessarily immovable"; a proposition that cannot rest either on experience or on the principle of contradiction; for it speaks of things that cannot occur in any experience, and the concepts "infinitely large" and "movable" do not contradict each other, but only pure perception establishes that movement demands a space outside the body, yet its infinite size leaves no space over. Now if anyone wished to object to the first mathematical example, and to say that it was a question only of how complete the concept is which the person judging has of the triangle, and that if it were quite complete, it would also contain the impossibility of a triangle being right-angled and yet equilateral, then the answer is as follows: Assume that his concept of the triangle is not so complete, then, without the addition of experience, he can, by the mere construction of the triangle in his imagination, extend his concept of it, and convince himself of the impossibility of that combination of concepts for all eternity. But this very process is a synthetic judgement a priori, in other words, a judgement by which we form and perfect our concepts without any experience, and yet with validity for all experience. For in general, whether a given judgement is analytic or synthetic can be determined in the particular case only according as the concept of the subject has in the mind of the person judging more or less completeness. The concept "cat" contains a hundred times more in Cuvier's mind than in his servant's; therefore the same judgements about it will be synthetic for the latter, merely analytic for the former. But if we take the concepts objectively, and then seek to decide whether a given judgement is analytic or synthetic, let us convert its predicate into its contradictory opposite, and assign this without copula to the subject. If this gives a contradictio in adjecto, the judgement was analytic; if otherwise it was synthetic. That
arithmetic rests on the pure intuition or perception of time is not so evident as that geometry is based on the intuition of space. [6] It can be demonstrated, however, as follows. All counting consists in the repeated setting down of unity; merely to know always how often we have already set down unity do we mark it each time with a different word; these are the numerals. Now repetition is possible only through succession; but succession, thus one thing after another, depends entirely on the intuition or perception of time. It is a concept that is intelligible only by means of this; and thus
counting is possible only by means of time. This dependence of all counting on time is also betrayed by the fact that in all languages multiplication is expressed by "time," and thus through a time-concept, sexies,
Although time, like space is the subject's form of knowledge, it nevertheless presents itself, like space, as something that exists independently of the subject and wholly objectively. Against our will, or without our knowledge, it hastens or lingers. We ask what time it is; we investigate time as though it were something quite objective. And what is this objective thing? Not the progress of the stars, or of clocks, which merely serve to measure the course of time itself; but it is something different from all these, yet like these is something independent of our willing and knowing. It exists only in the heads of beings that know, but the uniformity of its course and its independence of the will give it the right and title to objectivity. Time is primarily the form of the inner sense. Anticipating the following book, I remark that the sole object of the inner sense is the knower's own will. Time is therefore the form by means of which self-knowledge becomes possible to the individual will, which originally and in itself is without knowledge. Thus in time the essential nature of the will, in itself simple and identical, appears drawn out into a course of life. But precisely on account of that original simplicity and identity of what exhibits itself thus, its character always remains exactly the same. For this reason, the course of life itself retains throughout the same fundamental tone; in fact, its manifold events and scenes are at bottom like variations on one and the same theme. The a priori nature of the law of causality has at times not been seen at all, at other times not rightly understood, by Englishmen and Frenchmen. Therefore some of them continue the earlier attempts at finding an empirical origin for it. Maine de Biran puts this origin in experience, and says that the act of will as cause is followed by the movement of the body as effect. But this fact itself is erroneous. We do not by any means recognize the real, immediate act of will as something different from the action of the body, and the two as connected by the bond of causality; both are one and indivisible. Between them there is no succession; they are simultaneous. They are one and the same thing perceived and apprehended in a twofold manner. Thus what makes itself known to inner apprehension or perception (self-consciousness) as real act of will, exhibits itself at once in outer perception, in which the body stands out objectively, as the action of the body. That physiologically the action of the nerve precedes that of the muscle is here of no importance, as it does not come into self-consciousness; and it is not a question here of the relation between muscle and nerve, but of that between act of will and action of body. Now this does not make itself known as a causal relation. If these two presented themselves to us as cause and effect, their connexion would not be so incomprehensible to us as it actually is; for what we understand from its cause we understand in so far as there is in general for us a comprehension of things. On the other hand, the movement of our limbs by virtue of mere acts of will is indeed a miracle of such common occurrence that we no longer notice it; but if we once turn our attention to it, we become vividly conscious of the incomprehensible nature of the matter, just because we have here before us something we do not understand as effect of its cause. Therefore this perception or apprehension could never lead us to the notion of causality, for that does not occur in it at all. Maine de Biran himself recognizes the complete simultaneity of the act of will and of the movement (Nouvelles considerations des rapports du physique au moral, pp. 377, 378). In England Thomas Reid (On the First Principles of Contingent Truths, Essay VI, c. 5) stated that the knowledge of the causal relation has its ground in the nature and constitution of our cognitive faculty itself. Quite recently Thomas Brown has taught much the same thing in his extremely tedious book Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect (4th ed., 1835), namely that that knowledge springs from an innate, intuitive, and instinctive conviction; he is therefore essentially on the right path. However, the crass ignorance is unpardonable by which, in this book of 476 pages, 130 of which are devoted to the refutation of Hume, no mention at all is made of Kant, who cleared up the matter seventy years ago. If Latin had remained the exclusive language of science and literature, such a thing would not have occurred. In spite of Brown's explanation, which is on the whole correct, a modification of the doctrine, advanced by Maine de Biran, of the empirical origin of the fundamental knowledge of the causal relation, has found favour in England, for it is not without some plausibility. It is that we abstract the law of causality from the empirically perceived or apprehended effect of our own body on other bodies. Hume had already refuted it. I, however, have demonstrated its inadmissibility in my work On the Will in Nature (p. 75 of the second edition) from the fact that, in order that we may objectively apprehend in spatial perception our own body as well as others, the knowledge of causality must already exist, since it is the condition of such perception. The only genuine and convincing proof that we are conscious of the law of causality prior to all experience is actually found in the very necessity of making a transition from the sensation of the senses, given only empirically, to its cause, in order that perception of the external world may come about. I have therefore substituted this proof for the Kantian, whose incorrectness I have shown. The most detailed and thorough exposition of the whole of this important subject, here only touched on, and thus of the a priori nature of the law of causality, and of the intellectual nature of empirical perception, is found in the second edition of my essay On the Principle of Sufficient Reason, § 21, to which I refer to avoid repeating here all that I have said in that work. I have there shown the immense difference between the mere sensation of the senses and the perception of an objective world, and have uncovered the wide gulf that lies between the two. The law of causality alone bridges this gulf; but for its application it presupposes the other two forms akin to it, space and time. By means of these three in union do we first arrive at the objective representation. Now essentially it is immaterial whether the sensation, starting from which we arrive at perception or apprehension, occurs through the resistance suffered by the exertion of our muscles, or through the impression of light on the retina, or of sound on the auditory nerve, etc. The sensation always remains a mere datum for the understanding, and the understanding alone is capable of grasping it as effect of a cause different from it. The understanding now perceives it as something external, that is to say, something put into the form of space, which is also inherent in the intellect prior to all experience, as something occupying and filling this space. Without this intellectual operation, for which the forms must lie ready within us, the perception of an objective external world could never arise from a mere sensation inside our skin. How can we even conceive that the mere feeling of being hindered in a desired movement, which, moreover, occurs also in cases of paralysis, would be sufficient for this? In addition to this there is still the fact that, in order for me to attempt to affect external things, these must necessarily have affected me previously as motives; but this presupposes the apprehension of the external world. According to the theory in question (as I have already remarked in the place mentioned above), a person born without arms and legs would necessarily be quite unable to arrive at the representation of causality, and consequently at the perception or apprehension of the external world. But that this is not so is proved by a fact communicated in Froriep's Notizen (1838, July, No. 133), namely the detailed account, accompanied by a portrait, of an Estonian girl, Eva Lauk, then fourteen years old, who was born entirely without arms and legs. The account ends with the following words: "According to her mother's statements, she developed mentally as rapidly as her brothers and sisters did; in particular, she attained just as soon as they to a correct judgement of the size and distance of visible objects, yet without being able to make use of her hands. Dorpat, 1 March 1838. Dr. A. Hueck." Hume's doctrine that the concept of causality arises merely from the habit of seeing two states or conditions constantly follow each other finds a refutation based on fact in the oldest of all successions, that of day and night, which no one has ever yet regarded as cause and effect of each other. And this very succession also refutes Kant's false assertion that the objective reality of a succession would be known first of all by our apprehending the two succeeding things in the relation of cause and effect to each other. Indeed, the converse of this teaching of Kant is true; thus we know empirically only in their succession which of two connected states or conditions is cause and which effect. On the other hand, the absurd assertion of many professors of philosophy of our day that cause and effect are simultaneous can again be refuted by the fact that in cases where on account of its great rapidity the succession cannot be perceived at all, we nevertheless assume it with a priori certainty, and with it the lapse of a certain time. Thus, for example, we know that a certain time must elapse between the pressing of the trigger and the emission of the bullet, although we cannot perceive it. We know that this time must again be divided between several states appearing in a strictly definite succession, namely the pressure of the trigger, the striking of the spark, the ignition, the spreading of the fire, the explosion, and the departure of the bullet. No person has ever yet perceived this succession of states; but since we know which state brings about the other, we also know in precisely this way which state must precede the other in time, and consequently that during the course of the whole series a certain time elapses, although it is so short that it escapes our empirical apprehension. For no one will assert that the flying out of the bullet is actually simultaneous with the pressing of the trigger. Therefore not merely the law of causality, but also its relation to time, and the necessity of the succession of cause and effect, are known to us a priori. If we know which of two states is cause and which effect, we also know which state precedes the other in time. If, on the contrary, this is not known to us, but their causal relation in general is known, then we try to decide the succession empirically, and according to this determine which of the two states is cause and which effect. The falseness of the assertion that cause and effect are simultaneous appears moreover from the following consideration. An unbroken chain of causes and effects fills the whole of time. (For if this chain were interrupted, the world would stand still, or to set it in motion again an effect without a cause would have to appear.) Now if every effect were simultaneous with its cause, then every effect would be moved up into the time of its cause, and a chain of causes and effects with still the same number of links would fill no time at all, much less an infinite time, but the causes and effects would be all together in one moment. Therefore, on the assumption that cause and effect are simultaneous, the course of the world shrinks up into the business of a moment. This proof is analogous to the one that every sheet of paper must have a thickness, since otherwise a whole book would have no thickness. To state when the cause ceases and the effect begins is in almost all cases difficult, and often impossible. For the changes (in other words, the succession of states or conditions) are a continuum, like the time they fill; and therefore also like that time they are infinitely divisible. Their succession or sequence, however, is as necessarily determined and irreversible as is that of the moments of time itself, and each of them with reference to the one preceding it is called "effect," and with reference to the one succeeding it, "cause." Every change in the material world can appear only in so far as another change has immediately preceded it; this is the true and entire content of the law of causality. But in philosophy no concept has been more wrongly used than that of cause, by the favourite trick or blunder of conceiving it too widely, of taking it too generally, through abstract thinking. Since scholasticism, really in fact since Plato and Aristotle, philosophy has been for the most part a continued misuse of universal concepts, such as, for example, substance, ground, cause, the good, perfection, necessity, possibility, and very many others. A tendency of minds to operate with such abstract and too widely comprehended concepts has shown itself at almost all times. Ultimately it may be due to a certain indolence of the intellect, which finds it too onerous to be always controlling thought through perception. Gradually such unduly wide concepts are then used like algebraical symbols, and cast about here and there like them. In this way philosophizing degenerates into a mere combining, a kind of lengthy reckoning, which (like all reckoning and calculating) employs and requires only the lower faculties. In fact, there ultimately results from this a mere display of words, the most monstrous example of which is afforded us by mind-destroying Hegelism, where it is carried to the extent of pure nonsense. But scholasticism also often degenerated into word-juggling. In fact, even the Topi of Aristotle -- very abstract principles, conceived with complete generality, which could be applied to subjects of the most different kind, and be brought into the field everywhere for arguing either pro or contra -- also have their origin in that wrong use of universal concepts. We find innumerable examples of the way in which the scholastics worked with such abstractions in their writings,
particularly those of Thomas Aquinas. But philosophy, down to the time of Locke and Kant, really pursued the path prepared by the scholastics; these two men at last turned their attention to the origin of concepts. In fact, in his earlier years, we find Kant himself still on that path in his Proof of the Existence of God (p. 191 of the first volume of the Rosenkranz edition), where the concepts substance, ground, reality, are used in such a way as they could never have been if a return had been made to the source of those concepts and to their true content as determined by this source. For then matter only would have been found as the source and content of substance, and of ground (when it is a question of things of the real world) only cause, in other words, the previous change bringing about the later change, and so on. This, of course, would not have led here to the intended result. But everywhere, as here, there arose false principles from such concepts too widely comprehended, under which more could therefore be subsumed than their true content allowed; and from these false principles arose false systems. Even the whole of Spinoza's method of demonstration rests on such uninvestigated and too widely comprehended concepts. Here Locke's very great merit is to be found; in order to counteract all that dogmatic unreality. he insisted on an investigation of the origin of concepts, and thus led back to what is perceptive and to experience. Before him Bacon had worked in a similar sense, yet with reference to physics rather than metaphysics. Kant pursued the path prepared by Locke in a higher sense and much farther, as mentioned previously. The results of Locke and Kant were, however, annoying and inconvenient to the men of mere show who succeeded in diverting the public's attention from Kant to themselves. But in such a case they know quite well how to ignore the dead as well as the living. They therefore summarily forsook the only correct path found in the end by those wise men, and philosophized at random with all kinds of raked-up concepts, unconcerned as to their origin and true content, so that Hegel's pretended wisdom finally resulted in concepts which had no origin at all, but were rather themselves the origin and source of things. But Kant was wrong in neglecting empirical perception too much in favour of pure perception, and this I have discussed at length in my criticism of his philosophy. With me perception is throughout the source of all knowledge. Early recognizing the ensnaring and insidious nature of abstractions, I already in 1813, in my essay On the Principle of Sufficient Reason, pointed out the difference of the relations that are thought under this concept. It is true that universal concepts should be the material in which philosophy deposits and stores up its knowledge, but not the source from which it draws such knowledge; the terminus ad quem, not a quo. It is not, as Kant defines it, a science from concepts, but a science in concepts. Therefore the concept of causality which we are discussing here has always been comprehended far too widely by philosophers for the furtherance of their dogmatic ends; and in this way much came into it that is not to be found in it at all. Hence arose
propositions such as: "All that is, has its cause"; "The effect cannot contain more than the cause, and so anything that was not also in this cause"; "Causa est nabilior suo effectu," [7] and many others just as unwarranted. The following subtle sophistry of that humdrum prattler Proclus, in his Institutio Theologica, § 76, gives us a fuller and specially lucid example:
In consequence, however, of the above-mentioned too wide comprehension of the concept cause in abstract thinking, it has also been confounded with the concept force. Completely different from the cause, this force is nevertheless what imparts to every cause its causality, in other words, the possibility of acting. I have fully and thoroughly discussed this in the second book of volume one, also in my work On the Will in Nature, and finally in the second edition of the essay On the Principle of Sufficient Reason, § 20, p. 44. This confusion is found in its clumsiest form in Maine de Biran's book previously cited, and is dealt with in more detail at the place last mentioned. However, it is also usual apart from this, for example when one asks about the cause of any original force, say the force of gravity. Indeed Kant himself (On the Only Possible Proof, Vol. I, pp. 211 and 215 of the Rosenkranz edition) calls the forces of nature "effective causes," and says that "gravity is a cause." But it is impossible to have a clear understanding of his thought so long as force and cause in it are not distinctly recognized as completely different; the use of abstract concepts leads very easily to their confusion, if the consideration of their origin is set aside. Knowledge of causes and effects, resting on the form of the understanding and always perceptive, is abandoned, in order that one may stick to the abstraction cause. Merely in this way has the concept of causality so frequently been falsely comprehended, in spite of all its simplicity. Therefore even in Aristotle (Metaphysics, IV, 2) we find causes divided into four classes which are grasped in a fundamentally false and even crude way. Compare with this my division of causes, as set forth for the first time in my essay On Vision and Colours, Chap. I, briefly touched on in para. 6 of our first volume, and fully discussed in the essay On the Freedom of the Will, pp. 30-33 [2nd ed., pp. 29-32]. Two things in nature, namely matter and the forces of nature, remain untouched by the chain of causality which is endless in both directions. These two are the conditions of causality, whereas everything else is conditioned by it. For the one (matter) is that in which the states and their changes appear; the other (the forces of nature) that by virtue of which alone they are able to appear at all. But we must bear in mind here that in the second book, and later and more thoroughly in the essay On the Will in Nature, the forces of nature are shown to be identical with the will in ourselves, but that matter appears as the mere visibility of the will, so that ultimately it too can be regarded in a certain sense as identical with the will. On the other hand, what is explained in para. 4 of the first volume, and better still in the second edition of the essay On the Principle of Sufficient Reason at the end of para. 21, p. 77, is no less true and correct. This is to the effect that matter is objectively apprehended causality itself, since its entire nature consists in action generally; thus causality itself is the effectiveness ( This table contains all the fundamental truths rooted in our a priori knowledge of perception, expressed as first principles independent of one another. But what is special, what constitutes the content of arithmetic and geometry, is not laid down here, or what results from the union and application of those formal kinds of knowledge. This is the subject of the Metaphysical Rudiments of Natural Science expounded by Kant, to which this table forms, to a certain extent, the propaedeutic and introduction, and with which it is therefore directly connected. In this table I have had in view first of all the very remarkable parallelism of our knowledge a priori, which forms the framework of all experience, especially also the fact that, as I explained in § 4 of volume one, matter (as also causality) is to be regarded as a combination, or if preferred, an amalgamation, of space with time. In harmony with this, we find that what geometry is for the pure perception or intuition of space, and arithmetic for that of time, Kant's phoronomy is for the pure perception or intuition of the two in union. For matter is primarily that which is movable in space. The mathematical point cannot even be conceived as movable, as Aristotle has explained (Physics, VI. 10). This philosopher himself has also furnished the first example of such a science, for in the fifth and sixth books of his Physics he determines a priori the laws of rest and motion. Now we can, at our discretion, regard this table either as a collection of the eternal, basic laws of the world, and consequently as the basis of an ontology, or as a chapter from the physiology of the brain, according as we take up the realistic or the idealistic point of view, although the second is in the last instance right. We have, of course, already come to an understanding on this point in the first chapter; yet I still wish to illustrate it especially by an example. Aristotle's book De Xenophane, etc., begins with these weighty words of Xenophanes:
Notes to the Annexed Table.
(1) To No. 4 of Matter. The essential nature of matter consists in acting; it is action itself, in the abstract, and thus action in general, apart from all difference in the manner of acting; it is through and through causality. Precisely on this account, it itself, according to its existence, is not subject
to the law of causality. Therefore it is without origin and everlasting, for otherwise the law of causality would be applied to itself. Now as causality is known to us a priori, the concept of matter, as the indestructible basis of all that exists, in that it is only the
realization of a form of knowledge given to us a priori, can to this extent take its place among the different kinds of knowledge a priori. For as soon as we perceive something acting, it exhibits itself
eo ipso as material; and conversely, something material necessarily exhibits itself as acting or effective; in fact, they are interchangeable concepts. Therefore the word "actual" is used as a synonym of "material," and also the Greek
But I must not omit to mention that Kant's doctrine here referred to, and constituting the fundamental idea of the second main portion of his Metaphysical Rudiments of Natural Science, namely of the dynamics, was expounded distinctly and in detail before Kant by Priestley in his excellent Disquisitions on Matter and Spirit, Sect. 1 and 2. This book appeared in 1777 (second edition 1782), whereas the Metaphysical Rudiments appeared in 1786. Unconscious reminiscences can perhaps be assumed in the case of subsidiary ideas, flashes of wit, comparisons, and so on, but not in the case of main and fundamental ideas. Therefore, are we to believe that Kant silently appropriated that very important idea of another man, and this from a book that was still new at the time? Or that this book was unknown to him, and the same idea arose in two minds within a short time? The explanation, given by Kant in the Metaphysical Rudiments of Natural Science (first edition p. 88, Rosenkranz edition p. 384), of the real difference between fluid and solid, is also to be found essentially in Caspar Friedrich Wolff's Theorie von der Generation, Berlin 1764, p. 132. But what are we to say when we find Kant's most important and brilliant doctrine, that of the ideality of space and of the merely phenomenal existence of the corporeal world, expressed already thirty years previously by Maupertuis? This is dealt with fully in Frauenstiidt's letters on my philosophy, letter 14. Maupertuis expresses this paradoxical doctrine so decidedly, and yet without the addition of a proof, that it must be supposed that he also obtained it from somewhere else. It would be very desirable for the matter to be examined further, and as this calls for tedious and lengthy investigations, some German academy might well make the question the subject of a prize-essay. Just as Kant here stands to Priestley, and perhaps to Caspar Wolff also, and to Maupertuis or his predecessor, so does Laplace stand to Kant. The admirable and certainly correct theory of the origin of the planetary system, ex pounded in his Exposition du systeme du monde, Bk. V, c. 2, was in its main and fundamental ideas put forward by Kant some fifty years earlier, in 1755, in his Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, and more completely in 1763 in his Only Possible Proof of the Existence of God, chap. 7. Moreover, as he gives us to understand in the latter work that Lambert in his Kosmologische Briefe, 1761, silently borrowed that theory from him, but that at the same time these letters also appeared in French (Lettres cosmologiques sur la constitution de l'univers), we must assume that Laplace knew this theory of Kant's. He certainly expounds the matter more thoroughly, strikingly, fully, and yet more simply than Kant does, as is in keeping with his deeper astronomical knowledge. In the main, however, it is found clearly expressed in Kant, and, from the great importance of the matter, would alone be sufficient to immortalize his name. It must greatly distress us when we find minds of the first order suspected of dishonesty, a thing that is a disgrace even to those of the lowest rank. For we feel that theft is even less excusable in a rich man than in a poor one. But we dare not be silent about this, for here we are posterity and must be just, as we hope that one day posterity will be just to us. Therefore, as a third example, I will add to these cases that the fundamental ideas of Goethe's Metamorphosis of Plants were already expressed by Caspar Friedrich Wolff in 1764 in his Theorie von der Generation, pp. 148, 229, 243, etc. Indeed, is it otherwise with the system of gravitation, whose discovery on the continent of Europe is always ascribed to Newton? In England, on the other hand, the learned at any rate know quite well that the discovery belongs to Robert Hooke, who as early as the year 1666 in a Communication to the Royal Society expounded it quite clearly, yet only as a hypothesis and without proof. The principal passage of this communication is printed in Dugald Stewart's Philosophy of the Human Mind, Vol. II, p. 434, and is probably taken from R. Hooke's Posthumous Works. In the Biographie Universelle, article Neuton [Newton], we also find the details of the case, and how Newton got into difficulties over it. Hooke's priority is treated as an established fact in a short history of astronomy, Quarterly Review, August, 1828. More details on this subject are to be found in my Parerga, Vol. II, § 86. The story of the fall of the apple is a fairy-tale, as groundless as it is popular, and is without any authority. (2) To No. 18 of Matter. The magnitude of the motion (quantitas motus in Descartes) is the product of the mass into the velocity. This law is the basis not only of the theory of impact in mechanics, but also of the theory of equilibrium in statics. From the force of impact manifested by two bodies with equal velocity, the relation of their masses to each other can be determined. Thus, of two hammers striking with equal velocity, the one of greater mass will drive the nail farther into the wall or the post deeper into the ground. For example, a hammer weighing six pounds with a velocity of six units will produce the same effect as a hammer of three pounds with a velocity of twelve units; for in both cases the magnitude of the motion is equal to thirty-six. Of two spheres rolling with the same velocity, the one of greater mass will push a third sphere at rest to a greater distance than can the one of smaller mass, since the mass of the first multiplied by the same velocity produces a greater quantity of motion. The gun has a greater range than the musket, since the same velocity communicated to a much greater mass produces a much greater quantity of motion, and this resists the retarding effect of gravity for a longer time. For the same reason, the same arm will throw a lead bullet farther than a stone bullet of the same size, or a large stone farther than a quite small one. Hence a discharge of canister-shot has not the same range as a cannon-ball. The same law is the basis of the theory of the lever and the balance. For here also the smaller mass on the longer arm of the lever or beam of the balance has a greater velocity in falling, and, multiplied by this, can be equal to or even exceed in magnitude of motion the greater mass to be found at the shorter arm. In the state of rest, brought about by equilibrium, this velocity exists merely in intention or virtually, potentia not actu; yet its effect is as good as actu, which is very remarkable. Now that these truths have been called to mind, the following explanation will be more easily understood. The quantity of a given matter can be estimated in general only according to its force, and this force can be known only in its manifestation. Where matter is considered only as regards its quantity, not its quality, this manifestation can be only a mechanical one, in other words, can only consist in the motion imparted by it to other matter. For only in motion does the force of matter become, so to speak, alive; hence the expression vis viva for the force-manifestation of matter in motion. Accordingly, for the quantity of given matter the only measure is the magnitude of its motion. But if this is given, the quantity of matter still appears combined and amalgamated with its other factor, velocity. If, therefore, we want to know the quantity of matter (the mass), this other factor must be eliminated. Now the velocity is known directly, for it is s/T; but the other factor, that remains after this is eliminated, can always be known only relatively, in comparison with other masses, and these themselves in turn can be known only by means of the magnitude of their motion, and so in their combination with velocity. We must therefore compare one quantity of motion with another, and then subtract the velocity from both, in order to see how much each of them owes to its mass. This is done by weighing the masses against each other; and here the magnitude of motion is compared which, in each of the two masses, produces the earth's attractive force that acts on both only in proportion to their quantity. Hence there are two kinds of weighing; either we impart equal velocity to the two masses to be compared, in order to see which of the two communicates motion to the other, and thus itself has a greater quantity of motion; and, as the velocity is the same on both sides, this quantity is to be ascribed to the other factor of the magnitude of motion, that is to the mass (hand-balance). Or we weigh by investigating how much more velocity the one mass must receive than the other has, in order to be equal to the latter in magnitude of motion, and to allow no more motion to be communicated to itself from the other. For then in proportion as its velocity must exceed that of the other, its mass, i.e., the quantity of its matter, is less than that of the other (steelyard). This estimation of masses by weighing rests on the favourable circumstance that the moving force, in itself, acts on both quite equally, and that each of the two is in a position to communicate directly to the other its surplus magnitude of motion, whereby it becomes visible. What is essential in these theories was set forth long ago by Newton and Kant, but by the connexion and clearness of this discussion I believe I have made them more intelligible, and this brings within the reach of everyone the insight that I deemed to be necessary for the justification of proposition No. 18. _______________ Notes: Chapter I 1. "I think, therefore I am." [Tr.] 2. "Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy" at the end of volume 1. [Tr.] * Here I specially recommend the passage in Lichtenberg's Vermischte Schriften (Gottingen, 1801, Vol. II, page 12 seq.): "Euler says in his letters on various subjects of natural science (Vol. II, p. 228), that it would thunder and lighten just as well, even if there existed no human being whom the lightning could strike. It is a very common expression, but I must confess that it has never been easy for me to grasp it completely. It always seems to me as if the concept of being were something borrowed from our thinking, and that if there are no longer any sentient and thinking creatures, then also there is nothing any more." * [Footnotes so marked represent additions made by Schopenhauer in his interleaved copy of the third edition between its appearance in 1859 and his death in 1860. Tr.] 3. "Matter is a lie, and yet true." [Tr.] 4. "What is noble is difficult." [Tr.] 5. More correctly Prabodha-candra-udaya, "the rising of the moon of knowledge," an allegorical drama in six acts by Krishna Misra (about 1200 A.D.) in which philosophical concepts appear as persons. [Tr.] Chapter II. 1. "To think is to be conscious." [Tr.] 2. "Simple ideas." [Tr.] 3. "Really simple ideas." [Tr.] 4. "Toad's head." [Tr.] Chapter III * Lichtenberg says in his "Information and Observations about himself" (Vermischte Schriften, Gottingen 1800, Vol. I, p. 43): "I am extraordinarily sensitive to all loud noises, but they entirely lose their disagreeable impression as soon as they are associated with a rational purpose." 1. "I think, therefore I am." [Tr.] 2. "For thinking and being are the same thing." [Tr.] 3. "That which is not, has no predicates." [Tr.] 4. "From what to what." (From small to great.) [Tr.] 5. That the three-toed sloth has nine is to be regarded as an error, yet Owen still states it, Osteologie comparee, p. 405. 6. This, however, does not excuse a professor of philosophy who, sitting in Kant's chair, expresses himself thus: "That mathematics as such contains arithmetic and geometry is correct. Yet it is incorrect to conceive arithmetic as the science of time, in fact for no other reason than to give a pendant to geometry as the science of space." [The German is "einen Pendanten," after which Schopenhauer added "[sic]." "Pendant" is neuter, and the professor of philosophy should have written "ein Pendant." Tr.] (Rosenkranz in the Deutsches Museum, 14 May, 1857, No. 20.) This is the fruit of Hegelism. If the mind is once thoroughly ruined by the senseless gibberish of this, serious Kantian philosophy no longer enters it. The audacity of talking at random about things one does not understand has been inherited from the master, and in the end one comes to condemn without ceremony the fundamental teachings of a great mind in a peremptory and decisive tone, just as though they were Hegelian tomfoolery. But we must not overlook the fact that little men are anxious to get out of the track of great thinkers. Therefore they would have done better not to attack Kant, but to content themselves with giving their public more detailed information about God, the soul, the freedom of the will founded on fact, and anything else in that line, and then indulge in a little private amusement in their obscure back-shop, the philosophical journal. There they can work without ceremony and do what they like, for no one looks at it. 7. "The cause is nobler than its effect." [Tr.] 8. "All that arises out of an immovable cause has an immutable essence; but all that arises out of a movable cause has a mutable essence. For if the operating thing is in every sense unmoved, it will put forth the other thing out of itself not through a movement, but through its mere existence." [Tr.] 9. "The form gives the thing being." [Tr.] 10. "The form gives the thing essence, matter gives it existence." [Tr.] 11. "He [not Xenophanes, but Melissus, of whom the passage narrates] asserts that if there is anything at all, it must be eternal, as it is impossible for anything to arise out of nothing." [Tr.] |
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