CHAPTER IV.

ON THE FIRST CLASS OF OBJECTS FOR THE SUBJECT, AND THAT FORM OF THE

PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT REASON WHICH PREDOMINATES IN IT.

§ 17. _General Account of this Class of Objects._

The first class of objects possible to our representative faculty, is

that of _intuitive, complete, empirical_ representations. They are

_intuitive_ as opposed to mere thoughts, _i.e._ abstract conceptions;

they are _complete_, inasmuch as, according to Kant's distinction,

they not only contain the formal, but also the material part of

phenomena; and they are _empirical_, partly as proceeding, not from a

mere connection of thoughts, but from an excitation of feeling in our

sensitive organism, as their origin, to which they constantly refer

for evidence as to their reality: partly also because they are linked

together, according to the united laws of Space, Time and Causality,

in that complex without beginning or end which forms our _Empirical

Reality_. As, nevertheless, according to the result of Kant's teaching,

this _Empirical Reality_ does not annul their _Transcendental

Ideality_, we shall consider them here, where we have only to do with

the formal elements of knowledge, merely as representations.

§ 18. _Outline of a Transcendental Analysis of Empirical Reality._

The forms of these representations are those of the inner and outer

sense; namely, _Time_ and _Space_. But these are only _perceptible_

when _filled_. Their _perceptibility_ is _Matter_, to which I shall

return further on, and again in § 21. _If Time were the only form_

of these representations, there could be no _coexistence_, therefore

nothing _permanent_ and no _duration_. For _Time_ is only perceived

when filled, and its course is only perceived by the _changes_ which

take place in that which fills it. The _permanence_ of an object

is therefore only recognized by contrast with the _changes_ going

on in other objects _coexistent_ with it. But the representation

of _coexistence_ is impossible in Time alone; it depends, for its

completion, upon the representation of _Space_; because, in mere Time,

all things _follow one another_, and in mere Space all things are _side

by side_; it is accordingly only by the combination of Time and Space

that the representation of coexistence arises.

_On the other hand, were Space the sole form_ of this class of

representations, there would be no _change_; for change or alteration

is _succession_ of states, and _succession_ is only possible in _Time_.

We may therefore define Time as the possibility of opposite states in

one and the same thing.

Thus we see, that although infinite divisibility and infinite

extension are common to both Time and Space, these two forms of

empirical representations differ fundamentally, inasmuch as what is

essential to the _one_ is without any meaning at all for the _other_:

juxtaposition having no meaning in Time, succession no meaning in

Space. The empirical representations which belong to the orderly

complex of reality, appear notwithstanding in both forms together;

nay, the _intimate union_ of both is the condition of reality which,

in a sense, grows out of them, as a product grows out of its factors.

Now it is the Understanding which, by means of its own peculiar

function, brings about this _union_ and connects these heterogeneous

forms in such a manner, that _empirical reality_--albeit only for

that Understanding--arises out of their mutual interpenetration, and

arises as a collective representation, forming a complex, held together

by the forms of the principle of sufficient reason, but whose limits

are problematical. Each single representation belonging to this class

is a part of this complex, each one taking its place in it according

to laws known to us _à priori_; in it therefore countless objects

_coexist_, because Substance, _i.e._ Matter, remains permanent in

spite of the ceaseless flow of Time, and because its states change in

spite of the rigid immobility of Space. In this complex, in short,

the whole objective, real world exists for us. The reader who may be

interested in this, will find the present rough sketch of the analysis

of empirical reality further worked out in § 4 of the first volume of

"Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,"[55] where a closer explanation

is given of the way in which the Understanding effects this union

and thus creates for itself the empirical world. He will also find a

very important help in the table, "_Prædicabilia à priori_ of Time,

Space, and Matter," which is added to the fourth chapter of the second

volume of the same work, and which I recommend to his attention, as

it especially shows how the contrasts of Time and Space are equally

balanced in Matter, as their product, under the form of Causality.

[55] Vol. i. p. 12, and _seqq._ of the 1st edition; p. 9 of the 3rd

edition.

We shall now proceed to give a detailed exposition of that function

of the Understanding which is the basis of empirical reality; only we

must first, by a few incidental explanations, remove the more immediate

objections which the fundamental idealism of the view I have adopted

might encounter.

§ 19. _Immediate Presence of Representations._

Now as, notwithstanding this union through the Understanding of the

forms of the inner and outer sense in representing Matter and with it

a permanent outer world, all _immediate_ knowledge is nevertheless

acquired by the Subject through the _inner_ sense alone--the outer

sense being again Object for the inner, which in its turn perceives

the perceptions of the outer--and as therefore, with respect to the

_immediate presence_ of representations in its consciousness, the

Subject remains under the rule of _Time_ alone, as the form of the

_inner sense_:[56] it follows, that only one representation can be

present to it (the Subject) at the same time, although that one may

be very complicated. When we speak of representations as _immediately

present_, we mean, that they are not only known in the union of Time

and Space effected by the Understanding--an intuitive faculty, as

we shall soon see--through which the collective representation of

empirical reality arises, but that they are known in mere Time alone,

as representations of the inner sense, and just at the neutral point at

which its two currents separate, called the _present_. The necessary

condition mentioned in the preceding paragraph for the immediate

presence of a representation of this class, is its causal action upon

our senses and consequently upon our organism, which itself belongs

to this class of objects, and is therefore subject to the causal law

which predominates in it and which we are now about to examine. Now

as therefore, on the one hand, according to the laws of the inner and

outer world, the Subject cannot stop short at that one representation;

but as, on the other hand, there is no coexistence in Time alone:

that single representation must always vanish and be superseded by

others, in virtue of a law which we cannot determine _à priori_, but

which depends upon circumstances soon to be mentioned. It is moreover

a well-known fact, that the imagination and dreams reproduce the

immediate presence of representations; the investigation of that fact,

however, belongs to empirical Psychology. Now as, notwithstanding the

transitory, isolated nature of our representations with respect to

their immediate presence in our consciousness, the Subject nevertheless

retains the representation of an all-comprehensive complex of reality,

as described above, by means of the function of the Understanding;

representations have, on the strength of this antithesis, been viewed,

as something quite different when considered as belonging to that

complex than when considered with reference to their immediate presence

in our consciousness. From the former point of view they were called

_real things_; from the latter only, representations κατ' ἐξοχήν. This

view of the matter, which is the ordinary one, is known under the

name of _Realism_. On the appearance of modern philosophy, _Idealism_

opposed itself to this _Realism_ and has since been steadily gaining

ground. Malebranche and Berkeley were its earliest representatives,

and Kant enhanced it to the power of Transcendental Idealism, by

which the co-existence of the Empirical Reality of things with their

Transcendental Ideality becomes conceivable, and according to which

Kant expresses himself as follows:[57] "_Transcendental Idealism_

teaches that all phenomena are representations only, not things

by themselves." And again:[58] "Space itself is nothing but mere

representation, and whatever is in it must therefore be contained in

that representation. There is nothing whatever in Space, except so

far as it is really represented in it." Finally he says:[59] "If we

take away the thinking Subject, the whole material world must vanish;

because it is nothing but a phenomenon in the sensibility of our own

subject and a certain class of its representations." In India, Idealism

is even a doctrine of popular religion, not only of Brahminism, but

of Buddhism; in Europe alone is it a paradox, in consequence of the

essentially and unavoidably realistic principle of Judaism. But

Realism quite overlooks the fact, that the so-called existence of

these real things is _absolutely nothing but their being represented_

(_ein Vorgestellt-werden_), or--if it be insisted, that only the

immediate presence in the consciousness of the Subject can be called

being represented κατ' ἐντελέχειαν--it is even only a possibility of

being represented κατὰ δύναμιν. The realist forgets that the Object

ceases to be Object apart from its reference to the Subject, and that

if we take away that reference, or think it away, we at once do away

with all objective existence. Leibnitz, while he clearly felt the

Subject to be the necessary condition for the Object, was nevertheless

unable to get rid of the thought that objects exist by themselves

and independently of all reference whatsoever to the Subject, _i.e._

independently of being represented. He therefore assumed in the first

place a world of objects exactly like the world of representations

and running parallel with it, having no direct, but only an outward

connection with it by means of a _harmonia præstabilita_;--obviously

the most superfluous thing possible, for it never comes within

perception, and the precisely similar world of representations which

does come within perception, goes its own way regardless of it. When,

however, he wanted to determine more closely the essence of these

things existing objectively in themselves, he found himself obliged

to declare the Objects in themselves to be Subjects (_monades_), and

by doing so he furnished the most striking proof of the inability of

our consciousness, in as far as it is merely cognitive, to find within

the limits of the intellect--_i.e._ of the apparatus by means of

which we represent the world--anything beyond Subject and Object; the

representer and the represented. Therefore, if we abstract from the

objectivity of an Object, or in other words, from its being represented

(_Vorgestellt-werden_), if we annul it in its quality as an Object,

yet still wish to retain something, we can meet with nothing but _the

Subject_. Conversely, if we desire to abstract from the subjectivity of

the Subject, yet to have something over, the contrary takes place, and

this leads to Materialism.

[56] Compare Kant, "Krit. d. r. Vern." Elementarlehre. Abschnitt

ii. Schlüsse a. d. Begr. _b_ and _c_. 1st edition, pp. 33 and 34;

5th edition, p. 49. (Transl. M. Müller, p. 29, _b_ and _c_.)

[57] Kant, "Krit. d. r. V." Kritik des Vierten Paralogismus der

transcendentalen Psychologie, p. 369, 1st edition. (Engl. Transl.

by M. Müller, p. 320.)

[58] _Ibid._ 1st edition, pp. 374-375. Note. (Engl. Transl. p. 325.

Note.)

[59] Kant, "Krit. d. r. V." "Betrachtung über die Summe," &c., p.

383 of 1st edition. (Engl. Transl. p. 331.)

Spinoza, who never thoroughly sifted the matter, and never therefore

acquired a clear notion of it, nevertheless quite understood the

necessary correlation between Subject and Object as so essential, that

they are inconceivable without it; consequently he defined it as an

identity in the Substance (which alone exists) of that which knows,

with that which has extension.

OBSERVATION.--With reference to the chief argument of this

paragraph, I take the opportunity to remark that if, in the

course of this treatise, for the sake of brevity and in order

to be more easily understood, I at any time use the term _real

objects_, I mean by it nothing but the intuitive representations

that are united to form the complex of empirical reality, which

reality in itself always remains ideal.

§ 20. _Principle of Sufficient Reason of Becoming._

In the Class of Objects for the Subject just described, the principle

of sufficient reason figures as the _Law of Causality_, and, as such,

I call it the _Principle of Sufficient Reason of Becoming, principium

rationis sufficientis fiendi_. By it, all objects presenting

themselves within the entire range of our representation are linked

together, as far as the appearance and disappearance of their states

is concerned, _i.e._ in the movement of the current of Time, to form

the complex of empirical reality. The law of causality is as follows.

When one or several real objects pass into any new state, some other

state must have preceded this one, upon which the new state regularly

follows, _i.e._ as often as that preceding one occurs. This sort of

following we call _resulting_; the first of the states being named

a _cause_, the second an _effect_. When a substance takes fire, for

instance, this state of ignition must have been preceded by a state,

1^o, of affinity to oxygen; 2^o, of contact with oxygen; 3^o, of a

given temperature. Now, as ignition must necessarily follow immediately

upon this state, and as it has only just taken place, that state

cannot always have been there, but must, on the contrary, have only

just supervened. This supervening is called a _change_. It is on this

account that the law of causality stands in exclusive relation to

_changes_ and has to do with them alone. Every effect, at the time

it takes place, is a _change_ and, precisely by not having occurred

sooner, infallibly indicates some other _change_ by which it has been

preceded. That other _change_ takes the name of _cause_, when referred

to the following one--of _effect_, when referred to a third necessarily

preceding _change_. This is the chain of causality. It is necessarily

without a beginning. By it, each supervening state must have resulted

from a preceding change: in the case just mentioned, for instance,

from the substance being brought into contact with free heat, from

which necessarily resulted the heightened temperature; this contact

again depended upon a preceding change, for instance the sun's rays

falling upon a burning-glass; this again upon the removal of a cloud

from before the sun; this upon the wind; the wind upon the unequal

density of the atmosphere; this upon other conditions, and so forth

_in infinitum_. When a state contains all the requisite conditions for

bringing about a new state excepting _one, this one_, when at last it

arrives, is, in a sense, rightly called the cause κατ' ἐξοχήν, inasmuch

as we here have the final--in this case the decisive--change especially

in view; but if we leave out this consideration, no single condition

of the causal state has any advantage over the rest with reference to

the determination of the causal connection in general, merely because

it happens to be the last. Thus the removal of the cloud in the above

example, is in so far the cause of the igniting, as it took place later

than the direction of the burning-glass towards the object; but this

might have taken place after the removal of the cloud and the addition

of oxygen might have occurred later still: in this respect therefore it

is the accidental order of things that determines which is the cause.

On closer inspection, however, we find that it is _the entire state_

which is the cause of the ensuing one, so that the chronological order

in which its single conditions were brought about, is in all essential

respects indifferent. With reference to a given case therefore, the

last occurring condition of a state may be called the cause κατ'

ἐξοχήν, because it completes the measure of the necessary conditions,

and its appearance thus becomes the decisive change. For purposes of

general consideration, however, it is only the _entire_ state which, by

bringing about its successor, can be regarded as the cause. The single

requisites which, added together, complete and constitute the cause may

be called causal elements (_ursächliche Momente_) or even _conditions_,

and into these accordingly the cause may be subdivided. On the other

hand, it is quite wrong to call the objects themselves causes, instead

of the states: some would, for instance, call the burning-glass in the

above example the cause of the ignition; while others, again, would

call the cloud the cause; others the sun or the oxygen, and so on

arbitrarily and without order. But it is absurd to call an object the

cause of another object; first of all, because objects not only contain

form and quality, but _Matter_ also, which has neither beginning

or end; secondly, because the law of causality refers exclusively

to _changes_, _i.e._ to the entrance and exit of states in Time,

wherein it regulates that special relation, in reference to which the

earlier state is called _cause_, the later _effect_, and the necessary

connection between both, the _resulting_ of the one from the other.

I here refer the thoughtful reader to the explanations I have given

in my chief work.[60] For it is of the highest importance that our

conception of the true and proper meaning of the law of causality and

the sphere of its validity should be perfectly clear and definite:

before all things, that we should recognize, that this law refers

solely and exclusively to _changes_ of material states and to nothing

else whatever; consequently, that it ought not to be brought in when

_these_ are not in question. The law of causality is the regulator of

the _changes_ undergone in Time by objects of our outer _experience_;

but these objects are all material. Each change can only be brought

about by another having preceded it, which is determined by a rule, and

then the new change takes place as being necessarily induced by the

preceding one. This necessity is the causal nexus.

[60] "Die Welt a. W. u. V." vol. ii. chap. 4, especially p. 42 and

_seq._ of the 2nd edition; p. 46 _seq._ of the 3rd edition.

However simple therefore the law of causality is, we nevertheless

find it expressed quite differently in all philosophical manuals,

from the earliest down to the latest ages: namely, in a broader, more

abstract, therefore less definite way. We are, for instance, informed,

now, that it is that by which something else comes into being; now,

that it is what produces another thing or gives it reality, &c. &c.

Wolf says: _Causa est principium, a quo existentia, sive actualitas,

entis alterius dependet_; whereas it is obvious that in causality we

have only to do with changes in the form of uncreated, indestructible

Matter, and that a springing into existence of what did not previously

exist is an impossibility. Want of clearness of thought may, no

doubt, in most cases have led to these views of the causal relation;

but surely sometimes an _arrière-pensée_ lurks in the background--a

theological intention coqueting with the Cosmological Proof, for whose

sake it is ready to falsify even transcendental, _à priori_ truths, the

mother's milk of human understanding. We find the clearest instance of

this in Thomas Brown's book, "On the Relation of Cause and Effect,"

a work of 460 pages, which, in 1835, had already reached its fourth

edition, and has probably since gone through several more, and which,

in spite of its wearisome, pedantic, rambling prolixity, does not

handle the subject badly. Now this Englishman rightly recognises, that

it is invariably with _changes_ that the causal law has to do, and that

every effect is accordingly a _change_. Yet, although it can hardly

have escaped him, he is unwilling to admit that every cause is likewise

a _change_, and that the whole process is therefore nothing but the

uninterrupted nexus of _changes_ succeeding one another in Time. On

the contrary, he persists in clumsily calling the cause an _object_

or _substance_, which precedes the change, and in tormenting himself

throughout his tedious book with this entirely false expression, which

spoils all his explanations, notwithstanding his own better knowledge

and against his conscience, simply in order that his definition may on

no account stand in the way of the Cosmological Proof, which others

might hereafter state elsewhere.--But what can a truth be worth which

needs devices such as these to prepare its way?

And what have our own worthy, honest German professors of philosophy

been doing in behalf of their dearly beloved Cosmological Proof, since

Kant dealt it the death-blow in his Critique of Pure Reason?--they, who

prize truth above everything. They were, indeed, at their wits' ends,

for--as these worthies well know, though they do not say so--_causa

prima_ is, just as well as _causa sui_, a _contradictio in adjecto_,

albeit the former expression is more generally used than the latter. It

is besides usually pronounced with a very serious, not to say solemn,

air; nay, many people, especially English Reverends, turn up their

eyes in a truly edifying way when they impressively and emphatically

mention that _contradictio in adjecto_: 'the first cause.' They know

that a first cause is just as inconceivable as the point at which

Space ends or the moment when Time first began. For every cause is

a _change_, which necessarily obliges us to ask for the preceding

change that brought it about, and so on _in infinitum, in infinitum_!

Even a first state of Matter, from which, as it has ceased to be, all

following states could have proceeded, is inconceivable. For if this

state had in itself been the cause of the following ones, they must

likewise have existed from all eternity, and the actual state existing

at the present moment could not have only just now come into being.

If, on the other hand, that first state only began to be causal at

some given period, something or other must have _changed_ it, for its

inactivity to have ceased; but then something must have occurred,

some change must have taken place; and this again obliges us to ask

for its cause--_i.e._ a change which preceded it; and here we are

once more on the causal ladder, up which we are whipped step by step,

higher and higher, _in infinitum, in infinitum_! (These gentlemen

will surely not have the face to talk to me of Matter itself arising

out of nothing! If so, they will find corollaries at their service

further on.) The causal law therefore is not so accommodating as to

let itself be used like a hired cab, which we dismiss when we have

reached our destination; rather does it resemble the broom brought to

life by the apprentice-wizard in Göthe's poem,[61] which, when once

set in motion, does not leave off running and fetching water until the

old master-wizard himself stops it, which he alone has the power to

do. These gentlemen, however, have no master-wizards among them. So

what did they do, these noble, genuine lovers of truth, ever on the

alert, of course, to proclaim the advent of real merit to the world as

soon as it shows itself in their profession, who far from wishing to

divert attention from the works of those who are really what _they_

only seem to be, by craftily ignoring and meanly keeping them dark, are

naturally foremost to acknowledge their worth--aye, surely, as surely

as folly loves wisdom above everything? What did they do, I say, to

help their old friend, the sorely distressed Cosmological Proof, now at

its last gasp? Oh, they hit upon a shrewd device. "Friend," they said,

"you are in sorry plight since your fatal encounter with that stubborn

old man in Königsberg, and indeed your brethren, the Ontological and

Physico-theological Proofs are in no better condition. Never mind,

you shall not be abandoned by us (that is what we are paid for, you

know); only you must alter your dress and your name--there is no help

for it--for if we call you by your right name, everyone will take to

his heels. Now _incognito_, on the contrary, we can take you by the

arm, and once more lead you into society; only, as we have just said,

it must be _incognito_! That is sure to answer! First of all, your

argument must henceforth be called _The Absolute_. This has a foreign,

dignified, aristocratic ring; and no one knows better than we do all

that can be done with Germans by assuming airs of importance. Of course

all know what the real meaning is, and pique themselves upon that

knowledge. But you yourself must come forward disguised, in the form

of an enthymeme. Be sure and leave behind you all those prosyllogisms

and premisses, by which you used to drag us wearily up the long climax,

for everyone knows how utterly useless they are. Come forward with

a bold face and a self-sufficient, supercilious air, like a man of

few words, and at one bound you will reach the goal. Exclaim (and we

will chime in), '_The Absolute_, confound it! _that_ must _exist_,

or there would be nothing at all!' Here, strike the table with your

fist. Whence does the Absolute come? 'What a silly question! Did not

I tell you it was the Absolute?'--That will do, forsooth! That will

do! Germans are accustomed to content themselves with words instead of

thoughts. Do we not train them to it from their cradle? Only look at

Hegelianism! What is it but empty, hollow, nauseous twaddle! Yet how

brilliant a career was that of this philosophical time-server! A few

mercenary individuals had only to strike up a laudation of this stuff,

and they at once found an echo to their voices in the empty hollow of

a thousand numskulls--an echo which still continues to resound, and

to extend--and behold! an ordinary intellect, a common impostor soon

became a sublime thinker. Take heart, therefore! Besides, our friend

and patron, we will also second you in other ways, for how, indeed,

are we to get a living without you? So that carping old faultfinder,

Kant, has been criticizing Reason, and clipping her wings, has he?

Well, then, we will invent a _new_ sort of Reason, such as has never

been heard of--a Reason that does not think, but which has direct

intuition--a Reason which sees Ideas (a high-flown word, made to

mystify), sees them bodily; or which apprehends directly that which you

and others seek to prove; or, again, a Reason which has forebodings of

all this--this last for the benefit of those who do not care to make

large concessions, but also are satisfied with very little. Let us thus

pass off early inculcated, popular conceptions for direct revelations

of this new kind of Reason, _i.e._ for inspirations from above. As for

that old-fashioned Reason, which criticism has criticized away, let

us degrade it, call it Understanding, and send it about its business.

Well, and what is to become of real, true Understanding?--What in

the world have we to do with real, true Understanding?--You smile

incredulously; but we know our listeners, and the _harum_, _horum_ we

see on the students' benches before us. Bacon of Verulam already in

his time said: 'Young men learn to believe at Universities.' Of this

they can learn as much as they wish from us; we have a good stock of

articles of faith on hand. Should any misgivings assail you, remember

that we are in Germany, where what would have been impossible in any

other country, has been found possible: where a dull-witted, ignorant,

pseudo-philosopher, whose ineffably hollow verbiage disorganizes

peoples' brains completely and permanently, a scribbler of nonsense--I

am speaking of our dearly beloved Hegel--has not only been actually

proclaimed a profound thinker with impunity, and even without incurring

ridicule, but is readily accepted as such: yes, indeed, for this

fiction has found credence for the last thirty years, and is believed

to this day!--Once therefore we have this Absolute with your help,

we are quite safe, in spite of Kant and his Critique.--We may then

philosophise in a lofty tone, making the Universe proceed from _the

Absolute_ by means of the most heterogeneous deductions, one more

tiresome than the other--this, by the way, being their only point of

resemblance. We can call the world the Finite, and the Absolute the

Infinite--thus giving an agreeable variety to our nonsense--and talk

of nothing but God, explaining how, why, wherefore, by what voluntary

or involuntary process he created or brought forth the world, showing

whether he be within or without it, and so forth, as if Philosophy were

Theology, and as if it sought for enlightenment concerning God, not

concerning the Universe!"

[61] Göthe, "Der Zauberlehrling."

The Cosmological Proof, with which we here have to do, and to which

the above apostrophe is addressed, consists thus, properly speaking,

in the assertion, that the principle of the sufficient reason of

_becoming_, or the law of causality, necessarily leads to a thought

which destroys it and declares it to be null and void. For the _causa

prima_ (_absolutum_) can only be reached by proceeding upwards from

consequence to reason, through a series prolonged _ad libitum_; but

it is impossible to stop short at the _causa prima_ without at once

annulling the principle of sufficient reason.

Having thus briefly and clearly shown the nullity of the Cosmological

Proof, as I had in my second chapter already shown the nullity of the

Ontological Proof, the sympathizing reader may perhaps expect me to

do the same with respect to the Physico-theological Proof, which is a

great deal more plausible. As, however, this belongs by its nature to

a different department of philosophy, it would be quite out of place

here. I therefore refer him to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, as well

as to his Critique of the Faculty of Judgment, where he treats this

subject _ex professo_; I likewise refer him, as a complement to Kant's

purely negative procedure, to my own positive one in "The Will in

Nature,"[62] a work which, though small in bulk, is rich and weighty

in content. As for the indifferent reader, he is free to let this and

indeed all my writings pass down unread to his descendants. It matters

not to me; for I am here, not for one generation only, but for many.

[62] The translation of which follows the Fourfold Root in the

present volume.

Now, as the law of causality is known to us _à priori_, and is

therefore a transcendental law, applicable to every possible

experience and consequently without exception, as will be shown in §

21; as moreover it decides, that upon a given, definite, relatively

first state, a second equally definite one inevitably ensues by rule,

_i.e._, always; the relation between cause and effect is a necessary

one, so that the causal law authorizes us to form hypothetical

judgments, and thereby shows itself to be a form of the principle of

sufficient reason, upon which principle all judgments must be founded

and, as will be shown further on, all _necessity_ is based.

This form of our principle I call the _principle of the sufficient

reason of becoming_, because its application invariably pre-supposes a

change, the entering upon a new state: consequently a becoming. One of

its essential characteristics is this: that the cause always precedes

the effect in Time (compare § 47), and this alone gives us the original

criterion by which to distinguish which is cause and which effect, of

two states linked together by the causal nexus. Conversely, in some

cases, the causal nexus is known to us through former experience; but

the rapidity with which the different states follow upon each other is

so great, that the order in which this happens escapes our perception.

We then conclude with complete certitude from causality to succession:

thus, for instance, we infer that the igniting of gunpowder precedes

its explosion.[63]

[63] Here I refer my readers to "Die Welt als Wills und

Vorstellung," vol. ii. chap. 4, p. 41 of the 2nd edition, and p. 45

of the 3rd edition.

From this essential connection between causality and succession it

follows, that the conception of reciprocity, strictly speaking, has

no meaning; for it presumes the effect to be again the cause of its

cause: that is, that what follows is at the same time what precedes.

In a "Critique of Kantian Philosophy," which I have added to my chief

work, and to which I refer my readers,[64] I have shown at length that

this favourite conception is inadmissible. It may be remarked, that

authors usually have recourse to it just when their insight is becoming

less clear, and this accounts for the frequency of its use. Nay, it

is precisely when a writer comes to the end of his conceptions, that

the word '_reciprocity_' presents itself more readily than any other;

it may, in fact, be looked upon as a kind of alarm-gun, denoting that

the author has got out of his depth. It is also worthy of remark, that

the word _Wechselwirkung_, literally reciprocal action--or, as we have

preferred translating it, _reciprocity_--is only found in the German

language, and that there is no precise equivalent for it in daily use

in any other tongue.

[64] "Die Welt a. W. u. V." vol. i. pp. 517-521 of the 2nd edition,

and pp. 544-549 of the 3rd edition.

From the law of causality spring two corollaries which, in virtue of

this origin, are accredited as cognitions _à priori_, therefore as

unquestionable and without exception. They are, _the law of inertia_

and that _of permanence of substance_. The first of these laws avers,

that every state in which a body can possibly be--consequently that

of repose as well as that of any kind of movement--must last for

ever without change, diminution, or augmentation, unless some cause

supervenes to alter or annul it. But the other law, by which the

eternity of Matter is affirmed, results from the fact, that the law

of causality is exclusively applicable to _states_ of bodies, such

as repose, movement, form, and quality, since it presides over their

temporal passing in or out of being; but that it is by no means

applicable to the existence of _that which endures_ these states, and

is called _Substance_, in order precisely to express its exemption

from all arising and perishing. '_Substance is permanent_' means,

that it can neither pass into, nor out of being: so that its quantity

existing in the universe can neither be increased nor diminished. That

we know this _à priori_, is proved by the consciousness of unassailable

certainty with which, when we see a body disappear--whether it be by

conjuring, by minute subdivision, by combustion, volatilisation,

or indeed any process whatever--we all nevertheless firmly assume

that its substance, _i.e._ its _matter_, must still exist somewhere

or other in undiminished quantity, whatever may have become of its

_form_; likewise, when we perceive a body suddenly in a place,

where it was not before, that it must have been brought there or

formed by some combination of invisible particles--for instance, by

precipitation--but that it, _i.e._ its substance, cannot have then

started into existence; for this implies a total impossibility and

is utterly inconceivable. The certainty with which we assume this

beforehand (_à priori_), proceeds from the fact, that our Understanding

possesses absolutely no form under which to conceive the beginning

and end of Matter. For, as before said, the law of causality--the

only form in which we are able to conceive changes at all--is solely

applicable to _states_ of bodies, and never under any circumstances

to the existence of _that which undergoes_ all changes: _Matter_.

This is why I place the principle of the permanence of Matter among

the corollaries of the causal law. Moreover, we cannot have acquired

_à posteriori_ the conviction that substance is permanent, partly

because it cannot, in most instances, be empirically established;

partly also, because every empirical knowledge obtained exclusively

by means of induction, has only approximate, consequently precarious,

never unconditioned, certainty. The firmness of our persuasion as to

this principle is therefore of a different kind and nature from our

security of conviction with regard to the accuracy of any _empirically_

discovered law of Nature, since it has an entirely different, perfectly

unshakable, never vacillating firmness. The reason of this is, that

the principle expresses a _transcendental_ knowledge, _i.e._ one which

determines and fixes, _prior_ to all experience, what is in any way

possible within the whole range of experience; but, precisely by this,

it reduces the world of experience to a mere cerebral phenomenon. Even

the most universal among the non-transcendental laws of Nature and the

one least liable to exception--the law of gravitation--is of empirical

origin, consequently without guarantee as to its absolute universality;

wherefore it is still from time to time called in question, and doubts

occasionally arise as to its validity beyond our solar system; and

astronomers carefully call attention to any indications corroborative

of its doubtfulness with which they may happen to meet, thereby showing

that they regard it as merely empirical. The question may of course

be raised, whether gravitation takes effect between bodies which are

separated by an _absolute_ vacuum, or whether its action within a

solar system may not be mediated by some sort of ether, and may not

cease altogether between fixed stars; but these questions only admit

of an empirical solution, and this proves that here we have not to do

with a knowledge _à priori_. If, on the other hand, we admit with Kant

and Laplace the hypothesis, as the most probable one, that each solar

system has developed out of an original _nebula_ by a gradual process

of condensation, we still cannot for a moment conceive the possibility

of that original substance having sprung into being out of _nothing_:

we are forced to assume the anterior existence of its particles

somewhere or other, as well as their having been brought together

somehow or other, precisely because of the transcendental nature of the

principle of the permanence of Substance. In my Critique of Kantian

Philosophy,[65] I have shown at length, that _Substance_ is but another

word for _Matter_, the conception of substance not being realisable

excepting in _Matter_, and therefore deriving its origin from _Matter_,

and I have also specially pointed out how that conception was formed

solely to serve a surreptitious purpose. Like many other equally

certain truths, this eternity of Matter (called the permanence of

substance) is forbidden fruit for professors of philosophy; so they

slip past it with a bashful, sidelong glance.

[65] "Die Welt a. W. u. V." vol. i. p. 550 of 2nd, and 580 of 3rd

edition.

By the endless chain of causes and effects which directs all _changes_

but never extends beyond them, two existing things remain untouched,

precisely because of the limited range of its action: on the one hand,

_Matter_, as we have just shown; on the other hand, the primary _forces

of Nature_. The first (matter) remains uninfluenced by the causal

nexus, because it is _that which undergoes_ all changes, or _on which_

they take place; the second (the primary forces), because it is they

alone _by which_ changes or effects become possible; for they alone

give causality to causes. _i.e._ the faculty of operating, which the

causes therefore hold as mere vassals a fief. Cause and effect are

_changes_ connected together to necessary succession in Time; whereas

the forces of Nature by means of which all causes operate, are exempt

from all change; in this sense therefore they are outside Time, but

precisely on that account they are always and everywhere in reserve,

omnipresent and inexhaustible, ever ready to manifest themselves, as

soon as an opportunity presents itself in the thread of causality.

A _cause_, like its _effect_, is invariably something individual,

a single change; whereas a force of Nature is something universal,

unchangeable, present at all times and in all places. The attraction of

a thread by amber, for instance, at the present moment, is an effect;

its cause is the preceding friction and actual contact of the amber

with the thread; and the _force of Nature_ which acts in, and presides

over, the process, is Electricity. The explanation of this matter is

to be found in my chief work,[66] and there I have shown in a long

chain of causes and effects how the most heterogeneous natural forces

successively come into play in them. By this explanation the difference

between transitory phenomena and permanent forms of operation, becomes

exceedingly clear; and as, moreover, a whole section (§ 26) is devoted

to the question, it will be sufficient here to give a brief sketch of

it. The _rule_, by which a force of Nature manifests itself in the

chain of causes and effects--consequently the link which connects it

with them--is the law of Nature. But the confusion between forces of

Nature and causes is as frequent as it is detrimental to clearness of

thought. It seems indeed as though no one had accurately defined the

difference between these conceptions before me, however great may have

been the urgency for such a distinction. Not only are forces of Nature

turned into causes by such expressions as, 'Electricity, Gravity, &c.,

are the _cause_ of so-and-so,' but they are even often turned into

effects by those who search for a cause for Electricity, Gravity, &c.

&c., which is absurd. Diminishing the number of the forces of Nature,

however, by reducing one to another, as for instance Magnetism is

in our days reduced to Electricity, is a totally different thing.

Every _true_, consequently really primary force of Nature--and every

fundamental chemical property belongs to these forces--is essentially

a _qualitas occulta_, _i.e._ it does not admit of physical, but only

of metaphysical explanation: in other words, of an explanation which

transcends the world of phenomena. No one has carried this confusion,

or rather identification, of causes with forces of Nature further

than Maine de Biran in his "Nouvelles considérations des rapports

du physique au moral," for it is essential to his philosophy. It is

besides remarkable, that when he speaks of causes, he rarely uses the

word _cause_ alone, but almost always speaks of _cause ou force_,

just as we have seen Spinoza above (§ 8) write _ratio sive causa_ no

less than eight times in the same page. Both writers are evidently

conscious that they are identifying two disparates, in order to be able

to make use of the one or the other, according to circumstances; for

this end they are obliged to keep the identification constantly before

their readers' mind.--

[66] See "Die Welt a. W. u. V." vol. i. § 26, p. 153 of the 2nd,

and p. 160 of the 3rd edition.

Now Causality, as the director of each and every change, presents

itself in Nature under _three_ distinct forms: as _causes_ in the

strictest acceptation of the word, as _stimuli_, and as _motives_.

It is just upon this difference that the real, essential distinction

between inorganic bodies, plants, and animals is based, and not upon

external, anatomical, let alone chemical, distinctions.

A _cause_, in its narrowest sense, is that upon which changes in the

_inorganic_ kingdom alone ensue: those changes, that is to say, which

form the theme of Mechanics, Physics, and Chemistry. Newton's third

fundamental law, "Action and reaction are equal to one another,"

applies exclusively to this cause, and enunciates, that the state which

precedes (the cause) undergoes a change equivalent to that produced by

it (the effect). In this form of causality alone, moreover, does the

degree of the effect always exactly correspond to the degree of the

cause, so as to enable us accurately to calculate the one by means of

the other.

The second form of causality is the _stimulus_; it reigns over

_organic_ life, as such, _i.e._ over plant life and the vegetative,

that is, the unconscious, part of animal life. This second form is

characterized by the absence of the distinctive signs of the first.

In it accordingly action and reaction are not equal, nor does the

intensity of the effect by any means correspond throughout all its

degrees to the intensity of the cause; in fact, the opposite effect may

even be produced by intensifying the cause.

The third form of causality is the _motive_. Under this form causality

rules animal life proper: that is, the exterior, consciously performed

actions of all animals. The medium for motives is _knowledge_: an

intellect is accordingly needed for susceptibility to motives. The true

characteristic of the animal is therefore the faculty of knowing, of

representing (_Das Vorstellen_). Animals, as such, always move towards

some aim and end, which therefore must have been _recognised_ by them:

that is to say, it must have presented itself to them as something

different from themselves, yet of which they are conscious. Therefore

the proper definition of the animal would be: 'That which knows;' for

no other definition quite hits the mark or can even perhaps stand the

test of investigation. Movement induced by motives is necessarily

wanting where there is no cognitive faculty, and movement by stimuli

alone remains, _i.e._ plant life. Irritability and sensibility are

therefore inseparable. Still motives evidently act in a different way

from stimuli; for the action of the former may be very brief, nay,

need only be momentary; since their efficacy, unlike that of stimuli,

stands in no relation whatever to the duration of that action, to the

proximity of the object, &c. &c. A motive needs but to be perceived

therefore, to take effect; whereas stimuli always require outward,

often even inward, contact and invariably a certain length of time.

This short sketch of the three forms of causality will suffice here.

They are more fully described in my Prize-essay on Free Will.[67] One

thing, however, still remains to be urged. The difference between

cause, stimulus, and motive, is obviously only a consequence of

the various degrees of _receptivity_ of beings; the greater their

receptivity, the feebler may be the nature of the influence: a stone

needs an impact, while man obeys a look. Nevertheless, both are

moved by a sufficient cause, therefore with the same necessity. For

'_motivation_'[68] is only causality passing through knowledge; the

intellect is the medium of the motives, because it is the highest

degree of receptivity. By this, however, the law of causality loses

nothing whatever of its rigour and certainty; for motives are causes

and operate with the same necessity which all causes bring with them.

This necessity is easy to perceive in animals because of the greater

simplicity of their intellect, which is limited to the perception

of what is present. Man's intellect is double: for not only has he

intuitive, but abstract, knowledge, which last is not limited to

what is present. Man possesses Reason; he therefore has a power of

elective decision with clear consciousness: that is, he is able to

weigh against one another motives which exclude each other, as such;

in other terms, he can let them try their strength on his will. The

most powerful motive then decides him, and his actions ensue with

just the same necessity as the rolling of a ball after it has been

struck. Freedom of Will[69] means (not professorial twaddle but)

"_that a given human being, in a given situation, can act in two

different ways_." But the utter absurdity of this assertion is a truth

as certain and as clearly proved, as any truth can be which passes

the limits of pure mathematics. In my Essay on Free Will, to which

the Norwegian Society awarded the prize, this truth is demonstrated

more clearly, methodically, and thoroughly than has been done before

by anyone else, and this moreover with special reference to those

facts of our consciousness by which ignorant people imagine that

absurdity to be confirmed. In all that is essential however, Hobbes,

Spinoza, Priestley, Voltaire, and even Kant[70] already taught the

same doctrine. Our professional philosophers, of course, do not let

this interfere with their holding forth on Free Will, as if it were an

understood thing which had never been questioned. But what do these

gentlemen imagine the above-named great men to have come into the

world for, by the grace of Nature? To enable them (the professors) to

earn their livelihood by philosophy?--Since I had proved this truth

in my prize-essay more clearly than had ever been done before, and

since moreover a Royal Society had sanctioned that proof by placing

my essay among its memoranda, it surely behoved these worthies,

considering the views they held, to make a vigorous attack upon so

pernicious a doctrine, so detestable a heresy, and thoroughly to

refute it. Nay, this duty was all the more imperative as, in my

other essay "On the Foundation of Morality,"[71] I had proved the

utter groundlessness of Kant's practical Reason with its Categorical

Imperative which, under the name of the Moral Law, is still used by

these gentlemen as the corner-stone of their own shallow systems of

morality. I have shown it to be a futile assumption so clearly and

irrefutably, that no one with a spark of judgment can possibly believe

any longer in this fiction.--"Well, and so they probably did."--Oh

no! They take good care not to venture on such slippery ground! Their

ability consists in holding their tongues; silence is all they have

to oppose to intelligence, earnestness, and truth. In not one of the

products of their useless scribblings that have appeared since 1841,

has the slightest notice been taken of my Ethics--undoubtedly the most

important work on Moral Philosophy that has been published for the

last sixty years--nay, their terror of me and of my truth is so great,

that none of the literary journals issued by Academies or Universities

has so much as mentioned the book. _Zitto, zitto_, lest the public

should perceive anything: in this consists the whole of their policy.

The instinct of self-preservation may, no doubt, be at the bottom of

these artful tactics. For would not a philosophy, whose sole aim was

truth, and which had no other consideration in view, be likely to

play the part of the iron pot among the earthen ones, were it to come

in contact with the petty systems composed under the influence of a

thousand personal considerations by people whose chief qualification is

the propriety of their sentiments? Their wretched fear of my writings

is the fear of truth. Nor can it be denied, that precisely this very

doctrine of the complete necessity of all acts of the will stands in

flagrant contradiction with all the hypotheses of their favourite

old-woman's philosophy cut after the pattern of Judaism. Still, that

severely tested truth, far from being disturbed by all this, as a sure

datum and criterion, as a true δός μοι ποῦ στῶ, proves the futility of

all that old-woman's philosophy and the urgent need of a fundamentally

different, incomparably deeper view of the Universe and of Man;--no

matter whether that view be compatible with the official duties of a

professional philosopher or not.

[67] See "Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik," p. 30-34.

[68] The word "motivation," though it may appear objectionable

to the English reader, seemed unavoidable here, as being

Schopenhauer's own term, for which there is no adequate equivalent

in general use in our language. [Translator's note.]

[69] Here used in the absolute sense of _liberum arbitrium

indifferentiæ_. [Tr.]

[70] "Whatever conception one may form of freedom of the will,

for metaphysical purposes, its phenomena, human actions, are

nevertheless determined by universal laws of Nature, just as well

as every other occurrence in Nature." "Ideen zu einer allgemeinen

Geschichte." Anfang. I. Kant. "All the acts of a man, so far as

they are phenomena, are determined from his empirical character

and from the other concomitant causes, according to the order of

Nature; and if we could investigate all the manifestations of

his will to the very bottom, there would be not a single human

action which we could not predict with certainty and recognize

from its preceding conditions as necessary. There is no freedom

therefore with reference to this empirical character, and yet

it is only with reference to it that we can consider man, when

we are merely observing, and, as is the case in anthropology,

trying to investigate the motive causes of his actions

physiologically."--"Kritik. d. r. Vern." p. 549 of the 1st edition,

and p. 577 of the 5th edition. (Engl. Transl. by M. Müller, p. 474.)

"It may therefore be taken for granted, that if we could see far

enough into a man's mode of thinking, as it manifests itself in his

inner, as well as outer actions, for us to know every, even the

faintest motive, and in like manner all the other causes which act

upon these, it would be possible to calculate his conduct in future

with the same certainty as an eclipse of the sun or moon."--"Kritik

der praktischen Vernunft" ed. Rosenkranz, p. 230 and p. 177 of the

4th edition.

[71] Published in the same volume with the Prize-Essay on "Free

Will." See "Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik."

§ 21. À priori _character of the conception of Causality_.

_Intellectual Character of Empirical Perception._

THE UNDERSTANDING.

In the professorial philosophy of our philosophy-professors we are

still taught to this day, that perception of the outer world is a

thing of the senses, and then there follows a long dissertation upon

each of the five senses: whereas no mention whatever is made of the

intellectual character of perception: that is to say, of the fact,

that it is mainly the work of the Understanding, which, by means

of its own peculiar form of Causality, together with the forms of

pure sensibility, Time and Space, which are postulated by Causality,

primarily creates and produces the objective, outer world out of the

raw material of a few sensations. And yet in its principal features, I

had stated this matter in the first edition of the present treatise[72]

and soon after developed it more fully in my treatise "On Vision and

Colours" (1816), of which Professor Rosas has shown his appreciation

by allowing it to lead him into plagiarism.[73] But our professors of

philosophy have not thought fit to take the slightest notice either of

this, or indeed of any of the other great and important truths which it

has been the aim and labour of my whole life to set forth, in order to

secure them as a lasting possession to mankind. It does not suit their

tastes, or fit into their notions; it leads to no Theology, nor is it

even adapted to drill students for higher State purposes. In short,

professional philosophers do not care to learn from me, nor do they

even see how much they might learn from me: that is, all that their

children and their children's children will learn from me. They prefer

to sit down and spin a long metaphysical yarn, each out of his own

thoughts, for the benefit of the public; and no doubt, if fingers are a

sufficient qualification, they have it. How right was Macchiavelli when

he said, as Hesiod[74] before him: "There are three sorts of heads:

firstly, those which acquire knowledge of things and comprehend them by

themselves; secondly, those which recognise the truth when it is shown

them by others; and thirdly, those which can do neither the one nor the

other."[75]--

[72] Anno 1813, pp. 53-55.

[73] For further details see my "Will in Nature," p. 19 of the

1st edition, and p. 14 of the 3rd. (P. 230 _et seqq._ of the

translation of the "Will in Nature," which follows the "Fourfold

Root" in the present volume.)

[74] Hesiod, ἔργα, 293.

[75] Macchiavelli, "Il principe," cap. 22.

One must indeed be forsaken by all the gods, to imagine that the outer,

perceptible world, filling Space in its three dimensions and moving on

in the inexorable flow of Time, governed at every step by the laws of

Causality, which is without exception, and in all this merely obeying

laws we can indicate before all experience of them--that such a world

as this, we say, can have a real, objective existence outside us,

without any agency of our own, and that it can then have found its way

into our heads through bare sensation and thus have a second existence

within us like the one outside. For what a miserably poor thing is mere

sensation, after all! Even in the noblest of our organs it is nothing

but a local, specific feeling, susceptible of some slight variation,

still in itself always subjective and, as such therefore, incapable of

containing anything objective, anything like perception. For sensation

is and remains a process within the organism and is limited, as such,

to the region within the skin; it cannot therefore contain anything

which lies beyond that region, or, in other words, anything that is

outside us. A sensation may be pleasant or unpleasant--which betokens

a relation to the Will--but nothing objective can ever lie in any

sensation. In the organs of the senses, sensation is heightened by the

confluence of the nerve-extremities, and can easily be excited from

without on account of their extensive distribution and the delicacy of

the envelope which encloses them; it is besides specially susceptible

to particular influences, such as light, sound, smell; notwithstanding

which it is and remains mere sensation, like all others within our

body, consequently something essentially subjective, of whose changes

we only become immediately conscious in the form of the _inner_ sense,

Time: that is, successively. It is only when the _Understanding_

begins to act--a function, not of single, delicate nerve-extremities,

but of that mysterious, complicated structure weighing from five to

ten pounds, called the brain--only when it begins to apply its sole

form, _the causal law_, that a powerful transformation takes place,

by which subjective sensation becomes objective perception. For, in

virtue of its own peculiar form, therefore _à priori_, _i.e._ _before_

all experience (since there could have been none till then), the

Understanding conceives the given corporeal sensation as an _effect_

(a word which the Understanding alone comprehends), which _effect_, as

such, necessarily implies a _cause_. Simultaneously it summons to its

assistance _Space_, the form of the _outer_ sense, lying likewise ready

in the intellect (_i.e._ the brain), in order to remove that cause

_beyond_ the organism; for it is by this that the external world first

arises, Space alone rendering it possible, so that pure intuition _à

priori_ has to supply the foundation for empirical perception. In this

process, as I shall soon show more clearly, the Understanding avails

itself of all the several data, even the minutest, which are presented

to it by the given sensation, in order to construct the cause of it in

Space in conformity with them. This intellectual operation (which is

moreover explicitly denied both by Schelling[76] and by Fries[77]),

does not however take place discursively or reflectively, _in

abstracto_, by means of conceptions and words; it is, on the contrary,

an intuitive and quite direct process. For by it alone, therefore

exclusively _in_ the Understanding and _for_ the Understanding, does

the real, objective, corporeal world, filling Space in its three

dimensions, present itself and further proceed, according to the same

law of causality, to change in Time, and to move in Space.--It is

therefore the Understanding itself which has to create the objective

world; for this world cannot walk into our brain from outside all ready

cut and dried through the senses and the openings of their organs.

In fact, the senses supply nothing but the raw materials which the

Understanding at once proceeds to work up into the objective view of

a corporeal world, subject to regular laws, by means of the simple

forms we have indicated: Space, Time, and Causality. Accordingly our

every-day _empirical perception_ is an _intellectual_ one and has a

right to claim this predicate, which German pseudo-philosophers have

given to a pretended intuition of dream-worlds, in which their beloved

_Absolute_ is supposed to perform its evolutions. And now I will

proceed to show how wide is the gulf which separates sensation from

perception, by pointing out how raw is the material out of which the

beautiful edifice is constructed.

[76] Schelling, "Philosophische Schriften" (1809), vol. i. pp. 237

and 238.

[77] Fries, "Kritik der Vernunft." vol. i. pp. 52-56 and p. 290 of

the 1st edition.

Objective perception makes use, properly speaking, of only two senses;

touch and sight. These alone supply the data upon which, as its basis,

the Understanding constructs the objective world by the process just

described. The three other senses remain on the whole subjective; for

their sensations, while pointing to an external cause, still contain no

data by which its relations _in Space_ can be determined. Now _Space_

is the form of all perception, _i.e._ of _that_ apprehension, in which

alone _objects_ can, properly speaking, present themselves. Therefore

those other three senses can no doubt serve to announce the presence

of objects we already know in some other way; but no construction in

Space, consequently no objective perception, can possibly be founded on

their data. A rose cannot be constructed from its perfume, and a blind

man may hear music all his life without having the slightest objective

representation either of the musicians, or of the instruments, or of

the vibrations of the air. On the other hand, the sense of hearing

is of great value as a medium for language, and through this it is

the sense of _Reason_. It is also valuable as a medium for music,

which is the only way in which we comprehend numerical relations not

only _in abstracto_, but directly, _in concreto_. A musical sound or

tone, however, gives no clue to spacial relations, therefore it never

helps to bring the nature of its cause nearer to us; we stop short at

it, so that it is no datum for the Understanding in its construction

of the objective world. The sensations of touch and sight alone are

such data; therefore a blind man without either hands or feet, while

able to construct Space for himself _à priori_ in all its regularity,

would nevertheless acquire but a very vague representation of the

objective world. Yet what is supplied by touch and sight is not by any

means perception, but merely the raw material for it. For perception

is so far from being contained in the sensations of touch and sight,

that these sensations have not even the faintest resemblance to the

qualities of the things which present themselves to us through them,

as I shall presently show. Only what really belongs to sensation

must first be clearly distinguished from what is added to it by the

intellect in perception. In the beginning this is not easy, because

we are so accustomed to pass from the sensation at once to its cause,

that the cause presents itself to us without our noticing the sensation

apart from it, by which, as it were, the premisses are supplied to this

conclusion drawn by the Understanding.

Thus touch and sight have each their own special advantages, to begin

with; therefore they assist each other mutually. Sight needs no

contact, nor even proximity; its field is unbounded and extends to the

stars. It is moreover sensitive to the most delicate degrees of light,

shade, colour, and transparency; so that it supplies the Understanding

with a quantity of nicely defined data, out of which, by dint of

practice, it becomes able to construct the shape, size, distance, and

nature of bodies, and represents them at once perceptibly. On the

other hand, touch certainly depends upon contact; still its data are

so varied and so trustworthy, that it is the most searching of all the

senses. Even perception by sight may, in the last resort, be referred

to touch; nay, sight may be looked upon as an imperfect touch extending

to a great distance, which uses the rays of light as long feelers; and

it is just because it is limited to those qualities which have light

for their medium and is therefore one-sided, that it is so liable to

deception; whereas touch supplies the data for cognising size, shape,

hardness, softness, roughness, temperature, &c. &c., quite immediately.

In this it is assisted, partly by the shape and mobility of our

arms, hands, and fingers, from whose position in feeling objects the

Understanding derives its data for constructing bodies in Space, partly

by muscular power, which enables it to know the weight, solidity,

toughness, or brittleness of bodies: all this with the least possible

liability to error.

These data nevertheless do not by any means yet give perception, which

is always the work of the Understanding. The sensation I have in

pressing against a table with my hand, contains no representation of

a firm cohesion of parts in that object, nor indeed anything at all

like it. It is only when my Understanding passes from that sensation

to its cause, that the intellect constructs for itself a body having

the properties of solidity, impenetrability, and hardness. If in the

dark, I put my hand upon a flat surface, or lay hold of a ball of

about three inches in diameter, the same parts of my hand feel the

pressure in both cases; it is only by the different position which my

hand takes that, in the one or in the other case, my Understanding

constructs the shape of the body whose contact is the cause of the

sensation, for which it receives confirmation from the changes of

position which I make. The sensations in the hand of a man born blind,

on feeling an object of cubic shape, are quite uniform and the same on

all sides and in every direction: the edges, it is true, press upon

a smaller portion of his hand, still nothing at all like a cube is

contained in these sensations. His Understanding, however, draws the

immediate and intuitive conclusion from the resistance felt, that this

resistance must have a cause, which then presents itself through that

conclusion as a hard body; and through the movements of his arms in

feeling the object, while the hand's sensation remains unaltered, he

constructs the cubic shape in Space, which is known to him _à priori_.

If the representation of a cause and of Space, together with their

laws, had not already existed within him, the image of a cube could

never have proceeded from those successive sensations in his hand. If

a rope be drawn through his hand, he will construct, as the cause of

the friction he feels and of its duration, a long cylindrical body,

moving uniformly in the same direction in that particular position

of his hand. But the representation of movement, _i.e._ of change of

place in Space by means of Time, never could arise for him out of the

mere sensation in his hand; for that sensation can neither contain,

nor can it ever by itself alone produce any such thing. It is his

intellect which must, on the contrary, contain within itself, before

all experience, the intuitions of Space, Time, and together with them

that of the possibility of movement; and it must also contain the

representation of Causality, in order to pass from sensation--which

alone is given by experience--to a cause of that sensation, and to

construct that cause as a body having this or that shape, moving in

this or that direction. For how great is the difference between a mere

sensation in my hand and the representations of causality, materiality,

and mobility in Space by means of Time! The sensation in my hand, even

if its position and its points of contact are altered, is a thing far

too uniform and far too poor in data, to enable me to construct out of

it the representation of Space, with its three dimensions, and of the

influences of bodies one upon another, together with the properties of

expansion, impenetrability, cohesion, shape, hardness, softness, rest,

and motion: the basis, in short, of the objective world. This is, on

the contrary, only possible by the intellect containing within itself,

anterior to all experience, Space, as the form of perception; Time, as

the form of change; and the law of Causality, as the regulator of the

passing in and out of changes. Now it is precisely the pre-existence

before all experience of all these forms, which constitutes the

Intellect. Physiologically, it is a function of the brain, which the

brain no more learns by experience than the stomach to digest, or the

liver to secrete bile. Besides, no other explanation can be given

of the fact, that many who were born blind, acquire a sufficiently

complete knowledge of the relations of Space, to enable them to replace

their want of eyesight by it to a considerable degree, and to perform

astonishing feats. A hundred years ago Saunderson, for instance,

who was blind from his birth, lectured on Optics, Mathematics, and

Astronomy at Cambridge.[78] This, too, is the only way to explain the

exactly opposite case of Eva Lauk, who was born without arms or legs,

yet acquired an accurate perception of the outer world by means of

sight alone as rapidly as other children.[79] All this therefore proves

that Time, Space, and Causality are not conveyed into us by touch or by

sight, or indeed at all from outside, but that they have an internal,

consequently not empirical, but intellectual origin. From this again

follows, that the perception of the bodily world is an essentially

intellectual process, a work of the Understanding, to which sensation

merely gives the opportunity and the data for application in individual

cases.

[78] Diderot, in his "Lettre sur les Aveugles," gives a detailed

account of Saunderson.

[79] See "Die Welt a. W. u. V." vol. ii. chap. 4.

I shall now prove the same with regard to the sense of sight. Here

the only immediate datum is the sensation experienced by the retina,

which, though admitting of great variety, may still be reduced to the

impression of light and dark with their intermediate gradations and to

that of colours proper. This sensation is entirely subjective: that is

to say, it only exists within the organism and under the skin. Without

the Understanding, indeed, we should never even become conscious of

these gradations, excepting as of peculiar, varied modifications

of the feeling in our eye, which would bear no resemblance to the

shape, situation, proximity, or distance of objects outside us. For

_sensation_, in seeing, supplies nothing more than a varied affection

of the retina, exactly like the spectacle of a painter's palette with

divers splashes of colour. Nor would anything more remain over in our

consciousness, were we suddenly deprived of all our Understanding--let

us say by paralysis of the brain--at a moment when we were

contemplating a rich and extensive landscape, while the sensation

was left unchanged: for this was the raw material out of which our

Understanding had just before been constructing that perception.

Now, that the Understanding should thus be able, from such limited

material as light, shade and colour, to produce the visible world,

inexhaustibly rich in all its different shapes, by means of the simple

function of referring effects to causes assisted by the intuition of

Space, depends before all things upon the assistance given by the

sensation itself, which consists in this: first, that the retina, as

a surface, admits of a juxtaposition of impressions; secondly, that

light always acts in straight lines, and that its refraction in the

eye itself is rectilinear; finally, that the retina possesses the

faculty of immediately feeling from which direction the light comes

that impinges upon it, and this can, perhaps, only be accounted for

by the rays of light penetrating below the surface of the retina.

But by this we gain, that the mere impression at once indicates the

direction of its cause; that is, it points directly to the position

of the object from which the light proceeds or is reflected. The

passage to this object as a cause no doubt presupposes the knowledge of

causal relations, as well as of the laws of Space; but this knowledge

constitutes precisely the furniture of the _Intellect_, which, here

also, has again to create perception out of mere sensation. Let us now

examine its procedure in doing so more closely.

The first thing it does is to set right the impression of the object,

which is produced on the retina upside down. That original inversion

is, as we know, brought about in the following manner. As each point

of the visible object sends forth its rays towards all sides in a

rectilinear direction, the rays from its upper extremity cross those

from its lower extremity in the narrow aperture of the pupil, by which

the former impinge upon the bottom, the latter upon the top, those

projected from the right side upon the left, and _vice versa_. The

refracting apparatus of the eye, which consists of the _humor aqueus_,

_lens_, _et corpus vitreum_, only serves to concentrate the rays of

light proceeding from the object, so as to find room for them on the

small space of the retina. Now, if seeing consisted in mere sensation,

we should perceive the impression of the object turned upside down,

because we receive it thus; but in that case we should perceive it as

something within our eye, for we should stop short at the sensation.

In reality, however, the Understanding steps in at once with its

causal law, and as it has received from sensation the datum of the

direction in which the ray impinged upon the retina, it pursues that

direction retrogressively up to the cause on both lines; so that this

time the crossing takes place in the opposite direction, and the cause

presents itself upright as an external object in Space, _i.e._ in

the position in which it originally sent forth its rays, not that in

which they reached the retina (see fig. 1).--The purely intellectual

nature of this process, to the exclusion of all other, more especially

of physiological, explanations, may also be confirmed by the fact,

that if we put our heads between our legs, or lie down on a hill head

downwards, we nevertheless see objects in their right position, and

not upside down; although the portion of the retina, which is usually

met by the lower part of the object is then met by the upper: in fact,

everything is topsy turvy excepting the Understanding.

[Illustration: _Fig. 1._]

The _second_ thing which the Understanding does in converting sensation

into perception, is to make a single perception out of a double

sensation; for each eye in fact receives its own separate impression

from the object we are looking at; each even in a slightly different

direction: nevertheless that object presents itself as a single one.

This can only take place in the Understanding, and the process by

which it is brought about is the following: Our eyes are never quite

parallel, excepting when we look at a distant object, _i.e._ one which

is more than 200 feet from us. At other times they are both directed

towards the object we are viewing, whereby they converge, so as to make

the lines proceeding from each eye to the exact point of the object

on which it is fixed, form an _angle_, called the _optic angle_; the

lines themselves are called _optic axes_. Now, when the object lies

straight before us, these lines exactly impinge upon the centre of each

retina, therefore in two points which correspond exactly to each other

in each eye. The Understanding, whose only business it is to look for

the _cause_ of all things, at once recognises the impression as coming

from a _single_ outside point, although here the sensation is double,

and attributes it to _one_ cause, which therefore presents itself as

a single object. For all that is perceived by us, is perceived as a

_cause_--that is to say, as the cause of an effect we have experienced,

consequently _in the Understanding_. As, nevertheless, we take in not

only a single point, but a considerable surface of the object with both

eyes, and yet perceive it as a single object, it will be necessary to

pursue this explanation still further. All those parts of the object

which lie to one side of the vertex of the optic angle no longer send

their rays straight into the centre, but to the side, of the retina in

each eye; in both sides, however, to the same, let us say the left,

side. The points therefore upon which these rays impinge, _correspond

symmetrically to each other_, as well as the centres--in other words,

they are _homonymous points_. The Understanding soon learns to know

them, and accordingly extends the above-mentioned rule of its causal

perception to them also; consequently it not only refers those rays

which impinge upon the centre of each retina, but those also which

impinge upon all the other symmetrically corresponding places in both

retinas, to a single radiant point in the object viewed: that is,

it sees all these points likewise as single, and the entire object

also. Now, it should be well observed, that in this process it is

not the outer side of one retina which corresponds to the outer side

of the other, and the inner to the inner of each, but the right side

of one retina which corresponds to the right side of the other, and

so forth; so that this symmetrical correspondence must not be taken

in a physiological, but in a geometrical sense. Numerous and very

clear illustrations of this process, and of all the phenomena which

are connected with it, are to be found in Robert Smith's "Optics,"

and partly also in Kästner's German translation (1755). I only give

_one_ (fig. 2), which, properly speaking, represents a special case,

mentioned further on, but which may also serve to illustrate the

whole, if we leave the point R out of question. According to this

illustration, we invariably direct both eyes equally towards the

object, in order that the symmetrically corresponding places on both

retinas may catch the rays projected from the same points. Now, when

we move our eyes upwards and downwards, to the sides, and in all

directions, the point in the object which first impinged upon the

central point of each retina, strikes a different place every time, but

in all cases one which, in each eye, corresponds to the place bearing

the same name in the other eye. In examining (_perlustrare_) an object,

we let our eyes glide backwards and forwards over it, in order to bring

each point of it successively into contact with the centre of the

retina, which sees most distinctly: we feel it all over with our eyes.

It is therefore obvious that seeing singly with two eyes is in fact the

same process as feeling a body with ten fingers, each of which receives

a different impression, each moreover in a different direction: the

totality of these impressions being nevertheless recognised by the

Understanding as proceeding from _one_ object, whose shape and size

it accordingly apprehends and constructs in Space. This is why it is

possible for a blind man to become a sculptor, as was the case, for

instance, with the famous Joseph Kleinhaus, who died in Tyrol, 1853,

having been a sculptor from his fifth year.[80] For, no matter from

what cause it may have derived its data, perception is invariably an

operation of the Understanding.

[80] The Frankfort "Konversationsblatt," July 22, 1853, gives the

following account of this sculptor:--"The blind sculptor, Joseph

Kleinhaus, died at Nauders, in Tyrol, on the 10th inst. Having lost

his eyesight through small-pox when he was five years old, he began

to amuse himself with carving and modelling, as a pastime. Prugg

gave him some instructions, and supplied him with models, and at

the age of twelve he carved a Christ in life-size. During a short

stay in Nissl's workshop at Fügen, his progress was so rapid, that,

thanks to his good capacities and talents, his fame as the blind

sculptor soon spread far and wide. His works are numerous and of

various kinds. His Christs alone, of which there are about four

hundred, bear special witness to his proficiency, particularly if

his blindness is taken into consideration. He sculptured many other

objects besides, and, but two months ago, he modelled a bust of the

Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria which has been sent to Vienna."

[Illustration: _Fig. 2._]