SKETCH OF A HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE IDEAL AND THE REALPlurimi pertransibunt, et multiplex erit scientia.
[' Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.'
-- Daniel 12: 4.]
Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and the RealDESCARTES is rightly regarded as the father of modern philosophy primarily and generally because he helped the faculty of reason to stand on its own feet by teaching men to use their brains in place whereof the Bible, on the one hand, and Aristotle, on the other, had previously served. But he is the father in a special and narrower sense because he was the first to bring to our consciousness the problem whereon all philosophizing has since mainly turned, namely that of the ideal and the real. This is the question concerning what in our knowledge is objective and what subjective, and hence what eventually is to be ascribed by us to things different from us and what is to be attributed to ourselves. Thus in our head images arise not arbitrarily, as it were, from within, nor do they proceed from the connection of ideas; consequently, they arise from an external cause. But such images alone are what is immediately known to us, what is given. Now what relation may they have to things which exist quite separately from and independently of us and which would somehow become the cause of those images? Are we certain that such things generally exist at all, and in this case do the images give us any information as to their nature? This is the problem and in consequence thereof the main endeavour of philosophers for the last two hundred years has been clearly to separate by a line of cleavage correctly drawn the ideal, in other words, what belongs to our knowledge solely and as such, from the real, that is to say, what exists independently of our knowledge, and thus to determine the relation of the two to each other.
Neither the philosophers of antiquity nor even the Schoolmen really appear to have become clearly aware of this fundamental philosophical problem, although we find a trace of it, as idealism and even as the doctrine of the ideality of time, in Plotinus, and in fact in Enneads, lib. VII, c. 10, where he tells us that the soul made the world by emerging from eternity into time. He says there, for instance: [x] (neque datur alius hujus universi locus, quam anima.) [1] as also: [x] (oprortet autem nequaquam extra animam tempus accipere, quemadmodum neque aeternitatem ibi extra id, quod ens appellatur); [2] here is really expressed Kant's ideality of time. And in the following chapter: [x] (haec vita nostra tempus gignit: quamobrem dictum est, tempus simul cum hoc universo factum esse; quia anima tempus una cum hoc universo progenuit.) [3] Yet the clearly recognized and clearly expressed problem continues to be the characteristic theme of modern philosophy, after the necessary reflectiveness had first been awakened in Descartes. He was struck by the truth that we are above all restricted to our own consciousness and that the world is given to us only as representation or mental picture [Vorstellung). Through his well-known dubito, cogito, ergo sum, [4] he tried to lay stress on the only certain thing of subjective consciousness in contrast to the problematical nature of everything else, and to express the great truth that self-consciousness is the only thing really and unconditionally given. Closely considered, his famous proposition is the equivalent of that from which I started, namely: 'The world is my representation'. The only difference is that his proposition stresses the immediateness of the subject, whereas mine stresses the mediateness of the object. Both propositions express the same thing from two points of view. They are the reverse of each other and therefore stand in the same relation as the laws of inertia and causality, according to my discussion in the preface to my ethics. [ The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics treated in two academical prize-essays by Dr. Arthur Schopenhauer. Frankfurt am Main, 1841, p. xxiv; 2nd edn., Leipzig, 1860, pp. xxivf.) Since the days of Descartes his proposition has been repeated innumerable times from a mere feeling of its importance and without a clear understanding of its real meaning and purport. (See Meditationes, Med. II, p. 15.) And so it was he who discovered the gulf between the subjective or ideal and the objective or real. He clothed this insight in the form of a doubt concerning the existence of the external world; but by his inadequate solution of such doubt, namely that God Almighty would surely not deceive us, he has shown how profound the problem is and how difficult it is to solve. Meanwhile through him this scruple had come into philosophy and was bound to continue to have a disturbing effect until it was thoroughly disposed of. The consciousness that, without thorough knowledge and an explanation of the distinction that had been discovered, no sure and satisfactory system was possible, had since existed and the question could no longer be shirked.
To dispose of it, Malebranche first devised the system of occasional causes. He grasped the problem itself in its whole range more clearly, seriously, and deeply than did Descartes. (Recherches de La veriti, Livre III, seconde partie.) The latter had assumed the reality of the external world on the credit of God; and here, of course, it seems strange that, whereas the other theistic philosophers endeavour to demonstrate the existence of God from that of the world, Descartes, on the contrary, proves the existence of the world first from the existence and trustworthiness of God; it is the cosmological proof the other way round. Here too Malebranche goes a step farther and teaches that we see all things immediately in God himself. This certainly is equivalent to explaining something unknown by something even more unknown. Moreover, according to him, we not only see all things in God, but God is also the sole activity therein, so that physical causes are so only apparently; they are mere causes occasionnelles. (Recherches de La veriti, Livre VI, seconde partie, chap. 3.) And so here we have essentially the pantheism of Spinoza who appears to have learnt more from Malebranche than from Descartes.
On the whole, one might be surprised that even in the seventeenth century pantheism did not gain a complete victory over theism; for the most original, finest, and most thorough European expositions of it (none of them, of course, will bear comparison with the Upanishads of the Vedas) all came to light at that period, namely through Bruno, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Scotus Erigena. Mter Scot us Erigena had been lost and forgotten for many centuries, he was again discovered at Oxford and in 1681, thus four years after Spinoza's death, his work first saw the light in print. This seems to prove that the insight of individuals cannot make itself felt so long as the spirit of the age is not. ripe to receive it. On the other hand, in our day pantheism, although presented only in Schelling's eclectic and confused revival thereof, has become the dominant mode of thought of scholars and even of educated people. This is because Kant had preceded it with his overthrow of theistic dogmatism and had cleared the way for it, whereby the spirit of the age was ready for it, just as a ploughed field is ready for the seed. In the seventeenth century, on the contrary, philosophy again forsook that path and accordingly arrived at Locke, on the one hand, for whom Bacon and Hobbes had paved the way, and at Christian Wolff, on the other, through Leibniz. These two were then dominant in the eighteenth century, especially in Germany, although ultimately only in so far as they had been initiated into syncretistic eclecticism.
Malebranche's profound ideas, however, first gave rise to Leibniz's system of harmonia praestabilita, and the widespread fame and high repute of this in his day furnish a proof of the fact that in the world the absurd most easily succeeds. Although I cannot boast of having a clear notion of Leibniz's monads, which are at the same time mathematical points, material atoms, and souls, yet it seems to me beyond doubt that such an assumption once settled could help to save us from all further hypotheses for explaining the connection between the ideal and the real, and to dispose of the question by the fact that both are already fully identified in the monads. (For this reason Schelling in our day, as the originator of the system of identity, has again relished it.) However, it did not please the famous philosophizing mathematician, polyhistor, and politician to employ them for this purpose, but to this end he expressly formulated the pre-established harmony. This now furnishes us with two entirely different worlds, each incapable of acting in any way on the other (Principia philos., § 84, and Examen du sentiment du P. Malebranche, pp. 500 ff. of the Oeuvres de Leibniz, publ. by Raspe), each the wholly superfluous duplicate of the other. But yet the two are now supposed to exist once for all, to run exactly parallel to each other, and to keep time with each other to a hair. Therefore at the very beginning, the originator of both established between them the precisest harmony wherein they now continue most beautifully to run side by side. Incidentally, the harmonia praestabilita might perhaps be best rendered comprehensible by a comparison with the stage. Here very often the influxus physicus [5] only apparently exists, since cause and effect are connected merely by means of a pre-established harmony of the stage manager, for example, when the one shoots and the other falls a tempo. In §§ 62, 63 of his Thlodicle, Leibniz has presented the matter in its monstrous absurdity in the crassest manner and in brief. And yet with the whole dogma he has not even the merit of originality, since Spinoza had already presented the harmonia praestabilita clearly enough in the second part of his Ethics, thus in the sixth and seventh propositions together with their corollaries, and again in the fifth part, first proposition, after he had expressed, in his own way in the fifth proposition of the second part, the very closely related doctrine of Malebranche, that we see everything in God. * Therefore Malebranche alone is the originator of this whole line of thought which both Spinoza and Leibniz have utilized and modified, each in his own way. Leibniz could very well have dispensed with the thing altogether, for here he had already given up the mere fact, constituting the problem, namely that the world is immediately given to us merely as our representation, in order to substitute for it the dogma of a corporeal world and a spiritual world between which no bridge is possible. For he interweaves the question concerning the relation of representations to things-in-themselves with that concerning the possibility of the movements of the body through the will, and now solves both together by means of his harmonia praestabilita. (See Systeme nouveau de la nature, in Leibniz's Works, ed. Erdmann, p. 125-Brucker, Hist. Ph., Tom. iv, Pt. II, p. 425.) The monstrous absurdity of his assumption was placed in the clearest light even by some of his contemporaries, especially by Bayle, who showed the consequences resulting from it. (See also in Leibniz's short works, translated by Huth, 1740, the note on page 79, where Leibniz himself is compelled to expose the revolting consequences of his contention.) Nevertheless, the very absurdity of the assumption, to which a thinking mind was driven by the problem before us, shows its magnitude, difficulty, and perplexity, and also how little we are able to brush it aside and thus cut the knot by merely repudiating it, as some in our day have ventured to do.
Spinoza starts again directly from Descartes; therefore, in his capacity as a Cartesian, he at first retained even the dualism of his teacher and accordingly assumed a substantia cogitans and a substantia extensa, [6] the former as subject, the latter as object, of knowledge. Later, however, when he stood on his own feet, he found that both were one and the same substance, viewed from different sides, and hence at one time conceived as substantia extensa, at another as substantia cogitans. Now this is really equivalent to saying that the distinction between the thinking and the extended, or between mind and body, is unfounded and therefore inadmissible, and hence that nothing more should have been said about it. But nevertheless he still retains it in so far as he is never tired of repeating that the two are one. Now in addition to this, he says by a mere sic etiam that modus extensionis et idea illius modi una eademque est res [7] (Ethics, Pt. II, prop. 7, schol.), by which is meant that our representation of bodies and these bodies themselves are one and the same. However, the sic etiam [8] is an insufficient transition to this, for although the distinction between mind and body or between what represents and what is exended is unfounded, it by no means follows that the distinction between our representation and something objective and real existing outside this, that fundamental problem raised by Descartes, is also unfounded. What represents and what is represented may still be homogeneous, yet the question remains whether I can infer with certainty from representations in my head the existence of entities, in themselves different from me, that is to say, entities that are independent of those representations. The difficulty is not the one into which Leibniz would prefer to distort it (e.g. Theodicle, Pt. I, § 59), namely that between the assumed souls or minds and the corporeal world, as between two wholly heterogeneous kinds of substances, absolutely no action and connection can take place, for which reason he denied physical influence. For this difficulty is merely a consequence of rational psychology and, therefore, needs only to be discarded as a fiction, as is done by Spinoza. Moreover, there is, as the argumentum ad hominem [9] against the upholders of rational psychology, their dogma that God, who is indeed a spirit, created the corporeal world and continues to govern it; and so a spirit can act immediately on bodies. On the contrary, the difficulty is and remains merely the Cartesian, namely that the world, which alone is given immediately to us, is only ideal, in other words, one that consists of mere representations in our head; whereas, over and above this, we undertake to judge of a real world, in other words, one that exists independently of our representations. Therefore by abolishing the difference between substantia cogitans and substantia extensa, Spinoza has still not solved this problem, but has at most again rendered physical influence admissible. This, however, does not suffice to solve the difficulty, for the law of causality is demonstrably of subjective origin. But even if that law sprang conversely from external experience, it would still belong to that world in question which is given to us only ideally. Hence in no case can the law of causality furnish a bridge between the absolutely objective and the subjective; on the contrary, it is merely the bond that connects phenomena with one another, (See World as Will and Representation, vol. II, chap. I.)
But to explain more fully the above-mentioned identity of extension and of the representation thereof, Spinoza furnishes something that at the same time includes the views of Malebranche and Leibniz. Thus, wholly in accordance with Malebranche, we see all things in God: rerum singularium ideae non ipsa ideata, sive res perceptas, pro causa agnoscunt, sed ipsum Deum, quatenys est res cogitans. [10] Ethics, Pt. II, prop. 5; and this God is also at the same time the real and active principle in them, just as he is with Malebranche. In the last resort, however, nothing is explained by Spinoza's designation of the world with the name Deus. But at the same time there is with him, as with Leibniz, an exact parallelism between the extended and the represented worlds: ordo et connexio idearum idem est, ac ordo et connexio rerum, [11] Pt. II, prop. 7 and many similar passages. This is the harmonia praestabilita of Leibniz; only that here the represented world and the objectively existing world do not remain wholly separated, as with Leibniz, corresponding to each other merely by virtue of a harmonia, regulated in advance and from without, but actually they are one and the same. Therefore we have here in the first place a complete and absolute realism, in so far as the existence of things corresponds exactly to their representation in us, since indeed both are one. * Accordingly, we know the things-in-themselves; they are in themselves extensa, just as they also manifest themselves as extensa, in so far as they appear as cogitata, that is to say, in our representation of them. (Incidentally, here is the origin of Schelling's identity of the real and the ideal.) Now all this, properly speaking, is based only on mere assertion. The exposition is difficult to understand through the ambiguity of the word Deus that is used in a wholly improper sense; and so it loses itself in obscurity and in the end amounts to saying: nee impraesemiarum haec clarius possum explicare. [12] But obscurity in the exposition always arises from obscurity of a philosopher's own understanding and study of his works. Vauvenargues has very aptly said: La clarte est la bonne foi des philosophes. [13] (See Revue des deux mondes, 15 August 1853, p. 635.) What in music is the 'pure phrase or movement' is in philosophy perfect clearness, in so far as it is the conditio sine qua non, [14] and without the fulfilment of this, everything loses its value and we have to say: quodcunque ostendis mihi sic incredulus odi. [15] If even in the affairs of ordinary practical life we have through clearness carefully to guard against possible misunderstandings, how can we dare to express ourselves indefinitely, or even unintelligently, in the most difficult, abstruse, and wellnigh impenetrable subject of thought, in the problems of philosophy? The obscurity I have censured in Spinoza's doctrine arises from his not proceeding impartially from the nature of things as he finds them, but from Cartesianism, and accordingly from all kinds of traditional concepts, such as Deus, substantia, perfectio, and so on, which he attempted in roundabout ways to bring into harmony with his notion of truth. Very often he expresses the best things only indirectly, especially in the second part of the Ethics, since he always speaks per ambages [16] and almost allegorically. On the other hand, Spinoza again evinces an unmistakable transcendental idealism, namely a knowledge, although only general, of the truths expounded by Locke and particularly by Kant, hence a real distinction between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself, and a recognition that only the phenomenon is accessible to us. See, for example, Ethics, Pt. u, prop. 16, with the second corollary; prop. 17, schol.; prop. 18, schol.; prop. 19; prop. 23, which extends it to self- knowledge; prop. 25, which expresses it clearly, and finally, as a resume, the corollary to prop. 29, which clearly states that we do not know either ourselves or things as they are in themselves, but merely as they appear. The demonstration of Pt. III, prop. 27, expresses the matter most clearly at the very beginning. With regard to the relation of Spinoza's doctrine to Descartes's, I here recall what I have said in the World as Will and Representation, vol. ii, chap. 50. But by starting from the concepts of the Cartesian philosophy, Spinoza in his exposition not only gave rise to much obscurity and misunderstanding, but he was also led into many flagrant paradoxes, obvious fallacies, and indeed absurdities and contradictions. In this way, much that is true and admirable in his teaching has acquired an extremely unwelcome admixture of positively indigestible matter, and the reader is tossed between admiration and annoyance. But in the aspect here to be considered, Spinoza's fundamental fault is that from the wrong point he drew his line of intersection between the ideal and the real, or between the subjective and objective worlds. Thus extension is by no means the opposite of representation, but lies wholly within this. We represent things as extended and, in so far as they are extended, they are our representation. But the question and the original problem is whether, independently of our representing, anything is extended, or indeed whether anything exists at all. This problem was later solved by Kant, and so far with undeniable accuracy, by his stating that extension or spatiality lies simply and solely in the representation and hence that it is closely connected with and dependent on this, since the whole of space is the mere form of the representation; and, therefore, independently of our representing, nothing extended can exist and also quite certainly nothing does exist. Accordingly, Spinoza's line of intersection has been drawn entirely on the ideal side and he has stopped at the represented world. Indicated by its form of extension, this world is, therefore, regarded by him as the real and consequently as existing independently of its being represented in our heads, in other words, as existing in itself. He is then, of course, quite right in saying that what is extended and what is represented, in other words our representation of bodies and these bodies themselves, are one and the same (Pt. II, prop. 7, schol.). For naturally only as represented are things extended, and only as extended are they capable of representation; the world as representation and the world in space are una eademque res; [17] this we can fully admit. Now if extension were a quality of things-in-themselves, then our intuitive perception would be a knowledge of things-in- themselves. This is what he assumes, and therein consists his realism. But since he does not establish realism and does not prove that, corresponding to our intuitive perception of a spatial world, there is a spatial world independent of that perception, the fundamental problem remains unsolved. This, however, is simply due to the fact that the line of intersection is not correctly drawn between the real and the ideal, the objective and the subjective, the thing-in-itself and the phenomenon. On the contrary, he carries the intersection, as I have said, through the middle of the ideal, subjective, phenomenal side of the world and hence through the world as representation. He splits this world into the extended or spatial and our representation of the extended, and then takes a great deal of trouble to show that the two are identical, as in fact they are. Just because Spinoza remains entirely on the ideal side of the world, for he thought he would find the real in what is extended and belongs to the world; and as, in consequence, the world of intuitive perception is the sole reality outside us, and that which knows (cogitans) the sole reality within us, so, on the other hand, he shifts the only truly real, namely the will, into the ideal, for he represents it as being a mere modus cogitandi; in fact, he identifies it with the judgement. See Ethics, Pt II, the proofs of the propositions 48 and 49, where it says: per VOLUNTATEM intelligo affirmandi et negandi facultatem, and again: concipiamus singularem aliquam VOLITIONEM, nempe modum cogitandi, quo mens affirmat, tres angulos trianguli aequales esse duobus rectis, whereupon the corollary follows: Volunlas et intellectus unum et idem sunt. [18] In general Spinoza has the great fault of purposely misusing words for expressing concepts that in the entire world go by other names, and, on the other hand, of depriving them of the meaning which they everywhere have. Thus he calls 'God' that which is everywhere called 'the world'; 'justice' that which is everywhere called 'power'; and 'will' that which is everywhere called 'judgement'. Here we are fully justified in recalling the Hetman of the Cossacks in Kotzebue's Graf Benjowsky. [19]
Although coming later and already with the knowledge of Locke, Berkeley consistently went farther on this path of the Cartesians, and thus became the originator of the proper and true idealism, that is, of the knowledge that what is extended in and fills space, and thus the world of intuitive perception generally, can have its existence as such absolutely only in our representation, and that it is absurd and even contradictory to attribute to it, as such, another existence outside all representation and independently of the knowing subject, and accordingly to assume a matter existing in itself.* This is a very true and deep insight, but his whole philosophy consists in nothing but this. He had hit upon and clearly separated the ideal; but he did not know how to find the real, about which he did not trouble himself very much and expressed himself only occasionally, piecemeal, and incompletely. With him God's will and omnipotence are directly the cause of all the phenomena in the world of intuitive perception, that is to say, of all our representations. Real existence belongs only to knowing and willing beings, such as we ourselves are: hence these, together with God, constitute the real. They are spirits, that is, just knowing and willing beings; for willing and knowing are regarded by him as absolutely inseparable. Also in common with his predecessors, he regards God as better known than the actual world before us; and he therefore regards a reduction to him as an explanation. Speaking generally, his clerical and even episcopal position cramped and fettered him, and restricted him to a narrow circle of ideas against which he could never offend. He could, therefore, go no further, but in his head the true and the false had to learn as best they could to be compatible with each other. These remarks may be extended even to the works of all these philosophers, with the exception of Spinoza. They are all marred by that Jewish theism which is impervious to any investigation, dead to all research, and thus actually appears as a fixed idea. At every step, it plants itself in the path of truth, so that the harm it does here in the theoretical sphere appears as a counterpart to that which it has done in the practical in the course of a thousand years; I mean in religious wars, inquisitions, and conversions of nations by the sword.
The closest affinity between Malebranche, Spinoza, and Berkeley is unmistakable. We see them all start from Descartes in so far as they retain and try to solve the fundamental problem that is presented by him in the form of a doubt concerning the existence of the external world. For they are concerned to investigate the separation and connection of the ideal subjective world, given solely in our representation, and the real objective world, existing independently thereof and thus in itself. Therefore this problem is, as I have said, the axis on which the whole of modern philosophy turns.
Now Locke differs from those philosophers in that, probably because he is under the influence of Hobbes and Bacon, he attaches himself as closely as possible to experience and common sense, avoiding as far as possible hyperphysical hypotheses. For him the real is matter, and without paying any regard to Leibniz's scruple as to the impossibility of a causal connection between the immaterial thinking substance and the material extended substance, he at once assumes physical influence between matter and the knowing subject. Here, however, with rare deliberation and honesty, he goes so far as to confess that possibly that which knows and thinks can also be matter (On the Human Understanding, lib. IV, c. 3, § 6). Later this won for him the repeated praise of the great Voltaire; on the other hand, in his own day it exposed him to the malicious attacks of an artful Anglican priest, the Bishop of Worcester. [20] Now with him the real, i.e. matter, generates in the knower representations or the ideal through 'impulse', i.e. through push or thrust. (Ibid., lib. I, c. 8; § II.) Thus here we have a thoroughly massive realism which by its very exorbitance called forth contradiction and gave rise to Berkeley's idealism. The special point of origin of this is perhaps what Locke states at the end of § 2 of chapter 21 of the second book with so surprisingly little reflection. Among other things he says that 'solidity, extension, figure, motion and rest, would be really in the world, as they are, whether there were any sensible being to perceive them or not'. Thus as soon as we reflect on this, we are bound to recognize it as false; but then Berkeleyan idealism stands there and is undeniable. However, even Locke does not overlook that fundamental problem, namely the gulf between the representations within us and the things existing independently of us and thus the distinction between the ideal and the real. But speaking generally, he disposes of it with arguments of sound but rough common sense, and by reference to the adequacy of our knowledge of things for practical purposes (ibid., lib. IV, c. 4 and 9), which obviously has nothing to do with the case and only shows how very inadequate to the problem empiricism remains. But now it is just his realism that leads him to restrict what corresponds to the real in our knowledge to qualities inherent in things, as thry are in themselves, and to distinguish these qualities from those that are connected merely with our knowledge of them, and thus only with the ideal. Accordingly, he calls the latter secondary qualities but the former primary. This is the origin of the distinction between thing-in-itself and phenomenon, which later on in the Kantian philosophy becomes so very important. Here, then, is the true genetic point of contact between the Kantian teaching and the earlier philosophy, namely in Locke. The former was provoked, and more immediately occasioned, by Hume's sceptical objections to Locke's teaching; on the other hand, it has only a polemical relation to the philosophy of Leibniz and Wolff.
Now those primary qualities, which are said to be exclusively determinations of things-in-themselves and consequently to belong thereto, even outside and independently of our representation, prove to be merely such as cannot be thought away, namely extension, impenetrability, form, motion or rest, and number. All the rest are recognized as secondary, that is, as creations of the action of those primary qualities on our organs of sense, consequently as mere sensations therein; such qualities are colour, tone, taste, smell, hardness, softness, smoothness, roughness, and so on. Accordingly, these have not the least resemblance to that quality in the things-in-themselves which excites them, but are reducible to those primary qualities as their causes, and these alone are purely objective and actually exist in things. (Ibid., lib. I, c. 8, §§ 7 seqq.) Our representations of these are, therefore, actually faithful copies of them, which reproduce exactly the qualities present in the things-in-themselves (loc. cit., § 15. I wish the reader luck who actually perceives here how ludicrous realism becomes). We see, therefore, that Locke takes away from the nature of things-in-themselves, whose 'representations we receive from without, that which is an action of the nerves of the sense organs, an easy, comprehensible, and indisputable observation. But on this path, Kant later took the immeasurably greater step of also taking away that which is an action of our brain (this incomparably greater mass of nerves). Thus all those ostensibly primary qualities sink into secondary ones, and the assumed things-in-themselves into mere phenomena. The real thing-in- itself, however, now divested even of those qualities, remains over as an entirely unknown quantity, a mere x. Now this, of course, called for a difficult and deep analysis that was long to be defended against the attacks of misunderstanding and of a want of understanding.
Locke does not deduce his primary qualities of things, nor does he state any further reason why just these and no others are purely objective, except to say that they are ineradicable. Now if we ourselves investigate why he declares as not objectively present those qualities of things which act immediately on sensation and which consequently come directly from without, whereas he concedes objective existence to those qualities which (as we have since recognized) spring from our intellect's own special functions, then the reason for this is that the objectively perceiving consciousness (the consciousness of other things) necessarily requires a complicated apparatus, and as the function of this it appears; consequently, its most essential fundamental determinations are already fixed from within. Therefore the universal form, i.e. the mode, of intuitive perception, from which alone the a priori knowable can result, presents itself as the basic fabric of the intuitively perceived world and accordingly appears as the absolutely necessary factor that is without exception and cannot in any way be removed so that, already in advance, it stands firm as the condition of all other things and of their manifold variety. We know that this is first of all time and space, and what follows from them and is possible only through them. In themselves, time and space are empty; if anything is to come into them, it must appear as matter, in other words, as something acting and consequently as causality; for matter is through and through pure causality. Its being consists in its acting and vice versa; it is simply the objectively apprehended form of the understanding for causality itself. (On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, §21; as also World as Will and Representation, vol. i, § 4, and vol. ii, chap. 4.) Hence it follows that Locke's primary qualities are merely such as cannot be thought away; and this indicates clearly enough their subjective origin, since they result directly from the nature and constitution of the perception-apparatus itself. Consequently, it follows that he regards as absolutely objective just that which, as a function of the brain, is much more subjective than is the sensation that is occasioned directly from without, or is at any rate more fully determined.
Meanwhile, it is fine to see how, through all these different conceptions and explanations, the problem, raised by Descartes, of the relation between the ideal and the real is ever more developed and clarified and thus truth is advanced. This, of course, took place under the favourable circumstances of the times or more correctly of nature which, in the brief interval of two centuries, gave birth to, and allowed to mature in Europe, half a dozen thinking minds. Moreover, as a gift from fate, they were permitted, in a vulgar-minded world that was slavishly abandoned to profit and pleasure, to follow their eminent and exalted calling, indifferent as they were to the yelping of priests and to the twaddle or deliberate activities of the contemporary professors of philosophy.
Now as, in accordance with his strict empiricism, Locke enabled us to know even the relation of causality only through experience, Hume did not dispute this false assumption, which would have been the correct thing to do. On the contrary, he at once overshot the mark, the reality of the causality relation itself, and in fact did this by the observation, correct in itself, that experience can never give, sensuously and directly, more than a mere succession of things, not an ensuing and effecting in the real sense, namely a necessary connection. We all know how this sceptical objection of Hume's gave rise to Kant's incomparably deeper investigations of the matter, which led him to the result that causality, and indeed also space and time, are known by us a priori, that is to say, lie within us prior to all experience, and hence belong to the subjective part of knowledge. From this it further follows that all those primary, i.e. absolute, qualities of things, which had been determined by Locke, cannot be peculiar to things-in-themselves, but are inherent in our way of knowing these, for all such qualities are composed of pure determinations of time, space, and causality, and consequently are to be reckoned as belonging not to the real, but to the ideal. Finally, it follows from this that we know things in no respect as they are in themselves, but simply and solely in their phenomenal appearance. But then the real, the thing-in-itself, remains as something wholly unknown, a mere x, and the whole world of intuitive perception accrues to the ideal as a mere representation, a phenomenon, to which, however, as such a real, a thing-in-itself, must somehow correspond.
From this point I have finally made a step that I believe will be the last because I have solved the problem whereon all philosophizing since Descartes has turned. Thus I have reduced all being and knowing to the two elements of our self-consciousness and hence to something beyond which there can no longer be any principle of explanation, since it is that which is most immediate and therefore ultimate. I have thus called to mind, as follows from the investigations of all my predecessors which are here discussed, that the absolutely real, or the thing-initself, can never be given to us directly from without on the path of the mere representation because it is inevitably in the nature of such representation always to furnish only the ideal. On the other hand, since we ourselves are indisputably real, it must be possible in some way to draw a knowledge of the real from the interior of our own true nature. In fact, it now appears here in an immediate way in consciousness, namely as will. Accordingly, with me the line of intersection now falls between the real and the ideal in such a way that the whole world of intuitive perception, presenting itself objectively, including everyone's own body, together with space, time, and causality, and consequently together with the extended of Spinoza and the matter of Locke, belongs as representation to the ideal. But in this case, only the will is left as the real and all my predecessors, thoughtlessly and without reflection, had cast this into the ideal, as a mere result of representation and thought; in fact, Descartes and Spinoza even identified it with the judgement. [21] Thus with me ethics is now directly and incomparably more closely connected with metaphysics than it is in any other system, and so the moral significance of the world and existence is more firmly established than ever. Will and representation alone are fundamentally different in so far as they constitute the ultimate and basic contrast in all things in the world and leave no remainder. The represented thing and the representation thereof are the same; but only the represented thing, not the thing-in-itself. The latter is always will, whatever be the form in which it appears in the representation.
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Notes:1 ['For there is for this universe no other place than the mind.']
2 [' But we should not accept time outside the mind; and also we should not accept the eternity of the Beyond outside Being (i.e. the world of Ideas).']
3 ['This life produces time, which also means that time arose simultaneously with this universe; for the mind has produced it simultaneously with this universe.')
4 [' I doubt, that is to say, I think, consequently I am.')
* [Footnotes with an asterisk or dagger represent additions made by Schopenhauer in his interleaved copy between 1851 and his death in 1860.]
* Ethics, Pt. 11, prop. 7: Ordo et connexio idearum idem est, ac ordo et connexio rerum.-Pt. v, prop. 1: Prout cogitationes rerumque ideae concatenantur in Mente, ita corporis affectiones, seu rerum imagines ad amusim ordinantur et concatenantur in Corpore.-Pt. II, prop. 5: Esse formale idearum Deum, quatenus tantum ut res cogitans consideratur, pro causa agnoscit, et non quatenus alio attributo explicatur. Hoc est tam Dei attributorum, quam rerum singularium ideae non ipsa ideata, sive res perceptas pro causa efficiente agnoscunt: sed ipsum Deum, quatenus est res cogitans.
['The order and connection of ideas are the same as the order and connection of things... Just as the thoughts and ideas of things are linked in the mind, so are the affections of the body or the images of things arranged and linked in the body. . . . The formal existence of ideas has God as its cause, in so far as he is considered as a thinking being, and not in so far as he is evolved by another attribute. That is to say: the ideas of the attributes of God, as of individual things, have as their cause, not the objects of these ideas, i.e. perceived things, but God himself, in so far as he is a thinking being.']
5 ['Physical influence'. (Term used by Descartes.)]
6 [' A thinking substance' and 'an extended substance'.]
7 [' Likewise a mode of extension and the idea of this mode are also one and the same.']
8 (' Likewise'.]
9 [An irrelevant or malicious appeal to personal circumstances.)
* In the Treatise on the Improvement of the Understanding, pp. 414/25 he evinces a decided realism and indeed in such a way that idea vera est diversum quid a suo ideato; etc. ['A true idea is something different from its object.') Nevertheless, this treatise is undoubtedly older than his Ethics.
10 ['The ideas of particular things do not have as their cause the objects of these ideas, in other words, perceived things, but God himself, in so far as he is a thinking being.')
11 [' The order and connection of ideas are the same as the order and connection of things.')
12 [' And for the present I cannot explain this more clearly.']
13 [' Lucidity is the good faith of philosophers.']
14 [' Indispensable condition'.)
15 [' All that you show me is to me incredible and repulsive.' (Horace, Ars poetica, 188)]
16 [' Through circumlocutions'.)
17 [' One and the same thing'.]
18 ['By will I understand the ability to affirm and deny... Let us take a definite ad of will, namely the mode of thought whereby the mind affirms that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles ... Will and intellect are one and the same.']
* The uninitiated in philosophy, who include many doctors thereof, should be wholly deprived of the word Idealism because they do not know what it means and with it are up to all sorts of mischief. By idealism they understand first spiritualism, and then possibly the opposite of Philistinism, and in this view they are strengthened and confirmed by vulgar men of letters. The words' idealism' and ‘realism' are not ownerless and unappropriated, but have their fixed philosophical meaning. Those who mean something else, should simply use another word. The contrast between idealism and realism concerns what is known, the object; on the other hand, that between spiritualism and materialism concerns the knower, the subject. (The ignorant scribblers of today confuse idealism and spiritualism.)
19 (Kotzebue, A. F. F. v. (1761-1819). This early play has long since been forgotten. )
20 There is no Church that dreads the light more than does the English just because no other has at stake such great pecuniary interests, its income amounting to £5,000,000 sterling, which is said to be £40,000 more than the income of the whole of the remaining Christian clergy of both hemispheres taken together. On the other hand, there is no nation which it is so painful to see methodically stupefied by the most degrading blind faith than the English who surpass all others in intelligence. The root of the evil is that there is no ministry of public instruction and hence that this has hitherto remained entirely in the hands of the parsons. These have taken good care that two-thirds of the nation shall not be able to read and write; in fact, from time to time, they even have the audacity with the most ludicrous presumption to yelp at the natural sciences. It is, therefore, a human duty to smuggle into England, through every conceivable channel, light, liberal-mindedness, and science, so that those best-fed of all priests may have their business brought to an end. When Englishmen of education display on the Continent their Jewish sabbatarian superstition and other stupid bigotry, they should be treated with undisguised derision, until they be shamed into common sense (Schopenhauer's own English]. For such things are a scandal to Europe and should no longer be tolerated. Therefore even in the ordinary course of life, we should never make the least concession to the superstition of the English Church, but should at once stand up to it in the most caustic and trenchant manner wherever it puts in an appearance. For no arrogance exceeds that of Anglican parsons; on the Continent, therefore, this must suffer enough humiliation, so that a portion thereof is taken home, where there is a lack of it. For the audacity of Anglican parsons and of their slavish followers is quite incredible, even at the present time; it should, therefore, be confined to its island and, when it ventures to show itself on the Continent, it should at once be made to play the role of the owl by day.
21 Spinoza, loc cit.-Descartes, Mediationes de prima philosophia, Med. IV, p. 28.