Part 2 of 6
So far as we have considered the question of the reality of the external world, it always arose from a confusion, amounting even to a misunderstanding, of the faculty of reason itself, and to this extent the question could be answered only by explaining its subject-matter. After an examination of the whole nature of the principle of sufficient reason, of the relation between object and subject, and of the real character of sense-perception, the question itself was bound to disappear, because there was no longer any meaning in it. But this question has yet another origin, quite different from the purely speculative one so far mentioned, a really empirical origin, although the question is always raised from a speculative point of view, and in this form has a much more comprehensible meaning than it had in the former. We have dreams; may not the whole of life be a dream? or more exactly: is there a sure criterion for distinguishing between dream and reality, between phantasms and real objects? The plea that what is dreamt has less vividness and distinctness than real perception has, is not worth considering at all, for no one has held the two up to comparison; only the recollection of the dream could be compared with the present reality. Kant answers the question as follows: "The connexion of the representations among themselves according to the law of causality distinguishes life from the dream." But even in the dream every single thing is connected according to the principle of sufficient reason in all its forms, and this connexion is broken only between life and the dream and between individual dreams. Kant's answer might therefore run as follows: the long dream (life) has complete connexion in itself according to the principle of sufficient reason; but it has no such connexion with the short dreams, although each of these has within itself the same connexion; thus the bridge between the former and the latter is broken, and on this account the two are distinguished. To institute an inquiry in accordance with this criterion as to whether something was dreamt or really took place would, however, be very difficult, and often impossible. For we are by no means in a position to follow link by link the causal connexion between any experienced event and the present moment; yet we do not on that account declare that it is dreamt. Therefore in real life we do not usually make use of that method of investigation to distinguish between dream and reality. The only certain criterion for distinguishing dream from reality is in fact none other than the wholly empirical one of waking, by which the causal connexion between the dreamed events and those of waking life is at any rate positively and palpably broken off. An excellent proof of this is given by the remark, made by Hobbes in the second chapter of Leviathan, that we easily mistake dreams for reality when we have unintentionally fallen asleep in our clothes, and particularly when it happens that some undertaking or scheme occupies all our thoughts, and engrosses our attention in our dreams as well as in our waking moments. In these cases, the waking is almost as little observed as is the falling asleep; dream and reality flow into one another and become confused. Then, of course, only the application of Kant's criterion is left. If subsequently, as is often the case, the causal connexion with the present, or the absence of such connexion, cannot possibly be ascertained, then it must remain for ever undecided whether an event was dreamt or whether it really occurred. Here indeed the close relationship between life and the dream is brought out for us very clearly. We will not be ashamed to confess it, after it has been recognized and expressed by many great men. The Vedas and Puranas know no better simile for the whole knowledge of the actual world, called by them the web of Maya, than the dream, and they use none more frequently. Plato often says that men live only in the dream; only the philosopher strives to be awake. Pindar says (Pyth. viii, 135): [x] ; (umbrae somnium homo),7 and Sophocles:
[x]
[x]
-- Ajax, 125.
(Nos enim, quicunque vivimus, nihil aliud esse comperio, quam simulacra et levem umbram.) [8] Beside which Shakespeare stands most worthily:
"We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."
-- The Tempest, Act IV, Sc. 1.
Finally, Calderon was so deeply impressed with this view, that he sought to express it in a kind of metaphysical drama, Life a Dream ('La Vida es Sueno').
After these numerous passages from the poets, I may now be permitted to express myself by a metaphor. Life and dreams are leaves of one and the same book. The systematic reading is real life, but when the actual reading hour (the day) has come to an end, and we have the period of recreation, we often continue idly to thumb over the leaves, and turn to a page here and there without method or connexion. We sometimes turn up a page we have already read, at others one still unknown to us, but always from the same book. Such an isolated page is, of course, not connected with a consistent reading and study of the book, yet it is not so very inferior thereto, if we note that the whole of the consistent perusal begins and ends also on the spur of the moment, and can therefore be regarded merely as a larger single page.
Thus, although individual dreams are marked off from real life by the fact that they do not fit into the continuity of experience that runs constantly through life, and waking up indicates this difference, yet that very continuity of experience belongs to real life as its form, and the dream can likewise point to a continuity in itself. Now if we assume a standpoint of judgement external to both, we find no distinct difference in their nature, and are forced to concede to the poets that life is a long dream.
To return from this 'entirely independent empirical origin of the question of the reality of the external world to its speculative origin, we have found that this lay firstly in the false application of the principle of sufficient reason, namely between subject and object, and then again in the confusion of its forms, since the principle of sufficient reason of knowing was extended to the province where the principle of sufficient reason of becoming is valid. Yet this question could hardly have occupied philosophers so continuously, if it were entirely without any real content, and if some genuine thought and meaning did not lie at its very core as its real source. Accordingly, from this it would have to be assumed that, first by entering reflection and seeking its expression, it became involved in those confused and incomprehensible forms and questions. This is certainly my opinion, and I reckon that the pure expression of that innermost meaning of the question which it was unable to arrive at, is this: What is this world of perception besides being my representation? Is that of which I am conscious only as representation just the same as my own body, of which I am doubly conscious, on the one hand as representation, on the other as will? The clearer explanation of this question, and its answer in the affirmative, will be the content of the second book, and the conclusions from it will occupy the remaining part of this work.
6.
Meanwhile for the present, in this first book we are considering everything merely as representation, as object for the subject. And our own body, which is the starting-point for each of us in the perception of the world, we consider, like all other real objects, merely from the side of knowableness, and accordingly it is for us only a representation. Now the consciousness of everyone, which is already opposed to the explanation of other objects as mere representations, is in even greater opposition when his own body is said to be mere representation. Thus it happens that to everyone the thing-in-itself is known immediately in so far as it appears as his own body, and only mediately in so far as it is objectified in the other objects of perception. But the course of our investigation renders necessary this abstraction, this one-sided method of consideration, this forcible separation of two things that essentially exist together. Therefore this reluctance must for the time being be suppressed, and set at rest by the expectation that the following considerations will make up for the one-sidedness of this one, towards a complete knowledge of the nature of the world.
Here, therefore, the body is for us immediate object, in other words, that representation which forms the starting-point of the subject's knowledge, since it itself with its immediately known changes precedes the application of the law of causality, and thus furnishes this with the first data. The whole essence of matter consists, as we have shown, in its action. But there are cause and effect only for the understanding, which is nothing but the subjective correlative of these. The understanding, however, could never attain to application, if there were not something else from which it starts. Such a something is the mere sensation, the immediate consciousness of the changes of the body, by virtue of which this body is immediate object. Accordingly the possibility of knowing the world of perception is to be found in two conditions; the first is, if we express it objectively, the ability of bodies to act on one another, to bring about changes in one another. Without that universal property of all bodies no perception would be possible, even by means of the sensibility of animal bodies. If, however, we wish to express this same first condition subjectively, we say that the understanding first of all makes perception possible, for the law of causality, the possibility of effect and cause, springs only from the understanding, and is valid also for it alone; hence the world of perception exists only for it and through it. The second condition, however, is the sensibility of animal bodies, or the quality possessed by certain bodies of being directly objects of the subject. The mere changes sustained from without by the sense-organs through the impression specifically appropriate to them can themselves be called representations, in so far as such impressions stimulate neither pain nor pleasure, in other words, have no immediate significance for the will, and yet are perceived, i.e. exist only for knowledge. To this extent, therefore, I say that the body is immediately known, is immediate object. The conception of object, however, is not to be taken here in the fullest sense, for through this immediate knowledge of the body, which precedes the application of the understanding and is mere sensation, the body itself does not exist really as object, but first the bodies acting on it. For all knowledge of an object proper, in other words, of a representation of perception in space, exists only through and for the understanding, and thus not before, but only after, the application of the understanding. Therefore the body as object proper, in other words, as representation of perception in space, is first known indirectly, like all other objects, through the application of the law of causality to the action of one of its parts on another, as by the eye seeing the body, or the hand touching it. Consequently the form of our own body does not become known to us through mere ordinary feeling, but only through knowledge, only in the representation; in other words, only in the brain does our own body first present itself as an extended, articulate, organic thing. A person born blind receives this representation only gradually through data afforded him by touch. A blind man without hands would never get to know his form, or at most would infer and construct it gradually from the impression on him of other bodies. Therefore, if we call the body immediate object, we are to be understood as implying this restriction.
Moreover, it follows from what has been said that all animal bodies are immediate objects, in other words starting-points in the perception of the world for the subject that knows all, and, for this very reason, is never known. Knowledge, therefore, with movement consequent on motives conditioned by it, is the proper characteristic of animal life, just as movement consequent on stimuli is the characteristic of the plant. But that which is unorganized has no movement other than that produced by causes proper in the narrowest sense. I have discussed all this at length in the essay On the Principle of Sufficient Reason (second ed., § 20), in the Ethics (first essay, iii), and in my Vision and Colours (§ i), to which therefore I refer the reader.
It follows from what has been said that all animals, even the most imperfect, have understanding, for they all know objects, and this knowledge as motive determines their movements. The understanding is the same in all animals and in all men; everywhere it has the same simple form, that is to say, knowledge of causality, transition from effect to cause and from cause to effect, and nothing else. But the degree of its acuteness and the extent of its sphere of knowledge vary enormously, with many different gradations, from the lowest degree, which knows only the causal relation between the immediate object and indirect ones, and hence is just sufficient to perceive a cause as object in space by passing from the impression experienced by the body to the cause of this impression, up to the higher degrees of knowledge of the causal connexion among merely indirect objects. Such knowledge extends to the understanding of the most complicated concatenations of causes and effects in nature; for even this last degree of knowledge still belongs always to the understanding, not to the faculty of reason. The abstract concepts of reason can only serve to handle what is immediately understood, to fix and arrange this, but never to bring about understanding itself. Every force and law of nature, every case in which such forces and laws are manifested, must first be known immediately by the understanding, must be intuitively apprehended, before it can pass into reflected consciousness in abstracto for the faculty of reason. Hooke's discovery of the law of gravitation, and the reference of so many important phenomena to this one law, were intuitive, immediate apprehension through the understanding, and this was also confirmed by Newton's calculations. The same may be said also of Lavoisier's discovery of acids and their important role in nature, and of Goethe's discovery of the origin of physical colours. All these discoveries are nothing but a correct immediate return from the effect to the cause, which is at once followed by recognition of the identity of the natural force which manifests itself in all causes of the same kind. This complete insight is an expression, differing merely in degree, of the same single function of the understanding, by which an animal perceives as object in space the cause affecting its body. Therefore all those great discoveries are, just like perception and every manifestation of understanding, an immediate insight, and as such the work of an instant, an apercu, a sudden idea. They are not the product of long chains of abstract reasoning; these, on the contrary, serve to fix the immediate knowledge of the understanding for the faculty of reason by setting down such knowledge in the abstract concepts of such reason, in other words, to make it clear, to be in a position to point it out and explain it to others. That keenness of the understanding in apprehending the causal relations of objects indirectly known finds its application not only in natural science (all the discoveries of which are due to it), but also in practical life, where it is called good sense or prudence. But in its first application it is better called acuteness, penetration, sagacity. Strictly speaking, good sense or prudence signifies exclusively understanding in the service of the will. However, the boundaries of these concepts are never to be drawn sharply, for it is always one and the same function of the same understanding at work in every animal when perceiving objects in space. In its greatest keenness, it accurately investigates in natural phenomena the unknown cause from th.:: given effect, and thus provides the faculty of reason with the material for conceiving general rules as laws of nature. Again, it invents complicated and ingenious machines by applying known causes to intended effects. Or, applied to motivation, it sees through and frustrates subtle intrigues and machinations, or suitably arranges even the motives and the men susceptible to each of them, sets them in motion at will as machines are set in motion by levers and wheels, and directs them to its ends. Want of understanding is called in the proper sense stupidity, and it is just dulness in applying the law of causality, incapacity for the immediate apprehension of the concatenations of cause and effect, of motive and action. A stupid person has no insight into the connexion of natural phenomena, either when they appear of their own accord or when they are intentionally controlled, in other words made to serve machines. For this reason, he readily believes in magic and miracles. A stupid man does not notice that different persons, apparently independent of one another, are in fact acting together by agreement; he is therefore easily mystified and puzzled. He does not observe the concealed motives of proffered advice, expressed opinions, and so on. But it is invariably only one thing that he lacks, namely keenness, rapidity, ease in applying the law of causality, in other words, power of the understanding. The greatest and, in this respect, the most instructive example of stupidity that I ever came across was that of a totally imbecile boy of about eleven years of age in an asylum. He certainly had the faculty of reason, for he spoke and comprehended, but in understanding he was inferior to many animals. When I came, he noticed an eye-glass which I was wearing round my neck, and in which the windows of the room and the tops of the trees beyond them were reflected. Every time he was greatly astonished and delighted with this, and was never tired of looking at it with surprise. This was because he did not understand this absolutely direct causation of reflection.
As the degree of acuteness of understanding varies a great deal as between men, so does it vary even more as between the different species of animals. In all species, even those nearest to the plant, there exists as much understanding as is sufficient for passing from the effect in the immediate object to the mediate object as cause, and hence for perception, for the apprehension of an object. For it is just this that makes them animals, since it gives them the possibility of movement consequent on motives, and thus of seeking, or at any rate of grasping, nourishment. Plants, on the other hand, have only movement consequent on stimuli, the direct influence of which they must await or else droop; they cannot go after them or grasp them. In the most accomplished animals we marvel at their great sagacity, such as the dog, the elephant, the monkey, or the fox, whose cleverness has been described by Buffon in so masterly a way. In these most sagacious animals we can determine pretty accurately what the understanding is capable of without the aid of reason, that is to say, without the aid of abstract knowledge in concepts. We cannot find this out in ourselves, because in us understanding and the faculty of reason are always mutually supported. Therefore we find that the manifestations of understanding in animals are sometimes above our expectation, sometimes below it. On the one hand, we are surprised at the sagacity of that elephant which, after crossing many bridges on his journey through Europe, once refused to go on one, over which he saw the rest of the party of men and horses crossing as usual, because it seemed to him too lightly built for his weight. On the other hand, we wonder that the intelligent orang-utans, warming themselves at a fire they have found, do not keep it going by replenishing it with wood; a proof that this requires a deliberation that does not come about without abstract concepts. It is quite certain that the knowledge of cause and effect, as the universal form of the understanding, is a priori inherent in animals, because for them as for us it is the preliminary condition of all knowledge of the external world through perception. If we still want a special proof of this, let us observe, for example, how even a quite young dog does not venture to jump from the table, however much he wants to, because he foresees the effect of the weight of his body, without, however, knowing this particular case from experience. Meanwhile, in judging the understanding of animals, we must guard against ascribing to it a manifestation of instinct, a quality that is entirely different from it as well as from the faculty of reason; yet it often acts very analogously to the combined activity of these two. The discussion of this, however, does not belong here, but will find its place in the second book, when we are considering the harmony or so-called teleology of nature. The twenty-seventh chapter of the supplementary volume is expressly devoted to it.
Lack of understanding was called stupidity; deficiency in the application of the faculty of reason to what is practical we shall later recognize as foolishness; deficiency in power of judgement as silliness; finally, partial or even complete lack of memory as madness. But we shall consider each of these in its proper place. That which is correctly known through the faculty of reason is truth, namely an abstract judgement with sufficient ground or reason (essay On the Principle of Sufficient Reason, § 29 seqq.); that which is correctly known by understanding is reality, namely correctly passing from the effect in the immediate object to its cause. Error is opposed to truth as deception of reason; illusion is opposed to reality as deception of understanding. The detailed discussion of all this is to be found in the first chapter of my essay On Vision and Colours. Illusion comes about when one and the same effect can be brought to pass by two entirely different causes, one of which operates very frequently, the other very rarely. The understanding, having no datum for determining which cause operates in a given case, since the effect is identical, always presupposes the ordinary cause, and because the activity of the understanding is not reflective and discursive, but direct and immediate, such false cause stands before us as perceived object, which is just the false illusion. I have shown, in the essay referred to, how in this way double sight and double touch occur, when the organs of sense are brought into an unusual position, and I have thus given an irrefutable proof that perception exists only through the understanding and for the understanding. Examples of such deception of understanding, or illusion, are the stick that seems broken when dipped in water, the images of spherical mirrors appearing with convex surface somewhat behind them, with concave surface well before them. To this class of examples also belongs the apparently greater extension of the moon at the horizon than at the zenith. This is not optical, for, as the micrometer proves, the eye apprehends the moon at the zenith at an even greater angle of vision than at the horizon. It is the understanding that assumes the cause of the feebler brightness of the moon and of all stars at the horizon to be their greater distance, treating them like earthly objects in accordance with atmospheric perspective. Therefore it regards the moon at the horizon as very much larger than at the zenith, and at the same time also considers the vault of heaven to be more extended, and hence flattened out, at the horizon. The same estimation, falsely applied according to atmospheric perspective, leads us to suppose that very high mountains, whose summits are visible to us only in pure transparent air, are nearer than they really are, to the detriment of their height; as for example, Mont Blanc seen from Salenche. All such deceptive illusions stand before us in immediate perception which cannot be removed by any arguments of reason. Such arguments can prevent merely error, that is to say, a judgement without sufficient ground or reason, by forming an opposite judgement that is true; for instance, knowing in the abstract that the cause of the weaker light of the moon and stars in the case cited is not the greater distance, but the cloudier atmosphere at the horizon. But the illusion remains unshakable in all the cases mentioned, in spite of all abstract knowledge; for the understanding is completely and totally different from the faculty of reason, a cognitive faculty that has been added to man alone; and indeed the understanding is in itself irrational, even in man. Reason can always only know; perception remains free from its influence, and belongs to the understanding alone.
7.
With regard to the whole of our discussion so far, we must still note the following. We started neither from the object nor from the subject, but from the representation, which contains and presupposes them both; for the division into object and subject is the first, universal, and essential form of the representation. We therefore first considered this form as such; then (though here we refer mainly to the introductory essay) the other forms subordinate to it, namely time, space, and causality. These belong only to the object, yet because they are essential to the object as such, and as the object again is essential to the subject as such, they can be found also from the subject, in other words, they can be known a priori, and to this extent are to be regarded as the boundary common to both. But they can all be referred to one common expression, the principle of sufficient reason, as is shown in detail in the introductory essay.
This procedure distinguishes our method of consideration wholly and entirely from every philosophy ever attempted. All previous systems started either from the object or from the subject, and therefore sought to explain the one from the other, and this according to the principle of sufficient reason. We, on the other hand, deny the relation between object and subject to the dominion of this principle, and leave to it only the object. One might regard the philosophy of identity, which has arisen and become generally known in our day, as not coming within the contrast above mentioned, in so far as it makes its real first starting-point neither object nor subject, but a third thing, namely the Absolute, knowable through reason-intuition, which is neither object nor subject, but the identity of the two. As I am completely lacking in all reason-intuition, I shall not venture to speak of the aforesaid revered identity and of the Absolute. Yet, since I take my stand merely on the manifestoes of the reason-intuiters, which are open to all, even to profane persons like us, I must observe that the aforesaid philosophy cannot be excepted from the above-mentioned antithesis of two errors. For it does not avoid those two opposite errors, in spite of the identity of subject and object, which is not thinkable, but is merely intellectually intuitable, or is to be experienced through our being absorbed in it. On the contrary, it combines them both in itself, since it is itself divided into two branches; first, transcendental idealism, that is Fichte's doctrine of the ego; and consequently, according to the principle of sufficient reason, the object can be produced from the subject or spun out of it; and secondly, the philosophy of nature, which likewise represents the subject as coming gradually out of the object by the application of a method called construction, about which very little is clear to me, though enough to know that it is a process according to the principle of sufficient reason in various forms. I renounce the deep wisdom itself contained in that construction, for as I wholly lack reason-intuition. all those expositions which presuppose it must be to me like a book with seven seals. To such a degree is this the case that, strange to relate, with those doctrines of deep wisdom it always seems to me as if I were listening to nothing but atrocious and what is more extremely wearisome humbug.
The systems that start from the object have always had the whole world of perception and its order as their problem, yet the object which they take as their starting-point is not always this world or its fundamental element, namely matter. On the contrary, a division of these systems can be made in accordance with the four classes of possible objects set out in the introductory essay. Thus it can be said that Thales and the Ionians, Democritus, Epicurus, Giordano Bruno, and the French materialists started from the first of those classes, or from the real world. Spinoza (because of his conception of substance, as merely abstract and existing only in his definition), and before him the Eleatics, started from the second class, or from the abstract concept. The Pythagoreans and the Chinese philosophy of the I Ching started from the third class, namely from time, and consequently from numbers. Finally, the scholastics, teaching a creation out of nothing through the act of will of an extramundane personal being, started from the fourth class, namely from the act of will, motivated by knowledge.
The objective method can be developed most consistently and carried farthest when it appears as materialism proper. It regards matter, and with it time and space, as existing absolutely, and passes over the relation to the subject in which alone all this exists. Further, it lays hold of the law of causality as the guiding line on which it tries to progress, taking it to be a self-existing order or arrangement of things, veritas aeterna, and consequently passing over the understanding, in which and for which alone causality is. It tries to find the first and simplest state of matter, and then to develop all the others from it, ascending from mere mechanism to chemistry, to polarity, to the vegetable and the animal kingdoms. Supposing this were successful, the last link of the chain would be animal sensibility, that is to say knowledge; which, in consequence, would then appear as a mere modification of matter, a state of matter produced by causality. Now if we had followed materialism thus far with clear notions, then, having reached its highest point, we should experience a sudden fit of the inextinguishable laughter of the Olympians. As though waking from a dream, we should all at once become aware that its final result, produced so laboriously, namely knowledge, was already presupposed as the indispensable condition at the very first starting-point, at mere matter. With this we imagined that we thought of matter, but in fact we had thought of nothing but the subject that represents matter, the eye that sees it, the hand that feels it, the understanding that knows it. Thus the tremendous petitio principit [9] disclosed itself unexpectedly, for suddenly the last link showed itself as the fixed point, the chain as a circle, and the materialist was like Baron von Munchhausen who, when swimming in water on horseback, drew his horse up by his legs, and himself by his upturned pigtail. Accordingly, the fundamental absurdity of materialism consists in the fact that it starts from the objective; it takes an objective something as the ultimate ground of explanation, whether this be matter in the abstract simply as it is thought, or after it has entered into the form and is empirically given, and hence substance, perhaps the chemical elements together with their primary combinations. Some such thing it takes as existing absolutely and in itself, in order to let organic nature and finally the knowing subject emerge from it, and thus completely to explain these; whereas in truth everything objective is already conditioned as such in manifold ways by the knowing subject with the forms of its knowing, and presupposes these forms; consequently it wholly disappears when the subject is thought away. Materialism is therefore the attempt to explain what is directly given to us from what is given indirectly. Everything objective, extended, active, and hence everything material, is regarded by materialism as so solid a basis for its explanations that a reduction to this (especially if it should ultimately result in thrust and counter-thrust) can leave nothing to be desired. All this is something that is given only very indirectly and conditionally, and is therefore only relatively present, for it has passed through the machinery and fabrication of the brain, and hence has entered the forms of time, space, and causality, by virtue of which it is first of all presented as extended in space and operating in time. From such an indirectly given thing, materialism tries to explain even the directly given, the representation (in which all this exists), and finally even the will, from which rather are actually to be explained all those fundamental forces which manifest themselves on the guiding line of causes, and hence according to law. To the assertion that knowledge is a modification of matter there is always opposed with equal justice the contrary assertion that all matter is only modification of the subject's knowing, as the subject's representation. Yet at bottom, the aim and ideal of all natural science is a materialism wholly carried into effect. That we here recognize this as obviously impossible confirms another truth that will result from our further consideration, namely the truth that all science in the real sense, by which I understand systematic knowledge under the guidance of the principle of sufficient reason, can never reach a final goal or give an entirely satisfactory explanation. It never aims at the inmost nature of the world; it can never get beyond the representation; on the contrary, it really tells us nothing more than the relation of one representation to another.
Every science invariably starts from two principal data, one of which is always the principle of sufficient reason in some form as organon; the other is its special object as problem. Thus, for example, geometry has space as problem, the ground of being in space as organon. Arithmetic has time as problem, and the ground of being in time as organon. Logic has as problem the combinations of concepts as such, the ground of knowledge as organon. History has the past deeds of men as a whole as its problem, and the law of motivation as organon. Now natural science has matter as problem, and the law of causality as organon. Accordingly, its end and aim on the guiding line of causality is to refer all possible states of matter to one another and ultimately to a single state, and again to derive these states from one another, and ultimately from a single state. Thus in natural science two states stand opposed as extremes, the state of matter where it is the least direct object of the subject, and the state where it is the most direct object, in other words, the most dead and crude matter, the primary element, as one extreme, and the human organism as the other. Natural science as chemistry looks for the first; as physiology for the second. But as yet the two extremes have not been reached, and only between the two has something been gained. Indeed, the prospect is fairly hopeless. The chemists, assuming that the qualitative division of matter is not, like the quantitative, an endless process, are always trying to reduce the number of their elements, of which there are still about sixty; and even if they eventually reached two, they would want to reduce these two to one. For the law of homogeneity leads to the assumption of a first chemical state of matter which belongs only to matter as such, and which preceded all others, these being not essential to matter as such, but only accidental forms and qualities. On the other hand, it cannot be seen how this state could ever experience a chemical change, if there did not exist a second state to affect it. Thus the same dilemma here appears in the chemical realm that Epicurus met with in the mechanical, when he had to state how the first atom departed from the original direction of its motion. In fact this contradiction, developing entirely of itself and not to be avoided or solved, might quite properly be set up as a chemical antinomy. Just as an antinomy is to be found in the first of the two extremes sought in natural science, so will there appear in the second a counterpart corresponding to it. There is also little hope of reaching this other extreme of natural science, for we see more and more clearly that what is chemical can never be referred to what is mechanical, and that what is organic can never be referred to what is chemical or electrical. But those who today once more take this old misleading path will soon slink back silent and ashamed, as all their predecessors have done. This will be discussed in more detail in the next book. The difficulties mentioned here only casually, confront natural science in its own province. Regarded as philosophy, it would be materialism; but, as we have seen, it carries death in its heart even at its birth, because it passes over the subject and the forms of knowledge that are presupposed just as much with the crudest matter from which it would like to start, as with the organism at which it wants to arrive. For "No object without subject" is the principle that renders all materialism for ever impossible. Suns and planets with no eye to see them and no understanding to know them can of course be spoken of in words, but for the representation these words are a sideroxylon, an iron-wood. [10] On the other hand the law of causality, and the consideration and investigation of nature which follow on it, lead us necessarily to the certain assumption that each more highly organized state of matter succeeded in .time a cruder state. Thus animals existed before men, fishes before land animals, plants before fishes, and the inorganic before that which is organic; consequently the original mass had to go through a long series of changes before the first eye could be opened. And yet the existence of this whole world remains for ever dependent on that first eye that opened, were it even that of an insect. For such an eye necessarily brings about knowledge, for which and in which alone the whole world is, and without which it is not even conceivable. The world is entirely representation, and as such requires the knowing subject as the supporter of its existence. That long course of time itself, filled with innumerable changes, through which matter rose from form to form, till finally there came into existence the first knowing animal, the whole of this time itself is alone thinkable in the identity of a consciousness. This world is the succession of the representations of this consciousness, the form of its knowing, and apart from this loses all meaning, and is nothing at all. Thus we see, on the one hand, the existence of the whole world necessarily dependent on the first knowing being, however imperfect it be; on the other hand, this first knowing animal just as necessarily wholly dependent on a long chain of causes and effects which has preceded it, and in which it itself appears' as a small link. These two contradictory views, to each of which we are led with equal necessity, might certainly be called an antinomy in our faculty of knowledge, and be set up as the counterpart to that found in the first extreme of natural science. On the other hand, Kant's fourfold antinomy will be shown to be a groundless piece of jugglery in the criticism of his philosophy that is appended to the present work. But the contradiction that at last necessarily presents itself to us here finds its solution in the fact that, to use Kant's language, time, space, and causality do not belong to the thing-in-itself, but only to its appearance or phenomenon, of which they are the form. In my language, this means that the objective world, the world as representation, is not the only side of the world, but merely its external side, so to speak, and that the world has an entirely different side which is its innermost being, its kernel, the thing-in-itself. This we shall consider in the following book, calling it 'will' after the most immediate of its objectifications. But the world as representation, with which alone we are dealing here, certainly begins only with the opening of the first eye, and without this medium of knowledge it cannot be, and hence before this it did not exist. But without that eye, in other words, outside of knowledge, there was no before, no time. For this reason, time has no beginning, but all beginning is in time. Since, however, it is the most universal form of the knowable, to which all phenomena are adapted by means of the bond of causality, time with its whole infinity in both directions is also present in the first knowledge. The phenomenon which fills this first present must at the same time be known as causally connected with, and dependent on, a series of phenomena stretching infinitely into the past, and this past itself is just as much conditioned by this first present as, conversely, this present is by that past. Accordingly, the past, out of which the first present arises, is, like it, dependent on the knowing subject, and without this it is nothing. It happens of necessity, however, that this first present does not manifest itself as the first, in other words, as having no past for its mother, and as being the beginning of time; but rather as the consequence of the past according to the principle of being in time, just as the phenomenon filling this first present appears as the effect of previous states filling that past according to the law of causality. Anyone who likes mythological interpretations may regard the birth of Chronos ([x]), the youngest of the Titans, as the description of the moment here expressed, when time appears, although it is beginningless. As he castrates his father, the crude productions of heaven and earth cease, and the races of gods and men now occupy the scene.
This explanation at which we have arrived by following materialism, the most consistent of the philosophical systems that start from the object, helps at the same time to make clear the inseparable and reciprocal dependence of subject and object, together with the antithesis between them which cannot be eliminated. This knowledge leads us to seek the inner nature of the world, the thing-in-itself, no longer in either of those two elements of the representation, but rather in something entirely different from the representation, in something that is not encumbered with such an original, essential, and therefore insoluble antithesis.
Opposed to the system we have discussed, which starts from the object to make the subject result from it, is the system that starts from the subject and tries to produce the object therefrom. The first has been frequent and general in all philosophy hitherto; the second, on the other hand, affords us only a single example, and that a very recent one, namely the fictitious philosophy of J. G. Fichte. In this respect, therefore, he must be considered, however little genuine worth and substance his teaching had in itself. Taken on the whole, it was a mere piece of humbug, yet it was delivered with an air of the profoundest seriousness, with a reserved tone and keen ardour, and was defended with eloquent polemic against weak opponents, so that it was able to shine, and to seem to be something. But genuine earnestness, which, inaccessible to all external influences, keeps its goal, truth, steadily in view, was completely lacking in Fichte, as in all philosophers who like him adapt themselves to circumstances. For him, of course, it could not be otherwise. The philosopher always becomes such as the result of a perplexity from which he tries to disengage himself. This is Plato's [x], [11] which he calls a [x]. [11] But what distinguishes ungenuine from genuine philosophers is that this perplexity comes to the latter from looking at the world itself, to the former merely from a book, a philosophical system which lies in front of them. This was also the case with Fichte, for he became a philosopher merely over Kant's thing-in-itself, and had it not been for this would most probably have concerned himself with quite different things with much greater success, for he possessed considerable rhetorical talent. If he had penetrated only to some extent the meaning of the Critique of Pure Reason, the book that made him a philosopher, he would have understood that its principal teaching was in spirit as follows. The principle of sufficient reason is not, as all scholastic philosophy asserts, a veritas aeterna; in other words, it does not possess an unconditioned validity before, outside, and above the world, but only a relative and conditioned one, valid only in the phenomenon. It may appear as the necessary nexus of space or time, or as the law of causality, or as the law of the ground of knowledge. Therefore the inner nature of the world, the thing-in-itself, can never be found on the guiding line of this principle, but everything to which it leads is always itself also dependent and relative, always only phenomenon, not thing-in-itself. Further, this principle does not concern the subject, but is only the form of objects, which are for this very reason not things-in-themselves. With the object the subject exists forthwith, and with the subject the object; hence the object cannot be added to the subject or the subject to the object, merely as a consequent to its ground or reason. But Fichte did not take up the least fragment of all this. The only thing that interested him in the matter was setting out from the subject, which Kant had chosen in order to show the falsity of the previous setting out from the object, which had thus become the thing-in-itself. Fichte, however, took this setting out from the subject to be the chief thing, and, like all imitators, imagined that if he were to outdo Kant in this, he would also surpass him. Now in this direction he repeated the mistakes which the previous dogmatism had made in the opposite direction, and which had thus been the cause of Kant's Critique. Thus in the main nothing was changed, and the old fundamental mistake, the assumption of a relation of reason or ground and consequent between object and subject, remained just the same as before. Hence the principle of sufficient reason retained as before an unconditioned validity, and the thing-in-itself was now shifted into the subject of knowing instead of into the object as previously. The complete relativity of both subject and object, indicating that the thing-in-itself, or the inner nature of the world, is to be sought not in them, but outside both them and every other thing that exists only relatively, still remained unknown. Just as though Kant had never existed, the principle of sufficient reason is for Fichte just what it was for all the scholastics, namely an aeterna veritas. Just as eternal fate reigned over the gods of the ancients, so over the God of the scholastics reigned those aeternae veritates, in other words, metaphysical, mathematical and metalogical truths, in the case of some even the validity of the moral law. These veritates alone depended on nothing, but through their necessity both God and the world existed. Therefore with Fichte, by virtue of the principle of sufficient reason as such a veritas aeterna, the ego is the ground of the world or of the non-ego, the object, which is just its consequent, its product. He has therefore taken good care not to examine further, or to check the principle of sufficient reason. But if I am to state the form of that principle, under the guidance of which Fichte makes the non-ego result from the ego as the web from the spider, I find that it is the principle of sufficient reason of being in space. For it is only in reference to this that those tortuous deductions of the way in which the ego produces and fabricates out of itself the non-ego, forming the subject-matter of the most senseless and consequently the most tedious book ever written, acquire a kind of sense and meaning. This philosophy of Fichte, not otherwise even worth mention, is therefore of interest to us only as the real opposite of the old and original materialism, making a belated appearance. Materialism was the most consistent system starting from the object, as this system was the most consistent starting from the subject. Materialism overlooked the fact that, with the simplest object, it had at once posited the subject as wen; so Fichte too overlooked the fact that with the subject (let him give it whatever title he likes) he posited the object, since no subject is thinkable without object. He also overlooked the fact that all deduction a priori, indeed all demonstration in general, rests on a necessity, and that all necessity is based simply and solely on the principle of sufficient reason, since to be necessary and to follow from a given ground or reason are convertible terms. [12] But the principle of sufficient reason is nothing but the universal form of the object as such; hence it presupposes the object, but is not valid before and outside it; it can first produce the object, and cause it to appear in accordance with its legislative force. Therefore, generally speaking, starting from the subject has in common with starting from the object the same defect as explained above, namely that it assumes in advance what it professes to deduce, that is to say, the necessary correlative of its point of departure.