THE

WORLD AS WILL AND IDEA.

BY

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER.

VOLUME II.

THE

WORLD AS WILL AND IDEA.

BY

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER.

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY
R. B. HALDANE, M.A.

AND

J. KEMP, M.A.
VOL. II.

CONTAINING THE CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY,

AND THE SUPPLEMENTS TO THE FIRST AND PART

OF THE SECOND BOOK OF VOL. I.

" Faucis natua est, qui populum fetatis sure cogitat." -SEN.

(Enttton.

BOSTON:
TICKNOR AND COMPANY,

211 Fremont Street,
1887.

tsH

CONTENTS.

APPENDIX.

PAGE
CttlTICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY I

SUPPLEMENTS TO THE FIRST BOOK.

FIRST HALF.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE IDEA OF PERCEPTION.

CHAP.

I. THE STANDPOINT OF IDEALISM 163

. THE DOCTRINE OF PERCEPTION, OR KNOWLEDGE OF THE

UNDERSTANDING 184

III. ON THE SENSES 193

IV. ON KNOWLEDGE A PRIORI . 201

SECOND HALF.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE ABSTRACT IDEA, OR OF
THINKING.

V. ON THE IRRATIONAL INTELLECT 228

VI. THE DOCTRINE OF ABSTRACT OR RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE . 234
VII. ON THE RELATION OF THE CONCRETE KNOWLEDGE OF

PERCEPTION TO ABSTRACT KNOWLEDGE . . . 244

VIII. ON THE THEORY OF THE LUDICROUS .... 270

IX. ON LOGIC IN GENERAL 285

viii CONTENTS.

CHAP. PAOS

X. ON THE SYLLOGISM 292

XI. Ox RHETORIC 305

XII. OX THE DOCTRIXE OP SCIEXCE 307

XIII. Ox THE METHODS OF MATHEMATICS 321

XIV. Ox THE ASSOCIATION OP IDEAS 324

^ XV. Ox THE ESSENTIAL IMPERFECTIONS OP THE INTELLECT . 330

XVI. Ox THE PRACTICAL USE OP REASON AXD ON STOICISM . 345

XVII. Ox MAX'S NEED OP METAPHYSICS 359

SUPPLEMENTS TO THE SECOND BOOK.

XVIII. Ox THE POSSIBILITY OP KNOWING THE THING ix ITSELF 399

^ XIX. Ox THE PRIMACY OP THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 411

\ XX. OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL IN THE ANIMAL ORGANISM 468

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

,C'est le privilege du vrai genie, et surtout du genie qui ouvre une carriere
de faire impuntknent de grandes fautes. — Voltaire.

VOL. II.

IT is much easier to point out the faults and errors in the
work of a great mind than to give a distinct and full
exposition of its value. For the faults are particular and
finite, and can therefore be fully comprehended ; while, on
the contrary, the very stamp which genius impresses upon
its works is that their excellence is unfathomable and in
exhaustible. Therefore they do not grow old, but become
the instructor of many succeeding centuries. The per
fected masterpiece of a truly great mind will always pro
duce a deep and powerful effect upon the whole human
race, so much so that it is impossible to calculate to what
distant centuries and lands its enlightening influence may
extend. This is always the case ; for however cultivated
and rich the age may be in which such a masterpiece
appears, genius always rises like a palm-tree above the
soil in which it is rooted.

But a deep-reaching and widespread effect of this kind
cannot take place suddenly, because of the great difference
between the genius and ordinary men. The knowledge
which that one man in one lifetime drew directly from
life and the world, won and presented to others as won
and arranged, cannot yet at once become the possession of
mankind ; for mankind has not so much power to receive
as the genius has power to give. But even after a suc
cessful battle with unworthy opponents, who at its very
birth contest the life of what is immortal and desire to
nip in the bud the salvation of man (like the serpents
in the cradle of Hercules), that knowledge must then
traverse the circuitous paths of innumerable false con
structions and distorted applications, must overcome the

4 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

attempts to unite it with old errors, and so live in conflict
till a new and unprejudiced generation grows up to meet
it. Little by little, even in youth, this new generation
partially receives the contents of that spring through a
thousand indirect channels, gradually assimilates it, and
so participates in the benefit which was destined to flow
to mankind from that great mind. So slowly does the
education of the human race, the weak yet refractory pupil
of genius, advance. Thus with Kant's teaching also ; its
full strength and importance will only be revealed through
time, when the spirit of the age, itself gradually trans
formed and altered in the most important and essential
respects by,' the influence of that teaching, will afford con
vincing evidence of the power of that giant mind. I have,
however, no intention of presumptuously anticipating the
spirit of the age and assuming here the thankless rdle
of Calchas and Cassandra. Only I must be allowed, in
accordance with what has been said, to regard Kant's
works as still very new, while many at the present day
look upon them as already antiquated, and indeed have
laid them aside as done with, or, as they express it, have
left them behind^ and others, emboldened by this, ignore
them altogether, and with brazen face go on philosophising
about God and the soul on the assumption of the old
realistic dogmatism and its scholastic teaching, which is
as if one sought to introduce the doctrines of the alchemists
into modern chemistry. For the rest, the works of Kant
do not stand in need of my feeble eulogy, but will them
selves for ever praise their author, and though perhaps
not in the letter, yet in the spirit they will live for ever
upon earth.

Certainly, however, if we look back at the first result of
his teaching, at the efforts and events in the sphere of
philosophy during the period that has elapsed since he
wrote, a very depressing saying of Goethe obtains con
firmation : " As the water that is displaced by a ship
immediately flows in again behind it, so when great minds

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 5

have driven error aside and made room for themselves,
it very quickly closes in behind them again by the law
of its nature" (Walirlieit und Dichtung, Theil 3, s. 521).
Yet this period has been only an episode, which is to
be reckoned as part of the lot referred to above that
befalls all new and great knowledge ; an episode which is
now unmistakably near its end, for the bubble so long
blown out yet bursts at last. Men generally are begin
ning to be conscious that true and serious philosophy still
stands where Kant left it. At any rate, I cannot see that
between Kant and myself anything has been done in
philosophy; therefore I regard myself as his immediate
successor.

What I have in view in this Appendix to my work is
really only a defence of the doctrine I have set forth in it,
inasmuch as in many points that doctrine does not agree
with the Kantian philosophy, but indeed contradicts it.
A discussion of this philosophy is, however, necessary, for
it is clear that my train of thought, different as its con
tent is from that of Kant, is yet throughout under its
influence, necessarily presupposes it, starts from it ; and I
confess that, next to the impression of the world of per
ception, I owe what is best in my own system to the
impression made upon me by the works of Kant, by the
sacred writings of the Hindus, and by Plato. But I can
only justify the contradictions of Kant which are never
theless present in my work by accusing him of error in
these points, and exposing mistakes which he committed.
Therefore in this Appendix I must proceed against Kant
in a thoroughly polemical manner, and indeed seriously
and with every effort ; for it is only thus that his doctrine
can be freed from the error that clings to it, and its truth
shine out the more clearly and stand the more firmly.
It must not, therefore, be expected that the sincere rever
ence for Kant which I certainly feel shall extend to his
weaknesses and errors also, and that I shall consequently
refrain from exposing these except with the most careful

6 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

indulgence, whereby my language would necessarily be
come weak and insipid through circumlocution. Towards
a living writer such indulgence is needed, for human
frailty cannot endure even the most just refutation of an
error, unless tempered by soothing and flattery, and hardly
even then ; and a teacher of the age and benefactor of
mankind deserves at least that the human weakness he
also has should be indulged, so that he may not be caused
pain. But he who is dead has thrown off this weakness ;
his merit stands firm ; time will purify it more and more
from all exaggeration and detraction. His mistakes must
be separated from it, rendered harmless, and then given
over to oblivion. Therefore in the polemic against Kant
I am about to begin, I have only his mistakes and weak
points in view. I oppose them with hostility, and wage
a relentless war of extermination against them, always
mindful not to conceal them indulgently, but rather to
place them in the clearest light, in order to extirpate them
the more surely. For the reasons given above, I am not
conscious either of injustice or ingratitude towards Kant
in doing this. However, in order that, in the eyes of
others also, I may remove every appearance of malice, I
wish first to bring out clearly my sincere reverence for
Kant and gratitude to him, by expressing shortly what in
my eyes appears to be his chief merit ; and I shall do this
.from a standpoint so general that I shall not require to
touch upon the points in which I must afterwards contro
vert him.

Kant's greatest merit is the distinction of the phenomenon
from the thing in itself, based upon the proof that between
things and us there still always stands the intellect, so that
they cannot be known as they may be in themselves. He
was led into this path through Locke (see Prolegomena
zu jcdcr Mctaph.,§ 13, Anm. 2). The latter had shown
that the secondary qualities of things, such as sound,

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 7

smell, colour, hardness, softness, smoothness, and the like,
as founded on the affections of the senses, do not belong
to the objective body, to the thing in itself. To this he
attributed only the primary qualities, i.e., such as only pre
suppose space and impenetrability ; thus extension, figure,
solidity, number, mobility. But this easily discovered
Lockeian distinction was, as it were, only a youthful intro
duction to the distinction of Kant. The latter, starting
from an incomparably higher standpoint, explains all that
Locke had accepted as primary qualities, i.e., qualities
of the thing in itself, as also belonging only to its phe
nomenal appearance in our faculty of apprehension, and
this just because the conditions of this faculty, space, time,
and causality, are known by us a priori. Thus Locke had
abstracted from the thing in itself the share which the
organs of sense have in its phenomenal appearance ; Kant,
however, further abstracted the share of the brain-functions
(though not under that name). Thus the distinction be
tween the phenomenon and the thing in itself now received
an infinitely greater significance, and a very much deeper
meaning. For this end he was obliged to take in hand

o o

the important separation of our a priori from our a pos
teriori knowledge, which before him had never been car
ried out with adequate strictness and completeness, nor
with distinct consciousness. Accordingly this now became
the principal subject of his profound investigations. Now
here we would at once remark that Kant's philosophy has a
threefold relation to that of his predecessors. First, as we
have just seen, to the philosophy of Locke, confirming and
extending it ; secondly, to that of Hume, correcting and
making use of it, a relation which is most distinctly ex
pressed in the " Prolegomena " (that most beautiful and
comprehensible of all Kant's important writings, which is
far too little read, for it facilitates immensely the study of
his philosophy) ; thirdly, a decidedly polemical and de
structive relation to the Leibnitz-Wolfian philosophy.
All three systems ought to be known before one proceeds

8 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

to the study of the Kantian philosophy. If now, accord
ing to the above, the distinction of the phenomenon from
the thing in itself, thus the doctrine of the complete diver
sity of the ideal and the real, is the fundamental character
istic of the Kantian philosophy, then the assertion of the
absolute identity of these two which appeared soon after
wards is a sad proof of the saying of Goethe quoted above ;
all the more so as it rested upon nothing but the empty
boast of intellectual intuition, and accordingly was only
a return to the crudeness of the vulgar opinion, masked
under bombast and nonsense, and the imposing impression
of an air of importance. It became the fitting starting-
point for the still grosser nonsense of the clumsy and
stupid Hegel. Now as Kant's separation of the pheno
menon from the thing in itself, arrived at in the manner
explained above, far surpassed all that preceded it in the
depth and thoughtfulness of its conception, it was also
exceedingly important in its results. For in it he pro
pounded, quite originally, in a perfectly new way, found
from a new side and on a new path, the same truth which
Plato never wearies of repeating, and in his language
generally expresses thus : This world which appears to
the senses has no true being, but only a ceaseless becom
ing ; it is, and it is not, and its comprehension is not so
much knowledge as illusion. This is also what he ex
presses mythically at the beginning of the seventh book
of the Republic, the most important passage in all his
writings, which has already been referred to in the third
book of the present work. He says : Men, firmly chained
in a dark cave, see neither the true original light nor
real things, but only the meagre light of the fire in the
cave and the shadows of real things which pass by the
fire behind their backs ; yet they think the shadows are
the reality, and the determining of the succession of these
shadows is true wisdom. The same truth, again quite
differently presented, is also a leading doctrine of the
Vedas and Puranas, the doctrine of Maya, by which really

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 9

nothing else is understood than what Kant calls the
phenomenon in opposition to the thing in itself; for the
work of Maya is said to be just this visible world in
which we are, a summoned enchantment, an inconstant
appearance without true being, like an optical illusion or
a dream, a veil which surrounds human consciousness, .
something of which it is equally false and true to say
that it is and that it is not. But Kant not only expressed
the same doctrine in a completely new and original way,
but raised it to the position of proved and indisputable
truth by means of the calmest and most temperate ex
position ; while both Plato and the Indian philosophers
had founded their assertions merely upon a general per
ception of the world, had advanced them as the direct
utterance of their consciousness, and presented them
rather mythically and poetically than philosophically and
distinctly. In this respect they stand to Kant in the
same relation as the Pythagoreans Hicetas, Philolaus,
and Aristarchus, who already asserted the movement of
the earth round the fixed sun, stand to Copernicus. Such
distinct knowledge and calm, thoughtful exposition of
this dream-like nature of the whole world is really the
basis of the whole Kantian philosophy; it is its soul
and its greatest merit. He accomplished this by taking
to pieces the whole machinery of our intellect by means
of which the phantasmagoria of the objective world is
brought about, and presenting it in detail with marvel
lous insight and ability. All earlier Western philosophy,
appearing in comparison with the Kantian unspeakably
clumsy, had failed to recognise that truth, and had there
fore always spoken just as if in a dream. Kant first
awakened it suddenly out of this dream ; therefore the
last sleepers (Mendelssohn) called him the " all-destroyer."
He showed that the laws which reign with inviolable
necessity in existence, i.e., in experience generally, are not
to be applied to deduce and explain existence itself; that
thus the validity of these laws is only relative, i.e., only

io CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

arises after existence ; the world of experience in general
is already established and present ; that consequently
these laws cannot be our guide when we come to the
explanation of the existence of the world and of our
selves. All earlier Western philosophers had imagined
that these laws, according to which the phenomena are
combined, and all of which — time and space, as well as
causality and inference — I comprehend under the expres
sion " the principle of sufficient reason," were absolute
laws conditioned by nothing, ceternce veritates ; that the
world itself existed only in consequence of and in confor
mity with them ; and therefore that under their guidance
the whole riddle of the world must be capable of solution.
The assumptions made for this purpose, which Kant criti
cises under the name of the Ideas of the reason, only
served to raise the mere phenomenon, the work of Maya,
the shadow world of Plato, to the one highest reality, to
put it in the place of the inmost and true being of things,
and thereby to make the real knowledge of this impos
sible ; that is, in a word, to send the dreamers still more
soundly to sleep. Kant exhibited these laws, and there
fore the whole world, as conditioned by the form of know
ledge belonging to the subject; from which it followed,
that however far one carried investigation and reasoning
under the guidance of these laws, yet in the principal
matter, i.e., in knowledge of the nature of the world in
itself and outside the idea, no step in advance was made,
but one only moved like a squirrel in its wheel. Thus,
all the dogmatists may be compared to persons who sup
posed that if they only went straight on long enough they
would come to the end of the world ; but Kant then cir
cumnavigated the world and showed that, because it is
round, one cannot get out of it by horizontal movement,
but that yet by perpendicular movement this is perhaps
not impossible. We may also say that Kant's doctrine
affords the insight that we must seek the end and beginning
of the world, not without, but within us.

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 11

All this, however, rests on the fundamental distinction
between dogmatic and critical or transcendental philosophy.
Whoever wishes to make this quite clear to himself, and
realise it by means of an example, may do so very briefly
by reading, as a specimen of dogmatic philosophy, an essay
of Leibnitz entitled " DC Eerum Originatione Radicali,"
and printed for the first time in the edition of the philo
sophical works of Leibnitz by Erdmann (vol. i. p. 147).
Here the origin and excellence of the world is demon
strated a priori, so thoroughly in the manner of realistic-
dogmatism, on the ground of the veritates ceternce and
with the assistance of the ontological and cosmological
proofs. It is indeed once admitted, by the way, that ex
perience shows the exact opposite of the excellence of
the world here demonstrated ; but experience is therefore
given to understand that it knows nothing of the matter,
and ought to hold its tongue when philosophy has spoken
a priori. Now, with Kant, the critical philosophy appeared
as the opponent of this whole method. It takes for its
problem just these veritates ceternce, which serve as the
foundation of every such dogmatic structure, investigates
their origin, and finds it in the human mind, where they
spring from the peculiar forms which belong to it, and
which it carries in itself for the purpose of comprehending
an objective world. Thus, here, in the brain, is the quarry
which supplies the material for that proud dogmatic edi
fice. But because the critical philosophy, in order to attain
to this result, was obliged to go beyond the veritates mternce
upon which all the preceding dogmatism was founded,
and make these truths themselves the objects of in
vestigation, it became transcendental philosophy. From
this, then, it also follows that the objective world, as we
know it, does not belong to the true being of the thing in
itself, but is merely its phenomenal appearance conditioned
by those very forms which lie a priori in the intellect
(i.e., the brain), therefore it cannot contain anything but
phenomena.

12 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

Kant, indeed, did not attain to the knowledge that the
phenomenon is the world as idea, and the thing in itself
is the will. But he showed that the phenomenal world is
conditioned just as much through the subject as through
the object, and because he isolated the most universal
forms of its phenomenal appearance, i.e., of the idea,' he
proved that we may know these forms and consider them
in their whole constitution, not only by starting from the
object, but also just as well by starting from the subject,
because they are really the limits between object and
subject which are common to them both; and he con
cluded that by following these limits we never penetrate
to the inner nature either of the object or of the subject,
consequently never know the true nature of the world,
the thing in itself.

He did not deduce the thing in itself in the right
way, as I shall show presently, but by means of an in
consistency, and he had to pay the penalty of this in
frequent and irresistible attacks upon this important part
of his teaching. He did not recognise the thing in itself
directly in the will; but he made a great initial step
towards this knowledge in that he explained the undeni
able moral significance of human action as quite different
from and not dependent upon the laws of the pheno
menon, nor even explicable in accordance with them, but
as something which touches the thing in7 itself directly :
this is the second important point of view for estimating
his services.

We may regard as the third the complete overthrow of
the Scholastic philosophy, a name by which I wish here
to denote generally the whole period beginning with
Augustine, the Church Father, and ending just before
Kant. .:.,. For the chief characteristic of Scholasticism is,
indeed, that which is very correctly stated by Tennemann,
the guardianship of the prevailing national religion over
philosophy, which had really nothing left for it to do
but to prove and embellish the cardinal dogmas prescribed

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 13

to it by religion. The Schoolmen proper, down to Suarez,
confess this openly; the succeeding philosophers do it
more unconsciously, or at least unavowedly. It is held
that Scholastic philosophy only extends to about a hun
dred years before Descartes, and that then with him
there begins an entirely new epoch of free investigation
independent of all positive theological doctrine. Such
investigation, however, is in fact not to be attributed to
Descartes and his successors,1 but only an appearance of it,
and in any case an effort after it. Descartes was a man of
supreme ability, and if we take account of the age he lived
in, he accomplished a great deal. But if we set aside this
consideration and measure him with reference to the free
ing of thought from all fetters and the commencement of
a new period of untrammelled original investigation with
which he is credited, we are obliged to find that with
his doubt still wanting in true seriousness, and therefore
surrendering so quickly and so entirely, he has, indeed,
the appearance of wishing to throw off at once all the
early implanted opinions belonging to his age and nation,
but does so only apparently and for a moment, to assume
them again immediately and hold them all the more
firmly ; and so is it with all his successors down to Kant.

1 Bruno and Spinoza are here en- age, and he also shows a presenti-

tirely to be excepted. They stand ment of his fate which led him to

each for himself and alone, and delay the publication of his views,

belong neither to their age nor their till that inclination to communicate

quarter of the globe, which rewarded what one knows to be true, which

the one with death and the other is so strong in noble minds, pre-

with persecution and insult. Their vailed :

miserable existence and death in I( A / .

this Western world is like that of a Ad partum P™Pc™rfc tu»™> «««

tropical plant in Europe. The banks ~ 77' quld, °bstat.; ,

<• iv. i /-i ii. • oea/o luxe induino suit trwuenda

of the sacred Ganges were their / • . ?

true spiritual home ; there they TT i j> t

would have led a peaceful and Umlrarum flactu terras mcrgente,

, j ,., r ... cacumcn

honoured life among men of like A it n • ?

mind. In the following lines, with AdMhmdarum, rwster Olympe,

which Bruno begins his book Delia

Causa Principio et Uno, for which Whoever has read this his prin-

he was brought to the stake, he cipal work, and also his other Italian

expresses clearly and beautifully writings, which were formerly so

how Jonely he felt himself in his rare, but are now accessible to all

14 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

Goethe's lines are, therefore, very applicable to a free
independent thinker of this kind :

<: Saving Thy gracious presence, he to me
A long-legged grasshopper appears to be,
That springing flies, and flying springs,
And in the grass the same old ditty sings." l

Kant had reasons for assuming the air of also intending
nothing more. But the pretended spring, which was per
mitted because it was known that it leads back to the
grass, this time became a flight, and now those who remain
below can only look after him, and can never catch him
again.

Kant, then, ventured to show by his teaching that all
those dogmas which had been so often professedly proved
were incapable of proof. Speculative theology, and the
rational psychology connected with it, received from him
their deathblow. Since then they have vanished from
German philosophy, and one must not allow oneself to be
misled by the fact that here and there the word is retained
after the thing has been given up, or some wretched pro
fessor of philosophy has the fear of his master in view,
and lets truth take care of itself. Only he who has ob
served the pernicious influence of these conceptions upon
natural science, and upon philosophy in all, even the best
writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, can
estimate the extent of this service of Kant's. The change
of tone and of metaphysical background which has ap
peared in German writing upon natural science since Kant

through a German edition, will find, this work of his, in the hands of

as I have done, that he alone of all coarse, furious priests as his judges

philosophers in some degree ap- and executioners, and thank Time

preaches to Plato, in respect of the which brought a brighter and a

strong blending of poetical power gentler age, so that the after-world

and tendency along with the philo- whose curse was to fall on those

sophical, and this he also shows espe- fiendish fanatics is the world we

cially in a dramatic form. Imagine now live in.

the tender, spiritual, thoughtful l Bayard Taylor's translation of

being, as he shows himself to us in "Faust," vol. i. p. 14. — TRB.

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 15

is remarkable; before him it was in the same position as
it still occupies in England. This merit of Kant's is con
nected with the fact that the unreflecting pursuit of the
laws of the phenomenon, the elevation of these to the
position of eternal truths, and thus the raising of the
fleeting appearance to the position of the real being of the
world, in short, realism undisturbed in its illusion by any
reflection, had reigned throughout all preceding philo
sophy, ancient, mediaeval, and modern. Berkeley, who,
like Malebranche before him, recognised its one-sidedness ,
and indeed falseness, was unable to overthrow it, for his
attack was confined to one point. Thus it was reserved
for Kant to enable the idealistic point of view to obtain
the ascendancy in Europe, at least in philosophy; the
point of view which throughout all non-Mohammedan
Asia, and indeed essentially, is that of religion. Before
Kant, then, we were in time ; now time is in us, and so on.
Ethics also were treated by that realistic philosophy
according to the laws of the phenomenon, which it re
garded as absolute and valid also for the thing in itself.
They were therefore based now upon a doctrine of hap
piness, now upon the will of the Creator, and finally upon
the conception of perfection ; a conception which, taken
by itself, is entirely empty and void of content, for it
denotes a mere relation that only receives significance
from the things to which il is applied. " To be perfect "
means nothing more than " to correspond to some concep
tion which is presupposed and given," a conception which
must therefore be previously framed, and without which
the perfection is an unknown quantity, and consequently
has no meaning when expressed alone. If, however, it is
intended tacitly to presuppose the conception " humanity,"
and accordingly to make it the principle of morality to
strive after human perfection, this is only saying : " Men
ought to be as they ought to be," — and we are just as
wise as before. In fact " perfect " is very nearly a mere
synonym of " complete," for it signifies that in one given

16 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

case or individual, all the predicates which lie in the
conception of its species appear, thus are actually present.
Therefore the conception " perfection," if used absolutely
and in the abstract, is a word void of significance, and this is
also the case with the talk about the " most perfect being,"
and other similar expressions. All this is a mere jingle
of words. Nevertheless last century this conception of per
fection and imperfection had become current coin ; indeed
it was the hinge upon which almost all speculation upon
ethics, and even theology, turned. It was in every one's
mouth, so that at last it became a simple nuisance. We
see even the best writers of the time, for example Lessing,
entangled in the most deplorable manner in perfections
and imperfections, and struggling with them. At the
same time, every thinking man must at least dimly have
felt that this conception is void of all positive content, be
cause, like an algebraical symbol, it denotes a mere relation
in dbstracto. Kant, as we have already said, entirely
separated the undeniably great ethical signiiicance of
actions from the phenomenon and its laws, and showed
that the former directly concerned the thing in itself, the
inner nature of the world, while the latter, i.e., time,
space, and all that fills them, and disposes itself in them
according to the law of causality, is to be regarded as a
changing and unsubstantial dream.

The little I have said, which by no means exhausts the
subject, may suffice as evidence of my recognition of the
great merits of Kant, — a recognition expressed here both
for my own satisfaction, and because justice demands that
those merits should be recalled to the memory of every
one who desires to follow me in the unsparing exposure
of his errors to which I now proceed.

It may be inferred, upon purely historical grounds, that
Kant's great achievements must have been accompanied
by great errors. For although he effected the greatest

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 17

revolution in philosophy and made an end of Scholasticism,
Avhich, understood in the wider sense we have indicated,
had lasted for fourteen centuries, in order to begin what
was really the third entirely new epoch in philosophy
which the world has seen, yet the direct result of his
appearance was only negative, not positive. For since he
did not set up a completely new system, to which his dis
ciples could only have adhered for a period, all indeed
observed that something very great had happened, but yet
no one rightly knew what. They certainly saw that all
previous philosophy had been fruitless dreaming, from
which the new age had now awakened, but what they ought
to hold to now they did not know. A great void was felt ;
a great need had arisen ; the universal attention even of
the general public was aroused. Induced by this, but not
urged by inward inclination and sense of power (which
find utterance even at unfavourable times, as in the case
of Spinoza), men without any exceptional talent made
various weak, absurd, and indeed sometimes insane,
attempts, to which, however, the now interested public
gave its attention, and with great patience, such as is only
found in Germany, long lent its ear.

The same thing must once have happened in Nature,
when a great revolution had altered the whole surface of
the earth, land and sea had changed places, and the scene
was cleared for a new creation. It was then a long time
before Nature could produce a new series of lasting forms
all in harmony with themselves and with each other.
Strange and monstrous organisations appeared which did
not harmonise either with themselves or with each other,
and therefore could not endure long, but whose still exist
ing remains have brought down to us the tokens of that
wavering and tentative procedure of Nature forming itself
anew.

Since, now, in philosophy, a crisis precisely similar to
this, and an age of fearful abortions, was, as we all know,
introduced by Kant, it may be concluded that the ser-

VOL. II. B

1 8 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

vices lie rendered were not complete, but must have been
negative and one-sided, and burdened with great defects.
These defects \ve now desire to search out.

First of all we shall present to ourselves clearly and
examine the fundamental thought in which the aim of
the whole " Critique of Pure Reason " lies. Kant placed
himself at the standpoint of his predecessors, the dog
matic philosophers, and accordingly he started with them
from the following assumptions: — (i.) Metaphysics is the
science of that which lies beyond the possibility of all
experience. (2.) Such a science can never be attained by
applying principles which must first themselves be drawn
from experience (Prolegomena, § i) ; but only what we
know before, and thus independently of all experience, can
reach further than possible experience. (3.) In our reason
certain principles of this kind are actually to be found :
they are comprehended under the name of Knowledge of
pure reason. So far Kant goes with his predecessors, but
here he separates from them. They say: "These prin
ciples, or this knowledge of pure reason, are expressions
of the absolute possibility of things, ceternce vcritatcs,
sources of ontology ; they stand above the system of the
world, as fate stood above the gods of the ancients."
Kant says, they are mere forms of our intellect, laws,
not of the existence of things, but of our idea of them ;
they are therefore valid merely for our apprehension of
things, and hence they cannot extend beyond the possi
bility of experience, which, according to assumption i,
is what was aimed at ; for the a priori nature of these
forms of knowledge, since it can only rest on their sub
jective origin, is just what cuts us off for ever from the
knowledge of the nature of things in themselves, and con
fines us to a world of mere phenomena, so that we cannot
know things as they may be in themselves, even a pos
teriori, not to speak of a priori. Accordingly metaphysics

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 19

is impossible, and criticism of pure reason takes its place.
As opposed to the old dogmatism, Kant is here completely
victorious; therefore all dogmatic attempts which have
since appeared have been obliged to pursue an entirely
different path from the earlier systems ; and I shall now
go on to the justification of my own system, according to
the expressed intention of this criticism. A more care
ful examination, then, of the reasoning given above will
oblige one to confess that its first fundamental assumption
is a petitio principii. It lies in the proposition (stated
with particular clearness in the Prolegomena,^ i) : "The
source of metaphysics must throughout be non-empirical ;
its fundamental principles and conceptions must never
be taken from either inner or outer experience." Yet
absolutely nothing is advanced in proof of tins cardinal
assertion except the etymological argument from the word
metaphysic. In truth, however, the matter stands thus :
The world and our own existence presents itself to us
necessarily as a riddle. It is now assumed, without more
.ado, that the solution of this riddle cannot be arrived at
from a thorough understanding of the world itself, but
must be sought in something entirely different from the
world (for that is the meaning of " beyond the possibility
of all experience ") ; and that everything must be excluded
from that solution of which we can in any way have
immediate knowledge (for that is the meaning of possible
experience, both inner and outer) ; the solution must
rather be sought only in that at which we can arrive
merely indirectly, that is, by means of inferences from
universal principles a priori. After the principal source
of all knowledge has in this way been excluded, and the
direct way to truth has been closed, we must not wonder
that the dogmatic systems failed, and that Kant was able
to show the necessity of this failure ; for metaphysics and
knowledge a priori had been assumed beforehand to be
identical. But for this it was first necessary to prove that
the material for the solution of the riddle absolutely can-

20 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

not be contained in the world itself, but must be sought
for only outside the world in something we can only
attain to under the guidance of those forms of which we
are conscious a priori. But so long as this is not proved,
we have no grounds for shutting ourselves off, in the case
of the most important and most difficult of all questions,
from the richest of all sources of knowledge, inner and
outer experience, in order to work only with empty forms.
I therefore say that the solution of the riddle of the world
must proceed from the understanding of the world itself ;
that thus the task of metaphysics is not to pass beyond
the experience in which the world exists, but to understand
it thoroughly, because outer and inner experience is at
any rate the principal source of all knowledge ; that there
fore the solution of the riddle of the world is only possible
through the proper connection of outer with inner expe
rience, effected at the right point, and the combination
thereby produced of these two very different sources of
knowledge. Yet this solution is only possible within cer
tain limits which are inseparable from our finite nature,
so that we attain to a right understanding of the world
itself without reaching a final explanation of its existence
abolishing all further problems. Therefore est guadam
prodire tenus, and my path lies midway between the
omniscience of the earlier dogmatists and the despair of
the Kantian Critique. The important truths, however,
which Kant discovered, and through which the earlier
metaphysical systems were overthrown, have supplied my
system with data and materials. Compare what I have
said concerning my method in chap. xvii. of the Supple
ments. So much for the fundamental thought of Kant ;
we shall now consider his working out of it and its
details.

Kant's style bears throughout the stamp of a pre
eminent mind, genuine strong individuality, and quite

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY, 21

exceptional power of thought. Its characteristic quality
may perhaps be aptly described as a brilliant dryness, by
virtue of which he was able to grasp firmly and select the
conceptions with great certainty, and then to turn them
about with the greatest freedom, to the astonishment of the
reader. I find the same brilliant dryness in the style of
Aristotle, though it is much simpler. Nevertheless Kant's
language is often indistinct, indefinite, inadequate, and
sometimes obscure. Its obscurity, certainly, is partly
excusable on account of the difficulty of the subject and
the depth of the thought ; but he who is himself clear to
the bottom, and knows with perfect distinctness what he
thinks and wishes, will never write indistinctly, will never
set up wavering and indefinite conceptions, compose most
difficult and complicated expressions from foreign lan
guages to denote them, and use these expressions constantly
afterwards, as Kant took words and formulas from earlier
philosophy, especially Scholasticism, which he combined
with each other to suit his purposes; as, for example,
" transcendental synthetic unity of apperception," and
in general " unity of synthesis " (Einlicit dcr Synthesis},
always used where " union " ( V&r&inigung) would be quite
sufficient by itself. Moreover, a man who is himself
quite clear will not be always explaining anew what has
once been explained, as Kant does, for example, in the
case of the understanding, the categories, experience, and
other leading conceptions. In general, such a man will
not incessantly repeat himself, and yet in every new ex
position of the thought already expressed a hundred times
leave it in just the same obscure condition, but he will
express his meaning once distinctly, thoroughly, and ex
haustively, and then let it alone. " Quo enim melius rein
aliquam concipimus co magis ddcrminati sumus- ad eaiu
unico modo cxprimcndam" says Descartes in his fifth
letter. But the most injurious result of Kant's occasion
ally obscure language is, that it acted as exemplar vitiis
imitabile ; indeed, it was misconstrued as a pernicious

22 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

authorisation. The public was compelled to see that what
is obscure is not always without significance ; conse
quently, what was without significance took refuge behind
obscure language. Fichte was the first to seize this new
privilege and use it vigorously ; Schelling at least equalled
him ; and a host of hungry scribblers, without talent
and without honesty, soon outbade them both. But the
height of audacity, in serving up pure nonsense, in string
ing together senseless and extravagant mazes of words,
such as had previously only been heard in madhouses,
was finally reached in Hegel, and became the instrument
of the most barefaced general mystification that has ever
taken place, with a result which will appear fabulous to
posterity, and will remain as a monument of German stu
pidity. In vain, meanwhile, Jean Paul wrote his beautiful
paragraph, " Higher criticism of philosophical madness in
the professorial chair, and poetical madness in the theatre "
(^Esthctisclie Naclischulc) ; for in vain Goethe had already
said —

" They prate and teach, and no one interferes ;
All from the fellowship of fools are shrinking ;
Man usually believes, if only words he hears,
That also with them goes material for thinking." 1

But let us return to Kant. We are compelled to admit
that he entirely lacks grand, classical simplicity, na/ivctt,
inyenultt, candeur. His philosophy has no analogy with
Grecian architecture, which presents large simple propor
tions revealing themselves at once to the glance; on the
contrary, it reminds us strongly of the Gothic style of
building. For a purely individual characteristic of Kant's
mind is a remarkable love of symmetry, which delights in
a varied multiplicity, so that it may reduce it to order,
and repeat this order in subordinate orders, and so on
indefinitely, just as happens in Gothic churches. Indeed,
lie sometimes carries this to the extent of trifling, and
from love of this tendency he goes so far as to do open

1 "Faust," scene vi., Bayard Taylor'^ translation, vol. i. p. 134. — TRS.

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 23

violence to truth, and to deal with it as Nature was dealt
with by the old-fashioned gardeners, whose work we see
in symmetrical alleys, squares, and triangles, trees shaped
like pyramids and spheres, and hedges winding in regular
curves. I will support this with facts.

After he has treated space and time isolated from every
thing else, and has then dismissed this whole world of
perception which fills space and time, and in which we
live and are, with the meaningless words "the empirical
content of perception is given us," he immediately arrives
with one spring at the logical basis of his whole philoso])hy,
the table of judgments. From this table he deduces an
exact dozen of categories, symmetrically arranged under
four heads, which afterwards become the fearful pro-
crustean bed into which he violently forces all things in
the world and all that goes on in man, shrinking from no
violence and disdaining no sophistry if only he is able to
repeat everywhere the symmetry of that table. The first
that is symmetrically deduced from it is the pure physio
logical table of the general principles of natural science —
the axioms of intuition, anticipations of perception, ana
logies of experience, and postulates of empirical thought
in general. Of these fundamental principles, the first two
are simple; but each of the last two sends out symme
trically three shoots. The mere categories were what he
calls conceptions ; but these principles of natural science are
judgments. Iii accordance with his highest guide to all
wisdom, symmetry, the series must now prove itself fruit
ful in the syllogisms, and this, indeed, is done symme
trically and regularly. For, as by the application of the
categories to sensibility, experience with all its a priori
principles arose for the understanding, so by the applica
tion of syllogisms to the categories, a task performed by
the reason in accordance with its pretended principle of
seeking the unconditioned, the Ideas of the reason arise.
Now this takes place in the following manner : The three
categories of relation supply to syllogistic reasoning the

24 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

three only possible kinds of major premisses, and syllogistic
reasoning accordingly falls into three kinds, each of which

O O »/

is to be regarded as an egg out of which the reason
hatches an Idea; out of the categorical syllogism the
Idea of the soul, out of the hypothetical the Idea of the
world, and out of the disjunctive the Idea of God. In the
second of these, the Idea of the world, the symmetry of
the table of the categories now repeats itself again, for
its four heads produce four theses, each of which has its
antithesis as a symmetrical pendant.

We pay the tribute of our admiration to the really ex
ceedingly acute combination which produced this elegant
structure, but we shall none the less proceed to a thorough
examination of its foundation and its parts. But the fol
lowing remarks must come first.

It is astonishing how Kant, without further reflection,
pursues his way, following his symmetry, ordering every
thing in accordance with it, without ever taking one of
the subjects so handled into consideration on its own
account. I will explain myself more fully. After he has
considered intuitive knowledge in a mathematical refer
ence only, he neglects altogether the rest of knowledge of
perception in which the world lies before us, and confines
himself entirely to abstract thinking, although this receives
the whole of its significance and value from the world of
perception alone, which is infinitely more significant, gene
rally present, and rich in content than the abstract part
of our knowledge. Indeed, and this is an important
point, he has nowhere clearly distinguished perception
from abstract knowledge, and just on this account, as we
shall afterwards see, he becomes involved in irresolvable
contradictions with himself. After he has disposed of the
whole sensible world with the meaningless " it is given,"
he makes, as we have said, the logical table of judgments
the foundation-stone of his building. But here again he

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 25

does not reflect for a moment upon that which really lies
before him. These forms of judgment are indeed words
and combinations of words; yet it ought first to have
been asked what these directly denote : it would have
been found that they denote conceptions. The next question
would then have been as to the nature of conceptions. It
would have appeared from the answer what relation these
have to the ideas of perception in which the world exists ;
for perception and reflection would have been distin
guished. It would now have become necessarv to examine,

»/

not merely how pure and merely formal intuition or per
ception a priori, but also how its content, the empirical
perception, comes into consciousness. But then it would
have become apparent what part the understanding has in
this, and thus also in general what the understanding is, and,
on the other hand, what the reason properly is, the critique
of which is being written. It is most remarkable that he
does not once properly and adequately define the latter,
but merely gives incidentally, and as the context in each
case demands, incomplete and inaccurate explanations of
it, in direct contradiction to the rule of Descartes given
above.1 For example, at p. 1 1 ; V. 24, of the " Critique of
Pure Eeason," it is the faculty of principles a priori; but
at p. 299; V. 356, it is said that reason is the faculty of
principles, and it is opposed to the understanding, which is
the faculty of rules ! One would now think that there
must be a very wide difference between principles and
rules, since it entitles us to assume a special faculty of
knowledge for each of them. But this great distinction is
made to lie merely in this, that what is known a priori
through pure perception or through the forms of the
understanding is a rule, and only what results from mere

1 Observe here that I always quote sides this, I add the paging of the

the " Kritik der reinen Vernunft " fifth edition, preceded by a V. ; all

according to the paging of the first the other editions, from the second

edition, for in Rosenkranz's edition onwards, are the same as the fifth,

of Kant's collected works this pag- and so also is their paging,
ing is always given in addition. Be-

26 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

conceptions is a principle. We shall return to this arbi
trary and inadmissible distinction later, when we come to
the Dialectic. On p. 330 ; V. 386, reason is the faculty of
inference ; mere judging (p. 69 ; V. 94) he often explains as
the work of the understanding. Now, this really amounts
to saying : Judging is the work of the understanding so
long as the ground of the judgment is empirical, trans
cendental, or metalogical (Essay on the Principle of
Sufficient Beason, § 31, 32, 33); but if it is logical, as is
the case with the syllogism, then we are here concerned
with a quite special and much more important faculty of
knowledge — the reason. Nay, what is more, on p. 303 ;
V. 360, it is explained that what follows directly from a
proposition is still a matter of the understanding, and that
only those conclusions which are arrived at by the use of
a mediating conception are the work of the reason, and the
example given is this : From the proposition, " All men
are mortal," the inference, " Some mortals are men," may
be drawn by the mere understanding. On the other hand,
to draw the conclusion, "All the learned are mortal,"
demands an entirely different and far more important
faculty — the reason. How was it possible for a great
thinker to write the like of this! On p. 553; V. 581,
reason is all at once the constant condition of all voluntary
action. On p. 614; V. 642, it consists in the fact that
we can give an account of our assertions ; on pp. 643,
644; V. 671, 672, in the circumstance that it brings unity
into the conceptions of the understanding by means of
Ideas, as the understanding brings unity into the multi
plicity of objects by means of conceptions. On p. 646 ; V.
674, it is nothing else than the faculty which deduces the
particular from the general.

The understanding also is constantly being explained
anew. In seven passages of the " Critique of Pure Bea
son " it is explained in the following terms. On p. 5 1 ;
V. 75, it is the faculty which of itself produces ideas of
perception. On p. 69 ; Y. 94, it is the faculty of judging,

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 27

i.e., of thinking, i.e., of knowing through conceptions. On
p. 1 37 of the fifth edition, it is the faculty of knowledge
generally. On p. 132; V. 171, it is the faculty of rules.
On p. 158 ; V. 197, however, it is said : " It is not only the
faculty of rules, but the source of principles (Grundsdtzc)
according to which everything comes under rules ; " and
yet above it was opposed to the reason because the latter
alone was the faculty of principles (Principieri). On p.
1 60; V. 199, the understanding is the faculty of concep
tions ; but on p. 302 ; V. 359, it is the faculty of the unity
of phenomena by means of rules.

Against such really confused and groundless language
on the subject (even though it comes from Kant) I shall
have no need to defend the explanation which I have
given of these two faculties of knowledge — an explanation
which is fixed, clearly defined, definite, simple, and in full
agreement with the language of all nations and all ages.
I have only quoted this language as a proof of my charge
that Kant follows his symmetrical, logical system without
sufficiently reflecting upon the subject he is thus handling.

Now, as I have said above, if Kant had seriously
examined how far two such different faculties of know
ledge, one of which is the specific difference of man, may
be known, and what, in accordance with the language of
all nations and all philosophers, reason and understand
ing are, he would never, without further authority than
the intcllectus theoreticus and practicus of the Schoolmen,
which is used in an entirely different sense, have divided
the reason into theoretical and practical, and made the
latter the source of virtuous conduct. In the same way,
before Kant separated so carefully conceptions of the
understanding (by which he sometimes means his cate
gories, sometimes all general conceptions) and conceptions
of the reason (his so-called Ideas), and made them both
the material of his philosophy, which for the most part
deals only with the validity, application, and origin of all
these conceptions ; — first, I say, he ought to have really

28 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

examined what in general a conception is. But this very
necessary investigation has unfortunately been also ne
glected, and has contributed much to the irremediable
confusion of intuitive and abstract knowledge which I
shall soon refer to. The same want of adequate reflection
with which he passed over the questions : what is per
ception ? what is reflection ? what is conception ? what
is reason ? what is understanding ? allowed him to pass
over the following investigations, which were just as in
evitably necessary : what is it that I call the object, which
I distinguish from the idea ? what is existence ? what is
object ? what is subject ? what is truth, illusion, error ?
But he follows his logical schema and his symmetry with
out reflecting or looking about him. The table of judg
ments ought to, and must, be the key to all wisdom.

I have given it above as the chief merit of Kant that he
distinguished the phenomenon from the thing in itself,
explained the whole visible world as phenomenon, and
therefore denied all validity to its laws beyond the phe
nomenon. It is certainly remarkable that he did not
deduce this merely relative existence of the phenomenon
from the simple undeniable truth which lay so near him,
"No object without a subject," in order thus at the very
root to show that the object, because it always exists
merely in relation to a subject, is dependent upon it,
conditioned by it, and therefore conditioned as mere
phenomenon, which does not exist in itself nor uncon
ditioned. Berkeley, to whose merits Kant did not do
justice, had already made this important principle the
foundation-stone of his philosophy, and thereby established
an immortal reputation. Yet he himself did not draw the
proper conclusions from this principle, and so he was
both misunderstood and insufficiently attended to. In
my first edition I explained Kant's avoidance of this
Berkeleian principle as arising from an evident shrink-

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 29

ing from decided idealism ; while, on the other hand, I
found idealism distinctly expressed in many passages of
the " Critique of Pure Reason," and accordingly I charged
Kant with contradicting himself. And this charge was
well founded, if, as was then my case, one only knew the
" Critique of Pure Eeason " in the second or any of the five
subsequent editions printed from it. But when later I
read Kant's great work in the first edition, which is already
so rare, I saw, to my great pleasure, all these contradic
tions disappear, and found that although Kant does not
use the formula, " No object without a subject," he yet ex
plains, with just as much decision as Berkeley and I do, the
outer world lying before us in space and time as the mere
idea of the subject that knows it. Therefore, for example,
he says there without reserve (p. 383): "If I take away
the thinking subject, the whole material world must dis
appear, for it is nothing but a phenomenon in the sensi
bility of our subject, and a class of its ideas." But the
whole passage from p. 348-392, in which Kant expounded
his pronounced idealism with peculiar beauty and clear
ness, was suppressed by him in the second edition, and
instead of it a number of remarks controverting it were
introduced. In this way then the text of the " Critique
of Pure Eeason," as it has circulated from the year 1787
to the year 1838, was disfigured and spoilt, and it became
a self-contradictory book, the sense of which could not
therefore be thoroughly clear and comprehensible to any
one. The particulars about this, and also my conjectures
as to the reasons and the weaknesses which may have
influenced Kant so to disfigure his immortal work, I
have given in a letter to Professor Piosenkranz, and he has
quoted the principal passage of it in his preface to the
second volume of the edition of Kant's collected works
edited by him, to which I therefore refer. In consequence
of my representations, Professor Eosenkranz was induced
in the year 1838 to restore the "Critique of Pure Eeason"
to its original form, for in the second volume referred to

30 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

he had it printed according to ihe first edition of 1781, by
which he has rendered an inestimable service to philo
sophy ; indeed, he has perhaps saved from destruction the
most important work of German literature ; and^this should
always be remembered to his credit. But let no one
imagine that he knows the " Critique of Pure Reason "
and has a distinct conception of Kant's teaching if he has
only read the second or one of the later editions. That
is altogether impossible, for he has only read a mutilated,
spoilt, and to a certain extent ungenuine text. It is my
duty to say this here decidedly and for every one's warning.
Yet the way in which Kant introduces the thing in
itself stands in undeniable contradiction with the dis
tinctly idealistic point of view so clearly expressed in the
first edition of the " Critique of Pure Pteason," and without
doubt this is the chief reason why, in the second edition,
he suppressed the principal idealistic passage we have
referred to, and directly declared himself opposed to the
Berkeleian idealism, though by doing so he only intro
duced inconsistencies into his work, without being able to
remedy its principal defect. This defect, as is known, is
the introduction of the thing in itself in the way chosen
by him, the inadmissibleness of which was exposed at
length by G. E. Schulze in " dSncsidemus" and was soon
recognised as the untenable point of his system. The
matter may be made clear in a very few words. Kant
based the assumption of the thing in itself, though
concealed under various modes of expression, upon an
inference from the law of causality — an inference that the
empirical perception, or more accurately the sensation, in
our organs of sense, from which it proceeds, must have an
external cause. But according to his own account, which
is correct, the law of causality is known to us a priori,
consequently is a function of our intellect, and is thus of
subjective origin ; further, sensation itself, to which we here
apply the law of causality, is undeniably subjective; and
finally, even space, in which, by means of this application,

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 31

we place the cause of this sensation as object, is a form of
our intellect given a priori, and is consequently subjective.
Therefore the whole empirical perception remains always
upon a subjective foundation, as a mere process in us, and
nothing entirely different from it and independent of it
can be brought in as a thing in itself, or shown to be a
necessary assumption. The empirical perception actually
is and remains merely our idea : it is the world as idea.
An inner nature of this we can only arrive at on the
entirely different path followed by me, by means of calling
in the aid of self-consciousness, which proclaims the .will
as the inner nature of our own phenomenon ; but then the
thing in itself will be one which is toto genere different
from the idea and its elements, as I have explained.

The great defect of the Kantian system in this point,
which, as has been said, was soon pointed out, is an illus
tration of the truth of the beautiful Indian proverb : " No
lotus without a stem." The erroneous deduction of the
thing in itself is here the stem; yet only the method of
the deduction, not the recognition of a thing in itself
belonging to the given phenomenon. But this last was
Fichte's misunderstanding of it, which could only happen
because he was not concerned with truth, but with making
a sensation for the furtherance of his individual ends.
Accordingly he was bold and thoughtless enough to deny
the thing in itself altogether, and to set up a system in
which, not, as with Kant, the mere form of the idea, but
also the matter, its whole content, was professedly deduced
a priori from the subject. In doing this, he counted with
perfect correctness upon the want of judgment and the
stupidity of the public, which accepted miserable sophisms,
mere hocus-pocus and senseless babble, for proofs ; so that
he succeeded in turning its attention from Kant to himself,
and gave the direction to German philosophy in which it
was afterwards carried further by Schelling, and ultimately
reached its goal in the mad sophistry of Hegel.

I now return to the great mistake of Kant, already

32 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

touched on above, that he has not properly separated
perceptible and abstract knowledge, whereby an inextri
cable confusion has arisen which we have now to consider
more closely. If he had sharply separated ideas of per
ception from conceptions merely thought in abstracto, he
would have held these two apart, and in every case would
have known with which of the two he had to do. This,
however, was unfortunately not the case, although this
accusation has not yet been openly made, and may thus
perhaps be unexpected. His "object of experience," of
which he is constantly speaking, the proper object of the
categories, is not the idea of perception ; neither is it the
abstract conception, but it is different from both, and yet
both at once, and is a perfect chimera. For, incredible as
it may seem, he lacked either the wisdom or the honesty
to come to an understanding with himself about this, and
to explain distinctly to himself and others whether his
" object of experience, i.e., the knowledge produced by the
application of the categories," is the idea of perception in
space and time (my first class of ideas), or merely the
abstract conception. Strange as it is, there always runs
in his mind something between the two, and hence arises
the unfortunate confusion which I must now bring to
light. For this end I must go through the whole theory
of elements in a general wTay.

The " Transcendental ^Esthetic " is a work of such extra
ordinary merit that it alone would have been sufficient
to immortalise the name of Kant. Its proofs carry such
perfect conviction, that I number its propositions among
incontestable truths, and without doubt they are also
among those that are richest in results, and are, therefore,
to be regarded as the rarest thing in the world, a real
and great discovery in metaphysics. The fact, strictly
proved by him, that a part of our knowledge is known to
us a priori, admits of no other explanation than that this

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 33

constitutes the forms of our intellect ; indeed, this is less
an explanation than merely the distinct expression of the
fact itself. For a priori means nothing else than " not
gained on the path of experience, thus not come into us
from without." But what is present in the intellect, and
has not come from without, is just what belongs originally
to the intellect itself, its own nature. Now if what is
thus present in the intellect itself consists of the general
mode or manner in which it must present all its objects to
itself, this is just saying that what is thus present is the
intellect's forms of knowing, i.e., the mode, fixed once for
all, in which it fulfils this its function. Accordingly,
" knowledge a priori " and " the intellect's own forms " are
at bottom only two expressions for the same things thus
to a certain extent synonyms.

Therefore from the doctrine of the Transcendental
^Esthetic I knew of nothing to take away, only of some
thing to add. Kant did not carry out his thought to the
end, especially in this respect, that he did not reject
Euclid's whole method of demonstration, even after having
said on p. 87 ; V. 1 20, that all geometrical knowledge
has direct evidence from perception. It is most remark
able that one of Kant's opponents, and indeed the acutest
of them, G. E. Schulze (Kritik der theorctischen Philo
sophic, ii. 241), draws the conclusion that from his doc
trine an entirely different treatment of geometry from
that which is actually in use would arise ; and thus he
thought to bring an apagogical argument against Kant,
but, in fact, without knowing it, he only began the war
against the method of Euclid. Let me refer to § 15 of
the first book of this work.

After the full exposition of the universal forms of per
ception given in the Transcendental Esthetic, one neces
sarily expects to receive some explanation as to its content,
as to the way in \vhich the empirical perception comes
into our consciousness, how the knowledge of this whole
world, which is for us so real and so important, arises in

VOL. II. C

34 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

us. But the whole teaching of Kant contains really
nothing more about this than the oft-repeated meaning
less expression : " The empirical element in perception is
given from without." Consequently here also from the
pure forms of perception Kant arrives with one spring at
thinking at the Transcendental Logic. Just at the begin
ning of the Transcendental Logic (Critique of Pure
Eeason, p. 50 ; V. 74), where Kant cannot avoid touch
ing upon the content of the empirical perception, he takes
the first false step ; he is guilty of the Trpcorov -^euSo?.
" Our knowledge," he says, " has two sources, receptivity
of impressions and spontaneity of conceptions : the first is
the capacity for receiving ideas, the second that of know
ing an object through these ideas : through the first an
object is given us, through the second it is thought."
This is false ; for according to it the impression, for which
alone we have mere receptivity, which thus comes from
without and alone is properly " given," would be already
an idea, and indeed an object. But it is nothing more
than a mere sensation in the organ of sense, and only by
the application of the understanding (i.e., of the law of
causality) and the forms of perception, space and time,
does our intellect change this mere sensation into an idea,
which now exists as an object in space and time, and can
not be distinguished from the latter (the object) except in
so far as we ask after the thing in itself, but apart from
this is identical with it. I have explained this point fully
in the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 21.
With this, however, the work of the understanding and of
the faculty of perception is completed, and no conceptions
and no thinking are required in addition; therefore the
brute also has these ideas. If conceptions are added, if
thinking is added, to which spontaneity may certainly be
attributed, then knowledge of perception is entirely aban
doned, and a completely different class of ideas comes into
consciousness, non-perceptible abstract conceptions. This
is the activity of the reason, which vet obtains the whole

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 35

-content of its thinking only from the previous perception,
and the comparison of it with other perceptions and con
ceptions. But thus Kant brings thinking into the percep
tion, and lays the foundation for the inextricable confusion
of intuitive and abstract knowledge which I am now en
gaged in condemning. He allows the perception, taken by
itself, to be without understanding, purely sensuous, and
thus quite passive, and only through thinking (category
of the understanding) does he allow an object to be appre
hended : thus he brings thought into the perception. But
then, again, the object of thinking is an individual real
object ; and in this way thinking loses its essential char
acter of universality and abstraction, and instead of gene
ral conceptions receives individual things as its object :
thus again he brings perception into thinking. From this
springs the inextricable confusion referred to, and the
consequences of this first false step extend over his whole
theory of knowledge. Through the whole of his theory
the utter confusion of the idea of perception with the
abstract idea tends towards a something between the two
which he expounds as the object of knowledge through
the understanding and its categories, and calls this know
ledge experience. It is hard to believe that Kant really
figured to himself something fully determined and really
distinct in this object of the understanding ; I shall now
prove this through the tremendous contradiction which
runs through the whole Transcendental Logic, and is the
real source of the obscurity in which it is involved.

In the " Critique of Pure Reason," p. 67-69 ; V. 92-94 ;
p. 89, 90; V. 122, 123; further, V. 135, 139, 153, he
repeats and insists : the understanding is no faculty of
perception, its knowledge is not intuitive but discursive ;
the understanding is the faculty of judging (p. 69 ; V. 94),
and a judgment is indirect knowledge, an idea of an idea
(p. 68 ; V. 93) ; the understanding is the faculty of thinking,
and thinking is knowledge through conceptions (p. 69 ; V.
•94) ; the categories of the understanding are by no means

36 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

the conditions under which objects are given in percep
tion (p. 89; V. 122), and perception in no way requires
the functions of thinking (p. 91 ; V. 123) ; our under
standing can only think, not perceive (V. pp. 135, 139).
Further, in the "Prolegomena," § 20, he says that percep
tion, sensation, pcrceptio, belongs merely to the senses;
judgment to the understanding alone ; and in § 22, that
the work of the senses is to perceive, that of the under
standing to think, i.e., to judge. Finally, in the " Critique
of Practical Eeason," fourth edition, p. 247 ; Eosenkranz's
edition, p. 281, he says that the understanding is discur
sive; its ideas are thoughts, not perceptions. All this is in
Kant's own words.

From this it follows that this perceptible world would
exist for us even if we had no understanding at all ; that
it comes into our head in a quite inexplicable manner,
which he constantly indicates by his strange expression
the perception is given, without ever explaining this in
definite and metaphorical expression further.

Now all that has been quoted is contradicted in the
most glaring manner by the whole of the rest of his
doctrine of the understanding, of its categories, and of the
possibility of experience as he explains it in the Trans
cendental Logic. Thus (Critique of Pure Eeason, p. 79 ; V.
105), the understanding through its categories brings unity
into the manifold of perception, and the pure conceptions
of the understanding refer a priori to objects of per
ception. P. 94 ; V. 1 26, the " categories are the condition
of experience, whether of perception, which is found in
it, or of thought." V. p. 127, the understanding is the
originator of experience. V. p. 128, the categories deter
mine the perception of objects. V. p. 130, all that we pre
sent to ourselves as connected in the object (which is yet
certainly something perceptible and not an abstraction), has
been so connected by an act of the understanding. V. p..
135, the understanding is explained anew as the faculty of
combining a priori, and of bringing the multiplicity of given.

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 37

ideas under the unity of apperception ; but according to all
ordinary use of words, apperception is not the thinking of
a conception, but is perception. V. p. 136, we find a first
principle of the possibility of all perception in connection
with the understanding. V. p. 143, it stands as the
heading, that all sense perception is conditioned by the
categories. At the same place the logical function of the
judgment also brings the manifold of given perceptions
under an apperception in general, and the manifold of a
given perception stands necessarily under the categories.
V. p. 144, unity comes into perception, by means of the
categories, through the understanding. V. p. 145, the
thinking of the understanding is very strangely explained
as synthetically combining, connecting, and arranging
the manifold of perception. V. p. 161, experience is only
possible through the categories, and consists in the con
nection of sensations, which, however, are just perceptions.
V. P- T59> tne categories are a priori knowledge of the
objects of perception in general. Further, here and at V. p.
163 and 165, a chief doctrine of Kant's is given, this : tlmt
the understanding first makes Nature possible, because it pre
scribes laws for it a priori, and Nature adapts itself to the
system of the understanding, and so on. Nature, however,
is certainly perceptible and not an abstraction ; therefore,
the understanding must be a faculty of perception. V. p.
1 68, it is said, the conceptions of the understanding are the
principles of the possibility of experience, and the latter is
the condition of phenomena in space and time in general ;
phenomena which, however, certainly exist in perception.
Finally, p. 189-211 ; V. 232-265, the long proof is given
(the incorrectness of which is shown in detail in my essay
on the principle of sufficient reason, § 23) that the ob
jective succession and also the coexistence of objects of
experience are not sensuously apprehended, but are only
brought into Nature by the understanding, and that Nature
itself first becomes possible in this way. Yet it is certain
that Nature, the course of events, and the coexistence

38 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

of states, is purely perceptible, and no mere abstract
thought.

I challenge every one who shares my respect towards
Kant to reconcile these contradictions and to show that
in his doctrine of the object of experience and the way
it is determined by the activity of the understanding
and its twelve functions, Kant thought something quite
distinct and definite. I am convinced that the contra
diction I have pointed out, which extends through the
whole Transcendental Logic, is the real reason of the
great obscurity of its language. Kant himself, in fact,
was dimly conscious of the contradiction, inwardly com
bated it, but yet either would not or could not bring it
to distinct consciousness, and therefore veiled it from
himself and others, and avoided it by all kinds of subter
fuges. This is perhaps also the reason why he made out
of the faculties of knowledge such a strange complicated
machine, Avith so many wheels, as the twelve categories,
the transcendental synthesis of imagination, of the inner
sense, of the transcendental unity of apperception, also
the schematism of the pure conceptions of the understand
ing, &c., &c. And notwithstanding this great apparatus,
not even an attempt is made to explain the perception of
the external world, which is after all the principal fact in
our knowledge; but this pressing claim is very meanly
rejected, always through the same meaningless meta
phorical expression : " The empirical perception is given
us." On p. 145 of the fifth edition, we learn further that
the perception is given through the object ; therefore the
object must be something different from the perception.

If, now, we endeavour to investigate Kant's inmost
meaning, not clearly expressed by himself, we find that
in reality such an object, different from the perception,
but which is by no means a conception, is for him the
proper object for the understanding ; indeed that it must
be by means of the strange assumption of such an object,
which cannot be presented in perception, that the per-

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 39

ception first becomes experience. I believe that an old
deeply-rooted prejudice in Kant, dead to all investigation,
is the ultimate reason of the assumption of such an absolute
object, which is an object in itself, i.e., without a subject.
It is certainly not the perceived object, but through the
conception it is added to the perception by thought, as
something corresponding to it ; and now the perception is
experience, and has value and truth, which it thus only
receives through the relation to a conception (in diametrical
opposition to my exposition, according to which the con
ception only receives value and truth from the perception).
It is then the proper function of the categories to add on
in thought to the perception this directly non-perceptible
object. " The object is given only through perception, and
is afterwards thought in accordance with the category "
(Critique of Pure Beason, first edition, p. 399). This is
made specially clear by a passage on p. 125 of the fifth
edition : " Now the question arises whether conceptions a
priori do not also come first as conditions under which
alone a thing can be, not perceived certainly, but yet
thought as an object in general," which he answers in the
affirmative. Here the source of the error and the con
fusion in which it is involved shows itself distinctly. For
the object as such exists always only for perception and in
it ; it may now be completed through the senses, or, when
it is absent, through the imagination. What is thought,
on the contrary, is always an universal non-perceptible
conception, which certainly can be the conception of an
object in general ; but only indirectly by means of con
ceptions does thought relate itself to objects, which always
are and remain perceptible. For our thinking is not able
to impart reality to perceptions ; this they have, so far as
they are capable of it (empirical reality) of themselves;
but it serves to bring together the common element and
the results of perceptions, in order to preserve them, and
to be able to use them more easily. But Kant ascribes
the objects themselves to thought, in order to make expe-

40 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

rience and the objective world dependent upon under
standing, yet without allowing understanding to be a
faculty of perception. In this relation he certainly dis
tinguishes perception from thought, but he makes par
ticular things sometimes the object of perception and
sometimes the object of thought. In reality, however,
they are only the object of the former; our empirical
perception is at once objective, just because it proceeds
from the causal nexus. Things, not ideas different from
them, are directly its object. Particular things as such
are perceived in the understanding and through the senses;
the one-sided impression upon the latter is at once com
pleted by the imagination. But, on the contrary, as soon
as we pass over to thought, we leave the particular things,
and have to do with general conceptions, which cannot
be presented in perception, although we afterwards apply
the results of our thought to particular things. If we
hold firmly to this, the inadmissibleness of the assumption
becomes evident that the perception of things only obtains
reality and becomes experience through the thought of
these very things applying its twelve categories. Bather
in perception itself the empirical reality, and consequently
experience, is already given ; but the perception itself can
only come into existence by the application to sensation
of the ^knowledge of the causal nexus, which is the one
function of the understanding. Perception is accordingly
in reality intellectual, which is just what Kant denies.

Besides in the passages quoted, the assumption of Kant
here criticised will be found expressed with admirable
clearness in the " Critique of Judgment," § 36, just at
the beginning; also in the "Metaphysical Principles of
Natural Science," in the note to the first explanation of
" Phenomenology." But with a naivete which Kant ven
tured upon least of all with reference to this doubtful
point, it is to be found most distinctly laid down in the
book of a Kantian, Kiesewetter's " Grundriss einer alge-
meinen Logik" third edition, part i., p. 434 of the exposi-

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 41

tion, and part ii., § 52 and 53 of the exposition; similarly
in Tieftrunk's " Denldehrc in rein Dcutschem Gewande"
(1825). It there appears so clearly how those disciples
who do not themselves think become a magnifying mirror
of the errors of every thinker. Once having determined
his doctrine of the categories, Kant was always cautious
when expounding it, but his disciples on the contrary
were quite bold, and thus exposed its falseness.

According to what has been said, the object of the cate
gories is for Kant, not indeed the thing in itself, but yet
most closely akin to it. It is the object in itself ; it is an
object that requires no subject; it is a particular thing, and
yet not in space and time, because not perceptible ; it is
an object of thought, and yet not an abstract conception.
Accordingly Kant really makes a triple division: (i.) the
idea ; (2.) the object of the idea ; (3.) the thing in itself.
The first belongs to the sensibility, which in its case, as
in that of sensation, includes the pure forms of perception,
space and time. The second belongs to the understand
ing, which thinks it through its twelve categories. The
third lies beyond the possibility of all knowledge. (In
support of this, cf. Critique of Pure Reason, first edition,
p. 1 08 and 109.) The distinction of the idea from the
object of the idea is however unfounded ; this had already
been proved by Berkeley, and it appears from my whole
exposition in the first book, especially chap. i. of the sup
plements; nay, even from Kant's own completely idea
listic point of view in the first edition. But if we should
not wish to count the object of the idea as belonging to
the idea and identify it with the idea, it would be neces
sary to attribute it to the thing in itself : this ultimately
depends on the sense which is attached to the word object.
This, however, always remains certain, that, when we
think clearly, nothing more can be found than idea and
thing in itself. The illicit introduction of that hybrid, the
object of the idea, is the source of Kant's errors ; yet when
it is taken away, the doctrine of the categories as concep-

42 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

tions a priori also falls to the ground; for they bring
nothing to the perception, and are not supposed to hold
good of the thing in itself, but by means of them we only
think those " objects of the ideas," and thereby change ideas
into experience. For every empirical perception is already
experience; but every perception which proceeds from
sensation is empirical: this sensation is related by the
understanding, by means of its sole function (knowledge
a priori of the law of causality), to its cause, which just
on this account presents itself in space and time (forms of
pure perception) as object of experience, material object,
enduring in space through all time, yet as such always
remains idea, as do space and time themselves. If we
desire to go beyond this idea, then we arrive at the ques
tion as to the thing in itself, the answer to which is the
theme of my whole work, as of all metaphysics in general.
Kant's error here explained is connected with his mistake,
which we condemned before, that he gives no theory of
the origin of empirical perception, but, without saying
more, treats it as given, identifying it with the mere sen
sation, to which he only adds the forms of intuition or per
ception, space and time, comprehending both under the
name sensibility. But from these materials no objective
idea arises : this absolutely demands the relation of the idea
to its cause, thus the application of the law of causality,
and thus understanding; for without this the sensation
still remains always subjective, and does not take the
form of an object in space, even if space is given with it.
But according to Kant, the understanding must not be
assigned to perception ; it is supposed merely to think, so
as to remain within the transcendental logic. "With this
again is connected another mistake of Kant's : that he
left it to me to adduce the only valid proof of the a priori
nature of the law of causality which he rightly recognised,
the proof from the possibility of objective empirical per
ception itself, and instead of it gives a palpably false one,
as I have already shown in my essay on the principle of

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 43

sufficient reason, § 23. From the above it is clear that
Kant's "object of the idea" (2) is made up of what
he has stolen partly from the idea (i), and partly from
the thing in itself (3 ). If, in reality, experience were
only brought about by the understanding applying its
twelve different functions in order to think through as
many conceptions a priori, the objects which were pre
viously merely perceived, then every real thing would
necessarily as such have a number of determinations,
which, as given a priori, absolutely could not be thought
away, just like space and time, but would belong quite
essentially to the existence of the thing, and yet could
not be deduced from the properties of space and time.
But only one such determination is to be found — that of
causality. Upon this rests materiality, for the essence of
matter consists in action, and it is through and through
causality (cf. Bk. II. ch. iv.) But it is materiality alone
that distinguishes the real thing from the picture of the
imagination, which is then only idea. For matter, as per
manent, gives to the thing permanence through all time,
in respect of its matter, while the forms change in con
formity with causality. Everything else in the thing
consists either of determinations of space or of time, or of
its empirical properties, which are all referable to its
activity, and are thus fuller determinations of causality.
But causality enters already as a condition into the em
pirical perception, and this is accordingly a thing of the
understanding, which makes even perception possible, and
yet apart from the law of causality contributes nothing to
experience and its possibilty. What fills the old ontolo
gies is, with the exception of what is given here, nothing
more than relations of things to each other, or to our re
flection, and a farrago of nonsense.

The language in which the doctrine of the categories
is expressed affords an evidence of its baselessness. What
a difference in this respect between the Transcenden
tal Esthetic and the Transcendental Analytic ! IQ the

44 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

former, what clearness, definiteness, certainty, firm con
viction which is freely expressed and infallibly com
municates itself ! All is full of light, no dark lurking-
places are left : Kant knows what he wants and knows
that he is right. In the latter, on the other hand, all
is obscure, confused, indefinite, wavering, uncertain, the
language anxious, full of excuses and appeals to what is
coming, or indeed of suppression. Moreover, the whole
second and third sections of the Deduction of the Pure
Conceptions of the Understanding are completely changed
in the second edition, because they did not satisfy Kant
himself, and they have become quite different from the
first edition, though not clearer. We actually see Kant in
conflict with the truth in order to carry out his hypothe
sis which he has once fixed upon. In the Transcenden
tal .^Esthetic all his propositions are really proved from
undeniable facts of consciousness ; in the Transcenden
tal Analytic, on the contrary, we find, if we consider it
closely, mere assertions that thus it is and must be. Here,
then, as everywhere, the language bears the stamp of the
thought from which it has proceeded, for style is the
physiognomy of the mind. We have still to remark, that
whenever Kant wishes to give an example for the purpose
of fuller explanation, he almost always takes for this end
the category of causality, and then what he has said turns
out correct ; for the law of causality is indeed the real
form of the understanding, but it is also its only form,
and the remaining eleven categories are merely blind
windows. The deduction of the categories is simpler
and less involved in the first edition than in the second.
He labours to explain how, according to the perception
given by sensibility, the understanding produces experi
ence by means of thinking the categories. In doing so,
the wrords recognition, reproduction, association, appre
hension, transcendental unity of apperception, are re
peated to weariness, and yet no distinctness is attained.
It is well worth noticing, however, that in this explana-

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 45

tion he does not once touch upon what must nevertheless
first occur to every one — the relation of the sensation to
its external cause. If he did not intend this relation to
hold good, he ought to have expressly denied it ; but
neither does he do this. Thus in this way he evades the
point, and all the Kantians have in like manner evaded
it. The secret motive of this is, that he reserves the
causal nexus, under the name "ground of the phenome
non," for his false deduction of the thing in itself ; and also
that perception would become intellectual through the
relation to the cause, which he dare not admit. Besides
this, he seems to have been afraid that if the causal nexus
were allowed to hold good between sensation and object,
the latter would at once become the thing in itself, and
introduce the empiricism of Locke. But this difficulty
is removed by reflection, which shows us that the law of
causality is of subjective origin, as well as the sensation
itself ; and besides this, our own body also, inasmuch as
it appears in space, already belongs to ideas. But Kant
was hindered from confessing this by his fear of the
Berkeleian idealism.

" The combination of the manifold of perception " is
repeatedly given as the essential operation of the under
standing, by means of its twelve categories. Yet this is
never adequately explained, nor is it shown what this
manifold of perception is before it is combined by the
understanding. But time and space, the latter in all its
three dimensions, are contimia, i.e., all their parts are
originally not separate but combined. Thus, then, every
thing that exhibits itself in them (is given) appears origi
nally as a continuum, i.e., its parts appear already com
bined and require no adventitious combination of a
manifold. If, however, some one should seek to interpret
that combining of the manifold of perception by saying
that I refer the different sense-impressions of one object
to this one only — thus, for example, perceiving a bell, I
recognise that what affects my eye as yellow, my hand as

46 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

smooth and hard, my ear as sounding, is yet only one and
the same body, — then I reply that this is rather a conse
quence of the knowledge a priori of the causal nexus (this
actual and only function of the understanding), by virtue
of which all those different effects upon my different
organs of sense yet lead me only to one common cause of
them, the nature of the body standing before me, so that
my understanding, in spite of the difference and multi
plicity of the effects, still apprehends the unity of the
cause as a single object, which just on that account ex
hibits itself in perception. In the beautiful recapitulation
of his doctrine which Kant gives at p. 719-726 or V.
747-754 of the " Critique of Pure Eeason," he explains the
categories, perhaps more distinctly than anywhere else, as
" the mere rule of the synthesis of that which empirical
apprehension has given a posteriori." It seems as if here
he had something in his mind, such as that, in the construc
tion of the triangle, the angles give the rule for the com
position of the lines ; at least by this image one can best
explain to oneself what he says of the function of the cate
gories. The preface to the " Metaphysical First Principles
of Natural Science " contains a long note which likewise
gives an explanation of the categories, and says that they
" differ in no respect from the formal acts of the under
standing in judging," except that in the latter subject and
predicate can always change places ; then the judgment
in general is defined in the same passage as "an act
through which given ideas first become knowledge of
an object." According to this, the brutes, since they do
not judge, must also have no knowledge of objects. In
general, according to Kant, there are only conceptions of
objects, no perceptions. I, on the contrary, say : Objects
exist primarily only for perception, and conceptions are
always abstractions from this perception. Therefore ab
stract thinking must be conducted exactly according to
the world present in perception, for it is only their rela
tion to this that gives content to conceptions ; and we must

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 47

assume for the conceptions no other a priori determined
form than the faculty of reflection in general, the nature of
which is the construction of conceptions, i.e., of abstract
non-perceptible ideas, which constitutes the sole function of
the reason, as I have shown in the first book. I therefore
require that we should reject eleven of the categories, and
only retain that of causality, and yet that we should
see clearly that its activity is indeed the condition of
empirical perception, which accordingly is not merely
sensuous but intellectual, and that the object so per
ceived, the object of experience, is one with the idea,
from which there remains nothing to distinguish except
the thing in itself.

After repeated study of the " Critique of Pure Eeason "
at different periods of my life, a conviction has forced
itself upon me with regard to the origin of the Transcen
dental Logic, which I now impart as very helpful to an
understanding of it. Kant's only discovery, which is
based upon objective comprehension and the highest
human thought, is the appcr^u that time and space are
known by us a priori. Gratified by this happy hit, he
wished to pursue the same vein further, and his love of
architectonic symmetry afforded him the clue. As he
had found that a pure intuition or perception a priori
underlay the empirical perception as its condition, he
thought that in the same way certain pure conceptions
as presuppositions in our faculty of knowledge must lie at
the foundation of the empirically obtained conceptions, and
that real empirical thought must be only possible through
a pure thought a priori, which, however, would have no
objects in itself, but would be obliged to take them from
perception. So that as the Transcendental ^Esthetic estab
lishes an a priori basis of mathematics, there must, he
supposed, also be a similar basis for logic ; and thus, then
for the sake of symmetry, the former received a pendant
in a Transcendental Logic. From this point onwards Kant
was no more free, no more in the position of purely,

48 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

investigating and observing what is present in conscious
ness; but he was guided by an assumption and pursued
a purpose — the purpose of finding what he assumed, in
order to add to the Transcendental ^Esthetic so happily
discovered a Transcendental Logic analogous to it, and
thus symmetrically corresponding to it, as a second storey.
Now for this purpose he hit upon the table of judgments,
out of which he constructed, as well as he could, the table
of categories, the doctrine of twelve pure a priori con
ceptions, which are supposed to be the conditions of our
thinking those very things the perception of which is con
ditioned by the two a priori forms of sensibility : thus
a pure understanding now corresponded symmetrically to
a pure sensibility. Then another consideration occurred
to him, which offered a means of increasing the plausi
bility of the thing, by the assumption of the schematism
of the pure conceptions of the understanding. But just
through this the way in which his procedure had, uncon
sciously indeed, originated betrayed itself most distinctly.
For because he aimed at finding something a priori
analogous to every empirical function of the faculty of
knowledge, he remarked that between our empirical per
ception and our empirical thinking, conducted in abstract
non-perceptible conceptions, a connection very frequently,
though not always, takes place, because every now and
then we try to go back from abstract thinking to percep
tion ; but try to do so merely in order really to convince
ourselves that our abstract thought has not strayed far
from the safe ground of perception, and perhaps become
exaggeration, or, it may be, mere empty talk ; much in the
same way as, when we are walking in the dark, we stretch
out our hand every now and then to the guiding wall.
We go back, then, to the perception only tentatively and
for the moment, by calling up in imagination a perception
corresponding to the conceptions which are occupying us
at the time — a perception which can yet never be quite
adequate to the conception, but is merely a temporary

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 49

representative of it. I have already adduced what is
needful on this point in my essay on the principle of
sufficient reason, § 28. Kant calls a fleeting phantasy
of this kind a schema, in opposition to the perfected
picture of the imagination. He says it is like a mono
gram of the imagination, and asserts that just as such
a schema stands midway between our abstract thinking
of empirically obtained conceptions, and our clear percep
tion which comes to us through the senses, so there are
a priori schemata of the pure conceptions of the under
standing between the faculty of perception a priori of
pure sensibility and the faculty of thinking a priori of
the pure understanding (thus the categories). These
schemata, as monograms of the pure imagination a priori,
he describes one by one, and assigns to each of them its
corresponding category, in the wonderful " Chapter on
the Schematism of the Pure Conceptions of the Under
standing," which is noted as exceedingly obscure, because
no man has ever been able to make anything out of it.
Its obscurity, however, vanishes if it is considered from
the point of view here indicated, but there also comes
out more clearly in it than anywhere else the intentional
nature of Kant's procedure, and of the determination
formed beforehand of finding what would correspond to
the analogy, and could assist the architectonic symmetry ;
indeed this is here the case to such a degree as to be
almost comical. For when he assumes schemata of the
pure (empty) a priori conceptions of the understanding
(categories) analogous to the empirical schemata (or re
presentatives through the fancy of our actual conceptions),
he overlooks the fact that the end of such schemata is here
entirely wanting. For the end of the schemata in the case
of empirical (real) thinking is entirely connected with
the material content of such conceptions. For since these
conceptions are drawn from empirical perception, we assist
and guide ourselves when engaged in abstract thinking
by now and then casting a momentary glance back at

VOL. II. 1>

50 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

the perception out of which the conceptions are framed, in
order to assure ourselves that our thought has still real
content. This, however, necessarily presupposes that the
conceptions which occupy us are sprung from perception,
and it is merely a glance back at their material content,
indeed a mere aid to our weakness. But in the case of
a priori conceptions which as yet have no content at all,
clearly this is necessarily omitted. For these conceptions
are not sprung from perception, but come to it from
within, in order to receive a content first from it. Thus
they have as yet nothing on which they could look back.
I speak fully upon this point, because it is just this that
throws light upon the secret origin of the Kantian philo
sophising, which accordingly consists in this, that Kant,
after the happy discovery of the two forms of intuition
or perception a priori, exerted himself, under the guidance
of the analogy, to prove that for every determination of
our empirical knowledge there is an a priori analogue,
and this finally extended, in the schemata, even to a mere
psychological fact. Here the apparent depth and the
difficulty of the exposition just serve to conceal from
the reader that its content remains a wholly undemon-
strable and merely arbitrary assumption. But he who
has penetrated at last to the meaning of such an ex
position is then easily induced to mistake this under
standing so painfully attained for a conviction of the
truth of the matter. If, on the contrary, Kant had kept
himself here as unprejudiced and purely observant as in
the discovery of a priori intuition or perception, he must
have found that what is added to the pure intuition or
perception of space and time, if an empirical perception
arises from it, is on the one hand the sensation, and on the
other hand the knowledge of causality, which changes the
mere sensation into objective empirical perception, but
just on this account is not first derived and learned from
sensation, but exists a priori, and is indeed the form and
function of the pure understanding. It is also, however,

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 51

its sole form and function, yet one so rich in results that
all our empirical knowledge rests upon it. If, as has
often been said, the refutation of an error is only complete
when the way it originated has been psychologically
demonstrated, I believe I have achieved this, with regard
to Kant's doctrine of the categories and their schemata,
in what I have said above.

After Kant had thus introduced such great errors into
the first simple outlines of a theory of the faculty of per
ception, he adopted a variety of very complicated assump
tions. To these belongs first of all the synthetic unity
of apperception : a very strange thing, very strangely
explained. "The / think must be able to accompany
all my ideas." Must — be able : this is a problem atic-
apodictic enunciation; in plain English, a proposition
which takes with one hand what it gives with the other.
And what is the meaning of this carefully balanced
.proposition ? That all knowledge of ideas is thinking ?
That is not the case : and it would be dreadful ; there
would then be nothing but abstract conceptions, or at any
rate a pure perception free from reflection and will, such
as that of the beautiful, the deepest comprehension of the
true nature of things, i.e., of their Platonic Ideas. And
besides, the brutes would then either think also, or else
they would not even have ideas. Or is the proposition
perhaps intended to mean: no object without a subject?
That would be very badly expressed by it, and would
come too late. If we collect Kant's utterances on the
subject, we shall find that what he understands by the
synthetic unity of apperception is, as it were, the exten-
sionless centre of the sphere of all our ideas, whose radii
converge to it. It is what I call the subject of knowing,
the correlative of all ideas, and it is also that which I have
fully described and explained in the 22d chapter of the
Supplements, as the focus in which the rays of the activity

52 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

of the brain converge. Therefore, to avoid repetition, I
now refer to that chapter.

That I reject the whole doctrine of the categories, and
reckon it among the groundless assumptions with which
Kant burdened the theory of knowledge, results from the
criticism given above ; and also from the proof of the con
tradictions in the Transcendental Logic, which had their
ground in the confusion of perception and abstract know
ledge ; also further from the proof of the want of a distinct
and definite conception of the nature of the understanding
and of the reason, instead of which we found in Kant's writ
ings only incoherent, inconsistent, insufficient, and incorrect
utterances with regard to these two faculties of the mind.
Finally, it results from the explanations which I myself
have given of these faculties of the mind in the first book
and its Supplements, and more fully in the essay on the
principle of sufficient reason, § 21, 26, and 34, — explana
tions which are very definite and distinct, which clearly
follow from the consideration of the nature of our know
ledge, and which completely agree with the conceptions
of those two faculties of knowledge that appear in the
language and writings of all ages and all nations, but
were not brought to distinctness. Their defence against
the very different exposition of Kant has, for the most
part, been given already along with the exposure of the
errors of that exposition. Since, however, the table of
judgments, which Kant makes the foundation of his theory
of thinking, and indeed of^his whole philosophy, has, in
itself, as a whole, its correctness, it is still incumbent upon
me to show how these universal forms of all judgment
arise in our faculty of knowledge, and to reconcile them
with my exposition of it. In this discussion I shall always-
attach to the concepts understanding and reason the sense
given them in my explanation, which I therefore assume-
the reader is familiar with.

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 53

An essential difference between Kant's method and that
which I follow lies in this, that he starts from indirect,
reflected knowledge, while I start from direct or intuitive
knowledge. He may be compared to a man who measures
the height of a tower by its shadow, while I am like him
who applies the measuring-rule directly to the tower
itself. Therefore, for him philosophy is a science of con
ceptions, but for me it is a science in conceptions, drawn
from knowledge of perception, the one source of all evi
dence, and comprehended and made permanent in general
conceptions. He passes over this whole world of perception
which surrounds us, so multifarious and rich in signi
ficance, and confines himself to the forms of abstract
thinking ; and, although he never expressly says so, this
procedure is founded on the assumption that reflection is
the ectype of all perception, that, therefore, all that is
essential in perception must be expressed in reflection,
and expressed in very contracted forms and outlines,
which are thus easily surveyed. According to this, what
is essential and conformable to law in abstract know
ledge would, as it were, place in our hands all the threads
by which the varied puppet-show of the world of per
ception is set in motion before our eyes. If Kant had
only distinctly expressed this first principle of his method,
and then followed it consistently, he would at least have
been obliged to separate clearly the intuitive from the
abstract, and we would not have had to contend with
inextricable contradictions and confusions. But from the
way in which he solves his problem we see that that
fundamental principle of his method was only very in
distinctly present to his mind, and thus we have still to
arrive at it by conjecture even after a thorough study of
his philosophy.

Now as concerns the specified method and fundamental
maxim itself, there is much to be said for it, and it is a
brilliant thought. The nature of all science indeed con
sists in this, that we comprehend the endless manifold of

54 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

perceptible phenomena under comparatively few abstract
conceptions, and out of these construct a system by means
of which we have all those phenomena completely in the
power of our knowledge, can explain the past and deter
mine the future. The sciences, however, divide the wide
sphere of phenomena among them according to the special
and manifold classes of the latter. Now it was a bold
and happy thought to isolate what is absolutely essential
to the conceptions as such and apart from their content, in
order to discover from these forms of all thought found in
this way what is essential to all intuitive knowledge also,
and consequently to the world as phenomenon in general ;
and because this would be found a priori on account of
the necessity of those forms of thought, it would be of
subjective origin, and would just lead to the ends Kant
had in view. Here, however, before going further, the
relation of reflection to knowledge of perception ought
to have been investigated (which certainly presupposes
the clear separation of the two, which was neglected by
Kant). He ought to have inquired in what way the
former really repeats and represents the latter, whether
quite pure, or changed and to some extent disguised by
being taken up into its special forms (forms of reflection) ;
whether the form of abstract reflective knowledge becomes
more determined through the form of knowledge of percep
tion, or through the nature or constitution which unalter
ably belongs to itself, i.e., to reflective knowledge, so that
even what is very heterogeneous in intuitive knowledge can
no longer be distinguished when it has entered reflective
knowledge, and conversely many distinctions of which we
are conscious in the reflective method of knowledge have
also sprung from this knowledge itself, and by no means
point to corresponding differences in intuitive knowledge.
As the result of this investigation, however, it would have
appeared that knowledge of perception suffers very nearly
as much change when it is taken up into reflection as
food when it is taken into the animal organism whose

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 55

forms and compounds are determined by itself, so that the
nature of the food can no longer be recognised from the
result they produce. Or (for this is going a little too far)
at least it would have appeared that reflection is by no
means related to knowledge of perception as the reflection
in water is related to the reflected objects, but scarcely
even as the mere shadow of these objects stands to the
objects themselves ; which shadow repeats only a few
external outlines, but also unites the most manifold in
the same form and presents the most diverse through the
same outline ; so that it is by no means possible, starting
from it, to construe the forms of things with completeness
and certainty.

The whole of reflective knowledge, or the reason, has
only one chief form, and that is the abstract conception. It
is proper to the reason itself, and has no direct necessary
connection with the world of perception, which therefore
exists for the brutes entirely without conceptions, and in
deed, even if it were quite another world from what it is,
that form of reflection would suit it just as well. But
the combination of conceptions for the purpose of judging
has certain definite and normal forms, which have been
found by induction, and constitute the table of judgments.
These forms are for the most part deducible from the
nature of reflective knowledge itself, thus directly from
the reason, because they spring from the four laws of
thought (called by me metalogical truths) and the dictum
de omni et nullo. Certain others of these forms, however,
have their ground in the nature of knowledge of percep
tion, thus in the understanding ; yet they by no means
point to a like number of special forms of the under
standing, but can all be fully deduced from the sole
function which the understanding has — the direct know
ledge of cause and effect. Lastly, still others of these
forms have sprung from the concurrence and combination
of the reflective and intuitive modes of knowledge, or
more properly from the assumption of the latter into the

56 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

former. I shall now go through the moments of the
judgment one by one, and point out the origin of each of
them in the sources referred to ; and from this it follows
of itself that a deduction of categories from them is want
ing, and the assumption of this is just as groundless as
its exposition was found to be entangled and self- con
flicting.

i. The so-called Quantity of judgments springs from the
nature of concepts as such. It thus has its ground in the
reason alone, and has absolutely no direct connection with
the understanding and with knowledge of perception. It
is indeed, as is explained at length in the first book,
essential to concepts, as such, that they should have an
extent, a sphere, and the wider, less determined concept
includes the narrower and more determined. The latter
can therefore be separated from the former, and this may
happen in two ways, — either the narrower concept may
be indicated as an indefinite part of the wider concept in
general, or it may be defined and completely separated by
means of the addition of a special name. The judgment
which carries out this operation is in the first case called
a particular, and in the second case an universal judg
ment. For example, one and the same part of the sphere
of the concept tree may be isolated through a particular
and through an universal judgment, thus — " Some trees
bear gall-nuts," or "All oaks bear gall-nuts." One sees
that the difference of the two operations is very slight ;
indeed, that the possibility of it depends upon the rich
ness of the language. Nevertheless, Kant has explained
this difference as disclosing two fundamentally different
actions, functions, categories of the pure understanding,
which determines experience a priori through them.

Finally, a concept may also be used in order to arrive
by means of it at a definite particular idea of perception,
from which, as well as from many others, this concept
itself is drawn; this happens in the singular judgment.
Such a judgment merely indicates the boundary -line

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 57

between abstract knowledge and knowledge of perception,
and passes directly to the latter, "This tree here bears
gall-nuts." Kant has made of this also a special cate
gory.

After all that has been said there is no need of further
polemic here.

2. In the same way the Quality of the judgment lies
entirely within the province of reason, and is not an
adumbration of any law of that understanding which
makes perception possible, i.e., it does not point to it.
The nature of abstract concepts, which is just the nature
of the reason itself objectively comprehended, carries with
it the possibility of uniting and separating their spheres,
as was already explained in the first book, and upon this
possibility, as their presupposition, rest the universal laws
of thought of identity and contradiction, to which I have
given the name of mctalogical truths, because they spring
purely from the reason, and cannot be further explained.
They determine that what is united must remain united,
and what is separated must remain separate, thus that
what is established cannot at the same time be also
abolished, and thus they presuppose the possibility of the
combination and separation of spheres, i.e., of judgment.
This, however, lies, according to its form, simply and
solely in the reason, and this form has not, like the content
of th^e judgments, been brought over from the perceptible
knowledge of the understanding, and therefore there is no
correlative or analogue of it to be looked for there. After
the perception has been brought about through the under
standing and for the understanding, it exists complete,
subject to no doubt nor error, and therefore knows neither
assertion nor denial ; for it expresses itself, and has not,
like the abstract knowledge of the reason, its value and
content in its mere relation to something outside of it,
according to the principle of the ground of knowing. It
is, therefore, pure reality; all negation is foreign to its
nature, can only be added on through reflection, and just

58 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

on this account remains always in the province of abstract
thought.

To the affirmative and negative Kant adds the infinite
judgment, making use of a crotchet of the old scholastics,
an ingeniously invented stop-gap, which does not even
require to be explained, a blind window, such as many
others he made for the sake of his architectonic sym
metry.

3. Under the very wide conception of Relation Kant has
brought three entirely different properties of judgments,
which we must, therefore, examine singly, in order to
recognise their origin.

(a.) The hypothetical judgment in general is the abstract
expression of that most universal form of all our know
ledge, the principle of sufficient reason. In my essay on
this principle, I already showed in 1813 that it has four
entirely different meanings, and in each of these originally
originates in a different faculty of knowledge, and also
concerns a different class of ideas. It clearly follows from
this, that the source of the hypothetical judgment in
general, of that universal form of thought, cannot be, as
Kant wishes to make it, merely the understanding and its
category of causality ; but that the law of causality which,
according to my exposition, is the one form of knowledge
of the pure understanding, is only one of the forms of that
principle which embraces all pure or a priori knowledge —
the principle of sufficient reason — which, on the other hand,
in each of its meanings has this hypothetical form of judg
ment as its expression. We see here, however, very dis
tinctly how kinds of knowledge which are quite different
in their origin and significance yet appear, if thought in
abstracto by the reason, in one and the same form of com
bination of concepts and judgments, and then in this form
can no longer be distinguished, but, in order to distinguish
them, we must go back to knowledge of perception, leaving
abstract knowledge altogether. Therefore the path which
was followed by Kant, starting from the point of view of

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 59

abstract knowledge, to find the elements and the inmost
spring of intuitive knowledge also, was quite a wrong one.
For the rest, my whole introductory essay on the principle
of sufficient reason is, to a certain extent, to be regarded
merely as a thorough exposition of the significance of the
hypothetical form of judgment ; therefore I do not dwell
upon it longer here.

(I.) The form of the categorical judgment is nothing but
the form of judgment in general, in its strictest sense.
Tor, strictly speaking, judging merely means thinking,
the combination of, or the impossibility of combining, the
spheres of the concepts. Therefore the hypothetical and
the disjunctive combination are properly no special forms
of the judgment; for they are only applied to already
completed judgments, in which the combination of the
concepts remains unchanged the categorical. But they
again connect these judgments, for the hypothetical form
expresses their dependence upon each other, and the dis
junctive their incompatibility. Mere concepts, however,
have only one class of relations to each other, those which
are expressed in the categorical judgment. The fuller
determination, or the sub-species of this relation, are
the intersection and the complete separateness of the
concept-spheres, i.e., thus affirmation and negation ; out of
which Kant has made special categories, under quite a
different title, that of quality. Intersection and separate-
ness have again sub-species, according as the spheres
He within each other entirely, or only in part, a deter
mination which constitutes the quantity of the judg
ments ; out of which Kant has again made a quite special
class of categories. Thus he separates what is very closely
related, and even identical, the easily surveyed modifica
tions of the one possible relation of mere concepts to each
other, and, on the other hand, unites what is very different
under this title of relation.

Categorical judgments have as their metalogical prin
ciple the laws of thought of identity and contradiction.

60 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

But the ground of the connection of the concept-spheres
which gives truth to the judgment, which is nothing but
this connection, may be of very different kinds; and,
according to this, the truth of the judgment is either
logical, or empirical, or metaphysical, or metalogical, as
is explained in the introductory essay. § 30-33, and does
not require to be repeated here. But it is apparent from
this how very various the direct cognitions may be, all
of which exhibit themselves in the abstract, through the
combination of the spheres of two concepts, as subject and
predicate, and that we can by no means set up the sole
function of the understanding as corresponding to them
and producing them. For example, the judgments, "Water
boils, the sine measures the angle, the will resolves, busi
ness distracts, distinction is difficult," express through the
same logical form the most different kinds of relations ;
but from this we obtain the right, however irregular the
beginning may be, of placing ourselves at the standpoint
of abstract knowledge to analyse direct intuitive know
ledge. For the rest, the categorical judgment springs
from knowledge of the understanding proper, in my sense,
only when causation is expressed by it ; this is, however,
the case in all judgments which refer to a physical quality.
For if I say, " This body is heavy, hard, fluid, green, sour,
alkaline, organic, &c., &c.," this always refers to its effect,
and thus is knowledge which is only possible through the
pure understanding. Now, after this, like much which is
quite different from it (for example, the subordination of
very abstract concepts), has been expressed in the abstract
through subject and predicate, these mere relations of
concepts have been transferred back to knowledge of per
ception, and it has been supposed that the subject and
predicate of the judgment must have a peculiar and special
correlative in perception, substance and accident. But I
shall show clearly further on that the conception substance
has no other true content than that of the conception
matter. Accidents, however, are quite ^ synonymous with

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 61

kinds of effects, so that the supposed knowledge of sub
stance and accident is never anything more than the
knowledge of cause and effect by the understanding. But
the special manner in which the idea of matter arises is
explained partly in § 4 of the first book, and still more
clearly in the essay on the principle of sufficient reason
at the end of § 21, p. 77 (3d ed., p. 82), and in some
respects we shall see it still more closely when we in
vestigate the principle of the permanence of substance.

(c.) Disjunctive judgments spring from the law of
thought of excluded third, which is a metalogical truth ;
they are, therefore, entirely the property of the reason,
and have not their origin in the understanding. The
deduction of the category of community or reciprocity
from them is, however, a glaring example of the violence
which Kant sometimes allowed to be done to truth,
merely in order to satisfy his love of architectonic sym
metry. The illegitimacy of that deduction has already
often been justly condemned and proved upon various
grounds, especially by G. E. Schulze in his " Kritik der
theoretischen Philosophic" and by Berg in his " Epikritik
der Philosophic." What real analogy is there, indeed,
between the problematical determination of a concept by
disjunctive predicates and the thought of reciprocity?
The two are indeed absolutely opposed, for in the dis
junctive judgment the actual affirmation of one of the two
alternative propositions is also necessarily the negation of
the other ; if, on the other hand, we think two things in
the relation of reciprocity, the affirmation of one is also
necessarily the affirmation of the other, and vice versa.
Therefore, unquestionably, the real logical analogue of
reciprocity is the vicious circle, for in it, as nominally in
the case of reciprocity, what is proved is also the proof,
and conversely. And just as logic rejects the vicious
circle, so the conception of reciprocity ought to be ban
ished from metaphysics. For I now intend, quite seri
ously, to prove that there is no reciprocity in the strict

62 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

sense, and this conception, which people are so fond of
using, just on account of the indefiniteness of the thought,
is seen, if more closely considered, to be empty, false,
and invalid. First of all, the reader must call to mind
what causality really is, and to assist my exposition, see
upon this subject § 20 of the introductory essay, also my
prize-essay on the freedom of the will, chap. iii. p. 27 scq.,
and lastly the fourth chapter of the second book of this
work. Causality is the law according to which the con
ditions or states of matter which appear determine their
position in time. Causality has to do merely with con
ditions or states, indeed, properly, only with changes, and
neither with matter as such, nor with permanence with
out change. Matter, as such, does not come under the
law of causality, for it neither comes into being nor
passes away; thus neither does the whole thing, as we
commonly express ourselves, come under this law, but
only the conditions or states of matter. Further, the law
of causality has nothing to do with permanence, for where
nothing changes there is no producing of effects and no
causality, but a continuing quiet condition or state. But
if, now, such a state is changed, then the new state is
either again permanent or it is not, but immediately intro
duces a third state, and the necessity with which this
happens is just the law of causality, which is a form of
the principle of sufficient reason, and therefore cannot
be further explained, because the principle of sufficient
reason is the principle of all explanation and of all neces
sity. From this it is clear that cause and effect stand in
intimate connection with, and necessary relation to, the
course of time. Only because the state A. precedes in
time the state B., and their succession is necessary and
not accidental, i.e., no mere sequence but a consequence —
only because of this is the state A. cause and the state B.
effect. The conception reciprocity, however, contains this,
that both are cause and both are effect of each other; but
this really amounts to saying that each of the two is the

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 63

earlier and also the later ; thus it is an absurdity. For
that both states are simultaneous, and indeed necessarily
simultaneous, cannot be admitted ; because, as necessarily
belonging to each other and existing at the same time,
they constitute only one state. For the permanence of
this state there is. certainly required the continued exis
tence of all its determinations, but we are then no longer
concerned with change and causality, but with duration
and rest, and nothing further is said than that if one
determination of the whole state be changed, the new
state which then appears cannot continue, but becomes
the cause of the change of all the other determinations of
the first state, so that a new third state appears ; which
all happens merely in accordance with the simple law of
causality, and does not establish a new law, that of reci
procity.

I also definitely assert that the conception reciprocity
cannot be supported by a single example. Everything
that one seeks to pass off as such is either a state of rest,
to which the conception of causality, which has only sig
nificance with reference to changes, finds no application
at all, or else it is an alternating succession of states
of the same name which condition each other, for the
explanation of which simple causality is quite sufficient.
An example of the first class is afforded by a pair of
scales brought to rest by equal weights. Here there is
no effect produced, for there is no change; it is a state
of rest; gravity acts, equally divided, as in every body
which is supported at its centre of gravity, but it cannot
show its force by any effect. That the taking away of
one weight produces a second state, which at once be
comes the cause of the third, the sinking of the other
scale, happens according to the simple law of cause and
effect, and requires no special category of the under
standing, and not even a special name. An example of
the second class is the continuous burning of a fire. The
combination of oxygen with the combustible body is the

64 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

cause of heat, and heat, again, is the cause of the renewed
occurrence of the chemical combination. But this is
nothing more than a chain of causes and effects, the links
of which have alternately the same name. The burning,
A., produces free heat, B., this produces new burning, C.
(i.e., a new effect which has the same name as the cause
A., but is not individually identical with it), this pro
duces new heat, D. (which is not really identical with
the effect B., but only according to the concept, i.e., it has
the same name), and so on indefinitely. A good example
of what in ordinary life is called reciprocity is afforded
by a theory about deserts given by Humboldt (Ansichten
dcr Natur, 2d ed., vol. ii. p. 79). In the sandy deserts
it does not rain, but it rains upon the wooded mountains
surrounding them. The cause is not the attraction of the
clouds by the mountains ; but it is the column of heated
air rising from the sandy plain which prevents the par
ticles of vapour from condensing, and drives the clouds
high into the heavens. On the mountains the perpen
dicular rising stream of air is weaker, the clouds descend,
and the rainfall ensues in the cooler air. Thus, want of
rain and the absence of plants in the desert stand in the
relation of reciprocity ; it does not rain because the heated
sand-plain sends out more heat ; the desert does not be
come a steppe or prairie because it does not rain. But
clearly we have here again, as in the example given
above, only a succession of causes and effects -of the same
names, and throughout nothing essentially different from
simple causality. This is also the case with the swinging
of the pendulum, and indeed also with the self-conserva
tion of the organised body, in which case likewise every
state introduces a new one, which is of the same kind as
that by which it was itself brought about, but indivi
dually is new. Only here the matter is complicated,
because the chain no longer consists of links of two
kinds, but of many kinds, so that a link of the same name
only recurs after several others have intervened. Bui we

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 65

always see before us only an application of the single
and simple law of causality which gives the rule to the
sequence of states, but never anything which must be
comprehended by means of a new and special function
of the understanding.

Or is it perhaps advanced in support of the conception
of reciprocity that action and reaction are equal ? But the
reason of this is what I urge so strongly and have fully
explained in the essay on the principle of sufficient reason,
that the cause and the effect are not two bodies, but two
successive states of bodies, consequently each of the two
states implicates all bodies concerned ; thus the effect, i.e.,
the newly appearing state, for example, in the case of an
impulse, extends to both bodies in the same proportion ;
therefore the body impelled produces just as great a
change in the body impelling as it itself sustains (each
in proportion to its mass and velocity). If one pleases to
call this reciprocity, then absolutely every effect is a
reciprocal effect, and no new conception is introduced on
this account, still less does it require a new function of
the understanding, but we only have a superfluous synonym
for causality. But Kant himself, in a moment of thought
lessness, exactly expressed this view in the " Metaphysical
First Principles of Natural Science," at the beginning of the
proof of the fourth principle of mechanics : " All external
effect in the world is reciprocal effect." How then should
different functions lie a priori in the understanding for
simple causality and for reciprocity, and, indeed, how
should the real succession of things only be possible and
knowable by means of the first, and their co-existence by
means of the second ? According to this, if all effect is
reciprocal effect, succession and simultaneity would be the
same thing, and therefore everything in the world would
take place at the same moment. If there were true
reciprocity, then perpetual motion would also be possible,
and indeed a priori certain ; but it is rather the case that
the a priori conviction that there is no true reciprocity,
VOL. ir. E

66 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

and no corresponding form of the understanding, is
the ground of the assertion that perpetual motion is
impossible.

Aristotle also denies reciprocity in the strict sense ; for
lie remarks that two things may certainly be reciprocal
causes of each other, but only if this is understood in a
different sense of each of them; for example, that one
acts upon the other as the motive, but the latter acts
iipon the former as the cause of its movement. We find
in two passages the same words : Physic., lib. ii. c. 3, and
Metaph., lib. v. c. 2. Eari Se rtva tcai aXX^Xcyy atria' olov
TO Troveiv ainov XT;? eye^ta?, teat avrr) TOV iroveiv aXX' ov
TOV aurov rpoirov, aXXa TO fjbev &>? TeXo?, TO Se &>? ap%Tj
Kivrja-ecos. (Sunt prceterea qucc sibi sunt mutuo causes, ut
exercitium bonce lidbitudinis, et hccc exercitii : at non eodem
modo, sed hcec ut finis, aliud ut principium motus.) If,
besides this, he had accepted a reciprocity proper, he
would have introduced it here, for in both passages he is
concerned with enumerating all the possible kinds of
causes. In the Analyt. post., lib. ii. c. 1 1, he speaks of a
circle of causes and effects, but not of reciprocity.

4. The categories of Modality have this advantage over
all others, that what is expressed through each of them
really corresponds to the form of judgment from which it
is derived; which with the other categories is scarcely
ever the case, because for the most part they are deduced
from the forms of judgment with the most capricious
violence.

Thus that it is the conceptions of the possible, the actual,
and the necessary which occasion the problematic, asserta-
tory, and apodictic forms of judgment, is perfectly true ;
but that those conceptions are special, original forms of
knowledge of the understanding which cannot be further
deduced is not true. On the contrary, they spring from
the single original form of all knowledge, which is, there
fore, known to us a priori, the principle of sufficient rea
son; and indeed out of this the knowledge of necessity

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 67

springs directly. On the other hand, it is only because
reflection is applied to this that the conceptions of con
tingency, possibility, impossibility, and actuality arise.
Therefore all these do not by any means spring from one
faculty of the mind, the understanding, but arise through
the conflict of abstract and intuitive knowledge, as will be
seen directly.

I hold that to be necessary and to be the consequent
of a given reason are absolutely interchangeable notions,
and completely identical. We can never know, nor even
think, anything as necessary, except so far as \ve regard
it as the consequent of a given reason ; and the concep
tion of necessity contains absolutely nothing more than
this dependence, this being established through something
else, and this inevitable following from it. Thus it arises
and exists simply and solely [through the application of
the principle of sufficient reason. Therefore, there is,
according to the different forms of this principle, a physical
necessity (the effect from the cause), a logical (through the
ground of knowing, in analytical judgments, syllogisms,
Ac.), a mathematical (according to the ground of being in
time and space), and finally a practical necessity, by which
we intend to signify not determination through a pre
tended categorical imperative, but the necessary occurrence
of an action according to the motives presented, in the
case of a given empirical character. But everything
necessary is only so relatively, that is, under the pre
supposition of the reason from which it follows; there
fore absolute necessity is a contradiction. With regard
to the rest, I refer to § 49 of the essay on the principle
of sufficient reason.

The contradictory opposite, i.e., the denial of necessity,
is contingency. The content of this conception is, therefore,
negative — nothing more than this : absence of the con
nection expressed by the principle of sufficient reason.
Consequently the contingent is also always merely rela
tive. It is contingent in relation to something which is

68 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

not its reason. Every object, of whatever kind it may be
— for example, every event in the actual world — is always
at once necessary and contingent ; necessary in relation to
the one condition which is its cause : contingent in relation
to everything else. For its contact in time and space
with everything else is a mere coincidence without neces
sary connection : hence also the words chance, crvfj.Trrco/jLa,
contingens. Therefore an absolute contingency is just as
inconceivable as an absolute necessity. For the former
would be simply an object which stood to no other in the
relation of consequent to its reason. But the incon
ceivability of such a thing is just the content of the
principle of sufficient reason negatively expressed, and
therefore this principle must first be upset before we can
think an absolute contingency; and even then it itself
would have lost all significance, for the conception of con
tingency has meaning only in relation to that principle,
and signifies that two objects do not stand to each other
in the relation of reason and consequent.

In nature, which consists of ideas of perception, every
thing that happens is necessary ; for it proceeds from its
cause. If, however, we consider this individual with re
ference to everything else which is not its cause, we
know it as contingent ; but this is already an abstract
reflection. Now, further, let us abstract entirely from a
natural object its causal relation to everything else, thus
its necessity and its contingency ; then this kind of know
ledge comprehends the conception of the actual, in which
one only considers the effect, without looking for the cause,,
in relation to which one would otherwise have to call it
necessary, and in relation to everything else contingent.
All this rests ultimately upon the fact that the modality
of the judgment does not indicate so much the objective
nature of things as the relation of our knowledge to them.
Since, however, in nature everything proceeds from a
cause, everything actual is also necessary, yet only so far
as it is at this time, in this place; for only so far does

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 69

determination by the law of causality extend. Let us
leave, however, concrete nature and pass over to abstract
thinking; then we can present to ourselves in reflection
all the natural laws which are known to us partly a
priori, partly only a posteriori, and this abstract idea
contains all that is in nature at any time, in any place,
but with abstraction from every definite time and place ;
and just in this way, through such reflection, we have
entered the wide kingdom of the, possible. But what finds
no place even here is the impossible. It is clear that
possibility and impossibility exist only for reflection, for
abstract knowledge of the reason, not for knowledge of
perception ; although it is the pure forms of perception
which supply the reason with the determination of the
possible and impossible. According as the laws of nature,
from which we start in the thought of the possible and
impossible, are known a priori or a posteriori, is the pos
sibility or impossibility metaphysical or physical.

From this exposition, which requires no proof because
it rests directly upon the knowledge of the principle of
sufficient reason and upon the development of the concep
tions of the necessary, the actual, and the possible, it is
sufficiently evident how entirely groundless is Kant's
assumption of three special functions of the understanding
for these three conceptions, and that here again he has
allowed himself to be disturbed by no reflection in the
carrying out of his architectonic symmetry.

To this, however, we have to add the other great mistake,
that, certainly according to the procedure of earlier philo
sophy, he has confounded the conceptions of necessity and
contingency with each other. That earlier philosophy
lias applied abstraction to the following mistaken use. It
was clear that that of which the reason is given inevitably
follows, i.e., cannot not be, and thus necessarily is. But
that philosophy held to this last determination alone, and
said that is necessary which cannot be otherwise, or the
opposite of which is impossible. It left, however, the

70 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

ground and root of such necessity out of account, over
looked the relativity of all necessity which follows from
it, and thereby made the quite unthinkable fiction of an
absolute necessity, i.e., of something the existence of which
would be as inevitable as the consequent of a reason, but
which yet was not the consequent of a reason, and
therefore depended upon nothing; an addition which is
an absurd petitio, for it conflicts with the principle of
sufficient reason. Now, starting from this fiction, it ex
plained, in diametrical opposition to the truth, all that
is established by a reason as contingent, because it looked
at the relative nature of its necessity and compared this
with that entirely imaginary absolute necessity, which
is self-contradictory in its conception.1 Now Kant ad
heres to this fundamentally perverse definition of the
contingent and gives it as explanation. (Critique of Pure
Eeason, V. p. 289-291 ; 243. V. 301 ; 419. V. 447, 486,
488.) He falls indeed into the most evident contra
diction with himself upon this point, for on p. 301 he
says : " Everything contingent has a cause," and adds,
" That is contingent which might possibly not be." But
whatever has a cause cannot possibly not be : thus it is
necessary. For the rest, the source of the whole of this
false explanation of the necessary and the contingent is
to be found in Aristotle in "De Generatione et Corrupt-zone,"
lib. ii. c. 9 et n, where the necessary is explained as
that which cannot possibly not be : there stands in opposi-

1 Cf. Christian Wolf's "Vcrniin- matical truths. The reason he as-

ftige Gcdanken von Gott, Welt und signs for this is, that only the law

Seele" § 577~579- It is strange of causality gives infinite series,

that he only explains as contingent while the other kinds of grounds

what is necessary according to the give only finite series. Yet this is

principle of sufficient reason of be- by no means the case with the forms

coming, i.e., what takes place from of the principle of sufficient reason

causes, and on the contrary recog- in pure space and time, but only

nises as necessary that which is so holds good of the logical ground of

according to the other forms of the knowledge ; but he held mathe-

principle of sufficient reason ; for matical necessity to be such also,

example, what follows from the Compare the essay on the principle

essentia (definition), thus analytical of sufficient reason, § 50.
judgments, and further also mathe-

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 71

tion to it that which caiinot possibly be, and between these
two lies that which can both be and not be, — thus that
which comes into being and passes away, and this would
then be the contingent. In accordance with what has
been said above, it is clear that this explanation, like so
many of Aristotle's, has resulted from sticking to abstract
conceptions without going back to the concrete and per
ceptible, in which, however, the source of all abstract
conceptions lies, and by which therefore they must al
ways be controlled. " Something which cannot possibly
not be " can certainly be thought in the abstract, but if
we go with it to the concrete, the real, the perceptible
we find nothing to support the thought, even as possible,
— as even merely the asserted consequent of a given
reason, whose necessity is yet relative and conditioned.

I take this opportunity of adding a few further remarks
on these conceptions of modality. Since all necessity
rests upon the principle of sufficient reason, and is on this
account relative, all apodictic judgments are originally,
and according to their ultimate significance, hypothetical.
They become categorical only through the addition of an
assertatory minor, thus in the conclusion. If this minor is
still undecided, and this indecision is expressed, this gives
the problematical judgment.

What in general (as a rule) is apodictic (a law of nature),
is in reference to a particular case only problematical,
because the condition must actually appear which brings
the case under the rule. And conversely, what in the
particular as such is necessary (apodictic) (every particular
change necessary through the cause), is again in general,
and predicated universally, only problematical ; because
the causes which appear only concern the particular case,
and the apodictic, always hypothetical judgment, always
expresses merely the general law, not the particular case
directly. All this has its ground in the fact that possi
bility exists only in the province of reflection and for the
reason ; the actual, in the province of perception and for

72 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

the understanding ; the necessary, for both. Indeed, the
distinction between necessary, actual, and possible really
exists only in the abstract and according to the concep
tion ; in the real world, on the other hand, all three fall
into one. For all that happens, happens necessarily, be
cause it happens from causes ; but these themselves have
again causes, so that the whole of the events of the world,
great and small, are a strict concatenation of necessary
occurrences. Accordingly everything actual is also neces
sary, and in the real world there is no difference between
actuality and necessity, and in the same way no difference
between actuality and possibility ; for what has not hap
pened, i.e., has not become actual, was also not possible,
because the causes without which it could never appear
ha.ve not themselves appeared, nor could appear, in the
great concatenation of causes ; thus it was an impossibility.
Every event is therefore either necessary or impossible.
All this holds good only of the empirically real world,
i.e., the complex of individual things, thus of the whole
particular as such. If, on the other hand, we consider
things generally, comprehending them in abstracto, neces
sity, actuality, and possibility are again separated; we
then know everything which is in accordance with the a
priori laws which belong to our intellect as possible in
general ; that which corresponds to the empirical laws of
nature as possible in this world, even if it has never become
actual; thus we distinguish clearly the possible from the
actual. The actual is in itself always also necessary, but
is only comprehended as such by him who knows its cause ;
regarded apart from this, it is and is called contingent.
This consideration also gives us the key to that contentio
irept, Swarwu between the Megaric Diodorus and Chry-
sippus the Stoic which Cicero refers to in his book De
Fato. Diodorus says : " Only what becomes actual was
possible, and all that is actual is also necessary." Chry-
sippus on the other hand says: "Much that is possible
never becomes actual; for only the necessary becomes

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 73

actual." We may explain this thus : Actuality is the
conclusion of a syllogism to which possibility gives the
premises. But for this is required not only the major but
also the minor; only the two give complete possibility.
The major gives a merely theoretical, general possibility
in abstracto, but this of itself does not make anything
possible, i.e., capable of becoming actual. For this the
minor also is needed, which gives the possibility for the
particular case, because it brings it under the rule, and
thereby it becomes at once actual. For example :

MaJ. All houses (consequently also my house) can be
destroyed by fire.

Min. My house is on fire.

Concl. My house is being destroyed by fire.

For every general proposition, thus every major, always
determines things with reference to actuality only under
a presupposition, therefore hypothetically ; for example,
the capability of being burnt down has as a presupposition
the catching fire. This presupposition is produced in the
minor. The major always loads the cannon, but only if
the minor brings the match does the shot, i.e., the con
clusion, follow. This holds good throughout of the rela
tion of possibility to actuality. Since now the conclusion,
which is the assertion of actuality, always follows neces
sarily, it is evident from this that all that is actual is
also necessary, which can also be seen from the fact that
necessity only means being the consequent of a given
reason : this is in the case of the actual a cause : thus
everything actual is necessary. Accordingly, we see here
the conceptions of the possible, the actual, and the neces
sary unite, and not merely the last presuppose the first,
but also the converse. What keeps them apart is the limi
tation of our intellect through the form of time ; for time is
the mediator between possibility and actuality. The neces
sity of the particular event may be fully seen from the
knowledge of all its causes ; but the concurrence of the
whole of these different and independent causes seems to

74 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

us contingent ; indeed their independence of each other is
just the conception of contingency. Since, however, each
of them was the necessary effect of its causes, the chain of
which has no beginning, it is evident that contingency is
merely a subjective phenomenon, arising from the limita
tion of the horizon of our understanding, and just as sub
jective as the optical horizon at which the heavens touch
the earth.

Since necessity is the same thing as following from
given grounds, it must appear in a special way in the case
of every form of the principle of sufficient reason, and also
have its opposite in the possibility and impossibility which
always arises only through the application of the abstract
reflection of the reason to the object. Therefore the
four kinds of necessity mentioned above stand opposed to
as many kinds of impossibility, physical, logical, mathe
matical, and practical. It may further be remarked that
if one remains entirely within the province of abstract
concepts, possibility is always connected with the more
general, and necessity with the more limited concept ; for
example, " An animal may be a bird, a fish, an amphibious
creature, &c." " A nightingale must be a bird, a bird must
be an animal, an animal must be an organism, an organism
must be a body." This is because logical necessity, the
expression of which is the syllogism, proceeds from the
general to the particular, and never conversely. In the
concrete world of nature (ideas of the first class), on the
contrary, everything is really necessary through the law of
causality ; only added reflection can conceive it as also con
tingent, comparing it with that which is not its cause, and
also as merely and purely actual, by disregarding all causal
connection. Only in this class of ideas does the concep
tion of the actual properly occur, as is also shown by the
derivation of the word from the conception of causality.
In the third class of ideas, that of pure mathematical per
ception or intuition, if we confine ourselves strictly to it,
there is only necessity. Possibility occurs here also only

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 75

through relation to the concepts of reflection : for example,
" A triangle may be right-angled, obtuse-angled, or equi
angular ; its three angles must be equal to two right-angles."
Thus here we only arrive at the possible through the tran
sition from the perceptible to the abstract.

After this exposition, which presupposes the recollec
tion of what was said both in the essay on the principle
of sufficient reason and in the first book of the present
work, there will, it is hoped, be no further doubt as to
the true and very heterogeneous source of those forms
which the table of judgments lays before us, nor as to the
inadmissibility and utter groundlessness of the assump
tion of twelve special functions of the understanding for
the explanation of them. The latter point is also sup
ported by a number of special circumstances very easily
noted. Thus, for example, it requires great love of sym
metry and much trust in a clue derived from it, to lead
one to assume that an affirmative, a categorical, and an
assertatory judgment are three such different things that
they justify the assumption of an entirely special function
of the understanding for each of them.

Kant himself betrays his consciousness of the unten
able nature of his doctrine of the categories by the fact
that in the third chapter of the Analytic of Principles
(phenomena et noumena) several long passages of the first
edition (p. 241, 242, 244-246, 248-253) are omitted in
the second — passages which displayed the weakness of that
doctrine too openly. So, for example, he says there (p.
241) that he has not denned the individual categories,
because he could not define them even if he had wished
to do so, inasmuch as they were susceptible of no defini
tion. In saying this he forgot that at p. 82 of the same
first edition he had said : " I purposely dispense with the
definition of the categories although I may be in possession
of it." This then was, sit venia verbo, wind. But this
last passage he has allowed to stand. And so all those
passages wisely omitted afterwards betray the fact that

76 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

nothing distinct can be thought in connection with the
categories, and this whole doctrine stands upon a weak
foundation.

This table of the categories is now made the guiding
clue according to which every metaphysical, and indeed
every scientific inquiry is to be conducted (Prolegomena,
§ 39). And, in fact, it is not only the foundation of the
whole Kantian philosophy and the type according to which
its symmetry is everywhere carried out, as I have already
shown above, but it has also really become the procrustean
bed into which Kant forces every possible inquiry, by
means of a violence which I shall now consider somewhat
more closely. But with such an opportunity what must
not the imitatores servumpecus have done ! We have seen.
That violence then is applied in this way. The meaning
of the expressions denoted by the titles, forms of judgment
and categories, is entirely set aside and forgotten, and the
expressions alone are retained. These have their source
partly in Aristotle's Analyt. priora, i. 23 (irepi TrotoT^ro?
Kai TTOCTOT^TO? T(av Tov av\\ojtcr/j,ov opwv '. de qualitatc
ct quantitate terminorum syllogismi), but are arbitrarily
chosen ; for the extent of the concepts might certainly have
been otherwise expressed than through the word quantity,
though this word is more suited to its object than the
rest of the titles of the categories. Even the word quality
has obviously been chosen on account of the custom of
opposing quality to quantity ; for the name quality is
certainly taken arbitrarily enough for affirmation and
negation. But now in every inquiry instituted by Kant,
every quantity in time and space, and every possible
quality of things, physical, moral, &c., is brought by him
under those category titles, although between these things
and those titles of the forms of judgment and of thought
there is absolutely nothing in common except the acci
dental and arbitrary nomenclature. It is needful to keep
in mind all the respect which in other regards is due to
Kant to enable one to refrain from expressing in hard

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 77

terms one's repugnance to this procedure. The nearest
example is afforded us at once by the pure physiological
table of the general principles of natural science. What
in all the world has the quantity of judgments to do with
the fact that every perception has nn extensive magni
tude ? What has the quality of judgments to do with
the fact that every sensation has a degree ? The former
rests rather on the fact that space is the form of our
external perception, and the latter is nothing more than
an empirical, and, moreover, entirely subjective feeling,
drawn merely from the consideration of the nature of our
organs of sense. Further, in the table which gives the
basis of rational psychology (Critique of Pure Eeason,
p. 344 ; V. 402), the simplicity of the soul is cited under
quality ; but this is just a quantitative property, and has
absolutely no relation to the affirmation or negation in
the judgment. But quantity had to be completed by the
unity of the soul, which is, however, already included in
its simplicity. Then modality is forced in in an absurd
way ; the soul stands in connection with possible objects ;
but connection belongs to relation, only this is already
taken possession of by substance. Then the four cosmo-
logical Ideas, which are the material of the antinomies,
are referred to the titles of the categories ; but of this we
shall speak more fully further on, when we come to the
examination of these antinomies. Several, if possible, still
more glaring examples are to be found in the table of
the Categories of Freedom ! in the " Critique of Practical
Reason ; " also in the first book of the " Critique of
Judgment," which goes through the judgment of taste

O ' O O v O

according to the four titles of the categories ; and, finally,
in the " Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science,"
which are entirely adapted to the table of the categories,
whereby the false that is mingled here and there with
what is true and excellent in this important work is for
the most part introduced. See, for example, at the end of
the first chapter how the unity, the multiplicity, and the

78 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

totality of the directions of lines are supposed to corre
spond to the categories, which are so named according to
the quantity of judgments.

The principle of the Permanence of Substance is deduced
from the category of subsistence and inherence. This,
however, we know only from the form of the categorical
judgment, i.e., from the connection of two concepts as
subject and predicate. With what violence then is that
great metaphysical principle made dependent upon this
simple, purely logical form ! Yet this is only done pro
forma, and for the sake of symmetry. The proof of this
principle, which is given here, sets entirely aside its sup
posed origin in the understanding and in the category, and
is based upon the pure intuition or perception of time.
But this proof also is quite incorrect. It is false that in
mere time there is simultaneity and duration; these ideas
only arise from the union of space with time, as I have
already shown in the essay on the principle of sufficient
reason, § 18, and worked out more fully in § 4 of
the present work. I must assume a knowledge of both
these expositions for the understanding of what follows.
It is false that time remains the same through all change ;
on the contrary, it is just time itself that is fleeting; a
permanent time is a contradiction. Kant's proof is un
tenable, strenuously as he has supported it with sophisms;
indeed, he falls into the most palpable contradictions.
Thus, after he has falsely set up co-existence as a mode of
time (p. 177; V. 219), he says, quite rightly (p. 183; V. 226),
" Co-existence is not a mode of time, for in time there are
absolutely no parts together, but all in succession." In
truth, space is quite as much implicated in co-existence as
time. For if two things are co-existent and yet not one,
they are different in respect of space ; if two states of one
thing are co-existent (e.g., the glow and the heat of iron),
then they are two contemporaneous effects of one thing,

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 79

therefore presuppose matter, and matter presupposes space.
Strictly speaking, co-existence is a negative determination,
which merely signifies that two things or states are not
different in respect of time ; thus their difference is to be
sought for elsewhere. But in any case, our knowledge of
the permanence of substance, i.e., of matter, must be based
upon insight a priori; for it is raised above all doubt,
and therefore cannot be drawn from experience. I deduce
it from the fact that the principle of all becoming and
passing away, the law of causality, of which we are con
scious a priori, is essentially concerned only with the
changes, i.e., the successive states of matter, is thus limited
to the form, and leaves the matter untouched, which
therefore exists in our consciousness as the foundation of
all things, which is not subject to becoming or passing
away, which has therefore always been and will always
continue to be. A deeper proof of the permanence of
substance, drawn from the analysis of our perception of
the empirical world in general, is to be found in the first
book of this work, § 4, where it is shown that the
nature of matter consists in the absolute union of space and
time, a union which is only possible by means of the idea of
causality, consequently only for the understanding, which
is nothing but the subjective correlative of causality.
Hence, also, matter is never known otherwise than as
producing effects, i.e., as through and through causality ;
to be and to act are with it one, which is indeed signified
by the word actuality. Intimate union of space and
time — causality, matter, actuality — are thus one, and the
subjective correlative of this one is the understanding.
Matter must bear in itself the conflicting properties of
both factors from which it proceeds, and it is the idea of
causality which abolishes what is contradictory in both,
and makes their co-existence conceivable by the under
standing, through which and for which alone matter is,
and whose whole faculty consists in the knowledge of
cause and effect. Thus for the understanding there is

So CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

united in matter the inconstant flux of time, appearing as
change of the accidents, with the rigid immobility of space,
which exhibits itself as the permanence of substance. For
if the substance passed away like the accidents, the pheno
menon would be torn away from space altogether, and
would only belong to time ; the world of experience would
be destroyed by the abolition of matter, annihilation.
Thus from the share which space has in matter, i.e., in all
phenomena of the actual — in that it is the opposite and
counterpart of time, and therefore in itself and apart from
the union with the latter knows absolutely no change — the
principle of the permanence of substance, which recognises
everything as a priori certain, had to be deduced and ex
plained ; but not from mere time, to which for this purpose
and quite erroneously Kant has attributed permanence.

In the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 23,
I have fully explained the incorrectness of the following
proof of the a priori nature and of the necessity of the
law of causality from the mere succession of events in time ;
I must, therefore, content myself here by referring to that
passage.1 This is precisely the case with the proof of
reciprocity also, the concept of which I was obliged to
explain above as invalid. What is necessary has also
been said of modality, the working out of the principles of
which now follows.

There are still a few points in the further course of the
transcendental analytic which I should have to refute were
it not that I am afraid of trying the patience of the reader;
I therefore leave them to his own reflection. But ever
anew in the " Critique of Pure Eeason " we meet that prin
cipal and fundamental error of Kant's, which I have
copiously denounced above, the complete failure to dis
tinguish abstract, discursive knowledge from intuitive. It
is this that throws a constant obscurity over Kant's whole

_ * With my refutation of the Kan- Zcit, Raum und Kausalitcit, § 28 ; and
tian proof may be compared the ear- by G. E. Schulze, Kritik der thcoret-
lier attacks upon it by Feder, Ueber ischen Philosophic, Bd. ii. S. 422-442

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. Si

theory of the faculty of knowledge, and never allows the
reader to know what he is really speaking about at any
time, so that instead of understanding, he always merely
conjectures, for he alternately tries to understand what is
said as referring to thought and to perception, and remains
always in suspense. In the chapter " On the Division of
all Objects into Phenomena and ISToumena," Kant carries
that incredible want of reflection as to the nature of the
idea of perception and the abstract idea, as I shall explain
more fully immediately, so far as to make the monstrous
assertion that without thought, that is, without abstract
conceptions, there is no knowledge of an object ; and that
perception, because it is not thought, is also not know
ledge, and, in general, is nothing but a mere affection of
sensibility, mere sensation ! Nay, more, that perception
without conception is absolutely void ; but conception
without perception is yet always something (p. 253; V.
309). Now this is exactly the opposite of the truth ; for
concepts obtain all significance, all content, only from
their relation to ideas of perception, from which they
have been abstracted, derived, that is, constructed through
the omission of all that is unessential : therefore if the
foundation of perception is taken away from them, they
are empty and void. Perceptions, on the contrary, have
in themselves immediate and very great significance (in
them, indeed, the thing in itself objectifies itself); they
represent themselves, express themselves, have no mere
borrowed content like concepts. For the principle of suf
ficient reason governs them only as the law of causality,
and determines as such only their position in space and
time ; it does not, however, condition their content and
their significance, as is the case with concepts, in which it
appears as the principle of the ground of knowing. For
the rest, it looks as if Kant really wished here to set about
distinguishing the idea of perception and the abstract
idea. He objects to Leibnitz and Locke that the former
reduced everything to abstract ideas, and the latter every -

VOL. II. F

82 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

thing to ideas of perception. But yet he arrives at no
distinction ; and although Locke and Leibnitz really com
mitted these errors, Kant himself is burdened with a third
error which includes them both — the error of having so
mixed up knowledge of perception and abstract knowledge
that a monstrous hybrid of the two resulted, a chimera of
which no distinct idea is possible, and which therefore
necessarily only confused and stupefied students, and set
them at variance.

Certainly thought and perception are separated more in
the chapter referred to " On the Division of all Objects
into Phenomena and Noumena " than anywhere else, but
the nature of this distinction is here a fundamentally false
one. On p. 253; V. 309, it is said: "If I take away all
thought (through the categories) from empirical know
ledge, there remains absolutely no knowledge of an object,
for through mere perception nothing at all is thought, and
that this affection of sensibility is in me establishes really
no relation of such ideas to any object." This sentence
contains, in some degree, all the errors of Kant in a nut
shell ; for it brings out clearly that he has falsely con
ceived the relation between sensation, perception, and
thought, and accordingly identifies the perception, whose
form he yet supposes to be space, and indeed space in all
its three dimensions, with the mere subjective sensation
in the organs of sense, but only allows the knowledge of
an object to be given through thought, which is different
from perception. I, on the contrary, say : Objects are
first of all objects of perception, not of thought, and all
knowledge of objects is originally and in itself perception.
Perception, however, is by no means mere sensation, but
the understanding is already active in it. The thought,
which is added only in the case of men, not in the case of
the brutes, is mere abstraction from perception, gives no
fundamentally new knowledge, does not itself establish
objects which were not before, but merely changes the
form of the knowledge already won through perception,

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 83

makes it abstract knowledge in concepts, whereby its con
crete or perceptible character is lost, but, on the other
hand, combination of it becomes possible, which immeasur
ably extends the range of its applicability. The material
of our thought is, on the other hand, nothing else than our
perceptions themselves, and not something which the per
ceptions did not contain, and which was added by the
thought ; therefore the material of everything that appears
in our thought must be capable of verification in our per
ception, for otherwise it would be an empty thought.
Although this material is variously manipulated and
transformed by thought, it must yet be capable of being
reduced to perception, and the thought traced back to
this — just as a piece of gold can be reduced from all
its solutions, oxides, sublimates, and combinations, and
presented pure and undiminished. This could not happen
if thought itself had added something, and, indeed, the
principal thing, to the object.

The whole of the chapter on the Amphiboly, which fol
lows this, is merely a criticism of the Leibnitzian philo
sophy, and as such is on the whole correct, though the
form or pattern on which it is constructed is chosen merely
for the sake of architectonic symmetry, which here also is
the guiding clue. Thus, to carry out the analogy with the
Aristotelian Organon, a transcendental Topic is set up,
which consists in this, that every conception is to be con
sidered from four points of view, in order to make out to
which faculty of knowledge it belongs. But these four
points of view are quite arbitrarily selected, and ten others
might be added to them with just as much right ; but
their fourfold number corresponds to the titles of the
categories, and therefore the chief doctrine of Leibnitz is
divided among them as best it may be. By this critique,
also, to some extent, certain errors are stamped as natural
to the reason, whereas they were merely false abstractions
of Leibnitz's, who, rather than learn from his great philo
sophical contemporaries, Spinoza and Locke, preferred to

84 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

serve up his own strange inventions. In the chapter on
the Amphiboly of Eeflection it is finally said that there
may possibly be a kind of perception entirely different
from ours, to which, however, our categories are appli
cable ; therefore the objects of that supposed perception
would be noumena, things which can only be thought by
us ; but since the perception which would give that thought
meaning is wanting to us, and indeed is altogether quite
problematical, the object of that thought would also merely
be a wholly indefinite possibility. I have shown above by
quotations that Kant, in utter contradiction with himself,
sets up the categories now as the condition of knowledge of
perception, now as the function of merely abstract thought.
Here they appear exclusively in the latter sense, and it
seems quite as if he wished to attribute them merely to
discursive thought. But if this is really his opinion, then
necessarily at the beginning of the Transcendental Logic,
before specifying the different functions of thought at such
length, he was necessarily bound to characterise thought
in general, and consequently to distinguish it from per
ception ; he ought to have shown what knowledge is given
by mere perception, and what that is new is added by
thought. Then we would have known what he was really
speaking about ; or rather, he would then have spoken
quite differently, first of perception, and then of thought ;
instead of which, as it is, he is always dealing with some
thing between the two, which is a mere delusion. There
would not then be that great gap between the transcen
dental ^Esthetic and the transcendental Logic, where, after
the exposition of the mere form of perception, he simply
dismisses its content, all that is empirically apprehended*
with the phrase " It is given," and does not ask how it
came about, ivhether with or without understanding ; but,
with one spring, passes over to abstract thought ; and not
even to thought in general, but at once to certain forms of
thought, and does not say a word about what thought is,
what the concept is, what is the relation of abstract and

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 85

discursive to concrete and intuitive, what is the difference
between the knowledge of men and that of brutes, and
what is reason.

Yet it was just this distinction between abstract know
ledge and knowledge of perception, entirely overlooked
by Kant, which the ancients denoted by fyaivopeva and
voovpeva,1 and whose opposition and incommensurability
occupied them so much in the philosophemes of the
Eleatics, in Plato's doctrine of Ideas, in the dialectic of
the Megarics, and later the Scholastics in the controversy
between Nominalism and Realism, the seed of which, so
late in developing, was already contained in the opposite
mental tendencies of Plato and Aristotle. But Kant, who,
in an inexcusable manner, entirely neglected the thing
to denote which the words <f)aivofj,eva and voovpeva had
already been taken, took possession of the words, as if
they were still unappropriated, in order to denote by
them his thing in itself and his phenomenon.

Since I have been obliged to reject Kant's doctrine of
the categories, just as he rejected that of Aristotle, I wish
here to indicate as a suggestion a third way of reaching
what is aimed at. What both Kant and Aristotle sought
for under the name of the categories were the most
general conceptions under which all things, however
different, must be subsumed, and through which therefore
everything that exists would ultimately be thought. Just
on this account Kant conceived them as the forms of all
thought.

Grammar is related to logic as clothes to the body.
Should not, therefore, these primary conceptions, the ground-
bass of the reason, which is the foundation of all special
thought, without whose application, therefore, no thought
can take place, ultimately lie in those conceptions which

1 See Sext. Empir. Pyrrhon. ky- vois avrtTidti \va.%OLyopa.s(inteUi<jibilia,
l>otyp., lib. i. c. 13, vooviJ.(.va. ifiaivcfj.:- apparcntibus Ojijiosuit Amixagoras.

86 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

just on account of their exceeding generality (transcen
dentalism) have their expression not in single words, but
in whole classes of words, because one of them is thought
along with every word whatever it may be, whose de
signation would therefore have to be looked for, not in
the lexicon but in the grammar ? In fact, should they not
be those distinctions of conceptions on account of which
the word which expresses them is either a substantive or
an adjective, a verb or an adverb, a pronoun, a preposition,
or some other particle — in short, the parts of speech ? For
undoubtedly these denote the forms which all thought
primarily assumes, and in which it directly moves; ac
cordingly they are the essential forms of speech, the
fundamental constituent elements of every language, so
that we cannot imagine any language which would not
consist of at least substantives, adjectives, and verbs.
These fundamental forms would then have subordinated
to them those forms of thought which are expressed
through their inflections, that is, through declension and
conjugation, and it is unessential to the chief concern
whether in denoting them we call in the assistance of
the article and the pronoun. We will examine the thing,
however, somewhat more closely, and ask the question
anew : What are the forms of thought ?

(l.) Thought consists throughout of judging ; judgments
are the threads of its whole web, for without making use
of a verb our thought does not move, and as often as we
use a verb we judge.

(2.) Every judgment consists in the recognition of the
relation between subject and predicate, which it separates
or unites with various restrictions. It unites them from
the recognition of the actual identity of the two, which
can only happen in the case of synonyms; then in the
recognition that the one is always thought along with the
other, though the converse does not hold — in the universal
affirmative proposition; up to the recognition that the
one is sometimes thought along with the other, in the

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 87

particular affirmative proposition. The negative propo
sitions take the opposite course. Accordingly in every
judgment the subject, the predicate, and the copula, the
latter affirmative or negative, must be to be found ; even
although each of these is not denoted by a word of its
own, as is however generally the case. The predicate
and the copula are often denoted by one word, as " Caius
ages ; " sometimes one word denotes all three, as con-
curritur, i.e., "the armies engage." From this it is evi
dent that the forms of thought are not to be sought for
precisely and directly in words, nor even in the parts of
speech, for even in the same language the same judgment
may be expressed in different words, and indeed in
different parts of speech, yet the thought remains the
same, and consequently also its form ; for the thought
could not be the same if the form of thought itself were
different. But with the same thought and the same form
of thought the form of words may very well be different,
for it is merely the outward clothing of the thought,
which, on the other hand, is inseparable from its form.
Thus grammar only explains the clothing of the forms of
thought. The parts of speech can therefore be deduced
from the original forms of thought themselves which are
independent of all language ; their work is to express
these forms of thought in all their modifications. They
are the instrument and the clothing of the forms of
thought, and must be accurately adapted to the structure
of the latter, so that it may be recognised in them.

(3.) These real, unalterable, original forms of thought
are certainly those of Kant's logical table of judgments ; only
that in this table are to be found blind windows for the sake
of symmetry and the table of the categories ; these must
all be omitted, and also a false arrangement. Thus : —

(a.) Quality : affirmation and negation, i.e., combination
and separation of concepts : two forms. It depends on
the copula.

(6.) Quantity : the subject-concept is taken either in

88 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

whole or in part : totality or multiplicity. To the first
belong also individual subjects : Socrates means " all
Socrateses." Thus two forms. It depends on the subject.

(c.) Modality : has really three forms. It determines
the quality as necessary, actual, or contingent. It con
sequently depends also on the copula.

These three forms of thought spring from the laws
of thought of contradiction and identity. But from the
principle of sufficient reason and the law of excluded
middle springs —

(d.) Edation. It only appears if we judge concerning
completed judgments, and can only consist in this, that
it either asserts the dependence of one judgment upon
another (also in the plurality of both), and therefore
combines them in the hypothetical proposition ; or else
asserts that judgments exclude each other, and therefore
separates them in the disjunctive proposition. It depends
on the copula, which here separates or combines the
completed judgments.

The parts of speech and grammatical forms are ways of
expressing the three constituent parts of the judgment,
the subject, the predicate, and the copula, and also of the
possible relations of these ; thus of the forms of thought
just enumerated, and the fuller determinations and modi
fications of these. Substantive, adjective, and verb are
therefore essential fundamental constituent elements of
language in general ; therefore they must be found in all
languages. Yet it is possible to conceive a language in
which adjective and verb would always be fused together,
us is sometimes the case in all languages. Provisionally
it may be said, for the expression of the subject are
intended the substantive, the article, and the pronoun ;
for the expression of the predicate, the adjective, the ad
verb, and the preposition ; for the expression of the copula,
the verb, which, however, with the exception of the verb
to be, also contains the predicate. It is the task of the
philosophy of grammar to teach the precise mechanism of

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 89

the expression of the forms of thought, as it is the task of
logic to teach the operations with the forms of thought
themselves.

Note. — As a warning against a false path and to illus
trate the above, I mention S. Stern's " Vorlaufige Grund-
laye zur Sprachpliilosopliie" 1835, which is an utterly
abortive attempt to construct the categories out of the
grammatical forms. He has entirely confused thought
with perception, and therefore, instead of the categories of
thought, he has tried to deduce the supposed categories
of perception from the grammatical forms, and conse
quently has placed the grammatical forms in direct rela
tion to perception. He is involved in the great error that
language is immediately related to perception, instead of
being directly related only to thought as such, thus to
the abstract concepts, and only by means of these to per
ception, to which they, however, have a relation which
introduces an entire change of the form. What exists
in perception, thus also the relations which proceed
from time and space, certainly becomes an object of
thought; thus there must also be forms of speech to
express it, yet always merely in the abstract, as concepts.
Concepts are always the primary material of thought, and
the forms of logic are always related to these, never
directly to perception. Perception always determines only
the material, never the formal truth of the proposition,
for the formal truth is determined according to the logical
rules alone.

I return to the Kantian philosophy, and come now to
the Transcendental Dialectic. Kant opens it with the
explanation of reason, the faculty which is to play the
principal part in it, for hitherto only sensibility and
understanding were on the scene. When considering his
different explanations of reason, I have already spoken
above of the explanation he gives here that "it is the

90 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

faculty of principles." It is now taught here that all the
a priori knowledge hitherto considered, which makes pure
mathematics and pure natural science possible, affords
only rules, and no principles; because it proceeds from
perceptions and forms of knowledge, and not from mere
conceptions, which is demanded if it is to be called a
principle. Such a principle must accordingly be know
ledge from pure conceptions and yet synthetical. But this
is absolutely impossible. From pure conceptions nothing
but analytical propositions can ever proceed. If concep
tions are to be synthetically and yet a priori combined,
this combination must necessarily be accomplished by
some third thing, through a pure perception of the formal
possibility of experience, just as synthetic judgments
a posteriori are brought about through empirical percep
tion ; consequently a synthetic proposition a priori can
never proceed from pure conceptions. In general, how
ever, we are a priori conscious of nothing more than the
principle of sufficient reason in its different forms, and
therefore no other synthetic judgments a priori are pos
sible than those which proceed from that which receives
its content from that principle.

However, Kant finally comes forward with a pretended
principle of the reason answering to his demand, yet only
with this one, from which others afterwards follow as
corollaries. It is the principle which Chr. Wolf set up
and explained in his " Cosmologia" sect. i. c. 2, § 93, and
in his " Ontologia," § 178. As now above, under the title
of the Amphiboly, mere Leibnitzian philosophemes were
taken for natural and necessary aberrations of the reason,
and were criticised as such, so here precisely the same
thing happens with the philosophemes of Wolf. Kant
still presents this principle of the reason in an obscure
light, through indistinctness, indefiniteness, and breaking
of it up (p. 307; V. 361, and 322; V. 379). Clearly ex
pressed, however, it is as follows : " If the conditioned is
given, the totality of its conditions must also be given,

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 91

and therefore also the unconditioned, through which alone
that totality becomes complete." We become most vividly
aware of the apparent truth of this proposition if we
imagine the conditions and the conditioned as the links
of a suspended chain, the upper end of which, however, is
not visible, so that it might extend ad infinitum; since, how
ever, the chain does not fall, but hangs, there must be above
one link which is the first, and in some way is fixed. Or,
more briefly : the reason desires to have a point of attach
ment for the causal chain which reaches back to infinity ;
it would be convenient for it. But we will examine the
proposition, not in figures, but in itself. Synthetic it cer
tainly is ; for, analytically, nothing more follows from the
conception of the conditioned than that of the condition. It
has not, however, a priori truth, nor even a posteriori, but
it surreptitiously obtains its appearance of truth in a very
subtle way, which I must now point out. Immediately,
and a priori, we have the knowledge which the principle
of sufficient reason in its four forms expresses. From
this immediate knowledge all abstract expressions of the
principle of sufficient reason are derived, and they are
thus indirect ; still more, however, is this the case with
inferences or corollaries from them. I have already ex
plained above how abstract knowledge often unites a
variety of intuitive cognitions in one form or one concept
in such a way that they can no longer be distinguished ;
therefore abstract knowledge stands to intuitive knowledge
as the shadow to the real objects, the great multiplicity of
which it presents through one outline comprehending them
all. Now the pretended principle of the reason makes use
of this shadow. In order to deduce from the principle of
sufficient reason the unconditioned, which directly contra
dicts it, it prudently abandons the immediate concrete
knowledge of the content of the principle of sufficient
reason in its particular forms, and only makes use of
abstract concepts which are derived from it, and have
value and significance only through it, in order to smuggle

92 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

its unconditioned somehow or other into the wide sphere
of those concepts. Its procedure becomes most distinct
when clothed in dialectical form ; for example, thus : " If
the conditioned exists, its condition must also be given,
and indeed all given, thus completely, thus the totality of its
conditions ; consequently, if they constitute a series, the
M'hole series, consequently also its first beginning, thus
the unconditioned." Here it is false that the conditions
of a conditioned can constitute a series. Bather must the
totality of the conditions of everything conditioned be
contained in its nearest ground or reason from which it
directly proceeds, and which is only thus a sufficient ground
or reason. For example, the different determinations of the
state which is the cause, all of which must be present
together before the effect can take place. But the series,
for example, the chain of causes, arises merely from the
fact that we regard what immediately before was the con
dition as now a conditioned ; but then at once the whole
operation begins again from the beginning, and the prin
ciple of sufficient reason appears anew with its claim.
But there can never be for a conditioned a properly suc
cessive scries of conditions, which exist merely as such,
and on account of that which is at last conditioned ; it is
always an alternating series of conditioneds and condi
tions ; as each link is laid aside the chain is broken, and
the claim of the principle of sufficient reason entirely
satisfied, it arises anew because the condition becomes
the conditioned. Thus the principle of sufficient reason
always demands only the completeness of the immediate
or next condition, never the completeness of a series. But
just this conception of the completeness of the condition
leaves it undetermined whether this completeness should
be simultaneous or successive ; and since the latter is
chosen, the demand now arises for a complete series of
conditions following each other. Only through an arbi
trary abstraction is a series of causes and effects regarded
as a series of causes alone, which exists merely on account

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 93

of the last effect, and is therefore demanded as its sufficient
reason. From closer and more intelligent consideration,
and by rising from the indefinite generality of abstraction
to the particular definite reality, it appears, on the con
trary, that the demand for a sufficient reason extends only
to the completeness of the determinations of the immediate
cause, not to the completeness of a series. The demand
of the principle of sufficient reason is completely extin
guished in each sufficient reason given. It arises, however,
immediately anew, because this reason is again regarded
as a consequent ; but it never demands directly a series of
reasons. If, on the other hand, instead of going to the
thing itself, we confine ourselves to the abstract concepts,
these distinctions vanish. Then a chain of alternating
causes and effects, or of alternating logical reasons and
consequents, is given out as simply a chain of causes of
the last effect, or reasons of the last consequent, and the
completeness of the conditions, through which alone a reason
becomes sufficient, appears as the completeness of that as
sumed series of reasons alone, which only exist on account
of the last consequent. There then appears the abstract
principle of the reason very boldly with its demand for
the unconditioned. But, in order to recognise the in
validity of this claim, there is no need of a critique of
reason by means of antinomies and their solution, but
only of a critique of reason understood in my sense, an
examination of the relation of abstract knowledge to
direct intuitive knowledge, by means of ascending from
the indefinite generality of the former to the fixed de-
finiteness of the latter. From such a critique, then, it
here appears that the nature of the reason by no means
consists in the demand for an unconditioned ; for, when
ever it proceeds with full deliberation, it must itself find
that an unconditioned is an absurdity. The reason as a
faculty of knowledge can always have to do only with
objects ; but every object for the subject is necessarily
and irrevocably subordinated to the principle of sufficient

94 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

reason, both a parte ante and a parte post. The validity of
the principle of sufficient reason is so involved in the
form of consciousness that we absolutely cannot imagine
anything objective of which no why could further be de
manded ; thus we cannot imagine an absolute absolute,
like a blind wall in front of us. That his convenience
should lead this or that person to stop at some point, and
assume such an absolute at pleasure, is of no avail against
that incontestable certainty a priori, even if he should put
on an air of great importance in doing so. In fact, the
whole talk about the absolute, almost the sole theme of
philosophies since Kant, is nothing but the cosmological
proof incognito. This proof, in consequence of the case
brought against it by Kant, deprived of all right and
declared outlawed, dare no longer show itself in its true
form, and therefore appears in all kinds of disguises — now
in distinguished form, concealed under intellectual intui
tion or pure thought ; now as a suspicious vagabond, half
begging, half demanding what it wants in more unpre
tending philosophemes. If an absolute must absolutely
be had, then I will give one which is far better fitted to
meet all the demands which are made on such a thing
than these visionary phantoms ; it is matter. It has no
beginning, and it is imperishable ; thus it is really inde
pendent, and quod per se est et per se concipitur ; from its
womb all proceeds, and to it all returns ; what more can
be desired of an absolute ? But to those with whom no
critique of reason has succeeded, we should rather say —

" Are not ye like unto women, who ever
Return to the point from which they set out,
Though reason should have been talked by the hour 1 "

That the return to an unconditioned cause, to a first
beginning, by no means lies in the nature of reason, is,
moreover, practically proved by the fact that the primi
tive religions of our race, which even yet have the
greatest number of followers upon earth, Brahmanism and

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 95

Buddhaism, neither know nor admit such assumptions,
but carry the series of phenomena conditioning each
other into infinity. Upon this point, I refer to the note
appended to the criticism of the first antinomy, which
occurs further on ; and the reader may also see Upham's
" Doctrine of Buddhaism" (p. 9), and in general all genuine
accounts of the religions of Asia. Judaism and reason
ought not to be identified.

Kant, who by no means desires to maintain his pre
tended principle of reason as objectively valid, but merely
as subjectively necessary, deduces it even as such only by
means of a shallow sophism, p. 307 ; V. 364. He says
that because we seek to subsume every truth known to us
under a more general truth, as far as this process can be
carried, this is nothing else than the pursuit of the uncon
ditioned, which we already presuppose. But, in truth, in
this endeavour we do nothing more than apply reason, and
intentionally make use of it to simplify our knowledge by
enabling us to survey it — reason, which is that faculty of
abstract, general knowledge that distinguishes the reflec
tive, thinking man, endowed with speech, from the brute,
which is the slave of the present. For the use of reason
just consists in this, that we know the particular through
the universal, the case through the rule, the rule through
the more general rule ; thus that we seek the most general
points of view. Through such survey or general view
our knowledge is so facilitated and perfected that from it
arises the great difference between the life of the brutes
and that of men, and again between the life of educated
and that of uneducated men. Now, certainly the series of
grounds of knowledge, which exist only in the sphere of
the abstract, thus of reason, always finds an end in what
is indemonstrable, i.e., in an idea which is not further
conditioned according to this form of the principle of
sufficient reason, thus in the a priori or a posteriori
directly perceptible ground of the first proposition of the
train of reasoning. I have already shown in the essay on

96 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

the principle of sufficient reason, § 50, that here the series
of grounds of knowledge really passes over into grounds
of becoming or of being. But one can only desire to make
this circumstance hold good as a proof of an unconditioned
according to the law of causality, or even of the mere
demand for such an unconditioned, if one has not yet dis
tinguished the forms of the principle of sufficient reason
at all, but, holding to the abstract expression, has con
founded them all. Kant, however, seeks to establish that
confusion, through a mere play upon words, with Univer-
salitas and Universitas, p. 322 ; V. 379. Thus it is fun
damentally false that our search for higher grounds of
knowledge, more general truths, springs from the pre
supposition of an object unconditioned in its being, or
has anything whatever in common with this. Moreover,
how should it be essential to the reason to presuppose
something which it must know to be an absurdity as soon
as it reflects ? The source of that conception of the un
conditioned is rather to be found only in the indolence of
the individual who wishes by means of it to get rid of all
further questions, whether his own or of others, though
entirely without justification.

Now Kant himself denies objective validity to this
pretended principle of reason ; he gives it, however, as a
necessary subjective assumption, and thus introduces an
irremediable split into our knowledge, which he soon
allows to appear more clearly. With this purpose he
unfolds that principle of reason further, p. 322; V, 379,
in accordance with the method of architectonic symmetry
of which he is so fond. From the three categories of
relation spring three kinds of syllogisms, each of which
gives the clue for the discovery of a special unconditioned,
of which again there are three : the soul, the world (as an
object in itself and absolute totality), and God. Now here
we must at once note a great contradiction, of which
Kant, however, takes no notice, because it would be very
dangerous to the symmetry. Two of these unconditioneds

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 97

are themselves conditioned by the third, the soul and the
world by God, who is the cause of their existence. Thus
the two former have by no means the predicate of uncon-
ditionedness in common with the latter, though this is
really the point here, but only that of inferred being
according to the principles of experience, beyond the
sphere of the possibility of experience.

Setting this aside, we recognise in the three uncon-
ditioneds, to which, according to Kant, reason, following
its essential laws, must come, the three principal subjects
round which the whole of philosophy under the influence
of Christianity, from the Scholastics down to Christian
Wolf, has turned. Accessible and familiar as these con
ceptions have become through all these philosophers, and
now also through the philosophers of pure reason, this by
no means shows that, without revelation, they would
necessarily have proceeded from the development of all
reason as a production peculiar to its very nature. In
order to prove this it would be necessary to call in the
aid of historical criticism, and to examine whether the
ancient and non-European nations, especially the peoples
of Hindostan and many of the oldest Greek philosophers,
really attained to those conceptions, or whether it is only
we who, by quite falsely translating the Brahma of the
Hindus and the Tien of the Chinese as "God," good-
naturedly attribute such conceptions to them, just as the
Greeks recognised their gods everywhere ; whether it is
not rather the case that theism proper is only to be found
in the religion of the Jews, and in the two religions which
have proceeded from it, whose followers just on this
account comprise the adherents of all other religions on
earth under the name of heathen, which, by the way, is
a most absurd and crude expression, and ought to be
banished at least from the writings of the learned, because
it identifies and jumbles together Brahmanists, Buddhists,
Egyptians, Greeks, Eomans, Germans, Gauls, Iroquois,
Patagonians, Caribbeans, Otaheiteans, Australians, and

VOL. II. G

98 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

many others. Such an expression is all very well for
priests, but in the learned world it must at once be
shown the door: it can go to England and take up its
abode at Oxford. It is a thoroughly established fact that
Buddhism, the religion which numbers more followers
than any other on earth, contains absolutely no theism,
indeed rejects it. As regards Plato, it is my opinion that
he owes to the Jews the theism with which he is
periodically seized. On this account Numenius (accord
ing to Clem. Alex., Strom., i. c. 22, Euseb. prcep. cvang.,
xiii. 12, and Suidas under Numenius) called him the
Moses grcccisans : Ti jap eari HXarwv, rj Ma)ar)$ arriKi^tov ;
and he accuses him of having stolen (aTroa-vX.fjo-a^) his
doctrine of God and the creation from the Mosaical
writings. Clemens often repeats that Plato knew and
made use of Moses, e.g., Strom., i. 25. — v. c. 14, § 90, &c.,
&c. ; Pccdarjog., ii. IO, and iii. n; also in the Cohortatio
ad gentes, c. 6, where, after he has bitterly censured and
derided the whole of the Greek philosophers in the pre
ceding chapter because they were not Jews, he bestows
on Plato nothing but praise, and breaks out into pure
exultation that as Plato had learnt his geometry from
the Egyptians, his astronomy from the Babylonians,
magic from the Thracians, and much also from the
Assyrians, so he had learnt his theism from the Jews :
OiSa crov TOU? SiSaavcaAou?, /cav aTTOKpVTrreiv e0e\.f)$, . . .
§o%av TIJV rov deov Trap' aviwv co^eXtjaet rcov Efipaiwv (Tuos
Qiiayistros novi, licet cos celare velis, . . . ilia de Deo sentcntia
wppeditata tibi est db Hebrcels). A pathetic scene of
recognition. But I see a remarkable confirmation of the
matter in what follows. According to Plutarch (in Mario),
and, better, according to Lactantius (i. 3, 19), Plato
thanked Nature that he had been born a human being
and not a brute, a man and not a woman, a Greek and
not a barbarian. Now in Isaac Euchel's " Prayers of the
Jews," from the Hebrew, second edition, 1799, p. 7, there
is a morning prayer in which God is thanked and praised

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 99

that the worshipper was born a Jew and not a heathen,
a free man and not a slave, a man and not a woman.
Such an historical investigation would have spared Kant
an unfortunate necessity in which he now becomes
involved, in that he makes these three conceptions spring
necessarily from the nature of reason, and yet explains
that they are untenable and unverifiable by the reason,
and thus makes the reason itself a sophisticator ; for he
says, p. 339; V. 397: "There are sophistications, not of
man, but of pure reason itself, from which even the wisest
cannot free himself, and although after much trouble he
may be able to avoid error, yet he never can escape from
the illusion which unceasingly torments and mocks him."
Therefore these Kantian " Ideas of the Reason " might
be compared to the focus in which the converging re
flected rays from a concave mirror meet several inches
before its surface, in consequence of which, by an inevit
able process of the understanding, an object presents itself
to us there which is a thing without reality.

But the name " Idea " is very unfortunately chosen for
these pretended necessary productions of the pure theo
retical reason, and violently appropriated from Plato, who
used it to denote the eternal forms which, multiplied
through space and time, become partially visible in the
innumerable individual fleeting things. Plato's " Ideas "
are accordingly throughout perceptible, as indeed the
word which he chose so definitely signifies, for it could
only be adequately translated by means of perceptible or
visible things; and Kant has appropriated it to denote
that which lies so far from all possibility of perception
that even abstract thought can only half attain to it.
The word " Idea," which Plato first introduced, has, more
over, since then, through two-and-t\venty centuries, always
retained the significance in which he used it; for not
only all ancient philosophers, but also all the Scholastics,
and indeed the Church Fathers and the theologians of

o

the Middle Ages, used it only in that Platonic sense, the

ioo CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

sense of the Latin word exemplar, as Suarez expressly
mentions in his twenty-fifth Disputation, sect. i. That
Englishmen and Frenchmen were later induced by the
poverty of their languages to misuse this word is bad
enough, but not of importance. Kant's misuse of the
word idea, by the substitution of a new significance
introduced by means of the slender clue of not being
object of experience, which it has in common with Plato's
ideas, but also in common with every possible chimera, is
thus altogether unjustifiable. Now, since the misuse of a
few years is not to be considered against the authority of
many centuries, I have always used the word in its old,
original, Platonic significance.

The refutation of rational psychology is much fuller
and more thorough in the first edition of the " Critique of
Pure Pieason " than in the second and following editions,
and therefore upon this point we must make use of the
first edition exclusively. This refutation has as a whole
very great merit and much truth. Yet I am clearly of
opinion that it was merely from his love of symmetry
that Kant deduced as necessary the conception of the
soul from the paralogism of substantiality by applying
the demand for the unconditioned to the conception
substance, which is the first category of relation, and
accordingly maintained that the conception of a soul
arose in this way in every speculative reason. If this
conception really had its origin in the presupposition of a
final subject of all predicates of a thing, one would have
assumed a soul not in men alone, but also just as neces
sarily in every lifeless thing, for such a thing also requires
a final subject of all its predicates. Speaking generally,
however. Kant makes use of a quite inadmissible ex
pression when he talks of something which can exist
only as subject and not as predicate (e.g., Critique of
Pure Reason, p. 323; V. 412; Prolegomena, § 4 and

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 101

47) ; though a precedent for this is to be found in
Aristotle's " Metaphysics," iv. ch. 8. Nothing whatever
exists as subject and predicate, for these expressions
belong exclusively to logic, and denote the relations of
abstract conceptions to each other. Now their correlative
or representative in the world of perception must be
substance and accident. But then we need not look
further for that which exists always as substance and
never as accident, but have it directly in matter. It is
the substance corresponding to all properties of things
which are their accidents. It is, in fact, if one wishes to
retain the expression of Kant which has just been con
demned, the final subject of all predicates of that empiri
cally given thing, that which remains after the abstraction
of all its properties of every kind. And this holds good
of man as of a brute, a plant, or a stone, and is so evident,
that in order not to see it a determined desire not to see
is required. That it is really the prototype of the con
ception substance, I will show soon. But subject and
predicate are related to substance and accident rather as
the principle of sufficient reason in logic to the law of
causality in nature, and the substitution or identification
of the former is just as inadmissible as that of the latter.
Yet in the " Prolegomena," § 46, Kant carries this sub
stitution and identification to its fullest extent in order
to make the conception of the soul arise from that of the
final subject of all predicates and from the form of the
categorical syllogism. In order to discover the sophistical
nature of this paragraph, one only needs to reflect that
subject and predicate are purely logical determinations,
which concern abstract conceptions solely and alone, and
that according to their relation in the judgment. Sub
stance and accident, on the other hand, belong to the
world of perception and its apprehension in the under
standing, and are even there only as identical with matter
and form or quality. Of this more shortly.

The antithesis which has given occasion for the assump-

102 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

tion of two fundamentally different substances, body and
soul, is in truth that of objective and subjective. If a
man apprehends himself objectively in external percep
tion, he finds a being extended in space and in general
merely corporeal ; but if, on the other hand, he apprehends
himself in mere self-consciousness, thus purely subjectively,
he finds himself a merely willing and perceiving being,
free from all forms of perception, thus also without a
single one of the properties which belong to bodies. Now
he forms the conception of the soul, like all the trans
cendental conceptions called by Kant Ideas, by applying
the principle of sufficient reason, the form of all objects,
to that which is not an object, and in this case indeed to
the subject of knowing and willing. He treats, in fact,
knowing, thinking, and willing as effects of which he
seeks the cause, and as he cannot accept the body as their
cause, he assumes a cause of them entirely different from
the body. In this manner the first and the last of the
dogmatists proves the existence of the soul : Plato in the
" Phsedrus " and also Wolf : from thinking and willing as
the effects which lead to that cause. Only after in this
way, by hypostatising a cause corresponding to the effect,
the conception of an immaterial, simple, indestructible
being had arisen, the school developed and demonstrated
this from the conception of substance. But this conception
itself they had previously constructed specially for this
purpose by the following artifice, which is worthy of
notice.

With the first class of ideas, i.e., the real world of per
ception, the idea of matter is also given ; because the law
governing this class of ideas, the law of causality, deter
mines the change of the states or conditions, and these
conditions themselves presuppose something permanent,
whose changes they are. When speaking above of the
principle of the permanence of substance, I showed, by
reference to earlier passages, that this idea of matter
arises because in the understanding, for which alone it

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 103

exists, time and space are intimately united, and the
share of space in this product exhibits itself as the per
manence of matter, while the share of time appears as the
change of states. Purely in itself, matter can only be
thought in dbstracto, and not perceived ; for to perception
it always appears already in form and quality. From
this conception of matter, substance is again an abstraction,
consequently a higher genus, and arose in this way. Of
the conception of matter, only the predicate of permanence
was allowed to remain, while all its other essential pro
perties, extension, impenetrability, divisibility, &c., were
thought away. Like every higher genus, then, the concept
substance contains less in itself than the concept matter,
but, unlike every other higher genus, it does not contain
more under it, because it does not include several lower
genera besides matter ; but this remains the one true
species of the concept substance, the only assignable thing
by which its content is realised and receives a proof.
Thus the aim with which in other cases the reason pro
duces by abstraction a higher conception, in order that in
it several subordinate species may be thought at once
through common determinations, has here no place ; con
sequently that abstraction is either undertaken idly and
entirely without aim, or it has a secret secondary purpose.
This secret purpose is now brought to light ; for under
the conception substance, along with its true sub-species
matter, a second species is co-ordinated — the immaterial,
simple, indestructible substance, soul. But the surrep
titious introduction of this last concept arose from the
fact that the higher concept substance was framed illogi-
cally, and in a manner contrary to law. In its legitimate
procedure the reason always frames the concept of a higher
genus by placing together the concepts of several species,
and now comparing them, proceeds discursively, and by
omitting their differences and retaining the qualities in
which they agree, obtains the generic concept which
includes them all but has a smaller content. From this

104 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

it follows that the concepts of the species must always
precede the concept of the genus. But, in the present
case, the converse is true. Only the concept matter
existed before the generic concept substance. The latter
was without occasion, and consequently without justifica
tion, as it were aimlessly framed from the former by the
arbitrary omission of all its determinations except one.
Not till afterwards was the second ungenuine species
placed beside the concept matter, and so foisted in. But
for the framing of this second concept nothing more was
now required than an express denial of what had already
been tacitly omitted in the higher generic concept, exten
sion, impenetrability, arid divisibility. Thus the concept
substance was framed merely to be the vehicle for the sur
reptitious introduction of the concept of the immaterial
substance. Consequently, it is very far from being capable
of holding good as a category or necessary function of the
understanding ; rather is it an exceedingly superfluous
concept, because its only true content lies already in the
concept of matter, besides which it contains only a great
void, which can be filled up by nothing but the illicitly
introduced species immaterial substance ; and, indeed, it
was solely for the purpose of containing this that it was
framed. Accordingly, in strictness, the concept substance
must be entirely rejected, and the concept matter every
where put in its place.

The categories were a procrustean bed for every possible
thing, but the three kinds of syllogisms are so only for the
three so-called Ideas. The Idea of the soul was compelled
to find its origin in the form of the categorical syllogism.
It is now the turn of the dogmatic ideas concerning the
universe, so far as it is thought as an object in itself, be
tween two limits — that of the smallest (atom), and that of
the largest (limits of the universe in time and space). These
must now proceed from the form of the hypothetical

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 105

syllogism. Nor for this in itself is any special violence
necessary. For the hypothetical judgment has its form
from the principle of sufficient reason, and not the cosmo-
logical alone but all those so-called Ideas really have
their origin in the inconsiderate and unrestricted applica
tion of that principle, and the laying aside of it at pleasure.
For, in accordance with that principle, the mere dependence
of an object upon another is ever sought for, till finally
the exhaustion of the imagination puts an end to the
journey; and thus it is lost sight of that every object, and
indeed the whole chain of objects and the principle of
sufficient reason itself, stand in a far closer and greater
dependence, the dependence upon the knowing subject,
for whose objects alone, i.e., ideas, that principle is valid,
for their mere position in space and time is determined
by it. Thus, since the form of knowledge from which
here merely the cosmological Ideas are derived, the
principle of sufficient reason, is the source of all subtle
hypostases, in this case no sophisms need be resorted
to ; but so much the more is sophistry required in order
to classify those Ideas according to the four titles of the
categories.

( i .) The cosmological Ideas with regard to time and space,
thus of the limits of the world in both, are boldly regarded
as determined through the category of quantity, with which
they clearly have nothing in common, except the accidental
denotation in logic of the extent of the concept of the
subject in the judgment by the word quantity, a pictorial
expression instead of which some other might just as well
have been chosen. But for Kant's love of symmetry this
is enough. He takes advantage of the fortunate accident
of this nomenclature, and links to it the transcendent
dogmas of the world's extension.

(2.) Yet more boldly does Kant link to quality, i.e., the
affirmation or negation in a judgment, the transcendent
Ideas concerning matter; a procedure which has not even
an accidental similarity of words as a basis. For it is just

io6 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

to the quantity, and not to the quality of matter that its
mechanical (not chemical) divisibility is related. But,
M'hat is more, this whole idea of divisibility by no means
belongs to those inferences according to the principle of
sufficient reason, from which, however, as the content of
the hypothetical form, all cosmological Ideas ought to
flow. For the assertion upon which Kant there relies,
that the relation of the parts to the whole is that of the
condition to the conditioned, thus a relation according to
the principle of sufficient reason, is certainly an ingenious
but yet a groundless sophism. That relation is rather based
upon the principle of contradiction ; for the whole is not
through the part, nor the parts through the whole, but
both are necessarily together because they are one, and
their separation is only an arbitrary act. It depends upon
this, according to the principle of contradiction, that if the
parts are thought away, the whole is also thought away,
and conversely ; and by no means upon the fact that the
parts as the reason conditioned the whole as the consequent,
and that therefore, in accordance with the principle of suf
ficient reason, we were necessarily led to seek the ultimate
parts, in order, as its reason, to understand from them the
whole. Such great difficulties are here overcome by the
love of symmetry.

(3.) The Idea of the first cause of the world would now
quite properly come under the title of relation ; but Kant
must reserve this for the fourth title, that of modality, for
which otherwise nothing would remain, and under which
he forces this idea to come by saying that the contingent
(i.e., according to his explanation, which is diametrically
opposed to the truth, every consequent of its reason)
becomes the necessary through the first cause. Therefore,
for the sake of symmetry, the conception vt freedom appears
here as the third Idea. By this conception, however, as
is distinctly stated in the observations on the thesis
of the third conflict, what is really meant is only that
Idea of the cause of the world which alone is admissible

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 107

here. The third and fourth conflicts are at bottom tauto
logical.

About all this, however, I find and assert that the whole
antinomy is a mere delusion, a sham fight. Only the as
sertions of the antitheses really rest upon the forms of our
faculty of knowledge, i.e., if we express it objectively, on
the necessary, a priori certain, most universal laws of
nature. Their proofs alone are therefore drawn from
objective grounds. On the other hand, the assertions and
proofs of the theses have no other than a subjective
ground, rest solely on the weakness of the reasoning
individual ; for his imagination becomes tired with an
endless regression, and therefore he puts an end to it by
arbitrary assumptions, which he tries to smooth over as
well as he can ; and his judgment, moreover, is in this
case paralysed by early and deeply imprinted prejudices.
On this account the proof of the thesis in all the four
conflicts is throughout a mere sophism, while that of the
antithesis is a necessary inference of the reason from the
laws of the world as idea known to us a priori. It is,
moreover, only with great pains and skill that Kant is
able to sustain the thesis, and make it appear to attack
its opponent, which is endowed with native power. Now
in this regard his first and constant artifice is, that he
does not render prominent the nervus argumentationis, and
thus present it in as isolated, naked, and distinct a manner
as he possibly can ; but rather introduces the same argu
ment on both sides, concealed under and mixed up with
a mass of superfluous and prolix sentences.

The theses and antitheses which here appear in such
conflict remind one of the SIKO.IOS and aSiKos \oyos which
Socrates, in the " Clouds " of Aristophanes, brings forward
as contending. Yet this resemblance extends only to the
form and not to the content, though this would gladly be
asserted by those who ascribe to these most speculative of
all questions of theoretical philosophy an influence upon
morality, and therefore seriously regard the thesis as the

io8 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

&tfcaio<;, and the antithesis as the aSi«o? \oyos. I shall
not, however, accommodate myself here with reference
to such small, narrow, and perverse minds; and, giving
honour not to them, but to the truth, I shall show that
the proofs which Kant adduced of the individual theses
are sophisms, while those of the antitheses are quite fairly
and correctly drawn from objective grounds. I assume
that in this examination the reader has always before him
the Kantian antinomy itself.

If the proof of the thesis in the first conflict is to be
held as valid, then it proves too much, for it would be
just as applicable to time itself as to change in time, and
would therefore prove that time itself must have had a
beginning, which is absurd. Besides, the sophism consists
in this, that instead of the beginninglessness of the series
of states, which was at first the question, suddenly the
endlessness (infinity) of the series is substituted ; and now
it is proved that this is logically contradicted by com
pleteness, and yet every present is the end of the past,
which no one doubted. The end of a beginningless series
can, however, always be tJwught, without prejudice to the
fact that it has no beginning ; just as, conversely, the be
ginning of an endless series can also be thought. But
against the real, true argument of the antithesis, that the
changes of the world necessarily presuppose an infinite
series of changes backwards, absolutely nothing is ad
vanced. We can think the possibility that the causal
chain will some day end in an absolute standstill, but
we can by no means think the possibility of an absolute
beginning.1

1 That the assumption of a limit this fleeting and baseless web of

of the world in time is certainly not Maya, for they at once bring out

a necessary thought of the reason very ingeniously the relativity of all

may be also proved historically, for periods of time in the following my-

the Hindus teach nothing of the thus (Polier, Mythologie des Jndous,

kind, even in the religion of the vol. ii. p. 585). The four ages, in

people, much less in the Vedas, but the last of which we live, embrace

try to express mythologically by together 4,320,000 years. Each day

means of a monstrous chronology the of the creating Brahma has looo

infinity of this phenomenal world, such periods of four ages, and his

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 109

With reference to the spatial limits of the world, it is
proved that, if it is to he regarded as a given whole, it must
necessarily have limits. The reasoning is correct, only
it was just the first link of it that was to be proved, and
that remains unproved. Totality presupposes limits, and
limits presuppose totality ; but here both together are
arbitrarily presupposed. For this second point, however,
the antithesis affords no such satisfactory proof as for the
first, because the law of causality provides us with neces
sary determinations only with reference to time, not to
space, and affords us a priori the certainty that no
occupied time can ever be bounded by a previous empty
time, and that no change can be the first change, but not
that an occupied space can have no empty space beside
it. So far no a priori decision on the latter point would
be possible ; yet the difficulty of conceiving the world in
space as limited lies in the fact that space itself is neces
sarily infinite, and therefore a limited finite world in space,
however large it may be, becomes an infinitely small
magnitude ; and in this incongruity the imagination finds
an insuperable stumbling-block, because there remains
for it only the choice of thinking the world either as
infinitely large or infinitely small. This was already seen
by the ancient philosophers : MyrpoScopos, 6
Ejrucovpov, (f>r]<7iv aroTrov etvai ev fj^e^aXw TreSib) e
<yevvr]dr]vai, /cat eva Kocrpov ev ry aTreipat (MetrodoTUS, caput
scliolcc Epicuri, absurdum ait, in magno campo spicam unam
produci, et unum in infinite munduni) Stob. Eel., i. c. 23.
Therefore many of them taught (as immediately follows),
aTret/aoi"? Kocrpovs ev rw aTreipw (infinites mundos in inftnito).
This is also the sense of the Kantian argument for the

nights have also 1000. His year Polier's work, vol. ii. p. 594, from

has 365 days and as many nights, the Puranas. In it a Kajah, after a

He lives 100 of his years, always visit of a few seconds to Vishnu in

creating ; and if he dies, at once a his heaven, finds on his return to

new Brahma is born, and so on from earth that several millions of years

eternity to eternity. The same re- have elapsed, and a new age has

lativity of time is also expressed in begun ; for every day of Vishnu is

the special myth which is quoted in 100 recurrences of the four ages.

no CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

antithesis, only he has disfigured it by a scholastic and
ambiguous expression. The same argument might be
used against the limitation of the world in time, only we
have a far better one under the guidance of causality. In
the case of the assumption of a world limited in space,
there arises further the unanswerable question, What
advantage has the filled part of space enjoyed over the
infinite space that has remained empty ? In the fifth
dialogue of his book, "Del Infinite, Univcrso e Mondi,"
Giordano Bruno gives a full account of the arguments for
and against the finiteness of the world, which is very
well worth reading. For the rest, Kant himself asserts
seriously, and upon objective grounds, the infinity of the
world in space in his " Natural History of the Theory of
the Heavens," part ii. ch. 7. Aristotle also acknow
ledges the same, " Phys.," iii. ch. 4, a chapter which,
together with the following one, is very well worth reading
with reference to this antinomy.

In the second conflict the thesis is at once guilty of a
very palpable petitio principii, for it commences, " Every
compound substance consists of simple parts." From the
compoundness here arbitrarily assumed, no doubt it after
wards very easily proves the simple parts. But the pro
position, "All matter is compound," which is just the
point, remains unproved, because it is simply a groundless
assumption. The opposite of simple is not compound,
but extended, that which has parts and is divisible. Here,
however, it is really tacitly assumed that the parts existed
before the whole, and were brought together, whence the
whole has arisen : for this is the meanin^ of the word

' o

" compound." Yet this can just as little be asserted as
the opposite. Divisibility means merely the possibility
of separating the whole into parts, and not that the whole
is compounded out of parts and thus came into being.
Divisibility merely asserts the parts a parte post; com
poundness asserts them a parte ante. For there is essen
tially no temporal relation between the parts and the

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY, in

whole ; they rather condition each other reciprocally, and
thus always exist at the same time, for only so far as both
are there is there anything extended in space. Therefore
what Kant says in the observations on the thesis, " Space
ought not to be called a compositum, but a totum" &c.,
holds good absolutely of matter also, which is simply
space become perceptible. On the other hand, the infinite
divisibility of matter, which the antithesis asserts, follows
a priori and incontrovertibly from that of space, which it
fills. This proposition has absolutely nothing against it ;
and therefore Kant also (p. 513 ; V. 541), when he speaks
seriously and in his own person, no longer as the mouth
piece of the aSt/co? ^0709, presents it as objective truth ;
and also in the " Metaphysical First Principles of Natural
.Science" (p. 108, first edition), the proposition, "Matter is
infinitely divisible," is placed at the beginning of the proof
of the first proposition of mechanics as established truth,
having appeared and been proved as the fourth proposition
in the Dynamics. But here Kant spoils the proof of the
antithesis by the greatest obscurity of style and useless
accumulation of words, with the cunning intention that
the evidence of the antithesis shall not throw the sophisms
of the thesis too much into the shade. Atoms are no
necessary thought of the reason, but merely an hypothesis
for the explanation of the difference of the specific gravity
of bodies. But Kant himself has shown, in the dynamics
of his " Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science,"
that this can be otherwise, and indeed better and more
simply explained than by atomism. In this, however, he
was anticipated by Priestley, " On Matter and Spirit,"
sect. i. Indeed, even in Aristotle, " Phys." iv. 9, the
fundamental thought of this is to be found.

The argument for the third thesis is a very fine
sophism, and is really Kant's pretended principle of pure
reason itself entirely unadulterated and unchanged. It
tries to prove the finiteness of the series of causes by
saying that, in order to be sufficient, a cause must contain

ii2 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

the complete sum of the conditions from which the suc
ceeding state, the effect, proceeds. For the completeness
of the determinations present together in the state which is
the cause, the argument now substitutes the completeness
of the series of causes by which that state itself was brought
to actuality; and because completeness presupposes the
condition of being rounded off or closed in, and this again
presupposes finiteness, the argument infers from this a
first cause, closing the series and therefore unconditioned.
But the juggling is obvious. In order to conceive the
state A. as the sufficient cause of the state B., I assume
that it contains the sum of the necessary determinations
from the co-existence of which the estate B. inevitably
follows. Now by this my demand upon it as a sufficient
cause is entirely satisfied, and has no direct connection
with the question how the state A. itself came to be ;
this rather belongs to an entirely different consideration,
in which I regard the said state A. no more as cause, but
as itself an effect ; in which case another state again
must be related to it, just as it was related to B. The
assumption of the finiteness of the series of causes and
effects, and accordingly of a first beginning, appears
nowhere in this as necessary, any more than the present-
ness of the present moment requires us to assume a
beginning of time itself. It only comes to be added on
account of the laziness of the speculating individual.
That this assumption lies in the acceptance of a cause as
a sufficient reason is thus unfairly arrived at and false, as
I have shown at length above when considering the
Kantian principle of pure reason which coincides with
this thesis. In illustration of the assertion of this false
thesis, Kant is bold enough in his observations upon it to
give as an example of an unconditioned be^innino- his

o j. o ' o

rising from his chair ; as if it were not just as impossible
for him to rise without a motive as for a ball to roll
without a cause. I certainly do not need to prove the
baselessness of the appeal which, induced by a sense of

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 113

weakness, he makes to the philosophers of antiquity, by
quoting from Ocellus Lucanus, the Eleatics, &c., not to
speak of the Hindus. Against the proof of this anti
thesis, as in the case of the previous ones, there is nothing
to advance.

The fourth conflict is, as I have already remarked,
really tautological with the third ; and the proof of the
thesis is also essentially the same as that of the preceding
one. His assertion that every conditioned presupposes
a complete series of conditions, and therefore a series
which ends with an unconditioned, is a petitio principii,
which must simply be denied. Everything conditioned
presupposes nothing but its condition ; that this is again
conditioned raises a new consideration which is not
directly contained in the first.

A certain appearance of probability cannot be denied
to the antinomy ; yet it is remarkable that no part of
the Kantian philosophy has met so little contradiction,
indeed has found so much acceptance, as this exceed
ingly paradoxical doctrine. Almost all philosophical
parties and text-books have regarded it as valid, and
have also repeatedly reconstructed it; while nearly all
Kant's other doctrines have been contested, and indeed
there have never been wanting some perverse minds
which rejected even the transcendental aesthetic. The
undivided assent which the antinomy, on the other hand,
has met with may ultimately arise from the fact that
certain persons regard with inward satisfaction the point
at which the understanding is so thoroughly brought to
a standstill, having hit upon something which at once is
and is not, so that they actually have before them here the
sixth trick of Philadelphia in Lichtenberg's broadsheet.

If we examine the real meaning of Kant's Critical Solu
tion of the cosmological problem which now follows, we
find that it is not what he gives it out to be, the solution
of the problem by the disclosure that both sides, starting
from false assumptions, are wrong in the first and second

VOL. II. H

114 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

conflicts, and that in the third and fourth both, are right.
It is really the confirmation of the antitheses by the ex
planation of their assertions.

First Kant asserts, in this solution, obviously wrongly,
that both sides started from the assumption, as their first
principle, that with the conditioned the completed (thus
rounded off) series of its conditions is given. Only the
thesis laid down this proposition, Kant's principle of pure
reason, as the ground of its assertions ; the antithesis, on
the other hand, expressly denied it throughout, and asserted
the contrary. Further, Kant charges both sides with this
assumption, that the world exists in itself, i.e., indepen
dently of being known and of the forms of this knowledge,
but this assumption also is only made by the thesis ; in
deed, it is so far from forming the ground of the assertions
of the antithesis that it is absolutely inconsistent with
them. For that it should all be given is absolutely con
tradictory of the conception of an infinite series. It is
therefore essential to it that it should always exist only
with reference to the process of going through it, and not
independently of this. On the other hand, in the assump
tion of definite limits also lies that of a whole which
exists absolutely and independently of the process of
completely measuring it. Thus it is only the thesis that
makes the false assumption of a self-existent universe,
i.e., a universe given prior to all knowledge, and to which
knowledge came as to something external to itself. The
antithesis from the outset combats this assumption abso
lutely ; for the infinity of the series which it asserts merely
under the guidance of the principle of sufficient reason
can only exist if the regressus is fully carried out, but
not independently of it. As the object in general pre
supposes the subject, so also the object which is determined
as an endless chain of conditions necessarily presupposes
in the subject the kind of knowledge corresponding to
this, that is, the constant folloiving of the links of that
chain. But this is just what Kant gives as the solution

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 115

of the problem, and so often repeats : " The infinity of the
world is only through the regressus, not "before it." This
his solution of the conflict is thus really only the decision
in favour of the antithesis in the assertion of which this
truth already lies, while it is altogether inconsistent with
the assertions of the thesis. If the antithesis had asserted
that the world consisted of infinite series of reasons and
consequents, and yet existed independently of the idea
and its regressive series, thus in itself, and therefore con
stituted a given whole, it would have contradicted not
only the thesis but also itself. For an infinite can never
be given as a whole, nor an endless series exist, except as
an endless progress ; nor can what is boundless constitute
.a whole. Thus this assumption, of which Kant asserts
that it led both sides into error, belongs only to the thesis.

It is already a doctrine of Aristotle's that an infinity
can never be actu, i.e., actual and given, but only potentid.
OVK ecmi> evepyeta etvai ro aireipov , . . a\X' abvvaTov TO
evTe\€^eta ov cnreipov (infinitum non potest esse actu: . . .
sed impossibile, actu esse infinitum), Metaph. K. i o. Further :
KCUT evepyeiav pev yap ovbev ecrriv cnreipov, SvvctfMei Se eiri,
TTJV Siaipeaiv (nihil cnim actu infinitum est, sed potentia
tantum, nempe divisione ipsa). De generat, et corrupt.,
i., 3. He develops this fully in the "Physics," iii. 5 and
6, where to a certain extent he gives the perfectly correct
solution of the whole of the antinomies. He expounds
the antinomies in his short way, and then says, " A medi
ator (SiaiTijTov) is required;" upon which he gives the
solution that the infinite, both of the world in space and
in time and in division, is never before the regressus, or
progressus, but in it. Tiiis truth lies then in the rightly
apprehended conception of the infinite. Thus one mis
understands himself if he imagines that he can think the
infinite, of whatever kind it may be, as something objec
tively present and complete, and independent of the re
gressus.

Indeed if, reversing the procedure, we take as the

ii6 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

starting-point what Kant gives as the solution of the
conflict, the assertion of the antithesis follows exactly
from it. Thus : if the world is not an unconditioned
whole and does not exist absolutely but only in the idea,
and if its series of reasons and consequents do not exist
before the regressus of the ideas of them but only through
this regressus, then the world cannot contain determined
and finite series, because their determination and limita
tion would necessarily be independent of the idea, which
would then only come afterwards ; but all its series must
be infinite, i.e., inexhaustible by any idea.

On p. 506; V. 534, Kant tries to prove from the
falseness of both sides the transcendental ideality of
the phenomenon, and begins, " If the world is a whole
existing by itself, it is either finite or infinite." But this
is false ; a whole existing of itself cannot possibly be
infinite. That ideality may rather be concluded from
the infinity of the series in the world in the following
manner : — If the series of reasons and consequents in
the world are absolutely without end, the world cannot
be a given whole independent of the idea ; for such a
world always presupposes definite limits, just as on the
contrary infinite series presuppose an infinite regressus.
Therefore, the presupposed infinity of the series must be
determined through the form of reason and consequent,
and this again through the form of knowledge of the
subject ; thus the world as it is known must exist only
in the idea of the subject.

Now whether Kant himself was aware or not that his
critical solution of the problem is really a decision in
favour of the antithesis, I am unable to decide. For it
depends upon whether what Schelling has somewhere
very happily called Kant's system of accommodation
extended so far; or whether Kant's mind was here-
already involved in an unconscious accommodation to
the influence of his time and surroundings.

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 117

The solution of the third antinomy, the subject of
which was the Idea of freedom, deserves a special con
sideration, because it is for us very well worth notice that
it is just here in connection with the Idea of freedom
that Kant is obliged to speak more fully of the thing in
itself, which was hitherto only seen in the background.
This is very explicable to us since we have recognised
the thing in itself as the will. Speaking generally, this
is the point at which the Kantian philosophy leads to
mine, or at which mine springs out of his as its parent
stem. One will be convinced of this if one reads with
attention pp. 536 and 537; V. 564 and 565, of the
" Critique of Pure Reason," and, further, compares these
passages with the introduction to the " Critique of Judg
ment," pp. xviii. and xix. of the third edition, or p. 13 of
liosenkranz's edition, where indeed it is said : " The
conception of freedom can in its object (that is then the
will) present to the mind a thing in itself, but not in
perception ; the conception of nature, on the other hand,
can present its object to the mind in perception, but not
as a thing in itself." But specially let any one read con
cerning the solution of the antinomies the fifty-third
paragraph of the Prolegomena, and then honestly answer
the question whether all that is said there does not sound
like a riddle to which my doctrine is the answer. Kant
never completed his thought ; I have merely carried out
his work. Accordingly, what Kant says only of the
human phenomenon I have extended to all phenomena
in general, as differing from the human phenomenon only
in degree, that their true being is something absolutely
free, i.e., a will. It appears from my work how fruitful
this insight is in connection with Kant's doctrine of the
ideality of space, time, and causality.

Kant has nowhere made the thing in itself the subject
of a special exposition or distinct deduction ; but, when
ever he wants it, he introduces it at once by means of the
conclusion that the phenomenon, thus the visible world,

ii8 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

must have a reason, an intelligible cause, which is not a
phenomenon, and therefore belongs to no possible expe
rience. He does this after having assiduously insisted
that the categories, and thus causality also, had a use
which was absolutely confined to possible experience ;
that they were merely forms of the understanding, which,
served to spell out the phenomena of the world of sense,
beyond which, on the other hand, they had no signifi
cance, &c., &c. Therefore, he denies in the most uncom
promising manner their application to things beyond
experience, and rightly explains and at once rejects all
earlier dogmatism as based upon the neglect of this law.
The incredible inconsistency which Kant here fell into
was soon noticed, and used by his first opponents to
make attacks on his philosophy to which it could offer no
resistance. For certainly we apply the law of causality
entirely a priori and before all experience to the changes
felt in our organs of sense. But, on this very account,
this law is just as much of subjective origin as these
sensations themselves, and thus does not lead to a thing
in itself. The truth is, that upon the path of the idea one
can never get beyond the idea ; it is a rounded-off whole,
and has in its own resources no clue leading to the nature
of the thing in itself, which is toto genere different from
it. If we were merely perceiving beings, the way to the
thing in itself would be absolutely cut off from us. Only
the other side of our own being can disclose to us the
other side of the inner being of things. This path I have
followed. But Kant's inference to the thing in itself,
contrary as it is to his own teaching, obtains some excuse
from the following circumstance. He does not say, as
truth required, simply and absolutely that the object is
conditioned by the subject, and conversely ; but only that
the manner of the appearance of the object is conditioned
by the forms of knowledge of the subject, which, there
fore, also come a priori to consciousness. But that now
which in opposition to this is only known a posteriori is

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 119

for him the immediate effect of the thing in itself, which
becomes phenomenon only in its passage through these
forms which are given a priori. From this point of view
it is to some extent explicable how it could escape him
that objectivity in general belongs to the form of the
phenomenon, and is just as much conditioned by subjec
tivity in general as the mode of appearing of the object
is conditioned by the forms of knowledge of the subject ;
that thus if a thing in itself must be assumed, it abso
lutely cannot be an object, which however he always
assumes it to be, but such a thing in itself must neces
sarily lie in a sphere toto genere different from the idea
(from knowing and being known), and therefore could
least of all be arrived at through the laws of the com
bination of objects among themselves.

With the proof of the thing in itself it has happened to
Kant precisely as with that of the a priori nature of the
law of causality. Both doctrines are true, but their proof
is false. They thus belong to the class of true conclu
sions from false premises. I have retained them both,
but have proved them in an entirely different way, and
with certainty.

The thing in itself I have neither introduced surrepti
tiously nor inferred according to laws which exclude it,
because they really belong to its phenomenal appearance ;
nor, in general, have I arrived at it by roundabout ways.
On the contrary, I have shown it directly, there where it
lies immediately, in the will, which reveals itself to every
one directly as the in-itself of his own phenomenal being.

And it is also this immediate knowledge of his own
will out of which in human consciousness the concep
tion of freedom springs ; for certainly the will, as world-
creating, as thing in itself, is free from the principle of
sufficient reason, and therewith from all necessity, thus is
completely independent, free, and indeed almighty. Yet,
in truth, this only holds good of the will in itself, not of
its manifestations, the individuals, who, just through the

120 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

will itself, are unalterably determined as its manifestations
in time. But in the ordinary consciousness, unenlightened
by philosophy, the will is at once confused with its mani
festation, and what belongs only to the former is attributed
to the latter, whence arises the illusion of the uncondi
tioned freedom of the individual. Therefore Spinoza says
rightly that if the projected stone had consciousness, it
would believe that it flew of its own free will. For cer
tainly the in-itself of the stone also is the will, which alone
is free ; but, as in all its manifestations, here also, where it
appears as a stone, it is already fully determined. But of
all this enough has already been said in the text of this
work.

Kant fails to understand and overlooks this immediate
origin of the conception of freedom in every human con
sciousness, and therefore he now places (p. 533 ; V. 561)
the source of that conception in a very subtle speculation,
through which the unconditioned, to which the reason must
always tend, leads us to hypostatise the conception of free
dom, and it is only upon this transcendent Idea of freedom
that the practical conception of it is supposed to be founded.
In the " Critique of Practical Eeason," § 6, and p. 158 of
the fourth and 235 of Rosenkranz's edition, he yet deduces
this last conception differently by saying that the cate
gorical imperative presupposes it. The speculative Idea
is accordingly only the primary source of the conception
of freedom for the sake of this presupposition, but here
it obtains both significance and application. Neither,
however, is the case. For the delusion of a perfect
freedom of the individual in his particular actions is most
lively in the conviction of the least cultivated man who
has never reflected, and it is thus founded on no specula
tion, although often assumed by speculation from without.
Thus only philosophers, and indeed only the most profound
of them, are free from it, and also the most thoughtful and
enlightened of the writers of the Church.

It follows, then, from all that has been said, that the

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 121

true source of the conception of freedom is in no way
essentially an inference, either from the speculative Idea
of an unconditioned cause, nor from the fact that it is
presupposed by the categorical imperative. But it springs
directly from the consciousness in which each one recog
nises himself at once as the will, i.e., as that which, as the
thing in itself, has not the principle of sufficient reason
for its form, and which itself depends upon nothing, but
on which everything else rather depends. Every one, how
ever, does not recognise himself at once with the critical
and reflective insight of philosophy as a determined mani
festation of this will which has already entered time, as we
might say, an act of will distinguished from that will to
live itself ; and, therefore, instead of recognising his whole
existence as an act of his freedom, he rather seeks for
freedom in his individual actions. Upon this point I
refer the reader to my prize-essay on the freedom of the
will.

Now if Kant, as he here pretends, and also apparently
did in earlier cases, had merely inferred the thing in itself,
and that with the great inconsistency of an inference
absolutely forbidden by himself, what a remarkable acci
dent would it then be that here, where for the first time
he approaches the thing in itself more closely and explains
it, he should recognise in it at once the will, the free will
showing itself in the world only in temporal manifesta
tions ! I therefore really assume, though it cannot be
proved, that whenever Kant spoke of the thing in itself,
in the obscure depths of his mind he already always in
distinctly thought of the will. This receives support from
a passage in the preface to the second edition of the
" Critique of Pure Ixeason," pp. xxvii. and xxviii., in liosen-
kranz's edition, p. 677 of the Supplement.

For the rest, it is just this predetermined solution of the
sham third conflict that affords Kant the opportunity of
expressing very beautifully the deepest thoughts of his
whole philosophy. This is the case in the whole of the

122 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

" Sixth Section of the Antinomy of Pure Eeason ; " but,
above all, in the exposition of the opposition between the
empirical and the intelligible character, p. 534-550; V.
562-578, which I number among the most admirable
things that have ever been said by man. (As a supple
mental explanation of this passage, compare a parallel
passage in the Critique of Practical Eeasou, p. 169-179
of the fourth edition, or p. 224-231 of Eosenkranz's edi
tion.) It is yet all the more to be regretted that this is
here not in its right place, partly because it is not found
in the way which the exposition states, and therefore
could be otherwise deduced than it is, partly because it
does not fulfil the end for which it is there — the solution
of the sham antinomy. The intelligible character, the
thing in itself, is inferred from the phenomenon by the
inconsistent use of the category of causality beyond the
sphere of all phenomena, which has already been suffi
ciently condemned. In this case the will of man (which
Kant entitles reason, most improperly, and with an un
pardonable breach of all use of language) is set up as the
thing in itself, with an appeal to an unconditioned ought,
the categorical imperative, which is postulated without
more ado.

Now, instead of all this, the plain open procedure would
have been to start directly from the will, and prove it to
be the in-itself of our own phenomenal being, recognised
without any mediation ; and then to give that exposition of
the empirical and the intelligible character to explain how
all actions, although necessitated by motives, yet, both by
their author and by the disinterested judge, are necessarily
and absolutely ascribed to the former himself and alone, as
depending solely upon him, to whom therefore guilt and
merit are attributed in respect of them. This alone was
the straight path to the knowledge of that which is not
phenomenon, and therefore will not be found by the help
of the laws of the phenomenon, but is that which reveals
itself through the phenomenon, becomes knowable, objec-

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 123

tifies itself — the will to live. It would then have had to
be exhibited merely by analogy as the inner nature of
every phenomenon. Then, however, it certainly could not
have been said that in lifeless or even animal nature no
faculty can be thought except as sensuously conditioned
(p. 546; V. 574), which in Kant's language is simply
saying that the explanation, according to the law of
causality, exhausts the inner nature of these phenomena,
and thus in their case, very inconsistently, the thing in
itself disappears. Through the false position and the
roundabout deduction according with it which the exposi
tion of the thing in itself has received from Kant, the
whole conception of it has also become falsified. For the
will or the thing in itself, found through the investigation
of an unconditioned cause, appears here related to the
phenomenon as cause to effect. But this relation exists
only within the phenomenal world, therefore presupposes
it, and cannot connect the phenomenal world itself with
what lies outside it, and is toto gencre different from it.

Further, the intended end, the solution of the third
antinomy by the decision that both sides, each in a diffe
rent sense, are right, is not reached at all. For neither the
thesis nor the antithesis have anything to do with the
thing in itself, but entirely with the phenomenon, the
objective world, the world as idea. This it is, and abso
lutely nothing else, of which the thesis tries to show, by
means of the sophistry we have laid bare, that it contains
unconditioned causes, and it is also this of which the
antithesis rightly denies that it contains such causes.
Therefore the whole exposition of the transcendental free
dom of the will, so far as it is a thing in itself, which is
given here in justification of the thesis, excellent as it is
in itself, is yet here entirely a ^era/Sacri? eta a\\o <yevo$.
For the transcendental freedom of the will which is ex
pounded is by no means the unconditioned causality of a
cause, which the thesis asserts, because it is of the essence
of a cause that it must be a phenomenon, and not some-

124 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

thing which lies beyond all phenomena and is toto genere
different.

If what is spoken of is cause and effect, the relation
of the will to the manifestation (or of the intelligible
character to the empirical) must never be introduced, as
happens here : for it is entirely different from causal re
lation. However, here also, in this solution of the anti
nomy, it is said with truth that the empirical character of
man, like that of every other cause in nature, is unalterably
determined, and therefore that his actions necessarily take
place in accordance with the external influences; therefore
also, in spite of all transcendental freedom (i.e., indepen
dence of the will in itself of the laws of the connection of
its manifestation), no man has the power of himself to
begin a series of actions, which, however, was asserted by
the thesis. Thus also freedom has no causality ; for only
the will is free, and it lies outside nature or the pheno
menon, which is just its objectification, but does not stand
in a causal relation to it, for this relation is only found
within the sphere of the phenomenon, thus presupposes
it, and cannot embrace the phenomenon itself and connect
it with what is expressly not a phenomenon. The world
itself can only be explained through the will (for it is the
will itself, so far as it manifests itself), and not through
causality. But in the world, causality is the sole principle
of explanation, and everything happens simply according
to the laws of nature. Thus the right lies entirely on the
side of the antithesis, which sticks to the question in
hand, and uses that principle of explanation which is
valid with regard to it; therefore it needs no apology.
The thesis, on the other hand, is supposed to be got out of
the matter by an apology, which first passes over to some
thing quite different from the question at issue, and then
assumes a principle of explanation which is inapplicable
to it.

The fourth conflict is, as has already been said, in its
real meaning tautological with the third. In its solution

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 125

Kant develops still more the untenable nature of the thesis ;
while for its truth, on the other hand, and its pretended
consistency with the antithesis, he advances no reason, as
conversely he is able to bring no reason against the anti
thesis. The assumption of the thesis he introduces quite
apologetically, and yet calls it himself (p. 562 ; V. 590)
an arbitrary presupposition, the object of which might
well in itself be impossible, and shows merely an utterly
impotent endeavour to find a corner for it somewhere
where it will be safe from the prevailing might of the
antithesis, only to avoid disclosing the emptiness of the
whole of his once-loved assertion of the necessary anti
nomy in human reason.

Now follows the chapter on the transcendental ideal,
which carries us back at once to the rigid Scholasticism
of the Middle Ages. One imagines one is listening to
Anselm of Canterbury himself. The ens realissimum, the
essence of all realities, the content of all affirmative pro
positions, appears, and indeed claims to be a necessary
thought of the reason. I for rny part must confess that
to my reason such a thought is impossible, and that I am
not able to think anything definite in connection with the
words which denote it.

Moreover, I do not doubt that Kant was compelled to
write this extraordinary chapter, so unworthy of him,
simply by his fondness for architectonic symmetry. The
three principal objects of the Scholastic philosophy (which,
as we have said, if understood in the wider sense, may be
regarded as continuing down to Kant), the soul, the world,
and God, are supposed to be deduced from the three pos
sible major propositions of syllogisms, though it is plain
that they have arisen, and can arise, simply and solely
through the unconditioned application of the principle of
sufficient reason. Kow, after the soul had been forced
into the categorical judgment, and the hypothetical was

126 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

set apart for the world, there remained for the third
Idea nothing but the disjunctive major. Fortunately
there existed a previous work in this direction, the ens
rcalissimum of the Scholastics, together with the onto-
logical proof of the existence of God set up in a rudi
mentary form by Anselm of Canterbury and then per
fected by Descartes. This was joyfully made use of by
Kant, with some reminiscence also of an earlier Latin
work of his youth. However, the sacrifice which Kant
makes to his love of architectonic symmetry in this
chapter is exceedingly great. In defiance of all truth,
what one must regard as the grotesque idea of an essence
of all possible realities is made an essential and necessary
thought of the reason. For the deduction of this Kant
makes use of the false assertion that our knowledge of
particular things arises from a progressive limitation of
general conceptions ; thus also of a most general concep
tion of all which contains all reality in itself. In this he
stands just as much in contradiction with his own teach
ing as with the truth, for exactly the converse is the case.
Our knowledge starts with the particular and is extended
to the general, and all general conceptions arise by abstrac
tion from real, particular things known by perception, and
this can be carried on to the most general of all concep
tions, which includes everything under it, but almost
nothing in it. Thus Kant has here placed the procedure
of our faculty of knowledge just upside down, and thus
might well be accused of having given occasion to a philo
sophical charletanism that has become famous in our
day, which, instead of recognising that conceptions are
thoughts abstracted from things, makes, on the contrary
the conceptions first, and sees in things only concrete
conceptions, thus bringing to market the world turned
upside down as a philosophical buffoonery, which of
course necessarily found great acceptance.

Even if we assume that every reason must, or at least
can, attain to the conception of God, even without revela-

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 127

tion, this clearly takes place only under the guidance of
causality. This is so evident that it requires no proof.
Therefore Chr. Wolf says (Oosmologia Generates, prcef.,
p. i) : Sane in theologia naturdli existentiam Numinis e
principiis cosmologicis demonstramus. Contingentia uni-
versi ct ordinis natures, una cum impossibilitate casus, sunt
scala, per quam a mundo hoc adspectabili ad Dcum asccn-
ditur. And, before him, Leibnitz said, in connection
with the law of causality : Sans ce grand principe on nc
saurait venir a la preuve de I 'existence de Dieu. On the
other hand, the thought which is worked out in this
chapter is so far from being essential and necessary to
reason, that it is rather to be regarded as a veritable
masterpiece of the monstrous productions of an age
which, through strange circumstances, fell into the most

* o o *

singular aberrations and perversities, such as the age of
the Scholastics was — an age which is unparalleled in the
history of the world, and can never return again. This
Scholasticism, as it advanced to its final form, certainly
derived the principal proof of the existence of God from
the conception of the ens realissimum, and only then used
the other proofs as accessory. This, however, is mere
methodology, and proves nothing as to the origin of
theology in the human mind. Kant has here taken the
procedure of Scholasticism for that of reason — a mistake
which indeed he has made more than once. If it were
true that according to the essential laws of reason the Idea
of God proceeds from the disjunctive syllogism under the
form of an Idea of the most real being, this Idea would
also have existed in the philosophy of antiquity ; but of
the ens realissimum there is nowhere a trace in any of
the ancient philosophers, although some of them certainly
teach that there is a Creator of the world, yet only as the
giver of form to the matter which exists without him,
Sepiovp'yos, a being whom they yet infer simply and solely
in accordance with the law of causality. It is true that
Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math., ix. § 88) quotes an argu-

128 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

ment of Cleanthes, which some have held to be the
ontological proof. This, however, it is not, but merely an
inference from analogy ; because experience teaches that
upon earth one being is always better than another, and
man, indeed, as the best, closes the series, but yet has
many faults ; therefore there must exist beings who are still
better, and finally one being who is best of all (
apia-rov), and this would be God.

On the detailed refutation of speculative theology which
now follows I have only briefly to remark that it, and in
general the whole criticism of the three so-called Ideas of
reason, thus the whole Dialectic of Pure Eeason, is indeed
to a certain extent the goal and end of the whole work ;
yet this polemical part has not really an absolutely uni
versal, permanent, and purely philosophical interest, such
as is possessed by the preceding doctrinal part, i.e., the
aesthetic and analytic ; but rather a temporary and local
interest, because it stands in a special relation to the
leading points of the philosophy which prevailed in Europe
up till the time of Kant, the complete overthrow of which
was yet, to his immortal credit, achieved by him through
this polemic. He has eliminated theism from philosophy;
for in it, as a science and not a system of faith, only that
can find a place which is either empirically given or estab
lished by valid proofs. Naturally we only mean here the
real seriously understood philosophy which is concerned
with the truth, and nothing else ; and by no means the
jest of philosophy taught in the universities, in which, after
Kant as before him, speculative theology plays the principal
part, and where, also, after as before him, the soul appears
without ceremony as a familiar person. For it is the philo
sophy endowed with salaries and fees, and, indeed, also
with titles of Hofrath, which, looking proudly down from
its height, remains for forty years entirely unaware of the
existence of little people like me, and would be thoroughly

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 129

glad to be rid of the old Kant with his Critiques, that
they might drink the health of Leibnitz with all their
hearts. It is further to be remarked here, that as Kant
was confessedly led to his doctrine of the a priori nature
of the conception of causality by Hume's scepticism with
regard to that conception, it may be that in the same way
Kant's criticism of all speculative theology had its occasion
in Hume's criticism of all popular theology, which he had
given in his " Natural History of Eeligion," a book so well
worth reading, and in the " Dialogues on Natural Eeligion."
Indeed, it may be that Kant wished to a certain extent to
supplement this. For the first-named work of Hume is
really a critique of popular theology, the pitiable condi
tion of which it seeks to show ; while, on the other hand,
it points to rational or speculative theology as the genuine,
and that which is worthy of respect. But Kant now dis
closes the groundlessness of the latter, and leaves, on the
other hand, popular theology untouched, nay, even estab
lishes it in a nobler form as a faith based upon moral
feeling. This was afterwards distorted by the philoso-
phasters into rational apprehensions, consciousness of
God, or intellectual intuitions of the supersensible, of the
divine, &c., &c. ; while Kant, as he demolished old and
revered errors, and knew the danger of doing so, rather
wished through the moral theology merely to substitute a
few weak temporary supports, so that the ruin might not
fall on him, but that he might have time to escape.

Now, as regards the performance of the task, no critique
of reason was necessary for the refutation of the ontological
proof of the existence of God ; for without presupposing
the aesthetic and analytic, it is quite easy to make clear
that that ontological proof is nothing but a subtle playing
with conceptions which is quite powerless to produce con
viction. There is a chapter in the "Organon " of Aristotle
which suffices as fully for the refutation of the ontological
proof as if it had been written intentionally with that
purpose. It is the seventh chapter of the second book of

VOL. II. I

130 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

the " Analyt. Post" Among other things, it is expressly
said there : " TO Se etvai OVK ovcna ovbevi," i.e., existentia
nunquam ad essentiam rei pertinct.

The refutation of the cosmological proof is an applica
tion to a given case of the doctrine of the Critique as
expounded up to that point, and there is nothing to be
said against it. The physico-theological proof is a mere
amplification of the cosmological, which it presupposes,
and it finds its full refutation only in the " Critique of
Judgment." I refer the reader in this connection to the
rubric, " Comparative Anatomy," in my work on the Will
in Nature.

In the criticism of this proof Kant has only to do,
as we have already said, with speculative theology, and
limits himself to the School. If, on the contrary, he had
had life and popular theology also in view, he would have
been obliged to add a fourth proof to the three he has
considered — that proof which is really the effective one
with the great mass of men, and which in Kant's technical
language might best be called the keraunological. It is
the proof which is founded upon the needy, impotent, and
dependent condition of man as opposed to natural forces,
which are infinitely superior, inscrutable, and for the most
part threatening evil ; to which is added man's natural
inclination to personify everything, and finally the hope
of effecting something by prayers and flattery, and even
by gifts. In every human undertaking there is something
which is not in our power and does not come within our
calculations ; the wish to win this for oneself is the origin
of the gods. " Primus in orbe Deos fecit timor " is an old
and true saying of Petronius. It is principally this proof
which is criticised by Hume, who throughout appears as
Kant's forerunner in the writings referred to above. But
those whom Kant has placed in a position of permanent
embarrassment by his criticism of speculative theology
are the professors of philosophy. Salaried by Christian
governments, they dare not give up the chief article of

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 131

faith.1 Now, how do these gentlemen help themselves ?
They simply declare that the existence of God is self-
evident. Indeed ! After the ancient world, at the expense
of its conscience, had worked miracles to prove it, and
the modern world, at the expense of its understanding,
had brought into the field ontological, cosmological, and
physico-theological proofs — to these gentlemen it is self-
evident. And from this self-evident God they then explain
the world : that is their philosophy.

Till Kant came there was a real dilemma between
materialism and theism, i.e., between the assumption that
a blind chance, or that an intelligence working from with
out in accordance with purposes and conceptions, had
brought about the world, neque dabaiur tertium. There
fore atheism and materialism were the same ; hence the
doubt whether there really could be an atheist, i.e., a man
•who really could attribute to blind chance the disposition
of nature, so full of design, especially organised nature.
See, for example, Bacon's Essays (sermones fideles), Essay
1 6, on Atheism. In the opinion of the great mass of
men, and of the English, who in such things belong
entirely to the great mass (the mob), this is still the case,
even with their most celebrated men of learning. One
has only to look at Owen's " Ostfologie Compare'e," of 1855,
preface, p. 11, 12, where he stands always before the old
dilemma between Democritus and Epicurus on the one
side, and an intelligence on the other, in which la con-

1 Kant said, " It is very absurd the late Professor Bachmann who,
to expect enlightenment from rea- in the Jena Littcraturzcitung for
son, and yet to prescribe to her July 1840, No. 126, so indiscreetly
beforehand which side she must blurted out the maxim of all his
necessarily take " ("Critique of Pure colleagues. However, it is worth
Reason," p. 747; V. 775)- On the noticing, as regards the character-
other hand, the following is the istics of the University philosophy,
naive assertion of a professor of how here the truth, if it will not
philosophy in our own time : " If a suit and adapt itself, is shown the
philosophy denies the reality of the door without ceremony, with, " Be
fundamental ideas of Christianity, off, truth ! we cannot make use of
it is either false, or, even if true, it you. Do we owe you anything?
is yet useless." That is to say, for Do you pay us? Then be off !"
professors of philosophy. It was

132 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

naissance dun 6tre tel que I'homme a exists avant que
I'homme Jit son apparition. All design must have pro
ceeded from an intelligence ; he has never even dreamt of
doubting this. Yet in the lecture based upon this now
modified preface, delivered in the Academic des Sciences on
the 5th September 1853, he says, with childish naivete:
"La iiUologie, ou la the"ologie scientiftque" (Comptes Rendus,
Sept. 1853), that is for him precisely the same thing! Is
anything in nature designed ? then it is a work of inten
tion, of reflection, of intelligence. Yet, certainly, what
has such an Englishman and the Academic des Sciences
to do with the " Critique of Judgment," or, indeed, with
my book upon the Will in Nature ? These gentlemen
do not see so far below them. These illustres confreres
disdain metaphysics and the philosophic allemande: they
confine themselves to the old woman's philosophy. The
validity of that disjunctive major, that dilemma between
materialism and theism, rests, however, upon the assump
tion that the present given world is the world of things in
themselves ; that consequently there is no other order of
things than the empirical. But after the world and its
order had through Kant become mere phenomenon, the
laws of which rest principally upon the forms of our
intellect, the existence and nature of things and of the
world no longer required to be explained according to the
analogy of the changes perceived or effected by us in the
world ; nor must that which we comprehend as means and
end have necessarily arisen as the consequence of a similar
knowledge Thus, inasmuch as Kant, through his impor
tant distinction between phenomenon and thing in itself,
withdrew the foundation from theism, he opened, on the
other hand, the way to entirely different and more profound
explanations of existence.

In the chapter on the ultimate aim of the natural dia
lectic of reason it is asserted that the three transcendent
Ideas are of value as regulative principles for the advance
ment of the knowledge of nature. But Kant can barelv

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 133

have been serious in making this assertion. At least its
opposite, that these assumptions are restrictive and fatal
to all investigation of nature, is to every natural philo
sopher beyond doubt. To test this by an example, let any
one consider whether the assumption of the soul as an
immaterial, simple, thinking substance would have been
necessarily advantageous or in the highest degree impeding
to the truths which Cabanis has so beautifully expounded,
or to the discoveries of Flourens, Marshall Hall, and Ch.
Bell. Indeed Kant himself says (Prolegomena, § -M),
" The Ideas of the reason are opposed and hindering to
the maxims of the rational knowlege of nature."

It is certainly not the least merit of Frederick the
Great, that under his Government Kant could develop
himself, and dared to publish the " Critique of Pure
Eeason." Hardly under any other Government would a
salaried professor have ventured such a thing. Kant was
obliged to promise the immediate successor of the greac
kins that he would write no more.

I might consider that I could dispense with the criticism
of the ethical part of the Kantian philosophy here because
I have given a detailed and thorough criticism of it
twenty-two years later than the present work in the
" Beiden Grundprollemcn der Ethik." However, what is
here retained from the first edition, and for the sake of
completeness must not be omitted, may serve as a suitable
introduction to that later and much more thorough criti
cism, to which in the main I therefore refer the reader.

On account of Kant's love of architectonic symmetry,
the theoretical reason had also to have a pendant. The
intcllectus pradicus of the Scholastics, which again springs
from the vovs irpaKTUcos of Aristotle (De Anima, iii. 10,
and Polit., vii. c. 14: o t*ev 'yap irpaKTiKos ecrrt \oyos, o Se
6€Q)pr)TiKo<i), provides the word ready made. Yet here
something quite different is denoted by it — not as there,

134 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

the reason directed to technical skill. Here the practical
reason appears as the source and origin of the undeniable
ethical significance of human action, and of all virtue, all
nobleness, and every attainable degree of holiness. All
this accordingly should come from mere reason, and de
mand nothing but this. To act rationally and to act vir
tuously, nobly, holily, would be one and the same ; and
to act selfishly, wickedly, viciously, would be merely to
act irrationally. However, all times and peoples and
languages have distinguished the two, and held them to be
quite different things ; and so does every one even at the
present day who knows nothing of the language of the new
school, i.e., the whole world, with the exception of a small
company of German savants. Every one but these last
understands by virtuous conduct and a rational course of
life two entirely different things. To say that the sublime
founder of the Christian religion, whose life is presented
to us as the pattern of all virtue, was the most rational of
all men would be called a very unbecoming and even a
blasphemous way of speaking ; and almost as much so
if it were said that His precepts contained all the best
directions for a perfectly rational life. Further, that he
who, in accordance with these precepts, instead of taking
thought for his own future needs, always relieves the
greater present wants of others, without further motive,
nay, gives all his goods to the poor, in order then, desti
tute of all means of subsistence, to go and preach to
others also the virtue which he practises himself; this
every one rightly honours ; but who ventures to extol it
as the highest pitch of reasonableness? And finally, who
praises it as a rational deed that Arnold von Winkelried,
with surpassing courage, clasped the hostile spears against
his own body in order to gain victory and deliverance for
his countrymen ? On the other hand, if we see a man
who from his youth upwards deliberates with exceptional
foresight how he may procure for himself an easy compe
tence, the means for the support of wife and children, a

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 135

good name among men, outward honour and distinction,
and in doing so never allows himself to be led astray or
induced to lose sight of his end by the charm of present
pleasures or the satisfaction of defying the arrogance of
the powerful, or the desire of revenging insults and un
deserved humiliations he has suffered, or the attractions of
useless aesthetic or philosophical occupations of the mind,
or travels in interesting lands, but with great consistency
works towards his one end, — who ventures to deny that
such a philistine is in quite an extraordinary degree rational,
even if he has made use of some means which are not praise
worthy but are yet without danger ? Nay, more, if a bad
man, with deliberate shrewdness, through a well-thought-
out plan attains to riches and honours, and even to thrones
and crowns, and then with the acutest cunning gets the
better of neighbouring states, overcomes them one by
one, and now becomes a conqueror of the world, and in
doing so is not led astray by any respect for right, any
sense of humanity, but with sharp consistency tramples
down and dashes to pieces everything that opposes his
plan, without compassion plunges millions into misery of
every kind, condemns millions to bleed and die, yet royally
rewards and always protects his adherents and helpers,
never forgetting anything, and thus reaches his end, — who
does not see that such a man must go to work in a most,
rational manner ? — that, as a powerful understanding was
needed to form the plans, their execution demanded the
complete command of the reason, and indeed properly ot
practical reason ? Or are the precepts which the pru
dent and consistent, the thoughtful and far-seeing Machia-
velli prescribes to the prince irrational?1

1 By the way, Machiavelli's prob- purely the political one how, if he so

lem was the solution of the question wills, he can carry it out. And the

how the prince, as a prince, was to solution of this problem he gives just

keep himself on the throne in spite of as one writes directions for playing

internal and external enemies. His chess, with which it would be folly

problem was thus by no means the to mix up the answer to the ques-

ethical problem whether a prince, as tion whether from an ethical point

a man, ought to will such things, but of view it is advisable to play chess

136 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

As wickedness is quite consistent with reason, and in
deed only becomes really terrible in this conjunction, so,
conversely, nobleness is sometimes joined with want of
reason. To this may be attributed the action of Corio-
lanus, who, after he had applied all his strength for years
to the accomplishment of his revenge upon the Romans,
when at length the time came, allowed himself to be
softened by the prayers of the Senate and the tears of his
mother and wife, gave up the revenge he had so long and
so painfully prepared, and indeed, by thus bringing on
himself the just anger of the Volscians, died for those
very Eomans whose thanklessness he knew and desired
so intensely to punish. Finally, for the sake of complete
ness, it may be mentioned that reason may very well exist
along with want of understanding. This is the case when
a foolish maxim is chosen, but is followed out consistently.
An example of this is afforded by the case of the Princess
Isabella, daughter of Philip II., who vowed that she would
not put on a clean chemise so long as Ostend remained
unconquered, and kept her word through three years. In
general all vows are of this class, whose origin is a want
of insight as regards the law of causality, i.e., want of
understanding; nevertheless it is rational to fulfil them
if one is of such narrow understanding as to make them.

In agreement with what we have said, we see the
writers who appeared just before Kant place the con
science, as the seat of the moral impulses, in opposition to
the reason. Thus Eousseau, in the fourth book of " Umile,"
says : " La raison nous trompe, mais la conscience ne trompe
jamais;" and further on: "II est impossible d'expliquer par
les consciences de notre nature leprincipe imme'diat de la con
science indepcndant de la raison meme." Still further : " Mes
sentimens naturds parlaient pour I'inte'ret commun, ma raison
rapportait tout a moi. . . . On a beau ixniloir etablir la vertu

at all. To reproach Machiavelli not begin his instructions with a,

with the immorality of his writ- moral lecture against murder and

ing is just the same as to reproach slaughter.
a fencing-master because he does

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 137

par la raison seul, quelle solide base peut-on lui donner ? " In
the " Reveries du Promeneur," prom. 4 erne, he says : " Dans
toutes les questions de morale difficilesje me suis toujours lien
trouve" de les resoudre par le dictamen de la conscience, plutot
que par les lumieres de la raison." Indeed Aristotle already
says expressly (Eih. Magna, i. 5) that the virtues have
their seat in the aXoyw p,opiw T??? ^1/^779 (in parte irra-
tionali animi], and not in the \oyov e^ovrt (in parte
rationali). In accordance with this, Stobseus says (Ed.,
ii., c. 7), speaking of the Peripatetics : " Trjv rjOiKyv aperrjv
epi TO a\oyov /iepo<? yi'yveadai TT?? "^f^S",
Trpos TIJV Trapovcrav Oewpiav inreOevTO TTJV
, TO ftev \OJIKOV e%ovcrav, TO 8' aXoyov. Kat irept,
fiev TO \oyifcoi> Tffv KaXotcayaOiav ^i^veadav, icai Trjv (j)povr]-
<riv, Kai Tfjv a^^ivoiav, /cat crotyiav, KCLI evp.a6eiav, Kai
[jbvrifjLr)v, Kai Ta? o/iotof?' -nepi 8e TO a\oyov, (
Kai SiKaioo-vvrjV, Kai av&petav, Kat Ta? aXXa? Ta?
Ka\ovp. ej^a? apeTa?." (Ethicam virtutem circa partem animce
ratione carentem vcrsari putant, cum duplicem, ad hanc
disqitisitionem, animam ponant, ratione prccditam, et ea
carentem. In parte vero ratione prcedita collocant inyenui-
tatem, prudentiam, perspicacitatem, sapientiam, docilitatem,
memoriam et reliqua ; in parte vero ratione, destituta tem-
perantiam,justitiam,fortitudinem, et reliquas virtutes, quas
ethicas vocant.) And Cicero (De Nat. Deor., iii., c. 26-31)
explains at length that reason is the necessary means, the
tool, of all crime.

I have explained reason to be the faculty of framing
concepts. It is this quite special class of general non-
perceptible ideas, which are symbolised and fixed only
by words, that distinguishes man from the brutes and
gives him the pre-eminence upon earth. While the brute
is the slave of the present, and knows only immediate
sensible motives, and therefore when they present them
selves to it is necessarily attracted or repelled by them,
as iron is by the magnet, in man, on the contrary, de
liberation has been introduced through the gift of reason.

138 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

This enables him easily to survey as a whole his life and
the course of the world, looking before and after ; it makes
him independent of the present, enables him to go to
work deliberately, systematically, and with foresight, to
do evil as well as to do good. But what he does he does
with complete self-consciousness ; he knows exactly how
his will decides, what in each case he chooses, and what
other choice was in the nature of the case possible ; and
from this self-conscious willing he comes to know himself
and mirrors himself in his actions. In all these relations
to the conduct of men reason is to be called practical;
it is only theoretical so far as the objects with which
it is concerned have no relation to the action of the
thinker, but have purely a theoretical interest, which
very few men are capable of feeling. What in this sense
is called practical reason is very nearly what is signi
fied by the Latin word prudentia, which, according to
Cicero (De Nat. Deor. ii., 22), is a contraction of provi-
dentia ; while, on the other hand, ratio, if used of a faculty
of the mind, signifies for the most part theoretical reason
proper, though the ancients did not observe the distinction
strictly. In nearly all men reason has an almost exclusively
practical tendency ; but if this also is abandoned thought
loses the control of action, so that it is then said, " Scio
meliora, proboque, deteriora sequor," or " Le matin je fais
des projets, et le soirjefais des sottises." Thus the man does
not allow his conduct to be guided by his thought, but by
the impression of the moment, after the manner of the
brute ; and so he is called irrational (without thereby im
puting to him moral turpitude), although he is not really
wanting in reason, but in the power of applying it to his
action ; and one might to a certain extent say his reason is
theoretical and not practical. He may at the same time
be a really good man, like many a one who can never see
any one in misfortune without helping him, even making
sacrifices to do so, and yet leaves his debts unpaid. Such an
irrational character is quite incapable of committing great

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 139

crimes, because the systematic planning, the discrimina
tion and self-control, which this always requires are quite
impossible to him. Yet, on the other hand, he will hardly
attain to a very high degree of virtue, for, however much
inclined to good he may be by nature, those single vicious
and wicked emotions to which every one is subject can
not be wanting ; and where reason does not manifest it
self practically, and oppose to them unalterable maxims
and firm principles, they must become deeds.

Finally, reason manifests itself very specially as practi
cal in those exceedingly rational characters who on this
account are called in ordinary life practical philosophers,
and who are distinguished by an unusual equanimity in
disagreeable as in pleasing circumstances, an equable
disposition, and a determined perseverance in resolves
once made. In fact, it is the predominance of reason in
them, i.e., the more abstract than intuitive knowledge, and
therefore the survey of life by means of conceptions, in
general and as a whole, which has enabled them once for
all to recognise the deception of the momentary impres
sion, the fleeting nature of all things, the shortness of life,
the emptiness of pleasures, the fickleness of fortune, and
the great and little tricks of chance. Therefore nothing
comes to them unexpectedly, and what they know in the
abstract does not surprise nor disturb them when it meets
them in the actual and in the particular case, though it
does so in the case of those less reasonable characters
upon whom the present, the perceptible, the actual, exerts
such an influence that the cold, colourless conceptions are
thrown quite into the background of consciousness, and
forgetting principles and maxims, they are abandoned
to emotions and passions of every kind. I have already
explained at the end of the first book that in my opinion
the ethics of Stoicism were simply a guide to a truly
reasonable life, in this sense. Such a life is also re
peatedly praised by Horace in very many passages. This
is the significance of his nil admirari, and also of the

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

Delphic Mri^ev ayav. To translate nil admirari "to
admire nothing" is quite wrong. This Horatian rnaxim
does not concern the theoretical so much as the practical,
and its real meaning is : " Prize no object unconditionally.
Do not fall in love with anything ; do not believe that the
possession of anything can give you happiness. Every
intense longing for an object is only a delusive chimera,
which one may just as well, and much more easily, get
quit of by fuller knowledge as by attained possession."
Cicero also uses admirari in this sense (De Divinatione,
ii. 2). What Horace means is thus the aOa/j,/3ca and
aKara'jr'Xr]^, also a6av/^acria, which Democritus before
him prized as the highest good (see Clem. Alex. Strom., ii.
21, and cf. Strabo, i. p. 98 and 105). Such reasonableness
of conduct has properly nothing to do with virtue and
vice ; but this practical use of reason is what gives man
his pre-eminence over the brute, and only in this sense
has it any meaning and is it permissible to speak of a
dignity of man.

In all the cases given, and indeed in all conceivable
cases, the distinction between rational and irrational
action runs back to the question whether the motives are
abstract conceptions or ideas of perception. Therefore
the explanation which I have given of reason agrees
exactly with the use of language at all times and among
all peoples — a circumstance which will not be regarded as
merely accidental or arbitrary, but will be seen to arise
from the distinction of which every man is conscious, of
the different faculties of the mind, in accordance with
which consciousness he speaks, though certainly he does
not raise it to the distinctness of an abstract definition.
Our ancestors did not make the words without attaching
to them a definite meaning, in order, perhaps, that they
might lie ready for philosophers who might possibly
come centuries after and determine what ought to be
thought in connection with them ; but they denoted by
them quite definite conceptions. Thus the words are no

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 141

longer unclaimed, and to attribute to them an entirely dif
ferent sense from that which they have hitherto had means
to misuse them, means to introduce a licence in accordance
with which every one might use any word in any sense
he chose, and thus endless confusion would necessarily
arise. Locke has already shown at length that most dis
agreements in philosophy arise from a false use of words.
For the sake of illustration just glance for a moment at
the shameful misuse which philosophers destitute of
thoughts make at the present day of the words substance,
consciousness, truth, and many others. Moreover, the
utterances and explanations concerning reason of all philo
sophers of all ages, with the exception of the most modern,
agree no less with my explanation of it than the concep
tions which prevail among all nations of that prerogative
of man. Observe what Plato, in the fourth book of the
Republic, and in innumerable scattered passages, calls the
\oyi/M)v, or \o<yioriKov TT?? ^u^?, what Cicero says (De
Nat. Deor., iii. 26—31), what Leibnitz and Locke say upon
this in the passages already quoted in the first book. There
would be no end to the quotations here if one sought to show
how all philosophers before Kant have spoken of reason in
general in my sense, although they did not know how to
explain its nature with complete definiteness and distinct
ness by reducing it to one point. What was understood
by reason shortly before Kant's appearance is shown in
general by two essays of Sulzer in the first volume of
his miscellaneous philosophical writings, the one entitled
" Analysis of the Conception of Reason," the other, " On
the Reciprocal Influence of Reason and Language." If,
on the other hand, we read how reason is spoken about in
the most recent times, through the influence of the
Kantian error, which after him increased like an ava
lanche, we are obliged to assume that the whole of the
wise men of antiquity, and also all philosophers before
Kant, had absolutely no reason at all ; for the immediate
perceptions, intuitions, apprehensions, presentiments of the

142 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

reason now discovered were as utterly unknown to them
as the sixth sense of the bat is to us. And as far as I am
concerned, I must confess that I also, in my weakness, can
not comprehend or imagine that reason which directly
perceives or apprehends, or has an intellectual intuition of
the super-sensible, the absolute, together with long yarns
that accompany it, in any other way than as the sixth
sense of the bat. This, however, must be said in favour
of the invention or discovery of such a reason, which at
once directly perceives whatever you choose, that it is an
incomparable expedient for withdrawing oneself from the
affair in the easiest manner in the world, along with one's
favourite ideas, in spite of all Kants, with their Critiques
of Reason. The invention and the reception it has met
with do honour to the age.

Thus, although what is essential in reason (TO Xoyi/jiov, 77
<j}povr]ai$, ratio, raison, Vernuuft) was, on the whole and
in general, rightly understood by all philosophers of all
ages, though not sharply enough defined nor reduced to
one point, yet it was not so clear to them what the
understanding (you?, Siavoia, intellectus, esprit, Verstand) is.
Therefore they often confuse it with reason, and just on
this account they did not attain to a thoroughly complete,
pure, and simple explanation of the nature of the latter.
With the Christian philosophers the conception of reason
received an entirely extraneous, subsidiary meaning through
the opposition of it to revelation. Starting, then, from this,
many are justly of opinion that the knowledge of the duty of
virtue is possible from mere reason, i.e., without revelation.
Indeed this aspect of the matter certainly had influence
upon Kant's exposition and language. But this opposition
is properly of positive, historical significance, and is there
fore for philosophy a foreign element, from which it must
keep itself free.

We might have expected that in his critiques of theo
retical and practical reason Kant would have started with
an exposition of the nature of reason in general, and, after

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 143

he had thus defined the genus, would have gone on to the
explanation of the two species, showing how one and the
same reason manifests itself in two such different ways,
and yet, hy retaining its principal characteristic, proves
itself to be the same. But we find nothing of all this. I
have already shown how inadequate, vacillating, and in
consistent are the explanations of the faculty he is criti
cising, which he gives here and there by the way in the
" Critique of Pure Eeason." The practical reason appears
in the " Critique of Pure Reason " without any introduction,
and afterwards stands in the " Critique " specially devoted
to itself as something already established. No further
account of it is given, and the use of language of all times
and peoples, which is treated with contempt, and the defini
tions of the conception given by the greatest of earlier
philosophers, dare not lift up their voices. In general,
we may conclude from particular passages that Kant's
opinion amounts to this : the knowledge of principles
a priori is the essential characteristic of reason : since
now the knowledge of the ethical significance of action is
not of empirical origin, it also is an a priori principle, and
accordingly proceeds from the reason, and therefore thus
far the reason is practical. I have already spoken enough
of the incorrectness of this explanation of reason. But,
independently of this, how superficial it is, and what a
want of thoroughness it shows, to make use here of the
single quality of being independent of experience in order
to combine the most heterogeneous things, while over
looking their most essential and immeasurable difference
in other respects. For, even assuming, though we do not
admit it, that the knowledge of the ethical significance of
action springs from an imperative lying in us, an uncon
ditioned ought, yet how fundamentally different would
such an imperative be from those universal forms of know
ledge of which, in the " Critique of Pure Reason," Kant
proves that we are conscious a priori, and by virtue of
which consciousness we can assert beforehand an uncoil-

144 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

ditioned must, valid for all experience possible for us.
But the difference between this must, this necessary form
of all objects which is already determined in the subject,
and that ought of morality is so infinitely great and
palpable that the mere fact that they agree in the one
particular that neither of them is empirically known
may indeed be made use of for the purpose of a witty
comparison, but not as a philosophical justification for
regarding their origin as the same.

Moreover, the birthplace of this child of practical reason,
the absolute ought or the categorical imperative, is not in
the " Critique of Practical Eeason," but in that of " Pure
Eeason," p. 802 ; V. 830. The birth is violent, and is only
accomplished by means of the forceps of a therefore, which
stands boldly and audaciously, indeed one might say
shamelessly, between two propositions which are utterly
foreign to each other and have no connection, in order to
combine them as reason and consequent. Thus, that not
merely perceptible but also abstract motives determine
us, is the proposition from which Kant starts, expressing
it in the following manner : " Not merely what excites,
i.e., what affects the senses directly, determines human
will, but we have a power of overcoming the impressions
made upon our sensuous appetitive faculty through ideas
of that which is itself in a more remote manner useful
or hurtful. These deliberations as to what is worthy of
desire, with reference to our whole condition, i.e., as to
what is good and useful, rest upon reason." (Perfectly
right; would that he only always spoke so rationally of
reason !) " Eeason therefore gives ! also laws, which are
imperatives, i.e., objective laws of freedom, and say what
ought to take place, though perhaps it never does take
place" ! Thus, without further authentication, the cate
gorical imperative comes into the world, in order to rule
there with its unconditioned ought — a sceptre of wooden
iron. For in the conception " ought " there lies always
and essentially the reference to threatened punishment, or

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 145

promised reward, as a necessary condition, and cannot be
separated from it without abolishing the conception itself
and taking all meaning from it. Therefore an uncondi
tioned ought is a contradictio in adj'ecto. It was necessary
to censure this mistake, closely as it is otherwise con
nected with Kant's great service to ethics, which consists
in this, that he has freed ethics from all principles of the
world of experience, that is, from all direct or indirect
doctrines of happiness, and has shown in a quite special
manner that the kingdom of virtue is not of this world.
This service is all the greater because all ancient philo
sophers, with the single exception of Plato, thus the Peri
patetics, the Stoics, and the Epicureans, sought by very
different devices either to make virtue and happiness de
pendent on each other in accordance with the principle of
sufficient reason, or to identify them in accordance with the
principle of contradiction. This charge applies with equal
force to all modern philosophers down to Kant. His
merit in this respect is therefore very great ; yet justice
demands that we should also remember here first that his
exposition and elaboration often does not correspond with
the tendency and spirit of his ethics, and secondly that,
even so, he is not really the first who separated virtue
from all principles of happiness. For Plato, especially in
the " Republic," the principal tendency of which is just
this, expressly teaches that virtue is to be chosen for itself
alone, even if unhappiness and ignominy are inevitably
connected with it. Still more, however, Christianity
preaches a perfectly unselfish virtue, which is practised
not on account of the reward in a life after death, but
quite disinterestedly from love to God, for works do not
justify, but only faith, which accompanies virtue, so to
speak, as its symptom, and therefore appears quite irre
spective of reward and of its own accord. See Luther's
" De Libertate Christiana" I will not take into account at
all the Indians, in whose sacred books the hope of a re
ward for our works is everywhere described as the way

VOL. II. K

146 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

of darkness, which can never lead to blessedness. Kant's
doctrine of virtue, however, we do not find so pure ; or
rather the exposition remains far behind the spirit of it,
and indeed falls into inconsistency. In his highest good,
which he afterwards discussed, we find virtue united to
happiness. The ought originally so unconditioned does yet
afterwards postulate one condition, in order to escape from
the inner contradiction with which it is affected and with
which it cannot live. Happiness in the highest good is
not indeed really meant to be the motive for virtue ; yet
there it is, like a secret article, the existence of which
reduces all the rest to a mere sham contract. It is not
really the reward of virtue, but yet it is a voluntary gift
for which virtue, after work accomplished, stealthily opens
the hand. One may convince oneself of this from the
" Critique of Practical Beason" (p. 223-266 of the fourth,
or p. 264-295 of Eosenkranz's, edition). The whole of
Kant's moral theology has also the same tendency, and
just on this account morality really destroys itself through
moral theology. For I repeat that all virtue which in any
way is practised for the sake of a reward is based upon a
prudent, methodical, far-seeing egoism.

The content of the absolute ought, the fundamental
principle of the practical reason, is the famous : " So act
that the maxim of your will might always be also valid
as the principle of a universal legislation." This principle
presents to him who desires a rule for his own will the
task of seeking such a rule for the wills of all. Then the
question arises how such a rule is to be found. Clearly,
in order to discover the rule of my conduct, I ought not
to have regard to myself alone, but to the sum of all in
dividuals. Then, instead of my own well-being, the well-
being of all without distinction becomes my aim. Yet
the aim still always remains well-being. I find, then, that
all can be equally well off only if each limits his own
egoism by that of others. From this it certainly follows
that I must injure no one, because, since this principle is

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 147

assumed to be universal, I also will not be injured. This,
however, is the sole ground on account of which I, who
do not yet possess a moral principle, but am only seeking
one, can wish this to be a universal law. But clearly in
this way the desire of well-being, i.e., egoism, remains the
source of this ethical principle. As the basis of politics
it would be excellent, as the basis of ethics it is worthless.
For he who seeks to establish a rule for the wills of all,
as is demanded by that moral principle, necessarily stands
in need of a rule himself ; otherwise everything would be
alike to him. But this rule can only be his own egoism,
since it is only this that is affected by the conduct of
others ; and therefore it is only by means of this egoism,
and with reference to it, that each one can have a will
concerning the conduct of others, and that it is not a
matter of indifference to him. Kant himself very naively
intimates this (p. 123 of the "Critique of Practical
Eeason ; ' Eosenkranz's edition, p. 192), where he thus
prosecutes the search for maxims for the will : " If every
one regarded the need of others with complete indiffe-
ence, and thou also didst belong to such an order of things,
wouldst thou consent thereto ? " Quam temere in nosmet
legem sancimus iniquam I would be the rule of the consent
inquired after. So also in the " Fundamental Principles of
the Metaphysic of Morals " (p. 56 of the third, and p. 50
of Eosenkranz's, edition) : " A will which resolved to assist
no one in distress would contradict itself, for cases might
arise in which it required the love and sympathy of others"
&c. &c. This principle of ethics, which when light is
thrown upon it is therefore nothing else than an indirect
and disguised expression of the old, simple principle,
" Quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feceris," is related first
and directly to passivity, suffering, and then only by means
of this to action. Therefore, as we have said, it would be
thoroughly serviceable as a guide for the constitution of
the State, which aims at the prevention of the suffering of
wrong, and also desires to procure for all and each the

I48 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

greatest sum of well-being. But in ethics, where the object
of investigation is action as action, and in its direct signifi
cance for the actor — not its consequences, suffering, or its
relation to others — in this reference, I say, it is altogether
inadmissible, because at bottom it really amounts to a
principle of happiness, thus to egoism.

We cannot, therefore, share Kant's satisfaction that his
principle of ethics is not a material one, i.e., one which
sets up an object as a motive, but merely formal, whereby
it corresponds symmetrically to the formal laws with which
the " Critique of Pure Eeason " has made us familiar.
Certainly it is, instead of a law, merely a formula for find
ing such a law. But, in the first place, we had this
formula already more briefly and clearly in the " Quod tibi
fieri non vis, alteri nefeceris ; " and, secondly, the analysis
of this formula shows that it is simply and solely the
reference to one's own happiness that gives it content,
and therefore it can only be serviceable to a rational
egoism, to which also every legal constitution owes its
origin.

Another mistake which, because it offends the feelings of
every one, has often been condemned, and was satirised by
Schiller in an epigram, is the pedantic rule that for an act
to be really good and meritorious it must be done simply and
solely out of respect for the known law and the conception
of duty, and in accordance with a maxim known to the
reason in dbstracto, and not from any inclination, not from
benevolence felt towards others, not from tender-hearted
compassion, sympathy, or emotion of the heart, which
(according to the " Critique of Practical Eeason," p. 213;
Eosenkranz's edition, p. 257) to right-thinking persons
are indeed very burdensome, as confusing their deliberate
maxims. The act must be performed unwillingly and with
self-compulsion. Eemember that nevertheless the hope
of reward is not allowed to enter, and estimate the great
absurdity of the demand. But, what is saying more, this
is directly opposed to the true spirit of virtue ; not the

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 149

act, but the willingness to do it, the love from which it
proceeds, and without which it is a dead work, consti
tutes its merit. Therefore Christianity rightly teaches
that all outward works are worthless if they do not pro
ceed from that genuine disposition which consists in true
goodwill and pure love, and that what makes blessed and
saves is not the works done (opera operata), but the faith,
the genuine disposition, which is the gift of the Holy
Ghost alone, and which the free, deliberative will, having
only the law in view, does not produce. This demand of
Kant's, that all virtuous conduct shall proceed from pure,
deliberate respect for the law and in accordance with its
abstract maxims, coldly and without inclination, nay,
opposed to all inclination, is just the same thing as if
he asserted that every work of art must be accomplished
by a well-considered application of aesthetical rules. The
one is just as perverse as the other. The question, already
handled by Plato and Seneca, whether virtue can be taught,
is to be answered in the negative. We must finally make
up our minds to see, what indeed was the source of the
Christian doctrine of election by grace, that as regards
its chief characteristic and its inner nature, virtue, like
genius, is to a certain extent inborn ; and that just as
little as all the professors of aesthetics could impart to any
one the power of producing works of genius, i.e., genuine
works of art, so little could all the professors of ethics
and preachers of virtue transform an ignoble into a vir
tuous and noble character, the impossibility of which is
very much more apparent than that of turning lead into
gold. The search for a system of ethics and a first prin
ciple of the same, which would have practical influence
and would actually transform and better the human race,
is just like the search for the philosopher's stone. Yet I
have spoken at length at the end of the fourth book of
the possibility of an entire change of mind or conversion
of man (new birth), not by means of abstract (ethics) but
of intuitive knowledge (the work of grace). The contents

ISO CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

of that book relieve me generally of the necessity of dwell
ing longer upon this point.

That Kant by no means penetrated to the real signifi
cance of the ethical content of actions is shown finally by
his doctrine of the highest good as the necessary combina
tion of virtue and happiness, a combination indeed in
which virtue would be that which merits happiness. He
is here involved in the logical fallacy that the conception
of merit, which is here the measure or test, already pre
supposes a theory of ethics as its own measure, and thus
could not be deducible from it. It appeared in our fourth
book that all genuine virtue, after it has attained to its
highest grade, at last leads to a complete renunciation in
which all willing finds an end. Happiness, on the other
hand, is a satisfied wish ; thus the two are essentially in
capable of being combined. He who has been enlightened
by my exposition requires no further explanation of the
complete perverseness of this Kantian view of the highest
good. And, independent of my positive exposition, I have
no further negative exposition to give.

Kant's love of architectonic symmetry meets us also in
the " Critique of Practical Eeason," for he has given it the
shape of the " Critique of Pure Eeason," and has again
introduced the same titles and forms with manifest inten
tion, which becomes specially apparent in the table of the
categories of freedom.

The " Philosophy of Law " is one of Kant's latest works,
and is so poor that, although I entirely disagree with it, I
think a polemic against it is superfluous, since of its own
weakness it must die a natural death, just as if it were
not the work of this great man, but the production of an
ordinary mortal. Therefore, as regards the " Philosophy of
Law," I give up the negative mode of procedure and refer
to the positive, that is, to the short outline of it given in
the fourth book. Just one or two general remarks on

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 151

Kant's " Philosophy of Law " may be made here. The
errors which I have condemned in considering the " Cri
tique of Pure Eeason," as clinging to Kant throughout,
appear in the " Philosophy of Law " in such excess that
one often believes he is reading a satirical parody of the
Kantian style, or at least that he is listening to a Kantian.
Two principal errors, however, are these. He desires (and
many have since then desired) to separate the Philosophy
of Law sharply from ethics, and yet not to make the
former dependent upon positive legislation, i.e., upon arbi
trary sanction, but to let the conception of law exist for
itself pure and a priori. But this is not possible ; because
conduct, apart from its ethical significance, and apart from
the physical relation to others, and thereby from external
sanction, does not admit even of the possibility of any
third view. Consequently, when he says, " Legal obliga
tion is that which can be enforced," this can is either to
be understood physically, and then all law is positive and
arbitrary, and again all arbitrariness that achieves its end
is law ; or the can is to be understood ethically, and we are
again in the province of ethics. With Kant the conception
of legal right hovers between heaven and earth, and has no
ground on which to stand ; with me it belongs to ethics.
Secondly, his definition of the conception law is entirely
negative, and thereby inadequate.1 Legal right is that
which is consistent with the compatibility of the respec
tive freedom of individuals together, according to a general
law." Freedom (here the empirical, i.e., physical, not the
moral freedom of the will) signifies not being hindered or
interfered with, and is thus a mere negation ; compati
bility, again, has exactly the same significance. Thus we
remain with mere negations and obtain no positive concep
tion, indeed do not learn at all, what is really being spoken
about, unless we know it already from some other source.

1 Although the conception of legal planation of these conceptions must
right is properly negative in opposi- not on this account be entirely nega
tion to that of wrong, which is the tive.
positive starting-point, yet the ex-

152 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

In the course of the exposition the most perverse views
afterwards develop themselves, such as that in the state
of nature, i.e., outside the State, there is no right to pro
perty at all, which really means that all right or law is
positive, and involves that natural law is based upon
positive law, instead of which the case ought to be reversed.
Further, the founding of legal acquisition on possession ;
the ethical obligation to establish the civil constitution ;
the ground of the right of punishment, &c., &c., all of
which, as I have said, I do not regard as worth a special
refutation. However, these Kantian errors have exercised
a very injurious influence. They have confused and ob
scured truths long known and expressed, and have occa
sioned strange theories and much writing and controversy.
This certainly cannot last, and we see already how truth
and sound reason again make way for themselves. Of the
latter, the " Naturrecht " of J. C. F. Meister specially bears
evidence, and is thus a contrast to many a preposterous
theory, though I do not regard it as on this account a
pattern of perfection.

On the " Critique of Judgment " also, after what has
been said, I must be very short. We cannot but be sur
prised that Kant, to whom art certainly was very foreign,
and who to all appearance had little susceptibility for
the beautiful, indeed probably never had the opportunity
of seeing an important work of art, and who seems, finally,
to have had no knowledge of Goethe, the only man of his
century and nation who was fit to be placed by his side
as his giant equal. — it is, I say, surprising how, notwith
standing all this, Kant was able to render a great and
permanent service to the philosophical consideration of
art and the beautiful. His merit lies in this, that much
as men had reflected upon the beautiful and upon art,
they had yet really always considered it only from the
empirical point of view, and had investigated upon a basis

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 153

of facts what quality distinguished the object of any kind
which was called beautiful from other objects of the same
kind. On this path they first arrived at quite special
principles, and then at more general ones. They sought
to separate true artistic beauty from false, and to discover
marks of this genuineness, which could then serve again
as rules. What gives pleasure as beautiful and what
does not, what therefore is to be imitated, what is to be
striven against, what is to be avoided, what rules, at least
negative rules, are to be established, in short, what are
the means of exciting aesthetic satisfaction, i.e., what are
the conditions of this residing in the object — this was
almost exclusively the theme of all treatises upon art.
This path was followed by Aristotle, and in the most re
cent times we find it chosen by Home, Burke, Winckel-
inann, Lessing, Herder, and many others. It is true that
the universality of the sesthetical principles discovered
finally led back to the subject, and it was observed that
if the effect upon the subject were adequately known we
would then also be able to determine a priori the causes
of this which lie in the object, and thus alone this method
of treatment could attain to the certainty of a science.
This occasioned once and again psychological disquisitions.
Specially however, Alexander Baumgarten produced with
this intention a general aesthetic of all beauty, in which
he started from the conception of the perfection of sensu
ous knowledge, that is, of knowledge of perception. With
him also, however, the subjective part is done with as
soon as this conception has been established, and he passes
on to the objective part and to the practical, which is con
nected with it. But here also the merit was reserved for
Kant of investigating seriously and profoundly the feeling
itself, in consequence of which we call the object occasioning
it beautiful, in order to discover, wherever it was possible,
the constituent elements and conditions of it in our nature.
His investigation, therefore, took an entirely subjective
direction. This path was clearly the right one, for iu

154 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

order to explain a phenomenon which is given in its
effects, one must know accurately this effect itself, if one
is to determine thoroughly the nature of the cause. Yet
Kant's merit in this regard does not really extend much
further than this, that he has indicated the right path, and
by a provisional attempt has given an example of how,
more or less, it is to be followed. For what he gave can
not be regarded as objective truth and as a real gain. He
gave the method for this investigation, he broke ground
in the right direction, but otherwise he missed the mark.

In the " Critique of ^Esthetical Judgment " the observa
tion first of all forces itself upon us that Kant retains the
method which is peculiar to his whole philosophy, and which
I have considered at length above — I mean the method of
starting from abstract knowledge in order to establish
knowledge of perception, so that the former serves him, so
to speak, as a camera obscura in which to receive and sur
vey the latter. As in the " Critique of Pure Reason" the
forms of judgment are supposed to unfold to him the
knowledge of our whole world of perception, so in this
" Critique of JEsthetical Judgment " he does not start
from the beautiful itself, from the perceptible and imme
diately beautiful, but from the judgment of the beautiful,
the so-called, and very badly so-called, judgment of taste.
This is his problem. His attention is especially aroused
by the circumstance that such a judgment is clearly the
expression of something that takes place in the subject,
but yet is just as universally valid as if it concerned a
quality of the object. It is this that struck him, not the
beautiful itself. He starts always merely from the asser
tions of others, from the judgment of the beautful, not
from the beautiful itself. It is therefore as if he knew it
simply from hearsay, not directly. A blind man of high
understanding could almost in the same way make up a
theory of colours from very accurate reports which he had
heard concerning them. And really we can only venture
to regard Kant's philosophemes concerning the beautiful as

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 155

in almost the same position. Then we shall find that
his theory is very ingenious indeed, that here and there
telling and true observations are made ; but his real solu
tion of the problem is so very insufficient, remains so far
below the dignity of the subject, that it can never occur
to us to accept it as objective truth. Therefore I consider
myself relieved from the necessity of refuting it ; and
here also I refer to the positive part of my work.

With regard to the form of his whole book, it is to be
observed that it originated in the idea of finding in the
teleological conception the key to the problem of the
beautiful. This inspiration is deduced, which is always a
matter of no difficulty, as we have learnt from Kant's suc
cessors. Thus there now arises the strange combination
of the knowledge of the beautiful with that of the teleology
of natural bodies in one faculty of knowledge called judg
ment, and the treatment of these two heterogeneous sub
jects in one book. With these three powers of knowledge,
reason, judgment, and understanding, a variety of sym
metrical-architectonic amusements are afterwards under
taken, the general inclination to which shows itself in
many ways in this book ; for example, in the forcible
adaptation of the whole of it to the pattern of the " Critique
of Pure Season," and very specially in the antinomy of
the sesthetical judgment, which is dragged in by the hair.
One might also extract a charge of great inconsistency
from the fact that after it has been incessantly repeated
in the " Critique of Pure Reason " that the understanding
is the faculty of judgment, and after the forms of its judg
ment have been made the foundation-stone of all philo
sophy, a quite special faculty of judgment now appears,
which is completely different from the former. For the
rest, what I call the faculty of judgment, the capacity for
translating knowledge of perception into abstract know
ledge, and again of applying the latter correctly to the
former, is explained in the positive part of my work.

By far the best part of the " Critique of ^Esthetical Judg-

156 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

merit" is the theory of the sublime. It is incomparably
more successful than that of the beautiful, and does not
only give, as that does, the general method of investiga
tion, but also a part of the right way to it — so much so
that even though it does not give the real solution of the
problem, it yet touches very closely upon it.

In the " Critique of the Teleological Judgment," on ac
count of the simplicity of the matter, we can recognise
perhaps more than anywhere else Kant's rare talent of
turning a thought this way and that way, and expressing
it in a multitude of different ways, until out of it there
grows a book. The whole book is intended to say this
alone : although organised bodies necessarily appear to us
as if they were constructed in accordance with a conceived
design of an end which preceded them, yet we are not
justified in assuming that this is objectively the case.
For our intellect, to which things are given from without
and indirectly, which thus never knows their inner nature
through which they arise and exist, but merely their out
ward side, cannot otherwise comprehend a certain quality
peculiar to organised productions of nature than by
analogy, for it compares it with the intentionally accom
plished works of man, the nature of which is determined
by a design and the conception of this design. This
analogy is sufficient to enable us to comprehend the
agreement of all the parts with the whole, and thus indeed
to give us the clue to their investigation ; but it must by
no means on this account be made the actual ground of
explanation of the origin and existence of such bodies.
For the necessity of so conceiving them is of subjective
origin. Somewhat in this way I would epitomise Kant's
doctrine on this question. In its most important aspect he
had expounded it already in the "Critique of Pure Eeason,"
p. 692-702; V., 720-730. But in the knowledge of this
truth also we find David Hume to be Kant's worthy fore
runner. He also had keenly controverted that assumption
in the second part of his " Dialogues concerning Natural

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 157

Religion." The difference between Hume's criticism of
that assumption and Kant's is principally this, that Hume
criticised it as an assumption based upon experience, while
Kant, on the other hand, criticised it as an a priori assump
tion. Both are right, and their expositions supplement each
other. Indeed what is really essential in the Kantian
doctrine on this point we find already expressed in the
commentary of Simplicius on Aristotle's Physics : " 77 Se
Tr\avr) yeyovev avrois CLTCO TOV rjyeicrdai, Travra ra eve/ca
rov yivojAeva Kara Trpoaipecriv yeve&Oai KCLI \oryia/j.ov) ra
Be (frvcrei /JLTJ oirrco? opav <yivo/jieva" {Error Us ortus est ex eo,
quod credebant, omnia, quce propter finem aliquem fierent, ex
proposito et ratiocinio fieri, dam videbant, naturce opera non
ita fieri.) Schol. in Arist., ex edit. Berol., p. 354. Kant
is perfectly right in the matter ; and it was necessary that
after it had been shown that the conception of cause and
effect is inapplicable to the whole of nature in general, in
respect of its existence, it should also be shown that in
respect of its qualities it is not to be thought of as the
effect of a cause guided by motives (designs). If we con
sider the great plausibility of the physico-theological proof,
which even Voltaire held to be irrefragable, it was clearly
of the greatest importance to show that what is subjective
in our comprehension, to which Kant had relegated space,
time, and causality, extends also to our judgment of
natural bodies ; and accordingly the compulsion which we
feel to think of them as having arisen as the result of pre
meditation, according to designs, thus in such a way that
the idea of them preceded their existence, is just as much of
subjective origin as the perception of space, which presents
itself so objectively, and that therefore it must not be set
up as objective truth. Kant's exposition of the matter,
apart fron its tedious prolixity and repetitions, is excel
lent. He rightly asserts that we can never succeed in
explaining the nature of organised bodies from merely
mechanical causes, by which he understands the unde
signed and regular effect of all the universal forces of

158 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

nature. Yet I find here another flaw. He denies the
possibility of such an explanation merely with regard to
the teleology and apparent adaptation of organised bodies.
But we find that even where there is no organisation the
grounds of explanation which apply to one province of
nature cannot be transferred to another, but forsake us as
soon as we enter a new province, and new fundamental
laws appear instead of them, the explanation of which is
by no means to be expected from the laws of the former
province. Thus in the province of the mechanical, properly
so called, the laws of gravitation, cohesion, rigidity, fluidity,
and elasticity prevail, which in themselves (apart from my
explanation of all natural forces as lower grades of the
objectification of will) exist as manifestations of forces
which cannot be further explained, but themselves consti
tute the principles of all further explanation, which merely
consists in reduction to them. If we leave this province
and come to the phenomena of chemistry, of electricity,
magnetism, crystallisation, the former principles are ab
solutely of no use, indeed the former laws are no longer
valid, the former forces are overcome by others, and the
phenomena take place in direct contradiction to them,
according to new laws, which, just like the former ones,
are original and inexplicable, i.e., cannot be reduced to
more general ones. Thus, for example, no one will ever
succeed in explaining even the dissolving of a salt in
water in accordance with the laws proper to mechanics,
much less the more complicated phenomena of chemistry.
All this has already been explained at length in the second
book of the present work. An exposition of this kind
would, as it seems to me, have been of great use in the
" Critique of the Teleological Judgment," and would have
thrown much light upon what is said there. Such an
exposition would have been especially favourable to his
excellent remark that a more profound knowledge of the
real being, of which the things of nature are the manifes
tation, would recognise both in the mechanical (according

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 159

to law) and the apparently intentional effects of nature
one and the same ultimate principle, which might serve
a3 the more general ground of explanation of them both.
Such a principle I hope I have given by establishing the
will as the real thing in itself; and in accordance with it
generally in the second book and the supplements to it,
but especially in my work " On the Will in Nature," the
insight into the inner nature of the apparent design and
of the harmony and agreement of the whole of nature has
perhaps become clearer and deeper. Therefore I have
nothing more to say about it here.

The reader whom this criticism of the Kantian philo
sophy interests should not neglect to read the supplement
to it which is given in the second essay of the first volume
of my " Parerga and Paralipomena," under the title " Nock
einige Erlauterungcn zur Kantischen Philosophic " (Some
Further Explanations of the Kantian Philosophy). For it
must be borne in mind that my writings, few as they are,
were not composed all at once, but successively, in the
course of a long life, and with long intervals between
them. Accordingly, it must not be expected that all I
have said upon one subject should stand together in one
place.

Supplements to tfjc jfirst Book,

1 Warum willst du dich von uns Allen
Und unsrer Meinung entfernen ? '
Teh schreibe nicht ench zu gefallen,
Ihr sollt was lernen."

— GOETHE.

VOL. II.

SUPPLEMENTS TO THE FIRST BOOK,

JFirst f&ali

THE DOCTRINE OF THE IDEA OF PERCEPTION.
(To § 1-7 of the First Volume.}

CHAPTER I.

THE STANDPOINT OF IDEALISM.

IN boundless space countless shining spheres, about each
of which, and illuminated by its light, there revolve a
dozen or so of smaller ones, hot at the core and covered
with a hard, cold crust, upon whose surface there have
been generated from a mouldy film beings which live and
know — this is what presents itself to us in experience as
the truth, the real, the world. Yet for a thinking being
it is a precarious position to stand upon one of those
numberless spheres moving freely in boundless space
without knowing whence or whither, and to be only one
of innumerable similar beings who throng and press and
toil, ceaselessly and quickly arising and passing away in
time, which has no beginning and no end ; moreover,
nothing permanent but matter alone and the recurrence
of the same varied organised forms, by means of certain
ways and channels which are there once for all. All that
empirical science can teach is only the more exact nature
and law of these events. But now at last modern philo
sophy, especially through Berkeley and Kant, has called

1 64 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER I.

to mind that all this is first of all merely a phenomenon
of the brain, and is affected with such great, so many,
and such different subjective conditions that its supposed
absolute reality vanishes away, and leaves room for an
entirely different scheme of the world, which consists of
what lies at the foundation of that phenomenon, i.e., what
is related to it as the thing in itself is related to its mere
manifestation.

" The world is my idea " is, like the axioms of Euclid,
a proposition which every one must recognise as true as
soon as he understands it ; although it is not a propo
sition which every one understands as soon as he hears
it. To have brought this proposition to clear conscious
ness, and in it the problem of the relation of the ideal
and the real, i.e., of the world in the head to the world
outside the head, together with the problem of moral
freedom, is the distinctive feature of modern philosophy.
For it was only after men had spent their labour for
thousands of years upon a mere philosophy of the object
that they discovered that among the many things that
make the world so obscure and doubtful the first and
chiefest is this, that however immeasurable and massive
it may be, its existence yet hangs by a single thread ; and
this is the actual consciousness in which it exists. This
condition, to which the existence of the world is irrevocably
subject, marks it, in spite of all empirical reality, with
the stamp of ideality, and therefore of mere phenomenal
appearance. Thus on one side at least the world must be
recognised as akin to dreams, and indeed to be classified
along with them. For the same function of the brain
which, during sleep, conjures up before us a completely
objective, perceptible, and even palpable world must have
just as large a share in the presentation of the objective
world of waking life. Both worlds, although different as
regards their matter, are yet clearly moulded in the one
form. This form is the intellect, the function of the brain.
Descartes was probably the first who attained to the

THE STANDPOINT OF IDEALISM. 165

degree of reflection which this fundamental truth de
mands, and consequently he made it the starting-point
of his philosophy, though provisionally only in the
form of a sceptical doubt. When he took his cogito
ergo sum as alone certain, and provisionally regarded the
existence of the world as problematical, he really dis
covered the essential and only right starting-point of all
philosophy, and at the same time its true foundation.
This foundation is essentially and inevitably the subjective,
the individual consciousness. For this alone is and remains
immediate ; everything else, whatever it may be, is medi
ated and conditioned through it, and is therefore depen
dent upon it. Therefore modern philosophy is rightly
regarded as starting with Descartes, who was the father
of it. Not long afterwards Berkeley followed the same
path further, and attained to idealism proper, i.e., to the
knowledge that the world which is extended in space,
thus the objective, material world in general, exists as
such simply and solely in our idea, and that it is false,
and indeed absurd, to attribute to it, as such, an existence
apart from all idea and independent of the knowing sub
ject, thus to assume matter as something absolute and
possessed of real being in itself. But his correct and pro
found insight into this truth really constitutes Berkeley's
whole philosophy ; in it he had exhausted himself.

Thus true philosophy must always be idealistic ; indeed,
it must be so in order to be merely honest. For nothin^
is more certain than that no man ever came out of him
self in order to identify himself directly with things
which are different from him ; but everything of which
he has certain, and therefore immediate, knowledge lies
within his own consciousness. Beyond this consciousness,
therefore, there can be no immediate certainty ; but the
first principles of a science must have such certainty.
For the empirical standpoint of the other sciences it is
quite right to assume the objective world as something
absolutely given ; but not so for the standpoint of philo-

1 66 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER I.

sophy, which has to go back to what is first and original.
Only consciousness is immediately given; therefore the
basis of philosophy is limited to facts of consciousness, i.e.,
it is essentially idealistic. Realism which commends it
self to the crude understanding, by the appearance which
it assumes of being matter-of-fact, really starts from an
arbitrary assumption, and is therefore an empty castle in
the air, for it ignores or denies the first of all facts, that
all that we know lies within consciousness. For that
the objective existence of things is conditioned through a
subject whose ideas they are, and consequently that the
objective world exists only as idea, is no hypothesis, and
still less a dogma, or even a paradox set up for the sake
of discussion ; but it is the most certain and the simplest
truth ; and the knowledge of it is only made difficult by
the fact that it is indeed so simple, and that it is not
every one who has sufficient power of reflection to go back
to the first elements of his consciousness of things. There
can never be an absolute and independent objective exis
tence ; indeed such an existence is quite unintelligible.
For the objective, as such, always and essentially has its
existence in the consciousness of a subject, is thus the
idea of this subject, and consequently is conditioned by it,
and also by its forms, the forms of the idea, which depend
upon the subject and not on the object.

That the objective world would exist even if there existed
no conscious being certainly seems at the first blush to
be unquestionable, because it can be thought in the ab
stract, without bringing to light the contradiction which
it carries within it. But if we desire to realise this abstract
thought, that is, to reduce it to ideas of perception, from
which alone (like everything abstract) it can have con
tent and truth, and if accordingly we try to imagine an
objective world ivithout a knowing subject, we become aware
that what we then imagine is in truth the opposite of
what we intended, is in fact nothing else than the process
in the intellect of a knowing subject who perceives an

THE STANDPOINT OF IDEALISM. 167

objective world, is thus exactly what we desired to exclude.
For this perceptible and real world is clearly a pheno
menon of the brain ; therefore there lies a contradiction
in the assumption that as such it ought also to exist in
dependently of all brains.

The principal objection to the inevitable and essential
ideality of all objects, the objection which, distinctly or in
distinctly, arises in every one, is certainly this : My own
person also is an object for some one else, is thus his idea,
and yet I know certainly that I would continue to exist
even if he no longer perceived me. But all other objects
also stand in the same relation to his intellect as I do ;
consequently they also would continue to exist \vithout
being perceived by him. The answer to this is: That
other being as whose object I now regard my person is
not absolutely the subject, but primarily is a knowing
individual. Therefore, if he no longer existed, nay, even
if there existed no other conscious being except myself,
yet the subject, in whose idea alone all objects exist,
would by no means be on that account abolished. For I
myself indeed am this subject, as every conscious being
is. Consequently, in the case assumed, my person would
certainly continue to exist, but still as idea, in my own
knowledge. For even by me myself it is always known
only indirectly, never immediately ; because all existence
as idea is indirect. As object, i.e., as extended, occupying
space and acting, I know my body only in the perception
of my brain. This takes place by means of the senses,
upon data supplied by which the percipient understanding-
performs its function of passing from effect to cause, and
thereby, in that the eye sees the body or the hands touch
it, it constructs that extended figure which presents itself in
space as my body. By no means, however, is there directly
given me, either in some general feeling of bodily existence
or in inner self-consciousness, any extension, form, or
activity, which would then coincide with my nature itself,
which accordingly, in order so to exist, would require no

1 68 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER I.

other being in whose knowledge it might exhibit itself. On
the contrary, that general feeling of bodily existence, and
also self-consciousness, exists directly only in relation to the
will, that is, as agreeable or disagreeable, and as active in
the acts of will, which for external perception exhibit
themselves as actions of the body. From this it follows
that the existence of my person or body as something
extended and acting always presupposes a Jcnoiving being
distinct from it ; because it is essentially an existence in
apprehension, in the idea, thus an existence for another.
In fact, it is a phenomenon of brain, just as much whether
the brain in which it exhibits itself is my own or belongs
to another person. In the first case one's own person
divides itself into the knowing and the known, into object
and subject, which here as everywhere stand opposed to
each other, inseparable and irreconcilable. If, then, my
own person, in order to exist as such, always requires a
knowing subject, this will at least as much hold good of
the other objects for which it was the aim of the above
objection to vindicate an existence independent of know
ledge and its subject.

However, it is evident that the existence which is con
ditioned through a knowing subject is only the existence
in space, and therefore that of an extended and active
being. This alone is always something known, and con
sequently an existence for another. On the other hand,
every being that exists in this way may yet have an
existence for itself, for which it requires no subject. Yet
this existence for itself cannot be extension and activity
(together space-occupation), but is necessarily a being of
another kind, that of a thing in itself, which, as such, can
never be an object. This, then, would be the answer to the
leading objection set forth above, which accordingly does not
overthrow the fundamental truth that the objectively given
world can only exist in the idea, thus only for a subject.

We have further to remark here that Kant also, so Ion*?

' O

at least as he remained consistent, can have thought no

THE STANDPOINT OF IDEALISM. 169

objects among his things in themselves. For this follows
from the fact that he proves that space, and also time, are
mere forms of our perception, which consequently do not
belong to things in themselves. What is neither in space
nor in time can be no object ; thus the being of things in
themselves cannot be objective, but of quite a different
kind, a metaphysical being. Consequently that Kantian
principle already involves this principle also, that the
objective world exists only as idea.

In spite of all that one may say, nothing is so per
sistently and ever anew misunderstood as Idealism, because
it is interpreted as meaning that one denies the empirical
reality of the external world. Upon this rests the per
petual return to the appeal to common sense, which
appears in many forms and guises ; for example, as an
" irresistible conviction " in the Scotch school, or as
Jacobi's faith in the reality of the external world. The
external world by no means presents itself, as Jacobi
declares, upon credit, and is accepted by us upon trust
and faith. It presents itself as that which it is, and per
forms directly what it promises. It must be remembered
that Jacobi, who set up such a credit or faith theory of the
world, and had the fortune to impose it upon a few pro
fessors of philosophy, who for thirty years have philoso
phised upon the same lines lengthily and at their ease, is
the same man who once denounced Lessing as a Spino/ist,
and afterwards denounced Schelling as an atheist, and
who received from the latter the well-known and well-
deserved castigation. In keeping with such zeal, when he
reduced the external world to a mere matter of faith he
only wished to open the door to faith in general, and to
prepare belief for that which was afterwards really to be
made a matter of belief ; as if, in order to introduce a
paper currency, one should seek to appeal to the fact that
the value of the ringing coin also depends merely on the
stamp which the State has set upon it. Jacobi, in his
doctrine that the reality of the external world is assumed

170 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER I.

upon faith, is just exactly " the transcendental realist who
plays the empirical idealist" censured by Kant in the
" Critique of Pure Reason," first edition, p. 369.

The true idealism, on the contrary, is not the empirical
but the transcendental. This leaves the empirical reality of
the world untouched, but holds fast to the fact that every
object, thus the empirically real in general, is conditioned
in a twofold manner by the subject ; in the first place
materially or as object generally, because an objective
existence is only conceivable as opposed to a subject, and
as its idea; in the second place formally, because the
mode of existence of an object, i.e., its being perceived
(space, time, causality), proceeds from the subject, is pre
arranged in the subject. Therefore with the simple or
Berkeleian idealism, which concerns the object in general,
there stands in immediate connection the Kantian idealism,
which concerns the specially given mode or manner of
objective existence. This proves that the whole material
world, with its bodies, which are extended in space and,
by means of time, have causal relations to each other, and
everything that depends upon this — that all this is not
something which is there independently of our head, but
essentially presupposes the functions of our brain by means
of which and in which alone such an objective arrangement
of things is possible. For time, space, and causality, upon
which all those real and objective events rest, are them
selves nothing more than functions of the brain ; so that
thus the unchangeable order of things which affords the
criterion and clue to their empirical reality itself proceeds
only from the brain, and has its credentials from this alone.
All this Kant has expounded fully and thoroughly ; only
he does not speak of the brain, but calls it " the faculty
of knowledge." Indeed he has attempted to prove that
when that objective order in time, space, causality, matter,
&c., upon which all the events of the real world ultimately
rest, is properly considered, it cannot even be conceived
as a self-existing order, i.e., an order of the thing in itself,

THE STANDPOINT OF IDEALISM. 171

or as something absolutely objective and unconditionally
given, for if one tries to think this out it leads to contra
dictions. To accomplish this was the object of the anti
nomies, but in the appendix to my work I have proved
the failure of the attempt. On the other hand, the Kantian
doctrine, even without the antinomies, leads to the insight
that things and the whole mode of their existence are
inseparably bound up with our consciousness of them.
Therefore whoever has distinctly grasped this soon attains
to the conviction that the assumption that things also
exist as such, apart from and independently of our con
sciousness, is really absurd. That we are so deeply in
volved in time, space, causality, and the whole regular
process of experience which rests upon them, that we (and
indeed the brutes) are so perfectly at home, and know
how to find our way from the first — this would not be
possible if our intellect were one thing and things another,
but can only be explained from the fact that both con
stitute one whole, the intellect itself creates that order,
and exists only for things, while they, on the other hand,
exist only for it.

But even apart from the deep insight, which only
the Kantian philosophy gives, the inadmissibility of the
assumption of absolute realism which is so obstinately
clung to may be directly shown, or at least made capable
of being felt, by the simple exhibition of its meaning in the
light of such considerations as the following. According
to realism, the world is supposed to exist, as we know it,
independently of this knowledge. Let us once, then, remove
all percipient beings from it, and leave only unorganised
and vegetable nature. Rock, tree, and brook are there, and
the blue heaven ; sun, moon, and stars light this world, as
before ; yet certainly in vain, for there is no eye to see it.
Let us now in addition place in it a percipient being. Now
that world presents itself again in his brain, and repeats
itself within it precisely as it was formerly without it. Thus
to the first world a second has been added, which, although

172 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER I.

completely separated from it, resembles it to a nicety. And
now the subjective world of this perception is precisely so
constituted in subjective, known space as the objective world
in objective, infinite space. But the subjective world has
this advantage over the objective, the knowledge that that
space, outside there, is infinite ; indeed it can also give
beforehand most minutely and accurately the whole con
stitution or necessary properties of all relations which are
possible, though not yet actual, in that space, and does not
require to examine them. It can tell just as much with
regard to the course of time, and also with regard to the
relation of cause and effect which governs the changes in
that external world. I think all this, when closely con
sidered, turns out absurd enough, and hence leads to the
conviction that that absolute objective world outside the
head, independent of it and prior to all knowledge, which
at first we imagined ourselves to conceive, is really no
other than the second, the world which is known sub
jectively, the world of idea, as which alone we are actually
able to conceive it. Thus of its own accord the assumption
forces itself upon us, that the world, as we know it, exists
also only for our knowledge, therefore in the idea alone,
and not a second time outside of it.1 In accordance, then,
with this assumption, the thing in itself, i.e., that which
exists independently of our knowledge and of every know
ledge, is to be regarded as something completely different
from the idea and all its attributes, thus from objectivity in
general. What this is will be the subject of our second book.
On the other hand, the controversy concerning the
reality of the external world considered in § 5 of the first

1 I specially recommend here the expression, but I must confess that

passage in Lichtenberg's " Miscel- it has never been easy for me com-

laneous Writings " (Gothingen, 1801, pletely to comprehend it. It always

vol. ii. p. 12) : " Euler says, in his seems to me as if the conception

letters upon various subjects in con- being were something derived from

nection with natural science (vol. ii. our thought, and thus, if there are

p. 228), that it would thunder and no longer any sentient and thinking

lighten just as well if there were no creatures, then there is nothing more

man present whom the lightning whatever."
might strike. It is a very common

THE STANDPOINT OF IDEALISM. 173

volume rests upon the assumption, which has just been
criticised, of an objective and a subjective world both in
space, and upon the impossibility which arises in con
nection with this presupposition of a transition from, one
to the other, a bridge between the two. Upon this con
troversy I have still to add the following remarks.

The subjective and the objective do not constitute a con
tinuous whole. That of which we are immediately con
scious is bounded by the skin, or rat her by the extreme
ends of the nerves which proceed from the cerebral sys
tem. Beyond this lies a world of which we have no
knowledge except through pictures in our head. Now the
question is, whether and how far there is a world inde
pendent of us which corresponds to these pictures. The
relation between the two could only be brought about by
means of the law of causality ; for this law alone leads
from what is given to something quite different from it.
But this law itself has first of all to prove its validity.
Now it must either be of objective or of subjective origin ;
but in either case it lies upon one or the other side, and
therefore cannot supply the bridge between them. If, as
Locke and Hume assume, it is a posteriori, thus drawn
from experience, it is of objective, origin, and belongs then
itself to the external world which is in question. There
fore it cannot attest the reality of this world, for then,
according to Locke's method, causality would be proved
from experience, and the reality of experience from causa
lity. If, on the contrary, it is given a priori, as Kant has
more correctly taught us, then it is of subjective origin, and
in that case it is clear that with it we remain always in the
subjective sphere. For all that is actually given empiri
cally in perception is the occurrence of a sensation in the
organ of sense ; and the assumption that this, even in
general, must have a cause rests upon a law which is
rooted in the form of our knowledge, i.e., in the functions
of our brain. The origin of this law is therefore just as
subjective as that of the sensation itself. The cause of the

174 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER I.

given sensation, which is assumed in consequence of this
law, presents itself at once in perception as an object,
which has space and time for the form of its manifesta
tion. But these forms themselves again are entirely of
subjective origin ; for they are the mode or method of our
faculty of perception. That transition from the sensation
to its cause which, as I have repeatedly pointed out, lies
at the foundation of all sense-perception is certainly suf
ficient to give us the empirical presence in space and
time of an empirical object, and is therefore quite enough
for the practical purposes of life ; but it is by no means
sufficient to afford us any conclusion as to the existence
and real nature, or rather as to the intelligible substratum,
of the phenomena which in this way arise for us. Thus
that on the occasion of certain sensations occurring in my
organs of sense there arises in my head a perception of
things which are extended in space, permanent in time,
and causally efficient by no means justifies the assump
tion that they also exist in themselves, i.e., that such
things with these properties belonging absolutely to them
selves exist independently and outside of my head. This
is the true outcome of the Kantian philosophy. It coin
cides with an earlier result of Locke's, which is just as
true, but far more easily understood. For although, as
Locke's doctrine permits, external things are absolutely
assumed as the causes of sensations, yet there can be no
resemblance between the sensation in which the effect con
sists and the objective nature of the cause which occasions
it. For the sensation, as organic function, is primarily
determined by the highly artificial and complicated
nature of our organs of sense. It is therefore merely
excited by the external cause, but is then perfected en
tirely in accordance with its own laws, and thus is com
pletely subjective. Locke's philosophy was the criticism
of the functions of sense ; Kant has given us the criticism
of the functions of the brain. But to all this we have yet
to add the Berkeleian result, which has been revised by me,

THE STANDPOINT OF IDEALISM. 175

that every object, whatever its origin may be, is as object
already conditioned by the subject, is in fact merely its
idea. The aim of realism is indeed the object without
subject ; but it is impossible even to conceive such an
object distinctly.

From this whole inquiry it follows with certainty and
distinctness that it is absolutely impossible to attain to the
comprehension of the inner nature of things upon the path
of mere knowledge and perception. For knowledge always
comes to things from without, and therefore must for ever
remain outside them. This end would only be reached if
we could find ourselves in the inside of things, so that
their inner nature would be known to us directly. Now,
how far this is actually the case is considered in my
second book. But so long as we are concerned, as in this
first book, with objective comprehension, that is, with know
ledge, the world is, and remains for us, a mere idea, for here
there is no possible path by which we can cross over to it.

But, besides this, a firm grasp of the point of view of
idealism is a necessary counterpoise to that of materialism.
The controversy concerning the real and the ideal may also
be regarded as a controversy concerning the existence of
matter. For it is the reality or ideality of this that is
ultimately in question. Does matter, as such, exist only
in our idea, or does it also exist independently of it ? In
the latter case it would be the thing in itself ; and who
ever assumes a self-existent matter must also, consistently,
be a materialist, i.e., he must make matter the principle
of explanation of all things. Whoever, on the contrary,
denies its existence as a thing in itself is eo ipso an
idealist. Among the moderns only Locke has definitely
and without ambiguity asserted the reality of matter ; and
therefore his teaching led, in the hands of Condillac,
to the sensualism and materialism of the French. Only
Berkeley directly and without modifications denies matter.
The complete antithesis is thus that of idealism and ma
terialism, represented in its extremes by Berkeley and the

176 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER I.

French materialists (Hollbach). Fichte is not to be men
tioned here : he deserves no place among true philosophers ;
among those elect of mankind who, with deep earnestness,
seek not their own things but the truth, and therefore must
not be confused with those who, under this pretence, have
only their personal advancement in view. Fichte is the
father of the sham philosophy, of the disingenuous method
which, through ambiguity in the use of words, incompre
hensible language, and sophistry, seeks to deceive, and
tries, moreover, to make a deep impression by assuming
an air of importance — in a word, the philosophy which
seeks to bamboozle and humbug those who desire to learn.
After this method had been applied by Schelling, it reached
its height, as every one knows, in Hegel, in whose hands
it developed into pure charlatanism. But whoever even
names this Fichte seriously along with Kant shows that
he has not even a dim notion of what Kant is. On the
other hand, materialism also has its warrant. It is just
as true that the knower is a product of matter as that
matter is merely the idea of the knower ; but it is also
just as one-sided. For materialism is the philosophy of
the subject that forgets to take account of itself. And,
accordingly, as against the assertion that I am a mere
modification of matter, this must be insisted upon, that
all matter exists merely in my idea; and it is no less
right. A knowledge, as yet obscure, of these relations
seems to have been the origin of the saying of Plato, " v\ij
a\T]0ivov tyevbos " (materiel mendacium verax).

Realism necessarily leads, as we have said, to material
ism. For if empirical perception gives us things in them
selves, as they exist independently of our knowledge,
experience also gives us the order of things in themselves,
i.e., the true and sole order of the world. But this path
leads to the assumption that there is only one thing in
itself, matter; of which all other things are modifications;
for the course of nature is here the absolute and only order
of the world. To escape from these consequences, while

THE STANDPOINT OF IDEALISM. 177

realism remained in undisputed acceptance, spiritualism
was set up, that is, the assumption of a second substance
outside of and along with matter, an immaterial substance.
This dualism and spiritualism, equally unsupported by
experience and destitute of proof and comprehensibility,
was denied by Spinoza, and was proved to be false by
Kant, who dared to do so because at the same time he
established idealism in its rights. For with realism ma
terialism, as the counterpoise of which spiritualism had
been devised, falls to the ground of its own accord, because
then matter and the course of nature become mere pheno
mena, which are conditioned by the intellect, as they have
their existence only in its idea. Accordingly spiritualism
is the delusive and false safeguard against materialism,
while the real and true safeguard is idealism, which, by
making the objective world dependent upon us, gives the
needed counterpoise to the position of dependence upon
the objective world, in which we are placed by the course
of nature. The world from which I part at death is, in
another aspect, only my idea. The centre of gravity of
existence falls back into the subject. What is proved is
not, as in spiritualism, that the knower is independent of
matter, but that all matter is dependent on him. Cer
tainly this is not so easy to comprehend or so convenient
to handle as spiritualism, with its two substances ; but
^aXe-Tro. ra Ka\a.

In opposition to the subjective starting-point, " the world
is my idea," there certainly stands provisionally with
equal justification the objective starting-point, " the world
is matter," or " matter alone is absolute " (since it alone is
not subject to becoming and passing away), or " all that
exists is matter." This is the starting-point of Democritus,
Leucippus, and Epicurus. But, more closely considered,
the departure from the subject retains a real advantage ;
it has the start by one perfectly justified step. For con
sciousness alone is the immediate: but we pass over this
if we go at once to matter and make it our starting-point.

VOL. II. M

178 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER I.

On the other hand, it would certainly be possible to con
struct the world from matter and its properties if these
were correctly, completely, and exhaustively known to us
(which is far from being the case as yet). For all that
has come to be has become actual through causes, which
could operate and come together only by virtue of the
fundamental forces of matter. But these must be perfectly
capable of demonstration at least objectively, even if sub
jectively we never attain to a knowledge of them. But
such an explanation and construction of the world would
not only have at its foundation the assumption of an exist
ence in itself of matter (while in truth it is conditioned
by the subject), but it would also be obliged to allow all
the original qualities in this matter to pass current and
remain absolutely inexplicable, thus as gualitates occultce.
(Of. § 26, 27 of the first volume.) For matter is only the
vehicle of these forces, just as the law of causality is only
the arranger of their manifestations. Therefore such an
explanation of the world would always remain merely
relative and conditioned, properly the work of a physical
science, which at every step longed for a metapliysic. On
the other hand, there is also something inadequate about
the subjective starting-point and first principle, " the world
is my idea," partly because it is one-sided, since the world
is far more than that (the thing in itself, will), and indeed
its existence as idea is to a certain extent only accidental
to it ; but partly also because it merely expresses the fact
that the object is conditioned by the subject, without at
the same time saying that the subject, as such, is also con
ditioned by the object. For the assertion, " the subject
would still remain a knowing being if it had no object, i.e.,
if it had absolutely no idea," is just as false as the asser
tion of the crude understanding, " the world, the object,
would still exist, even if there were no subject." A con
sciousness without an object is no consciousness. A think
ing subject has conceptions for its object; a subject of
sense perception has objects with the qualities correspond-

THE STANDPOINT OF IDEALISM. 179

ing to its organisation. If we rob the subject of all special
characteristics and forms of its knowledge, all the pro
perties of the object vanish also, and nothing remains but
matter without form and quality, which can just as little
occur in experience as a subject without the forms of its
knowledge, but which remains opposed to the naked sub
ject as such, as its reflex, which can only disappear along
with it, Although materialism pretends to postulate
nothing more than this matter — for instance, atoms — yet
it unconsciously adds to it not only the subject, but also
space, time, and causality, which depend upon special pro
perties of the subject.

The world as idea, the objective world, has thus, as it
were, two poles ; the simple knowing subject without the
forms of its knowledge, and crude matter without form
and quality. Both are completely unknowable ; the sub
ject because it is that which knows, matter because with
out form and quality it cannot be perceived. Yet both
are fundamental conditions of all empirical perception.
Thus the knowing subject, merely as such, which is a
presupposition of all experience, stands opposed as its
pure counterpart to the crude, formless, and utterly dead
(i.e., will-less) matter, which is given in no experience,
but which all experience presupposes. This subject is
not in time, for time is only the more definite form of
all its ideas. The matter which stands over against it
is, like it, eternal and imperishable, endures through all
time, but is, properly speaking, not extended, for exten
sion gives form, thus it has no spatial properties. Every
thing else is involved in a constant process of coming
into being and passing away, while these two repre
sent the unmoved poles of the world as idea. The per
manence of matter may therefore be regarded as the
reflex of the timelessness of the pure subject, which is
simply assumed as the condition of all objects. Both
belong to phenomena, not to the thing in itself, but they
are the framework of the phenomenon. Both are arrived

i So FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER I.

at only by abstraction, and are not given immediately,
pure and for themselves.

The fundamental error of all systems is the failure to
understand this truth. Intelligence and matter are corre
lates, i.e., the one exists only for the other, both stand and
fall together, the one is only the reflex of the other. In
deed they are really one and the same thing regarded from
two opposite points of view ; and this one thing, I am here
anticipating, is the manifestation of the will, or the thing
in itself. Consequently both are secondary, and therefore
the origin of the world is not to be sought in either of the
two. But because of their failure to understand this, all
systems (with the exception perhaps of that of Spinoza)
sought the origin of all things in one of these two. Some
of them, on the one hand, suppose an intelligence, vovs,
as the absolutely First and STj/j^ovpyo^, and accordingly in
this allow an idea of things and of the world to precede
their actual existence; consequently they distinguish the
real world from the world of idea ; which is false. There
fore matter now appears as that through which the two
are distinguished, as the thing in itself. Hence arises the
difficulty of procuring this matter, the v\r], so that when
added to the mere idea of the world it may impart reality
to it. That original intelligence must now either find it
ready to hand, in which case it is just as much an absolute
First as that intelligence itself, and we have then two
absolute Firsts, the Sr)/j,ioupyos and the v\r) ; or the abso
lute intelligence must create this matter out of nothing,
an assumption which our understanding refuses to make,
for it is only capable of comprehending changes in matter,
and not that matter itself should come into being or pass
away. This rests ultimately upon the fact that matter is
essential, the correlate of the understanding. On the other
hand, the systems opposed to these, which make the other
of the two correlates, that is, matter, the absolute First,
suppose a matter which would exist without being per
ceived ; and it has been made sufficiently clear by all that

THE STANDPOINT OF IDEALISM. iSr

has been said above that this is a direct contradiction, for
by the existence of matter we always mean simply its
being perceived. But here they encounter the difficulty
of bringing to this matter, which alone is their absolute
First, the intelligence which is finally to experience it.
I have shown this weak side of materialism in § 7 of
the first volume. For me, on the contrary, matter and
intelligence are inseparable correlates, which exist only
for each other, and therefore merely relatively. Matter
is the idea of the intelligence ; the intelligence is that in
whose idea alone matter exists. The two together con
stitute the world as idea, which is just Kant's phenomenon,
and consequently something secondary. What is primary
is that which manifests itself, the thing in itself, which we
shall afterwards discover is the will. This is in itself
neither the perceiver nor the perceived, but is entirely
different from the mode of its manifestation.

As a forcible conclusion of this important and difficult
discussion I shall now personify these two abstractions,
and present them in a dialogue after the fashion of Pra-
bodha Tschandro Daya. It may also be compared with a
similar dialogue between matter and form in the "Duodccim
Principia Philosophies, " of Eaymund Lully, c. I and 2.

The Subject.

I am, and besides me there is nothing. For the world
is my idea.

Matter.

Presumptuous delusion ! I, I am, and besides me there
is nothing, for the world is my fleeting form. Thou art a
mere result of a part of this form and altogether acci
dental.

The Subject.

What insane arrogance ! Neither thou nor thy form
would exist without me ; ye are conditioned by me.
Whosoever thinks me away, and believes he can still think

1 82 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER I.

ye there, is involved in gross delusion, for your existence
apart from my idea is a direct contradiction, a meaningless
form of words. Ye are simply means ye are perceived by
me. My idea is the sphere of your existence; therefore I
am its first condition.

Matter.

Fortunately the audacity of your assertion will soon be
put to silence in reality and not by mere words. Yet a
few moments and thou actually art no more. With all
thy boasting thou hast sunk into nothing, vanished like a
shadow, and shared the fate of all my transitory forms.
But I, I remain, unscathed and undiminished, from age to
age, through infinite time, and behold unshaken the play
of mv changing form.

•/ o o

The Subject.

This infinite time through which thou boastest that
thou livest, like the infinite space which thou fillest, exists
only in my idea. Indeed it is merely the form of my
idea which I bear complete in myself, and in which thou
exhibitest thyself, which receives thee, and through which
thou first of all existest. But the annihilation with which
thou threatenest me touches me not ; were it so, then
wouldst thou also be annihilated. It merely affects the
individual, which for a short time is my vehicle, and
which, like everything else, is my idea.

Matter.

And if I concede this, and go so far as to regard thy
existence, which is yet inseparably linked to that of these
fleeting individuals, as something absolute, it yet remains
dependent upon mine. For thou art subject only so far
as thou hast an object ; and this object I am. I am its
kernel and content, that which is permanent in it, that
which holds it together, and without which it would be as
disconnected, as wavering, and unsubstantial as the dreams

THE STANDPOINT OF IDEALISM. 183

and fancies of thy individuals, which have yet borrowed
from me even the illusive content they possess.

The Subject.

Thou dost well to refrain from contesting my existence
on the ground that it is linked to individuals ; for, as in
separably as I am joined to them, thou art joined to thy
sister, Form, and hast never appeared without her. No
eye hath yet seen either thee or me naked and isolated ;
for we are both mere abstractions. It is in reality one
being that perceives itself and is perceived by itself, but
whose real being cannot consist either in perceiving or in
being perceived, since these are divided between us two.

Both.

We are, then, inseparably joined together as necessary
parts of one whole, which includes us both and exists
through us. Only a misunderstanding can oppose us two
hostilely to each other, and hence draw the false conclu
sion that the one contests the existence of the other, with
which its own existence stands or falls.

This whole, which comprehends both, is the world as
idea, or the world of phenomena. When this is taken
away there remains only what is purely metaphysical, the
thing in itself, which in the second book we shall recognise
as the will

1 84

CHAPTER II.

THE DOCTRINE OF PERCEPTION OR KNOWLEDGE OF
THE UNDERSTANDING.

WITH all transcendental ideality the objective world re
tains empirical reality ; the object is indeed not the
thing in itself, but as an empirical object it is real. It is
true that space is only in iny head ; but empirically my
head is in space. The law of causality can certainly
never enable us to get quit of idealism by building a
bridge between things in themselves and our knowledge
of them, and thus certifying the absolute reality of the
world, which exhibits itself in consequence of its applica
tion ; but this by no means does away with the causal
relation of objects to each other, thus it does not abolish
the causal relation which unquestionably exists between
the body of each knowing person and all other material
objects. But the law of causality binds together only
phenomena, and does not lead beyond them. With that
law we are and remain in the world of objects, i.e., the
world of phenomena, or more properly the world of ideas.
Yet the whole of such a world of experience is primarily
conditioned by the knowledge of a subject in general as
its necessary presupposition, and then by the special forms
of our perception and apprehension, thus necessarily be
longs to the merely phenomenal, and has no claim to pass
for the world of things in themselves. Indeed the subject
itself (so far as it is merely the knowing subject) belongs
to the merely phenomenal, of which it constitutes the
complementary half.

Without application of the law of causality, however,
perception of an objective world could never be arrived at ;

THE DOCTRINE OF PERCEPTION. 185

for this perception is, as I have often explained, essentially
matter of the intellect, and not merely of the senses. The
senses afford us mere sensation, which is far from being
perception. The part played by sensations of the senses
in perception was distinguished by Locke under the
name secondary qualities, which he rightly refused to
ascribe to things in themselves. But Kant, carrying
Locke's method further, distinguished also, and refused
to ascribe to things in themselves what belongs to the
working up of this material (the sensations) by the brain.
The result was, that in this was included all that Locke
had left to things in themselves as primary qualities
— extension, form, solidity, &c. — so that with Kant the
thing in itself was reduced to a completely unknown
quantity = x. With Locke accordingly the thing in itself
is certainly without colour, sound, smell, taste, neither
warm nor cold, neither soft nor hard, neither smooth nor
rough ; yet it has still extension and form, it is impene
trable, at rest or in motion, and has mass and number.
With Kant, on the other hand, it has laid aside all these
latter qualities also, because they are only possible by
means of time, space, and causality, and these spring from
an intellect (brain), just as colours, tones, smells, &c.,
originate in the nerves of the organs of sense. The thing
in itself has with Kant become spaceless, unextended, and
incorporeal. Thus what the mere senses bring to the
perception, in which the objective world exists, stands to
what is supplied by the functions of the brain (space, time,
causality) as the mass of the nerves of sense stand to the
mass of the brain, after subtracting that part of the latter
which is further applied to thinking proper, i.e., to abstract
ideas, and is therefore not possessed by the brutes. Eor
as the nerves of the organs of sense impart to the pheno
menal objects colour, sound, taste, smell, temperature, &c.,
so the brain imparts to them extension, form, impenetra
bility, the power of movement, &c., in short all that can
only be presented in perception by means of time, space,

186 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER II.

and causality. How small is the share of the senses in
perception, compared with that of the intellect, is also
shown by a comparison of the nerve apparatus for receiv
ing impressions with that for working them up. The mass
of the nerves of sensation of the whole of the organs of
sense is very small compared with that of the brain, even
in the case of the brutes, whose brain, since they do not,
properly speaking, i.e., in the abstract, think, is merely
used for effecting perception, and yet when this is com
plete, thus in the case of mammals, has a very considerable
mass, even after the cerebellum, whose function is the
systematic guidance of movements, has been taken away.

That excellent book by Thomas Eeid, the " Inquiry into
the Human Mind" (first edition, 1764; 6th edition, 1810),
as a negative proof of the Kantian truths, affords us a very
thorough conviction of the inadequacy of the senses to pro
duce the objective perception of things, and also of the non-
empirical origin of the perception of space and time. Eeid
refutes Locke's doctrine that perception is a product of
the senses, by a thorough and acute demonstration that the
collective sensations of the senses do not bear the least re
semblance to the world as known in perception, and espe
cially that the five primary qualities of Locke (extension,
form, solidity, movement, and number) absolutely could not
be afforded us by any sensation of the senses. Accordingly
he gives up the question as to the mode of origination
and the source of perception as completely insoluble ; and
although altogether unacquainted with Kant, he gives us,
as it were, according to the regula falsi, a thorough proof of
the intellectual nature of perception (really first explained
by me as a consequence of the Kantian doctrine), and also
of the a priori source, discovered by Kant, of its consti
tuent elements, space, time, and causality, from which
those primary qualities of Locke first proceed, but by
means of which they are easily constructed. Thomas
Eeid's book is very instructive and well worth reading —
ten times more so than all the philosophy together that has

THE DOCTRINE OF PERCEPTION. 187

been written since Kant. Another indirect proof of the
same doctrine, though in the way of error, is afforded by
the French sensational philosophers, who, since Condillac
trod in the footsteps of Locke, have laboured to show
once for all that the whole of our perception and thinking
can be referred to mere sensations (penser cest sentir),
which, after Locke's example, they call iddes simples, and
through the mere coming together and comparison of which
the whole objective world is supposed to build itself up
in our heads. These gentlemen certainly have des ide'es
lien simples. It is amusing to see how, lacking alike
the profundity of the German and the honesty of the
English philosopher, they turn the poor material of sensa
tion this way and that way, and try to increase its impor
tance, in order to construct out of it the deeply significant
phenomena of the world of perception and thought. But
the man constructed by them would necessarily be an
Anencephalus, a T6te de crapaud, with only organs of sense
and without a brain. To take only a couple of the better
attempts of this sort out of a multitude of others, I may
mention as examples Condorcet at the beginning of hi*
book, "Des Progress de V Esprit Humain" and Tourtual
on Sight, in the second volume of the " Scriptores Ophthal-
mologici Minores" edidit Justus Radius (1828).

The feeling of the insufficiency of a purely sensational-
istic explanation of perception is in like manner shown in
the assertion which was made shortly before the appear
ance of the Kantian philosophy, that we not only have
ideas of things called forth by sensation, but apprehend
the things themselves directly, although they lie outside us
— which is certainly inconceivable. And this was not
meant in some idealistic sense, but was said from the
point of view of common realism. This assertion is well
and pointedly put by the celebrated Euler in his " Letters
to a German Princess," vol. ii. p. 68. He says : " I there
fore believe that the sensations (of the senses) contain
something more than philosophers imagine. They are not

1 88 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER II.

merely empty perceptions of certain impressions made in
the brain. They do not give the soul mere ideas of things,
but actually place before it objects which exist outside
it, although we cannot conceive how this really hap
pens." This opinion is explained by the following facts.
Although, as I have fully proved, perception is brought
about by application of the law of causality, of which we
are conscious a priori, yet in sight the act of the under
standing, by means of which we pass from the effect to
the cause, by no means appears distinctly in conscious
ness ; and therefore the sensation does not separate itself
clearly from the idea which is constructed out of it, as the
raw material, by the understanding. Still less can a dis
tinction between object and idea, which in general does
not exist, appear in consciousness ; but we feel the things
themselves quite directly, and indeed as lying outside us,
although it is certain that what is immediate can only be
the sensation, and this is confined to the sphere of the body
enclosed by our skin. This can be explained from the fact
that outside us is exclusively a spatial determination. But
space itself is a form of our faculty of perception, i.e., a
function of our brain. Therefore that externality to us to
which we refer objects, on the occasion of sensations of
sight, is itself really within our heads ; for that is its
whole sphere of activity. Much as in the theatre we see
the mountains, the woods, and the sea, but yet everything
is inside the house. From this it becomes intelligible that
we perceive things in the relation of externality, and yet
in every respect immediately, but have not within us an
idea of the things which lie outside us, different from these
things. For things are in space, and consequently also
external to us only in so far as we perceive them. There
fore those things which to this extent we perceive directly,
and not mere images of them, are themselves only our
ideas, and as such exist only in our heads. Therefore we
do not, as Euler says, directly perceive the things them
selves which are external to us, but rather the things

THE DOCTRINE OF PERCEPTION. 189

which are perceived by us as external to us are only our
ideas, and consequently are apprehended by us imme
diately. The whole observation given above in Euler's
words, and which is quite correct, affords a fresh proof of
Kant's Transcendental ^Esthetic, and of my theory of per
ception which is founded upon it, as also of idealism in
general. The directness and unconsciousness referred to
above, with which in perception we make the transition
from the sensation to its cause, may be illustrated by an
analogous procedure in the use of abstract ideas or think
ing. When we read or hear we receive mere words, but
we pass from these so immediately to. the conceptions de
noted by them, that it is as if we received the conceptions
directly ; for we are absolutely unconscious of the tran
sition from the words to the conceptions. Therefore it
sometimes happens that we do not know in what language
it was that we read something yesterday which we now
remember. Yet that such a transition always takes place
becomes apparent if it is once omitted, that is, if in a fit of
abstraction we read without thinking, and then become
aware that we certainly have taken in all the words but
no conceptions. Only when we pass from abstract con
ceptions to pictures of the imagination do we become
conscious of the transposition we have made.

Further, it is really only in perception in the narrowest
sense, that is, in sight, that in empirical apprehension the
transition from the sensation to its cause takes place quite
unconsciously. In every other kind of sense perception,
on the contrary, the transition takes place with more
or less distinct consciousness; therefore, in the case of
apprehension through the four coarser senses, its reality is
capable of being established as an immediate fact. Thus
in the dark we feel a thing for a long time on all
sides until from the different effects upon our hands
we are able to construct its definite form as their cause.
Further, if something feels smooth we sometimes reflect
whether we may not have fat or oil upon our hands; and

190 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER II.

again, if something feels cold we ask ourselves whether it
may not be that we have very warm hands. When we
hear a sound we sometimes doubt whether it was really
an affection of our sense of hearing from without or merely
an inner affection of it ; then whether it sounded near and
weak or far off and strong, then from what direction it
came, and finally whether it was the voice of a man or of
a brute, or the sound of an instrument ; thus we investi
gate the cause of each effect we experience. In the case
of smell and taste uncertainty as to the objective nature
of the cause of the effect felt is of the commonest oc
currence, so distinctly are the two separated here. The
fact that in sight the transition from the effect to the
cause occurs quite unconsciously, and hence the illusion
arises that this kind of perception is perfectly direct, and
consists simply in the sensation alone without any opera
tion of the understanding — this has its explanation partly
in the great perfection of the organ of vision, and partly
in the exclusively rectilineal action of light. On account
of the latter circumstance the impression itself leads
directly to the place of the cause, and since the eye is
capable of perceiving with the greatest exactness and at a
glance all the fine distinctions of light and shade, colour
and outline, and also the data in accordance with which
the understanding estimates distance, it thus happens that
in the case of impressions of this sense the operation of
the understanding takes place with such rapidity and
certainty that we are just as little conscious of it as of
spelling when we read. Hence arises the delusion that
the sensation itself presents us directly with the objects.
Yet it is just in sight that the operation of the under
standing, consisting in the knowledge of the cause from
the effect, is most significant. By means of it what is felt
doubly, with two eyes, is perceived as single ; by means of
it the impression which strikes the retina upside down, in
consequence of the crossing of the rays in the pupils, is
put right by following back the cause of this in the same

THE DOCTRINE OF PERCEPTION. 191

direction, or as we express ourselves, we see things upright
although their image in the eye is reversed ; and finally
by means of the operation of the understanding magni
tude and distance are estimated by us in direct perception
from five different data, which are very clearly and beau
tifully described by Dr. Thomas Reid. I expounded all
this, and also the proofs which irrefutably establish the
intellectual nature of perception, as long ago as 1 8 1 6, in my
essay "On Sight and Colour" (second edition, 1854; third
edition, 1870), and with important additions fifteen years
later in the revised Latin version of it which is given
under the title, " Theoria Colorum Physiologica Eademque
Primaria," in the third volume of the " Script&res Oplithal-
mologici Minores" published by Justus Eadius in 1830 ; yet
most fully and thoroughly in the second (and third) edition
of my essay " On the Principle of Sufficient Reason," § 21.
Therefore on this important subject I refer to these works,
so as not to extend unduly the present exposition.

On the other hand, an observation which trenches on
the province of aesthetics may find its place here. It
follows from the proved intellectual nature of perception
that the sight of beautiful objects — for example, of a
beautiful view — is also a phenomenon of the brain. Its
purity and completeness, therefore, depends not merely on
the object, but also upon the quality of the brain, its form
and size, the fineness of its texture, and the stimulation
of its activity by the strength of the pulse of the arteries
which supply it. Accordingly the same view appears in
different heads, even when the eyes are equally acute, as
different as, for example, the first and last impressions of
a copper plate that has been much used. This is the
explanation of the difference of capacity for enjoying
natural beauty, and consequently also for reproducing it,
i.e., for occasioning a similar phenomenon of the brain by
means of an entirely different kind of cause, the arrange
ment of colours on a canvas.

The apparent immediacy of perception, depending on

192 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER II.

its entire intellectuality, by virtue of which, as Euler
says, we apprehend the thing itself, and as external to us,
finds an analogy in the way in which we feel the parts of
our own bodies, especially when they suffer pain, which
when we do feel them is generally the case. Just as we
imagine that we perceive things where they are, while
the perception really takes place in the brain, we believe
that we feel the pain of a limb in the limb itself, while
in reality it also is felt in the brain, to which it is con
ducted by the nerve of the affected part. Therefore, only
the affections of those parts whose nerves go to the brain
are felt, and not those of the parts whose nerves belong to
the sympathetic system, unless it be that an unusually
strong affection of these parts penetrates by some round
about way to the brain, where yet for the most part it
only makes itself known as a dull sense of discomfort,
and always without definite determination of its locality.
Hence, also, it is that we do not feel injuries to a limb
whose nerve-trunk has been severed or ligatured. And
hence, finally, the man who has lost a limb still some
times feels pain in it, because the nerves which go to the
brain are still there. Thus, in the two phenomena here
compared, what goes on in the brain is apprehended as
outside of it ; in the case of perception, by means of the
understanding, which extends its feelers into the outer
world ; in the case of the feeling of our limbs, by means of
the nerves.

( 193 )

CHAPTER III.

ON THE SENSES.

IT is not the object of my writings to repeat what has
been said by others, and therefore I only make here some
special remarks of my own on the subject of the senses.

The senses are merely the channels through which the
brain receives from without (in the form of sensations)
the materials which it works up into ideas of perception.
Those sensations which principally serve for the objective
comprehension of the external world must in themselves
be neither agreeable nor disagreeable. This really means
that they must leave the will entirely unaffected. Other
wise the sensation itself would attract our attention, and
we would remain at the effect instead of passing to the
cause, which is what is aimed at here. For it would
bring with it that marked superiority, as regards our
consideration, which the will always has over the mere
idea, to which we only turn when the will is silent.
Therefore colours and sounds are in themselves, and so
long as their impression does not pass the normal degree,
neither painful nor pleasurable sensations, but appear
with the indifference that fits them to be the material
of pure objective perception. This is as far the case as
was possible in a body which is in itself through and
through will; and just in this respect it is worthy of
admiration. Physiologically it rests upon the fact that
in the organs of the nobler senses, thus in sight and hear
ing, the nerves which have to receive the specific outward
impression are quite insusceptible to any sensation of pain,
"VOL. n.

i94 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER III.

and know no other sensation than that which is specifi
cally peculiar to them, and which serves the purpose of
mere apprehension. Thus the retina, as also the optic
nerve, is insensible to every injury; and this is also the
case with the nerve of hearing. In both organs pain is
only felt in their other parts, the surroundings of the
nerve of sense which is peculiar to them, never in this
nerve itself. In the case of the eye such pain is felt
principally in the conjunctiva ; in the case of the ear, in
the meatus auditorius. Even with the brain this is the
case, for if it is cut into directly, thus from above, it has
no feeling. Thus only on account of this indifference
with regard to the will which is peculiar to them are the
sensations of the eye capable of supplying the understand
ing with such multifarious and finely distinguished data,
out of which it constructs in our head the marvellous ob
jective world, by the application of the law of causality
upon the foundation of the pure perceptions of space and
time. Just that freedom from affecting the will which is
characteristic of sensations of colour enables them, when
their energy is heightened by transparency, as in the glow
of an evening sky, in painted glass, and the like, to raise
us very easily into the state of pure objective will-less
perception, which, as I have shown in my third book, is
one of the chief constituent elements of the aesthetic im
pression. Just this indifference with regard to the will
fits sounds to supply the material for denoting the in
finite multiplicity of the conceptions of the reason.

Outer sense, that is, receptivity for external impressions
as pure data for the understanding, is divided into Jive
senses, and these accommodate themselves to the four
elements, i.e., the four states of aggregation, together with
that of imponderability. Thus the sense for what is firm
(earth) is touch ; for what is fluid (water), taste ; for what
is in the form of vapour, i.e., volatile (vapour, exhalation),
smell; for what is permanently elastic (air), hearing; for
what is imponderable (fire, light), sight. The second im-

ON THE SENSES. 195

ponderable, heat, is not properly an object of the senses,
but of general feeling, and therefore always affects the
will directly, as agreeable or disagreeable. From this
classification there also follows the relative dignity of the
senses. Sight has the highest rank, because its sphere is
the widest and its susceptibility the finest. This rests
upon the fact that what affects it is an imponderable,
that is, something which is scarcely corporeal, but is quasi
spiritual. Hearing has the second place, corresponding
to air. However, touch is a more thorough and well-
informed sense. For while each of the other senses gives
us only an entirely one-sided relation to the object, as its
sound, or its relation to light, touch, which is closely
bound up with general feeling and muscular power, sup
plies the understanding with the data at once for the form,
magnitude, hardness, softness, texture, firmness, tempera
ture, and weight of bodies, and all this with the least
possibility of illusion and deception, to which all the
other senses are far more subject. The two lowest senses,
smell and taste, are no longer free from a direct affection
of the will, that is, they are always agreeably or disagree
ably affected, and are therefore more subjective than
objective.

Sensations of hearing are exclusively in time, and there
fore the whole nature of music consists in degrees of time,
upon which depends both the quality or pitch of tones,
by means of vibrations, and also their quantity or duration,
by means of time. The sensations of sight, on the other
hand, are primarily and principally in space; but secon
darily, by reason of their duration, they are also in time.

Sight is the sense of the understanding which perceives ;
hearing is the sense of the reason which thinks and ap
prehends. Words are only imperfectly represented by
visible signs ; and therefore I doubt whether a deaf and
dumb man, who can read, but has no idea of the sound of
the words, works as quickly in thinking with the mere
visible signs of conceptions as we do with the real, i.e.,

196 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER III.

the audible words. If he cannot read, it is well known
that he is almost like an irrational animal, while the man
born blind is from the first a thoroughly rational being.

Sight is an active, hearing a passive sense. Therefore
sounds affect our mind in a disturbing and hostile manner,
and indeed they do so the more in proportion as the
mind is active and developed ; they distract all thoughts
and instantly destroy the power of thinking. On the
other hand, there is no analogous disturbance through the
eye, no direct effect of what is seen, as such, upon the
activity of thought (for naturally we are not speaking
here of the influence which the objects looked at have
upon the will) ; but the most varied multitude of things
before our eyes admits of entirely unhindered and quiet
thought. Therefore the thinking mind lives at peace with
the eye, but is always at war with the ear. This oppo
sition of the two senses is also confirmed by the fact that
if deaf and dumb persons are cured by galvanism they
become deadly pale with terror at the first sounds they
hear (Gilbert's " Annalen der PkysiJc," vol. x. p. 382),
while blind persons, on the contrary, who have been
operated upon, behold with ecstasy the first light, and
unwillingly allow the bandages to be put over their eyes
again. All that has been said, however, can be explained
from the fact that hearing takes place by means of a
mechanical vibration of the nerve of hearing which is at
once transmitted to the brain, while seeing, on the other
hand, is a real action of the retina which is merely stimu
lated and called forth by light and its modifications ; as I
have shown at length in my physiological theory of
colours. But this whole opposition stands in direct con
flict with that coloured-ether, drum-beating theory which
is now everywhere unblushingly served up, and which
seeks to degrade the eye's sensation of light to a mechanical
vibration, such as primarily that of hearing actually is,
while nothing can be more different than the still, gentle
effect of light and the alarm-drum of hearing. If we add

ON THE SENSES. 197

to this the remarkable circumstance that although we
hear with two ears, the sensibility of which is often very
different, yet we never hear a sound double, as we often
see things double with our two eyes, we are led to the
conjecture that the sensation of hearing does not arise
in the labyrinth or in the cochlea, but deep in the brain
where the two nerves of hearing meet, and thus the im
pression becomes simple. But this is where the pons
Varolii encloses the medulla oblongata, thus at the ab
solutely lethal spot, by the injury of which every animal
is instantly killed, and from which the nerve of hearing
has only a short course to the labyrinth, the seat of
acoustic vibration. Now it is just because its source is
here, in this dangerous place, in which also all movement
of the limbs originates, that we start at a sudden noise ;
which does not occur in the least degree when we sud
denly see a light ; for example, a flash of lightning. The
optic nerve, on the contrary, proceeds from its thalami
much further forward (though perhaps its source lies
behind them), and throughout its course is covered by the
anterior lobes of the brain, although always separated
from them till, having extended quite out of the brain,
it is spread out in the retina, upon which, on stimulation
by light, the sensation first arises, and where it is really
localised. This is shown in my essay upon sight and
colour. This origin of the auditory nerve explains, then,
the great disturbance which the power of thinking suffers
from sound, on account of which thinking men, and in
general all people of much intellect, are without excep
tion absolutely incapable of enduring any noise. For it
disturbs the constant stream of their thoughts, interrupts
and paralyses their thinking, just because the vibration
of the auditory nerve extends so deep into the brain, the
whole mass of which feels the oscillations set up through
this nerve, and vibrates along with them, and because the
brains of such persons are more easily moved than those
of ordinary men. On the same readiness to be set in

198 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER III.

motion, and capacity for transmission, which characterises
their brains depends the fact that in the case of persons
like these every thought calls forth so readily all those
analogous or related to it whereby the similarities, ana
logies, and relations of things in general come so quickly
and easily into their minds ; that the same occasion which
millions of ordinary minds have experienced before brings
them to the thought, to the discovery, that other people
are subsequently surprised they did not reach themselves,
for they certainly can think afterwards, but they cannot
think before. Thus the sun shone on all statues, but
only the statue of Memnon gave forth a sound. For
this reason Kant, Gcethe, and Jean Paul were highly
sensitive to every noise, as their biographers bear wit
ness.1 Gcethe in his last years bought a house which had
fallen into disrepair close to his own, simply in order that
he might not have to endure the noise that would be
made in repairing it. Thus it was in vain that in his
youth he followed the drum in order to harden himself
against noise. It is not a matter of custom. On the
other hand, the truly stoical indifference to noise of
ordinary minds is astonishing. No noise disturbs them
in their thinking, reading, writing, or other occupations,
while the finer mind is rendered quite incapable by it.
But just that which makes them so insensible to noise of
every kind makes them also insensible to the beautiful
in plastic art, and to deep thought or fine expression in
literary art; in short, to all that does not touch their
personal interests. The following remark of Lichtenberg's
applies to the paralysing effect which noise has upon
highly intellectual persons : " It is always a good sign
\vhen an artist can be hindered by trifles from exercising

his art. ~F used to stick his fingers into sulphur if

he wished to play the piano. . . . Such things do not

1 Lichtenberg says in his " Xach- " I am extremely sensitive to all

richtcn und Bcmerkungcn von und noise, but it entirely loses its dis-

iiber sich sclbst " ( Vermisckte Schrif- agreeable character as soon as it is

ten, Gottinyen, 1800, vol. i. p. 43) : associated with a rational purpose."

ON THE SENSES. 199

interfere with the average mind ; ... it acts like a coarse
sieve" (Vermischte Schriften, vol. i. p. 398). I have long
really held the opinion that the amount of noise which
any one can bear undisturbed stands in inverse propor
tion to his mental capacity, and therefore may be regarded
as a pretty fair measure of it. Therefore, if I hear the
dogs barking for hours together in the court of a house
without being stopped, I know what to think of the intel
lectual capacity of the inhabitants. The man who habitu
ally slams the door of a room, instead of shutting it with
his hand, or allows this to go on in his house, is not only
ill-bred, but is also a coarse and dull-minded fellow.
That in English " sensible " also means gifted with under
standing is based upon accurate and fine observation.
We shall only become quite civilised when the ears are
no longer unprotected, and when it shall no longer be
the right of everybody to sever the consciousness of each
thinking being, in its course of a thousand steps, with
whistling, howling, bellowing, hammering, whip-cracking,
barking, &c. &c. The Sybarites banished all noisy trades
without the town; the honourable sect of the Shakers
in North America permit no unnecessary noise in their
villages, and the Moravians have a similar rule. Some
thing more is said upon this subject in the thirtieth
chapter of the second volume of the " Parerga."

The effect of music upon the mind, so penetrating, so
direct, so unfailing, may be explained from the passive
nature of hearing which has been discussed; also the
after effect which sometimes follows it, and which consists
in a specially elevated frame of mind. The vibrations of
the tones following in rationally combined numerical
relations set the fibre of the brain itself in similar vibra
tion. On the other hand, the active nature of sight,
opposed as it is to the passive nature of hearing, makes
it intelligible why there can be nothing analogous to
music for the eye, and the piano of colours was an absurd
mistake. Further, it is just on account of the active

200 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER III.

nature of the sense of sight that it is remarkably acute in
the case of Leasts that hunt, i.e., beasts of prey, while
conversely the passive sense of hearing is specially acute
in those beasts that are hunted, that flee, and are timid,
so that it may give them timely warning of the pursuer
that is rushing or creeping upon them.

Just as we have recognised in sight the sense of the
understanding, and in hearing the sense of the reason, so
we might call smell the sense of the memory, because it
recalls to us more directly than any other the specific
impression of an event or a scene even from the most
distant past.

( 201 )

CHAPTER IV.

OX KNOWLEDGE A PRIORI.

FROM the fact that we are able spontaneously to assign
and determine the laws of relations in space without
having recourse to experience, Plato concludes (Meno,
p. 353, Bip.) that all learning is mere recollection. Kant,
on the other hand, concludes that space is subjectively
conditioned, and merely a form of the faculty of know
ledge. How far, in this regard, does Kaut stand above
Plato!

Cogito, ergo sum, is an analytical judgment. Indeed
Parrnenides held it to be an identical judgment : " TO <yap
avro voeiv ean re KO.I eivat " (nam intelliyere et esse idem
est, Clem. Alex. Strom., vi. 2, § 23). As such, however, or
indeed even as an analytical judgment, it cannot contain
any special wisdom ; nor yet if, to go still deeper, we
seek to deduce it as a conclusion from the major premise,
non-entis nulla sunt prcedicata. But with this proposition
what Descartes really wished to express was the great
truth that immediate certainty belongs only to self-
consciousness, to what is subjective. To what is objective,
OTI the other hand, thus to everything else, only indirect
certainty belongs ; for it is arrived at through self-
consciousness ; and being thus merely at second hand, it
is to be regarded as problematical. Upon this depends
the value of this celebrated proposition. As its opposite
we may set up, in the sense of the Kantian philosophy,
cogito, ergo est, that is, exactly as I think certain relations
iu things (the mathematical), they must always occur in

202 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER IV.

all possible experience ; — this was an important, profound,
and a late appergu, which appeared in the form of the
problem as to the possibility of synthetic judgments a priori,
and has actually opened up the way to a deeper know
ledge. This problem is the watchword of the Kantian
philosophy, as the former proposition is that of the
Cartesian, and shows ef olwv et? ola.

Kant very fitly places his investigations concerning
time and space at the head of all the rest. For to the
speculative mind these questions present themselves before
all others : what is time ? — what is this that consists of
mere movement, without anything that moves it? — and
what is space? this omnipresent nothing, out of which
nothing that exists can escape without ceasing to be
anything at all ?

That time and space depend on the subject, are the
mode in which the process of objective apperception is
brought about in the brain, has already a sufficient proof
in the absolute impossibility of thinking away time and
space, while we can very easily think away everything
that is presented in them. The hand can leave go of
everything except itself. However, I wish here to illus
trate by a few examples and deductions the more exact
proofs of this truth which are given by Kant, not for
the purpose of refuting stupid objections, but for the
use of those who may have to expound Kant's doctrine
in future.

" A right-angled equilateral triangle " contains no logical
contradiction ; for the predicates do not by any means
cancel the subject, nor are they inconsistent with each
other. It is only when their object is constructed in pure
perception that the impossibility of their union in it
appears. Now if on this account we were to regard
this as a contradiction, then so would every physical
impossibility, only discovered to be such after the lapse
of centuries, be a contradiction; for example, the com
position of a metal from its elements, or a mammal with

ON KNOWLEDGE A PRIORI. 203

more or fewer than seven cervical vertebra,1 or horns
and upper incisors in the same animal. But only logical
impossibility is a contradiction, not physical, and just as
little mathemathical. Equilateral and rectangled do not
contradict each other (they coexist in the square), nor
does either of them contradict a triangle. Therefore the
incompatibility of the above conceptions can never be
known by mere thinking, but is only discovered by percep
tion — merely mental perception, however, which requires
no experience, no real object. We should also refer here
to the proposition of Giordano Bruno, which is also found
in Aristotle : " An infinitely large body is necessarily im
movable" — a proposition which cannot rest either upon
experience or upon the principle of contradiction, since it
speaks of things which cannot occur in any experience, and
the conceptions " infinitely large " and " movable " do not
contradict each other ; but it is only pure perception that
informs us that motion demands a space outside the body,
while its infinite size leaves no space over. Suppose, now.
it should be objected to the first mathematical example
that it is only a question of how complete a conception
of a triangle the person judging has : if the conception
is quite complete it will also contain the impossibility
of a triangle being rectangular and also equilateral. The
answer to this is : assume that his conception is not so
complete, yet without recourse to experience he can, by
the mere construction of the triangle in his imagination,
extend his conception of it and convince himself for ever
of the impossibility of this combination of these con
ceptions. This process, however, is a synthetic judgment
a priori, that is, a judgment through which, independently
of all experience, and yet with validity for all experience,
we form and perfect our conceptions. For, in general,
whether a given judgment is analytical or synthetical can
only be determined in the particular case according as

1 That the three-toed sloth has yet Owen still states this, " Osteologie
nine must be regarded as a mistake ; Comp." p. 405.

204 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER IV.

the conception of the subject in the mind of the person
judging is more or less complete. The conception " cat "
contains in the mind of a Cuvier a hundred times more
than in that of his servant ; therefore the same judg
ments about it will be synthetical for the latter, and only
analytical for the former. But if we take the conceptions
objectively, and now wish to decide whether a given
judgment is analytical or synthetical, we must change the
predicate into its contradictory opposite, and apply this to
the subject without a copula. If this gives a contradictio
in adjecto, then the judgment was analytical ; otherwise it
was synthetical.

That Arithmetic rests on the pure intuition or perception
of time is not so evident as that Geometry is based upon
that of space.1 It can be proved, however, in the following
manner. All counting consists in the repeated affirmation
of unity. Only for the purpose of always knowing how
often we have already affirmed unity do we mark it each
time with another word : these are the numerals. Now
repeti'tion is only possible through succession. But suc
cession, that is, being after one another, depends directly
upon the intuition or perception of time. It is a con
ception which can only be understood by means of this ;

1 This, however, does not excuse the end to condemn without cere-
a professor of philosophy who, sitting mony the fundamental teaching of
in Kant's chair, expresses himself a great genius in a tone of peremptory
thus : " That mathematics as such decision, just as if it were Hegelian
contains arithmetic and geometry is foolery. We must not, however, fail
correct. It is incorrect, however, to notice that these little people
to conceive arithmetic as the science struggle to escape from the track of
of time, really for no other reason great thinkers. They would there-
than to give a pendant (sic) to fore have done better not to attack
geometry as the science of space " Kant, but to content themselves
(Rosenkranz in the " Deutschen with giving their public full details
Museum," 1857, May 14, No. 20). about God, the soul, the actual free-
This is the fruit of Hegelism. If dom of the will, and whatever be-
the mind is once thoroughly de- longs to that sort of thing, and then
bauched with its senseless jargon, to have indulged in a private luxury
serious Kantian philosophy will no in their dark back-shop, the philo-
longer enter it. The audacity to sephical journal ; there they may
talk at random about what one does do whatever they like without con-
not understand has been inherited straint, for no one sees it.
from the master, and one comes in

" ON KNOWLEDGE A PRIORI. 205

and thus counting also is only possible by means of time.
This dependence of all counting upon time is also be
trayed by the fact that in all languages multiplication
is expressed by " time," thus by a time-concept : sexies,
ega/cis, sixfois, sex mal. But simple counting is already a
multiplication by one, and for this reason in Pestalozzi's
educational establishment the children are always made
to multiply thus : " Two times two is four times one."
Aristotle already recognised the close relationship of
number and time, and expounded it in the fourteenth
chapter of the fourth book of the " Physics." Time is for
him " the number of motion " (" 6 'xpovos api0/j,os eart K.W-
Tjcreco?"). He very profoundly suggests the question whether
time could be if the soul were not, and answers it in the
negative. If arithmetic had not this pure intuition or
perception of time at its foundation, it would be no science
a priori, and therefore its propositions would not have
infallible certainty.

Although time, like space, is the form of knowledge of
the subject, yet, just like space, it presents itself as inde
pendent of the subject and completely objective. Against
our will, or without our knowledge, it goes fast or slow.
We ask what o'clock it is ; we investigate time, as if it
were something quite objective. And what is this objec
tive existence ? Not the progress of the stars, or of the
clocks, which merely serve to measure the course of time
itself, but it is something different from all things, and
yet, like them, independent of our will and knowledge.
It exists only in the heads of percipient beings, but the
uniformity of its course and its independence of the will
give it the authority of objectivity.

Time is primarily the form of inner sense. Anticipat
ing the following book, I remark that the only object of
inner sense is the individual will of the knowing subject.
Time is therefore the form by means of which self-con
sciousness becomes possible for the individual will, which
originally and in itself is without knowledge. In it the

206 FIRST BOOK. 'CHAPTER IV.

nature of the will, which in itself is simple and identical,
appears drawn out into a course of life. But just on
account of this original simplicity and identity of what
thus exhibits itself, its character remains always precisely
the same, and hence also the course of life itself retains
throughout the same key-note, indeed its multifarious
events and scenes are at bottom just like variations of one
and the same theme.

The a priori nature of the law of causality has, by Eng
lishmen and Frenchmen, sometimes not been seen at all,
sometimes not rightly conceived of ; and therefore some
of them still prosecute the earlier attempts to find for it
an empirical origin. Maine de Biran places this in the
experience that the act of will as cause is followed by the
movement of the body as effect. But this fact itself is
untrue. We certainly do not recognise the really imme
diate act of will as something different from the action of
the body, and the two as connected by the bond of causa
lity ; but both are one and indivisible. Between them there
is no succession ; they are simultaneous. They are one and
the same thing, apprehended in a double manner. That
which makes itself known to inner apprehension (self-con
sciousness) as the real act of will exhibits itself at once in
external perception, in which the body exists objectively
as an action of the body. That physiologically the action
of the nerve precedes that of the muscle is here imma
terial, for it does not come within self-consciousness; and
we are not speaking here of the relation between muscle
and nerve, but of that between the act of will and the action
of the body. Now this does not present itself as a causal
relation. If these two presented themselves to us as
cause and effect their connection would not be so incom
prehensible to us as it actually is ; for what we under
stand from its cause we understand as far as there is an
understanding of things generally. On the other hand,
the movement of our limbs by means of mere acts of will
is indeed a miracle of such common occurrence that we

ON KNOWLEDGE A PRIORI. 207

no longer observe it ; but if we once turn our attention to
it we become keenly conscious of the incomprehensibility
of the matter, just because in this we have something
before us which we do not understand as the effect of a
cause. This apprehension, then, could never lead us to
the idea of causality, for that never appears in it at all.
Maine de Biran himself recognises the perfect simultane-
ousness of the act of will and the movement (Nouvelles
Considerations des Rapports du Physique au Moral, p.
377> 378)- In England Thomas Eeid (On the First
Principles of Contingent Truths, Essay IV. c. 5) already
asserted that the knowledge of the causal relation has
its ground in the nature of the faculty of knowledge it
self. Quite recently Thomas Brown, in his very tediously
composed book, " Inquiry into the Eelation of Cause and
Effect," 4th edit, 1835, says much the same thing, that
that knowledge springs from an innate, intuitive, and
instinctive conviction ; thus he is at bottom upon the
right path. Quite unpardonable, however, is the crass
ignorance on account of which in this book of 476 pages,
of which 130 are devoted to the refutation of Hume,
absolutely no mention is made of Kant, who cleared up
the question more than seventy years ago. If Latin had
remained the exclusive language of science such a thing
would not have occurred. In spite of Brown's exposition,
which in the main is correct, a modification of the doctrine
set up by Maine de Biran, of the empirical origin of the
fundamental knowledge of the causal relation, has yet
found acceptance in England ; for it is not without a
certain degree of plausibility. It is this, that we abstract
the law of causality from the perceived effect of our own
body upon other bodies. This was already refuted by
Hume. I, however, have shown that it is untenable in
my work, " Ueber den Willen in dcr Natur" (p. 75 of the
second edition, p. 82 of the third), from the fact that since
we apprehend both our own and other bodies objectively
in spatial perception, the knowledge of causality must

208 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER IV.

already be there, because it is a condition of such percep
tion. The one genuine proof that we are conscious of
the law of causalty before all experience lies in the neces
sity of making a transition from the sensation, which is
only empirically given, to its cause, in order that it may
become perception of the external world. Therefore I
have substituted this proof for the Kantian, the incorrect
ness of which I have shown. A most full and thorough
exposition of the whole of this important subject, which
is only touched on here, the a priori nature of the law of
causality and the intellectual nature of empirical percep
tion, will be found in my essay on the principle of suffi
cient reason, § 21, to which I refer, in order to avoid the
necessity of repeating here what is said there. I have
also shown there the enormous difference between the
mere sensation of the senses and the perception of an
objective world, and discovered the wide gulf that lies
between the two. The law of causality alone can bridge
across this gulf, and it presupposes for its application the
two other forms which are related to it, space and time.
Only by means of these three combined is the objective
idea attained to. Now whether the sensation from which
we start to arrive at apprehension arises through the
resistance which is suffered by our muscular exertion, or
through the impression of light upon the retina, or of
sound upon the nerves of the brain, &c. &c., is really a
matter of indifference. The sensation always remains a
mere datum for the understanding, which alone is capable
of apprehending it as the effect of a cause different from
itself, which the understanding now perceives as external,
i.e., as something occupying and filling space, which is
also a form inherent in the intellect prior to all experi
ence. Without this intellectual operation, for which the
forms must lie ready in us, the perception of an objective,
external world could never arise from a mere sensation
within our skin. How can it ever be supposed that the
mere feeling of being hindered in intended motion, which

ON KNOWLEDGE A PRIORI. 209

occurs also in lameness, could be sufficient for this ? We
may add to this that before I attempt to affect external
things they must necessarily have affected me as motives.
But this almost presupposes the apprehension of the ex
ternal world. According to the theory in question (as I
have remarked in the place referred to above), a man
born without arms and legs could never attain to the
idea of causality, and consequently could never arrive at
the apprehension of the external world. But that this
is not the case is proved by a fact communicated in
Froriep's Notizen, July 1838, No. 133 — the detailed
account, accompanied by a likeness, of an Esthonian girl,
Eva Lauk, then fourteen years old, who was born entirely
without arms or legs. The account concludes with these
words : " According to the evidence of her mother, her
mental development had been quite as quick as that of
her brothers and sisters ; she attained just as soon as they
did to a correct judgment of size and distance, yet without
the assistance of hands. — Dorpat, ist March 1838, Dr. A.
Hueck."

Hume's doctrine also, that the conception of causality
arises from the custom of seeing two states constantly
following each other, finds a practical refutation in the
oldest of all successions, that of day and night, which no
one has ever held to be cause and effect of each other.
And the same succession also refutes Kant's false asser
tion that the objective reality of a succession is only
known when we apprehend the two succeeding events as
standing in the relation of cause and effect to each other.
Indeed the converse of this doctrine of Kant's is true.
We know which of the two connected events is the cause
and which the effect, empirically, only in the succession.
Again, on the other hand, the absurd assertion of several
professors of philosophy in our own day that cause and
effect are simultaneous can be refuted by the fact that in
cases in which the succession cannot be perceived on
account of its great rapidity, we yet assume it with

VOL. II. 0

210 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER IV.

certainty a priori, and with it the lapse of a certain time.
Thus, for example, we know that a certain time must
elapse between the falling of the flint and the projection
of the bullet, although we cannot perceive it, and that
this time must further be divided between several events
that occur in a strictly determined succession — the fall
ing of the flint, the striking of the spark, ignition, the
spread of the fire, the explosion, and the projection of the
bullet. No man ever perceived this succession of events ;
but because we know which is the cause of the others, we
thereby also know which must precede the others in time,
and consequently also that during the course of the whole
series a certain time must elapse, although it is so short
that it escapes our empirical apprehension ; for no one
will assert that the projection of the bullet is actually
simultaneous with the falling of the flint. Thus not only
the law of causality, but also its relation to time, and the
necessity of the succession of cause and effect, is known to
us a priori. If we know which of two events is the cause
and which is the effect, we also know which precedes the
other in time ; if, on the contrary, we do not know which
is cause and which effect, but only know in general that
they are causally connected, we seek to discover the suc
cession empirically, and according to that we determine
which is the cause and which the effect. The falseness of
the assertion that cause and effect are simultaneous further
appears from the following consideration. An unbroken
chain of causes and effects fills the whole of time. (For
if this chain were broken the world would stand still, or
in order to set it in motion again an effect without a cause
would have to appear.) Now if every effect were simul
taneous with its cause, then every effect would be moved
up into the time of its cause, and a chain of causes and
effects containing as many links as before would fill no
time at all, still less an infinite time, but would be all
together in one moment. Thus, under the assumption that
cause and effect are simultaneous, the course of the world

ON KNOWLEDGE A PRIORI. 211

shrinks up into an affair of a moment. This proof is
analogous to the proof that every sheet of paper must
have a certain thickness, because otherwise the whole
book would have none. To say when the cause ceases
and the effect begins is in almost all cases difficult, and
often impossible. For the changes (i.e., the succession of
states) are continuous, like the time which they fill, and
therefore also, like it, they are infinitely divisible. But
their succession is as necessarily determined and as un
mistakable as that of the moments of time itself, and each
of them is called, writh reference to the one which precedes
it, " effect," and with reference to the one which follows
it, " cause."

Every change in the material world can only take place be
cause another has immediately preceded it: this is the true and
the whole content of the law of causality. But no concep
tion has been more misused in philosophy than that of cause,
by means of the favourite trick or blunder of conceiving it
too widely, taking it too generally, through abstract think
ing. Since Scholasticism, indeed properly since Plato and
Aristotle, philosophy has been for the most part a systematic
misuse of general conceptions. Such, for example, are sub
stance, ground, cause, the good, perfection, necessity, and
very many others. A tendency of the mind to work with
such abstract and too widely comprehended conceptions
has shown itself almost at all times. It may ultimately
rest upon a certain indolence of the intellect, which finds
it too difficult a task to be constantly controlling thought
by perception. By degrees such unduly wide conceptions
come to be used almost like algebraical symbols, and tossed
about like them, and thus philosophy is reduced to a mere
process of combination, a kind of reckoning which (like all
calculations) employs and demands only the lower facul
ties. Indeed there finally results from this a mere juggling
with words, of which the most shocking example is afforded
us by the mind-destroying Hegelism, in which it is carried
to the extent of pure nonsense. But Scholasticism also

212 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER IV.

often degenerated into word-juggling. Nay, even the
" Topi " of Aristotle — very abstract principles, conceived
with absolute generality, which one could apply to the
most different kinds of subjects, and always bring into the
field in arguing either pro or contra — have also their origin
in this misuse of general conceptions. We find innumer
able examples of the way the Schoolmen worked with such
abstractions in their writings, especially in those of Thomas
Aquinas. But philosophy really pursued the path which
was entered on by the Schoolmen down to the time of
Locke and Kant, who at last bethought themselves as to
the origin of conceptions. Indeed we find Kant himself,
in his earlier years, still upon that path, in his " Proof of
the Existence of God" (p. 191 of the first volume of
Eosenkranz's edition), where the conceptions substance,
ground, reality, are used in such a way as would never
have been possible if he had gone back to the source of
these conceptions and to their true content which is deter
mined thereby. For then he would have found as the
source and content of substance simply matter, of ground
(if things of the real world are in question) simply cause,
that is, the prior change which brings about the later
change, &c. It is true that in this case such an investi
gation would not have led to the intended result. But
everywhere, as here, such unduly wide conceptions, under
which, therefore, more was subsumed than their true con
tent would have justified, there have arisen false principles,
and from these false systems. Spinoza's whole method
of demonstration rests upon such uninvestigated and too
widely comprehended conceptions. Now here lies the
great merit of Locke, who, in order to counteract all that
dogmatic unreality, insisted upon the investigation of the
origin of the conceptions, and thus led back to perception
and experience. Bacon had worked in a similar frame of
mind, yet more with reference to Physics than to Meta
physics. Kant followed the path entered upon by Locke,
but in a higher sense and much further, as has already been

ON KNOWLEDGE A PRIORI. 213

mentioned above. To the men of mere show who succeeded
in diverting the attention of the public from Kant to
themselves the results obtained by Locke and Kant were
inconvenient. But in such a case they know how to
ignore both the dead and the living. Thus without
hesitation they forsook the only right path which had
at last been found by those wise men, and philosophised
at random with all kinds of indiscriminately collected
conceptions, unconcerned as to their origin and content,
till at last the substance of the Hegelian philosophy, wise
beyond measure, was that the conceptions had no origin
at all, but were rather themselves the origin and source of
things. But Kant has erred in this respect. He has too
much neglected empirical perception for the sake of pure
perception — a point which I have fully discussed in my
criticism of his philosophy. With me perception is through
out the source of all knowledge. I early recognised the
misleading and insidious nature of abstractions, and in
1813, in my essay on the principle of sufficient reason, I
pointed out the difference of the relations which are thought
under this conception. General conceptions must indeed be
the material in which philosophy deposits and stores up
its knowledge, but not the source from which it draws
it ; the terminus ad quern, not a quo. It is not, as Kant
defines it, a science drawn from conceptions, but a science
in conceptions. Thus the conception of causality also,
with which we are here concerned, has always been taken
far too widely by philosophers for the furtherance of their
dogmatic ends, and much was imported into it which does
not belong to it at all. Hence arose propositions such as
the following : " All that is has its cause " — " the effect
cannot contain more than the cause, thus nothing that
was not also in the cause " — " causa est ndbilior suo effectu"
and many others just as unwarranted. The following
subtilty of that insipid gossip Proclus affords an elaborate
and specially lucid example of this. It occurs in his
" Institutio Thcologica," § 76 : " Hav ro airo aKivr^rov ycyvo-

214 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER IV.

ama?, a^era^Krjrov e^ei TIJV vTrapfyv' irav Se TO CLTCO
, fj,6ra(3\r)Tr)v' ei jap a/avrjTOV e<JTi TcavTrj TO
TTotovv, ov 8ia Kiwrjcreays, a\\' avrw T&> eivai Trapayei TO
SevTepov a<f> eavTov." (Quidquid db immobili causa manat,
immutdbilem habet essentiam [substantiam"]. Quidquid vero
a mobili causa manat, essentiam habet mutdbilem. Si enim
illud, quod aliquid facit, est prorsus immobile, non per
inotum, sed per ipsum Esse producit ipsum secundum ex se
ipso.~) Excellent ! But just show me a cause which is not
itself set in motion : it is simply impossible. But here,
as in so many cases, abstraction has thought away all
determinations down to that one which it is desired to
make use of without regard to the fact that the latter
cannot exist without the former. The only correct ex
pression of the law of causality is this : Every change has
its cause in another change which immediately precedes it.
If something happens, i.e., if a new state of things appears,
i.e., if something is changed, then something else must
have changed immediately before, and something else again
before this, and so on ad infinitum, for a first cause is as
impossible to conceive as a beginning of time or a limit
of space. More than this the law of causality does not
assert. Thus its claims only arise in the case of changes.
So long as nothing changes there can be no question of
a cause. For there is no a priori ground for inferring
from the existence of given things, i.e., states of matter,
their previous non-existence, and from this again their
coming into being, that is to say, there is no a priori
ground for inferring a change. Therefore the mere exist
ence of a thing does not justify us in inferring that it
has a cause. Yet there may be a posteriori reasons,
that is, reasons drawn from previous experience, for the
assumption that the present state or condition did not
always exist, but has only come into existence in con
sequence of another state, and therefore by means of a
change, the cause of which is then to be sought, and also
the cause of this cause. Here then we are involved in

ON KNOWLEDGE A PRIORI. 215

the infinite regressus to which the application of the law
of causality always leads. We said above : " Things, i.e.,
states or conditions of matter" for change and causality
have only to do with states or conditions. It is these
states which we understand by form, in the wider sense ;
and only the forms change, the matter is permanent.
Thus it is only the form which is subject to the law of
causality. But the form constitutes the thing, i.e., it is
the ground of the difference of things ; while matter must
be thought as the same in all. Therefore the School
men said, "Forma dat esse rei;" more accurately this
proposition would run : Forma dat rei essentiam, materia
existentiam. Therefore the question as to the cause of a
thing always concerns merely its form, i.e., its state or
quality, and not its matter, and indeed only the former so
far as we have grounds for assuming that it has not always
existed, but has come into being by means of a change. The
union of form and matter, or of essentia and existentia, gives
the concrete, which is always particular ; thus, the thing.
And it is the forms whose union with matter, i.e., whose
appearance in matter by means of a change, are subject to
the law of causality. By taking the conception too widely
in the abstract the mistake slipped in of extending causality
to the thing absolutely, that is, to its whole inner nature
and existence, thus also to matter, and ultimately it was
thought justifiable to ask for a cause of the world itself.
This is the origin of the cosmological proof. This proof
begins by inferring from the existence of the world its
non-existence, which preceded its existence, and such an
inference is quite unjustifiable ; it ends, however, with the
most fearful inconsistency, for it does away altogether with
the law of causality, from which alone it derives all its
evidencing power, for it stops at a first cause, and will not
go further ; thus ends, as it were, by committing parricide,
as the bees kill the drones after they have served their
end. All the talk about the absolute is referable to a
shaniefast, and therefore disguised cosmological proof,

216 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER IV.

which, in the face of the " Critique of Pure Reason," has
passed for philosophy in Germany for the last sixty years.
What does the absolute mean ? Something that is, and of
which (under pain of punishment) we dare not ask further
whence and why it is. A precious rarity for professors of
philosophy ! In the case, however, of the honestly ex
pressed cosmological proof, through the assumption of a
first cause, and therefore of a first beginning in a time
which has absolutely no beginning, this beginning is always
pushed further back by the question : Why not earlier ?
And so far back indeed that one never gets down from
it to the present, but is always marvelling that the present
itself did not occur already millions of years ago. In
general, then, the law of causality applies to all things in
the world, but not to the world itself, for it is immanent
in the world, not transcendent ; with it it comes into
action, and with it it is abolished. This depends ultimately
upon the fact that it belongs to the mere form of our
understanding, like the whole of the objective world,
which accordingly is merely phenomenal, and is con
ditioned by the understanding. Thus the law of causality
has full application, without any exception, to all things in
the world, of course in respect of their form, to the variation
of these forms, and thus to their changes. It is valid for
the actions of men as for the impact of a stone, yet, as we
have said always, merely with regard to events, to changes.
But if we abstract from its origin in the understanding
and try to look at it as purely objective, it will be found
in ultimate analysis to depend upon the fact that every
thing that acts does so by virtue of its original, and
therefore eternal or timeless, power ; therefore its present
effect would necessarily have occurred infinitely earlier,
that is, before all conceivable time, but that it lacked the
temporal condition. This temporal condition is the occa
sion, i.e., the cause, on account of which alone the effect
only takes place now, but now takes place necessarily ;
the cause assigns it its place in time.

ON KNOWLEDGE A PRIORI. 217

But in consequence of that unduly wide view in abstract
thought of the conception cause, which was considered
above, it has been confounded with the conception offeree.
This is something completely different from the cause,
but yet is that which imparts to every cause its causality,
i.e., the capability of producing au effect. I have ex
plained this fully and thoroughly in the second book of
the first volume, also in " The Will in Nature," and
finally also in the second edition of the essay on the prin
ciple of sufficient reason, § 20, p. 44 (third edition, p. 45).
This confusion is to be found in its most aggravated form
in Maine de Biran's book mentioned above, and this is
dealt with more fully in the place last referred to ; but
apart from this it is also very common ; for example, when
people seek for the cause of any original force, such as
gravitation. Kant himself (Uber den Einzig Moglichen
Beweisgrund, vol. i. p. 211-215 of Eosenkranz's edition)
calls the forces of nature "efficient causes," and says
" gravity is a cause." Yet it is impossible to see to the
bottom of his thought so long as force and cause are not
distinctly recognised as completely different. But the
use of abstract conceptions leads very easily to their con
fusion if the consideration of their origin is set aside. The
knowledge of causes and effects, always perceptive, which
rests on the form of the understanding, is neglected in
order to stick to the abstraction cause. In this way alone
is the conception of causality, with all its simplicity, so
very frequently wrongly apprehended. Therefore even
in Aristotle (" Metaph.," iv. 2) we find causes divided into
four classes which are utterly falsely, and indeed crudely
conceived. Compare with it my classification of causes
as set forth for the first time in my essay on sight and
colour, chap. I , and touched upon briefly in the sixth para
graph of the first volume of the present work, but ex
pounded at full length in my prize essay on the freedom
of the will, p. 30-33. Two things in nature remain un
touched by that chain of causality which stretches into

218 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER IV.

infinity in both directions ; these are matter and the forces
of nature. They are both conditions of causality, while
everything else is conditioned by it. For the one (matter)
is that in which the states and their changes appear ; the
other (forces of nature) is that by virtue of which alone
they can appear at all. Here, however, one must remem
ber that in the second book, and later and more thoroughly
in " The Will in Nature," the natural forces are shown to
be identical with the will in us; but matter appears as
the mere visibility of the will ; so that ultimately it also
may in a certain sense be regarded as identical with the
will.

On the other hand, not less true and correct is what is ex
plained in § 4 of the first book, and still better in the second
edition of the essay on the principle of sufficient reason
at the end of § 21, p. 77 (third edition, p. 82), that matter
is causality itself objectively comprehended, for its entire
nature consists in acting in general, so that it itself is thus
the activity (evepyeut = reality) of things generally, as it
were the abstraction of all their different kinds of acting.
Accordingly, since the essence, essentia, of matter consists
in action in general, and the reality, existentia, of things
consists in their materiality, which thus again is one with
action in general, it may be asserted of matter that in it
existentia and essentia unite and are one, for it has no
other attribute than existence itself in general and inde
pendent of all fuller definitions of it. On the other hand,
all empirically given matter, thus all material or matter
in the special sense (which our ignorant materialists at
the present day confound with matter), has already entered
the framework of the forms and manifests itself onlv

v */

through their qualities and accidents, because in experience
every action is of quite a definite and special kind, and is
never merely general. Therefore pure matter is an object
of thought alone, not of perception, which led Plotinus
(Enneas II., lib. iv., c. 8 & 9) and Giordano Bruno (Delia
Causa, dial. 4) to make the paradoxical assertion that

ON KNOWLEDGE A PRIORI. 219

matter has no extension, for extension is inseparable from
the form, and that therefore it is incorporeal. Yet Aristotle
had already taught that it is not a body although it is
corporeal : "crcof^a /j,ev OVK av eirj, aco/nart/cr] Se" (Stob. Ed.,
lib. i., c. 12, § 5). In reality we think under pure matter
only action, in the abstract, quite independent of the kind
of action, thus pure causality itself; and as such it is not
an object but a condition of experience, just like space and
time. This is the reason why in the accompanying table
of our pure a priori knowledge matter is able to take the
place of causality, and therefore appears along with space
and time as the third pure form, and therefore as de
pendent on our intellect.

This table contains all the fundamental truths which
are rooted in our perceptive or intuitive knowledge a priori,
expressed as first principles independent of each other.
What is special, however, what forms the content of
arithmetic and geometry, is not given here, nor yet what
only results from the union and application of those
formal principles of knowledge. This is the subject of
the "Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science"
expounded by Kant, to which this table in some measure
forms the propsedutic and introduction, and with which it
therefore stands in direct connection. In this table I have
primarily had in view the very remarkable parallelism of
those a priori principles of knowledge which form the
framework of all experience, but specially also the fact
that, as I have explained in § 4 of the first volume, matter
(and also causality) is to be regarded as a combination, or
if it is preferred, an amalgamation, of space and time. In
agreement with this, we find that what geometry is for the
pure perception or intuition of space, and arithmetic for
that of time, Kant's plwronomy is for the pure perception
or intuition of the two united. For matter is primarily
that which is movable in space. The mathematical point
cannot even be conceived as movable, as Aristotle has
shown ("Physics," vi. 10). This philosopher also himself

220 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER IV.

provided the first example of such a science, for in the
fifth and sixth books of his " Physics " he determined
a priori the laws of rest and motion.

Now this table may be regarded at pleasure either as a
collection of the eternal laws of the world, and therefore
as the basis of our ontology, or as a chapter of the physio
logy of the brain, according as one assumes the realistic
or the idealistic point of view ; but the second is in the
last instance right. On this point, indeed, we have already
come to an understanding in the first chapter ; yet I wish
further to illustrate it specially by an example. Aristotle's
book "De Xenophane" &c., commences with these weighty
words of Xenophanes : " A'iSiov eivai tyrja-iv, ei TI ea-nv,
enrep //,?; evBe-^erai yeveadai jjurj^ev etc fjujSevos" (Sternum
esse, inquit, quicquid est, siquidem fieri non potest, ut ex
nihilo quippiam existat.) Here, then, Xenophanes judges
as to the origin of things, as regards its possibility, and
of this origin he can have had no experience, even by
analogy; nor indeed does he appeal to experience, but
judges apodictically, and therefore a priori. How can
he do this if as a stranger he looks from without into a
world that exists purely objectively, that is, independently
of his knowledge ? How can he, an ephemeral being
hurrying past, to whom only a hasty glance into such a
world is permitted, judge apodictically, a priori and
without experience concerning that world, the possibility
of its existence and origin ? The solution of this riddle
is that the man has only to do with his own ideas, which
as such are the work of his brain, and the constitution
of which is merely the manner or mode in which alone
the function of his brain can be fulfilled, i.e., the form
of his perception. He thus judges only as to the pheno
mena of his own brain, and declares what enters into its
forms, time, space, and causality, and what does not. In
this he is perfectly at home and speaks apodictically.
In a like sense, then, the following table of the Prcedica-
liilia a priori of time, space, and matter is to be taken : —

ON KNOWLEDGE A PRIORI.

221

PPwEDICABILIA A PRIORI.

Of Time.

Of Space.

Of Matter.

(i) There is only one

(i) There is only one

(i) There is only one Mat

Time, and all different

Space, and all different

ter, and all different mate

times are parts of it.

spaces are parts of it.

rials are different states of

matter ; as such it is called

Substance.

(2) Different times

(2) Different spaces

(2) Different matters (ma

are not simultaneous

are not successive but

terials) are not so through

but successive.

simultaneous.

substance but through acci

dents.

(3) Time cannot be

(3) Space cannot be

(3) Annihilation of matter

thought away, but

ihought away, but

is inconceivable, but anni

everything can be

everything can be

hilation of all its forms and

thought away from it.

thought away from it.

qualities is conceivable.

(4) Time has three

(4) Space has three

(4) Matter exists, i.e., acts

divisions, the past, the

dimensions — height,

in all the dimensions of

present, and the future,

breadth, and length.

space and throughout the

which constitute two

whole length of time, and

directions and a centre

thus these two are united

of indifference.

and thereby filled. In this

consists the true nature of

matter : thus it is through

and through causality.

(5) Time is infinitely

(5) Space is infinitely

(5) Matter is infinitely di

divisible.

divisible.

visible.

(6) Time is homogene

(6) Space is homo

(6) Matter is homogeneous

ous and a Continuum,

geneous and a Continu

and a Continuum, i.e., it

i.e., no one of its parts

um, i.e., no one of its

does not consist of originally

is different from the

parts is different from

different (homoiomeria) or

rest, nor separated from

the rest, nor separated

originally separated parts

it by anything that is

from it by anything

(atoms) ; it is therefore not

not time.

that is not space.

composed of parts, which

would necessarily be sepa

rated by something that was

not matter.

(7) Time has no be

(7) Space has no lim

(7) Matter has no origin

ginning and no end, but

its, but all limits are

and no end, but all coming

all beginning and end

in it.

into being and passing away

is in it.

are in it.

(8) By reason of time

(8) By reason of space

(8) 15y reason of matter

•we count.

we measure.

we weigh.

(9) Rhythm is only

(9) Symmetry is only

(9) Equilibrium is only in

in time.

in space.

matter.

(10) We know the

(10) We know the

(10) We know the laws of

laws of time a priori.

laws of space a priori.

the substance of all acci

dents a priori.

222

FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER IV.

Of Time.

Of Space.

Of Matter.

(n) Time can be per

(n) Space is imme

(n) Matter can only be

ceived a priori, al

diately perceptible a

thought a priori.

though only in the

priori.

form of a line.

(12) Time has no per

(12) Space can never

(12) The accidents change;

manence, but passes

pass away, but endures

the substance remains.

away as soon as it is

through all time.

there.

(13) Time never rests.

(13) Space is immov

(13) Matter is indifferent

able.

to rest and motion ; i. e. , it

is originally disposed to

wards neither of the two.

(14) Everything that

(14) Everything that

(14) Everything material

exists in time has dura

exists in space has a

has the capacity for action.

tion.

position.

(15) Time has no dura

(15) Space has no mo

(15) Matter is what is per

tion, but all duration

tion, but all motion is

manent in time and mov

is in it, and is the

in it, and it is the

able in space ; by the com

persistence of what is

change of position of

parison of what rests with

permanent in contrast

what is moved, in con

what is moved we measure

with its restless course.

trast with its unbroken

duration.

rest.

(16) All motion is

(16) All motion is

(16) All motion is only

only possible in time.

only possible in space.

possible to matter.

(17) Velocity is, in

(17) Velocity is, in

(17) The magnitude of the

equal spaces, in inverse

equal times, in direct

motion, the velocity being

proportion to the time.

proportion to the space.

equal, is in direct geometri

cal proportion to the matter

(mass).

(18) Time is not meas

(18) Space is measur

(18) Matter as such (mass)

urable directly through

able directly through

is measurable, i.e., deter-

itself, but only indirect

itself, and indirectly

minable as regards its quan

ly through motion,

through motion, which

tity only indirectly, only

which is in space and

is in time and space

through the amount of the

time together : thus

together : hence, for

motion which it receives

the motion of the sun

example, an hour's

and imparts when it is re

and of the clock meas

journey, and the dis

pelled or attracted.

ure time.

tance of the fixed stars

expressed as the tra

velling of light for so

many years.

(19) Time is omni

(19) Space is eternal.

(19) Matter is absolute.

present. Every part

Every part of it exists

That is, it neither comes

of time is everywhere,

always.

into being nor passes away,

i.e., in all space, at

and thus its quantity can

once.

neither be increased nor

diminished.

ON KNOWLEDGE A PRIORI.

223

Of Time.

Of Space.

Of Matter.

(20) In time taken

(20) In space taken

(20, 21) Matter unites the

by itself everything

by itself everything

ceaseless flight of time with

would be in succession.

would be simultane

the rigid immobility of

ous.

space ; therefore it is the

(21) Time makes the

(21) Space makes the

permanent substance of the

change of accidents pos

permanence of sub

changing accidents. Causa

sible.

stance possible.

lity determines this change

for every place at every

time, and thereby combines

time and space, and consti

tutes the whole nature of

matter.

(22) Every part of

(22) No part of space

(22) For matter is both

time contains all parts

contains the same mat

permanent and impene

of matter.

ter as another.

trable.

(23) Time is the prin-

(23) Space is the prin-

(23) Individuals are ma

cipium individuationis.

cipiumindii'iduationis.

terial.

(24) The now has no

(24) The point has no

(24) The atom has no

duration.

extension.

reality.

(25) Time in itself is

(25) Space in itself is

(25) Matter in itself is

empty and without pro

empty and without pro

without form and quality,

perties.

perties.

and likewise inert, i.e., in

different to rest or motion,

thus without properties.

(26) Every moment

(26) By the position

(26) Every change in mat

is conditioned by the

of every limit in space

ter can take place only on

preceding moment, and

with reference to any

account of another change

is only because the lat

other limit, its position

which preceded it ; and

ter has ceased to be.

with reference to every

therefore a first change,

(Principle of sufficient

possible limit is pre

and thus also a first state

reason of existence in

cisely determined.

of matter, is just as incon

time. — See my essay on

(Principle of sufficient

ceivable as a beginning of

the principle of suffi

reason of existence in

time or a limit of space.

cient reason. )

space. )

(Principle of sufficient reason

of becoming.)

(27) Time makes ar

(27) Space makes geo

(27) Matter, as that which

ithmetic possible.

metry possible.

is movable in space, makes

phoronomy possible.

(28) The simple ele

(28) The simple ele

(28) The simple element

ment in arithmetic is

ment in geometry is

in phoronomy is the atom.

unity.

the point.

224 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER IV.

NOTES TO THE ANNEXED TABLE.

(i) To No. 4 of Matter.

The essence of matter is acting, it is acting itself, in the abstract, thus
acting in general apart from all difference of the kind of action : it is through
and through causality. On this account it is itself, as regards its existence,
not subject to the law of causality, and thus has neither come into being
nor passes away, for otherwise the law of causality would be applied to
itself. Since now causality is known to us a priori, the conception of
matter, as the indestructible basis of all that exists, can so far take its place
in the knowledge we possess a priori, inasmuch as it is only the realisation
of an a priori form of our knowledge. For as soon as we see anything that
acts or is causally efficient it presents itself eo ipso as material, and con
versely anything material presents itself as necessarily active or causally
efficient. They are in fact interchangeable conceptions. Therefore the
word "actual " is used as synonymous with "material ; " and also the Greek
KCIT' evepyeiav, in opposition to Kara Svvafuv, reveals the same source, for
evepyeia signifies action in general ; so also with actu in opposition to po-
tentia, and the English "actually " for " wirklich." What is called space-
occupation, or impenetrability, and regarded as the essential predicate of
body (i.e. of what is material), is merely that kind of action which belongs to
all bodies without exception, the mechanical. It is this universality alone,
by virtue of which it belongs to the conception of body, and follows a priori
from this conception, and therefore cannot be thought away from it without
doing away with the conception itself — it is this, I say, that distinguishes it
from any other kind of action, such as that of electricity or chemistry, or
light or heat. Kant has very accurately analysed this space-occupation of
the mechanical mode of activity into repulsive and attractive force, just as
a given mechanical force is analysed into two others by means of the parallelo
gram of forces. But this is really only the thoughtful analysis of the phe
nomenon into its two constituent parts. The two forces in conjunction
exhibit the body within its own limits, that is, in a definite volume, while
the one alone would diffuse it into infinity, and the other alone would con
tract it to a point. Notwithstanding this reciprocal balancing or neutralisa
tion, the body still acts upon other bodies which contest its space with the
first force, repelling them, and with the other force, in gravitation, attracting
all bodies in general. So that the two forces are not extinguished in their
product, as, for instance, two equal forces acting in different directions, or
+ E and — E, or oxygen and hydrogen in water. That impenetrability and
gravity really exactly coincide is shown by their empirical inseparableness,
in that the one never appears without the other, although we can separate
them in thought.

I must not, however, omit to mention that the doctrine of Kant referred
to, which forms the fundamental thought of the second part of his "Meta
physical First Principles of Natural Science," thus of the Dynamics, was
distinctly and fully expounded before Kant by Priestley, in his excellent
"Disquisitions on Matter and Spirit,'' § i and 2, a book which appeared

ON KNOWLEDGE A PRIORI. 225

in 1777, and the second edition in 1782, while Kant's work was published in
1786. Unconscious recollection may certainly be assumed in the case of
subsidiary thoughts, flashes of wit, comparisons, &c., but not in the case of
the principal and fundamental thought. Shall we then believe that Kant
silently appropriated such important thoughts of another man? and this
from a book which at that time was new? Or that this book was unknown
to him, and that the same thoughts sprang up in two minds within a short
time? The explanation, also, which Kant gives, in the "Metaphysical First
Principles of Natural Science " (first edition, p. 88 ; Rosenkranz's edition,
p. 384), of the real difference between fluids and solids, is in substance already
to be found in Kaspar Freidr. "Wolffs "Theory of Generation," Berlin 1764,
p. 132. But what are we to say if we find Kant's most important and
brilliant doctrine, that of the ideality of space and the merely phenomenal
existence of the corporeal world, already expressed by Maupertuis thirty
years earlier ? This will be found more fully referred to in Frauenstiidt's
letters on my philosophy, Letter 14. Maupertuis expresses this paradoxical
doctrine so decidedly, and yet without adducing any proof of it, that one
must suppose that he also took it from somewhere else. It is very desirable
that the matter should be further investigated, and as this would demand
tiresome and extensive researches, some German Academy might very well
make the question the subject of a prize essay. Now in the same relation
as that in which Kant here stands to Priestley, and perhaps also to Kaspar
Wolff, and Maupertuis or his predecessor, Laplace stands to Kant. For
the principal and fundamental thought of Laplace's admirable and certainly
correct theory of the origin of the planetary system, which is set forth in
his "Exposition du Systeme du Monde," liv. v. c. 2, was expressed by Kant
nearly fifty years before, in 1755, in his " Naturgeschichte und Theorie des
Himmels," and more fully in 1763 in his " Einzig moglichen Beiccisgrund des
Daseyns Gottes" ch. 7. Moreover, in the later work he gives us to under
stand that Lambert in his " Kosmologischcn Briefen," 1761, tacitly adopted
that doctrine from him, and these letters at the same time also appeared in
French (Lettres Cosmologiqv.es sur la Constitution de VUntiers}. We are
therefore obliged to assume that Laplace knew that Kantian doctrine.
Certainly he expounds the matter more thoroughly, strikingly, and full}',
and at the same time more simply than Kant, as is natural from his more
profound astronomical knowledge ; yet in the main it is to be found clearly
expressed in Kant, and on account of the importance of the matter, would
alone have been sufficient to make his name immortal. It cannot but
disturb us very much if we find minds of the first order under suspicion of
dishonesty, which would be a scandal to those of the lowest order. For we
feel that theft is even more inexcusable in a rich man than in a poor one.
We dare not, however, be silent ; for here we are posterity, and must be just,
as we hope that posterity will some day be just to us. Therefore, as a third
example, I will add to these cases, that the fundamental thoughts of the
"Metamorphosis of Plants," by Goethe, were already expressed by Kaspar
Wolff in 1764 in his "Theory of Generation," p. 148, 229, 243, &c. Indeed,
is it otherwise with the system of gravitation ? the discovery of which is on
the Continent of Europe always ascribed to Newton, while in England the
learned at least know very well that it belongs to Robert Hooke, who in
the year 1666, in a "Communication to the Royal Society," expounds it
quite distinctly, although only as an hypothesis and without proof. The
VOL. II. P

226 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER IV.

principal passage of this communication is quoted in Dugalcl Stewart's
' ' Philosophy of the Human Mind, " and is probably taken from Robert Hooke's
Posthumous Works. The history of the matter, and how Newton got into
difficulty by it, is also to be found in the "Biographic UniverseUe," article
Newton. Hooke's priority is treated as an established fact in a short
history of astronomy, Quarterly Review, August 1828. Further details on
this subject are to be found in my " Parerga," vol. ii., § 86 (second edition,
§ 88). The story of the fall of an apple is a fable as groundless as it is
popular, and is quite without authority.

(2) To No. 1 8 of Matter.

The quantity of a motion (quantitas motus, already in Descartes) is the
product of the mass into the velocity.

This law is the basis not only of the doctrine of impact in mechanics, but
also of that of equilibrium in statics. From the force of impact which two
bodies with the same velocity exert the relation of their masses to each
other may be determined. Thus of two hammers striking with the same
velocity, the one which has the greater mass will drive the nail deeper into
the wall or the post deeper into the earth. For example, a hammer weigh
ing six pounds with a velocity = 6 effects as much as a hammer weighing
three pounds with a velocity = 12, for in both cases the quantity of motion
or the momentum = 36. Of two balls rolling at the same pace, the one
which has the greater mass will impel a third ball at rest to a greater
distance than the ball of less mass can. For the mass of the first multiplied
by the same velocity gives a greater quantity of motion, or a greater momen
tum. The cannon carries further than the gun, because an equal velocity
communicated to a much greater mass gives a much greater quantity of
motion, which resists longer the retarding effect of gravity. For the same
reason, the same arm will throw a lead bullet further than a stone one of
equal magnitude, or a large stone further than quite a small one. And
therefore also a case-shot does not carry so far as a ball-shot.

The same law lies at the foundation of the theory of the lever and of the
balance. For here also the smaller mass, on the longer arm of the lever or
beam of the balance, has a greater velocity in falling ; and multiplied by
this it may be equal to, or indeed exceed, the quantity of motion or the
momentum of the greater mass at the shorter arm of the lever. In the state
of rest brought about by equilibrium this velocity exists merely in intention
or virtually, potentid, not actu ; but it acts just as well as actu, which is very
remarkable.

The following explanation will be more easily understood now that these
truths have been called to mind.

The quantity of a given matter can only be estimated in general according
to its force, and its force can only be known in its expression. Now when
we are considering matter only as regards its quantity, not its quality, this
expression can only be mechanical, i.e., it can only consist in motion which
it imparts to other matter. For only in motion does the force of matter
become, so to speak, alive ; hence the expression vis viva for the manifesta
tion of force of matter in motion. Accordingly the only measure of the
quantity of a given matter is the quantity of its motion, or its momentum.
In this, however, if it is given, the quantity of matter still appears in cou-

ON KNOWLEDGE A PRIORI. 227

junction and amalgamated with its other factor, velocity. Therefore if we
waut to know the quantity of matter (the mass) this other factor must be

C1

eliminated. Now the velocity is known directly ; for it is y. But the other
factor, which remains when this is eliminated, can always be known only
relatively in comparison with other masses, which again can only be known
themselves by means of the quantity of their motion, or their momentum,
thus in their combination with velocity. "We must therefore compare one
quantity of motion with the other, and then subtract the velocity from both,
in order to see how much each of them owed to its mass. This is done by
weighing the masses against each other, in which that quantity of motion is
compared which, in each of the two masses, calls forth the attractive power
of the earth that acts upon both only in proportion to their quantity.
Therefore there are two kinds of weighing. Either we impart to the two
masses to be compared equal velocity, in order to find out which of the two
now communicates motion to the other, thus itself has a greater quantity of
motion, which, since the velocity is the same on both sides, is to be ascribed
to the other factor of the quantity of motion or the momentum, thus to the
mass (common balance). Or we weigh, by investigating how much more
velocity the one mass must receive than the other has, in order to be equal
to the latter in quantity of motion or momentum, and therefore allow no
more motion to be communicated to itself by the other ; for then in propor
tion as its velocity must exceed that of the other, its mass, i.e. , the quantity
of its matter, is less than that of the other (steelyard). This estimation of
masses by weighing depends upon the favourable circumstance that the
moving force, in itself, acts upon both quite equally, and each of the two is
in a position to communicate to the other directly its surplus quantity of
motion or momentum, so that it becomes visible.

The substance of these doctrines has long ago been expressed by Newton
and Kant, but through the connection and the clearness of this exposition
I believe I have made it more intelligible, so that that insight is possible for
all which I regarded as necessary for the justification of proposition No. 18.

( 228 ),

ScconU f&aif.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE ABSTRACT IDEA, OR
THINKING.

CHAPTER V.1
ON THE IRKATIONAL INTELLECT.

IT must be possible to arrive at a complete knowledge of
the consciousness of tlie brutes, for we can construct it
by abstracting certain properties of our own consciousness.
On the other hand, there enters into the consciousness of
the brute instinct, which is much more developed in all of
them than in man, and in some of them extends to what
we call mechanical instinct.

The brutes have understanding without having reason,
and therefore they have knowledge of perception but no
abstract knowledge. They apprehend correctly, and also
grasp the immediate causal connection, in the case of the
higher species even through several links of its chain, but
they do not, properly speaking, think. For they lack con
ceptions, that is, abstract ideas. The first consequence of
this, however, is the want of a proper memory, which
applies even to the most sagacious of the brutes, and it
is just this which constitutes the principal difference be
tween their consciousness and that of men. Perfect in
telligence depends upon the distinct consciousness of the

1 This chapter, along with the one which follows it, is connected with
§ 8 and 9 of the first book.

ON THE IRRATIONAL INTELLECT. 229

past and of the eventual future, as such, and in connection
with the present. The special memory which this de
mands is therefore an orderly, connected, and thinking
retrospective recollection. This, however, is only possible
by means of general conceptions, the assistance of which is
required by what is entirely individual, in order that it
may be recalled in its order and connection. For the
boundless multitude of things and events of the same
and similar kinds, in the course of our life, does not admit
directly of a perceptible and individual recollection of
each particular, for which neither the powers of the most
comprehensive memory nor our time would be sufficient.
Therefore all this can only be preserved by subsuming it
under general conceptions, and the consequent reference to
relatively few principles, by means of which we then have
always at command an orderly and adequate survey of
our past. We can only present to ourselves in perception
particular scenes of the past, but the time that has passed
since then and its content we are conscious of only in the
abstract by means of conceptions of things and numbers
which now represent days and years, together with their
content. The memory of the brutes, on the contrary, like
their whole intellect, is confined to what they perceive, and
primarily consists merely in the fact that a recurring im
pression presents itself as having already been experienced,
for the present perception revivifies the traces of an earlier
one. Their memory is therefore always dependent upon
what is now actually present. Just on this account, how
ever, this excites anew the sensation and the mood which
the earlier phenomenon produced. Thus the dog recog
nises acquaintances, distinguishes friends from enemies,
easily finds again the path it has once travelled, the houses
it has once visited, and at the sight of a plate or a stick
is at once put into the mood associated with them. All
kinds of training depend upon the use of this perceptive
memory and on the force of habit, which in the case of
animals is specially strong. It is therefore just as diffe-

250 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER V.

rent from human education as perception is from thinking.
We ourselves are in certain cases, in which memory proper
refuses us its service, confined to that merely perceptive
recollection, and thus we can measure the difference be
tween the two from our own experience. For example,
at the sight of a person whom it appears to us we know,
although we are not able to remember when or where
we saw him ; or again, when we visit a place where we
once were in early childhood, that is, while our reason
was yet undeveloped, and which we have therefore
entirely forgotten, and yet feel that the present impres
sion is one which we have already experienced. This
is the nature of all the recollections of the brutes. We
have only to add that in the case of the most saga
cious this merely perceptive memory rises to a certain
degree of phantasy, which again assists it, and by virtue
of which, for example, the image of its absent master
floats before the mind of the dog and excites a longing
after him, so that when he remains away long it seeks for
him everywhere. Its dreams also depend upon this phan
tasy. The consciousness of the brutes is accordingly a
mere succession of presents, none of which, however, exist
as future before they appear, nor as past after they have
vanished; which is the specific difference of human con
sciousness. Hence the brutes have infinitely less to suffer
than we have, because they know no other pains but those
which the present directly brings. But the present is with
out extension, while the future and the past, which contain
most of the causes of our suffering, are widely extended,
and to their actual content there is added that which is
merely possible, which opens up an unlimited field for
desire and aversion. The brutes, on the contrary, undis
turbed by these, enjoy quietly and peacefully each present
moment, even if it is only bearable. Human beings of
very limited capacity perhaps approach them in this.
Further, the sufferings which belong purely to the present
can only be physical. Indeed the brutes do not properly

OiV THE IRRATIONAL INTELLECT. 231

speaking feel death : they can only know it when it ap
pears, and then they are already no more. Thus then the
life of the brute is a continuous present. It lives on
without reflection, and exists wholly in the present ; even
the great majority of men live with very little reflection.
Another consequence of the special nature of the intellect
of the brutes, which we have explained is the perfect
accordance of their consciousness with their environment.
Between the brute and the external world there is
nothing, but between us and the external world there is
always our thought about it, which makes us often inap
proachable to it, and it to us. Only in the case of children
and very primitive men is this wall of partition so thin
that in order to see what goes on in them we only need to
see what goes on round about them. Therefore the brutes
are incapable alike of purpose and dissimulation ; they
reserve nothing. In this respect the dog stands to the
man in the same relation as a glass goblet to a metal one,
and this helps greatly to endear the dog so much to us,
for it affords us great pleasure to see all those inclinations
and emotions which we so often conceal displayed simply
and openly in him. In general, the brutes always play, as
it were, with their hand exposed ; and therefore we con
template with so much pleasure their behaviour towards
each other, both when they belong to the same and to
different species. It is characterised by a certain stamp
of innocence, in contrast to the conduct of men, which is
withdrawn from the innocence of nature by the entrance
of reason, and with it of prudence or deliberation. Hence
human conduct has throughout the stamp of intention or
deliberate purpose, the absence of which, and the conse
quent determination by the impulse of the moment, is the
fundamental characteristic of all the action of the brutes.
No brute is capable of a purpose properly so-called. To
conceive and follow out a purpose is the prerogative of man,
and it is a prerogative which is rich in consequences.
Certainly an instinct like that of the bird of passage or the

232 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER V.

bee, still more a permanent, persistent desire, a longing like
that of the dog for its absent master, may present the
appearance of a purpose, with which, however, it must
not be confounded. Now all this has its ultimate ground
in the relation between the human and the brute in
tellect, which may also be thus expressed : The brutes
have only direct knowledge, while we, in addition to
this, have indirect knowledge ; and the advantage which
in many things — for example, in trigonometry and
analysis, in machine work instead of hand work, &c. —
indirect has over direct knowledge appears here also.
Thus again we may say : The brutes have only a single
intellect, we a double intellect, both perceptive and thinking,
and the operation of the two often go on independently of
each other. We perceive one thing, and we think another.
Often, again, they act upon each other. This way of put
ting the matter enables us specially to understand that
natural openness and naivete of the brutes, referred to
above, as contrasted with the concealment of man.

However, the law natura nonfacit saltus is not entirely
suspended even with regard to the intellect of the brutes,
though certainly the step from the brute to the human
intelligence is the greatest which nature has made in the
production of her creatures. In the most favoured indi
viduals of the highest species of the brutes there certainly
sometimes appears, always to our astonishment, a faint
trace of reflection, reason, the comprehension of words, of
thought, purpose, and deliberation. The most striking
indications of this kind are afforded by the elephant, whose
highly developed intelligence is heightened and supported
by an experience of a lifetime which sometimes extends
to two hundred years. He has often given unmistakable
signs, recorded in well-known anecdotes, of premeditation,
which, in the case of brutes, always astonishes us more
than anything else. Such, for instance, is the story of the
tailor on whom an elephant revenged himself for pricking
him with a needle. I wish, however, to rescue from

ON THE IRRATIONAL INTELLECT. 233

oblivion a parallel case to this, because it has the advan
tage of being authenticated by judicial investigation. On
the 2/th of August 1830 there was held at Morpeth, in
England, a coroner's inquest on the keeper, Baptist Bern-
hard, who was killed by his elephant. It appeared from
the evidence that two years before he had offended the
elephant grossly, and now, without any occasion, but on
a favourable opportunity, the elephant had seized him and
crushed him. (See the Spectator and other English papers
of that day.) For special information on the intelligence
of brutes I recommend Leroy's excellent book, " Sur
V Intelligence des Animaux" nouv. ed. 1802.

CHAPTER VI.

ON THE DOCTRINE OF ABSTKACT OR RATIONAL
KNOWLEDGE.

THE outward impression upon the senses, together with
the mood which it alone awakens in us, vanishes with
the presence of the thing. Therefore these two cannot of
themselves constitute experience proper, whose teaching is
to guide our conduct for the future. The image of that
impression which the imagination preserves is originally
weaker than the impression itself, and becomes weaker
and weaker daily, until in time it disappears altogether.
There is only one thing which is not subject either to the
instantaneous vanishing of the impression or to the gradual
disappearance of its image, and is therefore free from the
power of time. This is the conception. In it, then, the teach
ing of experience must be stored up, and it alone is suited
to be a safe guide to our steps in life. Therefore Seneca
says rightly, "Si vis tibi omnia siibjicere, te subjice rationi"
(Ep. 37). And I add to this that the essential condition of
surpassing others in actual life is that we should reflect
or deliberate. Such an important tool of the intellect as
the concept evidently cannot be identical with the word,
this mere sound, which as an impression of sense passes
with the moment, or as a phantasm of hearing dies away
with time. Yet the concept is an idea, the distinct con
sciousness and preservation of which are bound up with
the word. Hence the Greeks called word, concept, rela
tion, thought, and reason by the name of the first, 6 \oyos.
Yet the concept is perfectly different both from the word,

ON ABSTRACT OR RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE. 235

to which it is joined, and from the perceptions, from which
it has originated. It is of an entirely different nature
from these impressions of the senses. Yet it is able to
take up into itself all the results of perception, and give
them back again unchanged and undiminished after the
longest period of time ; thus alone does experience arise.
But the concept preserves, not what is perceived nor what
is then felt, but only what is essential in these, in an
entirely altered form, and yet as an adequate representa
tive of them. Just as flowers cannot be preserved, but
their ethereal oil, their essence, with the same smell and
the same virtues, can be. The action that has been guided
by correct conceptions will, in the result, coincide with the
real object aimed at. We may judge of the inestimable i
value of conceptions, and consequently of the reason, if we i
glance for a moment at the infinite multitude and variety
of the things and conditions that coexist and succeed each
other, and then consider that speech and writing (the
signs of conceptions) are capable of affording us accurate
information as to everything and every relation when
and wherever it may have been ; for comparatively few
conceptions can contain and represent an infinite number
of things and conditions. In our own reflection abstrac
tion is a throwing off of useless baggage for the sake
of more easily handling the knowledge which is to be
compared, and has therefore to be turned about in all
directions. We allow much that is unessential, and
therefore only confusing, to fall away from the real
things, and work with few but essential determinations
thought in the abstract. But just because general con
ceptions are only formed by thinking away and leaving
out existing qualities, and are therefore the emptier the
more general they are, the use of this procedure is confined
to the working iip of knowledge which we have already
acquired. This working up includes the drawing of con
clusions from premisses contained in our knowledge. New
insight, on the contrary, can only be obtained by the help

236 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER VI.

of the faculty of judgment, from perception, which alone
is complete and rich knowledge. Further, because the
content and the extent of the concepts stand in inverse
relation to each other, and thus the more is thought un
der a concept, the less is thought in it, concepts form a
graduated series, a hierarchy, from the most special to the
most general, at the lower end of which scholastic realism
is almost right, and at the upper end nominalism. For the
most special conception is almost the individual, thus
almost real ; and the most general conception, e.g., being
(i.e., the infinitive of the copula), is scarcely anything but
a word. Therefore philosophical systems which confine
themselves to such very general conceptions, without
going down to the real, are little more than mere jug
gling with words. For since all abstraction consists in
thinking away, the further we push it the less we have
left over. Therefore, if I read those modern philoso-
phemes which move constantly in the widest abstrac
tions, I am soon quite unable, in spite of all attention,
to think almost anything more in connection with them ;
for I receive no material for thought, but am supposed to
work with mere empty shells, which gives me a feeling like
that which we experience when we try to throw very light
bodies; the strength and also the exertion are there, but
there is no object to receive them, so as to supply the other
moment of motion. If any one wants to experience this
let him read the writings of the disciples of Schelling, or
still better of the Hegelians. .ffLffljifc -iwtircj^rV??" would
necessarily be such as could not be broken up. Accordingly
they could never be the subject of an analytical judgment.
This I hold to be impossible, for if we think a conception
we must also be able to give its content. What are com
monly adduced as examples of simple conceptions are really
not conceptions at all, but partly mere sensations — as, for
instance, those of some special colour ; partly the forms
of perception which are known to us a priori, thus pro
perly the ultimate elements of perceptive knowledge. But

ON ABSTRACT OR RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE. 237

this itself is for the whole system of our thought what
granite is for geology, the ultimate firm basis which sup
ports all, and beyond which we cannot go. The distinct
ness of a conception demands not only that we should be
able to separate its predicates, but also that we should be
able to analyse these even if they are abstractions, and so
on until we reach knowledge of perception, and thus refer
to concrete things through the distinct perception of which
the final abstractions are verffiecT and reality guaran
teed to them, as well as to all the higher abstractions
which rest upon them. Therefore the ordinary explana
tion that the conception is distinct as soon as we can
give its predicates is not sufficient. For the separating
of these predicates may lead perhaps to more concep
tions ; and so on again without there being that ultimate
basis of perceptions which imparts reality to all those
conceptions. Take, for example, the conception " spirit,"
and analyse it into its predicates : " A thinking, will
ing, immaterial, simple, indestructible being that does
not occupy space." Nothing is yet distinctly thought
about it, because the elements of these conceptions
cannot be verified by means of perceptions, for a thinking
being without a brain is like a digesting being without
a stomach. Only perceptions are, properly speaking,
clear, not conceptions ; these at the most can only be
distinct. Hence also, absurd as it was, " clear and con
fused" were coupled together and used as synonymous
when knowledge of perception was explained as merely
a confused abstract knowledge, because the latter kind
of knowledge alone was distinct. This was first done
by Duns Scotus, but Leibnitz has substantially the same
view, upon which his "Identitas Indiscernibilium" depends.
(See Kant's refutation of this, p. 275 of the first edition
of the Critique of Pure Eeason.)

The close connection of the conception with the word,
thus of speech with reason, which was touched on above
rests ultimately upon the following ground. Time is
throughout the form of our whole consciousness, with its

238 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER VI.

inward and outward apprehension. Conceptions, on the
other hand, which originate through abstraction and are
perfectly general ideas, different from all particular things,
have in this property indeed a certain measure of objec
tive existence, which does not, however, belong to any
series of events in time. Therefore in order to enter the
immediate present of an individual consciousness, and
thus to admit of being introduced into a series of events
in time, they must to a certain extent be reduced again
to the nature of individual things, individualised, and
therefore linked to an idea of sense. Such an idea is the
word. It is accordingly the sensible sign of the concep
tion, and as such the necessary means of fixing it, that is,
of presenting it to the consciousness, which is bound up
with the form of time, and thus establishing a connection
between the reason, whose objects are merely general
universals, knowing neither place nor time, and con
sciousness, which is bound up with time, is sensuous, and
so far purely animal. Only by this means is the repro
duction at pleasure, thus the recollection and preserva
tion, of conceptions possible and open to us ; and only
by means of this, again, are the operations which are
undertaken with conceptions possible — judgment, infer
ence, comparison, limitation, &c. It is true it sometimes
happens that conceptions occupy consciousness without
their signs, as when we run through a train of reasoning
so rapidly that we could not think the words in the time.
But such cases are exceptions, which presuppose great
exercise of the reason, which it could only have obtained
by means of language. How much the use of reason is
bound up with speech we see in the case of the deaf
and dumb, who, if they have learnt no kind of language,
show scarcely more intelligence than the ourang-outang
or the elephant. For their reason is almost entirely
potential, not actual.

"Words and speech are thus the indispensable means
of distinct thought. But as every means, every machine,

ON ABSTRACT OR RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE. 239

at once burdens and hinders, so also does language ;
for it forces the fluid and modifiable thoughts, with
their infinitely fine distinctions of difference, into certain
rigid, permanent forms, and thus in fixing also fetters
them. This hindrance is to some extent got rid of by
learning several languages. For in these the thought
is poured from one mould into another, and somewhat
alters its form in each, so that it becomes more and more
freed from all form and clothing, and thus its own proper
nature comes more distinctly into consciousness, and it
recovers again its original capacity for modification. The
ancient languages render this service very much better
than the modern, because, on account of their great dif
ference from the latter, the same thoughts are expressed
in them in quite another way, and must thus assume
a very different form ; besides which the more perfect
grammar of the ancient languages renders a more artistic
and more perfect construction of the thoughts and their
connection possible. Thus a Greek or a Roman might
perhaps content himself with his own language, but he
who understands nothing but some single modern patois
will soon betray this poverty in writing and speaking ;
for his thoughts, firmly bound to such narrow stereotyped
forms, must appear awkward and monotonous. Genius
certainly makes up for this as for everything else, for
example in Shakespeare.

Burke, in his " Inquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful,"
p. 5, § 4 and 5, has given a perfectly correct and very
elaborate exposition of what I laid down in § 9 of the first
volume, that the words of a speech are perfectly under
stood without calling up ideas of perception, pictures in
our heads. But he draws from this the entirely false con
clusion that we hear, apprehend, and make use of words
without connecting with them any idea whatever; whereas
he ought to have drawn the conclusion that all ideas are
not perceptible images, but that precisely those ideas which
must be expressed by means of words are abstract notions

240 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER VI.

or conceptions, and these from their very nature are not
perceptible. Just because words impart only general
conceptions, which are perfectly different from ideas of
perception, when, for example, an event is recounted all
the hearers will receive the same conceptions ; but if after
wards they wish to make the incident clear to themselves,
each of them will call up in his imagination a different
image of it, which differs considerably from the correct
image that is possessed only by the eye-witness. This is
the primary reason (which, however, is accompanied by
others) why every fact is necessarily distorted by being
repeatedly told. The second recounter communicates con
ceptions which he has abstracted from the image of his
own imagination, and from these conceptions the third
now forms another image differing still more widely from
the truth, and this again he translates into conceptions,
and so the process goes on. Whoever is sufficiently matter
of fact to stick to the conceptions imparted to him, and
repeat them, will prove the most truthful reporter.

The best and most intelligent exposition of the essence
and nature of conceptions which I have been able to find
is in Thomas Keid's " Essays on the Powers of Human
Mind," vol. ii., Essay 5, ch. 6. This was afterwards con
demned by Dugald Stewart in his " Philosophy of the
Human Mind." Not to waste paper I will only briefly
remark with regard to the latter that he belongs to
that large class who have obtained an undeserved repu
tation through favour and friends, and therefore I can
only advise that not an hour should be wasted over the
scribbling of this shallow writer.

The princely scholastic Pico de Mirandula already saw
that reason is the faculty of abstract ideas, and under
standing the faculty of ideas of perception. For in his
book, " De Imaginatione," ch. u, he carefully distinguishes
understanding and reason, and explains the latter as the
discursive faculty peculiar to man, and the former as the
intuitive faculty, allied to the kind of knowledge which is

ON ABSTRACT OR RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE. 241

proper to the angels, and indeed to God. Spinoza also
characterises reason quite correctly as the faculty of
framing general conceptions (Eth., ii. prop. 40, schol. 2).
Such facts would not need to be mentioned if it were not
for the tricks that have been played in the last fifty years
by the whole of the philosophasters of Germany with the
conception reason. For they have tried, with shameless
audacity, to smuggle in under this name an entirely
spurious faculty of immediate, metaphysical, so-called
super-sensuous knowledge. The reason proper, on the
other hand, they call understanding, and the understand
ing proper, as something quite strange to them, they over
look altogether, and ascribe its intuitive functions to
sensibility.

In the case of all things in this world new drawbacks
or disadvantages cleave to every source of aid, to every
gain, to every advantage ; and thus reason also, which gives
to man such great advantages over the brutes, carries with
it its special disadvantages, and opens for Mm paths of
error into which the brutes can never stray. Through
it a new species of motives, to which the brute is not
accessible, obtains power over his will. These are the
abstract motives, the mere thoughts, which are by no
means always drawn from his own experience, but often
come to him only through the talk and example of others,
through tradition and literature. Having become accessible
to thought, he is at once exposed to error. But every error
must sooner or later do harm, and the greater the error
the greater the harm it will do. The individual error
must be atoned for by him who cherishes it, and often he
has to pay dearly for it. And the same thing holds good
on a large scale of the common errors of whole nations.
Therefore it cannot too often be repeated that every error
wherever we meet it, is to be pursued and rooted out as
an enemy of mankind, and that there can be no such
thing as privileged or sanctioned error. The thinker
ought to attack it, even if humanity should cry out with

VOL. II. Q

242 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER VI.

pain, like a sick man whose ulcer the physician touches.
The brute can never stray far from the path of nature ;
for its motives lie only in the world of perception, where
only the possible, indeed only the actual, finds room. On
the other hand, all that is only imaginable, and therefore
also the false, the impossible, the absurd, and senseless,
enters into abstract conceptions, into thoughts and words.
Since now all partake of reason, but few of judgment, the
consequence is that man is exposed to delusion, for he is
abandoned to every conceivable chimera which any one
talks him into, and which, acting on his will as a motive,
may influence him to perversities and follies of every kind,
to the most unheard-of extravagances, and also to actions
most contrary to his animal nature. True culture, in
which knowledge and judgment go hand in hand, can
only be brought to bear on a few ; and still fewer are
capable of receiving it. For the great mass of men
a kind of training everywhere takes its place. It is
effected by example, custom, and the very early and firm
impression of certain conceptions, before any experience,
understanding, or judgment were there to disturb the
work. Thus thoughts are implanted, which afterward
cling as firmly, and are as incapable of being shaken
by any instruction as if they were inborn; and indeed
they have often been regarded, even by philosophers,
as such. In this way we can, with the same trouble,
imbue men with what is right and rational, or with
what is most absurd. For example, we can accustom
them to approach this or that idol with holy dread, and at
the mention of its name to prostrate in the dust not only
their bodies but their whole spirit ; to sacrifice their pro
perty and their lives willingly to words, to names, to the
defence of the strangest whims ; to attach arbitrarily the
greatest honour or the deepest disgrace to this or that, and
to prize highly or disdain everything accordingly with
full inward conviction ; to renounce all animal food, as in
Hindustan, or to devour still warm and quivering pieces,

ON THE DOCTRINE OF KNOWLEDGE. 243

cut from the living animal, as in Abyssinia ; to eat men, as
in New Zealand, or to sacrifice their children to Moloch ;
to castrate themselves, to fling themselves voluntarily on
the funeral piles of the dead — in a word, to do anything
we please. Hence the Crusades, the extravagances of
fanatical sects ; hence Chiliasts and Flagellants, persecu
tions, autos da fe, and all that is offered by the long
register of human perversities. Lest it should be thought
that only the dark ages afford such examples, I shall add
a couple of more modern instances. In the year 1818
there went from "Wurtemberg 7000 Chiliasts to the neigh
bour1""^, of Ararat, because the new kingdom of God,
specially announced by Jung Stilling, was to appear there.1
Gall relates that in his time a mother killed her child and
roasted it in order to cure her husband's rheumatism with
its fat.2 The tragical side of error lies in the practical, the
comical is reserved for the theoretical. For example, if
we could firmly persuade three men that the sun is not
the cause of daylight, we might hope to see it soon
established as the general conviction. In Germany it
was possible to proclaim as the greatest philosopher of all
ages Hegel, a repulsive, mindless charlatan, an unparalleled
scribbler of nonsense, and for twenty years many thou
sands have believed it stubbornly and firmly ; and indeed,
outside Germany, the Danish Academy entered the lists
against myself for his fame, and sought to have him re
garded as a summits philosophus. (Upon this see the
preface to my Grundproblemen der Ethik) These, then,
are the disadvantages which, on account of the rarity of
judgment, attach to the existence of reason. We must
add to them the possibility of madness. The brutes do
not go mad, although the carnivora are subject to fury,
and the ruminants to a sort of delirium.

1 Illgen's " Zcitschrift far His- 2 Gall et Spurzhcim, " Des Dis-
torische Theoloyic," 1839, part i. positions Inntes," 1811, p. 253.
p. 182.

244

CHAPTER VII.1

ON THE RELATION OF THE CONCRETE KNOWLEDGE OF
PERCEPTION TO ABSTRACT KNOWLEDGE.

IT has been shown that conceptions derive their material

from knowledge of perception, and therefore the entire

structure of our world of thought rests upon the world

of perception. We must therefore be able to go back

from every conception, even if only indirectly through

intermediate conceptions, to the perceptions from which it

is either itself directly derived or those conceptions are

derived of which it is again an abstraction. That is to

say, we must be able to support it with perceptions which

stand to the abstractions in the relation of examples.

These perceptions thus afford the real content of all our

thought, and whenever they are wanting we have not had

conceptions but mere words in our heads. In this respect

our intellect is like a bank, which, if it is to be sound,

must have cash in its safe, so as to be able to meet all

the notes it has issued, in case of demand ; the perceptions

are the cash; the conceptions are the notes. In this sense

the perceptions might very appropriately be called primary,

and the conceptions, on the other hand, secondary ideas.

Not quite so aptly, the Schoolmen, following the example

of Aristotle (MctapJi., vi. n, xi. i), called real things

substantial primes, and the conceptions substantice secundce.

Books impart only secondary ideas. MRI^ Conceptions of

a thing without perception give only a general knowledge

of it. We only have a thorough understanding of things

and their relations so far as we are able to represent them

1 This chapter is connected with § 12 of the first volume.

CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT KNOWLEDGE, 245

to ourselves in pure, _distinct perceptions, without the aid
of words. To explain words by words, to compare concepts
with concepts, in which most philosophising consists, is a
trivial shifting about of the concept-spheres in order to
see which goes into the other and which does not. At the
best we can in this way only arrive at conclusions ; but
even conclusions give no really new knowledge, but only
show us all that lay in the knowledge we already pos
sessed, and what part of it perhaps might be applicable
to the particular case. On the other hand, to perceive, to
allow the things themselves to speak to us, to apprehend
new relations of them, and then to take up and deposit all
this in conceptions, in order to possess it with certainty —
that gives new knowledge. But, while almost every one is
capable of comparing conceptions with conceptions, to com
pare conceptions with perceptions is a gift of the select few.
It is the condition, according to the degree of its perfection,
of wit, judgment, ingenuity, genius. The former faculty,
on the contrary, results in little more than possibly rational
reflections. The inmost kernel of all genuine and actual
knowledge is a perception ; and every new truth is the
profit or gain yielded by a perception. All original think
ing takes place in images, and this is why imagination is
so necessary an instrument of thought, and minds that
lack imagination will never accomplish much, unless it
be in mathematics. On the other hand, merely abstract
thoughts, which have no kernel of perception, are like
cloud-structures, without reality. Even writing and speak
ing, whether didactic or poetical, has for its final aim to
guide the reader to the same concrete knowledge from
which the author started ; if it has not this aim it is bad.
This is why the contemplation and observing of every
real thing, as soon as it presents something new to
the observer, is more instructive than any reading or
hearing. For indeed, if we go to the bottom of the matter,
all truth and wisdom, nay, the ultimate secret of things, is
contained in each real object, yet certainly only in concrete,

246 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER VII.

just as gold lies hidden iii the ore ; the difficulty is to ex
tract it. From a book, on the contrary, at the best we only
receive the truth at second hand, and oftener not at all.

In most books, putting out of account those that are
thoroughly bad, the author, when their content is not
altogether empirical, has certainly thought but not per
ceived ; he has written from reflection, not from intuition,
and it is this that makes them commonplace and tedious.
For what the author has thought could always have been
thought by the reader also, if he had taken the same
trouble ; indeed it consists simply of intelligent thought,
full exposition of what is implicite contained in the theme.
But no actually new knowledge comes in this way into
the world ; this is only created in the moment of percep
tion, of direct comprehension of a new side of the thing.
When, therefore, on the contrary, sight has formed the
foundation of an author's thought, it is as if he wrote
from a land where the reader has never been, for all is
fresh and new, because it is drawn directly from the
original source of all knowledge. Let me illustrate the
distinction here touched upon by a perfectly easy and
simple example. Any commonplace writer might easily
describe profound contemplation or petrifying astonish
ment by saying : " He stood like a statue ; " but Cervantes
says : " Like a clothed statue, for the wind moved his gar
ments" (Don Quixote, book vi. ch. 19). It is thus that all
great minds have ever thought in presence of the perception,
and kept their gaze steadfastly upon it in their thought.
We recognise this from this fact, among others, that even
the most opposite of them so often agree and coincide
in some particular ; because they all speak of the same
thing which they all had before their eyes, the world, the
perceived reality; indeed in a certain degree they all say
the same thing, and others never believe them. We
recognise it further in the appropriateness and originality
of the expression, which is always perfectly adapted to
the subject because it has been inspired by perception, in

CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT KNOWLEDGE. 247

the naivete of the language, the freshness of the imagery,
and the impressiveness of the similes, all of which quali
ties, without exception, distinguish the works of great
minds, and, on the contrary, are always wanting in the
works of others. Accordingly only commonplace forms
of expression and trite figures are at the service of the
latter, and they never dare to allow themselves to be
natural, under penalty of displaying their vulgarity in all
its dreary barrenness ; instead of this they are affected
mannerists. Hence Buffon says : " Le style est I'homme
menu." If men of commonplace mind write poetry they
have certain traditional conventional opinions, passions,
noble sentiments, &c., which they have received in the
abstract, and attribute to the heroes of their poems, who
are in this way reduced to mere personifications of those
opinions, and are thus themselves to a certain extent
abstractions, and therefore insipid and tiresome. If they
philosophise, they have taken in a few wide abstract
conceptions, which they turn about in all directions, as if
they had to do with algebraical equations, and hope that
something will come of it ; at the most we see that they
have all read the same things. Such a tossing to and fro
of abstract conceptions, after the manner of algebraical
equations, which is now-a-days called dialectic, does not,
like real algebra, afford certain results ; for here the con
ception which is represented by the word is not a fixed
and perfectly definite quality, such as are symbolised by
the letters in algebra, but is wavering and ambiguous,
and capable of extension and contraction. Strictly speak
ing, all thinking, i.e., combining of abstract conceptions,
has at the most the recollections of earlier perceptions for
its material, and this only indirectly, so far as it consti
tutes the foundation of all conceptions. Real knowledge,
on the contrary, that is, immediate knowledge, is percep
tion alone, new, fresh perception itself. Now the concepts
which the reason has framed and the memory has pre
served cannot all be present to consciousness at once, but

248 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER VII.

only a very small number of them at a time. On the other
hand, the energy with which we apprehend what is present
in perception, in which really all that is essential in all
things generally is virtually contained and represented, is
apprehended, fills the consciousness in one moment with
its whole power. Upon this depends the infinite superiority
of genius to learning ; they stand to each other as the text
of an ancient classic to its commentary. All truth and
all wisdom really lies ultimately in perception. But this
unfortunately can neither be retained nor communicated.
The objective, conditions of such communication can cer
tainly be presented to others purified and illustrated
through plastic and pictorial art, and even much more
directly through poetry ; but it depends so much upon sub
jective conditions, which are not at the command of every
one, and of no one at all times, nay, indeed in the higher
degrees of perfection, are only the gift of the favoured
few. Only the worst knowledge, abstract, secondary
knowledge, the conception, the mere shadow of true know
ledge, is unconditionally communicable. If perceptions
were communicable, that would be a communication worth
the trouble ; but at last every one must remain in his o\vn
skin and skull, and no one can help another. To enrich
the conception from perception is the unceasing endeavour
of poetry and philosophy. However, the aims of man are
essentially practical ; and for these it is sufficient that
what he has apprehended through perception should leave
traces in him, by virtue of which he will recognise it in
the next similar case ; thus he becomes possessed of
worldly wisdom. Thus, as a rule, the man of the world
cannot teach his accumulated truth and wisdom, but
only make use of it ; he rightly comprehends each event
as it happens, and determines what is in conformity with
it. That books will not take the place of experience nor
learning of genius are two kindred phenomena. Their
common ground is that the abstract can never take the
place of the concrete. Books therefore do not take the

CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT KNOWLEDGE. 249

place of experience, because conceptions always remain
general, and consequently do not get down to the par
ticular, which, however, is just what has to be dealt with
in life ; and, besides this, all conceptions are abstracted
from what is particular and perceived in experience, and
therefore one must have come to know these in order
adequately to understand even the general conceptions
which the books communicate. Learning cannot take the
place of genius, because it also affords merely conceptions,
but the knowledge of genius consists in the apprehension
of the (Platonic) Ideas of things, and therefore is essentially
intuitive. Thus in the first of these phenomena the
objective condition of perceptive or intuitive knowledge is
wanting ; in the second the subjective ; the former may
be attained, the latter cannot.

Wisdom and genius, these two summits of the Parnassus
of human knowledge, have their foundation not in the
abstract and discursive, but in the perceptive faculty.
Wisdom proper is something intuitive, not something
abstract. It does not consist in principles and thoughts,
which one can carry about ready in his mind, as results of
his own research or that of others ; but it is the whole
manner in which the world presents itself in his mind.
This varies so much that on account of it the wise man
lives in another world from the fool, and the genius sees
another world from the blockhead. That the wrorks of the
man of genius immeasurably surpass those of all others
arises simply from the fact that the world which he sees,
and from which he takes his utterances, is so much clearer,
as it were more profoundly worked out, than that in the
minds of others, which certainly contains the same objects,
but is to the world of the man of genius as the Chinese
picture without shading and perspective is to the finished
oil-painting. The material is in all minds the same ; but
the difference lies in the perfection of the form which
it assumes in each, upon which the numerous grades
of intelligence ultimately depend. These grades thus

250 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER VII.

exist in the root, in the perceptive or intuitive appre
hension, and do not first appear in the abstract. Hence
original mental superiority shows itself so easily when
the occasion arises, and is at once felt and hated by
others.

In practical life the intuitive knowledge of the under
standing is able to guide our action and behaviour directly,
while the abstract knowledge of the reason can only do so
by means of the memory. Hence arises the superiority of
intuitive knowledge in all cases which admit of no time
for reflection ; thus for daily intercourse, in which, just on
this account, women excel. Only those who intuitively
know the nature of men as they are as a rule, and thus
comprehend the individuality of the person before them,
will understand how to manage him with certainty and
rightly. Another may know by heart all the three hun
dred maxims of Gracian, but this will not save him from
stupid mistakes and misconceptions if he lacks that in
tuitive knowledge. For all abstract knowledge affords
us primarily mere general principles and rules ; but the
particular case is almost never to be carried out exactly
according to the rule ; then the rule itself has to be pre
sented to us at the right time by the memory, which
seldom punctually happens ; then the propositio minor has
to be formed out of the present case, and finally the con
clusion drawn. Before all this is done the opportunity
has generally turned its back upon us, and then those
excellent principles and rules serve at the most to enable
us to measure the magnitude of the error we have com
mitted. Certainly with time we gain in this way experi
ence and practice, which slowly grows to knowledge of
the world, and thus, in connection with this, the abstract
rules may certainly become fruitful. On the other hand,
the intuitive knowledge, which always apprehends only the
particular, stands in immediate relation to the present
case. Rule, case, and application are for it one, and action
follows immediately upon it. This explains why in real

CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT KNOWLEDGE. 251

life the scholar, whose pre-eminence lies in the province
of abstract knowledge, is so far surpassed by the man of
the world, whose pre-eminence consists in perfect intuitive
knowledge, which original disposition conferred on him,
and a rich experience has developed. The two kinds of
knowledge always stand to each other in the relation of
paper money and hard cash ; and as there are many cases
and circumstances in which the former is to be preferred
to the latter, so there are also things and situations for
which abstract knowledge is more useful than intuitive.
If, for example, it is a conception that in some case guides
our action, when it is once grasped it has the advantage
of being unalterable, and therefore under its guidance we go
to work with perfect certainty and consistency. But this
certainty which the conception confers on the subjective
side is outweighed by the uncertainty which accompanies
it on the objective side. The whole conception may be
false and groundless, or the object to be dealt with may
not come under it, for it may be either not at all or not
altogether of the kind which belongs to it. Now if in the
particular case we suddenly become conscious of some
thing of this sort, we are put out altogether ; if we do not
become conscious of it, the result brings it to light. There
fore Vauvenargue says: "Personne nest suj'et a plus def antes,
que ceux qui nagissent que par reflexion." If, on the con
trary, it is direct perception of the objects to be dealt with
and their relations that guides our action, we easily hesitate
at every step, for the perception is always modifiable, is am
biguous, has inexhaustible details in itself, and shows many
sides in succession ; we act therefore without full confi
dence. But the subjective uncertainty is compensated by
the objective certainty, for here there is no conception
between the object and us, we never lose sight of it ; if
therefore we only see correctly what we have before us
and what we do, we shall hit the mark. Our action then
is perfectly sure only when it is guided by a conception
the right ground of which, its completeness, and applica-

252 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER VII.

bility to the given cause is perfectly certain. Action
in accordance with conceptions may pass into pedantry,
action in accordance with the perceived impression into
levity and folly.

Perception is not only the source of all knowledge, but
is itself knowledge KCLT e^o^rjv, is the only unconditionally
true, genuine knowledge completely worthy of the name.
For it alone imparts insight properly so called, it alone is
actually assimilated by man, passes into his nature, and
can with full reason be called his ; while the conceptions
merely cling to him. In the fourth book we see indeed
that true virtue proceeds from knowledge of perception or
intuitive knowledge ; for only those actions which are
directly called forth by this, and therefore are performed
purely from the impulse of our own nature, are properly
symptoms of our true and unalterable character; not so
those which, resulting from reflection and its dogmas,
are often extorted from the character, and therefore have
no unalterable ground in us. But wisdom also, the true
view of life, the correct eye, and the searching judgment,
proceeds from the way in which the man apprehends the
perceptible world, but not from his mere abstract know
ledge, i.e., not from abstract conceptions. The basis or
ultimate content of every science consists, not in proofs,
nor in what is proved, but in the unproved foundation
of the proofs, which can finally be apprehended only
through perception. So also the basis of the true wisdom
and real insight of each man does not consist in concep
tions and in abstract rational knowledge, but in what is
perceived, and in the degree of acuteness, accuracy, and
profundity with which he has apprehended it. He who
excels here knows the (Platonic) Ideas of the world and
life ; every case he has seen represents for him innumer
able cases ; he always apprehends each being according
to its true nature, and his action, like his judgment,
corresponds to his insight. By degrees also his coun
tenance assumes the expression of penetration, of true

CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT KNOWLEDGE. 253

intelligence, and, if it goes far enough, of wisdom. For
it is pre-eminence in knowledge of perception alone that
stamps its impression upon the features also ; while
pre-eminence in abstract knowledge cannot do this. In
accordance with what has been said, we find in all classes
men of intellectual superiority, and often quite without
learning. Natural understanding can take the place of
almost every degree of culture, but no culture can take
the place of natural understanding. The scholar has the
advantage of such men in the possession of a wealth of
cases and facts (historical knowledge) and of causal
determinations (natural science), all in well-ordered con
nection, easily surveyed ; but yet with all this he has not
a more accurate and profound insight into what is truly
essential in all these cases, facts, and causations. The
unlearned man of acuteness and penetration knows how
to dispense with this wealth ; we can make use of much ;
we can do with little. One case in his own experience
teaches him more than many a scholar is taught by a
thousand cases which he knows, but does not, properly
speaking, understand. For the little knowledge of that
unlearned man is living, because every fact that is known
to him is supported by accurate and well-apprehended
perception, and thus represents for him a thousand
similar facts. On the contrary, the much knowledge of
the ordinary scholar is dead, because even if it does not
consist, as is often the case, in mere words, it consists en
tirely in abstract knowledge. This, however, receives its
value only through the perceptive knowledge of the indivi
dual with which it must connect itself, and which must ulti
mately realise all the conceptions. If now this perceptive
knowledge is very scanty, such a mind is like a bank with
liabilities tenfold in excess of its cash reserve, whereby in
the end it becomes bankrupt. Therefore, while the right
apprehension of the perceptible world has impressed the
stamp of insight and wisdom on the brow of many an un
learned man, the face of many a scholar bears no other

254 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER VII.

trace of his much study than that of exhaustion and
weariness from excessive and forced straining of the
memory in the unnatural accumulation of dead concep
tions. Moreover, the insight of such a man is often so
puerile, so weak and silly, that we must suppose that the
excessive strain upon the faculty of indirect knowledge,
which is concerned with abstractions, directly weakens
the power of immediate perceptive knowledge, and the
natural and clear vision is more and more blinded by the
light of books. At any rate the constant streaming in of
the thoughts of others must confine and suppress our
own, and indeed in the long run paralyse the power of
thought if it has not that high degree of elasticity which
is able to withstand that unnatural stream. Therefore
ceaseless reading and study directly injures the mind —
the more so that completeness and constant connection of
the system of our own thought and knowledge must pay
the penalty if we so often arbitrarily interrupt it in order
to gain room for a line of thought entirely strange to us.
To banish my own thought in order to make room for
that of a book would seem to me like what Shakespeare
censures in the tourists of his time, that they sold their
own land to see that of others. Yet the inclination for
reading of most scholars is a kind of fuga vacui, from the
poverty of their own minds, which forcibly draws in the
thoughts of others. In order to have thoughts they must
read something; just as lifeless bodies are only moved
from without ; while the man who thinks for himself is
like a living body that moves of itself. Indeed it is dan
gerous to read about a subject before we have thought
about it ourselves. For along with the new material the
old point of view and treatment of it creeps into the mind,
all the more so as laziness and apathy counsel us to accept
what has already been thought, and allow it to pass for
truth. This now insinuates itself, and henceforward our
thought on the subject always takes the accustomed path,
like brooks that are guided by ditches ; to find a thought

CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT KNOWLEDGE. 255

of our own, a new thought, is then doubly difficult. This
contributes much to the want of originality on the part of
scholars. Add to this that they supposethat, like other people,
they must divide their time between pleasure and work.
Now they regard reading as their work and special calling,
and therefore they gorge themselves with it, beyond what
they can digest. Then reading no longer plays the part of
the mere initiator of thought, but takes its place altogether ;
for they think of the subject just as long as they are read
ing about it, thus with the mind of another, not with their
own. But when the book is laid aside entirely different
things make much more lively claims upon their interest ;
their private affairs, and then the theatre, card-playing,
skittles, the news of the day, and gossip. The man of
thought is so because such things have no interest for
him. He is interested only in his problems, with which
therefore he is always occupied, by himself and without
a book. To give ourselves this interest, if we have not
got it, is impossible. This is the crucial point. And
upon this also depends the fact that the former always
speak only of what they have read, while the latter, on
the contrary, speaks of what he has thought, and that they
are, as Pope says :

"For ever reading, never to be read."

The mind is naturally free, not a slave ; only what it
does willingly, of its own accord, succeeds. On the other
hand, the compulsory exertion of a mind in studies for
which it is not qualified, or when it has become tired, or
in general too continuously and invita Minerva, dulls the
brain, just as reading by moonlight dulls the eyes. This is
especially the case with the straining of the immature
brain in the earlier years of childhood. I believe that the
learning of Latin and Greek grammar from the sixth to the
twelfth year lays the foundation of the subsequent stupidity
of most scholars. At any rate the mind requires the
nourishment of materials from without. All that we eat
is not at once incorporated in the organism, but only so

256 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER VII.

much of it as is digested ; so that only a small part of it
is assimilated, and the remainder passes away ; and thus
to eat more than we can assimilate is useless and injurious.
It is precisely the same with what we read. Only so far
as it gives food for thought does it increase our insight
and true knowledge. Therefore Heracleitus says : " TTO\V-

o «/

fj,a0ia vow ov StSacr/cet." (multiscitia non dat intellectum) .
It seems, however, to me that learning may be compared
to a heavy suit of armour, which certainly makes the
strong man quite invincible, but to the weak man is a
burden under which he sinks altogether.

The exposition given in our third book of the knowledge
of the (Platonic) Ideas, as the highest attainable by man,
and at the same time entirely perceptive or intuitive know
ledge, is a proof that the source of true wisdom does not
lie in abstract rational knowledge, but in the clear and
profound apprehension of the world in perception. There
fore wise men may live in any age, and those of the past
remain wise men for all succeeding generations. Learn
ing, on the contrary, is relative ; the learned men of the
past are for the most part children as compared with us,
and require indulgence.

But to him who studies in order to gain insight books
and studies are only steps of the ladder by which he
climbs to the summit of knowledge. As soon as a round
of the ladder has raised him a step, he leaves it behind
him. The many, on the other hand, who study in order
to fill their memory do not use the rounds of the ladder
to mount by, but take them off, and load themselves with
them to carry them away, rejoicing at the increasing
weight of the burden. They remain always below, be
cause they bear what ought to have borne them.

Upon the truth set forth here, that the kernel of all
knowledge is the perceptive or intuitive apprehension, de
pends the true and profound remark of Helvetius, that
the really characteristic and original views of which a
gifted individual is capable, and the working up, develop-

CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT KNOWLEDGE. 257

ment, and manifold application of which is the material
of all his works, even if written much later, can arise in
him only up to the thirty-fifth or at the latest the fortieth
year of his life, and are really the result of combinations
he has made in his early youth. For they are not mere
connections of abstract conceptions, but his own intuitive
comprehension of the objective world and the nature of
things. Now, that this intuitive apprehension must have
completed its work by the age mentioned above depends
partly on the fact that by that time the ectypes of all
(Platonic) Ideas must have presented themselves to the
man, and therefore cannot appear later with the strength
of the first impression ; partly on this, that the highest
energy of brain activity is demanded for this quintessence
of all knowledge, for this proof before the letter of the
apprehension, and this highest energy of the brain is depen
dent on the freshness and flexibility of its fibres and the
rapidity with which the arterial blood flows to the brain.
But this again is at its strongest only as long as the arte
rial system has a decided predominance over the venous
system, which begins to decline after the thirtieth year,
until at last, after the forty-second year, the venous
system obtains the upper hand, as Cabanis has admirably
and instructively explained. Therefore the years between
twenty and thirty and the first few years after thirty are
for the intellect what May is for the trees ; only then do
the blossoms appear of which all the later fruits are the
development. The world of perception has made its
impression, and thereby laid the foundation of all the
subsequent thoughts of the individual. He may by
reflection make clearer what he has apprehended ; he
may yet acquire much knowledge as nourishment for the
fruit which has once set ; he may extend his views, correct
his conceptions and judgments, it may be only through
endless combinations that he becomes completely master
of the materials he has gained ; indeed he will generally
produce his best works much later, as the greatest heat
VOL. n. it

258 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER VII.

begins with the decline of the day, but he can no longer
hope for new original knowledge from the one living foun
tain of perception. It is this that Byron feels when he
breaks forth into his wonderfully beautiful lament :

" No more — no more — oh ! never more on me
The freshness of the heart can fall like dew,

Which out of all the lovely things we see
Extracts emotions beautiful and new,

Hived in our bosoms like the bag o' the bee :
Think'st thou the honey with those objects grew 1

Alas ! 'twas not in them, but in thy power

To double even the sweetness of a flower."

Through all that I have said hitherto I hope I have
placed in a clear light the important truth that since all
abstract knowledge springs from knowledge of perception,
it obtains its whole value from its relation to the latter,
thus from the fact that its conceptions, or the abstractions
which they denote, can be realised, i.e., proved, through
perceptions ; and, moreover, that most depends upon the
quality of these perceptions. Conceptions and abstrac
tions which do not ultimately refer to perceptions are
like paths in the wood that end without leading out of it.
The great value of conceptions lies in the fact that by
means of them the original material of knowledge is more
easily handled, surveyed, and arranged. But although
many kinds of logical and dialectical operations are pos
sible with them, yet no entirely original and new know
ledge will result from these ; that is to say, no knowledge
whose material neither lay already in perception nor was
drawn from self-consciousness. This is the true meaning
of the doctrine attributed to Aristotle : Nihil est in in-
tdlectu, nisi quod antea fuerit in sensu. It is also the
meaning of the Lockeian philosophy, which made for ever
an epoch in philosophy, because it commenced at last the
serious discussion of the question as to the origin of our
knowledge. It is also principally what the " Critique of
Pure Eeason " teaches. It also desires that we should not

CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT KNOWLEDGE. 259

remain at the conceptions, but go back to their source, thus
to perception ; only with the true and important addition
that what holds good of the perception also extends to its
subjective conditions, thus to the forms which lie pre
disposed in the perceiving and thinking brain as its
natural functions ; although these at least virtualiter
precede the actual sense-perception, i.e., are a priori, and
therefore do not depend upon sense-perception, but it upon
them. For these forms themselves have indeed no other
end, nor service, than to produce the empirical perception
on the nerves of sense being excited, as other forms are
determined afterwards to construct thoughts in the ab
stract from the material of perception. The " Critique
of Pure Eeason" is therefore related to the Lockeian
philosophy as the analysis of the infinite to elementary
geometry, but is yet throughout to be regarded as the
continuation of the Lockeian philosophy. The given mate
rial of every philosophy is accordingly nothing else than
the empirical consciousness, which divides itself into the
consciousness of one's own self (self-consciousness) and
the consciousness of other things (external perception).
For this alone is what is immediately and actually given.
Every philosophy which, instead of starting from this,
takes for its starting-point arbitrarily chosen abstract
conceptions, such as, for example, absolute, absolute sub
stance, God, infinity, finitude, absolute identity, being,
essence, &c., &c., moves in the air without support, and
can therefore never lead to a real result. Yet in all ages
philosophers have attempted it with such materials ; and
hence even Kant sometimes, according to the common
usage, and more from custom than consistency, defines
philosophy as a science of mere conceptions. But such
a science would really undertake to extract from the
partial ideas (for that is what the abstractions are) what
is not to be found in the complete ideas (the perceptions),
from which the former were drawn by abstraction. The
possibility of the syllogism leads to this mistake, because

26o FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER VII.

here the combination of the judgments gives a new result,
although more apparent than real, for the syllogism only
brings out what already lay in the given judgments ; for
it is true the conclusion cannot contain more than the
premisses. Conceptions are certainly the material of
philosophy, but only as marble is the material of the
sculptor. It is not to work out of them but in them ; that
is to say, it is to deposit its results in them, but not to
start from them as what is given. Whoever wishes to
see a glaring example of such a false procedure from
mere conceptions may look at the " Institutio Theologica "
of Proclus in order to convince himself of the vanity
of that whole method. There abstractions such as " ev,
, ayaOov, Trapayov Kat, Trapayopevov, avTapKes, aircov,
v,KivriTov, aKivr)Tov,KivovfAevov"(unum, multa, bonum,
producens et produdum, sibi sufficiens, causa, melius, mobile,
immobile, motum), &c., are indiscriminately collected, but
the perceptions to which alone they owe their origin
and content ignored and contemptuously disregarded. A
theology is then constructed from these conceptions, but
its goal, the 0eo<?, is kept concealed ; thus the whole pro
cedure is apparently unprejudiced, as if the reader did not
know at the first page, just as well as the author, what
it is all to end in. I have already quoted a fragment of
this above. This production of Proclus is really quite
peculiarly adapted to make clear how utterly useless and
illusory such combinations of abstract conceptions are, for
we can make of them whatever we will, especially if we
further take advantage of the ambiguity of many words,
such, for example, as /cpeiTrov. If such an architect of
conceptions wrere present in person we would only have
to ask naively where all the things are of which he has
so much to tell us, and whence he knows the laws from
which he draws his conclusions concerning them. He
would then soon be obliged to turn to empirical percep
tion, in which alone the real world exhibits itself, from
which those conceptions are drawn. Then we would only

CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT KNOWLEDGE. 261

have to ask further why he did not honestly start from
the given perception of such a world, so that at every
step his assertions could be proved by it, instead of opera
ting with conceptions, which are yet drawn from percep
tion alone, and therefore can have no further validity
than that which it imparts to them. But of course this
is just his trick. Through such conceptions, in which,
by virtue of abstraction, what is inseparable is thought
as separate, and what cannot be united as united, he goes
far beyond the perception which was their source, and thus
beyond the limits of their applicability, to an entirely
different world from that which supplied the material
for building, but just on this account to a world of
chimeras. I have here referred to Proclus because in him
this procedure becomes specially clear through the frank
audacity with which he carries it out. But in Plato also
we find some examples of this kind, though not so glar
ing; and in general the philosophical literature of all
ages affords a multitude of instances of the same thing.
That of our own time is rich in them. Consider, for ex
ample, the writings of the school of Schelling, and observe
the constructions that are built up out of abstractions like
finite and infinite — being, non-being, other being — activity,
hindrance, product — determining, being determined, deter-
minateness — limit, limiting, being limited — unity, plurality,
multiplicity — identity, diversity, indifference — thinking,
being, essence, &c. Not only does all that has been said
above hold good of constructions out of such materials,
but because an infinite amount can be thought through
such wide abstractions, only very little indeed can be
thought in them ; they are empty husks. But thus the
matter of the whole philosophising becomes astonishingly
trifling and paltry, and hence arises that unutterable and
excruciating tediousness which is characteristic of all such
writings. If indeed I now chose to call to mind the way
in which Hegel and his companions have abused such
wide and empty abstractions, I should have to fear that

262 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER VII.

"both the reader and I myself would be ill ; for the most
nauseous tediousness hangs over the empty word-juggling
of this loathsome philophaster.

That in practical philosophy also no wisdom is brought
to light from mere abstract conceptions is the one thing
to be learnt from the ethical dissertations of the theologian
Schleiermacher, with the delivery of which he has wearied
the Berlin Academy for a number of years, and which are
shortly to appear in a collected form. In them only
abstract conceptions, such as duty, virtue, highest good,
moral law, &c., are taken as the starting-point, without
further introduction than that they commonly occur in
ethical systems, and are now treated as given realities.
He then discusses these from all sides with great subtilty,
but, on the other hand, never makes for the source of these
conceptions, for the thing itself, the actual human life, to
which alone they are related, from which they ought to
be drawn, and with which morality has, properly speaking,
to do. On this account these diatribes are just as unfruit
ful and useless as they are tedious, which is saying a great
deal. At all times we find persons, like this theologian,
who is too fond of philosophising, famous while they are
alive, afterwards soon forgotten. My advice is rather to
read those whose fate has been the opposite of this, for
time is short and valuable.

Now although, in accordance with all that has been
said, wide, abstract conceptions, which can be realised in
no perception, must never be the source of knowledge, the
starting-point or the proper material of philosophy, yet
sometimes particular results of philosophy are such as can
only be thought in the abstract, and cannot be proved by
any perception. Knowledge of this kind will certainly
only be half knowledge ; it will, as it were, only point
out the place where what is to be known lies ; but this
remains concealed. Therefore we should only be satisfied
with such conceptions in the most extreme case, and when
we have reached the limit of the knowledge possible to

CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT KNOWLEDGE. 263

our faculties. An example of this might perhaps be the
conception of a being out of time ; such as the proposi
tion : the indestructibility of our true being by death is
not a continued existence of it. With conceptions of this
sort the firm ground which supports our whole knowledge,
the perceptible, seems to waver. Therefore philosophy
may certainly at times, and in case of necessity, extend to
such knowledge, but it must never begin with it.

The working with wide abstractions, which is con
demned above, to the entire neglect of the perceptive
knowledge from which they are drawn, and which is
therefore their permanent and natural controller, was at
all times the principal source of the errors of dogmatic
philosophy. A science constructed from the mere com
parison of conceptions, that is, from general principles,
could only be certain if all its principles were synthetical
a priori, as is the case in mathematics : for only such
admit of no exceptions. If, on the other hand, the prin
ciples have any empirical content, we must keep this con
stantly at hand, to control the general principles. For no
truths which are in any way drawn from experience are
ever unconditionally true. They have therefore only an
approximately universal validity ; for here there is no
rule without an exception. If now I link these principles
together by means of the intersection of their concept-
spheres, one conception might very easily touch the other
precisely where the exception lies. But if this happens
even only once in the course of a long train of reasoning,
the whole structure is loosed from its foundation and
moves in the air. If, for example, I say, " The ruminants
have no front incisors," and apply this and what follows
from it to the camel, it all becomes false, for it only holds
good of horned ruminants. What Kant calls das Ver-
nunfteln, mere abstract reasoning, and so often condemns,
is just of this sort. For it consists simply in subsuming
conceptions under conceptions, without reference to their
origin, and without proof of the correctness and exclusive-

264 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER VII.

ness of such subsumption — a method whereby we can
arrive by longer or shorter circuits at almost any result
we choose to set before us as our goal. Hence this mere
abstract reasoning differs only in degree from sophistica
tion strictly so called. But sophistication is in the theo
retical sphere exactly what chicanery is in the practical.
Yet even Plato himself has very frequently permitted
such mere abstract reasoning; and Proclus, as we have
already mentioned, has, after the manner of all imitators,
carried this fault of his model much further. Dionysius the
Areopagite, " De Divinis Nominibus" is also strongly af
fected with this. But even in the fragments of the Eleatic
Melissus we already find distinct examples of such mere
abstract reasoning (especially § 2-5 in Brandis'" Comment.
Meat.) His procedure with the conceptions, which never
touch the reality from which they have their content, but,
moving in the atmosphere of abstact universality, pass
away beyond it, resembles blows which never hit the mark.
A good pattern of such mere abstract reasoning is the " De
Diis et Mundo " of the philosopher Sallustius Biichelchen ;
especially chaps. 7, 12, and 17. But a perfect gem of
philosophical mere abstract reasoning passing into decided
sophistication is the following reasoning of the Platonist,
Maximus of Tyre, which I shall quote, as it is short :
" Every injustice is the taking away of a good. There is
no other good than virtue : but virtue cannot be taken
away : thus it is not possible that the virtuous can suffer
injustice from the wicked. It now remains either that
no injustice can be suffered, or that it is suffered by the
wicked from the wicked. But the wicked man possesses
no good at all, for only virtue is a good ; therefore none
can be taken from him. Thus he also can suffer no in
justice. Thus injustice is an impossible thing." The
original, which is less concise through repetitions, runs
thus : " ABiKia ecm a<j)aipecris ayadov' TO Be a^aOov n av
etrj a\\o 77 apery ; — f) 8e apery ava(f>aiperov. OVK a
rai TOLVVV o rrjv aperrjv e^a>v, f] OVK eariv aSircia

CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT KNOWLEDGE. 265

ayadov' ovSev <yap cvyadov a(f>ai,peTov, ov^'-^aTro^XTjTOV, ov
eXerov, ov8e \7)icnov. Etev ovv, ouS' aSifceir
To?, ovS VTTO TOV fjto%0i)pov' ava(j)aipeTO<> yap.
TOLVVV TJ fjLrjSeva aSiKeicrdat, Kada7ra£, 77 rov no^drjpov VTTO
TOV o/Jbotov' aXXa -T&) fjio^drjpa) ofSe^o? /ierecrrty ayadow
TI Se aSiKta rjv ajadov affxtipecris' 6 Se /j,rj e^cof o, ri a<f>ai,-
peadij, ovSe ei? 6, TI aSifcrjcrOrj, e^et" (Scrmo 2). I shall
add further a modern example of such proofs from
abstract conceptions, by means of which an obviously
absurd proposition is set up as the truth, and I shall take
it from the works of a great man, Giordano Bruno. In
his book, "Del Infinite* Universo & Mondi" (p. 87 of the
edition of A. Wagner), he makes an Aristotelian prove
(with the assistance and exaggeration of the passage
of Aristotle's De Casio, i. 5) that there can loe.no space
beyond the world. The world is enclosed by the eight
spheres of Aristotle, and beyond these there can be
no space. For if beyond these there were still a body,
it must either be simple or compound. It is now
proved sophistically, from principles which are obviously
begged, that no simple body could be there ; and therefore,
also, no compound body, for it would necessarily be com
posed of simple ones. Thus in general there can be no
body there — but if not, then no space. For space is defined
as " that in which bodies can be ; " and it has just been
proved that no body can be there. Thus there is also
there no space. This last is the final stroke of this proof
from abstract conceptions. It ultimately rests on the
fact that the proposition, " Where no space is, there can
be no body " is taken as a universal negative, and there
fore converted simply, " Where no body can be there is no
space." But the former proposition, when properly re
garded, is a universal affirmative : " Everything that has
no space has no body," thus it must not be converted
simply. Yet it is not every proof from abstract con
ceptions, with a conclusion which clearly contradicts
perception (as here the fmiteness of space), that can thus

266 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER VII.

be referred to a logical error. For the sophistry does not
always lie in the form, but often in the matter, in the
premisses, and in the indefiniteness of the conceptions and
their extension. We find numerous examples of this in
Spinoza, whose method indeed it is to prove from concep
tions. See, for example, the miserable sophisms in his
" Ethics," P. iv., prop. 29-31, by means of the ambiguity of
the uncertain conceptions convenire and commune habere,
Yet this does not prevent the neo-Spinozists of our own
day from taking all that he has said for gospel. Of these
the Hegelians, of whom there are actually still a few, are
specially amusing on account of their traditional reverence
for his principle, omnis determinatio est negatio, at which,
according to the charlatan spirit of the school, they put
on a face as if it was able to unhinge the world ; whereas
it is of no use at all, for even the simplest can see for
himself that if I limit anything by determinations, I
thereby exclude and thus negate what lies beyond these
limits.

Thus in all mere reasonings of the above kind it be
comes very apparent what errors that algebra with mere
conceptions, uncontrolled by perception, is exposed to,
and that therefore perception is for our intellect what the
firm ground upon which it stands is for our body : if we
forsake perception everything is instabilis tellus, innabilis
unda. The reader will pardon the fulness of these exposi
tions and examples on account of their instructiveness. I
have sought by means of them to bring forward and
support the difference, indeed the opposition, between per
ceptive and abstract or reflected knowledge, which has
hitherto been too little regarded, and the establishment of
which is a fundamental characteristic of my philosophy.
For many phenomena of our mental life are only ex
plicable through this distinction. The connecting link
between these two such different kinds of knowledge
is the faculty of judgment, as I have shown in § 14 of
the first volume. This faculty is certainly also active

CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT KNOWLEDGE. 267

in the province of mere abstract knowledge, in which
it compares conceptions only with conceptions ; therefore
every judgment, in the logical sense of the word, is cer
tainly a work of the faculty of judgment, for it always
consists in the subsumption of a narrower conception under
a wider one. Yet this activity of the faculty of judgment,
in which it merely compares conceptions with each other,
is a simpler and easier task than when it makes the transi
tion from what is quite particular, the perception, to the
essentially general, the conception. For by the analysis
of conceptions into their essential predicates it must be
possible to decide upon purely logical grounds whether
they are capable of being united or not, arid for this the
mere reason which every one possesses is sufficient. The
faculty of judgment is therefore only active here in short
ening this process, for he who is gifted with it sees at a
glance what others only arrive at through a series of re
flections. But its activity in the narrower sense really
only appears when what is known through perception,
thus the real experience, has to be carried over into distinct
abstract knowledge, subsumed under accurately corre
sponding conceptions, and -thus translated into reflected
rational knowledge. It is therefore this faculty which
has to establish the firm basis of all sciences, which always
consists of what is known directly and cannot be further
denied. Therefore here, in the fundamental judgments,
lies the difficulty of the sciences, not in the inferences
from these. To infer is easy, to judge is difficult. False
inferences are rare, false judgments are always the order
of the day. Not less in practical life has the faculty of
judgment to give the decision in all fundamental conclu
sions and important determinations. Its office is in the
main like that of the judicial sentence. As the burning-
glass brings to a focus all the sun's rays, so when the
understanding works, the intellect has to bring together
all the data which it has upon the subject so closely that
the understanding comprehends them at a glance, which

268 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER VII.

it now rightly fixes, and then carefully makes the result
distinct to itself. Further, the great difficulty of judging
in most cases depends upon the fact that we have to
proceed from the consequent to the reason, a path which
is always uncertain ; indeed I have shown that the source
of all error lies here. Yet in all the empirical sciences,
and also in the affairs of real life, this way is for the most
part the only one open to us. The experiment is an
attempt to go over it again the other way; therefore it
is decisive, and at least brings out error clearly ; provided
always that it is rightly chosen and honestly carried out; not
like Newton's experiments in connection with the theory
of colours. But the experiment itself must also again be
judged. The complete certainty of the a priori sciences,
logic and mathematics, depends principally upon the fact
that in them the path from the reason to the consequent
is open to us, and it is always certain. This gives them
the character of purely objective sciences, i.e., sciences with
regard to whose truths all who understand them must
judge alike ; and this is all the more remarkable as they
are the very sciences which rest on the subjective forms
of the intellect, while the empirical sciences alone have
to do with what is palpably objective.

Wit and ingenuity are also manifestations of the faculty
of judgment; in the former its activity is reflective, in the
latter subsuming. In most men the faculty of judgment
is only nominally present ; it is a kind of irony that it is
reckoned with the normal faculties of the mind, instead
of being only attributed to the monstris per excessum.
Ordinary men show even in the smallest affairs want of
confidence in their own judgment, just because they know
from experience that it is of no service. With them pre
judice and imitation take its place ; and thus they are kept
in a state of continual non-age, from which scarcely one in
many hundreds is delivered. Certainly this is not avowed,
for even to themselves they appear to judge ; but all the
time they are glancing stealthily at the opinion of others,

CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT KNOWLEDGE. 269

which is their secret standard. While each one would be
ashamed to go about in a borrowed coat, hat, or mantle,
they all have nothing but borrowed opinions, which they
eagerly collect wherever they can find them, and then
strut about giving them out as their own. Others borrow
them again from them and do the same thing. This ex
plains the rapid and wide spread of errors, and also the
fame of what is bad ; for the professional purveyors of
opinion, such as journalists and the like, give as a rule
only false wares, as those who hire out masquerading
dresses give only false jewels.

( 270 )

CHAPTEE VIII.1

ON THE THEORY OF THE LUDICROUS.

MY theory of the ludicrous also depends upon the op
position explained in the preceding chapters between
perceptible and abstract ideas, which I have brought into
such marked prominence. Therefore what has still to be
said in explanation of this theory finds its proper place
here, although according to the order of the text it would
have to come later.

The problem of the origin, which is everywhere the
same, and hence of the peculiar significance of laughter,
was already known to Cicero, but only to be at once
dismissed as insoluble (De Orat., ii. 58). The oldest
attempt known to me at a psychological explanation of
laughter is to be found in Hutcheson's " Introduction
into Moral Philosophy," Bk. I., ch. i. § 14. A somewhat
later anonymous work, " TraiU des Causes Physiques et
Morals du Hire," 1768, is not without merit as a ventila
tion of the subject. Platner, in his " Anthropology,"
§ 894, has collected the opinions of the philosophers from
Home to Kant who have attempted an explanation of
this phenomenon peculiar to human nature. Kant's and
Jean Paul's theories of the ludicrous are well known.
I regard it as unnecessary to prove their incorrectness,
for whoever tries to refer given cases of the ludicrous
to them will in the great majority of instances be at
once convinced of their insufficiency.

According to my explanation given in the first volume,

1 This chapter is connected with § 13 of the first volume.

ON THE THEORY OF THE LUDICROUS. 271

the source of the ludicrous is always the paradoxical, and
therefore unexpected, subsumption of an object under a
conception which in other respects is different from it,
and accordingly the phenomenon of laughter always
signifies the sudden apprehension of an incongruity
between such a conception and the real object thought
under it, thus between the abstract and the concrete
object of perception. The greater and more unexpected,
in the apprehension of the laugher, this incongruity is,
the more violent will be his laughter. Therefore in
everything that excites laughter it must always be
possible to show a conception and a particular, that is, a
thing or event, which certainly can be subsumed under
that conception, and therefore thought through it, yet
in another and more predominating aspect does not
belong to it at all, but is strikingly different from every
thing else that is thought through that conception. If,
as often occurs, especially in witticisms, instead of such
a real object of perception, the conception of a sub
ordinate species is brought under the higher conception
of the genus, it will yet excite laughter only through
the fact that the imagination realises it, i.e., makes a
perceptible representative stand for it, and thus the con
flict between what is thought and what is perceived takes
place. Indeed if we wish to understand this perfectly
explicitly, it is possible to trace everything ludicrous to
a syllogism in the first figure, with an undisputed major
and an unexpected minor, which to a certain extent
is only sophistically valid, in consequence of which con
nection the conclusion partakes of the quality of the
ludicrous.

In the first volume I regarded it as superfluous to illus
trate this theory by examples, for every one can do this
for himself by a little reflection upon cases of the ludicrous
which he remembers. Yet, in order to come to the assist
ance of the mental inertness of those readers who prefer
always to remain in a passive condition, I will accommodate

272 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER VIII.

myself to them. Indeed in tins third edition I wish to
multiply and accumulate examples, so that it may be
indisputable that here, after so many fruitless earlier
attempts, the true theory of the ludicrous is given, and
the problem which was proposed and also given up by
Cicero is definitely solved.

If we consider that an angle requires two lines meeting
so that if they are produced they will intersect each other ;
on the other hand, that the tangent of a circle only
touches it at one point, but at this point is really parallel
to it ; and accordingly have present to our minds the
abstract conviction of the impossibility of an angle be
tween the circumference of a circle and its tangent ; and
if now such an angle lies visibly before us upon paper,
this will easily excite a smile. The ludicrousness in this
case is exceedingly weak ; but yet the source of it in the
incongruity of what is thought and perceived appears in
it with exceptional distinctness. When we discover such
an incongruity, the occasion for laughter that thereby
arises is, according as we pass from the real, i.e., the
perceptible, to the conception, or conversely from the
conception to the real, either a witticism or an absurdity,
which in a higher degree, and especially in the practical
sphere, is folly, as was explained in the text. Now to
consider examples of the first case, thus of wit, we shall
first of all take the familiar anecdote of the Gascon at
whom the king laughed when he saw him in light summer
clothing in the depth of winter, and who thereupon said
to the king : " If your Majesty had put on what I have,
you would find it very warm ; " and on being asked what
he had put on, replied : " My whole wardrobe ! " Under
this last conception we have to think both the unlimited
wardrobe of a king and the single summer coat of a poor
devil, the sight of which upon his freezing body shows its
great incongruity with the conception. The audience in
a theatre in Paris once called for the " Marseillaise " to be
played, and as this was not done, began shrieking and

ON THE THEORY OF THE LUDICROUS. 273

howling, so that at last a commissary of police in uniform
came upon the stage and explained that it was not allowed
that anything should be .given in the theatre except what
was in the playbill. Upon this a voice cried : " Et vous,
Monsieur, etes-vous aussi sur Hafficke, ? " — a hit which
was received with universal laughter. For here the sub-
sumption of what is heterogeneous is at once distinct and
unforced. The epigramme :

" Bav is the true shepherd of whom the Bible spake :
Though his flock be all asleep, he alone remains awake : "

subsumes, under the conception of a sleeping flock and a
waking shepherd, the tedious preacher who still bellows
on unheard when he has sent all the people to sleep.
Analogous to this is the epitaph on a doctor : " Here lies
he like a hero, and those he has slain lie around him ; " it
subsumes under the conception, honourable to the hero,
of " lying surrounded by dead bodies," the doctor, who is
supposed to preserve life. Very commonly the witticism
consists in a single expression, through which only the
conception is given, under which the case presented can
be subsumed, though it is very different from everything
else that is thought under it. So is it in " Romeo " when
the vivacious Mercutio answers his friends who promise
to visit him on the morrow : " Ask for me to-morrow, and
you shall find me a grave man." Under this conception
a dead man is here subsumed ; but in English there is also
a play upon the words, for " a grave man " means both a
serious man and a man of the grave. Of this kind is
also the well-known anecdote of the actor Unzelmaun.
In the Berlin theatre he was strictly forbidden to im
provise. Soon afterwards he had to appear on the stage
on horseback, and just as he came on the stage the horse
dunged, at which the audience began to laugh, but laughed
much more when Unzelmann said to the horse : " What
are you doing ? Don't you know we are forbidden to
improvise ? " Here the subsumption of the heterogeneous
VOL. ii. s

274 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER VIII.

under the more general conception is very distinct, but
the witticism is exceedingly happy, and the ludicrous effect
produced by it excessively strong. To this class also
belongs the following announcement from Hall in a news
paper of March 1851: " The band of Jewish swindlers to
which we have referred were again delivered over to us
with obligate accompaniment." This subsuming of a
police escort under a musical term is very happy, though
it approaches the mere play upon words. On the other
hand, it is exactly a case of the kind we are considering
when Saphir, in a paper-war with the actor Angeli, de
scribes him as " Angeli, who is equally great in mind and
body." The small statue of the actor was known to the
whole town, and thus under the conception " great "
unusual smallness was presented to the mind. Also when
the same Saphir calls the airs of a new opera " good old
friends," and so brings the quality which is most to be
condemned under a conception which is usually employed
to commend. Also, if we should say of a lady whose
favour could be influenced by presents, that she knew
how to combine the utile with the dulci. For here we
bring the moral life tinder the conception of a rule
which Horace has recommended in an aesthetical refer
ence. Also if to signify a brothel we should call it the
" modest abode of quiet joys." Good society, in order to
be thoroughly insipid, has forbidden all decided utter
ances, and therefore all strong expressions. Therefore it
is wont, when it has to signify scandalous or in any
way indecent things, to mitigate or extenuate them by
expressing them through general conceptions. But in this
way it happens that they are more or less incongruously
subsumed, and in a corresponding degree the effect of
the ludicrous is produced. To this class belongs the use
of utile dulci referred to above, and also such expressions
as the following : " He had unpleasantness at the ball ''
when he w as thrashed and kicked out ; or, " He has done
too well " when he is drunk ; and also, " The woman has

ON THE THEORY OF THE LUDICROUS. 275

weak moments " if she is unfaithful to her husband, &c.
Equivocal sayings also belong to the same class. They
are conceptions which in themselves contain nothing
improper, but yet the case brought under them leads to
an improper idea. They are very common in society.
But a perfect example of a full and magnificent equi
vocation is Shenstone's incomparable epitaph on a justice
of the peace, which, in its high-flown lapidary style, seems
to speak of noble and sublime things, while under each of
their conceptions something quite different is to be sub
sumed, which only appears in the very last word as the
unexpected key to the whole, and the reader discovers
with loud laughter that he has only read a very obscene
equivocation. In this smooth-combed age it is altogether
impossible to quote this here, not to speak of translating
it ; it will be found in Shenstone's poetical works, under
the title " Inscription." Equivocations sometimes pass
over into mere puns, about which all that is necessary has
been said in the text.

Further, the ultimate subsumption, ludicrous to all, of
what in one respect is heterogeneous, under a conception
which in other respects agrees with it, may take place
contrary to our intention. Eor example, one of the free
negroes in North America, who take pains to imitate the
whites in everything, quite recently placed an epitaph
over his dead child which begins, " Lovely, early broken
lily." If, on the contrary, something real and perceptible
is, with direct intention, brought under the conception
of its opposite, the result is plain, common irony. For
example, if when it is raining hard we say, " Nice weather
we are having to-day ; " or if we say of an ugly bride,
" That man has found a charming treasure ; " or of a knave,
" This honest man," &c. &c. Only children and quite un
educated people will laugh at such things ; for here the
incongruity between what is thought and what is per
ceived is total. Yet just in this direct exaggeration in
the production of the ludicrous its fundamental character,

276 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER VIII.

incongruity, appears very distinctly. This species of the
ludicrous is, on account of its exaggeration and distinct
intention, in some respects related to parody. The pro
cedure of the latter consists in this. It substitutes for the
incidents and words of a serious poem or drama insignifi
cant low persons or trifling motives and actions. It thus
subsumes the commonplace realities which it sets forth
under the lofty conceptions given in the theme, under
which in a certain respect they must come, while in other
respects they are very incongruous ; and thereby the con
trast between what is perceived and what is thought
appears very glaring. There is no lack of familiar ex
amples of this, and therefore I shall only give one, from
the " Zobeide " of Carlo Gozzi, act iv., scene 3, where the
famous stanza of Ariosto (Orl. Fur., i. 22), " Oh gran bonta
de' cavalicri antichi," &c., is put word for word into the
mouth of two clowns who have just been thrashing each
other, and tired with this, lie quietly side by side. This
is also the nature of the application so popular in Ger
many of serious verses, especially of Schiller, to trivial
events, which clearly contains a subsumption of hetero
geneous things under the general conception which the
verse expresses. Thus, for example, when any one has
displayed a very characteristic trait, there will rarely be
wanting some one to say, " From that I know with whom
I have to do." But it was original and very witty of a
man who was in love with a young bride to quote to the
newly married couple (I know not how loudly) the con
cluding words of Schiller's ballad, " The Surety : "

" Let me be, I pray you,
In your bond the third."

The effect of the ludicrous is here strong and inevitable,
because under the conceptions through which Schiller
presents to the mind a moral and noble relation, a for
bidden and immoral relation is subsumed, and yet cor
rectly and without change, thus is thought through it.

ON THE THEORY OF THE LUDICROUS. 277

In all the examples of wit given here we find that under
a conception, or in general an abstract thought, a real
thing is, directly, or by means of a narrower conception,
subsumed, which indeed, strictly speaking, comes under
it, and yet is as different as possible from the proper and
original intention and tendency of the thought. Accord
ingly wit, as a mental capacity, consists entirely in a
facility for finding for every object that appears a concep
tion under which it certainly can be thought, though it is
very different from all the other objects which come under
this conception.

The second species of the ludicrous follows, as we have
mentioned, the opposite path from the abstract conception
to the real or perceptible things thought through it. But
this now brings to light any incongruity with the concep
tion which was overlooked, and hence arises an absurdity,
and therefore in the practical sphere a foolish action.
Since the play requires action, this species of the ludicrous
is essential to comedy. Upon this depends the observa
tion of Voltaire : " J*ai cru remarquer aux spectacles, qu'il
ne s'e'leve presque jamais de ccs Eclats de rire universels, qu'a
I' occasion d'une M^PRISE" (Preface de I! Enfant Prodiyue).
The following may serve as examples of this species of the
ludicrous. When some one had declared that he was fond
of walking alone, an Austrian said to him : " You like
walking alone ; so do I : therefore we can go together."
He starts from the conception, "A pleasure which two
love they can enjoy in common," and subsumes under
it the very case which excludes community. Further,
the servant who rubbed a worn sealskin in his master's
box with Macassar oil, so that it might become covered
with hair again ; in doing which he started from the con
ception, " Macassar oil makes hair grow." The soldiers in
the guard-room who allowed a prisoner who was brought
in to join in their game of cards, then quarrelled with
him for cheating, and turned him out. They let them
selves be led by the general conception, " Bad companions

278 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER VIII.

are turned out," and forget that he is also a prisoner, i.e.,
one whom they ought to hold fast. Two young peasants
had loaded their gun with coarse shot, which they wished
to extract, in order to substitute fine, without losing the
powder. So one of them put the mouth of the barrel in
his hat, which he took between his legs, and said to the
other : " Now you pull the trigger slowly, slowly, slowly ;
then the shot will come first." He starts from the concep
tion, " Prolonging the cause prolongs the effect." Most of
the actions of Don Quixote are also cases in point, for he
subsumes the realities he encounters under conceptions
drawn from the romances of chivalry, from which they
are very different. For example, in order to support the
oppressed he frees the galley slaves. Properly all Munch-
hausenisms are also of this nature, only they are not
actions which are performed, but impossibilities, which are
passed off upon the hearer as having really happened. In
them the fact is always so conceived that when it is
thought merely in the abstract, and therefore compara
tively a priori, it appears possible and plausible ; but
afterwards, if we come down to the perception of the parti
cular case, thus a posteriori the impossibility of the thing,
indeed the absurdity of the assumption, is brought into
prominence, and excites laughter through the evident
incongruity of what is perceived and what is thought.
For example, when the melodies frozen up in the post-
horn are thawed in the warm room — when Miinchhausen,
sitting upon a tree during a hard frost, draws up his
knife which has dropped to the ground by the frozen jet
of his own water, &c. Such is also the story of the two
lions who broke down the partition between them during
the night and devoured each other in their rage, so that in
the morning there was nothing to be found but the two
tails.

There are also cases of the ludicrous where the concep
tion under which the perceptible facts are brought does
not require to be expressed or signified, but comes into

ON THE THEORY OF THE LUDICROUS. 279

consciousness itself through the association of ideas. The
laughter into which Garrick burst in the middle of playing
tragedy because a butcher in the front of the pit, who
had taken off his wig to wipe the sweat from his head,
placed the wig for a while upon his large dog, who stood
facing the stage with his fore paws resting on the pit
railings, was occasioned by the fact that Garrick started
from the conception of a spectator, which was added in.
his own mind. This is the reason why certain animal
forms, such as apes, kangaroos, jumping-hares, &c., some
times appear to us ludicrous because something about
them resembling man leads us to subsume them under
the conception of the human form, and starting from this
we perceive their incongruity with it.

Now the conceptions whose observed incongruity with
the perceptions moves us to laughter are either those of
others or our own. In the first case we laugh at others,
in the second we feel a surprise, often agreeable, at
the least amusing. Therefore children and uneducated
people laugh at the most trifling things, even at misfor
tunes, if they were unexpected, and thus convicted their
preconceived conception of error. As a rule laughing is
a pleasant condition ; accordingly the apprehension of the
incongruity between what is thought and what is perceived,
that is, the real, gives us pleasure, and we give ourselves
up gladly to the spasmodic convulsions which this ap
prehension excites. The reason of this is as follows. In
every suddenly appearing conflict between what is per
ceived and what is thought, what is perceived is always
unquestionably right ; for it is not subject to error at all,
requires no confirmation from without, but answers for
itself. Its conflict with what is thought springs ultimately
from the fact that the latter, with its abstract concep
tions, cannot get down to the infinite multifariousness and
fine shades of difference of the concrete. This victory of
knowledge of perception over thought affords us pleasure.
For perception is the original kind of knowledge insepar-

28o FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER VIII.

able from animal nature, in which everything that gives
direct satisfaction to the will presents itself. It is the
medium of the present, of enjoyment and gaiety ; more
over it is attended with no exertion. With thinking the
opposite is the case ; it is the second power of knowledge,
the exercise of which always demands some, and often
considerable, exertion. Besides, it is the conceptions of
thought that often oppose the gratification of our imme
diate desires, for, as the medium of the past, the future, and
of seriousness, they are the vehicle of our fears, our re
pentance, and all our cares. It must therefore be divert
ing to us to see this strict, untiring, troublesome governess,
the reason, for once convicted of insufficiency. On this
account then the mien or appearance of laughter is very
closely related to that of joy.

On account of the want of reason, thus of general con
ceptions, the brute is incapable of laughter, as of speech.
This is therefore a prerogative and characteristic mark of
man. Yet it may be remarked in passing that his one
friend the dog has an analogous characteristic action
peculiar to him alone in distinction from all other brutes,
the very expressive, kindly, and thoroughly honest fawning
and wagging of its tail. But how favourably does this
salutation given him by nature compare with the bows
and simpering civilities of men. At least for the present,
it is a thousand times more reliable than their assurance
of inward friendship and devotion.

The opposite of laughing and joking is seriousness.
Accordingly it consists in the consciousness of the perfect
agreement and congruity of the conception, or thought,
with what is perceived, or the reality. The serious man
is convinced that he thinks the things as they are, and
that they are as he thinks them. This is just why the
transition from profound seriousness to laughter is so easy,
and can be effected by trifles. For the more perfect that
agreement assumed by seriousness may seem to be, the
more easily is it destroyed by the unexpected discovery

ON THE THEORY OF THE LUDICROUS. 281

of even a slight incongruity. Therefore the more a man
is capable of entire seriousness, the more heartily can he
laugh. Men whose laughter is always affected and forced
are intellectually and morally of little worth ; and in
general the way of laughing, and, on the other hand, the
occasions of it, are very characteristic of the person. That
the relations of the sexes afford the easiest materials for
jokes always ready to hand and within the reach of the
weakest wit, as is proved by the abundance of obscene
jests, could not be if it were not that the deepest serious
ness lies at their foundation.

That the laughter of others at what we do or say seri
ously offends us so keenly depends on the fact that it
asserts that there is a great incongruity between our con
ceptions and the objective realities. For the same reason,
the predicate " ludicrous " or " absurd " is insulting. The
laugh of scorn announces with triumph to the baffled
adversary how incongruous were the conceptions he
cherished with the reality which is now revealing itself
to him. Our own bitter laughter at the fearful disclosure
of the truth through which our firmly cherished expecta
tions are proved to be delusive is the active expression of
the discovery now made of the incongruity between the
thoughts which, in our foolish confidence in man or fate,
we entertained, and the truth which is now unveiled.

The intentionally ludicrous is the joke. It is the effort
to bring about a discrepancy between the conceptions of
another and the reality by disarranging one of the two ;
while its opposite, seriousness, consists in the exact con
formity of the two to each other, which is at least aimed
at. But if now the joke is concealed behind serious
ness, then we have irony. For example, if with apparent
seriousness we acquiesce in the opinions of another which
are the opposite of our own, and pretend to share them
with him, till at last the result perplexes him both as to
us and them. This is the attitude of Socrates as opposed
to Hippias, Protagoras, Gorgias, and other sophists, and

282 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER VIII.

indeed often to his collocutors in general. The converse
of irony is accordingly seriousness concealed behind a
joke, and this is humour. It might be called the double
counterpoint of irony. Explanations such as " Humour is
the interpenetration of the finite and the infinite " express
nothing more than the entire incapacity for thought of
those who are satisfied with such empty phrases. Irony
is objective, that is, intended for another ; but humour is
subjective, that is, it primarily exists only for one's own
self. Accordingly we find the masterpieces of irony among
the ancients, but those of humour among the moderns.
For, more closely considered, humour depends upon a
subjective, yet serious and sublime mood, which is in
voluntarily in conflict with a common external world
very different from itself, which it cannot escape from and
to which it will not give itself up ; therefore, as an accom
modation, it tries to think its own point of view and that
external world through the same conceptions ; and thus a
double incongruity arises, sometimes on the one side,
sometimes on the other, between these concepts and the
realities thought through them. Hence the impression of
the intentionally ludicrous, thus of the joke, is produced,
behind which, however, the deepest seriousness is con
cealed and shines through. Irony begins with a serious
air and ends with a smile ; with humour the order is
reversed. The words of Mercutio quoted above may
serve as an example of humour. Also in "Hamlet" —
Polonius : " My honourable lord, I will most humbly take
my leave of you. Hamlet : You cannot, sir, take from
me anything that I will more willingly part withal, except
my life, except my life, except my life." Again, before
the introduction of the play at court, Hamlet says to
Ophelia : " What should a man do but be merry ? for,
look you, how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father
died within these two hours. Ophelia: Nay, 'tis twice
two months, my lord. Hamlet : So long ? Nay, then let
the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables."

ON THE THEORY OF THE LUDICROUS. 283

Again, in Jean Paul's " Titan," when Schoppe, melancholy
and now brooding over himself, frequently looking at his
hands, says to himself, " There sits a lord in bodily reality,
and I in him ; but who is such ? " Heinrich Heine
appears as a true humourist in his " Romancero." Behind
all his jokes and drollery we discern a profound serious
ness, which is ashamed to appear unveiled. Accordingly
humour depends upon a special kind of mood or temper
(German, Laune, probably from Luna) through which
conception in all its modifications, a decided predomi
nance of the subjective over the objective in the appre
hension of the external world, is thought. Moreover,
every poetical or artistic presentation of a comical, or
indeed even a farcical scene, through which a serious
thought yet glimmers as its concealed background, is a
production of humour, thus is humorous. Such, for
example, is a coloured drawing of Tischbein's, which
represents an empty room, lighted only by the blazing
fire in the grate. Before the fire stands a man with his
coat off, in such a position that his shadow, going out
from his feet, stretches across the whole room. Tischbein
comments thus on the drawing : " This is a man who has
succeeded in nothing in the world, and who has made
nothing of it; now he rejoices that he can throw such
a large shadow." Now, if I had to express the serious
ness that lies concealed behind this jest, I could best
do so by means of the following verse taken from the
Persian poem of Anwari Soheili : —

" If them hast lost possession of a world,

Be not distressed, for it is nought ;
Or hast thou gained possession of a world,

Be not o'erjoyed, for it is nought.
Our pains, our gains, all pass away ;

Get thee beyond the world, for it is nought."

That at the present day the word homorous is generally
iised in German literature in the sense of comical arises
from the miserable desire to give things a more distin-

284 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER VIII.

guished name than belongs to them, the name of a class
that stands above them. Thus every inn must be called
a hotel, every money-changer a banker, every concert a
musical academy, the merchant's counting-house a bureau,
the potter an artist in clay, and therefore also every clown
a humourist. The word humour is borrowed from the
English to denote a quite peculiar species of the ludicrous,
which indeed, as was said above, is related to the sublime,
and which was first remarked by them. But it is not
intended to be used as the title for all kinds of jokes and
buffoonery, as is now universally the case in Germany,
without opposition from men of letters and scholars ; for
the true conception of that modification, that tendency of
the mind, that child of the sublime and the ridiculous,
would be too subtle and too high for their public, to
please which they take pains to make everything flat and
vulgar. Well, "high words and a low meaning" is in
general the motto of the noble present, and accordingly
now-a-days he is called a humourist who was formerly
called a buffoon.

CHAPTEE IX.1

ON LOGIC IN GENERAL.

LOGIC, Dialectic, and Ehetoric go together, because they
make up the whole of a technic of reason, and under this
title they ought also to be taught — Logic as the technic
of our own thinking, Dialectic of disputing with others,
and Ehetoric of speaking to many (concionatio) ; thus cor
responding to the singular, dual, and plural, and to the
monologue, the dialogue, and the panegyric.

Under Dialectic I understand, in agreement with Aris
totle (Metaph., iii. 2, and Analyt. Post., i. n), the art of
conversation directed to the mutual investigation of truth,
especially philosophical truth. But a conversation of this
kind necessarily passes more or less into controversy ;
therefore dialectic may also be explained as the art of
disputation. We have examples and patterns of dialectic
in the Platonic dialogues ; but for the special theory of it,
thus for the technical rules of disputation, eristics, very
little has hitherto been accomplished. I have worked
out an attempt of the kind, and given an example of it,
in the second volume of the " Parerga," therefore I shall
pass over the exposition of this science altogether here.

In Ehetoric the rhetorical figures are very much what
the syllogistic figures are in Logic ; at all events they are
worth considering. In Aristotle's time they seem to have
not yet become the object of theoretical investigation, for
he does not treat of them in any of his rhetorics, and in

1 This chapter and the one which follows it are connected with § 9 of
the first volume.

286 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER IX.

this reference we are referred to Eutilius Lupus, the epito-
miser of a later Gorgias.

All the three sciences have this in common, that with
out having learned them we follow their rules, which
indeed are themselves first abstracted from this natural
employment of them. Therefore, although they are of
great theoretical interest, they are of little practical use ;
partly because, though they certainly give the rule, they
do not give the case of its application ; partly because in
practice there is generally no time to recollect the rules.
Thus they teach only what every one already knows and
practises of his own accord ; but yet the abstract know
ledge of this is interesting and important. Logic will not
easily have a practical value, at least for our own thinking.
For the errors of our own reasoning scarcely ever lie in
the inferences nor otherwise in the form, but in the judg
ments, thus in the matter of thought. In controversy, on
the other hand, we can sometimes derive some practical
use from logic, by taking the more or less intentionally
deceptive argument of our opponent, which he advances
under the garb and cover of continuous speech, and
referring it to the strict form of regular syllogisms, and
thus convicting it of logical errors ; for example, simple
conversion of universal affirmative judgments, syllogisms
with four terms, inferences from the consequent to the
reason, syllogisms in the second figure with merely affir
mative premisses, and many such.

It seems to me that the doctrine of the laws of thought
might be simplified if we were only to set up two, the
law of excluded middle and that of sufficient reason. The
former thus : " Every predicate can either be affirmed or
denied of every subject." Here it is already contained in
the " either, or " that both cannot occur at once, and con
sequently just what is expressed by the laws of identity
and contradiction. Thus these would be added as corol
laries of that principle which really says that every two
concept-spheres must be thought either as united or as

ON LOGIC IN GENERAL. 287

separated, but never as both at once ; and therefore, even
although words are brought together which express the
latter, these words assert a process of thought which can
not be carried out. The consciousness of this infeasibility
is the feeling of contradiction. The second law of thought,
the principle of sufficient reason, would affirm that the
above attributing or denying must be determined by some
thing different from the judgment itself, which may be a
(pure or empirical) perception, or merely another judg
ment. This other and different thing is then called the
ground or reason of the judgment. So far as a judgment
satisfies the first law of thought, it is thinkable ; so far as
it satisfies the second, it is true, or at least in the case in
which the ground of a judgment is only another judgment
it is logically or formally true. But, finally, material or
absolute truth is always the relation between a judgment
and a perception, thus between the abstract and the con
crete or perceptible idea. This is either an immediate
relation or it is brought about by means of other judg
ments, i.e., through other abstract ideas. From this it is
easy to see that one truth can never overthrow another,
but all must ultimately agree ; because in the concrete or
perceptible, which is their common foundation, no contra
diction is possible. Therefore no truth has anything to
fear from other truths. Illusion and error have to fear
every truth, because through the logical connection of all
truths even the most distant must some time strike its
blow at every error. This second law of thought is there
fore the connecting link between logic and what is no

o o

longer logic, but the matter of thought. Consequently
the agreement of the conceptions, thus of the abstract
idea with what is given in the perceptible idea, is, on
the side of the object truth, and on the side of the subject
knowledge.

To express the union or separation of two concept-
spheres referred to above is the work of the copula, " is
— is not." Through this every verb can be expressed by

288 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER IX.

means of its participle. Therefore all judging consists in
the use of a verb, and vice versd. Accordingly the signi
ficance of the copula is that the predicate is to be thought
in the subject, nothing more. Now, consider what the
content of the infinitive of the copula " to be " amounts
to. But this is a principal theme of the professors of
philosophy of the present time. However, we must not
be too strict with them ; most of them wish to express
by it nothing but material things, the corporeal world, to
which, as perfectly innocent realists at the bottom of their
hearts, they attribute the highest reality. To speak, how
ever, of the bodies so directly appears to them too vulgar ;
and therefore they say " being," which they think sounds
better, and think in connection with it the tables and
chairs standing before them.

" For, because, why, therefore, thus, since, although, in
deed, yet, but, if, then, either, or," and more like these, are
properly logical particles, for their only end is to express
the form of the thought processes. They are therefore a
valuable possession of a language, and do not belong to all
in equal numbers. Thus "zwar" (the contracted " es ist
wahr ") seems to belong exclusively to the German lan
guage. It is always connected with an "aler" which
follows or is added in thought, as " if " is connected with
" then."

The logical rule that, as regards quantity, singular judg
ments, that is, judgments which have a singular conception
(notio singularis) for their subject, are to be treated as
universal judgments, depends upon the circumstance that
they are in fact universal judgments, which have merely
the peculiarity that their subject is a conception which
can only be supported by a single real object, and there
fore only contains a single real object under it ; as when
the conception is denoted by a proper name. This, how
ever, has really only to be considered when we proceed
from the abstract idea to the concrete or perceptible, thus
seek to realise the conceptions. In thinking itself, in

ON LOGIC IN GENERAL. 289

operating with judgments, this makes no difference, simply
because between singular and universal conceptions there
is no logical difference. " Immanuel Kant " signifies logi
cally, " all Immanuel Kant." Accordingly the quantity
of judgments is really only of two kinds — universal and
particular. An individual idea cannot be the subject of a
judgment, because it is not an abstraction, it is not some
thing thought, but something perceived. Every concep
tion, on the other hand, is essentially universal, and every
judgment must have a conception as its subject.

The difference between particular judgments (proposi-
tiones particulares) and universal judgments often depends
merely on the external and contingent circumstance that
the language has no word to express by itself the part
that is here to be separated from the general conception
which forms the subject of such a judgment. If there
were such a word many a particular judgment would be
universal. For example, the particular judgment, " Some
trees bear gall-nuts," becomes a universal judgment, be
cause for this part of the conception, " tree," we have a
special word, " All oaks bear gall-nuts." In the same way
is the judgment, " Some men are black," related to the
judgment, " All negroes are black." Or else this differ
ence depends upon the fact that in the mind of him who
judges the conception which he makes the subject of the
particular judgment has not become clearly separated
from the general conception as a part of which he defines
it ; otherwise he could have expressed a universal instead
of a particular judgment. For example, instead of the
judgment, " Some ruminants have upper incisors," this,
" All unhorned ruminants have upper incisors."

The liyijotlictical and disjunctive judgments are assertions
as to the relation of two (in the case of the disjunctive
judgment even several) categorical judgments to each other.
The hypothetical judgment asserts that the truth of the
second of the two categorical judgments here linked to
gether depends upon the truth of the first, arid the

VOL. n. T

290 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER IX.

falseness of the first depends upon the falseness of the
second; thus that these two propositions stand in direct
community as regards truth and falseness. The disjunctive
judgment, on the other hand, asserts that upon the truth
of one of the categorical judgments here linked together
depends the falseness of the others, and conversely ; thus
that these propositions are in conflict as regards truth and
falseness. The question is a judgment, one of whose three
parts is left open : thus either the copula, " Is Caius a
Roman — or not ? " or the predicate, " Is Caius a Roman —
or something else ? " or the subject, " Is Caius a Roman —
or is it some one else who is a Roman ? " The place of
the conception which is left open may also remain quite
empty ; for example, " What is Caius ? " — " Who is a
Roman ? "

The e7ra7&>7?7, inductio, is with Aristotle the opposite
of the aTraycayr}. The latter proves a proposition to be
false by showing that what would follow from it is not
true ; thus by the instantia in contrarium. The eTraywyr),
on the other hand, proves the truth of a proposition by
showing that what would follow from it is true. Thus it
leads by means of examples to our accepting something
while the cnrarywyr) leads to our rejecting it. Therefore
the eTraywyrj, or induction, is an inference from the con
sequents to the reason, and indeed modo ponente ; for from
many cases it establishes the rule, from which these cases
then in their turn follow. On this account it is never
perfectly certain, but at the most arrives at very great
probability. However, this formal uncertainty may yet
leave room for material certainty through the number of
the sequences observed ; in the same way as in mathe
matics the irrational relations are brought infinitely
near to rationality by means of decimal fractions. The
aTrajwyTj, on the contrary, is primarily an inference from
the reason to the consequents, though it is afterwards
carried out modo tollente, in that it proves the non-
existence of a necessary consequent, and thereby destroys

ON LOGIC IN GENERAL. 291

the truth of the assumed reason. On this account it is
always perfectly certain, and accomplishes more by a
single example in contrarium than the induction does by
innumerable examples in favour of the proposition pro
pounded. So much easier is it to refute than to prove, to
overthrow than to establish.

( 292 )

CHAPTER X.

OX THE SYLLOGISM.

ALTHOUGH it is very hard to establish a new and correct
view of a subject which for more than two thousand
years has been handled by innumerable writers, and
which, moreover, does not receive additions through the
growth of experience, yet this must not deter me from
presenting to the thinker for examination the following
attempt of this kind.

An inference is that operation of our reason by virtue of
which, through the comparison of two' judgments a third
judgment arises, without the assistance of any knowledge
otherwise obtained. The condition of this is that these
two judgments have one conception in common, for other
wise they are foreign to each other and have no com
munity. But under this condition they become the father
and mother of a child that contains in itself something of
both. Moreover, this operation is no arbitrary act, but
an act of the reason, which, when it has considered such
judgments, performs it of itself according to its own laws.
So far it is objective, not subjective, and therefore subject
to the strictest rules.

We may ask in passing whether he who draws an infer
ence really learns something new from the new propo
sition, something previously unknown to him ? Not
absolutely; but yet to a certain extent he does. What
he learns lay in what he knew : thus he knew it also, but
he did not know that he knew it ; which is as if he had
something, but did not know that he had it, and this is

ON THE SYLLOGISM. 293

just the same as if he had it not. He knew it only im-
plicite, now he knows it explicite ; but this distinction
may be so great that the conclusion appears to him a
new truth. For example :

All diamonds are stones ;
All diamonds are combustible :
Therefore some stones are combustible.
The nature of inference consequently consists in this, that
we bring it to distinct consciousness that we have already
thought in the premisses what is asserted in the con
clusion. It is therefore a means of becoming more dis
tinctly conscious of one's own knowledge, of learning
more fully, or becoming aware of what one knows. The
knowledge which is afforded by the conclusion was latent,
and therefore had just as little effect as latent heat has
on the thermometer. Whoever has salt has also chlorine ;
but it is as if he had it not, for it can only act as chlorine
if it is chemically evolved ; thus only, then, does he really
possess it. It is the same with the gain which a mere
conclusion from already known premisses affords : a previ
ously bound or latent knowledge is thereby set/ree. These
comparisons may indeed seem to be somewhat strained, but
yet they really are not. For because we draw many of the
possible inferences from our knowledge very soon, very
rapidly, and without formality, and therefore have no dis
tinct recollection of them, it seems to us as if no premisses
for possible conclusions remained long stored up unused,
but as if we already had also conclusions prepared for all
the premisses within reach of our knowledge. But this is
not always the case ; on the contrary, two premisses may
have for a long time an isolated existence in the same mind,
till at last some occasion brings them together, and then
the conclusion suddenly appears, as the spark conies from
the steel and the stone only when they are struck together.
In reality the premisses assumed from without, both for
theoretical insight and for motives, which bring about re
solves, often lie for a long time in us, and become, partly

294 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER X.

through half-conscious, and even inarticulate, processes of
thought, compared with the rest of our stock of knowledge,
reflected upon, and, as it were, shaken up together, till at
last the right major finds the right minor, and these imme
diately take up their proper places, and at once the conclu
sion exists as a light that has suddenly arisen for us, without
any action on our part, as if it were an inspiration ; for we
cannot comprehend how we and others have so long been
in ignorance of it. It is true that in a happily organised
mind this process goes on more quickly and easily than in
ordinary minds ; and just because it is carried on spon
taneously and without distinct consciousness it cannot be
learned. Therefore Goethe says : " How easy anything is
he knows who has discovered it, he knows who has attained
to it." As an illustration of the process of thought here
described we may compare it to those padlocks which con
sist of rings with letters ; hanging on the box of a travelling
carriage, they are shaken so long that at last the letters of
the word come together in their order and the lock opens.
For the rest, we must also remember that the syllogism
consists in the process of thought itself, and the words
and propositions through which it is expressed only
indicate the traces it has left behind it — they are related
to it as the sound-figures of sand are related to the notes
whose vibrations they express. When we reflect upon
something, we collect our data, reduce them to judgments,
which are all quickly brought together and compared, and
thereby the conclusions which it is possible to draw from
them are instantly arrived at by means of the use of all
the three syllogistic figures. Yet on account of the great
rapidity of this operation only a few words are used, and
sometimes none at all, and only the conclusion is formally
expressed. Thus it sometimes happens that because in
this way, or even merely intuitively, i.e., by a happy
apperqu, we have brought some new truth to consciousness,
we now treat it as a conclusion and seek premisses for it,
that is, we desire to prove it, for as a rule knowledge

ON THE SYLLOGISM. 295

exists earlier than its proofs. We then go through our
stock of knowledge in order to see whether we can find
some truth in it in which the newly discovered truth was
already implicitly contained, or two propositions which
would give this as a result if they were brought together
according to rule. On the other hand, every judicial
proceeding affords a most complete and imposing syllo
gism, a syllogism in the first figure. The civil or criminal
transgression complained of is the minor ; it is established
by the prosecutor. The law applicable to the case is the
major. The judgment is the conclusion, which therefore,
as something necessary, is "merely recognised" by the
judge.

But now I shall attempt to give the simplest and most
correct exposition of the peculiar mechanism of inference.

Judging, this elementary and most important process
of thought, consists in the comparison of two concep
tions ; inference in the comparison of two judgments. Yet
ordinarily in text-books inference is also referred to
the comparison of conceptions, though of three, because
from the relation which two of these conceptions have
to a third their relation to each other may be known.
Truth cannot be denied to this view also ; and since it
affords opportunity for the perceptible demonstration of
syllogistic relations by means of drawn concept-spheres,
a method approved of by me in the text, it has the
advantage of making the matter easily comprehensible.
But it seems to me that here, as in so many cases, com-
prehensibility is attained at the cost of thoroughness.
The real process of thought in inference, with which the
three syllogistic figures and their necessity precisely agree,
is not thus recognised. In inference we operate not with
mere conceptions but with whole judgments, to which
quality, which lies only in the copula and not in the
conceptions, and also quantity are absolutely essential,
and indeed we have further to add modality. That
exposition of inference as a relation of three conceptions

296 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER X.

fails in this, that it at once resolves the judgments into
their ultimate elements (the conceptions), and thus the
means of combining these is lost, and that which is
peculiar to the judgments as such and in their complete
ness, which is just what constitutes the necessity of the
conclusion which follows from them, is lost sight of. It
thus falls into an error analogous to that which organic
chemistry would commit if, for example, in the analysis
of plants it were at once to reduce them to their ultimate
elements, when it would find in all plants carbon, hydro
gen, and oxygen, but would lose the specific differences, to
obtain which it is necessary to stop at their more special
elements, the so-called alkaloids, and to take care to
analyse these in their turn. From three given concep
tions no conclusion can as yet be drawn. It may certainly
be said : the relation of two of them to the third must
be given with them. But it is just the judgments which
combine these conceptions, that are the expression of
this relation; thus judgments, not mere conceptions, are
the material of the inference. Accordingly inference is
essentially a comparison of two judgments. The process
of thought in our mind is concerned with these and the
thoughts expressed by them, not merely with three con
ceptions. This is the case even when this process is
imperfectly or not at all expressed in words ; and it is
as such, as a bringing together of the complete and un-
analysed judgments, that we must consider it in order
properly to understand the technical procedure of infer
ence. From this there will then also follow the necessity
for three really rational syllogistic figures.

As in the exposition of syllogistic reasoning by means
of concept- spheres these are presented to the mind under
the form of circles, so in the exposition by means of
entire judgments we have to think these tinder the form
of rods, which, for the purpose of comparison, are held
together now by one end, now by the other. The different
ways in which this can take place give the three figures.

ON THE SYLLOGISM. 297

Since now every premiss contains its subject and its
predicate, these two conceptions are to be imagined as
situated at the two ends of each rod. The two judgments
are now compared with reference to the two different
conceptions in them ; for, as has already been said, the
third conception must be the same in both, and is there
fore subject to no comparison, but is that with which, that
is, in reference to which, the other two are compared ; it
is the middle. The latter is accordingly always only the
means and not the chief concern. The two different con
ceptions, on the other hand, are the subject of reflection,
and to find out their relation to each other by means of
the judgments in which they are contained is the aim of
the syllogism. Therefore the conclusion speaks only of
them, not of the middle, which was only a means, a
measuring rod, which we let fall as soon as it has served
its end. Now if this conception which is identical in both
propositions, thus the middle, is the subject of one pre
miss, the conception to be compared with it must be the
predicate, and conversely. Here at once is established a
priori the possibility of three cases ; either the subject of
one premiss is compared with the predicate of the other,
or the subject of the one with the subject of the other,
or, finally, the predicate of the one with the predicate of
the other. Hence arise the three syllogistic figures of
Aristotle ; the fourth, which was added somewhat im
pertinently, is ungenuine and a spurious form. It is attri
buted to Galenus, but this rests only on Arabian authority.
Each of the three figures exhibits a perfectly different, cor
rect, and natural thought-process of the reason in inference.
If in the two judgments to be compared the relation be
tween the predicate of the one and the subject of the other
is the object of the comparison, the first figure appears.
This figure alone has the advantage that the conceptions
which in the conclusion are subject and predicate both
appear already in the same character in the premisses ;
while in the two other figures one of them must always

298 FIRST BOOK CHAPTER X.

change its roll in the conclusion. But thus in the first
figure the result is always less novel and surprising than
in the other two. Now this advantage in the first figure is
obtained by the fact that the predicate of the major is
compared with the subject of the minor, but not conversely,
which is therefore here essential, and involves that the
middle should assume both the positions, i.e., it is the sub
ject in the major and the predicate in the minor. And from
this again arises its subordinate significance, for it appears
as a mere weight which we lay at pleasure now in one
scale and now in the other. The course of thought in
this figure is, that the predicate of the major is attributed
to the subject of the minor, because the subject of the
major is the predicate of the minor, or, in the negative
case, the converse holds for the same reason. Thus here a
property is attributed to the things thought through a con
ception, because it depends upon another property which
we already know they possess ; or conversely. Therefore
here the guiding principle is : Nota notcc est nota rei ipsius,
et repugnans notce repugnat rei ipsi.

If, on the other hand, we compare two judgments with
the intention of bringing out the relation which the sub
jects of both may have to each other, we must take as the
common measure their predicate. This will accordingly
be here the middle, and must therefore be the same in
both judgments. Hence arises the second figure. In it
the relation of two subjects to each other is determined
by that which they have as their common predicate. But
this relation can only have significance if the same predi
cate is attributed to the one subject and denied of the
other, for thus it becomes an essential ground of distinc
tion between the two. For if it were attributed to both
the subjects this could decide nothing as to their relation
to each other, for almost every predicate belongs to innu
merable subjects. Still less would it decide this relation
if the predicate were denied of both the subjects. From
this follows the fundamental characteristic of the second

ON THE SYLLOGISM 299

figure, that the premisses must be of opposite quality ; the
one must affirm and the other deny. Therefore here the
principal rule is : Sit altcra neyans ; the corollary of which
is : E meris affirmativis nihil sequiter; a rule which is some
times transgressed in a loose argument obscured by many
parenthetical propositions. The course of thought which
this figure exhibits distinctly appears from what has been
said. It is the investigation of two kinds of things with
the view of distinguishing them, thus of establishing that
they are not of the same species ; which is here decided by
showing that a certain property is essential to the one
kind, which the other lacks. That this course of thought
assumes the second figure of its own accord, and ex
presses itself clearly only in it, will be shown by an
example :

All fishes have cold blood ;
No whale has cold blood :
Thus no whale is a fish.

In the first figure, on the other hand, this thought ex
hibits itself in a weak, forced, and ultimately patched-up
form :

Nothing that has cold blood is a whale ;
All fishes have cold blood :
Thus no fish is a whale,
And consequently no whale is a fish.
Take also an example with an affirmative minor :
No Mohamedan is a Jew ;
Some Turks are Jews :
Therefore some Turks are not Mohamedans.
As the guiding principle for this figure I therefore
give, for the mood with the negative minor : Cui repugnat
nota, etiam rcpugnat notatum; and for the mood with the
affirmative minor : Notato rcpugnat id cui nota repugnat.
Translated these may be thus combined : Two subjects
which stand in opposite relations to one predicate have a
negative relation to each other.

The third case is that in which we place two judgments

300 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER X.

together in order to investigate the relation of their predi
cates. Hence arises the third figure,in which accordingly the
middle appears in both premisses as the subject. It is also
here the tertium comparationis, the measure which is ap
plied to both the conceptions which are to be investigated,
or, as it were, a chemical reagent, with which we test
them both in order to learn from their relation to it what
relation exists between themselves. Thus, then, the con
clusion declares whether a relation of subject and predi
cate exists between the two, and to what extent this is
the case. Accordingly, what exhibits itself in this figure
is reflection concerning two properties which we are in
clined to regard either as incompatible, or else as insepa
rable, and in order to decide this we attempt to make
them the predicates of one subject in two judgments.
From this it results either that both properties belong
to the same thing, consequently their compatibility, or else
that a thing has the one but not the other, consequently
their separableness. The former in all moods with two
affirmative premisses, the latter in all moods with one
negative ; for example :

Some brutes can speak ;

All brutes are irrational :

Therefore some irrational beings can speak.
According to Kant (Die Falsche Spitzfiniglceit, § 4) this
inference would only be conclusive if we added in thought :
" Therefore some irrational beings are brutes." But this
seems to be here quite superfluous and by no means the
natural process of thought. But in order to carry out the
same process of thought directly by means of the first
figure I must say :

" All brutes are irrational ;

Some beings that can speak are brutes,"
which is clearly not the natural course of thought; in
deed the conclusion which would then follow, " Some
beings that can speak are irrational," would have to be
converted in order to preserve the conclusion which the

ON THE SYLLOGISM. 301

third figure gives of itself, and at which the whole course
of thought has aimed. Let us take another example :
All alkalis float in water ;
All alkalis are metals :
Therefore some metals float in water.
When this is transposed into the first figure the minor
must be converted, and thus runs : " Some metals are
alkalis." It therefore merely asserts that some metals lie

in the sphere "alkalis," thus I AikaiiB.( ) Metais. ), while our
actual knowledge is that all alkalis lie in the sphere

/ Metala. >.

" metals," thus : ( /• — . ] It follows that if the first

figure is to be regarded as the only normal one, in order
to think naturally we would have to think less than we
know, and to think indefinitely while we know definitely.
This assumption has too much against it. Thus in general
it must be denied that when we draw inferences in the
second and third figures we tacitly convert a proposition.
On the contrary, the third, and also the second, figure
exhibits just as rational a process of thought as the first.
Let us now consider another example of the other class
of the third figure, in which the separableness of two
predicates is the result ; on account of which one premiss
must here be negative :

No Buddhist believes in a God ;

Some Buddhists are rational :

Therefore some rational beings do not believe in a God.

As in the examples given above the compatibility of
two properties is the problem of reflection, now their
separableness is its problem, which here also must be de
cided by comparing them with one subject and showing

3o2 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER X.

that one of tliern is present in it without the other. Thus
the end is directly attained, while by means of the first
figure it could only be attained indirectly. For in order
to reduce the syllogism to the first figure we must convert
the minor, and therefore say : " Some rational beings are
Buddhists," which would be only a faulty expression of
its meaning, which really is : " Some Buddhists are yet
certainly rational."

As the guiding principle of this figure I therefore give :
for the affirmative moods: Ejusdem rei notce, modo sit
altera univcrsalis, sibi invicem sunt notce particular -es ; and
for the negative moods : Nota rei competens, notce eidem
repugnanti, particulariter repugnat, modo sit altera univer-
salis. Translated : If two predicates are affirmed of one
subject, and at least one of them universally, they are
also affirmed of each other particularly ; and, on the con
trary, they are denied of each other particularly when
ever one of them contradicts the subject of which the
other is affirmed ; provided always that either the con
tradiction or the affirmation be universal.

In the fourth figure the subject of the major has to
be compared with the predicate of the minor; but in
the conclusion they must both exchange their value and
position, so that what was the subject of the major appears
as the predicate of the conclusion, and what was the
predicate of the minor appears as the subject of the con
clusion. By this it becomes apparent that this figure is
merely the first, wilfully turned upside down, and by no
means the expression of a real process of thought natural
to the reason.

On the other hand, the first three figures are the ectypes
of three real and essentially different operations of thought.
They have this in common, that they consist in the com
parison of two judgments ; but such a comparison only
becomes fruitful when these judgments have one con
ception in common. If we present the premisses to our
imagination under the sensible form of two rods, we can

ON THE SYLLOGISM. 303

think of this conception as a clasp that links them to
each other ; indeed in lecturing one might provide oneself
with such rods. On the other hand, the three figures are
distinguished by this, that those judgments are compared
either with reference to the subjects of both, or to the pre
dicates of both, or lastly, with reference to the subject of
the one and the predicate of the other. Since now every
conception has the property of being subject or predicate
only because it is already part of a judgment, this con
firms my view that in the syllogism only judgments are
primarily compared, and conceptions only because they
are parts of judgments. In the comparison of two judg
ments, however, the essential question is, in respect of
what are they compared ? not ly what means are they
compared ? The former consists of the concepts which
are different in the two judgments ; the latter consists of
the middle, that is, the conception which is identical in
both. It is therefore not the right point of view which
Lambert, and indeed really Aristotle, and almost all the
moderns have taken in starting from the middle in the
analysis of syllogisms, and making it the principal matter
and its position the essential characteristic of the syllo
gisms. On the contrary, its roll is only secondary, and
its position a consequence of the logical value of the
conceptions which are really to be compared in the syllo
gism. These may be compared to two substances which
are to be chemically tested, and the middle to the reagent
by which they are tested. It therefore always takes the
place which the conceptions to be compared leave vacant,
and does not appear again in the conclusion. It is selected
according to our knowledge of its relation to both the
conceptions and its suitableness for the place it has to
take up. Therefore in many cases we can change it at
pleasure for another without affecting the syllogism. For
example, in the syllogism :

All men are mortal ;
Caius is a man :

304 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER X.

I can exchange the middle " man " for " animal exist
ence." In the syllogism :

All diamonds are stones ;
All diamonds are combustible :

I can exchange the middle " diamond " for " anthracite."
As an external mark by which we can recognise at once
the figure of a syllogism the middle is certainly very
useful. But as the fundamental characteristic of a thing
which is to be explained, we must take what is essential
to it ; and what is essential here is, whether we place two
propositions together in order to compare their predicates
or their subjects, or the predicate of the one and the
subject of the other.

Therefore, in order as premisses to yield a conclusion,
two judgments must have a conception in common ;
further, they must not both be negative, nor both parti
cular ; and lastly, in the case in which the conceptions to
be compared are the subjects of both, they must not both
be affirmative.

The voltaic pile may be regarded as a sensible image of
the syllogism. Its point of indifference, at the centre,
represents the middle, which holds together the two pre
misses, and by virtue of which they have the power of
yielding a conclusion. The two different conceptions, on
the other hand, which are really what is to be compared,
are represented by the two opposite poles of the pile.
Only because these are brought together by means of
their two conducting wires, which represent the copulas
of the two judgments, is the spark emitted upon their
contact — the new lidit of the conclusion.

CHAPTER XT.1

OX RHETORIC.

ELOQUENCE is the faculty of awakening in others our
view of a thing, or our opinion about it, of kindling in
them our feeling concerning it, and thus putting them
in sympathy with us. And all this by conducting the
stream of our thought into their minds, through the
medium of words, with such force as to carry their
thought from the direction it has already taken, and
sweep it along witli ours in its course. The more their
previous course of thought differs from ours, the greater
is this achievement. From this it is easily understood
how personal conviction and passion make a man elo
quent ; and in general, eloquence is more the gift of
nature than the work of art; yet here, also, art will
support nature.

In order to convince another of a truth which conflicts
with an error he firmly holds, the first rule to be observed,
is an easy and natural one : let the premisses come first, and
the conclusion follow. Yet this rule is seldom observed,
but reversed ; for zeal, eagerness, and dogmatic positive-
ness urge us to proclaim the conclusion loudly and noisily
against him who adheres to the opposed error. This easily
makes him shy, and now he opposes his will to all reasons
and premisses, knowing already to what conclusion they
lead. Therefore we ought rather to keep the conclusion
completely concealed, and only advance the premisses

1 This chapter is connected with the conclusion of § 9 of the first volume.
VOL. II. U

306 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XI.

distinctly, fully, and in different lights. Indeed, if possible,
we ought not to express the conclusion at all. It will
come necessarily and regularly of its own accord into the
reason of the hearers, and the conviction thus born in
themselves will be all the more genuine, and will also
be accompanied by self-esteem instead of shame. In
difficult cases we may even assume the air of desiring to
arrive at a quite opposite conclusion from that which we
really have in view. An example of this is the famous
speech of Antony in Shakspeare's " Julius Csesar."

In defending a thing many persons err by confidently
advancing everything imaginable that can be said for it,
mixing up together what is true, half true, and merely
plausible. But the false is soon recognised, or at any rate
felt, and throws suspicion also upon the cogent and true
arguments which were brought forward along with it.
Give then the true and weighty pure and alone, and
beware of defending a truth with inadequate, and there
fore, since they are set up as adequate, sophistical reasons ;
for the opponent upsets these, and thereby gains the
appearance of having upset the truth itself which was
supported by them, that is, he makes argumenta ad
hominem hold good as argumenta ad rem. The Chinese
go, perhaps, too far the other way, for they have the
saying : " He who is eloquent and has a sharp tongue
may always leave half of a sentence unspoken ; and he
who has right on his side may confidently yield three-
tenths of his assertion."

( 307 )

CHAPTER XII. i

ON THE DOCTRINE OF SCIENCE.

FROM the analysis of the different functions of our intellect
given in the whole of the preceding chapters, it is clear
that for a correct use of it, either in a theoretical or a
practical reference, the following conditions are demanded:
(i.) The correct apprehension through perception of the
real things taken into consideration, and of all their
essential properties and relations, thus of all data. (2.)
The construction of correct conceptions out of these ; thus
the connotation of those properties under correct abstrac
tions, which now become the material of the subsequent
thinking. (3.) The comparison of those conceptions both
with the perceived object and among themselves, and
with the rest of our store of conceptions, so that correct
judgments, pertinent to the matter in hand, and fully
comprehending and exhausting it, may proceed from them ;
thus the right estimation of the matter. (4.) The placing
together or combination of those judgments as the premisses
of syllogisms. This may be done very differently accord
ing to the choice and arrangement of the judgments, and
yet the actual result of the whole operation primarily
depends upon it. What is really of importance here is
that from among so many possible combinations of those
different judgments which have to do with the matter
free deliberation should hit upon the very ones which
serve the purpose and are decisive. But if in the first
function, that is, in the apprehension through perception

1 This chapter is connected with § 14 of the first volume.

308 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XII.

of the things and relations, any single essential point lias
been overlooked, the correctness of all the succeeding
operations of the mind cannot prevent the result from
being false; for there lie the data, the material of the
whole investigation. Without the certainty that these are
correctly and completely collected, one ought to abstain,
iu important matters, from any definite decision.

A conception is correct ; a judgment is true; a body is
real; and a relation is evident. A proposition of immedi
ate certainty is an axiom. Only the fundamental principles
of logic, and those of mathematics drawn a priori from in
tuition or perception, and finally also the law of causality,
have immediate certainty. A proposition of indirect
certainty is a maxim, and that by means of which it
obtains its certainty is the proof. If immediate certainty
is attributed to a proposition which has no such certainty,
this is a petitio principii. A proposition which appeals
directly to the empirical perception is an assertion: to
confront it with such perception demands judgment.
Empirical perception can primarily afford us only par
ticular, not universal truths. Through manifold repetition
and confirmation such truths indeed obtain a certain uni
versality also, but it is only comparative and preca
rious, because it is still always open to attack. But if a
proposition has absolute universality, the perception to
which it appeals is not empirical but a priori. Thus
Logic and Mathematics alone are absolutely certain
sciences ; but they really teach us only what we already
knew beforehand. For they are merely explanations of
that of which we are conscious a priori, the forms of our
own knowledge, the one being concerned with the forms
of thinking, the other with those of perceiving. Therefore
we spin them entirely out of ourselves. All other scien
tific knowledge is empirical.

A proof proves too much if it extends to things or cases
of which that which is to be proved clearly does not hold
good ; therefore it is refuted apagogically by these. The

ON THE DOCTRINE OF SCIENCE. 309

dedudio ad dbsurdum properly consists in this, that we
take a false assertion which has been made as the major
proposition of a syllogism, then add to it a correct minor,
and arrive at a conclusion which clearly contradicts facts
of experience or unquestionable truths. But by some
round-about way such a refutation must be possible of
every false doctrine. For the defender of this will yet
certainly recognise and admit some truth or other, and
then the consequences of this, and on the other hand
those of the false assertion, must be followed out until
we arrive at two propositions which directly contradict
each other. We find many examples in Plato of this
beautiful artifice of genuine dialectic.

A correct hypothesis is nothing more than the true and
complete expression of the present fact, which the origi
nator of the hypothesis has intuitively apprehended in
its real nature and inner connection. For it tells us only
what really takes place here.

The opposition of the analytical and synthetical methods
we find already indicated by Aristotle, yet perhaps first
distinctly described by Proclus, who says quite correctly :
" M edoSoc Se TrapaSiSovrai' KaXXiarr] p.ev 1} Sta TTJS ava-
Xucreo)? e-Tr' ap^v 6/J,o\oyov/J.evrjv avayovcra TO fyrov^evov •
r]v KCLI nXcnwv, a>9 fyacn, Aao8a/j,avri -TrapeSw/cev. K. r. \."
(Methodi tradunlur sequences : pulcherrima quidem ea, qua;
per analysin qucesitum refert ad principium, de quo jam
convenit ; quam etiain Plato Laodamanti tradidisse dicitur.")
" In Primuin Eaclidis Librum," L. iii. Certainly the ana
lytical method consists in referring what is given to an
admitted principle ; the synthetical method, on the con
trary, in deduction from such a principle. They are there
fore analogous to the eTra^cojTj and aTra^ojyt] explained
in chapter ix. ; only the latter are not used to establish
propositions, but always to overthrow them. The analy
tical method proceeds from the facts ; the particular, to the
principle or rule ; the universal, or from the consequents
to the reasons ; the other conversely. Therefore it would

3io riRST BOOK. CHAPTER XII.

be much more correct to call them the inductive and the
deductive methods, for the customary names are unsuitable
and do not fully express the things.

If a philosopher tries to begin by thinking out the
methods in accordance with which he will philosophise,
he is like a poet who first writes a system of aesthetics in
order to poetise in accordance with it. Both of them may
be compared to a man who first sings himself a tune and
afterwards dances to it. The thinking mind must find
its way from original tendency. Rule and application,
method and achievement, must, like matter and form,
be inseparable. But after we have reached the goal we
may consider the path we have followed. ^Esthetics and
methodology are, from their nature, younger than poetry
and philosophy ; as grammar is younger than language,
thorough bass younger than music, and logic younger than
thought.

This is a fitting place to make, in passing, a remark by
means of which I should like to check a growing evil
while there is yet time. That Latin has ceased to be the
language of all scientific investigations has the disad
vantage that there is no longer an immediately common
scientific literature for the whole of Europe, but national
literatures. And thus every scholar is primarily limited
to a much smaller public, and moreover to a public ham
pered with national points of view and prejudices. Then
he must now learn the four principal European languages,
as well as the two ancient languages. In this it will be a
great assistance to him that the termini technici of all
sciences (with the exception of mineralogy) are, as an in
heritance from our predecessors, Latin or Greek. Therefore
all nations wisely retain these. Only the Germans have
hit upon the unfortunate idea of wishing to Germanise
the termini technici of all the sciences. This has two
great disadvantages. First, the foreign and also the Ger
man scholar is obliged to learn all the technical terms
of his science twice, which, when there are many — for

ON THE DOCTRINE OF SCIENCE. 311

example, in Anatomy — is an incredibly tiresome and
lengthy business. If the other nations were not in this
respect wiser than the Germans, we would have the
trouble of learning every terminus technicus five times.
If the Germans carry this further, foreign men of learning
will leave their books altogether unread ; for besides this
fault they are for the most part too diffuse, and are writ
ten in a careless, bad, and often affected and objectionable
style, and besides are generally conceived with a rude
disregard of the reader and his requirements. Secondly,
those Germanised forms of the termini technici are almost
throughout long, patched-up, stupidly chosen, awkward,
jarring words, not clearly separated from the rest of the
language, which therefore impress themselves with diffi
culty upon the memory, while the Greek and Latin ex
pressions chosen by the ancient and memorable founders
of the sciences possess the whole of the opposite good
qualities, and easily impress themselves on the memory
by their sonorous sound. What an ugly, harsh-sound
ing word, for instance, is " Stickstoff" instead of azot !
" Verbum," " siibstantiv" " adjectiv" are remembered and
distinguished more easily than " Zeitwort," " Nennwort"
" Beiwort" or even " Umstandswort " instead of " adver-
bium." In Anatomy it is quite unsupportable, and more
over vulgar and low. Even " Pidsader " and " Blutader "
are more exposed to momentary confusion than " Arterie "
and " Vene ; " but utterly bewildering are such expressions
as " Fruchthdlter," " Fruclitgang" and " Fruchtleiter " in
stead of " uterus," " vagina" and " tuba Faloppii" which yet
every doctor must know, and which he will find sufficient
in all European languages. In the same way "Speiche " and
" Ellcnbogenrohre " instead of " radius " and " ulna," which
all Europe has understood for thousands of years. Where
fore then this clumsy, confusing, drawling, and awkward
Germanising ? Not less objectionable is the translation
of the technical terms in Logic, in which our gifted profes
sors of philosophy are the creators of a new terminology,

312 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XII.

and almost every one of them has his own. With
G. E. Schulze, for example, the subject is called " Grund-
legriff" the predicate " Beilegunysbegriff ; " then there are
" Beilegungsschlusse" " Voraussctzungssclilusse," and "Untge-
gensetzungsschlilsse ; " the judgments have " Grosse," " Be-
schaffenheit," " Verhaltniss" and " Zuverldssigkeit" i.e.,
quantity, quality, relation, and modality. The same per
verse influence of this Germanising mania is to be found
in all the sciences. The Latin and Greek expressions have
the further advantage that they stamp the scientific con
ception as such, and distinguish it from the words of
common intercourse, and the ideas which cling to them
through association ; while, for example, " Speisebrei " in
stead of chyme seems to refer to the food of little children,
arid " Lungensack " instead of pleura, and " Herzbeutel "
instead of pericardium seem to have been invented by
butchers rather than anatomists. Besides this, the most
immediate necessity of learning the ancient languages de
pends upon the old termini technici, and they are more
and more in danger of being neglected through the use of
living languages in learned investigations. But if it comes
to this, if the spirit of the ancients bound up with their
languages disappears from a liberal education, then coarse
ness, insipidity, and vulgarity will take possession of the
whole of literature. For the works of the ancients are
the pole-star of every artistic or literary effort ; if it sets
they are lost. Even now we can observe from the miser
able and puerile style of most writers that they have
never written Latin.1 The study of the classical authors
is very properly called the study of Humanity, for through
it the student first becomes a man again, for he enters

1 A principal use of the study of Therefore we ought to pursue the

the ancients is that it preserves study of the ancients all our life,

us from verbosity ; for the ancients although reducing the time devoted

always take pains to write concisely to it. The ancients knew that we

and pregnantly, and the error of al- ought not to write as we speak,

most all moderns is verbosity, which The moderns, on the other hand,

the most recent try to make up for are not even ashamed to print lec-

by suppressing syllables and letters, tures they have delivered.

ON THE DOCTRINE OF SCIENCE. 513

into the world which was still free from all the absurdities
of the Middle Ages and of romanticism, which afterwards
penetrated so deeply into mankind in Europe that even
now every one comes into the world covered with it, and
has first to strip it off simply to become a man again.
Think not that your modern wisdom can ever supply the
place of that initiation into manhood ; ye are not, like
the Greeks and Eomans, born freemen, unfettered sons of
nature. Ye are first the sous and heirs of the barbarous
Middle Ages and of their madness, of infamous priestcraft,
and of half-brutal, half-childish chivalry. Though both
now gradually approach their end, yet ye cannot yet stand
on your own feet. Without the school of the ancients
your literature will degenerate into vulgar gossip and dull
philistinism. Thus for all these reasons it is my well-
intended counsel that an end be put at once to the
Germanising mania condemned above.

I shall further take the opportunity of denouncing here
the disorder which for some years has been introduced
into German orthography in an unprecedented manner.
Scribblers of every species have heard something of
conciseness of expression, but do not know that this
consists in the careful omission of everything super
fluous (to which, it is true, the whole of their writings
belong), but imagine they can arrive at it by clipping the
words as swindlers clip coin ; and every syllable which
appears to them superfluous, because they do not feel its
value, they cut off without more ado. For example, our
ancestors, with true tact, said " Beweis" and " Verweis;"
but, on the other hand, " Nacliweisung." The fine distinc
tion analogous to that between " Versuch" and " Versu-
chung" "Betraclit " and "£etrachtung" is not perceptible to
dull ears and thick skulls ; therefore they have invented
the word " Nachiucis," which has come at once into gene
ral use, for this only requires that an idea should be
thoroughly awkward and a blunder very gross. Accord
ingly a similar amputation has already been proposed in in-

314 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XII.

numerable words; for example, instead of " Dnter&uchung"
is written " Untersuch ; " nay, even instead of " allmdlig"
'* mdlig;" instead of "beinahe," "nahe;" instead of " be-
stdndig" " standig." If a Frenchman took npon himself
to write "pres" instead of "presque," or if an Englishman
wrote " most " instead of " almost," they would be laughed
at by every one as fools ; but in Germany whoever does
this sort of thing passes for a man of originality. Chemists
already write " loslich" and " unloslich " instead of " ujiauf-
loslich," and if the grammarians do not rap them over
the knuckles they will rob the language of a valuable
word. Knots, shoe-strings, and also conglomerates of
which the cement is softened, and all analogous things
are " loslich " (can be loosed) ; but what is " aufloslick"
(soluble), on the other hand, is whatever vanishes in a
liquid, like salt in water. " Aufloscn " (to dissolve) is the
terminus ad hoc, which says this and nothing else, marking
out a definite conception ; but our acute improvers of the
language wish to empty it into the general rinsing-pan
" losen " (to loosen) ; they would therefore in consistency be
obliged to make " losen " also take the place everywhere
of "ablosen" (to relieve, used of guards), " auslosen " (to
release), " einlosen" (to redeem), &c., and in these, as in
the former case, deprive the language of definiteness of
expression. But to make the language poorer by a word
means to make the thought of the nation poorer by a
conception. Yet this is the tendency of the united efforts
of almost all our writers of books for the last ten or
twenty years. For what I have shown here by one ex
ample can be supported by a hundred others, and the
meanest stinting of syllables prevails like a disease. The
miserable wretches actually count the letters, and do not
hesitate to mutilate a word, or to use one in a false sense,
whenever by doing so they can gain two letters. He
who is capable of no new thoughts will at least bring new
words to market, and every ink-slinger regards it as his
vocation to improve the language. Journalists practise

ON THE DOCTRINE OF SCIENCE. 315

this most shamelessly ; and since their papers, on account
of the trivial nature of their contents, have the largest
public, indeed a public which for the most part reads
nothing else, a great danger threatens the language
through them. I therefore seriously advise that they
should be subjected to an orthographical censorship, or
that they should be made to pay a fine for every unusual
or mutilated word; for what could be more improper
than that changes of language should proceed from the
lowest branch of literature ? Language, especially a
relatively speaking original language like German, is the
most valuable inheritance of a nation, and it is also an
exceedingly complicated work of art, easily injured, and
which cannot again be restored, therefore a noli me tangere.
Other nations have felt this, and have shown great piety
towards their languages, although far less complete than
German. Therefore the language of Dante and Petrarch
differs only in trifles from that of to-day; Montaigne is
still quite readable, and so also is Shakspeare in his
oldest editions. For a German indeed it is good to have
somewhat long words in his mouth ; for he thinks slowly,
and they give him time to reflect. But this prevailing
economy of language shows itself in yet more character
istic phenomena. For example, in opposition to all logic
and grammar, they use the imperfect for the perfect and
pluperfect ; they often stick the auxiliary verb in their
pocket ; they use the ablative instead of the genitive ; for
the sake of omitting a couple of logical particles they
make such intricate sentences that one has to read them
four times over in order to get at the sense ; for it is only
the paper and not the reader's time that they care to
spare. In proper names, after the manner of Hotten
tots, they do not indicate the case either by inflection or
article : the reader may guess it. But they are specially
fond of contracting the double vowel and dropping the
lengthening h, those letters sacred to prosody ; which is
just the same thing as if we wanted to banish 77 and to

316 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XII.

from Greek, and make e and o take their place. Whoever
writes Scham, Mdrchcn, Mass, Spass, ought also to write
Lon, Son, Stat, Sat, Jar, Al, &c. But since writing is the
copy of speech, posterity will imagine that one ought
to speak as one writes; and then of the German language
there will only remain a narrow, mouth-distorting, jarring
noise of consonants, and all prosody will be lost. The
spelling " Literatur " instead of the correct "Litteratur"
is also very much liked, because it saves a letter. In
defence of this the participle of the verb linere is given
as the root of the word. But linere means to smear;
therefore the favoured spelling might actually be correct
for the greater part of German bookmaking ; so that one
could distinguish a very small " Litteratur " from a very
extensive " Literatur!' In order to \vrite concisely let a
man improve his style and shun all useless gossip and
chatter, and then he will not need to cut out syllables
and letters on account of the dearness of paper. But
to write so many useless pages, useless sheets, useless
books, and then to want to make up this waste of
time and paper at the cost of the innocent syllables and
letters — that is truly the superlative of what is called
in English being penny wise and pound foolish. It is to
be regretted that there is no German Academy to take
charge of the language against literary sans-culottism,
especially in an age when even those who are ignorant
of the ancient language venture to employ the press.
I have expressed my mind more fully on the whole sub
ject of the inexcusable mischief being done at the present
day to the German language in my " Parerga," vol. ii.
chap. 23.

In my essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 51,
I already proposed a first classification of the sciences in
accordance with the form of the principle of sufficient
reason which reigns in them ; and I also touched upon
it again in §§ 7 and 1 5 of the first volume of this work.

Ot) * »

I will give here a small attempt at such a classification,

ON THE DOCTRINE OF SCIENCE. 317

which will yet no doubt be susceptible of much improve
ment and perfecting : —

I. Pure a priori Sciences.

1. The doctrine of the ground of being.

(a.) In space : Geometry.

(&.) In time : Arithmetic and Algebra.

2. The doctrine of the ground of knowing : Logic.

II. Empirical or a posteriori Sciences. All based upon
the ground of becoming, i.e., the law of causalty, and upon
the three modes of that law.

1. The doctrine of causes.

(a.) Universal : Mechanics, Hydrodynamics,
Physics, Chemistry.

(&.) Particular : Astronomy, Mineralogy, Geo
logy, Technology, Pharmacy.

2. The doctrine of stimuli.

(a.) Universal : Physiology of plants and

animals, together with the ancillary

science, Anatomy.
(?>.) Particular : P>otany, Zoology, Zootomy,

Comparative Physiology, Pathology,

Therapeutics.

3. The doctrine of motives.

(a.) Universal : Ethics, Psychology.
(&.) Particular : Jurisprudence, History.

Philosophy or Metaphysics, as the doctrine of conscious
ness and its contents in general, or of the whole of expe
rience as such, does not appear in the list, because it does
not at once pursue the investigation which the principle
of sufficient reason prescribes, but first has this principle
itself as its object. It is to be regarded as the thorough
bass of all sciences, but belongs to a higher class than
they do, and is almost as much related to art as to science.
As in music every particular period must correspond to
the tonality to which thorough bass has advanced, so every

318 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XII.

author, in proportion to the line he follows, must bear the
stamp of the philosophy which prevails in his time. But
besides this, every science has also its special philosophy ;
and therefore we speak of the philosophy of botany, of zo
ology, of history, &c. By this we must reasonably under
stand nothing more than the chief results of each science
itself, regarded and comprehended from the highest, that is
the most general, point of view which is possible within
that science. These general results connect themselves
directly with general philosophy, for they supply it with
important data, and relieve it from the labour of seeking
these itself in the philosophically raw material of the
special sciences. These special philosophies therefore
stand as a mediating link between their special sciences
and philosophy proper. For since the latter has to give
the most general explanations concerning the whole of
things, these must also be capable of being brought down
and applied to the individual of every species of thing.
The philosophy of each science, however, arises indepen
dently of philosophy in general, from the data of its own
science itself. Therefore it does not need to wait till that
philosophy at last be found ; but if worked out in advance
it will certainly agree with the true universal philosophy.
This, on the other hand, must be capable of receiving
confirmation and illustration from the philosophies of
the particular sciences ; for the most general truth must
be capable of being proved through the more special
truths. Goethe has afforded a beautiful example of
the philosophy of zoology in his reflections on Dalton's
and Pander's skeletons of rodents (Hefte zur Morphologic,
1824). And like merit in connection with the same science
belongs to Kielmayer, Delamark, Geoffroy St. Hilaire,
Cuvier, and many others, in that they have all brought
out clearly the complete analogy, the inner relation
ship, the permanent type, and systematic connection of
animal forms. Empirical sciences pursued purely for
their own sake and without philosophical tendency are

ON THE DOCTRINE OF SCIENCE. 319

like a face without eyes. They are, however, a suitable
occupation for men of good capacity who yet lack the
highest faculties, which would even be a hindrance to
minute investigations of such a kind. Such men concen
trate their whole power and their whole knowledge upon
one limited field, in which, therefore, on condition of re
maining in entire ignorance of everything else, they can
attain to the most complete knowledge possible; while
the philosopher must survey all fields of knowledge, and
indeed to a certain extent be at home in them; and
thus that complete knowledge which can only be at
tained by the study of detail is necessarily denied him.
Therefore the former may be compared to those Geneva
workmen of whom one makes only wheels, another only
springs, and a third only chains. The philosopher, on
the other hand, is like the watchmaker, who alone pro
duces a whole out of all these which has motion and
significance. They may also be compared to the musi
cians of an orchestra, each of whom is master of his own
instrument ; and the philosopher, on the other hand, to the
conductor, who must know the nature and use of every
instrument, yet without being able to play them, all, or
even one of them, with great perfection. Scotus Erigena
includes all sciences under the name Scientia, in opposi
tion to philosophy, which he calls Sapientia. The same
distinction was already made by the Pythagoreans ; as
may be seen from Stobseus (Floril, vol. i. p. 20), where
it is very clearly and neatly explained. But a much
happier and more piquant comparison of the relation of
the two kinds of mental effort to each other has been
so often repeated by the ancients that we no longer know
to whom it belongs. Diogenes Laertius (ii. 79) attributes
it to Aristippus, Stobseus {Floril., tit. iv. no) to Aristo of
Chios ; the Scholiast of Aristotle ascribes it to him (p. 8 of
the Berlin edition), but Plutarch (De Puer. Educ., c. 10)
attributes it to Bio — " Qui ajebat, sicut Penelopes prod,

320 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XII.

quum non possent cum Penelope concumbere, rem cum ejus
ancillis habuissent ; ita qui philosophiam nequeunt appre-
hendere eos in alliis nullius pretii diciplinis sese conterere."
In our predominantly empirical and historical age it can
do no harm to recall this.

( 321 )

CHAPTER XIII.1

OX THE METHODS OF MATHEMATICS.

EUCLID'S method of demonstration has brought forth from
its own womb its most striking parody and caricature in
the famous controversy on the theory of parallels, and
the attempts, which are repeated every year, to prove the
eleventh axiom. This axiom asserts, and indeed supports
its assertion by the indirect evidence of a third inter
secting line, that two lines inclining towards each other
(for that is just the meaning of "less than two right
angles ") if produced far enough must meet — a truth
which is supposed to be too complicated to pass as self-
evident, and therefore requires a demonstration. Such a
demonstration, however, cannot be produced, just because
there is nothing that is not immediate. This scruple of
conscience reminds me of Schiller's question of law : — •

" For years I have used my nose for smelling. Have I,
then, actually a right to it that can be proved ? " Indeed
it seenis to me that the logical method is hereby reduced
to absurdity. Yet it is just through the controversies
about this, together with the vain attempts to prove what
is directly certain as merely indirectly certain, that the
self-sufficingness and clearness of intuitive evidence ap
pears in contrast with the uselessness and difficulty of
logical proof — a contrast which is no less instructive than
amusing. The direct certainty is not allowed to be valid
here, because it is no mere logical certainty following from
the conceptions, thus resting only upon the relation of the

1 This chapter is connected with § 15 of the first volume.
VOL. II. X

322 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XIII.

predicate to the subject, according to the principle of
contradiction. That axiom, however, is a synthetical
proposition a priori, and as such has the guarantee of
pure, not empirical, perception, which is just as immediate
and certain as the principle of contradiction itself, from
which all demonstrations first derive their certainty.
Ultimately this holds good of every geometrical theorem,
and it is quite arbitrary where we draw the line between
what is directly certain and what has first to be demon
strated. It surprises me that the eighth axiom is not
rather attacked. "Figures which coincide with each
other are equal to each other." For " coinciding with
each other " is either a mere tautology or something
purely empirical which does not belong to pure percep
tion but to external sensuous experience. It presupposes
that the figures may be moved ; but only matter is mov
able in space. Therefore this appeal to coincidence leaves
pure space — the one element of geometry — in order to
pass over to what is material and empirical.

The reputed motto of the Platonic lecture-room, " Ayeca-
fjieTptyros /i^Sei? eicrmo," of which mathematicians are so
proud, was no doubt inspired by the fact that Plato re
garded the geometrical figures as intermediate existences
between the eternal Ideas and particular things, as
Aristotle frequently mentions in his " Metaphysics " (espe
cially i. c. 6, p. 887, 998, d Scholia, p. 827, ed. Berol.)
Moreover, the opposition between those self-existent
eternal forms, or Ideas, and the transitory individual
things, was most easily made comprehensible in geometri
cal figures, and thereby laid the foundation of the doc
trine of Ideas, which is the central point of the philosophy
of Plato, and indeed his only serious and decided theo
retical dogma. In expounding it, therefore, he started from
geometry. In the same sense we are told that he regarded
geometry as a preliminary exercise through which the
mind of the pupil accustomed itself to deal with incorpo
real objects, having hitherto in practical life had only to

ON THE METHODS OF MATHEMATICS. 323

do with corporeal things (Sclwl. inAristot., p. 12, 15). This,
then, is the sense in which Plato recommended geometry
to the philosopher; and therefore one is not justified in
extending it further. I rather recommend, as an investi
gation of the influence of mathematics upon our mental
powers, and their value for scientific culture in general,
a very thorough and learned discussion, in the form of
a review of a book by Whewell in the Edinburgh Review
of January 1836. Its author, who afterwards published
it with some other discussions, with his name, is Sir W.
Hamilton, Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in Scot
land. This work has also found a German translator,
and has appeared by itself under the title, " Ueber den
Werth und Univerth dcr Matliematik " aus detn Englishen,
1836. The conclusion the author arrives at is that the
value of mathematics is only indirect, and lies in the
application to ends which are only attainable through
them; but in themselves mathematics leave the mind
where they find it, and are by no means conducive to
its general culture and development, nay, even a decided
hindrance. This conclusion is not only proved by tho
rough dianoiological investigation of the mathematical
activity of the mind, but is also confirmed by a very
learned accumulation of examples and authorities. The
only direct use which is left to mathematics is that it
can accustom restless and unsteady minds to fix their
attention. Even Descartes, who was yet himself famous
as a mathematician, held the same opinion with regard
to mathematics. In the " Vie de Descartes par Baillet"
1693, it is said, Liv. ii. c. 6, p. 54: " Sa propre experience
I'avait convaincu du pen dutilite" des mathe'matiques, surtout
lorsqu'on ne les cultive que pour dies memes. . . . II ne
voyait rien de moins solide, que de soccuper de noinbres tout
simples et de figures imaginaires" &c.

( 324 )

CHAPTER XIV.

ON THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS.

THE presence of ideas and thoughts in our consciousness
is as strictly subordinated to the principle of sufficient
reason in its different forms as the movement of bodies
to the law of causality. It is just as little possible that
a thought can appear in the mind without an occasion
as that a body can be set in motion without a cause.
Now this occasion is either external, thus an impression
of the senses, or internal, thus itself also a thought which
introduces another thought by means of association. This
again depends either upon a relation of reason and con
sequent between the two ; or upon similarity, even mere
analogy ; or lastly upon the circumstance that they were
both first apprehended at the same time, which again
may have its ground in the proximity in space of their
objects. The last two cases are denoted by the word
a propos. The predominance of one of these three bonds
of association of thoughts over the others is characteristic
of the intellectual worth of the man. The first named
will predominate in thoughtful and profound minds, the
second in witty, ingenious, and poetical minds, and the
third in minds of limited capacity. Not less characteristic
is the degree of facility with which one thought recalls
others that stand in any kind of relation to it ; this
constitutes the activeness of the mind. But the im
possibility of the appearance of a thought without its
sufficient occasion, even when there is the strongest desire
to call it up, is proved by all the cases in which we weary

ON THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 325

ourselves in vain to recollect something, and go through
the whole store of our thoughts in order to find any one
that may be associated with the one we seek; if we
find the former, the latter is also found. Whoever wishes
to call up something in his memory first seeks for a
thread with which it is connected by the association
of thoughts. Upon this depends mnemonics : it aims at
providing us with easily found occasioners or causes for
all the conceptions, thoughts, or words which are to be
preserved. But the worst of it is that these occasioners
themselves have first to be recalled, and this again re
quires an occasioner. How much the occasion accom
plishes in memory may be shown in this way. If we have
read in a book of anecdotes say fifty anecdotes, and then
have laid it aside, immediately afterwards we will some
times be unable to recollect a single one of them. But
if the occasion comes, or if a thought occurs to us which
has any analogy with one of those anecdotes, it imme
diately comes back to us ; and so with the whole fifty
as opportunity offers. The same thing holds good of
all that we read. Our immediate remembrance of
words, that is, our remembrance of them without the
assistance of mnemonic contrivances, and with it our
whole faculty of speech, ultimately depends upon the
direct association of thoughts. For the learning of lan
guage consists in this, that once for all we so connect a
conception with a word that this word will always occur
to us along with this conception, and this conception will
always occur to us along with this word. We have after
wards to repeat the same process in learning every new
language ; yet if we learn a language for passive and not
for active use — that is, to read, but not to speak, as, for
example, most of us learn Greek — then the connection is
one-sided, for the conception occurs to us along with the
word, but the word does not always occur to us along with
the conception. The same procedure as in language be
comes apparent in the particular case, in the learning of

326 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XIV.

every new proper name. But sometimes we do not trust
ourselves to connect directly the name of this person, or
town, river, mountain, plant, animal, &c., with the thought
of each so firmly that it will call each of them up of it
self ; and then we assist ourselves mnemonically, and con
nect the image of the person or thing with any perceptible
quality the name of which occurs in that of the person
or thing. Yet this is only a temporary prop to lean on ;
later we let it drop, for the association of thoughts be
comes an immediate support.

The search of memory for a clue shows itself in a
peculiar manner in the case of a dream which we have
forgotten on awaking, for in this case we seek in vain for
that which a few minutes before occupied our minds with
the strength of the clearest present, but now has entirely
disappeared. We grasp at any lingering impression by
which may hang the clue that by virtue of association
would call that dream back again into our conscious
ness. According to Kieser, " Tellurismus," Bd. ii. § 271,
memory even of what passed in magnetic-somnambular
sleep may possibly sometimes be aroused by a sensible
sign found when awake. It depends upon the same
impossibility of the appearance of a thought without
its occasion that if we propose to do anything at a defi
nite time, this can only take place if we either think of
nothing else till then, or if at the determined time we
are reminded of it by something, which may either be
an external impression arranged beforehand or a thought
which is itself again brought about in the regular way.
Both, then, belong to the class of motives. Every morning
when wre awake our consciousness is a tabula rasa, which,
however, quickly fills itself again. First it is the sur
roundings of the previous evening which now reappear,
and remind us of what we thought in these surroundings ;
to this the events of the previous day link themselves on ;
and so one thought rapidly recalls the others, till all that
occupied us yesterday is there again. Upon the fact that

ON THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 327

this takes place properly depends the health of the mind,
as opposed to madness, which, as is shown in the third
book, consists in the existence of great blanks in the
memory of past events. But how completely sleep breaks
the thread of memory, so that each morning it has to be
taken up again, we see in particular cases of the incom
pleteness of this operation. For example, sometimes we
cannot recall in the morning a melody which the night
before ran in our head till we were tired of it.

The cases in which a thought or a picture of the fancy
suddenly came into our mind without any conscious occa
sion seem to afford an exception to what has been said.
Yet this is for the most part an illusion, which rests on
the fact that the occasion was so trifling and the thought
itself so vivid and interesting, that the former is instantly
driven out of consciousness. Yet sometimes the cause of
such an instantaneous appearance of an idea may be an
internal physical impression either of the parts of the
brain on each other or of the organic nervous system upon
the brain.

In general our internal process of thought is in reality
not so simple as the theory of it ; for here it is involved in
many ways. To make the matter clear to our imagination,
let us compare our consciousness to a sheet of water of
some depth. Then the distinctly conscious thoughts are
merely the surface ; while, on the other hand, the indis
tinct thoughts, the feelings, the after sensation of percep
tions and of experience generally, mingled with the special
disposition of our own will, which is the kernel of our
being, is the mass of the water. Now the mass of the
whole consciousness is more or less, in proportion to the
intellectual activity, in constant motion, and what rise to
the surface, in consequence of this, are the clear pictures
of the fancy or the distinct, conscious thoughts expressed
in words and the resolves of the will. The whole process
of our thought and purpose seldom lies on the surface,
that is, consists in a combination of distinctly thought

328 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XIV.

judgments ; although we strive against this in order that we
may be able to explain our thought to ourselves and others.
But ordinarily it is in the obscure depths of the mind that
the rumination of the materials received from without takes
place, through which they are worked up into thoughts ;
and it goes on almost as unconsciously as the conversion of
nourishment into the humours and substance of the body.
Hence it is that we can often give no account of the origin
of our deepest thoughts. They are the birth of our myste
rious inner life. Judgments, thoughts, purposes, rise from
out that deep unexpectedly and to our own surprise. A
letter brings us unlooked-for and important news, in con
sequence of which our thoughts and motives are disordered ;
we get rid of the matter for the present, and think no
more about it ; but next day, or on the third or fourth
day after, the whole situation sometimes stands distinctly
before us, with what we have to do in the circumstances.
Consciousness is the mere surface of our mind, of which,
as of the earth, we do not know the inside, but only the
crust.

But in the last instance, or in the secret of our inner
being, what sets in activity the association of thought
itself, the laws of which were set forth above, is the will,
which urges its servant the intellect, according to the
measure of its powers, to link thought to thought, to re
call the similar, the contemporaneous, to recognise reasons
and consequents. For it is to the , interest of the will
that, in general, one should think, so that one may be
well equipped for all cases that may arise. Therefore the
form of the principle of sufficient reason which governs
the association of thoughts and keeps it active is ulti
mately the law of motivation. For that which rules the
sensorium, and determines it to follow the analogy or other
association of thoughts in this or that direction, is the
will of the thinking subject. Now just as here the laws
of the connection of ideas subsist only upon the basis of
the will, so also in the real world the causal connection

ON THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 329

cf bodies really subsists only upon the basis of the will,
which manifests itself in the phenomena of this world.
On this account the explanation from causes is never
absolute and exhaustive, but leads back to forces of nature
as their condition, and the inner being of the latter is just
the will as thing in itself. In saying this, however, I
have certainly anticipated the following book.

But because now the outward (sensible) occasions of
the presence of our ideas, just as well as the inner occa
sions (those of association), and both independently of
each other, constantly affect the consciousness, there arise
from this the frequent interruptions of our course of
thought, which introduce a certain cutting up and con
fusion of our thinking. This belongs to its imperfections
which cannot be explained away, and which we shall now
consider in a separate chapter.

( 330 )

CHAPTER XV.

ON THE ESSENTIAL IMPERFECTIONS OF THE INTELLECT.

OUR self-consciousness has not space but only time as its
form, and therefore we do not think in three dimensions,
as we perceive, but only in one, thus in a line, without
breadth or depth. This is the source of the greatest of
the essential imperfections of our intellect. We can know
all things only in succession, and can become conscious
of only one at a time, indeed even of this one only under
the condition that for the time we forget everything else,
thus are absolutely unconscious of everything else, 'so that
for the time it ceases to exist as far as we are concerned.
In respect of this quality our intellect may be compared
to a telescope with a very narrow field of vision; just
because our consciousness is not stationary but fleeting.
The intellect apprehends only successively, and in order
to grasp one thing must let another go, retaining nothing
but traces of it, which are ever becoming weaker. The
thought which is vividly present to me now must after a
little while have escaped me altogether ; and if a good
night's sleep intervene, it may be that I shall never find
it again, unless it is connected with my personal interests,
that is, with my will, which always commands the field.

Upon this imperfection of the intellect depends the
disconnected and often fragmentary nature of our course
of thought, which I have already touched on at the close
of last chapter ; and from this again arises the unavoidable
distraction of our thinking. Sometimes external iinpres-

ON THE IMPERFECTIONS OF THE INTELLECT. 331

sions of sense throng in upon it, disturbing and interrupt
ing it, forcing different kinds of things upon it every
moment ; sometimes one thought draws in another by the
bond of association, and is now itself dislodged by it ;
sometimes, lastly, the intellect itself is not capable of
fixing itself very long and continuously at a time upon
one thought, but as the eye when it gazes long at one
object is soon unable to see it any more distinctly, because
the outlines run into each other and become confused,
until finally all is obscure, so through long-continued
reflection upon one subject our thinking also is gradually
confused, becomes dull, and ends in complete stupor.
Therefore after a certain time, which varies with the
individual, we must for the present give up every medita
tion or deliberation which has had the fortune to remain
undisturbed, but yet has not been brought to an end,
even if it concerns a matter which is most important and
pertinent to us ; and we must dismiss from our conscious
ness the subject which interests us so much, however
heavily our anxiety about it may weigh upon us, in order
to occupy ourselves now with insignificant and indifferent
things. During this time that important subject no
longer exists for us; it is like the heat in cold water,
latent. If now we resume it again at another time, we
approach it like a new thing, with which we become
acquainted anew, although more quickly, and the agree
able or disagreeable impression of it is also produced
anew upon our will. We ourselves, however, do not
come back quite unchanged. For with the physical
composition of the humours and tension of the nerves,
which constantly changes with the hours, days, and years,
our mood and point of view also changes. Moreover, the
different kinds of ideas which have been there in the
meantime have left an echo behind them, the tone of
which influences the ideas which follow. Therefore the
same thing appears to us at different times, in the morn
ing, in the evening, at mid-day, or on another day, often

332 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XV.

very different; opposite views of it now press upon each
other and increase our doubt. Hence we speak of sleeping
upon a matter, and for important determinations we de
mand a long time for consideration. Now, although this
quality of our intellect, as springing from its weakness,
has its evident disadvantages, yet, on the other hand, it
affords the advantage that after the distraction and the
physical change we return to our subject as comparatively
new beings, fresh and strange, and thus are able to see
it repeatedly in very different lights. From all this it
is plain that human consciousness and thought is in its
nature necessarily fragmentary, on account of which the
theoretical and practical results which are achieved by
piecing together such fragments are for the most part
defective. In this our thinking consciousness is like a
magic lantern, in the focus of which only one picture can
appear at a time, and each, even if it represents the
noblest objects, must yet soon pass away in order to make
room for others of a different, and even most vulgar,
description. In practical matters the most important
plans and resolutions are formed in general; but others
are subordinated to these as means to an end, and others
again are subordinated to these, and so on down to the
particular case that has to be carried out in concrete.
They do not, however, come to be carried out in the order
of their dignity, but while we are occupied with plans
which are great and general, we have to contend with the
most trifling details and the cares of the moment. In
this way our consciousness becomes still more desultory.
In general, theoretical occupations of the mind unfit us
for practical affairs, and vice versd.

In consequence of the inevitably distracted and frag
mentary nature of all our thinking, which has been pointed
out, and the mingling of ideas of different kinds thereby
introduced, to which even the noblest human minds are
subject, we really have only half a consciousness with
which to grope about in the labyrinth of our life and the

ON THE IMPERFECTIONS OF THE INTELLECT. 333

obscurity of our investigations ; bright moments some
times illuminate our path like lightning. But what is
to be expected of heads of which even the wisest is every
night the scene of the strangest and most senseless dreams,
and which has to take up its meditations again on awaken
ing from these ? Clearly a consciousness which is subject
to such great limitations is little suited for solving the
riddle of the world ; and such an endeavour would neces
sarily appear strange and pitiful to a being of a higher
order whose intellect had not time as its form, and whose
thinking had thus true completeness and unity. Indeed
it is really wonderful that we are not completely confused
by the very heterogeneous mixture of ideas and fragments
of thought of every kind which are constantly crossing eacli
other in our minds, but are yet always able to see our
way again and make everything agree together. Clearly
there must exist a simpler thread upon \vhich everything
ranges itself together : but what is this ? Memory alone
is not sufficient, for it has essential limitations of which
I shall speak shortly, and besides this, it is exceedingly
imperfect and untrustworthy. The logical ego or even
the transcendental synthetic unity of apperception are ex
pressions and explanations which will not easily serve
to make the matter comprehensible; they will rather
suggest to many :

"'Tis true your beard is curly, yet it will not draw you the bolt."

Kant's proposition, "The / think must accompany all
our ideas," is insufficient ; for the " I " is an unknown
quantity, i.e., it is itself a secret. That which gives unity
and connection to consciousness in that it runs through
all its ideas, and is thus its substratum, its permanent
supporter, cannot itself be conditioned by consciousness,
therefore cannot be an idea. Rather it must be the prius
of consciousness, and the root of the tree of which that
is the fruit. This, I say, is the will. It alone is un
changeable and absolutely identical, and has brought

334 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XV.

forth consciousness for its own ends. Therefore it is also
the will which gives it imity and holds together all its
ideas and thoughts, accompanying them like a continuous
harmony. Without it the intellect would no longer have
the unity of consciousness, as a mirror in which now this
and now that successively presents itself, or at the most
only so much as a convex mirror whose rays unite in an
imaginary point behind its surface. But the will alone is
that which is permanent and unchangeable in conscious
ness. It is the will which holds together all thoughts
and ideas as means to its ends, and tinges them with the
colour of its own character, its mood, and its interests,
commands the attention, and holds in its hand the train
of motives whose influence ultimately sets memory and
the association of ideas in activity ; at bottom it is the
will that is spoken of whenever " I " appears in a judg
ment. Thus it is the true and final point of unity of
consciousness, and the bond of all its functions and acts ;
it does not itself, however, belong to the intellect, but is
only its root, source, and controller.

From the form of time and the single dimension of
the series of ideas, on account of which, in order to take
up one, the intellect must let all the others fall, there
follows not only its distraction, but also its foryetfulness.
Most of what it lets fall it never takes up again ; especi
ally since the taking up again is bound to the principle
of sufficient reason, and thus demands an occasion which
the association of thoughts and motivation have first to
supply; an occasion, however, which may be the more
remote and smaller in proportion as our sensibility for
it is heightened by our interest in the subject. But
memory, as I have already shown in the essay on the
principle of sufficient reason, is not a store-house, but
merely a faculty acquired by practice of calling up ideas
at pleasure, which must therefore constantly be kept
in practice by use; for otherwise it will gradually be
lost. Accordingly the knowledge even of the learned

ON THE IMPERFECTIONS OF THE INTELLECT. 335

man exists only virtualiter as an acquired facility in
calling up certain ideas ; actualiter, on the other hand,
it also is confined to one idea, and is only conscious of
this one at a time. Hence arises a strange contrast
between what he knows potentid and what he knows
actu ; that is, between his knowledge and what he thinks
at any moment : the former is an immense and always
somewhat chaotic mass, the latter is a single distinct
thought. The relation resembles that between the in
numerable stars of the heavens and the limited field of
vision of the telescope ; it appears in a striking manner
when upon some occasion he wishes to call distinctly
to his remembrance some particular circumstance in his
knowledge, and time and trouble are required to produce
it from that chaos. Rapidity in doing this is a special
gift, but is very dependent upon day and hour ; therefore
memory sometimes refuses us its service, even in things
which at another time it has readily at hand. This
consideration calls us in our studies to strive more to
attain to correct insight than to increase our learning,
and to lay it to heart that the quality of knowledge is
more important than its quantity. The latter imparts to
books only thickness, the former thoroughness and also
style ; for it is an intensive quantity, while the other is
merely extensive. It consists in the distinctness and com
pleteness of the conceptions, together with the purity and
accuracy of the knowledge of perception which forms
their foundation ; therefore the whole of knowledge in
all its parts is penetrated by it, and in proportion as it is
so is valuable or trifling. With a small quantity, but of
good quality, one achieves more than with a very large
quantity of bad quality.

The most perfect and satisfactory knowledge is that of
perception, but it is limited absolutely to the particular,
the individual. The combination of the many and the
different in one, idea is only possible through the conception,
that is, through the omission of the differences ; therefore

336 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XV.

this is a very imperfect manner of presenting things to
the mind. Certainly the particular also can be directly
comprehended as a universal, if it is raised to the (Pla
tonic) Idea ; but in this process, which I have analysed
in the third book, the intellect already passes beyond
the limits of individuality, and therefore of time ; more
over it is only an exception.

These inner and essential imperfections of the intellect
are further increased by a disturbance which, to a certain
extent, is external to it, but yet is unceasing — the influence
exerted by the will upon all its operations whenever it
is in any way concerned in their result. Every passion,
indeed every inclination and aversion, tinges the objects
of knowledge with its colour. Of most common occurrence
is the falsifying of knowledge which is brought about
by wishes and hopes, for they picture to us the scarcely
possible as probable and well nigh certain, and make
us almost incapable of comprehending what is opposed
to it : fear acts in a similar way ; and every preconceived
opinion, every partiality, and, as has been said, every
interest, every emotion and inclination of the will, acts in
an analogous manner.

To all these imperfections of the intellect we have
finally to add this, that it grows old with the brain, that
is, like all physiological functions, it loses its energy in
later years, whereby all its imperfections are then much
increased.

The defective nature of the intellect here set forth
will not, however, surprise us if we look back at its origin
and destiny as established by me in the second book.
Nature has produced it for the service of an individual
will. Therefore it is only designed to know things so far
as they afford the motives of such a will, but not to
fathom them or comprehend their true being. Human
intellect is only a higher gradation of the intellect of
the brutes ; and as this is entirely confined to the present,
our intellect also bears strong traces of this limitation.

ON THE IMPERFECTIONS OF THE INTELLECT. 337

Therefore our memory and recollection is something very
imperfect. How little of all that we have done, experi
enced, learnt, or read, can we recall ! And even this
little for the most part only laboriously and imperfectly.
For the same reasons is it so very difficult for us to keep
ourselves free from the impressions of the present. Un
consciousness is the original and natural condition of all
things, and therefore also the basis from which, in par
ticular species of beings, consciousness results as their
highest efflorescence ; wherefore even then unconscious
ness always continues to predominate. Accordingly most
existences are without consciousness ; but yet they act
according to the laws of their nature, i.e., of their will.
Plants have at most a very weak analogue of conscious
ness ; the lowest species of animals only the dawn of it.
But even after it has ascended through the whole series
of animals to man and his reason, the unconsciousness of
plants, from which it started, still remains the foundation,
and may be traced in the necessity for sleep, and also in
all those essential and great imperfections, here set forth,
of every intellect produced through physiological functions;
and of another intellect we have no conception.

The imperfections here proved to be essential to the
intellect are constantly increased, however, in particular
cases, by non-essential imperfections. The intellect is
never in every respect what it possibly might be. The
perfections possible to it are so opposed that they exclude
each other. Therefore no man can be at once Plato and
Aristotle, or Shakspeare and Newton, or Kant and Goethe.
The imperfections of the intellect, on the contrary, consort
very well together ; therefore in reality it for the most part
remains far below what it might be. Its functions depend
upon so very many conditions, which we can only compre
hend as anatomical and physiological, in the phenomenon
in which alone they are given us, that a decidedly excelling
intellect, even in one respect alone, is among the rarest of
natural phenomena. Therefore the productions of such an

VOL. II. Y

338 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XV.

intellect are preserved through thousands of years, indeed
every relic of such a highly favoured individual becomes
a most valuable treasure. From such an intellect down
to that which approaches imbecility the gradations are
innumerable. And primarily, in conformity with these
gradations, the mental horizon of each of us varies very
much from the mere comprehension of the present, which
even the brute has, to that which also embraces the next
hour, the day, even the morrow, the week, the year, the
life, the century, the thousand years, up to that of the con
sciousness which has almost always present, even though
obscurely dawning, the horizon of the infinite, and whose
thoughts therefore assume a character in keeping with
this. Further, that difference among intelligences shows
itself in the rapidity of their thinking, which is very im
portant, and which may be as different and as finely gradu
ated as that of the points in the radius of a revolving disc.
The remoteness of the consequents and reasons to which
any one's thought can extend seems to stand in a certain
relation to the rapidity of his thinking, for the greatest
exertion of thought-power in general can only last quite
a short time, and yet only while it lasts can a thought be
thought out in its complete unity. It therefore amounts
to this, how far the intellect can pursue it in so short a
time, thus what length of path it can travel in it. On
the other hand, in the case of some, rapidity may be made
up for by the greater duration of that time of perfectly
concentrated thought. Probably the slow and lasting
thought makes the mathematical mind, while rapidity of
thought makes the genius. The latter is a flight, the
former a sure advance upon firm ground, step by step.
Yet even in the sciences, whenever it is no longer a
question of mere quantities, but of understanding the
nature of phenomena, this last kind of thinking is in
adequate. This is shown, for example, by Newton's theory
of colour, and later by Biot's nonsense about colour rings,
which yet agrees with the whole atomistic method of

ON THE IMPERFECTIONS OF THE INTELLECT. 339

treating light among the French, with its molecules de
lumiere, and in general with their fixed idea of reducing
everything in nature to mere mechanical effects. Lastly,
the great individual diversity of intelligence we are
speaking about shows itself excellently in the degrees
of the clearness of understanding, and accordingly in
the distinctness of the whole thinking. To one man that
is to understand which to another is only in some
degree to observe ; the one is already done and at the
goal while the other is only at the beginning ; to the
one that is the solution which to the other is only the
problem. This depends on the quality of thought and
knowledge, which was already referred to above. As
in rooms the degree of light varies, so does it in minds.
We can detect this quality of the whole thought as soon
as we have read only a few pages of an author. For
in doing so we have been obliged to understand both

o o

with his understanding and in his sense ; and there
fore before we know all that he has thought we see
already how he thinks, what is the formal nature, the
texture of his thinking, which remains the same in every
thing about which he thinks, and whose expression is
the train of thought and the style. In this we feel at
once the pace, the flexibleness and lightness, even indeed
the soaring power of his mind; or, on the contrary, its
dulness, formality, lameness and leaden quality. For, as
language is the expression of the mind of a nation, style
is the more immediate expression of the mind of an
author than even his physiognomy. We throw a book
aside when we observe that in it we enter an obscurer
region than our own, unless we have to learn from it
mere facts, not thoughts. Apart from mere facts, only
that author will afford us profit whose understanding
is keener and clearer than our own, who forwards our
thinking instead of hindering it, like the dull mind that

O o

will force us to keep pace with the toad-like course of
its thought ; thus that author with whose mind it gives

340 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XV.

us sensible relief and assistance sometimes to think, by
whom we feel ourselves borne where we could not have
gone alone. Goethe once said to me that if he read a
page of Kant he felt as if he entered a brightly lighted
room. Inferior minds are so not merely because they
are distorted, and therefore judge falsely, but primarily
through the indistinctness of their whole thinking, which
may be compared to seeing through a bad telescope,
when all the outlines appear indistinct and as if ob
literated, and the different objects run into each other.
The weak understanding of such minds shrinks from
the demand for distinctness of conceptions, and therefore
they do not themselves make this claim upon it, but put
up with haziness ; and to satisfy themselves with this they
gladly have recourse to words, especially such as denote
indefinite, very abstract, unusual conceptions which are
hard to explain ; such, for example, as infinite and finite,
sensible and supersensible, the Idea of being, Ideas of
the reason, the absolute, the Idea of the good, the
divine, moral freedon, power of spontaneous generation,
the absolute Idea, subject-object, &c. The like of these
they confidently fling about, imagine they really express
thoughts, and expect every one to be content with them ;
for the highest summit of wisdom which they can see is
to have at command such ready-made words for every
possible question. This immense satisfaction in words is
thoroughly characteristic of inferior minds. It depends
simply upon their incapacity for distinct conceptions,
whenever these must rise above the most trivial and
simple relations. Hence upon the weakness and indolence
of their intellect, and indeed upon the secret conscious
ness of this, which in the case of scholars is bound up
with the early learnt and hard necessity of passing them
selves off as thinking beings, to meet which demand in
all cases they keep such a suitable store of ready-made
words. It must really be amusing to see a professor of
philosophy of this kind in the chair, who bond fide delivers

O.V THE IMPERFECTIONS OF THE INTELLECT. 341

such a juggle of words destitute of thoughts, quite sin
cerely, under the delusion that they are really thoughts,
and in front of him the students, who just as land fide, i.e.,
under the same delusion, listen attentively and take notes,
while yet in reality neither the one nor the other goes
beyond the words, but rather these words themselves, to
gether with the audible scratching of pens, are the only
realities iu the whole matter. This peculiar satisfaction in
words has more than anything else to do with the per
petuation of errors. For, relying on the words and phrases
received from his predecessors, each one confidently passes
over obscurities and problems, and thus these are pro
pagated through centuries from book to book ; and the
thinking man, especially in youth, is in doubt whether it
may be that he is incapable of understanding it, or that
there is really nothing here to understand ; and similarly,
whether for others the problem which they all slink past
with such comical seriousness by the same path is no
problem at all, or whether it is only that they will not
see it. Many truths remain undiscovered simply on this
account, that no one has the courage to look the problem
in the face and grapple with it. On the contrary, the
distinctness of thought and clearness of conceptions
peculiar to eminent minds produces the effect that even
known truths when brought forward by them gain new
light, or at least a new stimulus. If we hear them or read
them, it is as if we exchanged a bad telescope for a good
one. Let one only read, for example, in Euler's " Letters
to the Princess," his exposition of the fundamental truths
of mechanics and optics. Upon this rests the remark of
Diderot in the Neveu de Earneau, that only the perfect
masters are capable of teaching really well the elements of
a science ; just because it is only they who really under
stand the questions, and for them words never take the
place of thoughts.

But we ought to know that inferior minds are the
rule, good minds the exception, eminent minds very rare,

342 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XV.

and genius a portent. How otherwise could a human
race consisting of about eight hundred million individuals
have left so much after six thousand years to discover, to
invent, to think out, and to say ? The intellect is calcu
lated for the support of the individual alone, and as a rule
it is only barely sufficient even for this. But nature has
wisely been very sparing of conferring a larger measure ;
for the man of limited intelligence can survey the few
and simple relations which lie within reach of his narrow
sphere of action, and can control the levers of them with
much greater ease than could the eminently intellectual
man who commands an incomparably larger sphere and
works with long levers. Thus the insect sees everything
on its stern or leaf with the most minute exactness, and
better than we, and yet is not aware of the man who
stands within three steps of it. This is the reason of the
slyness of half-witted persons, and the ground of the
paradox : II y a un mystere dans I' esprit des gens qui
n'en ont pas. For practical life genius is about as useful
as an astral telescope in a theatre. Thus, with regard
to the intellect nature is highly aristocratic. The dis
tinctions which it has established are greater than those
which are made in any country by birth, rank, wealth,
or caste. But in the aristocracy of intellect, as in other
aristocracies, there are many thousands of plebeians for
one nobleman, many millions for one prince, and the great
multitude of men are mere populace, mob, rabble, la
canaille. Now certainly there is a glaring contrast be
tween the scale of rank of nature and that of convention,
and their agreement is only to be hoped for in a golden
age. Meanwhile those who stand very high in the one
scale of rank and in the other have this in common, that
for the most part they live in exalted isolation, to which
Byron refers when he says : —

" To feel me in the solitude of kings
Without the power that makes them bear a crown."

— Proph. of Dante, c. I.

ON THE IMPERFECTIONS OF THE INTELLECT. 343

For intellect is a differentiating, and therefore a separating
principle. Its different grades, far more than those of
mere culture, give to each man different conceptions, in
consequence of which each man lives to a certain extent
in a different world, in which he can directly meet those
only who are like himself, and can only attempt to speak
to the rest and make himself understood by them from
a distance. Great differences in the grade and in the
cultivation of the understanding fix a wide gulf between
man and man, which can only be crossed by benevolence ;
for it is, on the contrary, the unifying principle, which
identifies every one else with its own self. Yet the con
nection remains a moral one ; it cannot become intellectual.
Indeed, when the degree of culture is about the same,
the conversation between a man of great intellect and an
ordinary man is like the journey together of two men, one
of whom rides on a spirited horse and the other goes on
foot. It soon becomes very trying to both of them, and
for any length of time impossible. For a short way the
rider can indeed dismount, in order to walk with the
other, though even then the impatience of his horse will
give him much to do.

But the public could be benefited by nothing so much
as by the recognition of that intellectual aristocracy of
nature. By virtue of such recognition it would compre
hend that when facts are concerned, thus when the
matter has to be decided from experiments, travels, codes,
histories, and chronicles, the normal mind is certainly
sufficient; but, on the other hand, when mere thoughts
are in question, especially those thoughts the material or
data of which are within reach of every one, thus when it
is really only a question of thinking before others, decided
reflectiveness, native eminence, which only nature bestows,
and that very seldom, is inevitably demanded, and no one
deserves to be heard who does not at once give proofs
of this. If the public could be brought to see this for
itself, it would no longer waste the time which is sparingly

344 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XV.

measured out to it for its culture on the productions of
ordinary minds, thus on the innumerable botches of poetry
and philosophy which are produced every day. It would
no longer seize always what is newest, in the childish
delusion that books, like eggs, must be enjoyed while
they are fresh, but would confine itself to the works of
the few select and chosen minds of all ages and nations,
would strive to learn to know and understand them, and
might thus by degrees attain to true culture. And then,
also, those thousands of uncalled-for productious which,
like tares, hinder the growth of the good wheat would
be discontinued.

( 345 )

CHAPTER XVI.1

ON THE PRACTICAL USE OF REASON AND ON STOICISM.

IN the seventh chapter I have shown that, in the theo
retical sphere, procedure based upon conceptions suffices
for mediocre achievements only, while great achievements,
on the other hand, demand that we should draw from
perception itself as the primary source of all knowledge.
In the practical sphere, however, the converse is the case.
Here determination by what is perceived is the way of
the brutes, but is unworthy of man, who has conceptions
to guide his conduct, and is thus emancipated from the
power of what is actually perceptibly present, to which
the brute is unconditionally given over. In proportion
as a man makes good this prerogative his conduct may
be called rational, and only in this sense can we speak
of practical reason, not in the Kantian sense, the inadmis-
sibility of which I have thoroughly exposed in my prize
essay on the foundation of morals.

It is not easy, however, to let oneself be determined
by conceptions alone; for the directly present external
world, with its perceptible reality, intrudes itself forcibly
even on the strongest mind. But it is just in con
quering this impression, in destroying its illusion, that
the human spirit shows its worth and greatness. Thus
if incitements to lust and pleasure leave it unaffected,
if the threats and fury of enraged enemies do not shake
it, if the entreaties of erring friends do not make its

1 This chapter is connected with § 16 of the first volume.

346 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVI.

purpose waver, and the delusive forms with which pre
concerted plots surround it leave it unmoved, if the scorn
of fools and of the vulgar herd does not disturb it nor
trouble it as to its own worth, then it seems to stand
under the influence of a spirit-world, visible to it alone
(and this is the world of conceptions), before which that
perceptibly present world which lies open to all dissolves
like a phantom. But, on the other hand, what gives to
the external world and visible reality their great power
over the mind is their nearness and directness. As the
magnetic needle, which is kept in its position by the
combined action of widely distributed forces of nature
embracing the whole earth, can yet be perturbed and set
in violent oscillation by a small piece of iron, if only it
comes quite close to it, so even a great mind can some
times be disconcerted and perturbed by trifling events and
insignificant men, if only they affect it very closely, and
the deliberate purpose can be for the moment shaken
by a trivial but immediately present counter motive.
For the influence of the motives is subject to a law which
is directly opposed to the law according to which weights
act on a balance, and in consequence of it a very small
motive, which, however, lies very near to us, can out
weigh one which in itself is much stronger, but which
only affects us from, a distance. But it is this quality
of the mind, by reason of which it allows itself to be
determined in accordance with this law, and does not
withdraw itself from it by the strength of actual practical
reason, which the ancients denoted by animi impotentia,
which really signifies ratio regendce voluntatis impotens.
Every emotion (animi perturbatio) simply arises from the
fact that an idea which affects our will comes so exces
sively near to us that it conceals everything else from
us, and we can no longer see anything but it, so that
for the moment we become incapable of taking account
of things of another kind. It would be a valuable safe
guard against this if we were to bring ourselves to regard

ON THE USE OF REASON AND STOICISM. 347

the present, by the assistance of imagination, as if it
were past, and should thus accustom our apperception
to the epistolary style of the Romans. Yet conversely
we are very well able to regard what is long past as so
vividly present that old emotions which have long been
asleep are thereby reawakened in their full strength.
Thus also no one would be irritated or disconcerted
by a misfortune, a disappointment, if reason always kept
present to him what man really is : the most needy of
creatures, daily and hourly abandoned to innumerable
misfortunes, great and small, TO BeiXoTarov faov, who has
therefore to live in constant care and fear. Herodotus
already says, " Hav €<TTI avOpwnos avpfyopa " (homo totus
cst calamitas).

The application of reason to practice primarily ac
complishes this. It reconstructs what is one-sided and
defective in knowledge of mere perception, and makes
use of the contrasts or oppositions which it presents, to
correct each other, so that thus the objectively true
result is arrived at. For example, if we look simply
at the bad action of a man we will condemn him ; on
the other hand, if we consider merely the need that
moved him to it, we will compassionate him : reason, by
means of its conceptions, weighs the two, and leads to
the conclusion that he must be restrained, restricted, and
curbed by a proportionate punishment.

I am again reminded here of Seneca's saying : " Si vis
tibi omnia subjicere, te siibjice rationi." Since, however,
as was -shown in the fourth book, the nature of suffering
is positive, and that of pleasure negative, he who takes
abstract or rational knowledge as the rule of his conduct,
and therefore constantly reilects on its consequences and
on the future, will very frequently have to practise
sustine et abstine, for in order to obtain the life that is
most free from pain he generally sacrifices its keenest
joys and pleasures, mindful of Aristotle's " o <ppovt/jios TO
$i(0K€i, ov TO ijov" (quod dolore vacat, non quod

348 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVI.

suave est, persequitur vir prudens). Therefore with him
the future constantly borrows from the present, instead
of the present borrowing from the future, as is the case
with a frivolous fool, who thus becomes impoverished and
finally bankrupt. In the case of the former reason must,
for the most part, assume the role of a churlish mentor,
and unceasingly call for renunciations, without being able
to promise anything in return, except a fairly painless
existence. This rests on the fact that reason, by means
of its conceptions, surveys the whole of life, whose outcome,
in the happiest conceivable case, can be no other than
what we have said.

When this striving after a painless existence, so far as
it might be attainable by the application of and strict
adherence to rational reflection and acquired knowledge
of the true nature of life, was carried out with the greatest
consistency and to the utmost extreme, it produced cyni
cism, from which stoicism afterwards proceeded. I wish
briefly here to bring this out more fully for the sake of
establishing more firmly the concluding exposition of our
first book.

All ancient moral systems, with the single exception of
that of Plato, were guides to a happy life. Accordingly
in them the end of virtue was entirely in this life, not
beyond death. For to them it is only the right path to
a truly happy life ; and on this account the wise choose
it. Hence arise those lengthy debates chiefly preserved
for us by Cicero, those keen and constantly renewed
investigations, whether virtue quite alone and in itself
is really sufficient for a happy life, or whether this
further requires some external condition ; whether the
virtuous and wise may also be happy on the rack and the
wheel, or in the bull of Phalaris ; or whether it does not
go as far as this. For certainly this would be the touch
stone of an ethical system of this kind ; the practice of
it must give happiness directly and unconditionally. If
it cannot do this it does not accomplish what it ought,

ON THE USE OF REASON AND STOICISM. 349

and must be rejected. It is therefore with truth and
in accordance with the Christian point of view that
Augustine prefaces his exposition of the moral systems
of the ancients (De Civ. Dei, Lib. xix. c. i) with the
explanation : " Exponenda sunt ndbis argumenta morta-
lium, quibus sibi ipsi beatitudinem facere IN HUJUS VlT^E
INFELIGITATE moliti sunt ; ut ab eorum rebus vanis spes
nostra quid differ at clarescat. De finibus bonorum et
malorum multa inter se philosophi disputarunt ; quam
quccstionem maxima intentione versantes, invenire conati
sunt, quid efficiat liominem beatum: illud enim est finis
bonorum." I wish to place beyond all doubt the eu-
dsemonistic end which we have ascribed to all ancient
ethics by several express statements of the ancients them
selves. Aristotle says in the " Uth. Magna," i. 4: "'H

ev rw ev tyjv eari, TO Se ev fyv ev TCO Kara ra<?

" (Felicitas in bene vivendo posita est : verum
bene vivere est in eo positum, ut secundum virtutem vivamus),
with which may be compared " Eth. Nicom." i. 5. " Cic.
Tusc." v. i : " Nam, quum ea causa impulerit eos, qui primi
se ad philosophies studia contulerunt,ut, omnibus rebus post-
habitis, totos se in optima vitas, statu exquirendo collocarent ;
profecto spe beate vivendi tantam in eo studio curam operam-
que posuemnt. According to Plutarch (De Eepugn. Stoic.,
c. xviii.) Chrysippus said : " To Kara Kaiciav tyv rw fca/co-
&aifj,ov(as tyjv ravrov eari." ( Vitiose vivere idem est quod
vivcre infeliciter.} Ibid., c. 26 : "'JET fypovrjais ov% erepov
ecrTi TT;? evSai/jiovcas /cad' kavro, a\\' ev8ai/j,ovia." (Pru-
dentia nihil differt a felicitate, estque ipsa adeo felicitas.)
" Stob. Eel.," Lib. ii. c. 7 : " TeXo? Se (fraaiv eivai TO evBai-
fjioveiv, 6u eveica, Travra irparrerai." (Finem esse dicunt
felicitatem, cvjus causa fiunt omnia.) " EvSatpoviav a-vvw-
vvpew TW re\ei \eyovai,." (Finem bonorum et felicita
tem synonyma esse dicunt.} " Arrian Diss. Epict.," i. 4 : " 'H
aperr) ravTijv e^et TTJV eTrayje^iav, evSatfj-oviav Troirjcrai."
(Virtus profitetur, se felicitatem prwstare.) Sen., Ep. 90:
" Ceterum (sapientia) ad beatum statum tendit, illo ducit,

350 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVI.

illo vias aperit." — Id., Ep. 108 : " Illud admoneo audit ionem
philosophorum, lectionemque, ad proposition beatce vitce tra-
hendum"

The ethics of the C}rnics also adopted this end of the
happiest life, as the Emperor Julian expressly testifies
(Orat. vi.) : " Trjs Kuvi/crj<; Se (^iXocro^ta? CT/COTTO? fjuev ecrn
teat reXo?, axnrep 8ij Kai Tracnjs <f)i\oa'o<j)ia<;, TO evbai/Aoveiv'
ro Sc ev8ai/jtoveiv ev ru> fyv Kara (frvaiv, d\Xa p.rj Trpo? ra?
rwv 7To\\(ov So£a?." (Cynicce philosophic ut etiam omnis
philosophic^, scopus et finis est feliciter vivere : felicitas vitce
autem in eo posita est, ut secundum naturam vivatur, nee
vero secundum opiniones multitudinis.) Only the Cynics
followed quite a peculiar path to this end, a path directly
opposed to the ordinary one — the path of extreme priva
tion. They start from the insight that the motions of the
will which are brought about by the objects which attract
and excite it, and the wearisome, and for the most part
vain, efforts to attain these, or, if they are attained, the
fear of losing them, and finally the loss itself, produce far
greater pain than the want of all these objects ever can.
Therefore, in order to attain to the life that is most free
from pain, they chose the path of the extremest desti
tution, and fled from all pleasures as snares through
which one was afterwards handed over to pain. But
after this they could boldly scorn happiness and its
caprices. This is the spirit of cynicism. Seneca dis
tinctly expresses it in the eighth chapter, " De Tranquili-
tate Animi : " " Cogitandum est, quanto levior dolor sit, non
habere, quam perdere : et intelligemus paupertati eo mino-
rem tormentorum, quo minorem damnorum esse materiam."
Then : " Tolerabilius est, faciliusque, non acquirere, quam
amittere. . . . Diogenes effecit, ne quid sibi eripi posset, . . .
qui se fortuitis omnibus exuit. . . . Videtur mihi dixisse ;
age tuum ner/otium, fortuna : nihil apud Diogenem jam
tuum est." The parallel passage to this last sentence is
the quotation of Stobasus (Eel. ii. /) : "Aioyevr]? e^ vofju-
%eiv opav rrjv Tvyr,v evopwcrav avrov Kai Xeyovcrav' TOVTOV

ON THE USE OF REASON AND STOICISM. 351

S'ov Svva/jiai fBaXeeiv Kvva 'Xvcra^rrj pa." (Diogenes credere
se dixit, videre Fortunam, ipsum intuentem, ac dicentem :
aut hunc non potui tetiyisse canem rabiosum.) The same
spirit of cynicism is also shown in the epitaph on Diogenes,
in Suidas, under the word ^iTuoveo?, and in " Diogenes
Laertius," vi. 2 :

" TrjpaffKfi fjifv %aX«os VTTO XPOVOV'

KvSos a was aiuv, Aioyevij^,
M owes firei pioTris avrapKea 5o£ac eSetfas
QVTJTOLS, /ecu fco?;s OI/JLOV f\a.(j)pora.rt)V,"

{JEra quidem absumit tempus, sed tempore numquam

Interitura tua est gloria, Diogenes :
Quandoquidem ad vitam miseris mortalibus cequam

Monstrata estfacilis, te duce, et ampla via.)

Accordingly the fundamental thought of cynicism is that
life in its simplest and nakedest form, with the hardships
that belong to it by nature, is the most endurable, and is
therefore to be chosen ; for every assistance, convenience,
gratification, and pleasure by means of which men seek to
make life more agreeable only brings with it new and
greater ills than originally belonged to it. Therefore we
may regard the following sentence as the expression of the
kernel of the doctrine of cynicism: " Awyevris efioq TTO\-
\a/a<? Xeyayv, rov iwv avOwjrwv ftiov pa&iov inro TWV decov
&6$oa6ai, aTro/ceKpv(J)9ai 8e avrov ^rjTowroov fJ,€\L7rrjKTa
Kat fjivpa teat ra 7rapcnr\r)aria." (Diogenes clamabat sccpius,
hominum vitam facilcm a diis dari, verum occultari illam
qucerentibus mellita cibaria, ungucnta et his similia. (Diog.,
Laert., vi. 2.) And further : " Aeov, avrt, rwv a^prjarcav
TTOVCOV, TOU? Kara (j>v<riv e\o(j,evovs, "C^v euSat/Ltoyo)?' jrapa rrjv
avoiav Ka/toScufiovovcn. . • . rov avrov %apa/crr)pa rov ftiov
\e<ya)v Siej^aryeiv, ovrrep Kat, 'HpaKkys, firj&ev eXevdijpia?
rrpoKpivwv" (Quum igitur, repudiatis inutilibus laborious,
naturales insequi, ac vivere beate dcbcamus, per summam de-
mentiam infelices sumus. . . . eandem vitce formam, quam
Hercules, se vivere affirmans, nihil libertati prccferens.
Ibid.) Therefore the old, genuine Cynics, Antisthenes,

352 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVI.

Diogenes, Krates, and their disciples had once for all re
nounced every possession, all conveniences and pleasures,
in order to escape for ever from the troubles and cares,
the dependence and the pains, which are inevitably
bound up with them and are not counterbalanced by
them. Through the bare satisfaction of the most press
ing wants and the renunciation of everything superfluous
they thought they would come off best. Accordingly they
contented themselves with what in Athens or Corinth
was to be had almost for nothing, such as lupines, water,
an old threadbare cloak, a wallet, and a staff. They
begged occasionally, as far as was necessary to supply
such wants, but they never worked. Yet they accepted
absolutely nothing that exceeded the wants referred to
above. Independence in the widest sense was their aim.
They occupied their time in resting, going about, talking
with all men, and much mocking, laughing, and joking ;
their characteristic was carelessness and great cheerful
ness. Since now in this manner of life they had no aims
of their own, no purposes or ends to pursue, thus were
lifted above the sphere of human action, and at the same
time always enjoyed complete leisure, they were admir
ably fitted, as men of proved strength of mind, to be the
advisers and admonishers of the rest. Therefore Apuleius
says (Florid., iv.) : " Crates, ut lar familiaris apud homines
suoe cctatis cultus est. Nulla domus ei unquam clausa erat :
nee erat patrisfamilias tarn absconditum secretum, quin co
tempestive Crates interveniret, litium omnium et jurgiorum
inter propinquos disceptator et arbiter" Thus in this, as in
so many other respects, they show a great likeness to the
mendicant friars of modern times, that is, to the better
and more genuine among them, whose ideal may be seen
in the Capucine Christoforo in Manzoni's famous romance.
Yet this resemblance lies only in the effects, not in the
cause. They agree in the result, but the fundamental
thought of the two is quite different. With the friars, as
with the Sannyasis, who are akin to them, it is an aim

ON THE USE OF REASON AND STOICISM. 353

which transcends life ; but with the Cynics it is only the
conviction that it is easier to reduce their wishes and
their wants to the minimum, than to attain to the maxi
mum in their satisfaction, which indeed is impossible, for
with their satisfaction the wishes and wants grow ad
infinitum; therefore, in order to reach the goal of all
ancient ethics, the greatest happiness possible in this
life, they took the path of renunciation as the shortest
and easiest : " odev /cat rov Kvvt,cr[j.ov eiprjKaaiv (rvvro^ov
GTT apeTTjv o&ov." (Unde Cynismum dixere compendiosam
ad virtutem viam.} Diog. Laert., vi. 9. The fundamental
difference between the spirit of cynicism and that of
asceticism comes out very clearly in the humility which
is essential to the ascetic, but is so foreign to the Cynic
that, on the contrary, he is distinguished beyond every
thing else for pride and scorn : —

" Sapiens uno minor est Jove, dives,
Liber, honoratua, pulcher, rex denique regum." — Hor.

On the other hand, the view of life held by the Cynics
agrees in spirit wyith that of J. J. Eousseau as he expounds
ijb in the " Discours sur I'Origine de I'Indgalitt" For he
also would wish to lead us back to the crude state of
nature, and regards the reduction of our wants to the
minimum as the surest path to happiness. For the rest,
the Cynics were exclusively practical philosophers : at
least no account of their theoretical philosophy is known
to me.

Now the Stoics proceeded from them in this way — they
changed the practical into the theoretical. They held
that the actual dispensing with everything that can be
done without is not demanded, but that it is sufficient
that we should regard possessions and pleasures constantly
as dispensable, and as held in the hand of chance ; for
then the actual deprivation of them, if it should chance
to occur, would neither be unexpected nor fall heavily.
One might always have and enjoy everything ; only one

VOL. II. Z

354 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVI

must ever keep present the conviction of the worthless-
ness and dispensableness of these good things on the one
hand, and of their uncertainty and perishableness on the
other, and therefore prize them all very little, and be
always ready to give them up. Nay more, he who must
actually dispense with these things in order not to be
moved by them, thereby shows that in his heart he
holds them to be truly good things, which one must put
quite out of sight if one is not to long after them. The
wise man, on the other hand, knows that they are not
good things at all, but rather perfectly indifferent things,
aSia^opa, in any case Trpoiyy/j.eva. Therefore if they
present themselves he will accept them, but yet is always
ready to let them go again, if chance, to which they be
long, should demand them back ; for they are TWV OVK e</>'
rj/jiiv. In this sense, Epictetus, chap, vii., says that the
wise man, like one who has landed from a ship, &c., will
also let himself be comforted by a wife or a child, but yet
will always be ready, whenever the captain calls, to let
them go again. Thus the Stoics perfected the theory of
equanimity and independence at the cost of the practice,
for they reduced everything to a mental process, and by
arguments, such as are presented in the first chapter of
Epictetus, sophisticated themselves into all the amenities
of life. But in doing so they left out of account that
everything to which one is accustomed becomes a need,
and therefore can only be given up with pain ; that the
will does not allow itself to be played with, cannot enjoy
without loving the pleasures ; that a dog does not remain
indifferent if one draws a piece of meat through its mouth,
and neither does a wise man if he is hungry; and that
there is no middle path between desiring and renouncing.
But they believed that they satisfied their principles if,
sitting at a luxurious Roman table, they left no dish
untasted, yet at the same time protested that they were
each and all of them mere Trpoiufieva, not ajaOa ; or in
plain English, if they eat, drank, and were merry, yet

ON THE USE OF REASON AND STOICISM. 355

gave no thanks to God for it all, but rather made fastidious
faces, and persisted in boldly asserting that they gained
nothing whatever from the whole feast. This was the
expedient of the Stoics ; they were therefore mere brag
garts, and stand to the Cynics in much the same relation
as well-fed Benedictines and Augustines stand to Francis
cans and Capucines. Now the more they neglected
practice, the more they refined the theory. I shall here
add a few proofs and supplementary details to the exposi
tion of it given at the close of our first book.

If we search in the writings of the Stoics which re
main to us, all of which are unsystematically composed,
for the ultimate ground of that irrefragible equanimity
which is unceasingly demanded of us, we find no other
than the knowledge that the course of the world is entirely
independent of our will, and consequently, that the evil
which befalls us is inevitable. If we have regulated our
claims by a correct insight into this, then mourning,
rejoicing, fearing, and hoping are follies of which we are
no longer capable. Further, especially in the commen
taries of Arrian, it is surreptitiously assumed that all that
is OVK €<f> r^jiiv (i.e., does not depend upon us) is at once
also ov 7r/3o<? r}/jLas (i.e., does not concern us). Yet it
remains true that all the good things of life are in the
power of chance, and therefore whenever it makes use of
this power to deprive us of them, we are unhappy if we
have placed our happiness in them. From this unworthy
fate we are, in the opinion of the Stoics, delivered by the
right use of reason, by virtue of which we regard all these
things, never as ours, but only as lent to us for an in
definite time ; only thus can we never really lose them.
Therefore Seneca says (Ep. 98) : " Si, quid humanarum
rerum varietas possit, cogitaverit, ante quam senserit," and
Diogenes Laertius (vii. I. 87) : " Icrov Se ecrrt TO KCLT aperrjv
%r)v TO) Ka-f €fj,TT€ipiav ra)v (£ucra av^aivovrwu "C^v" (Secun
dum virtutem vivere idem est, quod secundum experientiam
eorum, quce secundum naturam accidunt, vivere.~) The pas-

356 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVI.

sage in Arrian's "Discourses of Epictetus," B. iii., c. 24,
84-89, is particularly in point here; and especially, as
a proof of what I have said in this reference in § 16 of
the first volume, the passage : " TOVTO 709 ecrrt TO airiov
TOL<? avOpoTTOLS TTavrwv Twv KdKWV TO T<Z? TrpoX.rjtyeis Ta<?
icoLvas fjiT) &vvacr0ai e<f)ap/j,ot,6iv rot? 67U /jiepovs," Ibid, iv.,
I. 42. (If ax enim causa est hominibus omnium malorum,
quod anticipationes generates rebus singularibus accom-
modare non possuntS) Similarly the passage in " Marcus
Aurelius " (iv. 29) : " Et %evo<; KOO-/JLOV 6 fjii
TO, €v avro) ovra, ov% rjrrov £evo<; /cat o ^
ra ryLyvofieva ; " that is : " If he is a stranger to the
universe who does not know what is in it, no less
is he a stranger who does not know how things go
on in it." Also Seneca's eleventh chapter, " De Tran-
guilitate Animi," is a complete proof of this view. The
opinion of the Stoics amounts on the whole to this,
that if a man has watched for awhile the juggling illusion
of happiness and then uses his reason, he must recognise
both the rapid changes of the dice and the intrinsic worth-
lessness of the counters, and therefore must henceforth
remain unmoved. Taken generally the Stoical point of
view may be thus expressed : our suffering always arises
from the want of agreement between our wishes and the
course of the world. Therefore one of these two must
be changed and adapted to the other. Since now the
course of things is not in our power (OVK €<$> ^^iv), we
must direct our volitions and desires according to the
course of things : for the will alone is e<£' TJ^IV. This
adaptation of volition to the course of the external world,
thus to the nature of things, is very often understood
under the ambiguous Kara fyvanv %gv. See the " Discourses
of Epictetus," ii. 17, 21, 22. Seneca also denotes this
point of view (E^. 119) when he says: " Nihil interest,
utrum non desideres, an habeas. Summa rei in utroque est
eadem: non torqueberis." Also Cicero (Tusc. iv. 26) by
the words : " Solum halere velle, summa dementia est,"

ON THE USE OF REASON AND STOICISM. 357

Similarly Arrian (iv. i. 175): " Ov yap eKTrXrjpcoa-ei rtav
€7ridvfj,ov/jiei'0)v e\.6v0epia irapaaKeva^erai, aXka avaarcevr)
TT;? €7ri6v/ALa<;." (Non cnim explcndis desideriis libertas
comparatur, sed tollenda cupiditate.)

The collected quotations in the " Historia Philosophies
Grceco-Romance" of Hitter and Preller may be taken as
proofs of what I have said, in the place referred to above,
about the o/j,o\o<yoviievws tyv of the Stoics. Also the
saying of Seneca (Ep. 31, and again Ep. 74): " Perfecta
virtus cst cequalitas et tenor mice per omnia consonans sibi."
The following passage of Seneca's indicates the spirit
of the Stoa generally (Ep. 92) : " Quid est beata vita ?
Securitas et perpetua tranquillitas. Hanc dabit animi
magnitude, dabit constantia bene judicati tenax" A sys
tematical study of the Stoics will convince every one that
the end of their ethics, like that of the ethics of Cynicism
from which they sprang, is really nothing else than a life
as free as possible from pain, and therefore as happy as
possible. Whence it follows that the Stoical morality
is only a special form of Eudccmonism. It has not, like
the Indian, the Christian, and even the Platonic ethics,
a metaphysical tendency, a transcendental end, but a
completely immanent end, attainable in this life; the
steadfast serenity (arapa^ta) and unclouded happiness of
the wise man, whom nothing can disturb. Yet it cannot
be denied that the later Stoics, especially Arrian, some
times lose sight of this end, and show a really ascetic
tendency, which is to be attributed to the Christian and
Oriental spirit in general which was then already spreading.
If we consider closely and seriously the goal of Stoicism,
that arapa^ia, we find in it merely a hardening and in
sensibility to the blow of fate which a man attains to
because he keeps ever present to his mind the short
ness of life, the emptiness of pleasure, the instability of
happiness, and has also discerned that the difference be
tween happiness and unhappiness is very much less than
our anticipation of both is wont to represent. But this is

358 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVI.

yet no state of happiness ; it is only the patient endur
ance of sufferings which one has foreseen as irremedi
able. Yet magnanimity and worth consist in this, that
one should bear silently and patiently what is irremedi
able, in melancholy peace, remaining always the same,
while others pass from rejoicing to despair and from des
pair to rejoicing. Accordingly one may also conceive of
Stoicism as a spiritual hygiene, in accordance with which,
just as one hardens the body against the influences of
wind and weather, against fatigue and exertion, one has
also to harden one's mind against misfortune, danger, loss,
injustice, malice, perfidy, arrogance, and the folly of men.
I remark further, that the KaOyrcovra of the Stoics,
which Cicero translates officia, signify as nearly as pos
sible Oblicgenheiten, or that which it befits the occasion
to do ; English, incumbencies ; Italian, quel che tocca a me di
fare, o di lasciare, thus what it behoves a reasonable man
to do. Cf. Diog. Laert, vii. i. 109. Finally, the panthe
ism of the Stoics, though absolutely inconsistent with
many an exhortation of Arrian, is most distinctly ex
pressed by Seneca : " Quid est Deus ? Mens universi. Quid
est Deus ? Quod vides totum, et quod non vides totum. Sic
dem.um magnitudo sua illi redditur, qua nihil majus ex-
cogitari potest : si solus est omnia, opus suum et extra et
intra tenet." (Qucest. Natur. i,prcefatio 12.)

( 359 )

CHAPTEE XVII.1

ON MAN'S NEED OF METAPHYSICS.

WITH the exception of man, no being wonders at its own
existence ; but it is to them all so much a matter of course
that they do not observe it. The wisdom of nature speaks
out of the peaceful glance of the brutes ; for in them, the
will and the intellect are not yet so widely separated
that they can be astonished at each other when they meet
again. Thus here the whole phenomenon is still firmly
attached to the stem of nature from which it has come,
and is partaker of the unconscious omniscience of the
great mother. Only after the inner being of nature (the
will to live in its objectification) has ascended, vigorous
and cheerful, through the two series of unconscious exist
ences, and then through the long and broad series of ani
mals, does it attain at last to reflection for the first time
on the entrance of reason, thus in man. Then it marvels
at its own works, and asks itself what it itself is. Its
wonder however is the more serious, as it here stands for
the first time consciously in the presence of death, and
besides the finiteness of all existence, the vanity of all
effort forces itself more or less upon it. With this reflec
tion and this wonder there arises therefore for man alone,
the need for a mdaphysic ; he is accordingly an animal
metapJiysicum. At the beginning of his consciousness cer
tainly he also accepts himself as a matter of course. This
does not last long however, but very early, with the first
dawn of reflection, that wonder already appears, which is

1 This chapter is connected with § 15 of the first volume.

360 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVII.

some day to become the mother of metaphysics. In agree
ment with this Aristotle also says at the beginning of his
metaphysics : " Ata <yap TO Oavfj,a^eiv olavOpwjroi, Kai vvv /cat
TO TTpatTov r)p£avTO <f}iXocro(f)eiv." (Propter admirationem
enim et nunc et primo inceperunt homines philosophari.}
Moreover, the special philosophical disposition consists
primarily in this, that a man is capable of wonder beyond
the ordinary and everyday degree, and is thus induced to
make the universal of the phenomenon his problem, while
the investigators in the natural sciences wonder only at
exquisite or rare phenomena, and their problem is merely
to refer these to phenomena which are better known.
The lower a man stands in an intellectual regard the less
of a problem is existence itself for him ; everything, how
it is, and that it is, appears to him rather a matter of
course. This rests upon the fact that his intellect still
remains perfectly true to its original destiny of being ser
viceable to the will as the medium of motives, and therefore
is closely bound up with the world and nature, as an inte
gral part of them. Consequently it is very far from com
prehending the world in a purely objective manner, freeing
itself, so to speak, from the whole of things, opposing
itself to this whole, and so for a while becoming as if self-
existent. On the other hand, the philosophical wonder
which springs from this is conditioned in the individual
by higher development of the intellect, yet in general not
by this alone; but without doubt it is the knowledge
of death, and along with this the consideration of the
suffering and misery of life, which gives the strongest
impulse to philosophical reflection and metaphysical
explanation of the world. If our life were endless and
painless, it would perhaps occur to no one to ask why the
world exists, and is just the kind of world it is ; but
everything would just be taken as a matter of course. In
accordance with this we find that the interest which
philosophical and also religious systems inspire has
always its strongest hold in the dogma of some kind of

ON MAN'S NEED OF METAPHYSICS. 361

existence after death ; and although the most recent
systems seem to make the existence of their gods the
main point, and to defend this most zealously, yet in
reality this is only because they have connected their
special dogma of immortality with this, and regard the one
as inseparable from the other : only on this account is it
of importance to them. For if one could establish their
doctrine of immortality for them in some other way, their
lively zeal for their gods would at once cool, and it would
give place almost to complete indifference if, conversely,
the absolute impossibility of immortality were proved to
them ; for the interest in the existence of the gods would
vanish with the hope of a closer acquaintance with
them, to the residuum which might connect itself with
their possible influence on the events of this present life.
But if one could prove that continued existence after
death is incompatible with the existence of gods, because,
let us say, it pre-supposes originality of being, they would
soon sacrifice the gods to their own immortality and be
come zealous for Atheism. The fact that the materialistic
systems, properly so-called, and also absolute scepticism,
have never been able to obtain a general or lasting in
fluence, depends upon the same grounds.

Temples and churches, pagodas and mosques, in all
lands and in all ages, in splendour and vastness, testify to
the metaphysical need of man, which, strong and ineradic
able, follows close upon his physical need. Certainly
whoever is satirically inclined might add that this meta
physical need is a modest fellow who is content with poor
fare. It sometimes allows itself to be satisfied with
clumsy fables and insipid tales. If only imprinted early
enough, they are for a man adequate explanations of his
existence and supports of his morality. Consider, for
example, the Koran. This wretched book was sufficient
to found a religion of the world, to satisfy the metaphysical
need of innumerable millions of men for twelve hundred
years, to become the foundation of their morality, and of

362 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVII.

no small contempt for death, and also to inspire them to
bloody wars and most extended conquests. We find in it
the saddest and the poorest form of Theism. Much may
be lost through the translations ; but I have not been able
to discover one single valuable thought in it. Such things
show that metaphysical capacity does not go hand in hand
with the metaphysical need. Yet it will appear that in
the early ages of the present surface of the earth this was
not the case, and that those who stood considerably nearer
than we do to the beginning of the human race and the
source of organic nature, had also both greater energy of
the intuitive faculty of knowledge, and a truer disposition
of mind, so that they were capable of a purer, more direct
comprehension of the inner being of nature, and were
thus in a position to satisfy the metaphysical need in a
more worthy manner. Thus originated in the primitive
ancestors of the Brahmans, the Eishis, the almost super
human conceptions which were afterwards set down in the
Upanishads of the Vedas.

On the other hand, there have never been wanting
persons who were interested in deriving their living from
that metaphysical need, and in making the utmost they
could out of it. Therefore among all nations there are
monopolists and farmers-general of it — the priests. Yet
their trade had everywhere to be assured to them in this
way, that they received the right to impart their meta
physical dogmas to men at a very early age, before the
judgment has awakened from its morning slumber, thus in
early childhood; for then every well-impressed dogma,
however senseless it may be, remains for ever. If they
had to wait till the judgment is ripe, their privileges could
not continue.

A second, though not a numerous class of persons, who
derive their support from the metaphysical need of man,
is constituted by those who live by philosophy. By the
Greeks they were called Sophists, by the moderns they
are called Professors of Philosophy. Aristotle (Metaph.,

ON MAN'S NEED OF METAPHYSICS. 363

ii. 2) without hesitation numbers Aristippus among the
Sophists. In Diogenes Laertius (ii. 65) we find that the
reason of this is that he was the first of the Socratics
who accepted payment for his philosophy ; on account of
which Socrates also returned him his present. Among
the moderns also those who live "by philosophy are not
only, as a rule, and with the rarest exceptions, quite
different from those who live for philosophy, but they
are very often the opponents, the secret and irreconcilable
enemies of the latter. For every true and important
philosophical achievement will overshadow their own too
much, and, moreover, cannot adapt itself to the views and
limitations of their guild. Therefore it is always their
endeavour to prevent such a work from making its way ;
and for this purpose, according to the age and circum
stances in each case, the customary means are suppressing,
concealing, hushing up, ignoring and keeping secret, or
denying, disparaging, censuring, slandering and distorting,
or, finally, denouncing and persecuting. Hence many a
great man has had to drag himself wearily through life
unknown, unhonoured, unrewarded, till at last, after his
death, the world became undeceived as to him and as to
them. In the meanwhile they had attained their end,
had been accepted by preventing him from being accepted,
and, with wife and child, had lived "by philosophy, while
he lived for it. But if he is dead, then the thing is
reversed ; the new generation of the former class, which
always exists, now becomes heir to his achievements, cuts
them down to its own measure, and now lives "by him.
That Kant could yet live both "by and for philosophy
depended on the rare circumstance that, for the first time
since Divus Antoninus and Divus Julianus, a philosopher
sat on the throne. Only under such auspices could the
" Critique of Pure Reason " have seen the light. Scarcely
was the king dead than we see that Kant also, seized with
fear, because he belonged to the guild, modified, expur
gated, and spoiled his masterpiece in the second edition,

364 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVII.

and yet was soon in danger of losing bis place ; so that
Campe invited him to come to him, in Brunswick, and
live with him as the instructor of his family (Iling.,
Ansichten aus Kant's Leben, p. 68). University philosophy
is, as a rule, mere juggling. Its real aim is to impart to
the students, in the deepest ground of their thought, that
tendency of mind which the ministry that appoints to the
professorships regards as consistent with its views. The
ministry may also be perfectly right in this from a states
man's point of view; only the result of it is that such
philosophy of the chair is a nervis alienis mobile lignum,
and cannot be regarded as serious philosophy, but as the
mere jest of it. Moreover, it is at any rate just that such
inspection or guidance should extend only to the philo
sophy of the chair, and not to the real philosophy that is
in earnest. For if anything in the world is worth wishing
for — so well worth wishing for that even the ignorant and
dull herd in its more reflective moments would prize it
more than silver and gold — it is that a ray of light should
fall on the obscurity of our being, and that we should gain
some explanation of our mysterious existence, in which
nothing is clear but its misery and its vanity. But even
if this is in itself attainable, it is made impossible by
imposed and compulsory solutions.

We shall now subject to a general consideration the
different ways of satisfying this strong metaphysical need.

By metaphysics I understand all knowledge that pre
tends to transcend the possibility of experience, thus to
transcend nature or the given phenomenal appearance of
things, in order to give an explanation of that by which,
in some sense or other, this experience or nature is con
ditioned ; or, to speak in popular language, of that which
is behind nature, and makes it possible. But the great
original diversity in the power of understanding, besides
the cultivation of it, which demands much leisure, makes
so great a difference between men, that as soon as a people
has emerged from the state of savages, no one metaphysic

ON MAN'S NEED OF METAPHYSICS. 365

can serve for them all. Therefore among civilised nations
we find throughout two different kinds of metaphysics,
which are distinguished by the fact that the one has its
evidence in itself, the other outside itself. Since the meta
physical systems of the first kind require reflection, culture,
and leisure for the recognition of their evidence, they can
be accessible only to a very small number of men ; and,
moreover, they can only arise and maintain their existence
in the case of advanced civilisation. On the other hand,
the systems of the second kind exclusively are for the great
majority of men who are not capable of thinking, but only
of believing, and who are not accessible to reasons, but only
to authority. fThese systems may therefore be called
metaphysics of the people, after the analogy of poetry of
the people, and also wisdom of the people, by which is
understood proverbs. These systems, however, are known
under the name of religions, and are found among all na
tions, not excepting even the most savage. Their evidence
is, as has been said, external, and as such is called revela
tion, which is authenticated by signs and miracles. Their
arguments are principally threats of eternal, and indeed
also temporal evils, directed against unbelievers, and even
against mere doubters. As ultima ratio theologorum, we
find among many nations the stake or things similar to it.
If they seek a different authentication, or if they make use
of other arguments, they already make the transition into
the systems of the first kind, and may degenerate into a
mixture of the two, which brings more danger than advan
tage, for their invaluable prerogative of being imparted to
children gives them the surest guarantee of the permanent
possession of the mind, for thereby their dogmas grow into
a kind of second inborn intellect, like the twig upon the
grafted tree ; while, on the other hand, the systems of the
first kind only appeal to grown-up people, and in them
always find a system of the second kind already in pos
session of their convictions. Both kinds of metaphysics,
whose difference may be briefly expressed by the words

366 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVII.

reasoned conviction and faith, have this in common, that
every one of their particular systems stands in a hostile re
lation to all the others of its kind. Between those of the
first kind war is waged only with word and pen ; between
those of the second with fire and sword as well. Several
of the latter owe their propagation in part to this last
kind of polemic, and all have by degrees divided the earth
between them, and indeed with such decided authority
that the peoples of the earth are distinguished and sepa
rated more according to them than according to nation
ality or government. They alone reign, each in its own
province. The systems of the first kind, on the contrary,
are at the most tolerated, and even this only because, on
account of the small number of their adherents, they are
for the most part not considered worth the trouble of com
bating with fire and sword — although, where it seemed
necessary, these also have been employed against them
with effect ; besides, they occur only in a sporadic form.
Yet in general they have only been endured in a tamed
and subjugated condition, for the system of the second
kind which prevailed in the country ordered them to con
form their teaching more or less closely to its own. Some
times it not only subjugated them, but even employed
their services and used them as a support, which is how
ever a dangerous experiment. For these systems of the
first kind, since they are deprived of power, believe they
may advance themselves by craft, and never entirely lay
aside a secret ill-will which at times comes unexpectedly
into prominence and inflicts injuries which are hard to heal.
For they are further made the more dangerous by the fact
that all the real sciences, not even excepting the most
innocent, are their secret allies against the systems of the
second kind, and without themselves being openly at war
with the latter, suddenly and unexpectedly do great mis
chief in their province. Besides, the attempt which is
aimed at by the enlistment referred to of the services of
the systems of the first kind by the second — the attempt

ON MAN'S NEED OF METAPHYSICS. 367

to add an inner authentication to a system whose original
authentication was external, is in its nature perilous ; for,
if it were capable of such an authentication, it would never
have required an external one. And in general it is
always a hazardous thing to attempt to place a new foun
dation under a finished structure. Moreover, how should
a religion require the suffrage of a philosophy ? It has
everything upon its side — revelation, tradition, miracles,
prophecies, the protection of the government, the highest
rank, as is due to the truth, the consent and reverence of
all, a thousand temples in which it is proclaimed and
practised, bands of sworn priests, and, what is more than
all, the invaluable privilege of being allowed to imprint
its doctrines on the mind at the tender age of childhood,
whereby they became almost like innate ideas. With
such wealth of means at its disposal, still to desire the
assent of poor philosophers it must be more covetous, or
to care about their contradiction it must be more fearful,
than seems to be compatible with a good conscience.

To the distinction established above between metaphy
sics of the first and of the second kind, we have yet to add
the following : — A system of the first kind, thus a philo
sophy, makes the claim, and has therefore the obligation,
in everything that it says, sensu strict o et proprio, to be
true, for it appeals to thought and conviction. A religion,
on the other hand, being intended for the innumerable
multitude who, since they are incapable of examination
and thought, would never comprehend the profoundest
and most difficult truths sensu proprio, has only the obli
gation to be true sensu alleyorico. Truth cannot appear
naked before the people. A symptom of this allegorical
nature of religions is the mysteries which are to be found
perhaps in them all, certain dogmas which cannot even be
distinctly thought, not to speak of being literally true.
Indeed, perhaps it might be asserted that some absolute
contradictions, some actual absurdities, are an essential
ingredient in a complete religion, for these are just the

368 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVII.

stamp of its allegorical nature, and the only adequate
means of making the ordinary mind and the uncultured
understanding feel what would be incomprehensible to it,
that religion has ultimately to do with quite a different
order of things, with an order of things in themselves, in
the presence of which the laws of this phenomenal world,
in conformity with which it must speak, vanish ; and that
therefore not only the contradictory but also the compre
hensible dogmas are really only allegories and accommo
dations to the human power of comprehension. It seems
to me that it was in this spirit that Augustine and even
Luther adhered to the mysteries of Christianity in opposi-
sition to Pelagianism, which sought to reduce everything
to the dull level of comprehensibility. From this point of
view it is also conceivable how Tertullian could say in all
seriousness : "Prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est : . . . cer-
tum est, quia impossible " (De Carne Christi, c. 5). This alle
gorical nature of religions makes them independent of the
proofs which are incumbent on philosophy, and in general
withdraws them from investigation. Instead of this
they require faith, that is, a voluntary admission that
such is the state of the case. Since, then, faith guides
action, and the allegory is always so framed that, as
regards the practical, it leads precisely to that which
the truth sensu proprio would also lead to, religion is
justified in promising to those who believe eternal salva
tion. Thus we see that in the main, and for the great ma
jority, who cannot apply themselves to thought, religions
very well supply the place of metaphysics in general, the
need of which man feels to be imperative. They do this
partly in a practical interest, as the guiding star of their
action, the unfurled standard of integrity and virtue, as
Kant admirably expresses it ; partly as the indispensable
comfort in the heavy sorrows of life, in which capacity
they fully supply the place of an objectively true meta-
physic, because they lift man above himself and his exist
ence in time, as well perhaps as such a metaphysic ever

ON MAN'S NEED OF METAPHYSICS. 369

could. In this their great value and indeed necessity
shows itself very clearly. For Plato says, and says rightly,
" <f>i\6ao(f)ov 7r\r)6o<? aSvvarov elvai " (vulgus philosophum
esse impossible est. De Rep., vi. p. 89, Bip.} On the other
hand, the only stumbling-stone is this, that religions never
dare to confess their allegorical nature, but have to assert
that they are true sensu proprio. They thereby encroach
on the province of metaphysics proper, and call forth the
antagonism of the latter, which has therefore expressed
itself at all times when it was not chained up. The con
troversy which is so perseveringly carried on in our own
day between supernaturalists and rationalists also rests on
the failure to recognise the allegorical nature of all religion.

o o o

Both wish to have Christianity true sensu proprio ; in this
sense the former wish to maintain it without deduction,
as it were with skin and hair ; and thus they have a hard
stand to make against the knowledge and general culture
of the age. The latter wish to explain away all that
is properly Christian ; whereupon they retain something
which is neither sensu proprio nor sensu allegorico true,
but rather a mere platitude, little better than Judaism,
or at the most a shallow Pelagianism, and, what is worst,
an abject optimism, absolutely foreign to Christianity
proper. Moreover, the attempt to found a religion upon
reason removes it into the other class of metaphysics,
that which has its authentication in itself, thus to the
foreign ground of the philosophical systems, and into the
conflict which these wage against each other in their own
arena, and consequently exposes it to the light fire of
scepticism and the heavy artillery of the " Critique of
Pure Eeason ; " but for it to venture there would be clear
presumption.

It would be most beneficial to both kinds of meta
physics that each of them should remain clearly separated
from the other and confine itself to its own province, that
it may there be able to develop its nature fully. Instead
of which, through the whole Christian era, the endeavour

VOL. n. 2 A

370 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVII.

has been to bring about a fusion of the two, for the dogmas
and conceptions of the one have been carried over into the
other, whereby both are spoiled. This has taken place in
the most open manner in our own day in that strange her
maphrodite or centaur, the so-called philosophy of religion,
which, as a kind of gnosis, endeavours to interpret the
given religion, and to explain what is true sensu allegorico
through something which is true sensu proprio. But for
this we would have to know and possess the truth sensu
proprio already ; and in that case such an interpretation
would be superfluous. For to seek first to find meta
physics, i.e., the truth sensu proprio, merely out of religion
by explanation and interpretation would be a doubtful
and dangerous undertaking, to which one would only
make up one's mind if it were proved that truth, like
iron and other base metals, could only be found in a
mixed, not in a pure form, and therefore one could only
obtain it by reduction from the mixed ore.

Eeligions are necessary for the people, and an inestim
able benefit to them. But if they oppose themselves to
the progress of mankind in the knowledge of the truth,
they must with the utmost possible forbearance be set
aside. And to require that a great mind — a Shakspeare ;
a Goethe — should make the dogmas of any religion im
plicitly, bond fide et sensu proprio, his conviction is to
require that a giant should put on the shoe of a dwarf.

Eeligions, being calculated with reference to the power
of comprehension of the great mass of men, can only have
indirect, not immediate truth. To require of them the
latter is as if one wished to read the letters set up in the
form-chase, instead of their impression. The value of a
religion will accordingly depend upon the greater or less
content of truth which it contains under the veil of alle
gory, and then upon the greater or less distinctness with
which it becomes visible through this veil, thus upon the
transparency of the latter. It almost seems that, as the
oldest languages are the most perfect, so also are the oldest

ON MAN'S NEED OF METAPHYSICS. 371

religions. If I were to take the results of my philosophy
as the standard of truth, I would be obliged to concede to
Buddhism the pre-eminence over the rest. In any case
it must be a satisfaction to me to see my teaching in such
close agreement with a religion which the majority of
men upon the earth hold as their own; for it numbers
far more adherents than any other. This agreement,
p however, must be the more satisfactory to me because
in my philosophising I have certainly not been under
its influence. For up till 1818, when my work appeared,
there were very few, exceedingly incomplete and scanty,
accounts of Buddhism to be found in Europe, which were
almost entirely limited to a few essays in the earlier
volumes of "Asiatic Eesearches," and were principally
concerned with the Buddhism of the Burmese. Only
since then has fuller information about this religion
gradually reached us, chiefly through the profound and
instructive essays of the meritorious member of the St.
Petersburg Academy, J. J. Schmidt, in the proceedings
of his Academy, and then little by little through several
English and French scholars, so that I was able to give
a fairly numerous list of the best works on this religion
in my work, " Ueber den Willen in der Natur" under the
heading Sinologie. Unfortunately Csoma Korosi, that per
severing Hungarian, who, in order to study the language
and sacred writings of Buddhism, spent many years in
Tibet, and for the most part in Buddhist monasteries,
was carried off by death just as he was beginning to work
out for us the results of his researches. I cannot, how
ever, deny the pleasure with which I read, in his pro
visional accounts, several passages cited directly from the
Kahgyur itself; for example, the following conversation
of the dying Buddha with Brahma, who is doing him
homage : " There is a description of their conversation on
the subject of creation, — by whom was the world made ?
Shakya asks several questions of Brahma, — whether was
it he who made or produced such and such things, and

372 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVII.

endowed or blessed them with such and such virtues or
properties, — whether was it he who caused the several
revolutions in the destruction and regeneration of the
world. He denies that he had ever done anything to
that effect. At last he himself asks Shaky a how the
world was made, — by whom ? Here are attributed all
changes in the world to the moral works of the animal
beings, and it is stated that in the world all is illusion, •
there is no reality in the things ; all is empty. Brahma,
being instructed in his doctrine, becomes his follower"
(Asiatic Researches, vol. xx. p. 434).

I cannot place, as is always done, the fundamental
difference of all religions in the question whether they
are monotheistic, polytheistic, pantheistic, or atheistic,
but only in the question whether they are optimistic or
pessimistic, that is, whether they present the existence of
the world as justified by itself, and therefore praise and
value it, or regard it as something that can only be con
ceived as the consequence of our guilt, and therefore
properly ought not to be, because they recognise that
pain and death cannot lie in the eternal, original, and
immutable order of things, in that which in every respect
ought to be. The power by virtue of which Christianity
was able to overcome first Judaism, and then the heathen
ism of Greece and Rome, lies solely in its pessimism, in
the confession that our state is both exceedingly wretched
and sinful, \vhile Judaism and heathenism were opti
mistic. That truth, profoundly and painfully felt by all,
penetrated, and bore in its train the need of redemption.

I turn to a general consideration of the other kind of
metaphysics, that which has its authentication in itself,
and is called philosophy. I remind the reader of its origin,
mentioned above, in a wonder concerning the world and
our own existence, inasmuch as these press upon the intel
lect as a riddle, the solution of which therefore occupies
mankind without intermission. Here, then, I wish first
of all to draw attention to the fact that this could not be

ON MAN'S NEED OF METAPHYSICS. 373

the case if, in Spinoza's sense, which in our own day has
so often been brought forward again under modern forms
and expositions as pantheism, the world were an " absolute
substance," and therefore an absolutely necessary existence.
For this means that it exists with so great a necessity
that beside it every other necessity comprehensible to our
understanding as such must appear as an accident. It
would then be something which comprehended in itself
not only all actual but also all possible existence, so that,
as Spinoza indeed declares, its possibility and its actuality
would be absolutely one. Its non-being would therefore
be impossibility itself; thus it would be something the
non-being or other-being of which must be completely
inconceivable, and which could therefore just as little be
thought away as, for example, space or time. And since,
further, loe ourselves would be parts, modes, attributes, or
accidents of such an absolute substance, which would be
the only thing that, in any sense, could ever or anywhere
exist, our and its existence, together with its properties,
would necessarily be very far from presenting itself to us
as remarkable, problematical, and indeed as an unfathom
able and ever-disquieting riddle, but, on the contrary,
would be far more self-evident than that two and two
make four. For we would necessarily be incapable of
thinking anything else than that the world is, and is,
as it is ; and therefore we would necessarily be as little
conscious of its existence as such, i.e., as a problem for
reflection, as we are of the incredibly fast motion of our
planet.

All this, however, is absolutely not the case. Only to
the brutes, who are without thought, does the world and
existence appear as a matter of course; to man, on the
contrary, it is a problem, of which even the most unedu
cated and narrow-minded becomes vividly conscious in
certain brighter moments, but which enters more distinctly
and more permanently into the consciousness of each one
of us the clearer and more enlightened that conscious-

374 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVII.

ness is, and the more material for thought it has acquired
through culture, which all ultimately rises, in minds that
are naturally adapted for philosophising, to Plato's " dav^a-
%ew, yu-aXa <f)i\o<ro<f)iKov TraOos " (mirari, valde philosophicus
affectus), that is, to that wonder which comprehends in its
whole magnitude that problem which unceasingly occupies
the nobler portion of mankind in every age and in every
land, and gives it no rest. In fact, the pendulum which
keeps in motion the clock of metaphysics, that never runs
down, is the consciousness that the non-existence of this
world is just as possible as its existence. Thus, then, the
Spinozistic view of it as an absolutely necessary existence,
that is, as something that absolutely and in every sense
ought to and must be, is a false one. Even simple Theism,
since in its cosmological proof it tacitly starts by inferring
the previous non-existence of the world from its existence,
thereby assumes beforehand that the world is something
contingent. Nay, what is more, we very soon apprehend
the world as something the non-existence of which is not
only conceivable, but indeed preferable to its existence.
Therefore our wonder at it easily passes into a brooding
over the fatcdity which could yet call forth its existence,
arid by virtue of which such stupendous power as is de
manded for the production and maintenance of such a
world could be directed so much against its own interest.
The philosophical astonishment is therefore at bottom per
plexed and melancholy ; philosophy, like the overture to
" Don Juan," commences with a minor chord. It follows
from this that it can neither be Spinozism nor optimism.
The more special nature, which has just been indicated,
of the astonishment which leads us to philosophise clearly
springs from the sight of the suffering and the wickedness
in the world, which, even if they were in the most just
proportion to each other, and also were far outweighed
by good, are yet something which absolutely and in gene
ral ought not to be. But since now nothing can come
out of nothing, these also must have their germ in the

ON MAN'S NEED OF METAPHYSICS. 375

origin or in the kernel of the world itself. It is hard for
us to assume this if we look at the magnitude, the order
and completeness, of the physical world, for it seems to us
that what had the power to produce such a world must
have been able to avoid the suffering and the wickedness.
That assumption (the truest expression of which is Or-
muzd and Ahrimines), it is easy to conceive, is hardest of
all for Theism. Therefore the freedom of the will was
primarily invented to account for wickedness. But this
is only a concealed way of making something out of
nothing, for it assumes an Operari that proceeded from
no Esse (see Die beiden Grrundprobleme der Ethik, p. 58,
et seq. ; second edition, p. 57 et seq.) Then it was sought to
get rid of evil by attributing it to matter, or to unavoid
able necessity, whereby the devil, who is really the right
Expedicns ad hoc, was unwillingly set aside. To evil also
belongs death; but wickedness is only the throwing of the
existing evil from oneself on to another. Thus, as was said
above, it is wickedness, evil, and death that qualify and
intensify the philosophical astonishment. Not merely
that the world exists, but still more that it is such a
wretched world, is the punctum pruriens of metaphysics,
the problem which awakens in mankind an unrest that
cannot be quieted by scepticism nor yet by criticism.

We find physics also (in the widest sense of the word)
occupied with the explanation of the phenomena in the
world. But it lies in the very nature of its explanations
themselves that they cannot be sufficient. Physics cannot
stand on its own feet, but requires a metaphysic to lean
upon, whatever airs it may give itself towards the latter.
For it explains the phenomena by something still more
unknown than they are themselves ; by laws of nature,
resting upon forces of nature, to which the power of life
also belongs. Certainly the whole present condition of
all things in the world, or in nature, must necessarily be
explicable from purely physical causes. But such an ex
planation — supposing one actually succeeded so far as to

3?6 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVII.

be able to give it — must always just as necessarily be
tainted with two imperfections (as it were with two sores,
or like Achilles with the vulnerable heel, or the devil
with the horse's hoof), on account of which everything so
explained really remains still unexplained. First with
this imperfection, that the 'beginning of every explanatory
chain of causes and effects, i.e., of connected changes, can
absolutely never be reached, but, just like the limits of the
world in space and time, unceasingly recedes in infinite.
Secondly with this, that the whole of the efficient causes
out of which everything is explained constantly rest upon
something which is completely inexplicable, the original
qualities of things and the natural forces which play a
prominent part among them, by virtue of which they pro
duce a specific kind of effect, e.g., weight, hardness, impul
sive force, elasticity, warmth, electricity, chemical forces
&c., and which now remain in every explanation which is
given, like an unknown quantity, which absolutely cannot
be eliminated, in an otherwise perfectly solved algebraical
equation. Accordingly there is no fragment of clay, how
ever little worth, that is not entirely composed of inex
plicable qualities. Thus these .two inevitable defects in
every purely physical, i.e., causal, explanation show that
such an explanation can only be relative, and that its
whole method and nature cannot be the only one, the
ultimate and thus the sufficient one, i.e., cannot be the
method of explanation that can ever lead to the satis
factory solution of the difficult riddle of things, and to the
true understanding of the world and existence ; but that
the physical explanation in general and as such requires
further a metaphysical explanation, which affords us the
key to all its assumptions, but just on this account must
necessarily follow quite a different path. The first step
to this is that one should bring to distinct consciousness
and firmly retain the difference of the two, hence the
difference between physics and metaphysics. It rests in
general on the Kantian distinction between phenomenon

ON MAN'S NEED OF METAPHYSICS. 377

and thing in itself. 'Just because Kant held the latter to
be absolutely unknowable, there was, according to him,
no metaphysics, but merely immanent knowledge, i.e., phy
sics, which throughout can speak only of phenomena, and
also a critique of the reason which strives after metaphy
sics. Here, however, in order to show the true point of
connection between my philosophy and that of Kant, I
shall anticipate the second book, and give prominence to
the fact that Kant, in his beautiful exposition of the com
patibility of freedom and necessity (Critique of Pure
Eeason, first edition, p. 532-554; and Critique of Prac
tical Pieason, p. 224-231 of Rosenkranz's edition), shows
how one and the same action may in one aspect be per
fectly explicable as necessarily arising from the character
of the man, the influence to which he has been subject in
the course of his life, and the motives which are now pre
sent to him, but yet in another aspect must be regarded
as the work of his free will ; and in the same sense he
says, § 53 of the " Prolegomena :" " Certainly natural neces
sity will belong to every connection of cause and effect in
the world of sense ; yet, on the other hand, freedom will be
conceded to that cause which is not itself a phenomenon
(though indeed it is the ground of phenomena), thus
nature and freedom may without contradiction be attri
buted to the same thing, but in a different reference — in
the one case as a phenomenon, in the other case as a thing
in itself." What, then, Kant teaches of the phenomenon of
man and his action my teaching extends to all phenomena
in nature, in that it makes the will as a thing in itself
their foundation. This proceeding is justified first of all
by the fact that it must not be assumed that man is
specifically toto genere radically different from the other
beings and things in nature, but rather that he is different
only in degree. I turn back from this premature digres
sion to our consideration of the inadequacy of physics to
afford us the ultimate explanation of things. I say, then,
everything certainly is physical, but yet nothing is explic-

378 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVII.

able physically. As for the motion of the projected bullet, so
also for the thinking of the brain, a physical explanation
must ultimately be in itself possible, which would make the
latter just as comprehensible as is the former. But even
the former, which we imagine we understand so perfectly,
is at bottom as obscure to us as the latter ; for what the
inner nature of expansion in space may be — of impenetra
bility, mobility, hardness, elasticity, and gravity remains,
after all physical explanations, a mystery, just as much as
thought. But because in the case of thought the inexplic
able appears most immediately, a spring was at once made
here from physics to metaphysics, and a substance of quite
a different kind from all corporeal substances was hypos-
tatised — a soul was set up in the brain. But if one had
not been so dull as only to be capable of being struck by
the most remarkable of phenomena, one would have had
to explain digestion by a soul in the stomach, vegetation
by a soul in the plant, affinity by a soul in the reagents,
nay, the falling of a stone by a soul in the stone. For the
quality of every unorganised body is just as mysterious as
the life in the living body. In the same way, therefore,
the physical explanation strikes everywhere upon what is
metaphysical, by which it is annihilated, i.e., it ceases to
be explanation. Strictly speaking, it may be asserted that
no natural science really achieves anything more than
what is also achieved by Botany : the bringing together of
similars, classification. A physical system which asserted
that its explanations of things — in the particular from
causes, and in general from forces — were really sufficient,
and thus exhausted the nature of the world, would be
the true Naturalism. From Leucippus, Dernocritus, and
Epicurus down to the Systeme de la Nature, and further,
to Delamark, Cabanis, and to the materialism that has
again been warmed up in the last few years, we can trace
the persistent attempt to set up a system of physics without
metaphysics, that is, a system which would make the
phenomenon the thing in itself. But all their explana-

ON MAN'S NEED OF METAPHYSICS. 379

tions seek to conceal from the explainers themselves and
from others that they simply assume the principal matter
without more ado. They endeavour to show that all
phenomena, even those of mind, are physical. And they
are right ; only they do not see that all that is physical is
in another aspect also metaphysical. But, without Kant,
this is indeed difficult to see, for it presupposes the dis
tinction of the phenomenon from the thing in itself. Yet
without this Aristotle, much as he was inclined to empiri
cism, and far as he was removed from the Platonic hyper-
physics, kept himself free from this limited point of view.
He says : " Ei /ACV ovv pi) can T*<? erepa ovaia Trapa ret?
(f>va€i avveo-Trj/cvias, rj (frvcriKi} av eirj TrpUtTTj eTTiarrj/j-Tf]' et Be
eari T*$ ovcria afctvrjTos, avrr) TT pore pa Kai <f>i\ocro(f>ia Trpayrfj,
Kai Kado\ov euro)?, <m irpatTr)' KCLI irept, TOV ovros 77 ov,
TCIVTIJS av en) OeatpTja-ai." (Si igitur non est aliqua alia sub-
stantia, prceter eas, quce natura consistunt, physica profecto
prima scientia esset : quodsi autem est aliqua substantia
immobilis, hcec prim* et philosopliia prima, et universalis sic,
quod prima ; et de ente, prout ens est, speculari hujus est),
"Metaph.,"v. I. Such an absolute system of physics as is
described above, which leaves room for no metaphysics,
would make the Natura naturata into the Natura natu-
rans ; it would be physics established on the throne of
metaphysics, yet it would comport itself in this high
position almost like Holberg's theatrical would-be poli
tician who was made burgomaster. Indeed behind the
reproach of atheism, in itself absurd, and for the most
part malicious, there lies, as its inner meaning and truth,
which gives it strength, the obscure conception of such an
absolute system of physics without metaphysics. Certainly
such a system would necessarily be destructive of ethics ;
and while Theism has falsely been held to be inseparable
from morality, this is really true only of metaphysics in
general, i.e., of the knowledge that the order of nature is
not the only and absolute order of things. Therefore we
may set up this as the necessary Credo of all just and

380 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVII.

good men : " I believe in metaphysics." In this respect it
is important and necessary that one should convince one
self of the untenable nature of an absolute system of physics,
all the more as this, the true naturalism, is a point of view
which of its own accord and ever anew presses itself upon
a man, and can only be done away with through profound
speculation. In this respect, however, all kinds of systems
and faiths, so far and so long as they are accepted, certainly
serve as a substitute for such speculation. But that a
fundamentally false view presses itself upon man of its
own accord, and must first be skilfully removed, is explic
able from the fact that the intellect is not originally
intended to instruct us concerning the nature of things,
but only to show us their relations, with reference to our
will ; it is, as we shall find in the second book, only the
medium of motives. Now, that the world schematises
itself in the intellect in a manner which exhibits quite a
different order of things from the absolutely true one,
because it shows us, not their kernel, but only their outer
shell, happens accidentally, and cannot be used as a
reproach to the intellect; all the less as it nevertheless
finds in itself the means of rectifying this error, in that it
arrives at the distinction between the phenomenal appear
ance and the inner being of things, which distinction
existed in substance at all times, only for the most part
was very imperfectly brought to consciousness, and there
fore was inadequately expressed, indeed often appeared in
strange clothing. The Christian mystics, when they call
it the light of nature, declare the intellect to be inadequate
to the comprehension of the true nature of things. It is,
as it were, a mere surface force, like electricity, and does
not penetrate to the inner being.

The insufficiency of pure naturalism appears, as we have
said, first of all, on the empirical path itself, through the
circumstance that every physical explanation explains the
particular from its cause ; but the chain of these causes, as
we know a priori, and therefore with perfect certainty,

ON MAN'S NEED OF METAPHYSICS. 381

runs back to infinity, so that absolutely no cause could

ever be the first. Then, however, the effect of every cause

is referred to a law of nature, and this finally to a force of

nature, which now remains as the absolutely inexplicable.

But this inexplicable, to which all phenomena of this so

clearly given and naturally explicable world, from the

highest to the lowest, are referred, just shows that the

whole nature of such explanation is only conditional, as

it were only ex concessis, and by no means the true and

sufficient one ; therefore I said above that physically

everything and nothing is explicable. That absolutely

inexplicable element which pervades all phenomena, which

is most striking in the highest, e.g., in generation, but yet

is just as truly present in the lowest, e.g., in mechanical

phenomena, points to an entirely different kind of order

of things lying at the foundation of the physical order,

which is just what Kant calls the order of things in

themselves, and which is the goal of metaphysics. But,

secondly, the insufficiency of pure naturalism comes out

clearly from that fundamental philosophical truth, which

we have fully considered in the first half of this book, and

which is also the theme of the " Critique of Pure Eeason ;"

the truth that every object, both as regards its objective

existence in general and as regards the manner (forms) of

this existence, is throughout conditioned by the knowing

subject, hence is merely a phenomenon, not a thing in

itself. This is explained in § 7 of the first volume, and it

is there shown that nothing can be more clumsy than that,

after the manner of all materialists, one should blindly take

the objective as simply given in order to derive everything

from it without paying any regard to the subjective, through

which, however, nay, in which alone the former exists.

Samples of this procedure are most readily afforded us

by the fashionable materialism of our own day, which

has thereby become a philosophy well suited for barbers'

and apothecaries' apprentices. For it, in its innocence,

matter, assumed without reflection as absolutely real, is

382 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVII.

the thing in self, and the one capacity of a thing in itself
is impulsive force, for all other qualities can only be mani
festations of this.

With naturalism, then, or the purely physical way of
looking at things, we shall never attain our end ; it is like
a sum that never comes out. Causal series without begin
ning or end, fundamental forces which are inscrutable,
endless space, beginningless time, infinite divisibility of
matter, and all this further conditioned by a knowing
brain, in which alone it exists just like a dream, and
without which it vanishes — constitute the labyrinth in
which naturalism leads us ceaselessly round. The height
to which in our time the natural sciences have risen in
this respect entirely throws into the shade all previous
centuries, and is a summit which mankind reaches for the
first time. But however great are the advances which
physics (understood in the wide sense of the ancients)
may make, not the smallest step towards metaphysics is
thereby taken, just as a plane can never obtain cubical
content by being indefinitely extended. For all such
advances will only perfect our knowledge of the pheno
menon; while metaphysics strives to pass beyond the
phenomenal appearance itself, to that which so appears.
And if indeed it had the assistance of an entire and com
plete experience, it would, as regards the main point, be
in no way advantaged by it. Nay, even if one wandered
through all the planets and fixed stars, one would thereby
have made no step in metaphysics. It is rather the case
that the greatest advances of physics will make the need
of metaphysics ever more felt ; for it is just the corrected,
extended, and more thorough knowledge of nature which,
on the one hand, always undermines and ultimately over
throws the metaphysical assumptions which till then have
prevailed, but, on the other hand, presents the problem
of metaphysics itself more distinctly, more correctly, and
more fully, and separates it more clearly from all that
is merely physical; moreover, the more perfectly and

OiV MAN'S NEED OF METAPHYSICS. 383

accurately known nature of the particular thing more
pressingly demands the explanation of the whole and the
general, which, the more correctly, thoroughly, and com
pletely it is known empirically, only presents itself as the
more mysterious. Certainly the individual, simple inves
tigator of nature, in a special branch of physics, does not at
once become clearly conscious of all this ; he rather sleeps
contentedly by the side of his chosen maid, in the house
of Odysseus, banishing all thoughts of Penelope (cf. ch. 12
at the end). Hence we see at the present day the husk
of nature investigated in its minutest details, the intes
tines of intestinal worms and the vermin of vermin known
to a nicety. But if some one comes, as, for example, I
do, and speaks of the kernel of nature, they will not listen ;
they even think it has nothing to do with the matter, and
go on sifting their husks. One finds oneself tempted to
call that over-microscopical and micrological investigator
of nature the cotquean of nature. But those persons who
believe that crucibles and retorts are the true and only
source of all wisdom are in their own way just as per
verse as were formerly their antipodes the Scholastics.
As the latter, absolutely confined to their abstract con
ceptions, used these as their weapons, neither knowing
nor investigating anything outside them, so the former,
absolutely confined to their empiricism, allow nothing to
be true except what their eyes behold, and believe they
can thus arrive at the ultimate ground of things, not
discerning that between the phenomenon and that which
manifests itself in it, the thing in itself, there is a deep
gulf, a radical difference, which can only be cleared up by
the knowledge and accurate delimitation of the subjective
element of the phenomenon, and the insight that the
ultimate and most important conclusions concerning the
nature of things can only be drawn from self-conscious
ness ; yet without all this one cannot advance a step
beyond what is directly given to the senses, thus can get
no further than to the problem. Yet, on the other hand,

384 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVII.

it is to be observed that the most perfect possible know
ledge of nature is the corrected statement of the problem of
metaphysics. Therefore no one ought to venture upon
this without having first acquired a knowledge of all the
branches of natural science, which, though general, shall
be thorough, clear, and connected. For the problem must
precede its solution. Then, however, the investigator
must turn his glance inward ; for the intellectual and
ethical phenomena are more important than the physical,
in the same proportion as, for example, animal magnetism
is a far more important phenomenon than mineral mag
netism. The last fundamental secret man carries within
himself, and this is accessible to him in the most imme
diate manner ; therefore it is only here that he can hope
to find the key to the riddle of the world and gain a clue
to the nature of all things. The special province of meta
physics thus certainly lies in what has been called mental
philosophy.

" The ranks of living creatures thou dost lead
Before me, teaching me to know my brothers
In air and water and the silent wood :

Then to the cave secure thou leadest me,

Then show'st me mine own self, and in my breast

The deep, mysterious miracles unfold." 1

Finally, then, as regards the source or the foundation of
metaphysical knowledge, I have already declared myself
above to be opposed to the assumption, which is even re
peated by Kant, that it must lie in mere conceptions. In
no knowledge can conceptions be what is first ; for they
are always derived from some perception. What has
led, however, to that assumption is probably the example
of mathematics. Mathematics can leave perception alto
gether, and, as is especially the case in algebra, trigono
metry, and analysis, can operate with purely abstract
conceptions, nay, with conceptions which are represented

: [Bayard Taylor's translation of Faust, vol. i. 180. Trs.]

ON MAN'S NEED OF METAPHYSICS. 385

only by signs instead of words, and can yet arrive at a
perfectly certain result, which is still so remote that any
one who adhered to the firm ground of perception could
not arrive at it. But the possibility of this depends, as
Kant has clearly shown, on the fact that the conceptions
of mathematics are derived from the most certain and
definite of all perceptions, from the a priori and yet in
tuitively known relations of quantity, and can therefore
be constantly realised again and controlled by these, either
arithmetically, by performing the calculations which are
merely indicated by those signs, or geometrically, by means
of what Kant calls the construction of the conceptions.
This advantage, on the other hand, is not possessed by the
conceptions out of which it was believed metaphysics could
be built up ; such, for example, as essence, being, substance,
perfection, necessity, reality, finite, infinite, absolute, ground,
&c. For such conceptions are by no means original, as
fallen from heaven, or innate ; but they also, like all con
ceptions, are derived from perceptions ; and as, unlike the
conceptions of mathematics, they do not contain the mere
form of perception, but more, empirical perceptions must
lie at their foundation. Thus nothing can be drawn from
them which the empirical perceptions did not also contain,
that is, nothing which was not a matter of experience, and
which, since these conceptions are very wide abstractions,
we would receive with much greater certainty at first
hand from experience. For from conceptions nothing
more can ever be drawn than the perceptions from which
they are derived contain. If we desire pure conceptions,
i.e., such as have no empirical source, the only ones that
can be produced are those which concern space and time,
i.e., the merely formal part of perception, consequently
only the mathematical conceptions, or at most also the
conception of causality, which indeed does not originate
in experience, but yet only comes into consciousness by
means of it (first in sense-perception) ; therefore experience
indeed is only possible by means of it ; but it also is only

VOL. II. 2 B

386 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVII.

valid in the sphere of experience, on which account Kant
has shown that it only serves to communicate the connec
tion of experience, and not to transcend it ; that thus it
admits only of physical application, not of metaphysical.
Certainly only its a priori origin can give apodictic certainty
to any knowledge ; but this limits it to the mere form of
experience in general, for it shows that it is conditioned
by the subjective nature of the intellect. Such knowledge,
then, far from taking us beyond experience, gives only one
part of experience itself, the formal part, which belongs
to it throughout, and therefore is universal, consequently
mere form without content. Since now metaphysics can
least of all be confined to this, it must have also empirical
sources of knowledge ; therefore that preconceived idea of
a metaphysic to be found purely a priori is necessarily vain.
It is really a petitio principii of Kant's, which he expresses
most distinctly in § i of the Prolegomena, that metaphysics
must not draw its fundamental conceptions and principles
from experience. In this it is assumed beforehand that
only what we knew before all experience can extend
beyond all possible experience. Supported by this, Kant
then comes and shows that all such knowledge is nothing
more than the form of the intellect for the purpose of
experience, and consequently can never lead beyond ex
perience, from which he then rightly deduces the impossi
bility of all metaphysics. But does it not rather seem
utterly perverse that in order to discover the secret of
experience, i.e., of the world which alone lies before us, we
should look quite away from it, ignore its content, and
take and use for its material only the empty forms of
which we are conscious a priori ? Is it not rather in
keeping with the matter that the science of experience in
general, and as such, should also be drawn from experience ?
Its problem itself is given it empirically; why should
not the solution of it call in the assistance of experience ?
Is it not senseless that he who speaks of the nature of
things should not look at things themselves, but should

ON MAN'S NEED OF METAPHYSICS. 387

confine himself to certain abstract conceptions ? The task
of metaphysics is certainly not the observation of particular
experiences, but yet it is the correct explanation of experi
ence as a whole. Its foundation must therefore, at any
rate, be of an empirical nature. Indeed the a priori
nature of a part of human knowledge will be apprehended
by it as a given fact, from which it will infer the sub
jective origin of the same. Only because the conscious
ness of its a priori nature accompanies it is it called by
Kant transcendental as distinguished from transcendent,
which signifies " passing beyond all possibility of experi
ence," and has its opposite in immanent, i.e., remaining
within the limits of experience. I gladly recall the
original meaning of this expression introduced by Kant,
with which, as also with that of the Categories, and many
others, the apes of philosophy carry on their game at the
present day. Now, besides this, the source of the know
ledge of metaphysics is not outer experience alone, but
also inner. Indeed, what is most peculiar to it, that by
which the decisive step which alone can solve the great
question becomes possible for it, consists, as I have fully
and thoroughly proved in " Ueber den Willen in der Natur"
under the heading, " Physische Astronomie" in this, that
at the right place it combines outer experience with inner,
and uses the latter as a key to the former.

The origin of metaphysics in empirical sources of
knowledge, which is here set forth, and which cannot
fairly be denied, deprives it certainly of that kind of
apodictic certainty which is only possible through know
ledge a priori. This remains the possession of logic and
mathematics — sciences, however, which really only teach
what every one knows already, though not distinctly. At
most the primary elements of natural science may also be
deduced from knowledge a priori. By this confession
metaphysics only surrenders an ancient claim, which,
according to what has been said above, rested upon mis
understanding, and against which the great diversity and

388 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVII.

changeableness of metaphysical systems, and also the con
stantly accompanying scepticism, in every age has testified.
Yet against the possibility of metaphysics in general this
changeableness cannot be urged, for the same thing affects
just as much all branches of natural science, chemistry,
physics, geology, zoology, &c., and even history has not
remained exempt from it. But when once, as far as the
limits of human intellect allow, a true system of meta
physics shall have been found, the unchangeableuess of a
science which is known a priori will yet belong to it ; for
its foundation can only be experience in general, and not
the particular and special experiences by which, on the
other hand, the natural sciences are constantly modified
and new material is always being provided for history.
For experience as a whole and in general will never
change its character for a new one.

The next question is : How can a science drawn from
experience pass beyond it and so merit the name of meta
physics ? It cannot do so perhaps in the same way as we
find a fourth number from three proportionate ones, or a
triangle from two sides and an angle. This was the way
of the pre-Kantian dogmatism, which, according to certain
laws known to us a priori, sought to reason from the given
to the not given, from the consequent to the reason, thus
from experience to that which could not possibly be given
in any experience. Kant proved the impossibility of a
metaphysic upon this path, in that he showed that although
these laws were not drawn from experience, they were only
valid for experience. He therefore rightly taught that in
such a way we cannot transcend the possibility of all ex
perience. But there are other paths to metaphysics. The
whole of experience is like a cryptograph, and philosophy
the deciphering of it, the correctness of which is proved
by the connection appearing everywhere. If this whole
is only profoundly enough comprehended, and the inner
experience is connected with the outer, it must be capable
of being interpreted, explained from itself. Since Kant

ON MAN'S NEED OF METAPHYSICS. 389

has irrefutably proved to us that experience in general
proceeds from two elements, the forms of knowledge and
the inner nature of things, and that these two may be dis
tinguished in experience from each other, as that of which
we are conscious a priori and that which is added a pos
teriori, it is possible, at least in general, to say, what in
the given experience, which is primarily merely phenome
nal, belongs to the form of this phenomenon, conditioned
by the intellect, and what, after deducting this, remains
over for the thing in itself. And although no one can dis
cern the thing in itself through the veil of the forms of
perception, on the other hand every one carries it in him
self, indeed is it himself; therefore in self-consciousness
it must be in some way accessible to him, even though
only conditionally. Thus the bridge by which meta
physics passes beyond experience is nothing else than
that analysis of experience into phenomenon and thing
in itself in which I have placed Kant's greatest merit.
For it contains the proof of a kernel of the phenomenon
different from the phenomenon itself. This can indeed
never be entirely separated from the phenomenon and
regarded in itself as an ens extramundanum, but is always
known only in its relations to and connections with the
phenomenon itself. But the interpretation and explana
tion of the latter, in relation to the former, which is its
inner kernel, is capable of affording us information with
regard to it which does not otherwise come into conscious
ness. In this sense, then, metaphysics goes beyond the
phenomenon, i.e., nature, to that which is concealed in or
behind it (TO //.era TO (fivaiKov), always regal-ding it, how
ever, merely as that which manifests itself in the pheno
menon, not as independent of all phenomenal appearance ;
it therefore remains immanent, and does not become tran
scendent. For it never disengages itself entirelv from

o o •/

experience, but remains merely its interpretation and
explanation, since it never speaks of the thing in itself
otherwise than in its relation to the phenomenon. This

390 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XV II.

at least is the sense in which I, with reference through
out to the limitations of human knowledge proved by
Kant, have attempted to solve the problem of metaphysics.
Therefore his Prolegomena to future metaphysics will be
valid and suitable for mine also. Accordingly it never
really goes beyond experience, but only discloses the true
understanding of the world which lies before it in experi
ence. It is neither, according to the definition of meta
physics which even Kant repeats, a science of mere con
ceptions, nor is it a system of deductions from a priori
principles, the uselessness of which for the end of meta
physics has been shown by Kant. But it is rational
knowledge, drawn from perception of the external actual
world and the information which the most intimate fact
of self-consciousness affords us concerning it, deposited in
distinct conceptions. It is accordingly the science of ex
perience ; but its subject and its source is not particular
experiences, but the totality of all experience. I com
pletely accept Kant's doctrine that the world of experience
is merely phenomenal, and that the a priori knowledge is
valid only in relation to phenomena ; but I add that just
as phenomenal appearance, it is the manifestation of that
which appears, and with him I call this the thing in itself.
This must therefore express its nature and character in
the world of experience, and consequently it must be
possible to interpret these from this world, and indeed
from the matter, not the mere form, of experience. Accord
ingly philosophy is nothing but the correct and universal
understanding of experience itself, the true exposition of its
meaning and content. To this the metaphysical, i.e., that
which is merely clothed in the phenomenon and veiled in
its forms, is that which is related to it as thought to words.
Such a deciphering of the world with reference to that
which manifests itself in it must receive its confirmation
from itself, through the agreement with each other in
which it places the very diverse phenomena of the world,
and which without it we do not perceive. If we find a

ON MAN'S NEED OF METAPHYSICS. 391

document the alphabet of which is unknown, we endea
vour to make it out until we hit upon an hypothesis as to
the significance of the letters in accordance with which
they make up comprehensible words and connected sen
tences. Then, however, there remains no doubt as to the
correctness of the deciphering, because it is not possible
that the agreement and connection in which all the letters
of that writing are placed by this explanation is merely
accidental, and that by attributing quite a different value
to the letters we could also recognise words and sentences
in this arrangement of them. In the same way the de
ciphering of the world must completely prove itself from
itself. It must throw equal light upon all the phenomena
of the world, and also bring the most heterogeneous into
agreement, so that the contradiction between those which
are most in contrast may be abolished. This proof from
itself is the mark of genuineness. For every false de
ciphering, even if it is suitable for some phenomena, will
conflict all the more glaringly with the rest. So, for
example, the optimism of Leibnitz conflicts with the pal
pable misery of existence ; the doctrine of Spinoza, that
the world is the only possible and absolutely necessary
substance, is incompatible with our wonder at its exist
ence and nature ; the Wolfian doctrine, that man obtains
his Existentia and Essentia from a will foreign to himself,
is contradicted by our moral responsibility for the actions
which proceed with strict necessity from these, in conflict
with the motives ; the oft-repeated doctrine of the progres
sive development of man to an ever higher perfection, or
in general of any kind of becoming by means of the pro
cess of the world, is opposed to the a priori knowledge
that at any point of time an infinite time has already run
its course, and consequently all that is supposed to come
with time would necessarily have already existed ; and in
this way an interminable list might be given of the con
tradictions of dogmatic assumptions with the given reality
of things. On the other hand, I must deny that any doc-

392 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVII.

trine of my philosophy could fairly be added to such a
list, because each of them has been thought out in the
presence of the perceived reality, and none of them has
its root in abstract conceptions alone. There is yet in it
a fundamental thought which is applied to all the phe
nomena of the world as their key ; but it proves itself
to be the right alphabet at the application of which all
words and sentences have sense and significance. The
discovered answer to a riddle shows itself to be the right
one by the fact that all that is said in the riddle is
suitable to it. In the same way my doctrine introduces
agreement and connection into the confusion of the con
trasting phenomena of this world, and solves the innume
rable contradictions which, when regarded from any other
point of view, it presents. Therefore, so far, it is like
a sum that comes out right, yet by no means in the
sense that it leaves no problem over to solve, no possible
question unanswered. To assert anything of that sort
would be a presumptuous denial of the limits of human
knowledge in general. Whatever torch we may kindle,
and whatever space it may light, our horizon will always
remain bounded by profound night. For the ultimate
solution of the riddle of the world must necessarily be
concerned with the things in themselves, no longer with
the phenomena. But all our forms of knowledge are
adapted to the phenomena alone ; therefore we must com
prehend everything through coexistence, succession, and
causal relations. These forms, however, have meaning
and significance only with reference to the phenomenon ;
the things in themselves and their possible relations can
not be apprehended by means of those forms. Therefore
the actual, positive solution of the riddle of the world
must be something that human intellect is absolutely
incapable of grasping and thinking ; so that if a being of
a higher kind were to come and take all pains to impart
it to us, we would be absolutely incapable of understand
ing anything of his expositions. Those, therefore, who pro-

ON MAN'S NEED OF METAPHYSICS. 393

fess to know the ultimate, i.e., the first ground of things,
thus a primordial being, an absolute, or whatever else
they choose to call it, together with the process, the
reasons, motives, or whatever it may be, in consequence
of which the world arises from it, or springs, or falls, or
is produced, set in existence, "discharged," and ushered
forth, are playing tricks, are vain boasters, when indeed
they are not charlatans.

I regard it as a great excellence of my philosophy that all
its truths have been found independently of each other, by
contemplation of the real world ; but their unity and agree
ment, about which I had been unconcerned, has always
afterwards appeared of itself. Hence also it is rich, and
has wide-spreading roots in the ground of perceptible
reality, from which all nourishment of abstract truths
springs ; and hence, again, it is not wearisome — a quality
which, to judge from the philosophical writings of the last
fifty years, one might regard as essential to philosophy. If,
on the other hand, all the doctrines of a philosophy are
merely deduced the one out of the other, and ultimately
indeed all out of one first principle, it must be poor and
meagre, and consequently wearisome, for nothing can follow
from a proposition except what it really already says itself.
Moreover, in this case everything depends upon the cor
rectness of one proposition, and by a single mistake in the
deduction the truth of the whole would be endangered.
Still less security is given by the systems which start
from an intellectual intuition, i.e., a kind of ecstasy or
clairvoyance. All knowledge so obtained must be rejected
as subjective, individual, and consequently problematical.
Even if it actually existed it would not be communicable,
for only the normal knowledge of the brain is communi
cable ; if it is abstract, through conceptions and words ; if
purely perceptible or concrete, through works of art.

If, as so often happens, metaphysics is reproached with
having made so little progress, it ought also to be con
sidered that no other science has grown up like it under

394 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVII.

constant oppression, none has been so hampered and
hindered from without as it has always been by the
religion of every land, which, everywhere in possession of
a monopoly of metaphysical knowledge, regards meta
physics as a weed growing beside it, as an unlicensed
worker, as a horde of gipsies, and as a rule tolerates it
only under the condition that it accommodates itself to
serve and follow it. For where has there ever been true
freedom of thought ? It has been vaunted sufficiently ;
but whenever it wishes to go further than perhaps to
differ about the subordinate dogmas of the religion of the
country, a holy shudder seizes the prophets of tolerance,
and they say : " Not a step further ! " What progress of
metaphysics was possible under such oppression ? Nay,
this constraint which the privileged metaphysics exercises
is not confined to the communication of thoughts, but
extends to thinking itself, for its dogmas are so firmly
imprinted in the tender, plastic, trustful, and thoughtless
age of childhood, with studied solemnity and serious airs,
that from that time forward they grow with the brain, and
almost assume the nature of innate thoughts, which some
philosophers have therefore really held them to be, and
still more have pretended to do so. Yet nothing can so
firmly resist the comprehension of even the problem of
metaphysics as a previous solution of it intruded upon
and early implanted in the mind. For the necessary
starting-point for all genuine philosophy is the deep
feeling of the Socratic : " This one thing I know, that I
know nothing." The ancients were in this respect in a
better position than we are, for their national religions
certainly limited somewhat the imparting of thoughts ; but
they did not interfere with the freedom of thought itself,
because they were not formally and solemnly impressed
upon children, and in general were not taken so seriously.
Therefore in metaphysics the ancients are still our
teachers.

Whenever metaphysics is reproached with its small pro-

ON MAN'S NEED OF METAPHYSICS. 395

gress, and with not having yet reached its goal in spite
of such sustained efforts, one ought further to consider
that in the meanwhile it has constantly performed the in
valuable service of limiting the boundless claims of the
privileged metaphysics, and yet at the same time combat
ing naturalism and materialism proper, which are called
forth by it as an inevitable reaction. Consider to what a
pitch the arrogance of the priesthood of every religion
would rise if the belief in their doctrines was as firm and
blind as they really wish. Look back also at the wars,
disturbances, rebellions, and revolutions in Europe from
the eighth to the eighteenth century; how few will be
found that have not had as their essence, or their pre
text, some controversy about beliefs, thus a metaphysical
problem, which became the occasion of exciting nations
against each other. Yet is that whole thousand years a
continual slaughter, now on the battlefield, now on the
scaffold, now in the streets, in metaphysical interests !
I wish I had an authentic list of all crimes which Chris
tianity has really prevented, and all good deeds it has
really performed, that I might be able to place them in the
other scale of the balance.

Lastly, as regards the obligations of metaphysics, it has
only one ; for it is one which endures no other beside it —
the obligation to be true. If one would impose other obli
gations upon it besides this, such as to be spiritualistic,
optimistic, monotheistic, or even only to be moral, one
cannot know beforehand whether this would not interfere
with the fulfilment of that first obligation, without which
all its other achievements must clearly be worthless. A
given philosophy has accordingly no other standard of its
value than that of truth. For the rest, philosophy is essen
tially world-wisdom : its problem is the world. It has to
do with this alone, and leaves the gods in peace — expects,
however, in return, to be left in peace by them.

" ' Ihr folget falscher Spur,

Denkt nicht, wir scherzen !
1st nicht der Kern der Natur
Menschen im Herzen ? ' ':

— GOETHE.

SUPPLEMENTS TO THE SECOND BOOK.

CHAPTER XVIII.1

ON THE POSSIBILITY OF KNOWING THE THING IN ITSELF.

IN 1836 I already published, under the title " Ueber den
Willen in der Naiur" (second ed., 1854 ; third ed., 1867),
the most essential supplement to this book, which contains
the most peculiar and important step in my philosophy,
the transition from the phenomenon to the thing in itself,
which Kant gave up as impossible. It would be a great
mistake to regard the foreign conclusions with which I
have there connected my expositions as the real material
and subject of that work, which, though small as regards
its extent, is of weighty import. These conclusions are
rather the mere occasion starting from which I have there
expounded that fundamental truth of my philosophy with
so much greater clearness than anywhere else, and brought
it down to the empirical knowledge of nature. And in
deed this is done most exhaustively and stringently under
the heading "Physisclie Astronomic;" so that I dare not hope
ever to find a more correct or accurate expression of that
core of my philosophy than is given there. Whoever desires
to know my philosophy thoroughly and to test it seriously
must therefore give attention before everything to that
section. Thus, in general, all that is said in that little
work would form the chief content of these supplements,
if it had not to be excluded on account of having preceded

1 This chapter is connected with § 18 of the first volume.

4co SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XVIII.

them; but, on the other hand, I here take for granted
that it is known, for otherwise the very best would be
wanting.

I wish now first of all to make a few preliminary obser
vations from a general point of view as to the sense in
which we can speak of a knowledge of the thing in itself
and of its necessary limitation.

What is knowledge? It is primarily and essentially
idea. What is idea ? A very complicated physiological
process in the brain of an animal, the result of which is
the consciousness of a picture there. Clearly the relation
between such a picture and something entirely different
from the animal in whose brain it exists can only be a very
indirect one. This is perhaps the simplest and most com
prehensible way of disclosing the deep gulf between the ideal
and the real. This belongs to the things of which, like the
motion of the earth, we are not directly conscious ; there
fore the ancients did not observe it, just as they did not
observe the motion of the earth. Once pointed out, on
the other hand, first by Descartes, it has ever since given
philosophers no rest. But after Kant had at last proved
in the most thorough manner the complete diversity of the
ideal and the real, it was an attempt, as bold as it was
absurd, yet perfectly correctly calculated with reference
to the philosophical public in Germany, and consequently
crowned with brilliant results, to try to assert the absolute
identity of the two by dogmatic utterances, on the strength
of a pretended intellectual intuition. In truth, on the
contrary, a subjective and an objective existence, a being
for self and a being for others^ a consciousness of one's
own self, and a consciousness of other things, is given us
directly, and the two are given in such a fundamentally
different manner that no other difference can compare
with this. About himself every one knows directly, about
all others only very indirectly. This is the fact and the
problem.

Whether, on the other hand, through further processes

ON KNOWING THE THING IN ITSELF. 401

in the interior of a brain, general conceptions ( Unwersalia)
are abstracted from the perceptible ideas or images that
have arisen within it, for the assistance of further com
binations, whereby knowledge becomes rational, and is
now called thinking — this is here no longer the essential
question, but is of subordinate significance. For all such
conceptions receive their content only from the perceptible
idea, which is therefore primary knowledge, and has con
sequently alone to be taken account of in an investigation
of the relation between the ideal and the real. It there
fore shows entire ignorance of the problem, or at least
it is very inept, to wish to define that relation as that
between being and thinking. Thinking has primarily only
a relation to perceiving, but perception has a relation to the
real Icing of what is perceived, and this last is the great
problem with which we are here concerned. Empirical
being, on the other hand, as it lies before us, is nothing
else than simply being given in perception; but the
relation of the latter to thinking is no riddle, for the con
ceptions, thus the immediate materials of thought, are
obviously abstracted from perception, which no reason
able man can doubt. It may be said in passing that one can
see how important the choice of expressions in philosophy
is from the fact that that inept expression condemned
above, and the misunderstanding which arose from it,
became the foundation of the whole Hegelian pseudo-
philosophy, which has occupied the German public for
twenty-five years.

If, however, it should be said : " The perception is itself
the knowledge of the thing in itself: for it is the effect of that
which is outside of us, and as this acts, so it is : its action
is just its being;" to this we reply: (i.) that the law of
causality, as has been sufficiently proved, is of subjective
origin, as well as the sensation from which the perception
arises ; (2.) that at any rate time and space, in which the
object presents itself, are of subjective origin ; (3.) that if
the being of the object consists simply in its action, this

VOL. II. 2 C

402 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XVIII.

means that it consists merely in the changes which it
brings about in others ; therefore itself and in itself it is
nothing at all. Only of matter is it true, as I have said in
the text, and worked out in the essay on the principle of
sufficient reason, at the end of § 21, that its being consists
in its action, that it is through and through only causa
lity, thus is itself causality objectively regarded ; hence,
however, it is also nothing in itself (77 V\T} TO a\rjdivov
•\|ret>So9, materiel mendacium verax), but as an ingredient
in the perceived object, is a mere abstraction, which
for itself alone can be given in no experience. It will
be fully considered later on in a chapter of its own.
But the perceived object must be something in itself,
and not merely something for others. For otherwise it
would be altogether merely idea, and we would have an
absolute idealism, which would ultimately become theo
retical egoism., with which all reality disappears and the
world becomes a mere subjective phantasm. If, however,
without further question, we stop altogether at the world
as idea, then certainly it is all one whether I explain
objects as ideas in my head or as phenomena exhibiting
themselves in time and space ; for time and space them
selves exist only in my head. In this sense, then, an
identity of the ideal and the real might always be affirmed ;
only, after Kant, this would not be saying anything new.
Besides this, however, the nature of things and of the phe
nomenal world would clearly not be thereby exhausted ;
but with it we would always remain still upon the ideal
side. The real side must be something toto genere diffe
rent from the world as idea, it must be that which things
are in themselves; and it is this entire diversity between
the ideal and the real which Kant has proved in the most
thorough manner.

Locke had denied to the senses the knowledge of things
as they are in themselves ; but Kant denied this also to
the perceiving understanding, under which name I here
comprehend what he calls the pure sensibility, and, as it

ON KNOWING THE THING IN ITSELF. 403

is given a priori, the law of causality which brings abcmt
the empirical perception. Not only are both right, but we
can also see quite directly that a contradiction lies in the
assertion that a thing is known as it is in and for itself, i.e.,
outside of knowledge. For all knowing is, as we have said,
essentially a perceiving of ideas ; but my perception of ideas,
just because it is mine, can never be identical with the inner
nature of the thing outside of me. The being in and for
itself, of everything, must necessarily be subjective ; in the
idea of another, however, it exists just as necessarily as
objective — a difference which can never be fully reconciled.
For by it the whole nature of its existence is fundamentally
changed ; as objective it presupposes a foreign subject, as
whose idea it exists, and, moreover, as Kant has shown,
has entered forms which are foreign to its own nature,
just because they belong to that foreign subject, whose
knowledge is only possible by means of them. If I, ab
sorbed in this reflection, perceive, let us say lifeless bodies,
of easily surveyed magnitude and regular, comprehensible
form, and now attempt to conceive this spatial existence,
in its three dimensions, as their being in itself, consequently
as the existence which to the things is subjective, the im
possibility of the thing is at once apparent to me, for I can
never think those objective forms as the being which to
the things is subjective, rather I become directly conscious
that what I there perceive is only a picture produced in
my brain, and existing only for me as the knowing subject,
which cannot constitute the ultimate, and therefore sub
jective, being in and for itself of even these lifeless bodies.
But, on the other hand, I must not assume that even these
lifeless bodies exist only in my idea, but, since they have
inscrutable qualities, and, by virtue of these, activity, I
must concede to them a being in itself of some kind. But
this very inscrutableness of the properties, while, on the
one hand, it certainly points to something which exists
independently of our knowledge, gives also, on the other
hand, the empirical proof that our knowledge, because it

404 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XVIII.

consists simply in framing ideas by means of subjective
forms, affords us always mere phenomena, not the true
being of things. This is the explanation of the fact that
in all that we know there remains hidden from us a certain
something, as quite inscrutable, and we are obliged to con
fess that we cannot thoroughly understand even the com
monest and simplest phenomena. For it is not merely the
highest productions of nature, living creatures, or the com
plicated phenomena of the unorganised world that remain
inscrutable to us, but even every rock-crystal, every iron-
pyrite, by reason of its crystallographical, optical, chemical,
and electrical properties, is to the searching consideration
and investigation an abyss of incomprehensibilities and
mysteries. This could not be the case if we knew things
as they are in themselves ; for then at least the simpler phe
nomena, the path to whose qualities was not barred for us
by ignorance, would necessarily be thoroughly compre
hensible to us, and their whole being and nature would
be able to pass over into our knowledge. Thus it lies not
in the defectiveness of our acquaintance with things, but
in the nature of knowledge itself. For if our perception,
and consequently the whole empirical comprehension of
the things that present themselves to us, is already essen
tially and in the main determined by our faculty of know
ledge, and conditioned by its forms and functions, it can
not but be that things exhibit themselves in a manner
which is quite different from their own inner nature, and
therefore appear as in a mask, which allows us merely
to assume what is concealed beneath it, but never to
know it ; hence, then, it gleams through as an inscrutable
mystery, and never can the nature of anything entire and
without reserve pass over into knowledge ; but much less
can any real thing be construed a priori, like a mathema
tical problem. Thus the empirical inscrutableness of all
natural things is a proof a posteriori of the ideality and
merely phenomenal-actuality of their empirical existence.
According to all this, upon the path of objective know-

ON KNOWING THE THING IN ITSELF. 405

ledge, hence starting from the idea, one will never get be
yond the idea, i.e., the phenomenon. One will thus remain
at the outside of things, and will never be able to penetrate
to their inner nature and investigate what they are in them
selves, i.e., for themselves. So far I agree with Kant. But,
as the counterpart of this truth, I have given prominence to
this other truth, that we are not merely the knowing subject,
but, in another aspect, we ourselves also belong to the inner
nature that is to be known, we ourselves are the thing in
itself; that therefore a way from within stands open for
us to that inner nature belonging to things themselves,
to which we cannot penetrate from without, as it were a
subterranean passage, a secret alliance, which, as if by
treachery, places us at once within the fortress which it
was impossible to take by assault from without. The
thing in itself can, as such, only come into consciousness
quite directly, in this way, that it is itself conscious of
itself: to wish to know it objectively is to desire something
contradictory. Everything objective is idea, therefore
appearance, mere phenomenon of the brain.

Kant's chief result may in substance be thus concisely
stated : " All conceptions which have not at their founda
tion a perception in space and time (sensuous intuition),
that is to say then, whi'h have not been drawn from
such a perception, are absolutely empty, i.e., give no
knowledge. But since now perception can afford us only
phenomena, not things in themselves, we have also abso
lutely no knowledge of things in themselves." I grant
this of everything, with the single exception of the know
ledge which each of us has of his own willing: this is
neither a perception (for all perception is spatial) nor is it
empty ; rather it is more real than any other. Further, it
is not a priori, like merely formal knowledge, but entirely
a posteriori; hence also we cannot anticipate it in the
particular case, but are hereby often convicted of error
concerning ourselves. In fact, our willing is the one
opportunity which we have of understanding from within

406 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XVIII.

any event which exhibits itself without, consequently the
one thing which is known to us immediately, and not, like
all the rest, merely given in the idea. Here, then, lies the
datum which alone is able to become the key to everything
else, or, as I have said, the single narrow door to the truth.
Accordingly we must learn to understand nature from our
selves, not conversely ourselves from nature. What is
known to us immediately must give us the explanation of
what we only know indirectly, not conversely. Do we
perhaps understand the rolling of a ball when it has re
ceived an impulse more thoroughly than our movement
when we feel a motive ? Many may imagine so, but I
say it is the reverse. Yet we shall attain to the know
ledge that what is essential in both the occurrences just
mentioned is identical; although identical in the same
way as the lowest audible note of harmony is the same as
the note of the same name ten octaves higher.

Meanwhile it should be carefully observed, and I have
always kept it in mind, that even the inward experience
which we have of our own will by no means affords us an
exhaustive and adequate knowledge of the thing in itself.
This would be the case if it were entirely an immediate
experience ; but it is effected in this way : the will, with
and by means of the corporisation, provides itself also with
an intellect (for the sake of its relations to the external
world), and through this now knows itself as will in self-
consciousness (the necessary counterpart of the external
world); this knowledge therefore of the thing in itself
is not fully adequate. First of all, it is bound to the
form of the idea, it is apprehension, and as such falls
asunder into subject and object. For even in self-con
sciousness the I is not absolutely simple, but consists of a
knower, the intellect, and a known, the will. The former
is not known, and the latter does not know, though both
unite in the consciousness of an I. But just on this
account that I is not thoroughly intimate with itself, as it
were transparent, but is opaque, and therefore remains a

ON KNOWING THE THING IN ITSELF. 407

riddle to itself, thus even in inner knowledge there also
exists a difference between the true being of its object and
the apprehension of it in the knowing subject. Yet inner
knowledge is free from two forms which belong to outer
knowledge, the form of space and the form of causality,
which is the means of effecting all sense-perception. On
the other hand, there still remains the form of time, and
that of being known and knowing in general. Accord
ingly in this inner knowledge the thing in itself has
indeed in great measure thrown off its veil, but still does
not yet appear quite naked. In consequence of the form
of time which still adheres to it, every one knows his will
only in its successive acts, and not as a whole, in and for
itself: therefore no one knows his character a priori, but
only learns it through experience and always incom
pletely. But yet the apprehension, in which we know
the affections and acts of our own will, is far more imme
diate than any other. It is the point at which the thing
in itself most directly enters the phenomenon and is most
closely examined by the knowing subject ; therefore the
event thus intimately known is alone fitted to become the
interpreter of all others.

For in every emergence of an act of will from the ob
scure depths of our inner being into the knowing con
sciousness a direct transition occurs of the thing in itself,
which lies outside time, into the phenomenal world. Ac
cordingly the act of will is indeed only the closest and
most distinct manifestation of the thing in itself ; yet it
follows from this that if all other manifestations or phe
nomena could be known by us as directly and inwardly,
we would be obliged to assert them to be that which the
will is in us. Thus in this sense I teach that the inner
nature of everything is will, and I call will the thing in
itself. Kant's doctrine of the unknowableness of the
thing in itself is hereby modified to this extent, that the
thing in itself is only not absolutely and from the very
foundation knowable, that yet by far the most immediate

408 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XVIII.

of its phenomena, which by this immediateness is toto
genere distinguished from all the rest, represents it for us ;
and accordingly we have to refer the whole world of phe
nomena to that one in which the thing in itself appears
in the very thinnest of veils, and only still remains pheno
menon in so far as my intellect, which alone is capable
of knowledge, remains ever distinguished from me as the
willing subject, and moreover does not even in inner per
fection put off the form of knowledge of time.

Accordingly, even after this last and furthest step, the
question may still be raised, what that will, which ex
hibits itself in the world and as the world, ultimately and
absolutely is in itself ? i.e., what it is, regarded altogether
apart from the fact that it exhibits itself as will, or in
general appears, i.e., in general is known. This question
can never be answered : because, as we have said, becom
ing known is itself the contradictory of being in itself,
and everything that is known is as such only phenomenal.
But the possibility of this question shows that the thing
in itself, which we know most directly in the will, may
have, entirely outside all possible phenomenal appearance,
ways of existing, determinations, qualities, which are abso
lutely unknowable and incomprehensible to us, and which
remain as the nature of the thing in itself, when, as is
explained in the fourth book, it has voluntarily abrogated
itself as will, and has therefore retired altogether from the
phenomenon, and for our knowledge, i.e., as regards the
world of phenomena, has passed into empty nothingness.
If the will were simply and absolutely the thing in itself
this nothing would also be absolute, instead of which it
expressly presents itself to us there as only relative.

I now proceed to supplement with a few considerations
pertinent to the subject the exposition given both in our
second book and in the work " Ueber den Willen in der
Natur" of the doctrine that what makes itself known to
us in the most immediate knowledge as will is also that
which objectifies itself at different grades in all the phe-

ON KNOWING THE THING IN ITSELF. 409

nomena of this world ; and I shall begin by citing a num
ber of psychological facts which prove that first of all in
our own consciousness the will always appears as primary
and fundamental, and throughout asserts its superiority to
the intellect, which, on the other hand, always presents
itself as secondary, subordinate, and conditioned. This
proof is the more necessary as all philosophers before
me, from the first to the last, place the true being or
the kernel of man in the knowing consciousness, and
accordingly have conceived and explained the I, or,
in the case of many of them, its transcendental hypo-
stasis called soul, as primarily and essentially knowing,
nay, thinking, and only in consequence of this, secondarily
and derivatively, as willing. This ancient and universal
radical error, this enormous wpwrov tyevSos and fundamen
tal varepov irporepov, must before everything be set aside,
and instead of it the true state of the case must be
brought to perfectly distinct consciousness. Since, how
ever, this is done here for the first time, after thousands of
years of philosophising, some fulness of statement will be
appropriate. The remarkable phenomenon, that in this
most essential point all philosophers have erred, nay, have
exactly reversed the truth, might, especially in the case
of those of the Christian era, be partly explicable from the
fact that they all had the intention of presenting man as
distinguished as widely as possible from the brutes, yet at
the same time obscurely felt that the difference between
them lies in the intellect, not in the will ; whence there
arose unconsciously within them an inclination to make
the intellect the essential and principal thing, and even
to explain volition as a mere function of the intellect.
Hence also the conception of a soul is not only inadmis
sible, because it is a transcendent hypostasis, as is proved
by the " Critique of Pure Eeason," but it becomes the
source of irremediable errors, because in its " simple sub
stance " it establishes beforehand an indivisible unity of
knowledge and will, the separation of which is just the

410 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XVIII.

path to the truth. That conception must therefore appear
no more in philosophy, but may be left to German doc
tors and physiologists, who, after they have laid aside
scalpel and spattle, amuse themselves by philosophising
with the conceptions they received when they were con
firmed. They might certainly try their luck in England.
The Trench physiologists and zootomists have (till lately)
kept themselves free from that reproach.

The first consequence of their common fundamental
error, which is very inconvenient to all these philosophers,
is this : since in death the knowing consciousness obvi
ously perishes, they must either allow death to be the
annihilation of the man, to which our inner being is op
posed, or they must have recourse to the assumption of
a continued existence of the knowing consciousness, which
requires a strong faith, for his own experience has suffi
ciently proved to every one the thorough and complete
dependence of the knowing consciousness upon the brain,
and one can just as easily believe in digestion without a
stomach as in a knowing consciousness without a brain.
My philosophy alone leads out of this dilemma, for it for
the first time places the true being of man not in the con
sciousness but in the will, which is not essentially bound
up with consciousness, but is related to consciousness, i.e.,
to knowledge, as substance to accident, as something illu
minated to the light, as the string to the resounding-board,
and which enters consciousness from within as the cor
poreal world does from without. Now we can compre
hend the indestructibleness of this our real kernel and true
being, in spite of the evident ceasing of consciousness in
death, and the corresponding non-existence of it before
birth. For the intellect is as perishable as the brain,
whose product or rather whose action it is. But the brain,
like the whole organism, is the product or phenomenon,
in short, the subordinate of the will, which alone is
imperishable.

CHAPTEE XIX.1

ON THE PRIMACY OF THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.

THE will, as the thing in itself, constitutes the inner, true,
and indestructible nature of man ; in itself, however, it
is unconscious. For consciousness is conditioned by the
intellect, and the intellect is a mere accident of our being ;
for it is a function of the brain, which, together with the
nerves and spinal cord connected with it, is a mere fruit, a
product, nay, so far, a parasite of the rest of the organism ;
for it does not directly enter into its inner constitution,
but merely serves the end of self-preservation by regulat
ing the relations of the organism to the external world.
The organism itself, on the other hand, is the visibility,
the objectivity, of the individual will, the image of it as
it presents itself in that very brain (which in the first
book we learned to recognise as the condition of the objec
tive world in general), therefore also brought about by its
forms of knowledge, space, time, and causality, and conse
quently presenting itself as extended, successively acting,
and material, i.e., as something operative or efficient. The
members are both directly felt and also perceived by
means of the senses only in the brain. According to this
one may say : The intellect is the secondary phenomenon ;
the organism the primary phenomenon, that is, the imme
diate manifestation of the will ; the will is metaphysi
cal, the intellect physical ; — the intellect, like its objects,
is merely phenomenal appearance ; the will alone is the
thing in itself. Then, in a more and more figurative sense,

1 This chapter is coonected with § 19 of the first volume.

412 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

thus by way of simile : The will is the substance of man,
the intellect the accident ; the will is the matter, the
intellect is the form ; the will is warmth, the intellect
is light.

We shall now first of all verify and also elucidate this
thesis by the following facts connected with the inner
life of man ; and on this opportunity perhaps more will be
done for the knowledge of the inner man than is to be
found in many systematic psychologies.

I. Not only the consciousness of other things, i.e., the
apprehension of the external world, but also self-conscious
ness, contains, as was mentioned already above, a knower
and a known ; otherwise it would not be consciousness.
For consciousness consists in knowing; but knowing re
quires a knower and a known ; therefore there could be
no self-consciousness if there were not in it also a known
opposed to the knower and different from it. As there
can be no object without a subject, so also there can
be no subject without an object, i.e., no knower without
something different from it which is known. Therefore
a consciousness which is through and through pure in
telligence is impossible. The intelligence is like the sun,
which does not illuminate space if there is no object from
which its rays are reflected. The knower himself, as such,
cannot be known ; otherwise he would be the known of
another knower. But now, as the knoivn in self-conscious
ness we find exclusively the will. For not merely willing
and purposing in the narrowest sense, but also all striving,
wishing, shunning, hoping, fearing, loving, hating, in short,
all that directly constitutes our own weal and woe, desire
and aversion, is clearly only affection of the will, is a mov
ing, a modification of willing and not-willing, is just that
which, if it takes outward effect, exhibits itself as an act of
will proper.1 In all knowledge, however, the known is first

1 It is remarkable that Augustine preceding book he had brought under

already knew this. In the fourteenth four categories, cupiditas, timor, lat-

book, "De Civ. Dei'' c. 6, he speaks of titia, tristitia, and says : " Voluntas est

the affectionibus animi, which in the quippe in omnibus, imo omncs nihil

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 413

and essential, not the knower ; for the former is the irpw-
TOTVTTOS, the latter the €KTVTTO<S. Therefore in self-con
sciousness also the known, thus the will, must be what is
first and original ; the knower, on the other hand, only what
is secondary, that which has been added, the mirror. They
are related very much as the luminous to the reflecting
body ; or, again, as the vibrating strings to the resounding-
board, in which case the note produced would be conscious
ness. We may also regard the plant as a like symbol of
consciousness. It has, we know, two poles, the root and the
corona : the former struggling into darkness, moisture, and
cold, the latter into light, dryness, and warmth; then,
as the point of indifference of the two poles, where they
part asunder, close to the ground, the collum (rhizoma, le
collet}. The root is what is essential, original, perennial,
the death of which involves that of the corona, is thus the
primary ; the corona, on the other hand, is the ostensible,
but it has sprung from something else, and it passes away
without the root dying ; it is thus secondary. The root
represents the will, the corona the intellect, and the point .
of indifference of the two, the collum, would be the /,
which, as their common termination, belongs to both. This
I is the pro tempore identical subject of knowing and will
ing, whose identity I called in my very first essay (on the
principle of sufficient reason), and in rny first philosophical
wonder, the miracle KO.T e£o%7?f. It is the temporal start
ing-point and connecting-link of the whole phenomenon,
i.e., of the objectification of the will : it conditions indeed
the phenomenon, but is also conditioned by it. This com
parison may even be carried to the individual nature of
men. As a large corona commonly springs only from a
large root, so the greatest intellectual capabilities are only
found in connection with a vehement and passionate will.
A genius of a phlegmatic character and weak passions

aliud, quam voluntates sunt: nam volumus? et quid est mctus atque tris-
quid est cupiditas et Icetitia, nisi vo- titia, nisi voluntas in dissensionem ab
luntan in eorum consensionem, quce his, qua nolumus? cet."

4H SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

would resemble those succulent plants that, with a con
siderable corona consisting of thick leaves, have very small
roots ; will not, however, be found. That vehemence of
will and passionateness of character are conditions of
heightened intelligence exhibits itself physiologically
through the fact that the activity of the brain is condi
tioned by the movement which the great arteries running
towards the basis cerebri impart to it with each pulsation ;
therefore an energetic pulse, and even, according to Bichat,
a short neck, is a requisite of great activity of the brain.
But the opposite of the above certainly occurs : vehement
desires, passionate, violent character, along with weak in
tellect, i.e., a small brain of bad conformation in a thick
skull. This is a phenomenon as common as it is repulsive :
we might perhaps compare it to beetroot.

2. But in order not merely to describe consciousness
figuratively, but to know it thoroughly, we have first of
all to find out what appears in the same way in every
consciousness, and therefore, as the common and constant
element, will also be the essential. Then we shall consider
what distinguishes one consciousness from another, which
accordingly will be the adventitious and secondary element.

Consciousness is positively only known to us as a pro
perty of animal nature ; therefore we must not, and indeed
cannot, think of it otherwise than as animal consciousness,
so that this expression is tautological. Now, that which
in every animal consciousness, even the most imperfect
and the weakest, is always present, nay, lies at its founda
tion, is an immediate sense of longing, and of the alternate
satisfaction and non-satisfaction of it, in very different
degrees. This we know to a certain extent a priori. For
marvellously different as the innumerable species of animals
are, and strange as some new form, never seen before,
appears to us, we yet assume beforehand its inmost nature,
with perfect certainty, as well known, and indeed fully
confided to us. We know that the animal wills, indeed
also what it wills, existence, well-being, life, and propaga-

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 415-

tion ; and since in this we presuppose with perfect certainty
identity with us, we do not hesitate to attribute to it un
changed all the affections of will which we know in our
selves, and speak at once of its desire, aversion, fear, anger,
hatred, love, joy, sorrow, longing, &c. On the other hand,
whenever phenomena of mere knowledge come to be spoken
of we fall at once into uncertainty. We do not venture
to say that the animal conceives, thinks, judges, knows :
we only attribute to it with certainty ideas in general;
because without them its will could not have those emo
tions referred to above. But with regard to the definite
manner of knowing of the brutes and the precise limits of
it in a given species, we have only indefinite conceptions,
and make conjectures. Hence our understanding with
them is also often difficult, and is only brought about by
skill, in consequence of experience and practice. Here
then lie distinctions of consciousness. On the other hand,
a longing, desiring, wishing, or a detesting, shunning, and
not wishing, is proper to every consciousness: man has
it in common with the polyp. This is accordingly the
essential element in and the basis of every consciousness.
The difference of the manifestations of this in the different
species of animal beings depends upon the various exten
sion of their sphere of knowledge, in which the motives of
those manifestations lie. We understand directly from
our own nature all actions and behaviour of the brutes
which express movements of the will ; therefore, so far,
we sympathise with them in various ways. On the other
hand, the gulf between us and them results simply and
solely from the difference of intellect. The gulf which
lies between a very sagacious brute and a man of very
limited capacity is perhaps not much greater than that
which exists between a blockhead and a man of genius ;
therefore here also the resemblance between them in
another aspect, which springs from the likeness of their
inclinations and emotions, and assimilates them again
to each other, sometimes appears with surprising promi-

416 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

nence, and excites astonishment. This consideration makes
it clear that in all animal natures the will is what is
primary and substantial, the intellect again is secondary,
adventitious, indeed a mere tool for the service of the
former, and is more or less complete and complicated,
according to the demands of this service. As a species of
animals is furnished with hoofs, claws, hands, wings, horns,
or teeth according to the aims of its will, so also is it fur
nished with a more or less developed brain, whose function
is the intelligence necessary for its endurance. The more
complicated the organisation becomes, in the ascending
series of animals, the more numerous also are its wants,
and the more varied and specially determined the objects
which are capable of satisfying them ; hence the more com
plicated and distant the paths by which these are to be
obtained, which must now be all known and found : there
fore in the same proportion the ideas of the animal must
be more versatile, accurate, definite, and connected, and
also its attention must be more highly strung, more sus
tained, and more easily roused, consequently its intellect
must be more developed and perfect. Accordingly we
see the organ of intelligence, the cerebral system, together
with all the organs of sense, keep pace with the increasing
wants and the complication of the organism ; and the in
crease of the part of consciousness that has to do with
ideas (as opposed to the willing part) exhibits itself in a
bodily form in the ever-increasing proportion of the brain
in general to the rest of the nervous system, and of the
cerebrum to the cerebellum ; for (according to Flourens)
the former is the workshop of ideas, while the latter is the
disposer and orderer of movements. The last step which
nature has taken in this respect is, however, dispropor
tionately great. For in man not only does the faculty
of ideas of perception, which alone existed hitherto,
reach the highest degree of perfection, but the abstract
idea, thought, i.e., reason, and with it reflection, is added.
Through this important advance of the intellect, thus

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 417

of the secondary part of consciousness, it now gains a
preponderance over the primary part, in so far as it
becomes henceforward the predominantly active part.
While in the brute the immediate sense of its satisfied
or unsatisfied desire constitutes by far the most important
part of its consciousness, and the more so indeed the
lower the grade of the animal, so that the lowest animals
are only distinguished from plants by the addition of a
dull idea, in man the opposite is the case. Vehement as are
his desires, even more vehement than those of any brute,
rising to the level of passions, yet his consciousness
remains continuously and predominantly occupied and
filled with ideas and thoughts. Without doubt this has
been the principal occasion of that fundamental error of
all philosophers on account of which they make thought
that which is essential and primary in the so-called soul,
i.e., in the inner or spiritual life of man, always placing it
first, but will, as a mere product of thought, they regard
as only a subordinate addition and consequence of it.
But if willing merely proceeded from knowing, how could
the brutes, even the lower grades of them, with so very
little knowledge, often show such an unconquerable and
vehement will ? Accordingly, since that fundamental
error of the philosophers makes, as it were, the accident
the substance, it leads them into mistaken paths, which
there is afterwards no way of getting out of. Now this
relative predominance of the knowing consciousness over
the desiring, consequently of the secondary part over
the primary, which appears in man, may, in particular
exceptionally favoured individuals, go so far that at the
moments of its highest ascendancy, the secondary or
knowing part of consciousness detaches itself altogether
from the willing part, and passes into free activity for itself,
i.e., untouched by the will, and consequently no longer
serving it. Thus it becomes purely objective, and the clear
mirror of the world, and from it the conceptions of genius
then arise, which are the subject of our third book.

VOL. II. 2 D

4i 8 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

3. If we run through the series of grades of animals
downwards, we see the intellect always becoming weaker
and less perfect, but we by no means observe a corre
sponding degradation of the will. Eather it retains every
where its identical nature and shows itself in the form of
great attachment to life, cave for the individual and the
species, egoism and regardlessness of all others, together
with the emotions that spring from these. Even in the
smallest insect the will is present, complete and entire ; it
wills what it wills as decidedly and completely as the
man. The difference lies merely in what it wills, i.e., in
the motives, which, however, are the affair of the intellect.
It indeed, as the secondary part of consciousness, and
bound to the bodily organism, has innumerable degrees of
completeness, and is in general essentially limited and
imperfect. The will, on the contrary, as original and the
thing in itself, can never be imperfect, but every act of
will is all that it can be. On account of the simplicity
which belongs to the will as the thing in itself, the meta
physical in the phenomenon, its nature admits of no
degrees, but is always completely itself. Only its excite
ment has degrees, from the weakest inclination to the
passion, and also its susceptibility to excitement, thus its
vehemence from the phlegmatic to the choleric tempera
ment. The intellect, on the other hand, has not merely
degrees of excitement, from sleepiness to being in the vein,
and inspiration, but also degrees of its nature, of the com
pleteness of this, which accordingly rises gradually from
the lowest animals, which can only obscurely apprehend,
up to man, and here again from the fool to the genius.
The will alone is everywhere completely itself. For its
function is of the utmost simplicity ; it consists in willing
and not willing, which goes on with the greatest ease,
without effort, and requires no practice. Knowing, on the
contrary, has multifarious functions, and never takes
place entirely without effort, which is required to fix the
attention and to make clear the object, and at a higher

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 419

stage is certainly needed for thinking and deliberation ;
therefore it is also capable of great improvement through
exercise and education. If the intellect presents a simple,
perceptible object to the will, the latter expresses at once
its approval or disapproval of it, and this even if the
intellect has laboriously inquired and pondered, in order
from numerous data, by means of difficult combinations,
ultimately to arrive at the conclusion as to which of the
two seems to be most in conformity with the interests of
the will. The latter has meanwhile been idly resting, and
when the conclusion is arrived at it enters, as the Sultan
enters the Divan, merely to express again its monotonous
approval or disapproval, which certainly may vary in
degree, but in its nature remains always the same.

This fundamentally different nature of the will and the
intellect, the essential simplicity and originality of the
former, in contrast to the complicated and secondary char
acter of the latter, becomes still more clear to us if we
observe their remarkable interaction within us, and now
consider in the particular case, how the images and
thoughts which arise in the intellect move the will, and
how entirely separated and different are the parts which
the two play. We can indeed perceive this even in
actual events which excite the will in a lively manner,
while primarily and in themselves they are merely objects
of the intellect. But, on the one hand, it is here not so
evident that this reality primarily existed only in the
intellect; and, on the other hand, the change does not
generally take place so rapidly as is necessary if the thing
is to be easily surveyed, and thereby become thoroughly
comprehensible. Both of these conditions, however, are
fulfilled if it is merely thoughts and phantasies which we
allow to act on the will. If, for example, alone with our
selves, we think over our personal circumstances, and now
perhaps vividly present to ourselves the menace of an
actually present danger and the possibility of an unfortu
nate issue, anxiety at once compresses the heart, and the

420 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

blood ceases to circulate in the veins. But if then the
intellect passes to the possibility of an opposite issue, and
lets the imagination picture the long hoped for happiness
thereby attained, all the pulses quicken at once with joy
and the heart feels light as a feather, till the intellect
awakes from its dream. Thereupon, suppose that an occa
sion should lead the memory to an insult or injury once
suffered long ago, at once anger and bitterness pour into
the breast that was but now at peace. But then arises,
called up by accident, the image of a long-lost love, with
which the whole romance and its magic scenes is con
nected; then that auger will at once give place to pro
found longing and sadness. Finally, if there occurs to us
some former humiliating incident, we shrink together
would like to sink out of sight, blush with shame, and
often try forcibly to distract and divert our thoughts by
some loud exclamation, as if to scare some evil spirit.
One sees, the intellect plays, and the will must dance to
it. Indeed the intellect makes the will play the part of a
child which is alternately thrown at pleasure into joyful
or sad moods by the chatter and tales of its nurse. This
depends upon the fact that the will is itself without
knowledge, and the understanding which is given to it is
without will. Therefore the former is like a body which
is moved, the latter like the causes which set it in motion,
for it is the medium of motives. Yet in all this the pri
macy of the will becomes clear again, if this will, which,
as we have shown, becomes the sport of the intellect as
soon as it allows the latter to control it, once makes its
supremacy in the last instance felt by prohibiting the
intellect from entertaining certain ideas, absolutely pre
venting certain trains of thought from arising, because
it knows, i.e., learns from 4that very intellect, that they
would awaken in it some one of the emotions set forth
above. It now bridles the intellect, and compels it to turn
to other things. Hard as this often may be, it must yet
be accomplished as soon as the will is in earnest about it,

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 421

for the resistance in this case does not proceed from the
intellect, which always remains indifferent, but from the
will itself, which in one respect has an inclination towards
an idea that in another respect it abhors. It is in itself
interesting to the will simply because it excites it, but at
the same time abstract knowledge tells it that this idea
will aimlessly cause it a shock of painful or unworthy
emotion : it now decides in conformity with this abstract
knowledge, and compels the obedience of the intellect.
This is called " being master of oneself." Clearly the
master here is the will, the servant the intellect, for in the
last instance the will always keeps the upper hand, and
therefore constitutes the true core, the inner being of
man. In this respect the title Hye^ovifcov would belong
to the will ; yet it seems, on the other hand, to apply to the
intellect, because it is the leader and guide, like the valet
de place who conducts a stranger. In truth, however, the
happiest figure of the relation of the two is the strong
blind man who carries on his shoulders the lame man who
can see.

The relation of the will to the intellect here explained
may also be further recognised in the fact that the intel
lect is originally entirely a stranger to the purposes of the
will. It supplies the motives to the will, but it only learns
afterwards, completely a posteriori, how they have affected
it, as one who makes a chemical experiment applies the
reagents and awaits the result. Indeed the intellect
remains so completely excluded from the real decisions
and secret purposes of its own will that sometimes it can
only learn them like those of a stranger, by spying upon
them • and surprising them, and must catch the will in
the act of expressing itself in order to get at its real
intentions. For example, I have conceived a plan, about
which, however, I have still some scruple, but the feasible
ness of which, as regards its possibility, is completely
uncertain, for it depends upon external and still unde
cided circumstances. It would therefore certainly be un-

422 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

necessary to come to a decision about it at present, and so
for the time I leave the matter as it is. Now in such a case
I often do not know how firmly I am already attached to
that plan in secret, and how much, in spite of the scruple,
I wish to carry it out : that is, my intellect does not
know. But now only let me receive news that it is prac
ticable, at once there rises within me a jubilant, irresis
tible gladness, that passes through my whole being and
takes permanent possession of it, to my own astonishment.
For now my intellect learns for the first time how firmly
my will had laid hold of that plan, and how thoroughly
the plan suited it, while the intellect had regarded it as
entirely problematical, and had with difficulty been able
to overcome that scruple. Or in another case, I have
entered eagerly into a contract which I believed to be
very much in accordance with my wishes. But as the
matter progresses the disadvantages and burdens of it are
felt, and I begin to suspect that I even repent of what I
so eagerly pursued ; yet I rid myself of this feeling by
assuring myself that even if I were not bound I would
follow the same course. Now, however, the contract is
unexpectedly broken by the other side, and I perceive with
astonishment that this happens to my great satisfaction
and relief. Often we don't know what we wish or what
we fear. We may entertain a wish for years without even
confessing it to ourselves, or even allowing it to come to
clear consciousness ; for the intellect must know nothing
about it, because the good opinion which we have of our
selves might thereby suffer. But if it is fulfilled we learn
from our joy, not without shame, that we have wished this.
For example, the death of a near relation whose heir we
are. And sometimes we do not know what we really fear,
because we lack the courage to bring it to distinct con-
sciousnesss. Indeed we are often in error as to the real
motive from which we have done something or left it
undone, till at last perhaps an accident discovers to us the
secret, and we know that what we have held to be the

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 423

motive was not the true one, but another which we had
not wished to confess to ourselves, because it by no means
accorded with the good opinion we entertained of our
selves. For example, we refrain from doing something
on purely moral grounds, as we believe, but afterwards we
discover that we were only restrained by fear, for as soon
as all danger is removed we do it. In particular cases
this may go so far that a man does not even guess the
true motive of his action, nay, does not believe himself
capable of being influenced by such a motive ; and yet it
is the true motive of his action. We may remark in
passing that in all this we have a confirmation and ex
planation of the rule of Larochefoucauld : " L' amour-propre
est plus habile que le plus habile homme du monde;" nay,
even a commentary on the Delphic yvcoOi, aavrov and its
difficulty. If now, on the contrary, as all philosophers
imagine, the intellect constituted our true nature and the
purposes of the will were a mere result of knowledge, then
only the motive from which we imagined that we acted
would be decisive of our moral worth ; in analogy with
the fact that the intention, not the result, is in this respect
decisive. But really then the distinction between imagined
and true motive would be impossible. Thus all cases here
set forth, to which every one who pays attention may
observe analogous cases in himself, show us how the
intellect is so strange to the will that it is sometimes
even mystified by it : for it indeed supplies it with
motives, but does not penetrate into the secret workshop
of its purposes. It is indeed a confidant of the will, but
a confidant that is not told everything. This is also
further confirmed by the fact, which almost every one will
some time have the opportunity of observing in himself,
that sometimes the intellect does not thoroughly trust the
will. If we have formed some great and bold purpose,
which as such is yet really only a promise made by the
will to the intellect, there often remains within us a slight
unconfessed doubt whether we are quite in earnest about

424 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

it, whether in carrying it out we will not waver or draw
back, but will have sufficient firmness and persistency to
fulfil it. It therefore requires the deed to convince us
ourselves of the sincerity of the purpose.

All these facts prove the absolute difference of the will
and the intellect, the primacy of the former and the sub
ordinate position of the latter.

4. The intellect becomes tired ; the will is never tired.
After sustained work with the head we feel the tiredness
of the brain, just like that of the arm after sustained
bodily work. All knowing is accompanied with effort ;
willing, on the contrary, is our very nature, whose mani
festations take place without any weariness and entirely
of their own accord. Therefore, if our will is .strongly
excited, as in all emotions, thus in anger, fear, desire,
grief, &c., and we are now called upon to know, perhaps
with the view of correcting the motives of that emotion,
the violence which we must do ourselves for this purpose
is evidence of the transition from the original natural
activity proper to ourselves to the derived, indirect, and
forced activity. For the will alone is avroparos, and
therefore a/co/taro? Kai ayrjparos y^ara, Travra (lassitu-
dinis et senii expers in sempiternum). It alone is active
without being called upon, and therefore often too early
and too much, and it knows no weariness. Infants who
scarcely show the first weak trace of intelligence are
already full of self-will : through unlimited, aimless roar
ing and shrieking they show the pressure of will with
which they swell, while their willing has yet no object,
i.e., they will without knowing what they will. What
Cabanis has observed is also in point here : " Toutes ces
passions, qui se succedent d'une manniere si rapide, et se
peignent avec tant de naivete", sur le visage mobile des enfants.
Tandis que les foibles muscles de leurs bras et de leurs jambes
savent encore a peine former quelque mouvemens inde'cis, les
muscles dc la face expriment deja par des mouvemens dis-
tincts presque toute la suite des affections ge'ne'rales propres a

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 425

la nature humaine: etVobscrvateurattentifreconnaitfacile-
ment dans ce tableau les traits caracte'ristiques de I'homme
futur " (Rapports du Physique et Moral, vol. i. p. 1 23). The
intellect, on the contrary, develops slowly, following the
completion of the brain and the maturity of the whole
organism, which are its conditions, just because it is
merely a somatic function. It is because the brain
attains its full size in the seventh year that from that
time forward children become so remarkably intelligent,
inquisitive, and reasonable. But then comes puberty ; to
a certain extent it affords a support to the brain, or a
resounding-board, and raises the intellect at once by a
large step, as it were by an octave, corresponding to the
lowering of the voice by that amount. But at once the
animal desires and passions that now appear resist the
reasonableness that has hitherto prevailed and to which
they have been added. Further evidence is given of the
indefatigable nature of the will by the fault which is,
more or less, peculiar to all men by nature, and is only
overcome by education — precipitation. It consists in this,
that the will hurries to its work before the time. This
work is the purely active and executive part, which ought
only to begin when the explorative and deliberative part,
thus the work of knowing, has been completely and
thoroughly carried out. But this time is seldom waited
for. Scarcely are a few data concerning the circumstances
before us, or the event that has occurred, or the opinion
of others conveyed to us, superficially comprehended and
hastily gathered together by knowledge, than from the
depths of our being the will, always ready and never weary,
comes forth unasked, and shows itself as terror, fear, hope,
joy, desire, envy, grief, zeal, anger, or courage, and leads
to rash words and deeds, which are generally followed by
repentance when time has taught us that the hegemoni-
con, the intellect, has not been able to finish half its work
of comprehending the circumstances, reflecting on their
connection, and deciding what is prudent, because the will

426 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

did not wait for it, but sprang forward long before its
time with " Now it is my turn ! " and at once began the
active work, without the intellect being able to resist, as
it is a mere slave and bondman of the will, and not, like
it, avTofMaros, nor active from its own power and its own
impulse ; therefore it is easily pushed aside and silenced
by a nod of the will, while on its part it is scarcely able,
with the greatest efforts, to bring the will even to a brief
pause, in order to speak. This is why the people are so
rare, and are found almost only among Spaniards, Turks,
and perhaps Englishmen, who even under circumstances
of provocation keep the head uppermost, imperturbably pro
ceed to comprehend and investigate the state of affairs,
and when others would already be beside themselves, con
mucho sosiego, still ask further questions, which is some
thing quite different from the indifference founded upon
apathy and stupidity of many Germans and Dutchmen.
Iffland used to give an excellent representation of this
admirable quality, as Hetmann of the Cossacks, in Ben-
jowski, when the conspirators have enticed him into their
tent and hold a rifle to his head, with the warning that
they will fire it if he utters a cry, Iffland blew into the
mouth of the rifle to try whether it was loaded. Of ten
things that annoy us, nine would not be able to do so if
we understood them thoroughly in their causes, and there
fore knew their necessity and true nature ; but we would
do this much oftener if we made them the object of re
flection before making them the object of wrath and
indignation. For what bridle and bit are to an unmanage
able horse the intellect is for the will in man ; by this
bridle it must be controlled by means of instruction,
exhortation, culture, &c., for in itself it is as wild and
impetuous an impulse as the force that appears in the
descending waterfall, nay, as we know, it is at bottom
identical with this. In the height of anger, in intoxica
tion, in despair, it has taken the bit between its teeth, has
run away, and follows its original nature. In the Mania

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 427

sincjdelirio it has lost bridle and bit altogether, and shows
now most distinctly its original nature, and that the in
tellect is as different from it as the bridle from the horse.
In this condition it may also be compared to a clock
which, when a certain screw is taken away, runs down
without stopping.

Thus this consideration also shows us the will as that
which is original, and therefore metaphysical ; the intel
lect, on the other hand, as something subordinate and
physical. For as such the latter is, like everything physi
cal, subject to vis inertice, consequently only active if it is
set agoing by something else, the will, which rules it,
manages it, rouses it to effort, in short, imparts to it the
activity which does not originally reside in it. Therefore
it willingly rests whenever it is permitted to do so, often
declares itself lazy and disinclined to activity; through
continued effort it becomes weary to the point of complete
stupefaction, is exhausted, like the voltaic pile, through
repeated shocks. Hence all continuous mental work de
mands pauses and rest, otherwise stupidity and incapacity
ensue, at first of course only temporarily ; but if this rest
is persistently denied to the intellect it will become ex
cessively and continuously fatigued, and the consequence
is a permanent deterioration of it, which in an old man
may pass into complete incapacity, into childishness, im
becility, and madness. It is not to be attributed to age
in and for itself, but to long-continued tyrannical over-
exertion of the intellect or brain, if this misfortune ap
pears in the last years of life. This is the explanation
of the fact that Swift became mad, Kant became
childish, Walter Scott, and also Wordsworth, Southey,
and many minorum gentium, became dull and incapable.
Goethe remained to the end clear, strong, and active-
minded, because he, who was always a man of the world
and a courtier, never carried on his mental occupations
with self-compulsion. The same holds good of Wieland
and of Kuebel, who lived to the age of ninety-one, and also

428 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

of Voltaire. Now all this proves how very subordinate
and physical and what a mere tool the intellect is. Just
on this account it requires, during almost a third part of
its lifetime, the entire suspension of its activity in sleep,
i.e., the rest of the brain, of which it is the mere func
tion, and which therefore just as truly precedes it as the
stomach precedes digestion, or as a body precedes its impul
sion, and with which in old age it flags and decays. The
will, on the contrary, as the thing in itself, is never lazy,
is absolutely untiring, its activity is its essence, it never
ceases willing, and when, during deep sleep, it is forsaken
of the intellect, and therefore cannot act outwardly in
accordance with motives, it is active as the vital force,
cares the more uninterruptedly for the inner economy of
the organism, and as vis naturae medicatrix sets in order
again the irregularities that have crept into it. For it is
not, like the intellect, a function of the body ; ~but the body
is its function ; therefore it is, ordine rerum, prior to the
body, as its metaphysical substratum, as the in-itself of
its phenomenal appearance. It shares its unwearying
nature, for the time that life lasts, with the heart, that
primum mobile of the organism, which has therefore be
come its symbol and synonym. Moreover, it does not
disappear in the old man, but still continues to will what
it has willed, and indeed becomes firmer, more inflexible,
than it was in youth, more implacable, self-willed, and
unmanageable, because the intellect has become less sus
ceptible : therefore in old age the man can perhaps only
be matched by taking advantage of the weakness of his
intellect.

Moreover, the prevailing weakness and imperfection of
the intellect, as it is shown in the want of judgment,
narrow-mindedness, perversity, and folly of the great
majority of men, would be quite inexplicable if the in
tellect were not subordinate, adventitious, and merely
instrumental, but the immediate and original nature of
the so-called soul, or in general of the inner man : as all

O.V THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 429

philosophers have hitherto assumed it to be. For how
could the original nature in its immediate and peculiar
function so constantly err and fail ? The truly original
in human consciousness, the willing, always goes on with
perfect success; every being wills unceasingly, capably,
and decidedly. To regard the immorality in the will as an
imperfection of it would be a fundamentally false point of
view. For morality has rather a source which really lies
above nature, and therefore its utterances are in contra
diction with it. Therefore morality is in direct opposition
to the natural will, which in itself is completely egoistic ;
indeed the pursuit of the path of morality leads to the
abolition of the will. On this subject I refer to our fourth
book and to my prize essay, " Uebcr das Fundament der
Moral."

5. That the will is what is real and essential in man,
and the intellect only subordinate, conditioned, and pro
duced, is also to be seen in the fact that the latter can
carry on its function with perfect purity and correctness
only so long as the will is silent and pauses. On the
other hand, the function of the intellect is disturbed by
every observable excitement of the will, and its result is
falsified by the intermixture of the latter; but the con
verse does not hold, that the intellect should in the same
way be a hindrance to the will. Thus the moon cannot
shine when the sun is in the heavens, but when the moon
is in the heavens it does not prevent the sun from shining.

A great fright often deprives us of our senses to such
an extent that we are petrified, or else do the most absurd
things ; for example, when fire has broken out run right
into the flames. Anger makes us no longer know what
we do, still less what we say. Zeal, therefore called blind,
makes us incapable of weighing the arguments of others,
or even of seeking out and setting in order our own. Joy
makes us inconsiderate, reckless, and foolhardy, and desire,
acts almost in the same way. Fear prevents us from see
ing and laying hold of the resources that are still present,

430 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

and often lie close beside us. Therefore for overcoming
sudden dangers, and also for fighting with opponents and
enemies, the most essential qualifications are coolness and
presence of mind. The former consists in the silence of
the will so that the intellect can act ; the latter in the
undisturbed activity of the intellect under the pressure of
events acting on the will ; therefore the former is the con
dition of the latter, and the two are nearly related ; they
are seldom to be found, and always only in a limited
degree. But they are of inestimable advantage, because
they permit the use of the intellect just at those times
when we stand most in need of it, and therefore confer
decided superiority. He who is without them only knows
what he should have done or said when the opportunity
has passed. It is very appropriately said of him who is
violently moved, i.e., whose will is so strongly excited that
it destroys the purity of the function of the intellect, he is
disarmed ; for the correct knowledge of the circumstances
and relations is our defence and weapon in the conflict
with things and with men. In this sense Balthazar Gra-
ciau says : " Es la passion enemiga declarada de la cordura "
(Passion is the declared enemy of prudence). If now the
intellect were not something completely different from the
will, but, as has been hitherto supposed, knowing and will
ing had the same root, and were equally original functions
of an absolutely simple nature, then with the rousing and
heightening of the will, in which the emotion consists, the
intellect would necessarily also be heightened ; but, as we
have seen, it is rather hindered and depressed by this ;
whence the ancients called emotion animi perturlatio.
The intellect is really like the reflecting surface of water,
but the water itself is like the will, whose disturbance
therefore at once destroys the clearness of that mirror and
the distinctness of its images. The organism is the will
itself, is embodied will, i.e., will objectively perceived in
the brain. Therefore many of its functions, such as res
piration, circulation, secretion of bile, and muscular power,

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 431

are heightened and accelerated by the pleasurable, and in
general the healthy, emotions. The intellect, on the other
hand, is the mere function of the brain, which is only
nourished and supported by the organism, as a parasite.
Therefore every perturbation of the will, and with it of
the organism, must disturb and paralyse the function of
the brain, which exists for itself and for no other wants
than its own, which are simply rest and nourishment.

But this disturbing influence of the activity of the will
upon the intellect can be shown, not only in the perturba
tions brought about by emotions, but also in many other,
more gradual, and therefore more lasting falsifications of
thought by our inclinations. Hope makes us regard what
we wish, and fear what we are apprehensive of, as pro
bable and near, and both exaggerate their object. Plato
(according to vElian, V.H., 13, 28) very beautifully called
hope the dream of the waking. Its nature lies in this,
that the will, when its servant the intellect is not able to
produce what it wishes, obliges it at least to picture it
before it, in general to undertake the roll of comforter, to
appease its lord with fables, as a nurse a child, and so to
dress these out that they gain an appearance of likelihood.
Now in this the intellect must do violence to its own nature,
which aims at the truth, for it compels it, contrary to its
own laws, to regard as true things which are neither true
nor probable, and often scarcely possible, only in order to
appease, quiet, and send to sleep for a while the restless
and unmanageable will. Here we see clearly who is master
and who is servant. Many may well have observed that
if a matter which is of importance to them may turn out
in several different ways, and they have brought all of
these into one disjunctive judgment which in their opinion
is complete, the actual result is yet quite another, and one
wholly unexpected by them : but perhaps they will not
have considered this, that this result was then almost
always the one which was unfavourable to them. The ex
planation of this is, that while their intellect intended to

432 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

survey the possibilities completely, the worst of all remained
quite invisible to it ; because the will, as it were, covered
it with its hand, that is, it so mastered the intellect that
it was quite incapable of glancing at the worst case of all,
although, since it actually came to pass, this was also the
most probable case. Yet in very melancholy dispositions,
or in those that have become prudent through experi
ence like this, the process is reversed, for here apprehen
sion plays the part which was formerly played by hope.
The first appearance of danger throws them into ground
less anxiety. If the intellect begins to investigate the
matter it is rejected as incompetent, nay, as a deceitful
sophist, because the heart is to be believed, whose fears
are now actually allowed to pass for arguments as to the
reality and greatness of the danger. So then the intellect
dare make no search for good reasons on the other side,
which, if left to itself, it would soon recognise, but is
obliged at once to picture to them the most unfortunate
issue, even if it itself can scarcely think this issue possible :

" Such as we know is false, yet dread in sooth,
Because the worst is ever nearest truth."

— BYRON (Lara, c. 1).

Love and hate falsify our judgment entirely. In our
enemies we see nothing but faults — in our loved ones no
thing but excellences, and even their faults appear to us
amiable. Our interest, of whatever kind it may be, exer
cises a like secret power over our judgment ; what is in
conformity with it at once seems to us fair, just, and
reasonable ; what runs contrary to it presents itself to us,
in perfect seriousness, as unjust and outrageous, or injudi
cious and absurd. Hence so many prejudices of position,
profession, nationality, sect, and religion. A conceived
hypothesis gives us lynx-eyes for all, that confirms it, and
makes us blind to all that contradicts it. What is opposed
to our party, our plan, our wish, our hope, we often can
not comprehend and grasp at all, while it is clear to every

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 433

one else ; but what is favourable to these, on the other
hand, strikes our eye from afar. What the heart opposes
the head will not admit. We firmly retain many errors
all through life, and take care never to examine their
ground, merely from a fear, of which we ourselves are con
scious, that we might make the discovery that we had so
long believed and so often asserted what is false. Thus
then is the intellect daily befooled and corrupted by the
impositions of inclination. This has been very beauti
fully expressed by Bacon of Verulam in the words : Intel-
lectus LUMINIS sicci non est ; sed recipit infusionem a volun-
tate et affectibus : id quod general ad quod vult scientias :
quod enim mavult homo, id potius credit. Innumeris modis,
Usque interdum imperceptibilibus, affectus intellectum im-
luit et inftcit (Onj. Nov., i. 14). Clearly it is also this that
opposes all new fundamental opinions in the sciences and
all refutations of sanctioned errors, for one will not easily
see the truth of that which convicts one of incredible want
of thought. It is explicable, on this ground alone, that the
truths of Goethe's doctrine of colours, which are so clear
and simple, are still denied by the physicists ; and thus
Goethe himself has had to learn what a much harder posi
tion one has if one promises men instruction than if one
promises them amusement. Hence it is much more for
tunate to be born a poet than a philosopher. But the
more obstinately an error was held by the other side, the
more shameful does the conviction afterwards become.
In the case of an overthrown system, as in the case of a
conquered army, the most prudent is he who first runs
away from it.

A trifling and absurd, but striking example of that
mysterious and immediate power which the will exercises
over the intellect, is the fact that in doing accounts we
make mistakes much oftener in our own favour than to
our disadvantage, and this without the slightest dishonest
intention, merely from the unconscious tendency to
diminish our Debit and increase our Credit.

VOL. II. 2 E

434 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

Lastly, the fact is also in point here, that when advice
is given the slightest aim or purpose of the adviser gene
rally outweighs his insight, however great it may be;
therefore we dare not assume that he speaks from the
latter when we suspect the existence of the former. How
little perfect sincerity is to be expected even from other
wise honest persons whenever their interests are in any
way concerned we can gather from the fact that we so
often deceive ourselves when hope bribes us, or fear be
fools us, or suspicion torments us, or vanity natters us, or
an hypothesis blinds us, or a small aim which is close at
hand injures a greater but more distant one ; for in this
we see the direct and unconscious disadvantageous influ
ence of the will upon knowledge. Accordingly it ought
not to surprise us if in asking advice the will of the per
son asked directly dictates the answer even before the
question could penetrate to the forum of his judgment.

I wish in a single word to point out here what will be
fully explained in the following book, that the most per
fect knowledge, thus the purely objective comprehension
of the world, i.e., the comprehension of genius, is condi
tioned by a silence of the will so profound that while it
lasts even the individuality vanishes from consciousness
and the man remains as the pure subject of knowing, which
is the correlative of the Idea.

The disturbing influence of the will upon the intellect,
which is proved by all these phenomena, and, on the other
hand, the weakness and frailty of the latter, on account of
which it is incapable of working rightly whenever the will
is in any way moved, gives us then another proof that
the will is the radical part of our nature, and acts with
original power, while the intellect, as adventitious and in
many ways conditioned, can only act in a subordinate and
conditional manner.

There is no direct disturbance of the will by the intel
lect corresponding to the disturbance and clouding of
knowledge by the will that has been shown. Indeed we

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 435

cannot well conceive such a thing. No one will wish to
construe as such the fact that motives wrongly taken up
lead the will astray, for this is a fault of the intellect in
its own function, which is committed quite within its
own province, and the influence of which upon the will
is entirely indirect. It would be plausible to attribute
irresolution to this, for in its case, through the conflict of
the motives which the intellect presents to the will, the
latter is brought to a standstill, thus is hindered. But
when we consider it more closely, it becomes very clear
that the cause of this hindrance does not lie in the ac
tivity of the intellect as such, but entirely in external
objects which are brought about by it, for in this case they
stand in precisely such a relation to the will, which is here
interested, that they draw it with nearly equal strength in
different directions. This real cause merely acts through
the intellect as the medium of motives, though certainly
under the assumption that it is keen enough to compre
hend the objects in their manifold relations. Irresolu
tion, as a trait of character, is just as much conditioned
by qualities of the will as of the intellect. It is certainly
not peculiar to exceedingly limited minds, for their weak
understanding does not allow them to discover such mani
fold qualities and relations in things, and moreover is so
little fitted for the exertion of reflection and pondering
these, and then the probable consequences of each step,
that they rather decide at once according to the first
impression, or according to some simple rule of conduct.
The converse of this occurs in the case of persons of con
siderable understanding. Therefore, whenever such per
sons also possess a tender care for their own well-being,
i.e., a very sensitive egoism, which constantly desires to
come off well and always to be safe, this introduces a cer
tain anxiety at every step, and thereby irresolution. This
quality therefore indicates throughout not a want of
understanding but a want of courage. Yet very eminent
minds survey the relations and their probable develop-

436 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

inents with such rapidity and certainty, that if they are
only supported by some courage they thereby acquire
that quick decision and resolution that fits them to play
an important part in the affairs of the world, if time and
circumstances afford them the opportunity.

The only decided, direct restriction and disturbance
which the will can suffer from the intellect as such may
indeed be the quite exceptional one, which is the conse
quence of an abnormally preponderating development of
the intellect, thus of that high endowment which has been
defined as genius. This is decidedly a hindrance to the

o v

energy of the character, and consequently to the power of
action. Hence it is not the really great minds that make
historical characters, because they are capable of bridling
and ruling the mass of men and carrying out the affairs
of the world ; but for this persons of much less capacity
of mind are qualified when they have great firmness,
decision, and persistency of will, such as is quite incon
sistent with very high intelligence. Accordingly, where
this very high intelligence exists we actually have a case
in which the intellect directly restricts the will.

6. In opposition to the hindrances and restrictions
which it has been shown the intellect suffers from the
will, I wish now to show, in a few examples, how, con
versely, the functions of the intellect are sometimes aided
and heightened by the incitement and spur of the will ; so
that in this also we may recognise the primary nature of
the one and the secondary nature of the other, and it may
become clear that the intellect stands to the will in the
relation of a tool.

A motive which affects us strongly, such as a yearning
desire or a pressing need, sometimes raises the intellect
to a degree of which we had not previously believed it
capable. Difficult circumstances, which impose upon us
the necessity of certain achievements, develop entirely
new talents in us, the germs of which were hidden from
us, and for which we did not credit ourselves with any

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 437

capacity. The understanding of the stupidest man be
comes keen when objects are in question that closely
concern his wishes ; he now observes, weighs, and dis
tinguishes with the greatest delicacy even the smallest
circumstances that have reference to his wishes or fears.
This has much to do with the cunning of half-witted
persons, which is often remarked with surprise. On this
account Isaiah rightly says, vexatio dat intellectum, which
is therefore also used as a proverb. Akin to it is the
German proverb, " Die Noth ist die Mutter der Kunste "
(" Necessity is the mother of the arts ") ; when, however, the
fine arts are to be excepted, because the heart of every
one of their works, that is, the conception, must proceed
from a perfectly will-less, and only thereby purely objective,
perception, if they are to be genuine. Even the under
standing of the brutes is increased considerably by neces
sity, so that in cases of difficulty they accomplish things
at which we are astonished. For example, they almost all
calculate that it is safer not to run away when they
believe they are not seen ; therefore the hare lies still in
the furrow of the field and lets the sportsman pass close
to it; insects, when they cannot escape, pretend to be
dead, &c. We may obtain a fuller knowledge of this
influence from the special history of the self-education of
the wolf, under the spur of the great difficulty of its
position in civilised Europe ; it is to be found in the
second letter of Leroy's excellent book, " Lettres sur V in
telligence et la perfectibility des animaux." Immediately
afterwards, in the third letter, there follows the high
school of the fox, which in an equally difficult position
has far less physical strength. In its case, however, this
is made up for by great understanding ; yet only through
the constant struggle with want on the one hand and
danger on the other, thus under the spur of the will, does
it attain that high degree of cunning which distinguishes
it especially in old age. In all these enhancements of the
intellect the will plays the part of a rider who with the

438 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

spur urges the horse beyond the natural measure of its
strength.

In the same way the memory is enhanced through the
pressure of the will. Even if it is otherwise weak, it
preserves perfectly what has value for the ruling passion.
The lover forgets no opportunity favourable to him, the
ambitious man forgets no circumstance that can forward
his plans, the avaricious man never forgets the loss he has
suffered, the proud man never forgets an injury to his
honour, the vain man remembers every word of praise and
the most trifling distinction that falls to his lot. And this
also extends to the brutes : the horse stops at the inn
where once long ago it was fed ; dogs have an excellent
memory for all occasions, times, and places that have
afforded them choice morsels ; and foxes for the different
hiding-places in which they have stored their plunder.

Self-consideration affords opportunity for finer observa
tions in this regard. Sometimes, through an interruption,
it has entirely escaped me what I have just been thinking
about, or even what news I have just heard. Now if the
matter had in any way even the most distant personal
interest, the after-feeling of the impression which it made
upon the will has remained. I am still quite conscious
how far it affected me agreeably or disagreeably, and also
of the special manner in which this happened, whether,
even in the slightest degree, it vexed me, or made me
anxious, or irritated me, or depressed me, or produced the
opposite of these affections. Thus the mere relation of
the thing to my will is retained in the memory after the
thing itself has vanished, and this often becomes the clue
to lead us back to the thing itself. The sight of a man
sometimes affects us in an analogous manner, for we
remember merely in general that we have had something
to do with him, yet without knowing where, when, or
what it was, or who he is. But the sight of him still
recalls pretty accurately the feeling which our dealings
with him excited in us, whether it was agreeable or dis-

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, 439

agreeable, and also in what degree and in what way.
Thus our memory has preserved only the response of
the will, and not that which called it forth. We might
call what lies at the foundation of this process the
memory of the heart ; it is much more intimate than that
of the head. Yet at bottom the connection of the two is
so far-reaching that if we reflect deeply upon the matter
we will arrive at the conclusion that memory in general
requires the support of a will as a connecting point, or
rather as a thread upon which the memories can range
themselves, and which holds them firmly together, or that
the will is, as it were, the ground to which the individual
memories cleave, and without which they could not last ;
and that therefore in a pure intelligence, i.e., in a merely
knowing and absolutely will-less being, a memory cannot
well be conceived. Accordingly the improvement of the
memory under the spur of the ruling passion, which has
been shown above, is only the higher degree of that which
takes place in all retention and recollection ; for its basis
and condition is always the will. Thus in all this also it
becomes clear how very much more essential to us the
will is than the intellect. The following facts may also
serve to confirm this.

The intellect often obeys the will ; for example, if we
wishto remember something, and after some effort succeed;
so also if we wish now to ponder something carefully and
deliberately, and in many such cases. Sometimes, again,
the intellect refuses to obey the will ; for example, if we
try in vain to fix our minds upon something, or if we call
in vain upon the memory for something that was intrusted
to it. The anger of the will against the intellect on such
occasions makes its relation to it and the difference of the
two very plain. Indeed the intellect, vexed by this anger,
sometimes officiously brings what was asked of it hours
afterwards, or even the following morning, quite unex
pectedly and unseasonably. On the other hand, the will
never really obeys the intellect ; but the latter is only the

440 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

ministerial council of that sovereign ; it presents all kinds
of things to the will, which then selects what is in con
formity with its nature, though in doing so it determines
itself with necessity, because this nature is unchangeable
and the motives now lie before it. Hence no system of
ethics is possible which moulds and improves the will
itself. For all teaching only affects knowledge, and know
ledge never determines the will itself, i.e., the fundamental
character of willing, but only its application to the circum
stances present. Eectified knowledge can only modify
conduct so far as it proves more exactly and judges more
correctly what objects of the will's choice are within its
reach ; so that the will now measures its relation to things
more correctly, sees more clearly what it desires, and con
sequently is less subject to error in its choice. But over the
will itself, over the main tendency or fundamental maxim
of it, the intellect has no power. To believe that know
ledge really and fundamentally determines the will is like
believing that the lantern which a man carries by night is
the primum mobile of his steps. Whoever, taught by experi
ence or the admonitions of others, knows and laments a fun
damental fault of his character, firmly and honestly forms
the intention to reform and give it up; but in spite of this, on
the first opportunity, the fault receives free course. New re
pentance, new intentions, new transgressions. When this
has been gone through several times he becomes conscious
that he cannot improve himself, that the fault lies in his
nature and personality, indeed is one with this. Now he
will blame and curse his nature and personality, will have
a painful feeling, which may rise to anguish of conscious
ness, but to change these he is not able. Here we see that
which condemns and that which is condemned distinctly
separate : we see the former as a merely theoretical faculty,
picturing and presenting the praiseworthy, and therefore
desirable, course of life, but the other as something real
and unchangeably present, going quite a different way in
spite of the former : and then again the first remaining

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 441

behind with impotent lamentations over the nature of
the other, with which, through this very distress, it again
identifies itself. Will and intellect here separate very
distinctly. But here the will shows itself as the stronger,
the invincible, unchangeable, primitive, and at the same
time as the essential thing in question, for the intellect
deplores its errors, and finds no comfort in the correctness
of the knowledge, as its own function. Thus the intellect
shows itself entirely secondary, as the spectator of the
deeds of another, which it accompanies with impotent
praise and blame, and also as determinable from without,
because it learns from experience, weighs and alters its
precepts. Special illustrations of this subject will be found
in the "Parcrga," vol. ii. § 1 18 (second ed., § 1 19.) Accord
ingly, a comparison of our manner of thinking at different
periods of our life will present a strange mixture of per
manence and changeableness. On the one hand, the moral
tendency of the man in his prime and the old man is still
the same as was that of the boy ; on the other hand, much
has become so strange to him that he no longer knows
himself, and wonders how he ever could have done or said
this and that. In the first half of life to-day for the most
part laughs at yesterday, indeed looks down on it with
contempt; in the second half, on the contrary, it more
and more looks back at it with envy. But on closer
examination it will be found that the changeable element
was the intellect, with its functions of insight and know
ledge, which, daily appropriating new material from with
out, presents a constantly changing system of thought,
while, besides this, it itself rises and sinks with the growth
and decay of the organism. The will, on the contrary, the
basis of this, thus the inclinations, passions, and emotions,
the character, shows itself as what is unalterable in con
sciousness. Yet we have to take account of the modifica
tions that depend upon physical capacities for enjoyment,
and hence upon age. Thus, for example, the eagerness
for sensuous pleasure will show itself in childhood as a

442 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

love of dainties, in youth and manhood as the tendency
to sensuality, and in old age again as a love of dainties.

7. If, as is generally assumed, the will proceeded from
knowledge, as its result or product, then where there is
much will there would necessarily also be much know
ledge, insight, and understanding. This, however, is abso
lutely not the case ; rather, we find in many men a strong,
i.e., decided, resolute, persistent, unbending, wayward, and
vehement will, combined with a very weak and incapable
understanding, so that every one who has to do with them
is thrown into despair, for their will remains inaccessible
to all reasons and ideas, and is not to be got at, so that it
is hidden, as it were, in a sack, out of which it wills
blindly. Brutes have often violent, often stubborn wills,
but yet very little understanding. Finally, plants only
will without any knowledge at all.

If willing sprang merely from knowledge, our anger
would necessarily be in every case exactly proportionate
to the occasion, or at least to our relation to it, for it
would be nothing more than the result of the present
knowledge. This, however, is rarely the case ; rather,
anger generally goes far beyond the occasion. Our fury
and rage, the furor brevis, often upon small occasions, and
without error regarding them, is like the raging of an evil
spirit which, having been shut up, only waits its oppor
tunity to dare to break loose, and now rejoices that it has
found it. This could not be the case if the foundation
of our nature were a Jcnower, and willing were merely a
result of knowledge; for how came there into the result
what did not lie in the elements ? The conclusion cannot
contain more than the premisses. Thus here also the
will shows itself as of a nature quite different from know
ledge, which only serves it for communication with the
external world, but then the will follows the laws of its
own nature without taking from the intellect anything
but the occasion.

The intellect, as the mere tool of the will, is as different

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 443

from it as the hammer from the smith. So long as in a
conversation the intellect alone is active it remains cold.
It is almost as if the man himself were not present. More
over, he cannot then, properly speaking, compromise him
self, but at the most can make himself ridiculous. Only
when the will comes into play is the man really present :
now he becomes warm, nay, it often happens, hot. It is
always the will to which we ascribe the warmth of life ;
on the other hand, we say the cold understanding, or to
investigate a thing coolly, i.e., to think without being influ
enced by the will. If we attempt to reverse the relation,
and to regard the will as the tool of the intellect, it is as
if we made the smith the tool of the hammer.

Nothing is more provoking, when we are arguing against
a man with reasons and explanations, and taking all pains
to convince him, under the impression that we have only
to do with his understanding, than to discover at last that
he will not understand ; that thus we had to do with his
will, which shuts itself up against the truth and brings
into the field wilful misunderstandings, chicaneries, and
sophisms in order to intrench itself behind its understand
ing and its pretended want of insight. Then he is cer
tainly not to be got at, for reasons and proofs applied
against the will are like the blows of a phantom pro
duced by mirrors against a solid body. Hence the saying
so often repeated, " Stat pro ratione voluntas." Sufficient
evidence of what has been said is afforded by ordinary
life. But unfortunately proofs of it are also to be found
on the path of the sciences. The recognition of the most
important truths, of the rarest achievements, will be
looked for in vain from those who have an interest in
preventing them from being accepted, an interest which
either springs from the fact that such truths contradict
what they themselves daily teach, or else from this, that
they dare not make use of them and teach them; or if
all this be not the case they will not accept them, because
the watchword of mediocrity will always be, Si quelqu'un

444 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

excelle parmi nous, quil aille exceller ailleurs, as Helvetius
has admirably rendered the saying of the Ephesian in the
fifth book of Cicero's " Tusculance " (c. 36), or as a saying
of the Abyssinian Fit Arari puts it, " Among quartzes
adamant is outlawed." Thus whoever expects from this
always numerous band a just estimation of what he has
done will find himself very much deceived, and perhaps
for a while he will not be able to understand their be
haviour, till at last he finds out that while he applied
himself to knowledge he had to do with the will, thus is
precisely in the position described above, nay, is really
like a man who brings his case before a court the judges
of which have all been bribed. Yet in particular cases he
will receive the fullest proof that their will and not their
insight opposed him, when one or other of them makes up
his mind to plagiarism. Then he will see with astonish
ment what good judges they are, what correct perception
of the merit of others they have, and how well they know
how to find out the best, like the sparrows, who never
miss the ripest cherries.

The counterpart of the victorious resistance of the will
to knowledge here set forth appears if in expounding our
reasons and proofs we have the will of those addressed
with us. Then all are at once convinced, all arguments
are telling, and the matter is at once clear as the day.
This is well known to popular speakers. In the one case,
as in the other, the will shows itself as that which has
original power, against which the intellect can do nothing.

8. But now we shall take into consideration the indi
vidual qualities, thus excellences and faults of the will
and character on the one hand, and of the intellect on the
other, in order to make clear, in their relation to each
other, and their relative worth, the complete difference
of the two fundamental faculties. History and experi
ence teach that the two appear quite independently of
each other. That the greatest excellence of mind will not
easily be found combined with equal excellence of char-

ON THE WILL IX SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 445

acter is sufficiently explained by the extraordinary rarity
of both, while their opposites are everywhere the order of
the day ; hence we also daily find the latter in union.
However, we never infer a good will from a superior mind,
nor the latter from the former, nor the opposite from the
opposite, but every unprejudiced person accepts them
as perfectly distinct qualities, the presence of which
each for itself has to be learned from experience. Great
narrowness of mind may coexist with great goodness of
heart, and I do not believe Balthazar Gracian was right
in saying (Discrete, p. 406), "No ay simple, que no sea
malicioso " (" There is no simpleton who would not be mali
cious "), though he has the Spanish proverb in his favour,
" Nunca la necedad anduvo sin malicia" ("Stupidity is
never without malice"). Yet it may be that many stupid
persons become malicious for the same reason as many
hunchbacks, from bitterness on account of the neglect
they have suffered from nature, and because they think
they can occasionally make up for what they lack in
understanding through malicious cunning, seeking in this
a brief triumph. From this, by the way, it is also com
prehensible why almost every one easily becomes mali
cious in the presence of a very superior mind. On the
other hand, again, stupid people have very often the repu
tation of special good-heartedness, which yet so seldom
proves to be the case that I could not help wondering
how they had gained it, till I was able to flatter myself
that I had found the key to it in what follows. Moved
by a secret inclination, every one likes best to choose
for his more intimate intercourse some one to whom
he is a little superior in understanding, for only in this
case does he find himself at his ease, because, according to
Hobbes, " Omnis animi voluptas, omnisque alacritas in eo
sita est, quod quis haleat, quibuscum conferens sc, possit
magnifice scntire de se ipso " (De Cive, i. 5). For the
same reason every one avoids him who is superior to him
self; wherefore Lichtenberg quite rightly observes: "To

446 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

certain men a man of mind is a more odious production
than the most pronounced rogue." And similarly Helve-
tius says : " Les gens mddiocres out un instinct sur et prompt,
pour connditre et fuir les gens d'esprit." And Dr. Johnson
assures us that " there is nothing by which a man exas
perates most people more than by displaying a superior
ability of brilliancy in conversation. They seem pleased
at the time, but their envy makes them curse him
in their hearts " (Boswell ; aet. anno 74). In order to
bring this truth, so universal and so carefully concealed,
more relentlessly to light, I add the expression of it by
Merck, the celebrated friend of Goethe's youth, from his
story " Lindor : " " He possessed talents which were given
him by nature and acquired by himself through learning ;
and thus it happened that in most society he left the
worthy members of it far behind. If, in the moment of
delight at the sight of an extraordinary man, the public
swallows these superiorities also, without actually at once
putting a bad construction upon them, yet a certain im
pression of this phenomenon remains behind, which, if it is
often repeated, may on serious occasions have disagreeable
future consequences for him who is guilty of it. Without
any one consciously noting that on this occasion he was
insulted, no one is sorry to place himself tacitly in the
way of the advancement of this rnan. Thus on this ac
count great mental superiority isolates more than any
thing else, and makes one, at least silently, hated. Now
it is the opposite of this that makes stupid people so gene
rally liked ; especially since many can only find in them
what, according to the law of their nature referred to
above, they must seek. Yet this the true reason of such
an inclination no one will confess to himself, still less to
others ; and therefore, as a plausible pretext for it, will
impute to those he has selected a special goodness of
heart, which, as we have said, is in reality only very
rarely and accidentally found in combination with mental
incapacity. Want of understanding is accordingly by no

07V THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 447

means favourable or akin to goodness of character. But, on
the other hand, it cannot be asserted that great understand
ing is so ; nay, rather, no scoundrel has in general been
without it. Indeed even the highest intellectual emi
nence can coexist with the worst moral depravity. An
example of this is afforded by Bacon of Verulam : " Un
grateful, filled with the lust of power, wicked and base, he
at last went so far that, as Lord Chancellor and the highest
judge of the realm, he frequently allowed himself to be
bribed in civil actions. Impeached before his peers, he
confessed himself guilty, was expelled by them from the
House of Lords, and condemned to a fine of forty thousand
pounds and imprisonment in the Tower " (see the review
of the latest edition of Bacon's Works in the Edinburgh
Review, August 1837). Hence also Pope called him "the
wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind " (" Essay on Man,"
iv. 282). A similar example is afforded by the historian
Guicciardini, of whom Eosini says in the Notizie Storiche,
drawn from good contemporary sources, which is given in
his historical romance " Luisa Strozzi : " " Da coloro, die
pongono I'ingegno e il sapere al di' sopra di tutte le umane
qualita, questo uomo sard riguardato come fra i piu grandi
del suo secolo : ma da quelli, eke reputano la virtu dovere
andare innanzi a tutto, non potra esecrarsi abbastanza la
sua memoria. Esso fu il piu crudele fra i cittadini a
perseguitare, uccidere e corifinare," &C.1

If now it is said of one man, " He has a good heart,
though a bad head," but of another, " He has a very good
head, yet a bad heart," every one feels that in the first case
the praise far outweighs the blame — in the other case the
reverse. Answering to this, we see that if some one has
done a bad deed his friends and he himself try to remove
the guilt from the will to the intellect, and to give out that

1 By those who place mind and dence of everything else his memory

learning above all other human can never be execrated enough. He

qualities this man will be reckoned was the crudest of the citizens in

the greatest of his century. But persecuting, putting to death, and

by those who let virtue take prece- banishing.

448 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

faults of the heart were faults of the head ; roguish tricks
they will call errors, will say they were merely want of
understanding, want of reflection, light-mindedness, folly ;
nay, if need be, they will plead a paroxysm, momentary
mental aberration, and if a heavy crime is in question,
even madness, only in order to free the will from the guilt.
And in the same way, we ourselves, if we have caused
a misfortune or injury, will before others and ourselves
willingly impeach our stultitia, simply in order to escape
the reproach of malitia. In the same way, in the case of
the equally unjust decision of the judge, the difference,
whether he has erred or been bribed, is so infinitely great.
All this sufficiently proves that the will alone is the real
and essential, the kernel of the man, and the intellect
is merely its tool, which may be constantly faulty without
the will being concerned. The accusation of want of
understanding is, at the moral judgment-seat, no accusa
tion at all ; on the contrary, it even gives privileges.
And so also, before the courts of the world, it is every
where sufficient to deliver a criminal from all punishment
that his guilt should be transferred from his will to his
intellect, by proving either unavoidable error or mental
derangement, for then it is of no more consequence than
if hand or foot had slipped against the will. I have fully
discussed this in the appendix, " Ueber die Intellelduelle,
Freiheit" to my prize essay on the freedom of the will,
to which I refer to avoid repetition.

Everywhere those who are responsible for any piece of
work appeal, in the event of its turning out unsatisfac
torily, to their good intentions, of which there was no
lack. Hereby they believe that they secure the essential,
that for which they are properly answerable, and their
true self ; the inadequacy of their faculties, on the other
hand, they regard as the want of a suitable tool.

If a man is stupid, we excuse him by saying that he
cannot help it ; but if we were to excuse a bad man on
the same grounds we would be laughed at. And yet the

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 449

one, like the other, is innate. This proves that the will is
the man proper, the intellect merely its tool.

Thus it is always only our willing that is regarded as
depending upon ourselves, i.e., as the expression of our
true nature, and for which we are therefore made respon
sible. Therefore it is absurd and unjust if we are taken
to task for our beliefs, thus for our knowledge : for we
are obliged to regard this as something which, although it
changes in us, is as little in our power as the events of the
external world. And here, also, it is clear that the will
alone is the inner and true nature of man ; the intellect, on
the contrary, with its operations, which go on as regularly
as the external world, stands to the will in the relation of
something external to it, a mere toot

High mental capacities have always been regarded as
the gift of nature or the gods ; and on that account they
have been called Gaben, Begabung, ingenii dotes, gifts (a
man highly gifted), regarding them as something different
from the man himself, something that has fallen to his lot
through favour. No one, on the contrary, has ever taken
this view of moral excellences, although they also are
innate; they have rather always been regarded as some
thing proceeding from the man himself, essentially belong
ing to him, nay, constituting his very self. But it follows
now from this that the will is the true nature of man ; the
intellect, on the other hand, is secondary, a tool, a gift.

Answering to this, all religions promise a reward beyond
life, in eternity, for excellences of the will or heart, but
none for excellences of the head or understanding. Virtue
expects its reward in that world ; prudence hopes for it
in this ; genius, again, neither in this world nor in that ;
it is its own reward. Accordingly the will is the eternal
part, the intellect the temporal.

Connection, communion, intercourse among men is based,
as a rule, upon relations which concern the will, not upon
such as concern the intellect. The first kind of communion
may be called the material, the other the formal. Of the

VOL. II. 2 F

450 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

former kind are the bonds of family and relationship, and
further, all connections that rest upon any common aim or
interest, such as that of trade or profession, of the corpora
tion, the party, the faction, &c. In these it merely amounts
to a question of views, of aims ; along with which there
may be the greatest diversity of intellectual capacity and
culture. Therefore not only can any one live in peace and
unity with any one else, but can act with him and be allied
to him for the common good of both. Marriage also is a
bond of the heart, not of the head. It is different, how
ever, with merely formal communion, which aims only at
an exchange of thought ; this demands a certain equality
of intellectual capacity and culture. Great differences in
this respect place between man and man an impassable
gulf : such lies, for example, between a man of great mind
and a fool, between a scholar and a peasant, between a
courtier and a sailor. Natures as heterogeneous as this

o

have therefore trouble in making themselves intelligible
so long as it is a question of exchanging thoughts, ideas,
and views. Nevertheless close material friendship may
exist between them, and they may be faithful allies, con
spirators, or men under mutual pledges. For in all that
concerns the will alone, which includes friendship, enmity,
honesty, fidelity, falseness, and treachery, they are perfectly
homogeneous, formed of the same clay, and neither mind
nor culture make any difference here; indeed here the
ignorant man often shames the scholar, the sailor the
courtier. For at the different grades of culture there are
the same virtues and vices, emotions and passions ; and
although somewhat modified in their expression, they very
soon mutually recognise each other even in the most
heterogeneous individuals, upon which the similarly dis
posed agree and the opposed are at enmity.

Brilliant qualities of mind win admiration, but never
affection ; this is reserved for the moral, the qualities of
j;he character. Every one will choose as his friend the
honest, the good-natured, and even the agreeable, com-

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 451

plaisant man, who easily concurs, rather than the merely
able man. Indeed many will be preferred to the latter,
on account of insignificant, accidental, outward qualities
which just suit the inclination of another. Only the man
who has much mind himself will wish able men for his
society ; his friendship, on the other hand, he will bestow
with reference to moral qualities ; for upon this depends his
really high appreciation of a man in whom a single good
trait of character conceals and expiates great want of un
derstanding. The known goodness of a character makes
us patient and yielding towards weaknesses of understand
ing, as also towards the dulness and childishness of age.
A distinctly noble character along with the entire absence
of intellectual excellence and culture presents itself as
lacking nothing ; while, on the contrary, even the greatest
mind, if affected with important moral faults, will always
appear blamable. For as torches and fireworks become
pale and insignificant in the presence of the sun, so intel
lect, nay, genius, and also beauty, are outshone and eclipsed
by the goodness of the heart. When this appears in a high
degree it can make up for the want of those qualities to
such an extent that one is ashamed of having missed them.
Even the most limited understanding, and also grotesque
ugliness, whenever extraordinary goodness of heart declares
itself as accompanying them, become as it were transfigured,
outshone by a beauty of a higher kind, for now a wisdom
speaks out of them before which all other wisdom must
be dumb. For goodness of heart is a transcendent quality ;
it belongs to an order of things that reaches beyond this
life, and is incommensurable with any other perfection.
When it is present in a high degree it makes the heart so
large that it embraces the world, so that now everything
lies within it, no longer without ; for it identifies all natures
with its own. It then extends to others also that bound
less indulgence which otherwise each one only bestows on
himself. Such a man is incapable of becoming angry ; even
if the malicious mockery and sneers of others have drawn

452 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

attention to his own intellectual or physical faults, he only
reproaches himself in his heart for having been the occa
sion of such expressions, and therefore, without doing vio
lence to his own feelings, proceeds to treat those persons
in the kindest manner, confidently hoping that they will
turn from their error with regard to him, and recognise
themselves in him also. What is wit and genius against
this ? — what is Bacon of Verulam ?

Our estimation of our own selves leads to the same
result as we have here obtained by considering our esti
mation of others. How different is the self-satisfaction
which we experience in a moral regard from that which
we experience in an intellectual regard ! The former
arises when, looking back on our conduct, we see that with
great sacrifices we have practised fidelity and honesty,
that we have helped many, forgiven many, have behaved
better to others than they have behaved to us ; so that we
can say with King Lear, " I am a man more sinned against
than sinning ; " and to its fullest extent if perhaps some
noble deed shines in our memory. A deep seriousness
will accompany the still peace which such a review affords
us ; and if we see that others are inferior to us here, this
will not cause us any joy, but we will rather deplore it,
and sincerely wish that they were as we are. How entirely
differently does the knowledge of our intellectual superio
rity affect us ! Its ground bass is really the saying of
Hobbes quoted above : Omnis animi voluptas, omnisque,
alacritas in eo sita est, quod quis habeat, quibuscum conferens
se, possit magnifice sentire de se ipso. Arrogant, triumphant
vanity, proud, contemptuous looking down on others, in
ordinate delight in the consciousness of decided and con
siderable superiority, akin to pride of physical advantages,
— that is the result here. This opposition between the
two kinds of self-satisfaction shows that the one concerns
our true inner and eternal nature, the other a more exter
nal, merely temporal, and indeed scarcely more than a mere
physical excellence. The intellect is in fact simply the

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 453

function of the brain; the will, on the contrary, is that whose
function is the whole man, according to his being and nature.

If, looking without us, we reflect that 6 /3to? /3/ja^u?, 17
Se re^yrj fj,arcpa (vita brevis, ars longa), and consider how
the greatest and most beautiful minds, often when they
have scarcely reached the summit of their power, and the
greatest scholars, when they have only just attained to a
thorough knowledge of their science, are snatched away
by death, we are confirmed in this, that the meaning and
end of life is not intellectual but moral.

The complete difference between the mental and moral
qualities displays itself lastly in the fact that the intellect
suffers very important changes through time, while the
will and character remain untouched by it. The new
born child has as yet no use of its understanding, but
obtains it within the first two months to the extent of
perception and apprehension of the things in the external
world — a process which I have described more fully in my
essay, " Ueber das Sehn und die Farben," p. 10 of the
second (and third) edition. The growth of reason to the
point of speech, and thereby of thought, follows this first
and most important step much more slowly, generally
only in the third year; yet the early childhood remains
hopelessly abandoned to silliness and folly, primarily
because the brain still lacks physical completeness, which,
both as regards its size and texture, it only attains in the
seventh year. But then for its energetic activity there is
still wanting the antagonism of the genital system ; it
therefore only begins with puberty. Through this, how
ever, the intellect has only attained to the capacity for its
psychical improvement ; this itself can only be won by
practice, experience, and instruction. Thus as soon as the
mind has escaped from the folly of childhood it falls into
the snares of innumerable errors, prejudices, and chimeras,
sometimes of the absurdest and crudest kind, which it
obstinately sticks to, till experience gradually removes
them, and many of them also are insensibly lost. All

454 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

this takes many years to happen, so that one grants it
majority indeed soon after the twentieth year, yet has
placed full maturity, years of discretion, not before the
fortieth year. But while this psychical education, rest
ing upon help from without, is still in process of growth,
the inner physical energy of the brain already begins to
sink again. This has reached its real calminating point
about the thirtieth year, on account of its dependence upon
the pressure of blood and the effect of the pulsation upon
the brain, and through this again upon the predominance
of the arterial over the venous system, and the fresh ten
derness of the brain fibre, and also on account of the energy
of the genital system. After the thirty-fifth year a slight
diminution of the physical energy of the brain becomes
noticeable, which, through the gradually approaching pre
dominance of the venous over the arterial system, and also
through the increasing firmer and drier consistency of the
brain fibre, more and more takes place, and would be much
more observable if it were not that, on the other hand, the
psychical perfecting, through exercise, experience, increase
of knowledge, and acquired skill in the use of it, counter
acts it — an antagonism which fortunately lasts to an ad
vanced age, for the brain becomes more and more like a
worn-out instrument. But yet the diminution of the
original energy of the intellect, resting entirely upon
organic conditions, continues, slowly indeed, but unceas
ingly : the faculty of original conception, the imagination,
the plastic power, the memory, become noticeably weaker ;
and so it goes on step by step downwards into old age,
garrulous, without memory, half-unconscious, and ulti
mately quite childish.

The will, on the contrary, is not affected by all this
becoming, this change and vicissitude, but is from begin
ning to end unalterably the same. Willing does not
require to be learned like knowing, but succeeds perfectly
at once. The new-born child makes violent movements,
rages, and cries ; it wills in the most vehement manner,

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 455

though it does not yet know what it wills. For the
medium of motives, the intellect, is not yet fully de
veloped. The will is in darkness concerning the external
world, in which its objects lie, and now rages like a
prisoner against the walls and bars of his dungeon. But
little by little it becomes light: at once the fundamental
traits of universal human willing, and, at the same time,
the individual modification of it here present, announce
themselves. The already appearing character shows itself
indeed at first in weak and uncertain outline, on account
of the defective service of the intellect, which has to
present it with motives ; but to the attentive observer it
soon declares its complete presence, and in a short time it
becomes unmistakable. The characteristics appear which
last through the whole of life ; the principal tendencies of
the will, the easily excited emotions, the ruling passion,
declare themselves. Therefore the events at school stand
to those of the future life for the most part as the dumb-
show in " Hamlet" that precedes the play to be given at the
court, and foretells its content in the form of pantomime,
stands to the play itself. But it is by no means possible
to prognosticate in the same way the future intellectual
capacities of the man from those shown in the boy ; rather
as a rule the ingenia prcecocia, prodigies, turn out block
heads ; genius, on the contrary, is often in childhood of
slow conception, and comprehends with difficulty, just
because it comprehends deeply. This is how it is that
every one relates laughing and without reserve the follies
and stupidities of his childhood. For example, Goethe,
how he threw all the kitchen crockery out of the window
(Dichtung und Wahrheit, vol. i. p. 7) ; for we know that
all this only concerns what changes. On the other hand,
a prudent man will not favour us with the bad features,
the malicious or deceitful actions, of his youth, for he feels
that they also bear witness to his present character. 1
have been told that when Gall, the phrenologist and
investigator of man, had to put himself into connection

456 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

with a man as yet unknown to him, he used to get him to
speak about his youthful years and actions, in order, if
possible, to gather from these the distinctive traits of his
character ; because this must still be the same now. This
is the reason why we are indifferent to the follies and
want of understanding of our youthful years, and even
look back on them with smiling satisfaction, while the
bad features of character even of that time, the ill-natured
actions and the misdeeds then committed exist even in old
age as inextinguishable reproaches, and trouble our con
sciences. Now, just as the character appears complete, so
it remains unaltered to old age. The advance of age, which
gradually consumes the intellectual powers, leaves the
moral qualities untouched. The goodness of the heart
still makes the old man honoured and loved when his
head already shows the weaknesses which are the com
mencement of second childhood. Gentleness, patience,
honesty, veracity, disinterestedness, philanthropy, &c., re
main through the whole life, and are not lost through the
weaknesses of old age ; in every clear moment of the worn-
out old man they come forth undiminished, like the sun
from the winter clouds. And, on the other hand, malice,
spite, avarice, hard-heartedness, infidelity, egoism, and
baseness of every kind also remain undiminished to our
latest years. We would not believe but would laugh at
any one who said to us, " In former years I was a mali
cious rogue, but now I am an honest and noble-minded
man." Therefore Sir Walter Scott, in the " Fortunes of
Nigel," has shown very beautifully, in the case of the old
usurer, how burning avarice, egoism, and injustice are still
in their full strength, like a poisonous plant in autumn,
when the intellect has already become childish. The only
alterations that take place in our inclinations are those
which result directly from the decrease of our physical
strength, and with it of our capacities for enjoyment.
Thus voluptuousness will make way for intemperance, the
love of splendour for avarice, and vanity for ambition ;

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 457

just like the man who before he has a beard will wear a
false one, and later, when his own beard has become grey,
will dye it brown. Thus while all organic forces, muscu
lar power, the senses, the memory, wit, understanding,
genius, wear themselves out, and in old age become dull,
the will alone remains undecayed and unaltered : the
strength and the tendency of willing remains the same.
Indeed in many points the will shows itself still more
decided in age : thus, in the clinging to life, which, it is
well known, increases ; also in the firmness and persistency
with regard to what it has once embraced, in obstinacy ;
which is explicable from the fact that the susceptibility of
the intellect for other impressions, and thereby the move
ment of the will by motives streaming in upon it, has
diminished. Hence the implacable nature of the anger
and hate of old persons —

" The young man's wrath is like light straw on fire,
But like red-hot steel is the old man's ire."

— Old Ballad.

From all these considerations it becomes unmistakable
to the more penetrating glance that, while the intellect has
to run through a long series of gradual developments, but
then, like everything physical, must encounter decay, the
will takes no part in this, except so far as it has to con
tend at first with the imperfection of its tool, the intellect,
and, again, at last with its worn-out condition, but itself
appears perfect and remains unchanged, not subject to
the laws of time and of becoming and passing away in it.
Thus in this way it makes itself known as that which
is metaphysical, not itself belonging to the phenomenal
world.

9. The universally used and generally very well under
stood expressions heart and head have sprung from a true
feeling of the fundamental distinction here in question;
therefore they are also apt and significant, and occur in
all languages. Nee cor nee caput halet, says Seneca of the
Emperor Claudius (Ludus de morte Glaudii Ccesaris, c. 8).

458 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

The heart, this primum mobile of the animal life, has
with perfect justice been chosen as the symbol, nay, the
synonym, of the will, as the primary kernel of our pheno
menon, and denotes this in opposition to the intellect,
which is exactly identical with the head. All that, in the
widest sense, is matter of the will, as wish, passion, joy,
grief, goodness, wickedness, also what we are wont to
understand under " Gemiith," and what Homer expresses
through <f)tXov rjrop, is attributed to the heart. Accord
ingly we say : He has a bad heart ; — his heart is in the
thing ; — it comes from his heart ; — it cut him to the
heart ; — it breaks his heart ; — his heart bleeds ; — the
heart leaps for joy ; — who can see the heart of man ? — it
is heart-rending, heart-crushing, heart-breaking, heart-

O' G' O7

inspiring, heart - touching ; — he is good-hearted, hard
hearted, heartless, stout-hearted, faint-hearted, &c. &c.
Quite specially, however, love affairs are called affairs of
the heart, affaires de cceur ; because the sexual impulse is
the focus of the will, and the selection with reference to it
constitutes the chief concern of natural, human volition,
the ground of which I shall show in a full chapter sup
plementary to the fourth book. Byron in " Don Juan,"
c. xi. v. 34, is satirical about love being to women an affair
of the head instead of an affair of the heart. On the other
hand, the head denotes everything that is matter of know
ledge. Hence a man of head, a good head, a fine head, a
bad head, to lose one's head, to keep one's head upper
most, &c. Heart and head signifies the whole man. But
the head is always the second, the derived ; for it is not
the centre but the highest efflorescence of the body.
When a hero dies his heart is embalmed, not his brain ;
on the other hand, we like to preserve the skull of the
poet, the artist, and the philosopher. So Raphael's skull
was preserved in the Academia di S. Luca at Rome, though
it has lately been proved not to be genuine ; in Stockholm
in 1820 the skull of Descartes was sold by auction.1

1 The Times of iSth October 1845 ; from the AthencEum.

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 459

A true feeling of the real relation between will, in
tellect, and life is also expressed in the Latin language.
The intellect is mens, vovs ; the will again is animus,
which comes from anima, and this from avejj,(ov. Anima
is the life itself, the breath, ^f%7/ ; but animus is the
living principle, and also the will, the subject of inclina
tions, intentions, passions, emotions ; hence also est mihi
animus, — fert animus, — for " I have a desire to," also
animi causa, &c. ; it is the Greek QV/AOS, the German
" Gemiith," thus the heart but not the head. Animi
perturbatio is an emotion ; mentis perturbatio would signify
insanity. The predicate immortalis is attributed to ani
mus, not to mens. All this is the rule gathered from the
great majority of passages ; though in the case of con
ceptions so nearly related it cannot but be that the words
are sometimes interchanged. Under •^rv^ij the Greeks
appear primarily and originally to have understood the
vital force, the living principle, whereby at once arose
the dim sense that it must be something metaphysical,
which consequently would not be reached by death.
Among other proofs of this are the investigations of the
relation between vows and ^v^r) preserved by Stobseus
(Eel, Lib. i. c. 51, § 7, 8).

10. Upon what depends the identity of the person?
Not upon the matter of the body ; it is different after a
few years. Not upon its form, which changes as a whole
and in all its parts ; all but the expression of the glance,
by which, therefore, we still know a man even after many
years ; which proves that in spite of all changes time pro
duces in him something in him remains quite untouched
by it. It is just this by which we recognise him even after
the longest intervals of time, and find the former man
entire. It is the same with ourselves, for, however old we
become, we yet feel within that we are entirely the same
as we were when we were young, nay, when we were still
children. This, which unaltered always remains quite the
same, and does not grow old along with us, is really the

460 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

kernel of our nature, which does not lie in time. It is
assumed that the identity of the person rests upon that of
consciousness. But by this is understood merely the con
nected recollection of the course of life ; hence it is not
sufficient. We certainly know something more of our life
than of a novel we have formerly read, yet only very little.
The principal events, the interesting scenes, have impressed
themselves upon us ; in the remainder a thousand events
are forgotten for one that has been retained. The older
we become the more do things pass by us without leaving
any trace. Great age, illness, injury of the brain, madness,
may deprive us of memory altogether, but the identity of
the person is not thereby lost. It rests upon the identical
will and the unalterable character of the person. It is it
also which makes the expression of the glance unchange
able. In the heart is the man, not in the head. It is true
that, in consequence of our relation to the external world,
we are accustomed to regard as our real self the subject of
knowledge, the knowing I, which wearies in the evening,
vanishes in sleep, and in the morning shines brighter with
renewed strength. This is, however, the mere function of
the brain, and not our own self. Our true self, the kernel
of our nature, is what is behind that, and really knows
nothing but willing and not willing, being content and not
content, with all the modifications of this, which are called
feelings, emotions, and passions. This is that which pro
duces the other, does not sleep with it when it sleeps, and
in the same way when it sinks in death remains uninjured.
Everything, on the contrary, that belongs to knowledge is
exposed to oblivion ; even actions of moral significance can
sometimes, after years, be only imperfectly recalled, and
we no longer know accurately and in detail how we acted
on a critical occasion. But the character itself, to which
the actions only testify, cannot be forgotten by us ; it is
now still quite the same as then. The will itself, alone
and for itself, is permanent, for it alone is unchangeable,
indestructible, not growing old, not physical, but nieta-

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 461

physical, not belonging to the phenomenal appearance, but
to that itself which so appears. How the identity of
consciousness also, so far as it goes, depends upon it I
have shown above in chapter 15, so I need not dwell upon
it further here.

ii. Aristotle says in passing, in his book on the com
parison of the desirable, "To live well is better than to
live " (j3e\Tiov rov fyv TO ev fyv, Top. iii. 2). From this
we might infer, by double contraposition, not to live is
better than to live badly. This is also evident to the in
tellect ; yet the great majority live very badly rather than
not at all. This clinging to life cannot therefore have its
ground in the object of life, since life, as was shown in the
fourth book, is really a constant suffering, or at the least,
as will be shown further on in the 28th chapter, a business
which does not cover its expenses ; thus that clinging to
life can only be founded in the subject of it. But it is not
founded in the intellect, it is no result of reflection, and in
general is not a matter of choice ; but this willing of life
is something that is taken for granted : it is a prius of the
intellect itself. We ourselves are the will to live, and
therefore we must live, well or ill. Only from the fact
that this clinging to a life which is so little worth to them
is entirely a priori and not a posteriori can we explain
the excessive fear of death that dwells in every living
thing, which Eochefoucauld has expressed in his last re
flection, with rare frankness and naivete, and upon which
the effect of all tragedies and heroic actions ultimately rest,
for it would be lost if we prized life only according to its
objective worth. Upon this inexpressible horror mortis is
also founded the favourite principle of all ordinary minds,
that whosoever takes his own life must be mad ; yet not
less the astonishment, mingled with a certain admiration,
which this action always excites even in thinking minds,
because it is so opposed to the nature of all living beings
that in a certain sense we are forced to admire him who is
able to perform it. For suicide proceeds from a purpose

462 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

of the intellect, but our will to live is a prius of the in
tellect. Thus this consideration also, which will be fully
discussed in chapter 28, confirms the primacy of the will
in self-consciousness.

12. On the other hand, nothing proves more clearly
the secondary, dependent, conditioned nature of the intellect
than its periodical intermittance. In deep sleep all know
ing and forming of ideas ceases. But the kernel of our
nature, the metaphysical part of it which the organic
functions necessarily presuppose as their prim/urn mobile,
must never pause if life is not to cease, and, moreover,
as something metaphysical and therefore incorporeal, it
requires no rest. Therefore the philosophers who set up
a soul as this metaphysical kernel, i.e., an originally and
essentially knowing being, see themselves forced to the
assertion that this soul is quite untiring in its perceiving
and knowing, therefore continues these even in deep sleep ;
only that we have no recollection of this when we awake.
The falseness of this assertion, however, was easy to see
whenever one had rejected that soul in consequence of
Kant's teaching. For sleep and waking prove to the un
prejudiced mind in the clearest manner that knowing is a
secondary function and conditioned by the organism, just
like any other. Only the heart is untiring, because its
beating and the circulation of the blood are not directly
conditioned by nerves, but are just the original manifesta
tion of the will. Also all other physiological functions
governed merely by ganglionic nerves, which have only a
very indirect and distant connection with the brain, are
carried on during sleep, although the secretions take place
more slowly ; the beating of the heart itself, on account of
its dependence upon respiration, which is conditioned by
the cerebral system (medulla oblongata), becomes with it a
little slower. The stomach is perhaps most active in sleep,
which is to be attributed to its special consensus with the
now resting brain, which occasions mutual disturbances.
The brain alone, and with it knowing, pauses entirely in

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 463

deep sleep. For it is merely the minister of foreign affairs,
as the ganglion system is the minister of the interior. The
brain, with its function of knowing, is only a vedette estab
lished by the will for its external ends, which, up in the
watch-tower of the head, looks round through the windows
of the senses and marks where mischief threatens and
where advantages are to be looked for, and in accordance
with whose report the will decides. This vedette, like
every one engaged on active service, is then in a condition
of strain and effort, and therefore it is glad when, after its
watch is completed, it is again withdrawn, as every watch
gladly retires from its post. This withdrawal is going to
sleep, which is therefore so sweet and agreeable, and to
which we are so glad to yield; on the other hand, being
roused from sleep is unwelcome, because it recalls the
vedette suddenly to its post. One generally feels also after
the beneficent systole the reappearance of the difficult
diastole, the reseparation of the intellect from the will.
A so-called soul, which was originally and radically a
knowing being, would, on the contrary, necessarily feel on
awaking like a fish put back into water. In sleep, when
merely the vegetative life is carried on, the will works
only according to its original and essential nature, undis
turbed from without, with no diminution of its power
through the activity of the brain and the exertion of
knowing, which is the heaviest organic function, yet for the
organism merely a means, not an end ; therefore, in sleep
the whole power of the will is directed to the mainten
ance and, where it is necessary, the improvement of the
organism. Hence all healing, all favourable crises, take
place in sleep ; for the vis naturae mcdicatrix has free play
only when it is delivered from the burden of the function
of knowledge. The embryo which has still to form the
body therefore sleeps continuously, and the new-born
child the greater part of its time. In this sense Burdach
(Physiologic, vol. iii. p. 484) quite rightly declares sleep
to be the original state.

464 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

With reference to the brain itself, I account to myself
for the necessity of sleep more fully through an hypothesis
which appears to have been first set up in Neumann's
book, " Von den Krankheiten dcs Menschen," 1834, vol. 4,
§ 2 1 6. It is this, that the nutrition of the brain, thus the
renewal of its substance from the blood, cannot go on
while we are awake, because the very eminent organic
function of knowing and thinking would be disturbed or
put an end to by the low and material function of nutri
tion. This explains the fact that sleep is not a purely
negative condition, a, mere pausing of the activity of the
brain, but also shows a positive character. This makes
itself known through the circumstance that between sleep
and waking there is no mere difference of degree, but a
fixed boundary, which, as soon as sleep intervenes,
declares itself in dreams which are completely different
from our immediately preceding thoughts. A further
proof of this is that when we have dreams which frighten
us we try in vain to cry out, or to ward off attacks, or
to shake off sleep ; so that it is as if the connecting-link
between the brain and the motor nerves, or between the
cerebrum and the cerebellum (as the regulator of move
ments) were abolished ; for the brain remains in its iso
lation and sleep holds us fast as with brazen claws.
Finally, the positive character of sleep can be seen in
the fact that a certain degree of strength is required for
sleeping. Therefore too great fatigue or natural weakness
prevent us from seizing it, capere somnum. This may be
explained from the fact that the process of nutrition must
be introduced if sleep is to ensue : the brain must, as it
were, begin to feed. Moreover, the increased flow of blood
into the brain during sleep is explicable from the nutritive
process ; and also the position of the arms laid together
above the head, which is instinctively assumed because it
furthers this process : also why children, so long as their
brain is still growing, require a great deal of sleep, while
in old age, on the other hand, when a certain atrophy of

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 465

the brain, as of all the parts, takes place, sleep is
short ; and finally why excessive sleep produces a certain
dulness of consciousness, the consequence of a certain
hypertrophy of the brain, which in the case of habitual
excess of sleep may become permanent and produce
imbecility : avirj teat, TroXu? VTTVOS (noxce est etiam multus
somnus), Od. 15, 394. The need of sleep is therefore
directly proportionate to the intensity of the brain-life,
thus to the clearness of the consciousness. Those animals
whose brain-life is weak and dull sleep little and lightly ;
for example, reptiles and fishes : and here I must remind
the reader that the winter sleep is sleep almost only in
name, for it is not an inaction of the brain alone, but
of the whole organism, thus a kind of apparent death.
Animals of considerable intelligence sleep deeply and
long. Men also require more sleep the more developed,
both as regards quantity and quality, and the more active
their brain is. Montaigne relates of himself that he had
always been a long sleeper, that he had passed a large part
of his life in sleeping, and at an advanced age still slept
from eight to nine hours at a time (Liv. iii., chap. 13).
Descartes also is reported to have slept a great deal
(Baillet, Vie de Descartes, 1693, p. 288). Kant allowed
himself seven hours for sleep, but it was so hard for him
to do with this that he ordered his servant to force him
against his will, and without listening to his remonstrances,
to get up at the set time (Jachmann, Immanuel Kant, p.
162). For the more completely awake a man is, i.e., the
clearer and more lively his consciousness, the greater for
him is the necessity of sleep, thus the deeper and longer
he sleeps. Accordingly much thinking or hard brain-work
increases the need of sleep. That sustained muscular
exertion also makes us sleepy is to be explained from
the fact that in this the brain continuously, by means of
the medulla oblongata, the spinal marrow, and the motor
nerves, imparts the stimulus to the muscles which affects
their irritability, and in this way it exhausts its strength.

VOL. II. 2 G

466 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XIX.

The fatigue which we observe in the arms and legs has
accordingly its real seat in the brain ; just as the pain
which these parts feel is really experienced in the brain ;
for it is connected with the motor nerves, as with the
nerves of sense. The muscles which are not actuated from
the brain — for example, those of the heart — accordingly
never tire. The same grounds explain the fact that both
during and after great muscular exertion we cannot think
acutely. That one has far less energy of mind in summer
than in winter is partly explicable from the fact that in
summer one sleeps less ; for the deeper one has slept, the
more completely awake, the more lively, is one afterwards.
This, however, must not mislead us into extending sleep
unduly, for then it loses in intension, i.e., in deepness and
soundness, what it gains in extension ; whereby it becomes
mere loss of time. This is what Goethe means when he
says (in the second part of " Faust ") of morning slumber :
" Sleep is husk : throw it off." Thus in general the phe
nomenon of sleep most specially confirms the assertion
that consciousness, apprehension, knowing, thinking, is
nothing original in us, but a conditioned and secondary-
state. It is a luxury of nature, and indeed its highest,
which it can therefore the less afford to pursue without
interruption the higher the pitch to which it has been
brought. It is the product, the efflorescence of the cerebral
nerve-system, which is itself nourished like a parasite by
the rest of the organism. This also agrees with what is
shown in our third book, that knowing is so much the
purer and more perfect the more it has freed and severed
itself from the will, whereby the purely objective, the
aesthetic comprehension appears. Just as an extract is so
much the purer the more it has been separated from that
out of which it is extracted and been cleared of all sedi
ment. The opposite is shown by the will, whose most
immediate manifestation is the whole organic life, and
primarily the untiring heart.

This last consideration is related to the theme of the

ON THE WILL IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 467

following chapter, to which it therefore makes the transition :
yet the following observation belongs to it. In magnetic
somnambulism the consciousness is doubled : two trains
of knowledge, each connected in itself, but quite different
from each other, arise ; the waking consciousness knows
nothing of the somnambulent. But the will retains in
both the same character, and remains throughout iden
tical; it expresses in both the same inclinations and aver
sions. For the function may be doubled, but not the true
nature.

( 468 )

CHAPTEE XX.1

OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL IN THE ANIMAL ORGANISM.

BY objectification I understand the self-exhibition in the
real corporeal world. However, this world itself, as was
fully shown in the first book and its supplements, is
throughout conditioned by the knowing subject, thus by
the intellect, and therefore as such is absolutely incon
ceivable outside the knowledge of this subject; for it
primarily consists simply of ideas of perception, and as
such is a phenomenon of the brain. After its removal
the thing in itself would remain. That this is the will
is the theme of the second book, and is there proved first
of all in the human organism and in that of the brutes.

The knowledge of the external world may also be
defined as the consciousness of other things, in opposition to
self-consciousness. Since we have found in the latter that
its true object or material is the will, we shall now, with
the same intention, take into consideration the conscious
ness of other things, thus objective knowledge. Now here
my thesis is this : that which in self-consciousness, thus
subjectively is the intellect, presents itself in the consciousness
of other things, thus objectively, as the brain; and that which
in self -consciousness, thus subjectively, is the will, presents
itself in the consciousness of other things, thus objectively, as
the whole organism.

To the evidence which is given in support of this pro
position, both in our second book and in the first two
chapters of the treatise " Ueber den Willen in der Natur,"

1 This chapter is connected with § 20 of the first volume.

OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL. 469

I add the following supplementary remarks and illustra
tions.

Nearly all that is necessary to establish the first part of
this thesis has already been brought forward in the pre
ceding chapter, for in the necessity of sleep, in the altera
tions that arise from age, and in the differences of the
anatomical conformation, it was proved that the intellect
is of a secondary nature, and depends absolutely upon a
single organ, the brain, whose function it is, just as grasp
ing is the function of the hand ; that it is therefore
physical, like digestion, not metaphysical, like the will.
As good digestion requires a healthy, strong stomach, as
athletic power requires muscular sinewy arms, so extra
ordinary intelligence requires an unusually developed,
beautifully formed brain of exquisitely fine texture and
animated by a vigorous pulse. The nature of the will, on
the contrary, is dependent upon no organ, and can be
prognosticated from none. The greatest error in Gall's
phrenology is that he assigns organs of the brain for moral
qualities also. Injuries to the head, with loss of brain sub
stance, affect the intellect as a rule very disadvantageously :
they result in complete or partial imbecility or forgetful-
ness of language, permanent or temporary, yet sometimes
only of one language out of several which were known,
also in the loss of other knowledge possessed, &c., &c.
On the other hand, we never read that after a misfortune
of this kind the character has undergone a change, that the
man has perhaps become morally worse or better, or has
lost certain inclinations or passions, or assumed new ones ;
never. For the will has not its seat in the brain, and
moreover, as that which is metaphysical, it is the prius of
the brain, as of the whole body, and therefore cannot be
altered by injuries of the brain. According to an experi
ment made by Spallanzaui and repeated by Voltaire,1 a

1 Spattanzani, Risultati di espe- Societa Italiana, Tom. i. p. 58 !-

rienze sopra la riproduzione della Voltaire, Les colima<;ons du reverend

testa nclie lumache terrestri : in the pere L'escarbotier.
Memorie di matematica efisica della

470 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XX.

snail that has had its head cut off remains alive, and after
some weeks a new head grows on, together with horns ;
with this consciousness and ideas again appear; while till
then the snail had only given evidence of blind will
through unregulated movements. Thus here also we find
the will as the substance which is permanent, the intellect,
on the contrary, conditioned by its organ, as the changing
accident. It may be defined as the regulator of the will.

It was perhaps Tiedemann who first compared the
cerebral nervous system to a parasite (Tiedemann und
Treviranns Journal fur Physiologic, Bd. i. § 62). The
comparison is happy ; for the brain, together with the
spinal cord and nerves which depend upon it, is, as it were,
implanted in the organism, and is nourished by it without
on its part directly contributing anything to the support of
the economy of the organism ; therefore there can be life
without a brain, as in the case of brainless abortions, and
also in the case of tortoises, which live for three weeks
after their heads have been cut off; only the medulla
ollongata, as the organ of respiration, must be spared.
Indeed a hen whose whole brain Flourens had cut away
lived for ten months and grew. Even in the case of men
the destruction of the brain does not produce death
directly, but only through the medium of the lungs, and
then of the heart (Bichat, Sur la Vie et la Mort, Part ii.,
art. ii. § i). On the other hand, the brain controls the
relations to the external world ; this alone is its office,
and hereby it discharges its debt to the organism which
nourishes it, since its existence is conditioned by the
external relations. Accordingly the brain alone of all the
parts requires sleep, because its activity is completely dis
tinct from its support; the former only consumes both
strength and substance, the latter is performed by the rest
of the organism as the nurse of the brain : thus because
its activity contributes nothing to its continued existence
it becomes exhausted, and only when it pauses in sleep
does its nourishment go on unhindered.

OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL. 471

The second part of our thesis, stated above, will require
a fuller exposition even after all that I have said about it
in the writings referred to. I have shown above, in chapter
1 8, that the thing in itself, which must lie at the foun
dation of every phenomenon, and therefore of our own
phenomenal existence also, throws off in self-consciousness
one of its phenomenal forms — space, and only retains the
other — time. On this account it presents itself here more
immediately than anywhere else, and we claim it as will,
according to its most undisguised manifestation. But no
permanent substance, such as matter is, can present itself
in time alone, because, as § 4 of the first volume showed,
such a substance is only possible through the intimate
union of space and time. Therefore, in self-consciousness
the will is not apprehended as the enduring substratum of
its impulses, therefore is not perceived as a permanent
substance ; but only its individual acts, such as purposes,
wishes, and emotions, are known successively and during
the time they last, directly, yet not perceptibly. The
knowledge of the will in self-consciousness is accordingly
not a perception of it, but a perfectly direct becoming
aware of its successive impulses. On the other hand, for
the knowledge which is directed outwardly, brought about
by the senses and perfected in the understanding, which,
besides time, has also space for its form, which two it con
nects in the closest manner by means of the function of
the understanding, causality, whereby it really becomes
perception — this knowledge presents to itself perceptibhj
what in inner immediate apprehension was conceived as
will, as organic body, M'hose particular movements visibly
present to us the acts, and whose parts and forms visibly
present to us the sustained efforts, the fundamental char
acter, of the individually given will, nay, whose pain and
comfort are perfectly immediate affections of this will
itself.

We first become aware of this identity of the body with
the will in the individual actions of the two, for in, these

472 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XX.

what is known in self-consciousness as an immediate, real
act of will, at the same time and unseparated, exhibits
itself outwardly as movement of the body ; and every one
beholds the purposes of his will, which are instantaneously
brought about by motives which just as instantaneously
appear at once as faithfully copied in as many actions of
his body as his body itself is copied in his shadow ; and
from this, for the unprejudiced man, the knowledge arises in
the simplest manner that his body is merely the outward
manifestation of his will, i.e., the way in which his will
exhibits itself in his perceiving intellect, or his will itself
under the form of the idea. Only if we forcibly deprive
ourselves of this primary and simple information can we
for a short time marvel at the process of our own bodily
action as a miracle, which then rests on the fact that
between the act of will and the action of the body there is
really no causal connection, for they are directly identical,
and their apparent difference only arises from the circum
stance that here what is one and the same is apprehended
in two different modes of knowledge, the outer and the
inner. Actual willing is, in fact, inseparable from doing ;
and in the strictest sense only that is an act of will which
the deed sets its seal to. Mere resolves of the will, on the
contrary, till they are carried out, are only intentions, and
are therefore matter of the intellect alone; as such they
have their place merely in the brain, and are nothing more
than completed calculations of the relative strength of the
different opposing motives. They have, therefore, certainly
great probability, but no infallibility. They may turn out
false, not only through alteration of the circumstances, but
also from the fact that the estimation of the effect of the
respective motives upon the will itself was erroneous, which
then shows itself, for the deed is untrue to the purpose :
therefore before it is carried out no resolve is certain. The
will itself, then, is operative only in real action; hence in
muscular action, and consequently in irritability. Thus the
will proper objectifies itself in this. The cerebrum is the

OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL. 473

place of motives, where, through these, the will becomes
choice, i.e., becomes more definitely determined by motives.
These motives are ideas, which, on the occasion of external
stimuli of the organs of sense, arise by means of the func
tions of the brain, and are also worked up into conceptions,
and then into resolves. When it comes to the real act of
will these motives, the workshop of which is the cerebrum,
act through the medium of the cerebellum upon the spinal
cord and the motor nerves which proceed from it, which
then act upon the muscles, yet merely as stimuli of their
irritability; for galvanic, chemical, and even mechanical
stimuli can effect the same contraction which the motor
nerve calls forth. Thus what was motive in the brain acts,
when it reaches the muscle through the nerves, as mere
stimulus. Sensibility in itself is quite unable to contract a
muscle. This_can only be done by the muscle itself, and its
capacity for doing so is called irritability, i.e., susceptibility
to stimuli. It is exclusively a property of the muscle, as sen
sibility is exclusively a property of the nerve. The latter
indeed gives the muscle the occasion for its contraction, but
it is by no means it that, in some mechanical way, draws the
muscle together; but this happens simply and solely on ac
count of the irritability, which is a power of the muscle itself.
Apprehended from without this is a Qualitas occulta, and
only self-consciousness reveals it as the will. In the causal
chain here briefly set forth, from the effect of the motive
lying outside us to the contraction of the muscle, the will
does not in some way come in as the last link of the chain ;
but it is the metaphysical substratum of the irritability of
the muscle : thus it plays here precisely the same part
which in a physical or chemical chain of causes is played by
the mysterious forces of nature which lie at the foundation
of the process — forces which as such are not themselves in
volved as links in the causal chain, but impart to all the
links of it the capacity to act, as I have fully shown in
§ 26 of the first volume. Therefore we would ascribe the
contraction of the muscle also to a similar mysterious

474 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XX.

force of nature, if it were not that this contraction is
disclosed to us by an entirely different source of know
ledge — self-consciousness as will. Hence, as was said
above, if we start from the will our own muscular move
ment appears to us a miracle ; for indeed there is a strict
causal chain from the external motive to the muscular
action ; but the will itself is not included as a link in it,
but, as the metaphysical substratum of the possibility of
an action upon the muscle through brain and nerve, lies at
the foundation of the present muscular action also ; there
fore the latter is not properly its effect but its manifesta
tion. As such it enters the world of idea, the form of
which is the law of causality, a world which is entirely
different from the will in itself : and thus, if we start from
the will, this manifestation has, for attentive reflection, the
appearance of a miracle, but for deeper investigation it
affords the most direct authentication of the great truth
that what appears in the phenomenon as body and its
action is in itself will. If now perhaps the motor nerve
that leads to my hand is severed, the will can no longer
move it. This, however, is not because the hand has
ceased to be, like every part of my body, the objectivity,
the mere visibility, of my will, or in other words, that the
irritability has vanished, but because the effect of the
motive, in consequence of which alone I can move my
hand, cannot reach it and act on its muscles as a stimulus,
for the line of connection between it and the brain is
broken. Thus really my will is, in this part, only de
prived of the effect of the motive. The will objectifies
itself directly, in irritability, not in sensibility.

In order to prevent all misunderstandings about this
important point, especially such as proceed from physio
logy pursued in a purely empirical manner, I shall explain
the whole process somewhat more thoroughly. My doc
trine asserts that the whole body is the will itself, exhibit
ing itself in the perception of the brain ; consequently,
having entered into its forms of knowledge. From this it

OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL. 475

follows that the will is everywhere equally present in the
whole body, as is also demonstrably the case, for the orga
nic functions are its work no less than the animal. But
how, then, can we reconcile it with this, that the voluntary
actions, those most undeniable expressions of the will,
clearly originate in the brain, and thus only through the
spinal cord reach the nerve fibres, which finally set the
limbs in motion, and the paralysis or severing of which
therefore prevents the possibility of voluntary movement ?
This would lead one to think that the will, like the_intgl-
-lect, has its seat only in the brain, and, like it, is a mere
function of the brain.

Yet this is not the case: but the whole body is and
remains the exhibition of the will in perception, thus the
will itself objectively perceived by means of the functions
of the brain. That process, however, in the case of the
acts of will, depends upon the fact that the will, which,
according to my doctrine, expresses itself in every phe
nomenon of nature, even in vegetable and inorganic phe
nomena, appears in the bodies of men and animals as a
conscious will. A consciousness, however, is essentially a
unity, and therefore always requires a central point of
unity. The necessity of consciousness is, as I have often
explained, occasioned by the fact that in consequence of
the increased complication, and thereby more multifarious
wants, of an organism, the acts of its will must be guided
by motives, no longer, as in the lower grades, by mere
stimuli. For this purpose it had at this stage to appear
provided with a knowing consciousness, thus with an
intellect, as the medium and place of the motives. This
intellect, if itself objectively perceived, exhibits itself as
the brain, together with its appendages, spinal cord, and
nerves. It is the brain now in which, on the occasion of
external impressions, the ideas arise which become motives
for the will. But in the rational intellect they undergo
besides this a still further working up, through reflection
and deliberation. Thus such an intellect must first of all

476 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XX.

unite in one point all impressions, together with the
working up of them by its functions, whether to mere
perception or to conceptions, a point which will be, as it
were, the focus of all its rays, in order that that unity of
consciousness may arise which is the theoretical ego, the
supporter of the whole consciousness, in which it presents
itself as identical with the willing ego, whose mere function
of knowledge it is. That point of unity of consciousness,
or the theoretical ego, is just Kant's synthetic unity of
apperception, upon which all ideas string themselves as
on a string of pearls, and on account of which the " I
think," as the thread of the string of pearls, " must be
capable of accompanying all our ideas."1 This assembling-
place of the motives, then, where their entrance into the
single focus of consciousness takes place, is the brain.
Here, in the non-rational consciousness, they are merely
perceived ; in the rational consciousness they are elucidated
by conceptions, thus are first thought in the abstract and
compared ; upon which the will chooses, in accordance
with its individual and immutable character, and so the
purpose results which now, by means of the cerebellum,
the spinal cord, and the nerves, sets the outward limbs in
motion. For although the will is quite directly present in
these, inasmuch as they are merely its manifestation, yet
when it has to move according to motives, or indeed
according to reflection, it requires such an apparatus for
the apprehension and working up of ideas into such
motives, in conformity with which its acts here appear as
resolves : just as the nourishment of the blood with chyle
requires a stomach and intestines, in which this is pre
pared, and then as such is poured into the blood through
the ductus thoracicus, which here plays the part which the
spinal cord plays in the former case. The matter may be
most simply and generally comprehended thus : the will is
immediately present as irritability in all the muscular
fibres of the whole body, as a continual striving after
1 Cf. Ch. 22.

OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL. 477

activity in general. Now if this striving is to realise
itself, thus to manifest itself as movement, this movement
must as such have some direction ; but this direction must
be determined by something, i.e., it requires a guide, and
this is the nervous system. For to the mere irritability,
as it lies in the muscular fibres and in itself is pure will,
all directions are alike ; thus it determines itself in no
direction, but behaves like a body which is equally drawn
in all directions ; it remains at rest. Since the activity of
the nerves comes in as motive (in the case of reflex move
ments as a stimulus), the striving force, i.e., the irritability,
receives a definite direction, and now produces the move
ments. Yet those external acts of will which require no
motives, and thus also no working up of mere stimuli into
ideas in the brain, from which motives arise, but which
follow immediately upon stimuli, for the most part inward
stimuli, are the reflex movements, starting only from the
spinal cord, as, for example, spasms and cramp, in which
the will acts without the brain taking part. In an analo
gous manner the will carries on the organic life, also by
nerve stimulus, which does not proceed from the brain.
Thus the will appears in every muscle as irritability, and
is consequently of itself in a position to contract them, yet
only in general; in order that some definite contraction
should take place at a given moment, there is required
here, as everywhere, a cause, which in this case must be
a stimulus. This is everywhere given by the nerve which
goes into the muscle. If this nerve is in connection with
the brain, then the contraction is a conscious act of will,
i.e., takes place in accordance with motives, which, in con
sequence of external impressions, have arisen as ideas in the
brain. If the nerve is not in connection with the brain,
but with the sympathicus maximus, then the contraction is
involuntary and unconscious, an act connected with the
maintenance of the organic life, and the nerve stimulus
which causes it is occasioned by inward impressions ; for
example, by the pressure upon the stomach of the food

4/8 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XX.

received, or of the chyme upon the intestines, or of the
in-flowing blood upon the walls of the heart, in accordance
with which the act is digestion, or motus peristalticus, or
beating of the heart, &c.

But if now, in this process, we go one step further, we
find that the muscles are the product of the blood, the
result of its work of condensation, nay, to a certain extent
they are merely solidified, or, as it were, clotted or crystal
lised blood ; for they have taken up into themselves, almost
unaltered, its fibrin (cruor} and its colouring matter (Bur-
dach's Physiologic, Bd. v. § 686). But the force which
forms the muscle out of the blood must not be assumed to
be different from that which afterwards moves it as irrita
bility, upon nerve stimulus, which the brain supplies ; in
which case it then presents itself in self-consciousness as
that which we call will. The close connection between
the blood and irritability is also shown by this, that where,
on account of imperfection of the lesser circulation, part of
the blood returns to the heart unoxidised, the irritability
is also uncommonly weak, as in the batrachia. Moreover,
the movement of the blood, like that of the muscle, is
independent and original ; it does not, like irritation, re
quire the influence of the nerve, and is even independent
of the heart, as is shown most clearly by the return of the
blood through the veins to the heart ; for here it is not
propelled by a vis a teryo, as in the case of the arterial
circulation ; and all other mechanical explanations, such
as a power of suction of the right ventricle of the heart,
are quite inadequate. (See Burdachls Physiologic, Bd. 4,
§ 763, and Rosch, Ueber die Bedeutung des Blutcs, § 1 1, seq.)
It is remarkable to see how the French, who recognise
nothing but mechanical forces, controvert each other with
insufficient grounds upon both sides ; and Bichat ascribes
the flowing back of the blood through the veins to the

O C3

pressure of the walls of the capillary tubes, and Magendie,
on the other hand, to the continued action of the impulse
of the heart (Precis de Physiologie par Magendie, vol. ii. p.

OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL. 479

389). That the movement of the blood is also independent
of the nervous system, at least of the cerebral nervous
system, is shown by the fetus, which (according to Mutter's
Physiologic}, without brain and spinal cord, has yet circula
tion of the blood. And Flourens also says : " Lc mouvement
du cceur, pris en soi, et abstraction faite de tout ce qui n'est
pas essentiellement lui, comme sa durde, son dnergie, ne depend
ni imme'diatement, ni coinstantane'nient, du systeme nervcux
central, et conse'quemment cest dans tout autre point de ce
syst&me que dans les centres nerveux eux-m&nies, qu'il faut
chercher le principe primitif ct imme'diat de ce mouvement "
(Annales des sciences naturdles p. Audouin et Brougniard,
1828, vol. 13). Cuvier also says : " La circulation survit a
la destruction de tout I'ence'phale et de toute la moelle e'pini-
aire (Me'm. de I'acad. d. sc., 1823, vol. 6; Hist. d. Vacad.p.
Cuvier" p. cxxx). " Cor primum vivens et ultimum moriens,"
says Haller. The beating of the heart ceases at last in
death. The blood has made the vessels themselves ; for it
appears in the ovum earlier than they do ; they are only
its path, voluntarily taken, then beaten smooth, and finally
gradually condensed and closed up ; as Kaspar Wolff
has already taught: " Theorie dcr Generation," § 30-35.
The motion of the heart also, which is inseparable from
that of the blood, although occasioned by the necessity of
sending blood into the lungs, is yet an original motion, for
it is independent of the nervous system and of sensibility,
as Burdach fully shows. " In the heart," he says, " appears
with the maximum of irritability, a minimum of sensi
bility " (loc. cit., § 769). The heart belongs to the muscular
system as well as to the blood or vascular system ; from
which, however, it is clear that the two are closely related,
indeed constitute one whole. Since now the metaphysical
substratum of the force which moves the muscle, thus of
irritability, is the will, the will must also be the meta
physical substratum of the force which lies at the founda
tion of the movement and the formations of the blood, as
that by which the muscles are produced. The course of

480 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XX.

the arteries also determines the form and size of all the
limbs ; consequently the whole form of the body is deter
mined by the course of the blood. Thus in general the
blood, as it nourishes all the parts of the body, has also,
as the primary fluidity of the organism, produced and
framed them out of itself. And the nourishment which
confessedly constitutes the principal function of the blood
is only the continuance of that original production of
them. This truth will be found thoroughly and excellently
explained in the work of Eosch referred to above : " Ueber
die Bedeutung des Blutes" 1839. He shows that the blood
is that which first has life and is the source both of the
existence and of the maintenance of all the parts ; that all
the organs have sprung from it through secretion, and
together with them, for the management of their functions,
the nervous system, which appears now as plastic, ordering
and arranging the life of the particular parts within, now
as cerebral, controlling the relation to the external world.
" The blood," he says, p. 25, " was flesh and nerve at once,
and at the same moment at which the muscle freed itself
from it the nerve, severed in like manner, remained
opposed to the flesh." Here it is a matter of course that
the blood, before those solid parts have been secreted from
it, has also a somewhat different character from afterwards ;
it is then, as Eosch defines it, the chaotic, animated, slimy,
primitive fluid, as it were an organic emulsion, in which
all subsequent parts are implicite contained : moreover, it
has not the red colour quite at the beginning. This dis
poses of the objection which might be drawn from the fact
that the brain and the spinal cord begin to form before the
circulation of the blood is visible or the heart appears.
In this reference also Schultz says (System der Circulation,
§ 297) : " We do not believe that the view of Baumgarteu,
according to which the nervous system is formed earlier
than the blood, can consistently be carried out; for
Baumgarten reckons the appearance of the blood only from
the formation of the corpuscles, while in the embryo and

OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL. 481

in the series of animals blood appears much earlier in the
form of a pure plasma." The blood of invertebrate animals
never assumes the red colour ; but we do not therefore,
with Aristotle, deny that they have any. It is well
worthy of note that, according to the account of Justiuus
Kerner (Geschichte zweier Somnambulen, § 78), a somnam
bulist of a very high degree of clairvoyance, says : " I am
as deep in myself as ever a man can be led ; the force of
my mortal life seems to me to have its source in the blood,
whereby, through the circulation in the veins, it communi
cates itself, by means of the nerves, to the whole body, and
to the brain, which is the noblest part of the body, and
above the blood itself."

From all this it follows that the will objectifies itself
most immediately in the blood as that which originally
makes and forms the organism, perfects it by growth, and
afterwards constantly maintains it, both by the regular
renewal of all the parts and by the extraordinary restora
tion of any part that may have been injured. The first
productions of the blood are its own vessels, and then the
musclec, in the irritability of which the will makes itself
known to self-consciousness ; but with this also the heart,
which is at once vessel and muscle, and therefore is the
true centre and primum mobile of the whole life. But for
the individual life and subsistence in the external world the
will now requires two assistant systems : one to govern and
order its inner and outer activity, and another for the con
stant renewal of the mass of the blood ; thus a controller
and a sustainer. It therefore makes for itself the nervous
and the intestinal systems ; thus the functiones animalcs
and the functiones naturales associate themselves in a sub
sidiary manner with the functiones vitales, which are the
most original and essential. In the nervous system, accord
ingly, the will only objectifies itself in an indirect and
secondary way ; for this system appears as a mere auxiliary
organ, as a contrivance by means of which the will attains
to a knowledge of those occasions, internal and external,

VOL. II. 2 II

482 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XX.

upon which, in conformity with its aims, it must express
itself; the internal occasions are received by the plastic
nervous system, thus by the sympathetic nerve, this cere
brum abdominale, as mere stimuli, and the will thereupon
reacts on the spot without the brain being conscious ; the
outward occasions are received by the brain, as motives,
and the will reacts through conscious actions directed out
wardly. Therefore the whole nervous system constitutes,
as it were, the antennae of the will, which it stretches
towards within and without. The nerves of the brain and
spinal cord separate at their roots into sensory and motory
nerves. The sensory nerves receive the knowledge from
without, which now accumulates in the thronging brain,
and is there worked up into ideas, which arise primarily as
motives. But the motory nerves bring back, like couriers,
the result of the brain function to the muscle, upon which
it acts as a stimulus, and the irritability of which is the
immediate manifestation of the will. Presumably the
plastic nerves also divide into sensory and motory, although
on a subordinate scale. The part which the ganglia play
in the organism we must think of as that of a diminutive
brain, and thus the one throws light upon the other. The
ganglia lie wherever the organic functions of the vegetative
system require care. It is as if there the will was not
able by its direct and simple action to carry out its aims,
but required guidance, and consequently control ; just as
when in some business a man's own memory is not suffi
cient, and he must constantly take notes of what he does.
For this end mere knots of nerves are sufficient for the
interior of the organism, because everything goes on within
its own compass. For the exterior, on the other hand,
a very complicated contrivance of the same kind is re
quired. This is the brain with its feelers, which it
stretches into the outer world, the nerves of sense. But
even in the organs which are in communication with this
great nerve centre, in very simple cases the matter does
not need to be brought before the highest authority, but a

OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL. 483

subordinate one is sufficient to determine what is needed ;
such is the spinal cord, in the reflex actions discovered by
Marshall Hall, such as sneezing, yawning, vomiting, the
second half of swallowing, &c. &c. The will itself is pre
sent in the whole organism, since this is merely its visible
form; the nervous system exists everywhere merely for
the purpose of making the direction of an action possible
by a control of it, as it were to serve the will as a mirror,
so that it may see what it does, just as we use a mirror to
shave by. Hence small sensoria arise within us for special,
and consequently simple, functions, the ganglia ; but the
chief sensorium, the brain, is the great and skilfully con
trived apparatus for the complicated and multifarious
functions which have to do with the ceaselessly and
irregularly changing external world. Wherever in the
organism the nerve threads run together in a ganglion,
there, to a certain extent, an animal exists for itself and
shut off, which by means of the ganglion has a kind of
weak knowledge, the sphere of which is, however, limited
to the part from which these nerves directly come. But
what actuates these parts to such quasi knowledge is
clearly the will ; indeed we are utterly unable to conceive
it otherwise. Upon this depends the vita propria of each
part, and also in the case of insects, which, instead of a
spinal cord, have a double string of nerves, with ganglia at
regular intervals, the capacity of each part to continue
alive for days after being severed from the head and the
rest of the trunk ; and finally also the actions which
in the last instance do not receive their motives from
the brain, i.e., instinct and natural mechanical skill.
Marshall Hall, whose discovery of the reflex movements
I have mentioned above, has given us in this the theory of
involuntary movements. Some of these are normal or physio
logical ; such are the closing of the places of ingress to
and egress from the body, thus of the sphincteres vesicce et
ani (proceeding from the nerves of the spinal cord) ; the
closing of the eyelids in sleep (from the fifth pair of

484 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XX.

nerves), of the larynx (from N. vagus) if food passes over
it or carbonic acid tries to enter; also swallowing, from
the pharynx, yawning and sneezing, respiration, entirely
in sleep and partly when awake ; and, lastly, the erection,
ejaculation, as also conception, and many more. Some,
again, are abnormal and pathological; such are stammer
ing, hiccoughing, vomiting, also cramps and convulsions of
every kind, especially in epilepsy, tetanus, in hydrophobia
and otherwise ; finally, the convulsive movements produced
by galvanic or other stimuli, and which take place without
feeling or consciousness in paralysed limbs, i.e., in limbs
which are out of connection with the brain, also the con
vulsions of beheaded animals, and, lastly, all movements
and actions of children born without brains. All cramps
are a rebellion of the nerves of the limbs against the
sovereignty of the brain ; the normal reflex movements, on
the other hand, are the legitimate autocracy of the sub
ordinate officials. These movements are thus all involun
tary, because they do not proceed from the brain, and
therefore do not take place in accordance with motives,
but follow upon mere stimuli. The stimuli which occasion
them extend only to the spinal cord or the medulla oblon-
gata, and from there the reaction directly takes place which
effects the movement. The spinal cord has the same re
lation to these involuntary movements as the brain has to
motive and action, and what the sentient and voluntary
nerve is for the latter the incident and motor nerve is
for the former. That yet, in the one as in the other, that
which really moves is the will is brought all the more
clearly to light because the involuntarily moved muscles
are for the most part the same which, under other circum
stances, are moved from the brain in the voluntary actions,
in which their primum mobile is intimately known to us
through self-consciousness as the will. Marshall Hall's
excellent book " On the Diseases of the Nervous System "
is peculiarly fitted to bring out clearly the difference be-

OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL. 485

tween volition and will, and to confirm the truth of my
fundamental doctrine.

For the sake of illustrating all that has been said, let us
now call to mind that case of the origination of an or
ganism which is most accessible to our observation. Who
makes the chicken in the egg? Some power and skill
coming from without, and penetrating through the shell ?
Oh no ! The chicken makes itself, and the force which
carries out and perfects this work, which is complicated,
well calculated, and designed beyond all expression, breaks
through the shell as soon as it is ready, and now performs
the outward actions of the chicken, under the name of
will. It cannot do both at once; previously occupied
with the perfecting of the organism, it had no care for
without. But after it has completed the former, the latter
appears, under the guidance of the brain and its feelers,
the senses, as a tool prepared beforehand for this end, the
service of which only begins when it grows up in self-
consciousness as intellect, which is the lantern to the steps
of the will, its rjye/j,oviKov, and also the supporter of the
objective external world, however limited the horizon of
this may be in the consciousness of a hen. But what the
hen is now able to do in the external world, through the
medium of this organ, is, as accomplished by means of
something secondary, infinitely less important than what
it did in its original form, for it made itself.

We became acquainted above with the cerebral nervous
system as an assistant organ of the will, in which it there
fore objectifies itself in a secondary manner. As thus the
cerebral system, although not directly coming within the
sphere of the life-functions of the organism, but only
governing its relations to the outer world, has yet the
organism as its basis, and is nourished by it in return for
its services ; and as thus the cerebral or animal life is to be
regarded as the production of the organic life, the brain
and its function, knowledge, thus the intellect, belong
indirectly and in a subordinate manner to the manifesta-

486 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XX.

tion of the will. The will objectifies itself also in it, as
will to apprehend the external world, thus as will to know.
Therefore great and fundamental as is the difference in
us between .willing and knowing, the ultimate substratum
of both is yet the same, the will, as the real inner nature
of the whole phenomenon. But knowing, the intellect,
which presents itself in self-consciousness entirely as
secondary, is to be regarded not only as the accident of
the will, but also as its work, and thus, although in a
circuitous manner, is yet to be referred to it. As the
intellect presents itself physiologically as the function of
an organ of the body, metaphysically it is to be regarded
as a work of the will, whose objectification or visible
appearance is the whole body. Thus the will to know,
objectively perceived, is the brain; as the will to go,
objectively perceived, is the foot; the will to grasp, the
hand ; the will to digest, the stomach ; the will to beget, the
genitals, &c. This whole objectification certainly ulti
mately exists only for the brain, as its perception : in this
the will exhibits itself as organised body. But so far as
the brain knows, it is itself not known, but is the knower,
the subject of all knowledge. So far, however, as in objec
tive perception, i.e., in the consciousness of other things, thus
secondarily, it is known, it belongs, as an organ of the body,
to the objectification of the will. For the whole process
is the self-knowledge of the will ; it starts from this and
returns to it, and constitutes what Kant has called the
phenomenon in opposition to the thing in itself. Therefore
that which is known, that which is idea, is the will ; and
this idea is what we call body, which, as extended in space
and moving in time, exists only by means of the functions of
the brain, thus only in it. That, on the other hand, which
knows, which has that idea, is the brain, which yet does
not know itself, but only becomes conscious of itself sub
jectively as intellect, i.e., as the knower. That which
when regarded from within is the faculty of knowledge is
when regarded from without the brain. This brain is a

OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL. 487

part of that body, just because it itself belongs to the
objectification of the will, the will's will to know is objec
tified in ic, its tendency towards the external world.
Accordingly the brain, and therefore the intellect, is
certainly conditioned immediately by the body, and this
again by the brain, yet only indirectly, as spatial and
corporeal, in the world of perception, not in itself, i.e., as
will. Thus the whole is ultimately the will, which itself
becomes idea, and is that unity which we express by I.
The brain itself, so far as it is perceived — thus in the
consciousness of other things, and hence secondarily — is
only idea. But in itself, and so far as it perceives, it is the
will, because this is the real substratum of the whole
phenomenon ; its wrill to know objectifies itself as brain
and its functions. We may take the voltaic pile as an
illustration, certainly imperfect, but yet to some extent
throwing light upon the nature of the human phenomenon,
as we here regard it. The metals, together with the fluid,
are the body ; the chemical action, as the basis of the
whole effect, is the will, and the electric current resulting
from it, which produces shock and spark, is the intellect.
But omne simile claudicat.

Quite recently the physiatrical point of view has at last
prevailed in pathology. According to it diseases are them
selves a curative process of nature, which it introduces to
remove, by overcoming its causes, a disorder which in
some way has got into the organism. Thus in the decisive
battle, the crisis, it is either victorious and attains its
end, or else is defeated. This view only gains its full
rationality from our standpoint, which shows the will in
the vital force, that here appears as vis naturae medicatrix,
the will which lies at the foundation of all organic func
tions in a healthy condition, but now, when disorder has
entered, threatening its whole work, assumes dictatorial
power in order to subdue the rebellious forces by quite
extraordinary measures and entirely abnormal operations
(the disease), and bring everything back to the right track.

488 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XX.

On the other hand, that the will itself is sick, as Brandis
repeatedly expresses himself in his book, " Ueber die
Anwendung der Kalte" which I have quoted in the first
part of my essay, " Ucber den Willen in der Natur" is a
gross misunderstanding. When I weigh this, and at the
same time observe that in his earlier "book, " Ueber die
Lebenskraft," of 1795, Brandis betrayed no suspicion that
this force is in itself the will, but, on the contrary, says
there, page 1 3 : " It is impossible that the vital force can be
that which we only know through our consciousness, for
most movements take place without our consciousness.
The assertion that this, of which the only characteristic
known to us is consciousness, also affects the body with
out consciousness is at the least quite arbitrary and
unproved;" and page 14: " Haller's objections to the
opinion that all living movements are the effect of the
soul are, as I believe, quite unanswerable ; " when I fur
ther reflect that he wrote his book, " Ueber die Anwendung
der Ktilte," in which all at once the will appears so decidedly
as the vital force, in his seventieth year, an age at which
no one as yet has conceived for the first time original
fundamental thoughts ; when, lastly, I bear in mind that
he makes use of my exact expressions, " will and idea,"
and not of those which are far more commonly used by
others, " the faculties of desire and of knowledge," I am
now convinced, contrary to my earlier supposition, that he
borrowed his fundamental thought from me, and with the
usual honesty which prevails at the present day in the
learned world, said nothing about it. The particulars
about this will be found in the second (and third) edition
of my work, " Ueber den Willen in der Natur" p. 14.

Nothing is more fitted to confirm and illustrate the
thesis with which we are occupied in this chapter than
Bichat's justly celebrated book, " Sur la vie et la mort."
His reflections and mine reciprocally support each other,
for his are the physiological commentary on mine, and
mine are the philosophical commentary on his, and one

OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL. 489

will best understand us both by reading us together. This
refers specially to the first half of his work, entitled " Re-
cherches pliysiologiques sur la vie" He makes the founda
tion of his expositions the opposition of the organic to the
animal life, which corresponds to mine of the will to the
intellect. Whoever looks at the sense, not at the words,
will not allow himself to be led astray by the fact that
he ascribes the will to the animal life ; for by will, as
is usual, he only understands conscious volition, which
certainly proceeds from the brain, where, however, as was
shown above, it is not yet actual willing, but only delibera
tion upon and estimation of the motives, the conclusion or
product of which at last appears as the act of will. All
that I ascribe to the will proper he ascribes to the organic
life, and all that I conceive as intellect is with him the
animal life : the latter has with him its seat in the brain
alone, together with its appendages : the former, again, in
the whole of the remainder of the organism. The com
plete opposition in which he shows that the two stand
to each other corresponds to that which with me exists
between the will and the intellect. As anatomist and
physiologist he starts from the objective, that is, from the
consciousness of other things; I, as a philosopher, start
from the subjective, self-consciousness ; and it is a pleasure
to see how, like the two voices in a duet, we advance in
harmony with each other, although each expresses some
thing different. Therefore, let every one who wishes to un
derstand me read him ; and let every one who wishes to un
derstand him, better than he understood himself, read me.
Bichat shows us, in article 4, that the organic life begins
earlier and ends later than the animal life ; consequently,
since the latter also rests in sleep, has nearly twice as long
a duration ; then, in articles 8 and 9, that the organic life
performs everything perfectly, at once, and of its own
accord ; the animal life, on the other hand, requires long
practice and education. But he is most interesting in the
sixth article, where he shows that the animal life is com-

490 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XX.

pletely limited to the intellectual operations, therefore
goes on coldly and indifferently, while the emotions and
passions have their seat in the organic life, although the
occasions of them lie in the animal, i.e., the cerebral, life.
Here he has ten valuable pages which I wish I could
quote entire. On page 50 he says : "// est sans doute eto%-
nant, que Us passions nayent jamais leur terme ni leur
origine dans les divers organs de la vie animale ; qu'au
contraire les parties servant aux fonctions internes, soient
constamment affeetdes par elles, et meme les determinant sui-
vant I'dtat oil elles se trouvent. Tel est cependant ce que la
stride observation nous prouve. Je dis d'abord qite I'effet de
toute espece de passion, constamment Stranger a la vie animale,
est defaire naitre un cfiangement, une alteration quelconque
dans la vie organique." Then he shows in detail how anger
acts on the circulation of the blood and the beating of the
heart, then how joy acts, and lastly how fear ; next, how the
lungs, the stomach, the intestines, the liver, glands, and pan
creas are affected by these and kindred emotions, and how
grief diminishes the nutrition ; and then how the animal,
that is, the brain life, is untouched by all this, and quietly
goes on its way. He refers to the fact that to signify intel
lectual operations we put the hand to the head, but, on the
contrary, we lay it on the heart, the stomach, the bowels,
if we wish to express our love, joy, sorrow, or hatred ; and
he remarks that he must be a bad actor who when he
spoke of his grief would touch his head, and when he
spoke of his mental effort would touch his heart ; and
also that while the learned make the so-called soul reside
in the head, the common people always indicate the well-
felt difference between the affections of the intellect and
the will by the right expression, and speak, for example,
of a capable, clever, fine head ; but, on the other hand,
say a good heart, a feeling heart, and also "Anger boils in
my veins," " Stirs my gall," " My bowels leap with joy,"
" Jealousy poisons my blood," &c. " Les chants sont le Ian-
gage des passions, de la vie organique, comme la parole ordi-

OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL. 491

naire est celui de I'entendement, de la vie animalc : la de"cla-
mation, tient le milieu, elle anime la languefroide du cerveau
par la langue expressive des organes inte'rieurs, du coeur, du
foie, de I'estomac," &c. His conclusion is : "La vie organique
est le terme ou aboutissent, et le centre d'ou partent les pas
sions." Nothing is better fitted than this excellent and
thorough book to confirm and bring out clearly that the
body is only the embodied (i.e., perceived by means of the
brain functions, time, space, and causality) will itself, from
which it follows that the will is the primary and original,
the intellect, as mere brain function, the subordinate and
derived. But that which is most worthy of admiration,
and to me most pleasing, in Bichat's thought is, that this
great anatomist, on the path of his purely physiological
investigations, actually got so far as to explain the un
alterable nature of the moral character from the fact that
only the animal life, thus the functions of the brain, are
subject to the influence of education, practice, culture, and
habit, but the moral character belongs to the organic Hie, i.e.,
to all the other parts, which cannot be modified from with
out. I cannot refrain from giving the passage ; it occurs
in article 9, § 2 : " Telle est done la grandc difference des
deux vies de I' animal " (cerebral or animal and organic life)
"par rapport d I'ine'galite' de perfection des divers systemcs
defonctions, dont chacune re'sulte; savoir, que dans I'une la
predominance ou linfe'riorite' d'un systeme relativement aux
autres, tient presque toujours d I'activite" ou d I'inertie plus
grandes de ce systdme, d r habitude d'agir ou de ne pas agir ;
que dans I'autre, au contraire, cette predominance ou cette
inferiority sont imme'diatement lie'es a la texture des or
ganes, et jamais d leur Education. Voila pourquoi le
temperament physique et le CHARACTERS MORAL ne sont
point susceptible de changer par F Education, qui modifie
si prodigieusem.ent les actes de la vie animale ; car,
comme nous I'avons vu, tous deux APPARTIENNENT A LA VIE
ORGANIQUPL La charactere est, si je puis mexprimer ainsi, la
physionomie des passions ; le temperament est celle des f one-

492 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XX.

tions internes : or les unes et les autres e'tant toujours Us
mimes, ayant une direction que I'habitude et I'exercice ne
de'rangent jamais, il est manifeste que le temperament et Le
characters doivent etre aussi soustraits a V empire de Ve'du-
cation. Ellepeut mode'rer I' influence du second, perfectionner
assez le jugement et la reflection, pour rendre leur empire
supe'rieur au sien, fortifier la vie animal afln qu'elle resiste
aux impulsions de I'organique. Mais vouloir par elle de-
naturer le character e, adoucir ou exalter les passions dont il
est I 'expression habituelle, agrandir ou resserrer leur sphere,
c'est une entreprise analogue a celle d'un me'decin qui essaie-
rait d'e'lever ou d'abaisser de quelque degre's, et pour toute la
vie, la force de contraction ordinaire au coeur dans I'e'tat de
sante", de pre"cipiter ou de ralentir habituellement le mouve-
ment naturel aux arteres, et qui est ne'cessaire d leur action,
etc. Nous observerions d ce me'decin, que la circulation, la
respiration, etc., ne sont point sous le domaine de la volonte'
(volition), quelles ne peuvent Stre modifiers par I'homme, sans
passer d I'e'tat maladif, etc. Faisons la mtime observation d
eeux qui croient qu'on change le charactere, et par-Id meme
les PASSIONS, puisque celles-ci sont un PKODUIT DE L' ACTION
DE TOUS LES ORGANES INTERNES, ou quelles y ont au moins
spe'cialcment leur siege." The reader who is familiar with
my philosophy may imagine how great was my joy when
I discovered, as it were, the proof of my own convictions in
those which were arrived at upon an entirely different field,
by this extraordinary man, so early taken from the world.
A special authentication of the truth that the organism
is merely the visibility of the will is also afforded us by
the fact that if dogs, cats, domestic cocks, and indeed other
animals, bite when violently angry, the wounds become
mortal ; nay, if they come from a dog, may cause hydro
phobia in the man who is bitten, without the dog being
mad or afterwards becoming so. For the extremest anger
is only the most decided and vehement will to annihilate
its object ; this now appears in the assumption by the
saliva of an injurious, and to a certain extent magically

OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL. 493

acting, power, and springs from the fact that the will
and the organism are in truth one. This also appears from
the fact that intense vexation may rapidly impart to the
mother's milk such a pernicious quality that the sucking
child dies forthwith in convulsions (Most, Ueber sympa-
thetische Mittel, p. 16).

NOTE ON WHAT HAS BEEN SAID ABOUT BICHAT.

BICHAT has, as we have shown above, cast a deep glance into human
nature, and in consequence has given an exceedingly admirable ex
position, which is one of the most profound works in the whole of
French literature. Now, sixty years later, M. Flourens suddenly
appears with a polemic against it in his work, " De la vie et de I'in-
telligence" and makes so bold as to declare without ceremony that all
that Bichat has brought to light on this important subject, which
was quite his own, is false. And what does he oppose to him in the
field ? Counter reasons ? No, counter assertions l and authorities,
indeed, which are as inadmissible as they are remarkable — Descartes
and Gall ! M. Flourens is by conviction a Cartesian, and to him
Descartes, in the year 1858, is still " le philosophe par excellence."
Now Descartes was certainly a great man, yet only as a forerunner.
In the whole of his dogmas, on the other hand, there is not a word
of truth ; and to appeal to these as authorities at this time of day is
simply absurd. For in the nineteenth century a Cartesian in philo
sophy is just what a follower of Ptolemy would be in astronomy, or
a follower of Stahl in chemistry. But for M. Flourens the dogmas
of Descartes are articles of faith. Descartes has taught, les volonte's
sont des pensees : therefore this is the case, although every one feels
within himself that willing and thinking are as different as white
and black. Hence I have been able above, in chapter 19, to prove
and explain this fully and thoroughly, and always under the guidance
of experience. But above all, according to Descartes, the oracle of
M. Flourens, there are two fundamentally different substances, body
and soul. Consequently M. Flourens, as an orthodox Cartesian, says :
" Le premier point est de separer, meme par les mots, ce qui est du corps de
ce qui est de I'dme " (i. 72). He informs us further that this " amere-
side uniquement et exclusivement dans le cerveau" (ii. 137) ; from whence,
according to a passage of Descartes, it sends the spiritus animales as
couriers to the muscles, yet can only itself be affected by the brain ;

1 " Tout ce qui est relatifa I'entende- appartient a la vie organique" — et

ment appartient a la vie animate," dit ceci est absolument faux. Indeed!

Bichat, et jusque-la point de doute; — decrevit Florentius magnus.
'' tout ce qui est relatif aux passions

NOTE ABOUT BICHAT. 495

therefore the passions have their seat (siege) in the heart, which is
altered by them, yet their place (place) in the brain. Thus, really thus,
speaks the oracle of M. Flourens, who is so much edified by it, that
he even utters it twice after him (i. 33 and ii. 135), for the unfailing
conquest of the ignorant Bichat, who knows neither soul nor body,
but merely an animal and an organic life, and whom he then here con
descendingly informs that we must thoroughly distinguish the parts
where the passions have their seat (sieyent) from those which they
affect. According to this, then, the passions act in one place while
they are in another. Corporeal things are wont to act only where
they are, but with an immaterial soul the case may be different.
But what in general may he and his oracle really have thought in
this distinction of place aud siege, of sieger and affecter ? The funda
mental error of M. Flourens and Descartes springs really from the fact
that they confound the motives or occasions of the passions, which,
as ideas, certainly lie in the intellect, i.e., in the brain, with the
passions themselves, which, as movements of the will, lie in the whole
body, which (as we know) is the perceived will itself. M. Flourens'
second authority is, as we have said, Gall. I certainly have said,
at the beginning of this twentieth chapter (and already in the earlier
edition) : " The greatest error in Gall's phrenology is, that he makes
the brain the organ of moral qualities also." But what I censure and
reject is precisely what M. Flourens praises and admires, for he bears
in his heart the doctrine of Descartes : " Les volontes sont des pense'es."
Accordingly he says, p. 144: " Le premier service que Gall a rendu
a, la physiologic (?) a e'te de rammener le moral d Vintellectuel, et de
faire voir que les faculte's morales et les faculte's inlellectuelles sont
du mdme ordre, et de les placer toutes, autant les unes que les autres,
uniquement et exclusivement dans le cerveau." To a certain extent
my whole philosophy, but especially the nineteenth chapter of
this volume, consists of the refutation of this fundamental error.
M. Flourens, on the contrary, is never tired of extolling this as a
great truth and Gall as its discoverer; for example, p. 147 : "Si
j'en e'tais a classer les services que nous a rendu Gall, je dirais que le
premier a e'te de rammener les qualites morales au cerveau j" — p. 153 :
" Le cerveau seul est Vorgane de I'dme, et de I'dme dans toute la pleni
tude de ses fonctions " (we see the simple soul of Descartes still always
lurks in the background, as the kernel of the matter) ; "il est le
siege de toutes les faculte's intellectuelles. . . . Gall a rammene LE MORAL
A L'INTELLECTUEL, il a rammene les qualites morales au mSme siege, au
meme organe, que les faculte's intellectuelles." Oh how must Bichat and
I be ashamed of ourselves in the presence of such wisdom ! But, to
speak seriously, what can be more disheartening, or rather more
shocking, than to see the true and profound rejected and the false

496 SECOND BOOK. CHAPTER XX.

and perverse extolled ; to live to find that important truths, deeply
hidden, and extracted late and with difficulty, are to be torn down,
and the old, stale, and late conquered errors set up in their place ;
nay, to be compelled to fear that through such procedure the ad
vances of human knowledge, so hardly achieved, will be broken off !
But let us quiet our fears; for magna est vis veritatis et prcevalebit.
M. Flourens is unquestionably a man of much merit, but he has
chiefhr acquired it upon the experimental path. Just those truths,
however, which are of the greatest importance cannot be brought
out by experiments, but only by reflection and penetration. Now
Bichat by his reflection and penetration has here brought a truth to
light which is of the number of those which are unattainable by the
experimental efforts of M. Flourens, even if, as a true and consistent
Cartesian, he tortures a hundred more animals to death. But he
ought betimes to have observed and thought something of this :
" Take care, friend, for it burns." The presumption and self-
sufficiency, however, such as is only imparted by superficiality com
bined with a false obscurity, with which M. Flourens undertakes to
refute a thinker like Bichat by counter assertions, old wives' beliefs,
and futile authorities, indeed to reprove and instruct him, and even
almost to mock at him, has its origin in the nature of the Academy
and its fauteuils. Throned upon these, and saluting each other
mutually as illustre confrere, gentlemen cannot avoid making them
selves equal with the best who have ever lived, regarding them
selves as oracles, and therefore fit to decree what shall be false
and what true. This impels and entitles me to say out plainly for
once, that the really superior and privileged minds, who now and
then are born for the enlightenment of the rest, and to whom cer
tainly Bichat belongs, are so " by the grace of God," and accordingly
stand to the Academy (in which they have generally occupied only
the forty-first fauteuil) and to its illustres confreres, as born princes
to the numerous representatives of the people, chosen from the
crowd. Therefore a secret awe should warn these gentlemen of the
Academy (who always exist by the score) before they attack such a
man, — unless they have most cogent reasons to present, and not
mere contradictions and appeals to placita of Descartes, which at the
present day is quite absurd.

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