The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp

hand, does not come under this principle, and has therefore neither multiplicity nor change While the individuals in which it expresses itself are innumerable, and unceasingly come into being and pass away, it remains unchanged as one and the same, and the principle of sufficient reason has for it no meaning.

As, however, this is the form under which all knowledge of the subject comes, so far as the subject knows as an individual, the Ideas lie quite outside the sphere of its knowledge. If, therefore, the Ideas are to become objects of knowledge, this can only happen by transcending the individuality of the knowing subject. The more exact and detailed explanation of this is what will now occupy our attention.

§ 31. First, however, the following very essential remark. I hope that in the preceding book I have succeeded in producing the conviction that what is called in the Kantian phUosophy the thina-in-iMf^'m^ appears there as so significant, and yet so obscure and paradoxicalli doctrine, and especially on account of the manner in which Kant introduced it as an inference from the caused to the cause, was considered a stumbling-stone, and, in fact, the weak side of his philosophy, — that this, I say, if’ it is reached by the entirely different way by which we have arrived at it, is nothing but the wiU when the sphere of that conception is extended and defined in the way I have shown. I hope, further, that after what has been said there will be no hesitation in recognising the definite grades of the objectification of the will, which is the iimer reality of the world, to be what Plato called the eternal Ideas or unchangeable forms ; a doctrine which is regarded as the principal, but at the ^me time the, most obscure and paradoxical dogma of his system, and has been the subject of reflecfion "and controversy of ridicule and of reverence to so ma^ and such differently endowed minds in the course of many centuries.

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If now the will is for us the thinj-in-itself , and the Idea is the immediate objectivity of that will at a definite ^rade, we find thatJCant’s thing-in^itself, and Plato’s Idea, which to him is th^. ovrm op, these two great obscure paradoxes of the two greatest philosophers of the West are not indeed identical, but yet very closely related, and only distinguished by a single circumstance.

The purport of these two great paradoxes, with all inner harmony and relationship, is yet so very different on account of the remarkable diversity of the individuality of their authors, that they are the best commentary on each other, for they are like two entirely different roads that conduct us to the sahie goal. This is easily made clear.

What Kant says is in substance this : — “ Time, space, and causahty are not determinations of the thing-in-itself, but belong only to its j)li^omenal existence, for they are nothing but the forms of our knowledge. Since, however, all multiplicity, and all coming into HBeiug and passing away, are only possible through time, space, and causality, it follows that they also belong only to the phenomenon, not to the tliing-in-itself.

But as our knowledge is conditioned by these forms, the whole of experience is only knowledge of the phenomenon, not of the~ thing-in-itself ] therefore its laws cannot be made valid for the thing-in-itself. This extends even to our own effo, and we know_it^ only as phenomenon, and not according to what it may be in itself. This is the meaning and content of the doctrine of Kant m the important respect we are considering.

What Plato says is thisj — “ The things of this world which our senses perceive have no true; being ; they always iecome, they rmer are: they have only a, relative being; they all eSTmerely m and through their relations to each other ; their whole being may, therefore, quite as well be called a non-being.

They are consequently not objects of a true knowledge {eirtaryiii)), for such a knowledge can only be of what exists for itself, and always in the same way ;