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

§ 2. That whjch knows all things arid is known by none is the subject. Thus it is the supporter of the world, that condition of all phenomena, of all objects which is always pre-supposed throughout experience ; for all that exists, exists only for the subject. Every one finds himself to be subject, yet only in so lar as he knows, not in so far as he is an object of knowledge. But his body is object, and therefore from this point of view we call it idea. For the body is an object among objects, and is conditioned by the laws of oTjects, although it is an immediate object. Like all objects of perception, it lies within the universal forms of knowledge, time and space, which are the conditions of multiplicity. The subject, on the contrary, which is always the knovrer, never the known, does not come under these forms, but is presupposed by them ; it has therefore neither multiplicity nor its opposite unity! “We never know it, but it is always the knower wherever there is knowledge.

So then the world as idea, the only aspect in which

THE WORLD ^5 IDEA.

we consider it at present, has two fundamental, necessaiy, and inseparable halves. The one half is the object, the forms of which are space and time, and through these multiplicity.:- The other half is the subject, which is not in space and timie, for it is present, entire and undivided, inT every percipient being.

So that any one percipient being, with the object, constitutes the whole world as idea just as fully as the existing millions could do ; but if this one were to disappear, then the whole world as idea would cease to be. These halves are therefore inseparable even for thought, for each of the two has meaning and existence only through and for the other, each appears with the other and vanishes with it.

1 hey limit each other immediately ; where the object begins thje suliject ends.

The universality of this limitation is shown by the fact that the essential and hence universal forms of all objects^ space, time, and causality, npay, without knowledge of the object, be discovered and fully known from a consideration of the subject, ie., in Kantian language, they lie a priori in our consciousness, '^at h^ discovered this is one of Kant’s principal merits, and it is a great one.

I however go beyond this, and maintain that the principle of sufficient reason is the general expression for all these forms of the object of which we are a priori conscious; and that therefore all that we know purely a priori, is merely the content of that principle and what follows from it; in it all our certain a priori knowledge is expressed.

In my essay on the principle of sufficient reason I have shown in detail how every possible object comes under it ; that is, stands in a necessary relation to other objects, on the one side as determined, on the other side as determining : this is of such wide application, that the whole existence of all objects, so far as they are objects, ideas and nothing more, may be entirely traced to this their necessary relation to each other, rests only in it, is in fact merely relative ; but of this more presently. 1 have further

THE WORLD AS IDEA.

Bbown, that the necessary relation which the principle of sufficient reason expresses generally, appears iu other forms corresponding to the classes into which objects are divided, according to their possibility ; and again that by these forms the proper division of the classes is tested. I take it for granted that what I said iu this earlier essay is known and present to the reader, for if it had not been alreaoy said it would necessarily find its place here.