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

flux of things ; in Plato when he degrades the object to that which is ever becoming, but never bein^ ; in Spinoza as the doctrine oF the ~mere~1acci3«iil¥”dr the one substance which is and endures. Kant opposes what ^s thus known as the mere phenomenon to the thing in itself.

Lastly, tjie anci^t wisdotiijof the Indian philosophers declares. ** j^s Mây&, the veU of deception, which BfindT^ the eyes of mortals, and makes them behold a world of which they cannot say either that it is or that it is not: for it is like a dream; it is like the sunshine on the sahcT which the traveller takes from afar for \^ter^ or the stray piece of r9pe he mistakes for a snakft.” (These similes are repeated in innumerable passages of the Vedas and the Puranas.) But what all these mean, and that of which they all speak, is nothing more than what we have just considered — the world as idea^su^ect to the principle of sufficient reason.

§ 4. Whoever has recognised the form of the principle of sufficient reason, which appears in pure time as such, and on which all counting and arithmetical calculation rests, has completely mastered the nature of time. Time is nothing more than that form of the principle of sufficient reason, and has no further significance. Succession is tlie^orm of the principle of sufficient reason in time, and succession is tlie whole nature of time. Further, whoever lias recognisetl the 'princIpe of sufficient reason as it appears in the presentation of pure space, has exhausted the whole nature of space, which is absolutely nothing more than that possibility of the reciprocal determination of its parts by each other, which is called position. The detailed treatment of this, and the formulation in' abstract conceptions of the results which flow from it, so that they may be more conveniently used, is the subject of the science of geometry. Thus also, whoever has recognised the law of causation, the aspect of the principle of sufficient reason which appears in what fills these forms (space and time) as objects of perception, lo THE WORLD AS IDEA.

that is to say matter, has completely mastered the nature of matter as such, for matter is nothing more than causation, as any one will see at once if he reflects. Its true being is its action, nor can we possibly conceive it as having any other meaning. Only as active does it fill space and time ; its action upon the immediate object (wliich is itself matter) determines that perception in which alone it exists.

Tlie consequence of the action of any material object upon any other, is known only in so far as the latter acts upon the immediate object in a different way from that in which it acted before ; it consists only of this.

Cause and effect thus constitute the jwhole nature o^maU^ its true being is its action. (A fuller treatment of this will be found in the essay on the Principle of Sufficient Reason, § 21, p. 77.) The nature of all material things is therefore very appropriately called in German WirhUclikcit^ a word which is far more expressive than Realitdt.

Again, that which is acted upon is always matter, and thus the whole being and essence of matter consists in the orderly change, which one part of it brings about in another part. The existence of matter is therefore entirely relative, according to a relation which is valid only within its limits, as in the case of time and space.