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

§ 6. For the present, however, in this first book we consider everything merely as idea, as object for the subject. And our own body, which is the starting-point for each of us in our perception of the world, we consider, like all other real objects, from the side of its knowableness, and in this regard it is simply an idea. Now the consciousness of every one is in general opposed to tlie explanation of objects as mere ideas, and more especially to the explanation of our bodies as such ; for toe thing in iteelf is known to each of us immediately in so far as it appears as our own body ; but in so far as it objectifies itoelf in the other objects of perception, it is known only indirectly. But this abstraction, this one-sided treatment, this forcible separation of what is essentially and necessarily united, is only adopted to meet the demands of our argument ; and therefore the disinclination to it must, in the meantime, be suppressed and silenced by the expectation that the subsequent treatment will comet the one-sidedness of the present ,one» and complete our knowle^e of the nature of the world,..

At present toerefore the body is for us immediate

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object ; that is to say, that idea which forms the starting-point of the subject’s knowledge ; because the body, with its immediately known changes, precedes the application of the law of causality, and thus supplies it with its first data. The whole nature of matter consists, as we have seen, in its causal action. But cause and effect exist only for the underatanding, which is nothing but their subjective correlative.

The understanding, however, could never come into operation if there were not something else from which it starts. This is simple sensation— the immediate consciousness of the changes of the body, by virtue of which it is immediate object.

Thus the possibility of knowing the world of perception depends upon two conditions ; the first, objectively expressed, is the power of material things to act upon each other, to produce changes in each other, without which common quality of all bodies no perception would be possible, even by means of the sensibility of the animal body.

And if we wish to express this condition subjectively we say ; The understanding first makes perception possible ; for the law of causality, the possibility of effect and cause, springs only from the understanding, and is valid only for it, and therefore the world of perception exists only through and for it.

The second condition is the sensibility of animal bodies, or the quality of being immediate objects of the subject which certain bodies possess. The mere modification which the organs of sense sustain from without through their specific affections, may here be called ideas, so far as these affections produce neither pain nor pleasure, that is, have no immediate significance for the will, and are yet perceived, exist therefore only for knowledge.

Thus far, then, I say that the body is immediately known, is immediate object. But the conception of object is not to be taken here in its fullest sense, for through this immediate knowledge of the body, which precedes the operation of the understanding, and is mere sensation, our own body does not exist

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*5 specifically as dl^’ect, but first the material things which affect it : for all knowledge of an object proper, of an idea perceived in space, exists only through and for the understanding ; therefore not before, but only subseq^uently to its operation. Therefore the body as object proper, that is, as an idea perceived in space, is first known indirectly, like all other objeets, through the applieation of the law of causality to the action of one of its parts upon another, as, for example, when the eye sees the body or the hand touches it. Consequently the form of our body does not become known to us through mere feeling, but only through knowledge, only in idea ; that is to say, only in the brain does our own body first come to appear as extended, articulate, organic. A man born blind receives this idea only little by little from the data afforded by touch. A blind man without hands could never come to know his own form ; or at the most could infer and construct it little by little from the effects of other bodies upon him. If, then, we call the body an immediate object, we are to be understood with these reservations.