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

attention to this, once for all. For it is only through the medium of time and space that what is one and the same, both according to its nature and to its concept, yet appears as different, as a multiplicity of co-existent and successive phenomena. Thus time and space are the principium individuationis, the subject of so many subtleties and disputes among the schoolmen, which may be found collected in Suarez (Disp. 5, Sect. 3).

According to what has been said, the will as a thing-in-itself lies outside the province of the principle of sufficient reason in all its forms, and is consequently completely groundless, although all its manifestations are entirely subordinated tolhe principle of sufficient reasom Further, it_ is free from all multiplicity, altiiough its manifestations in time and space are innmimrable._ It is itself one, though not in the sense in which an object is one, for the unity of an object can only be known in opposition to a possible multiplicity ; nor yet in the sense in which a concept is one, for the unity of a concept originates only in abstraction from a multiplicity ; but it is one as that which lies outside time and space, the principium ihdwidudivmH, €e7,lEe possibility of multiplicity.

Only when all this has 'beottme quite clear to us through the subsequent examination of the phenomena and different manifestations of the.\yill, shall we fully understand the meaning^ of the Kantian doctrine that time, space and causality do not belong to the thing-in-itself, but are only foims^^ knowing.

The uncaused nature of will has been actually recognised, where it manifests itself most distinctly, as the will of man, and this has been called free, independent. But on account of the uncaused nature of the will itself, the necessity to which its manifestation is everywhere subjected has been overlooked, and actions are treated as free, which they are not. FOT~~ev5ry~Tnamdual action follows with strict necessity from the effect of the motii^ upon~the' character. All necessity is, as we have already

THE OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL.

p. 147

said, the relation of the consequent to the reason, and nothing more. The principle of sufficient reason is the universal form of all phenomena, and man in his action must he subordinated to it like every otlier phenomenon. But because in self-consciousness the will is known directly and in itself, in this consciousness lies also the consciousness of freedom.

The fact is, however, overlooked that the individual, the person, is not wUl as a thing-in itself, but is a fhaurniaion of will, is already dGteru1iined'"a"§"StR;E^irn3 has come under the form of the phenomenal, the principle of sufficient reason.

Hence arises the strange fact that every one believes himself a •priori to be perfectly free, even in his individual actions, and thinks that at every moment he can commence another manner of life, which just means that he can become another person.

But a posteriori, through experience, he finds to his astonishment that he is not free, but subjected to necessity ; tliat in spite of aU his resolutions and reflections he does not change his conduct,, and tlfaF from the beginning of his life to the end of jt, lle^lisrcarry out the very character which he himself condemns, and as it were play the part he has undertaken to the end.

I cannot pursue this subject further at present, for it belongs, as ethical, to another part ol this work.

In the meantime, I only wish to point out here that the phenomenon of the will which in itself is uncaused, is yet as such subordinated to the law of necessity, that is, the principle of sufficient reason^ so that in the necessity with which the phenomena of natiTfe TolTo^ eacTi oflief, w'e may ~iihd~ ndtlung toTTrlnder us from recognising in them the manifestations of will.