The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp
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The translator’s English as printed (R. B. Haldane & J. Kemp). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
seeks to reduce all the forces of nature to action and re* action as its thing-in-itself. According to this teaching, light is the mechanical vibration or undulation of an imaginary ether, postulated for this end. This ether, if it reaches the eye, beats rapidly upon the retina, and gives us the knowledge of colour.
Thus, for example, four hundred and eighty-three billion beats in a second give red, and seven hundred and twenty-seven billion beats in a second give violet. Upon this theory, persons who are colourblind must be those who are unable to count the beats, must they not ?
Such crass, mechanical, clumsy, and certainly knotty theories, which remind one of Democritus, are quite worthy of those who, fifty year§_afte.r the appearanc^o£^Goj!the’s dpijMuAJlf iu Newtoffs homogeneous lights and , aie. not ashamed to say so. They will find that what is overlooked in the child (Democritus) will not be forgiven to the man.
They might indeed, some day, come to an ignominious end; but then every one would slink away and pretend that he never had anything to do with them. We shall soon have to speak again of this false reduction of the forces of nature to each other ; so much for the present.
Supposing this theory were possible, all would certainly be explained and established and finally reduced to an arithmetical problem, which would then be the holiest thing in the temple of wisdom, to which the principle of sufficient reason would at last have happily conducted us. But all content of the phenomenon would have disappeared, and the mere form would remain.
The “what appears ” would be referred to the “ how it appears,” and this “ how ” would be what is a priori knowable, therefore entirely dependent on the subject, therefore only for the subject, therefore, lastly, mere phantom, idea and form of idea, through and through; no thing-in-itself could be demanded. Supposing, then, that this were possible, the whole world would be derived from the subject, and. in fact, that would be accomplished which
THE OByECTlFlCATlON OP THE WILL. i6l
Fichte wanted to seem to accomplish by his empty bombast^ But it is not possiWeT^l^iantasies^ sopbi^^ castles in the aT^T^uve^eeii^ cons tructed in thj way^. but science n^^y^" TPhe many and multifarious phenomena in nature have been successfully referred to particular original forces, and as often as this has been done, a real advance has been made. Several forces and qualities, which were at first regarded as different, have been derived from each other, and thus their number has been curtailed. (For example, magnetism from electricity.) Etiology will have reached its goal when it has recognised and exhibited as such all the original forces of nature, and established their mode of operation, i.^., the law according to which, under the guidance of causality, their phenomena appear in time and space, and determine their position with regard to each other. But certain original forces will always remainover; there will always remain as an insoluble residuum a content of phenomena which cannot be referred to their form, and thus cannot be explained from something else in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason. For in everything in nature there is something of which no ground can ever be assigned, of which no explanation is possible, and no ulterior cause is to be sought. This is the specific nature of its action, i.e., the nature of its existence, its being. Of each particular effect of the thing a cause may be certainly indicated, from which it follows that it must act just at this time and in this place ; but no cause can ever be found from which it follows that a thing acts in general, and precisely in the way it does. If it has no other is, mere^ in a sunbeam, it yet exhibits this unfathonaable something, at least as weight and. impehetrabiU^^^ But jhis, I say, is to the mote what his will is to a man ; and, like the liu^ it is, accordin^^to its, inner natm subject to explaStidn;
nay, more — it is in itself identicaf with this will. It is true that a md^^^ may Tie given every manifestation
VOL. I. L
i62
THE WORLD AS WILL.
EK. II.
of will, for every act of will at a particular time and in a particular place, upon which it must necessarily follow, under the presupposition of the character of the man. But no reason can ever be given that the man has this character; that he wills at all; that, of several motives, just this one and no other, or indeed that any motive at all, moves his will. That which in the case of man is the unfathomable character which is presupposed in every explanation of his actions from motives is, in the case of every unorganised body, its definitive quality — the mode of its action, the manifestations of which are occasioned by impressions from without, while it itself, on the contrary, is determined by nothing outside itself, and thus is also inexplicable. Its particular manifestations, through which alone it becomes visible, are subordinated to the principle of sufficient reason ; it itself is groundless. This was in substance rightly understood by the schoolmen, who called it forma svi)stantialis. (fit Suarez, Disput Metaph., disp. XV. sect. I.)
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