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

certainty a priori, and with it the lapse of a certain time Thus, for example, we know that a certain time must elapse between the falling of the flint and the projection of the bullet, although we cannot perceive it, and that this time must further be divided between several events that occur in a strictly determined succession — the falling of the flint, the striking of the spark, ignition, the spread of the fire, the explosion, and the projection of the bullet.

No man ever perceived this succession of events ; but because we know which is the cause of the others, we thereby also know which must precede the others in time, and consequently also that during the course of the whole series a certain time must elapse, although it is so short that it escapes our empirical apprehension ; for no one will assert that the projection of the bullet is actually simultaneous with the falling of the flint.

Tims not only the law of causality, but also its relation to time, and the necessity of the succession of cause and effect, is known to us a priori.

If we know which of two events is the cause and which is the effect, we also know which precedes the other in time ; if, on the contrary, we do not know which is cause and which effect, but only know in general that they are causally connected, we seek to discover the succession empirically, and according to that we determine which is the cause and which the effect The falseness of the assertion that cause and effect are simultaneous further appears from the following consideration.

An unbroken chain of causes and effects fills the whole of time. (For if this chain were broken the world would stand still, or in order to set it in motion again an effect without a cause would have to appear.) Now if every effect were simultaneous with its cause, then every effect would be moved up into the time of its cause, and a chain of causes and effects containing as many links as before would fill no time at all, still less an infinite time, but would be all together in one moment. Thus, under the assumption that cause and effect are simultaneous, the course of the world

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shrinks up into an affair of a moment. This proof is analogous to the proof that every sheet of paper must have a certain thickness, because otherwise the whole book would have none. To say when the cause ceases and the effect begins is in almost all cases difficult, and often impossible. For the changes (i.e., the succession of states) are continuous, like the time which they fill, and therefore also, like it, they are infinitely divisible. But their succession is as necessarily determined and as unmistakable as that of the moments of time itself, and each of them is called, with reference to the one which precedes it, " effect," and with reference to the one which follows it, " cause."

Every change in the material world can only take 'place because another has immediately preceded it: this is the true and the whole content of the law of causality. But no conception has been more misused in philosophy than that of cause, by means of the favourite trick or blunder of conceiving it :oo widely, taking it too generally, through abstract thinkng. Since Scholasticism, indeed properly since Plato and Aristotle, philosophy has been for the most part a systematic nisuse 0/ general conceptions. Such, for example, are substance, ground, cause, the good, perfection, necessity, and rery many others. A tendency of the mind to work with uch abstract and too widely comprehended conceptions las shown itself almost at all times. It may ultimately est upon a certain indolence of the intellect, which finds t too difficult a task to be constantly controlling thought >y perception. By degrees such unduly wide conceptions ome to be used almost like algebraical symbols, and tossed bout like them, and thus philosophy is reduced to a mere rocess of combination, a kind of reckoning which (like all alculations) employs and demands only the lower facules. Indeed there finally results from this a mere juggling 'ith words, of which the most shocking example is afforded s by the mind-destroying Hegelism, in which it is carried ) the extent of pure nonsense. But Scholasticism also

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