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

to which it is joined, and from the perceptions, from which it has originated. It is of an entirely different nature from these impressions of the senses. Yet it is able to take up into itself all the results of perception, and give them back again unchanged and undiminished after the longest period of time; thus alone does experience arise.

But the concept preserves, not what is perceived nor what is then felt, but only what is essential in these, in an entirely altered form, and yet as an adequate representative of them. Just as flowers cannot be preserved, but their ethereal oil, their essence, with the same smell and the same virtues, can be. The action that has been guided by correct conceptions will, in the result, coincide with the real object aimed at.

We may judge of the inestimable value of conceptions, and consequently of the reason, if we glance for a moment at the infinite multitude and variety of the things and conditions that coexist and succeed each other, and then consider that speech and writing (the signs of conceptions) are capable of affording us accurate information as to everything and every relation when and wherever it may have been ; for comparatively few conceptions can contain and represent an infinite number of things and conditions.

In our own reflection abstraction is a throwing off of useless baggage for the sake of more easily handling the knowledge which is to be compared, and has therefore to be turned about in all directions. We allow much that is unessential, and ' therefore only confusing, to fall away from the real things, and work with few but essential determinations thought in the abstract.

But just because general conceptions are only formed by thinking away and leaving out existing qualities, and are therefore the emptier the more general they are, the use of this procedure is confined to the working up of knowledge which we have already acquired. This working up includes the drawing of conclusions from premisses contained in our knowledge. New insight, on the contrary, can only be obtained by the help 2of the faculty of judgment, from perception, which alone is complete and rich knowledge. Further, because the content and the extent of the concepts stand in inverse relation to each other, and thus the more is thought under a concept, the less is thought in it, concepts form a graduated series, a hierarchy, from the most special to the most general, at the lower end of which scholastic realism is almost right, and at the upper end nominalism.

For the most special conception is almost the individual, thus almost real ; and the most general conception, e.g., being (i.e., the infinitive of the copula), is scarcely anything but a word. Therefore philosophical systems which confine themselves to such very general conceptions, without going down to the real, are little more than mere juggling with words.

For since all abstraction consists in thinking away, the further we push it the less we have left over.

Therefore, if I read those modern philosophemes which move constantly in the widest abstractions, I am soon quite unable, in spite of all attention, to think almost anything more in connection with them ; for I receive no material for thought, but am supposed to work with mere empty shells, which gives me a feeling like that which we experience when we try to throw very light bodies; the strength and also the exertion are there, but there is no object to receive them, so as to supply the other moment of motion.

If any one wants to experience this let him read the writings of the disciples of Schelling, or still better of the Hegelians. Simple conceptions would necessarily be such as could not be broken up. Accordingly they could never be the subject of an analytical judgment. This I hold to be impossible, for if we think a conception we must also be able to give its content.

What are commonly adduced as examples of simple conceptions are really not conceptions at all, but partly mere sensations — as, foi instance, those of some special colour ; partly the form* of perception which are known to us a priori, thus properly the ultimate elements of perceptive knowledge. Hu 3this itself is for the whole system of our thought what granite is for geology, the ultimate firm basis which supports all, and beyond which we cannot go.

The distinctness of a conception demands not only that we should be able to separate its predicates, but also that we should be able to analyse these even if they are abstractions, and so on until we reach knowledge of perception, and thus refer to concrete things through the distinct perception of which the final abstractions are verified and reality guaranteed to them, as well as to all the higher abstractions which rest upon them.

Therefore the ordinary explanation that the conception is distinct as soon as we can give its predicates is not sufficient. For the separating of these predicates may lead perhaps to more conceptions ; and so on again without there being that ultimate basis of perceptions which imparts reality to all those conceptions.

Take, for example, the conception " spirit," and analyse it into its predicates : " A thinking, willing, immaterial, simple, indestructible being that does not occupy space. Nothing is yet distinctly thought about it, because the elements of these conceptions cannot be verified by means of perceptions, for a thinking being without a brain is like a digesting being without a stomach.

Only perceptions are, properly speaking, clear, not conceptions; these at the most can only be distinct. Hence also, absurd as it was, " clear and confused" were coupled together and used as synonymous when knowledge of perception was explained as merely a confused abstract knowledge, because the latter kind of knowledge alone was distinct.

This was first done by Duns Scotus, but Leibnitz has substantially the same view, upon which his "Identitas Indiscemibiliwm," depends. (See Kant's refutation of this, p. 275 of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Eeason.)