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

to ourselves in pure, distinct perceptions, without the aid of words. To explain words by words, to compare concepts with concepts, in which most philosophising consists, is a trivial shifting about of the concept-spheres in order to see which goes into the other and which does not.

At the best we can in this way only arrive at conclusions ; but even conclusions give no really new knowledge, but only show us all that lay in the knowledge we already possessed, and what part of it perhaps might be applicable to the particular case.

On the other hand, to perceive, to allow the things themselves to speak to us, to apprehend new relations of them, and then to take up and deposit all this in conceptions, in order to possess it with certainty — that gives new knowledge. But, while almost every one is capable of comparing conceptions with conceptions, to compare conceptions with perceptions is a gift of the select few.

It is the condition, according to the degree of its perfection, of wit, judgment, ingenuity, genius. The former faculty, on the contrary, results in little more than possibly rational reflections. The inmost kernel of all genuine and actual knowledge is a perception; and every new truth is the profit or gain yielded by a perception.

All original thinking takes place in images, and this is why imagination is so necessary an instrument of thought, and minds that lack imagination will never accomplish much, unless it be in mathematics. On the other hand, merely abstract thoughts, which have no kernel of perception, are like cloud-structures, without realit)7.

Even writing and speaking, whether didactic or poetical, has for its final aim to guide the reader to the same concrete knowledge from which the author started ; if it has not this aim it is bad. This is why the contemplation and observing of every real thing, as soon as it presents something new to the observer, is more instructive than any reading or hearing.

For indeed, if we go to the bottom of the matter, all truth and wisdom, nay, the ultimate secret of things, is contained in each real object, yet certainly only in concreto,

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just as gold lies hidden in the ore ; the difficulty is to ex tract it. From a book, on the contrary, at the best we only receive the truth at second hand, and oftener not at all.

In most books, putting out of account those that are thoroughly bad, the author, when their content is not altogether empirical, has certainly thought but not perceived ; he has written from reflection, not from intuition, and it is this that makes them commonplace and tedious.

"For what the author has thought could always have been thought by the reader also, if he had taken the same trouble ; indeed it consists simply of intelligent thought, full exposition of what is implicite contained in the theme. But no actually new knowledge comes in this way into the world ; this is only created in the moment of perception, of direct comprehension of a new side of the thing.

When, therefore, on the contrary, sight has formed the foundation of an author's thought, it is as if he wrote from a land where the reader has never been, for all is fresh and new, because it is drawn directly from the original source of all knowledge. Let me illustrate the distinction here touched upon by a perfectly easy and simple example.

Any commonplace writer might easily describe profound contemplation or petrifying astonishment by saying : " He stood like a statue ; " but Cervantes says : " Like a clothed statue, for the wind moved his garments" {Don Quixote, book vi. ch. 19).

It is thus that all great minds have ever thought in presence of the perception, and kept their gaze steadfastly upon it in their thought We recognise this from this fact, among others, that even the most opposite of them so often agree and coincide in some particular ; because they all speak of the same thing which they all had before their eyes, the world, the perceived reality ; indeed in a certain degree they all say the same thing, and others never believe them.

We recognise it further in the appropriateness and originality of the expression, which is always perfectly adapted to the subject because it has beeu inspired by perception, in