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

Perception is not only the source of all knowledge, but is itself knowledge tear e^oxv^> is the only unconditionally true, genuine knowledge completely worthy of the name. For it alone imparts insight properly so called, it alone m^ actually assimilated by man, passes into his nature, and can with full reason be called his; while the conceptions merely cling to him.

In the fourth book we see indeed that true virtue proceeds from knowledge of perception or intuitive knowledge; for only those actions which are directly called forth by this, and therefore are performed purely from the impulse of our own nature, are properly symptoms of our true and unalterable character; not so those which, resulting from reflection and its dogmas, are often extorted from the character, and therefore have no unalterable ground in us.

But wisdom also, the true view of life, the correct eye, and the searching judgment, proceeds from the way in which the man apprehends the perceptible world, but not from his mere abstract knowledge, i.e., not from abstract conceptions. The basis or ultimate content of every science consists, not in proofs, nor in what is proved, but in the unproved foundation of the proofs, which can finally be apprehended only through perception.

So also the basis of the true wisdom and real insight of each man does not consist in conceptions and in abstract rational knowledge, but in what is perceived, and in the degree of acuteness, accuracy, and profundity with which he has apprehended it.

He who excels here knows the (Platonic) Ideas of the world and life ; every case he has seen represents for him innumerable cases; he always apprehends each being according to its true nature, and his action, like his judgment, corresponds to his insight. By degrees also his countenance assumes the expression of penetration, of true 2intelligence, and, if it goes far enough, of wisdom. For it is pre-eminence in knowledge of perception alone that stamps its impression upon the features also; while pre-eminence in abstract knowledge cannot do this. In accordance with what has been said, we find in all classes men of intellectual superiority, and often quite without learning.

Natural understanding can take the place of almost every degree of culture, but no culture can take the place of natural understanding.

The scholar has the advantage of such men in the possession of a wealth of cases and facts (historical knowledge) and of causal determinations (natural science), all in well-ordered connection, easily surveyed ; but yet with all this he has not a more accurate and profound insight into what is truly essential in all these cases, facts, and causations.

The unlearned man of acuteness and penetration knows how to dispense with this wealth ; we can make use of much ; we can do with little. One case in his own experience teaches him more than many a scholar is taught by a thousand cases which he knows, but does not, properly Bpeaking, understand.

For the little knowledge of that unlearned man is living, because every fact that is known to him is supported by accurate and well-apprehended perception, and thus represents for him a thousand similar facts. On the contrary, the much knowledge of the ordinary scholar is dead, because even if it does not consist, as is often the case, in mere words, it consists entirely in abstract knowledge.

This, however, receives its value only through the perceptive knowledge of the individual with which it must connect itself, and which must ultimately realise all the conceptions. If now this perceptive knowledge is very scanty, such a mind is like a bank with liabilities tenfold in excess of its cash reserve, whereby in the end it becomes bankrupt.

Therefore, while the right apprehension of the perceptible world has impressed the stamp of insight and wisdom on the brow of many an unlearned man, the face of many a scholar bears no other 3trace of his much study than that of exhaustion and weariness from excessive and forced straining of the memory in the unnatural accumulation of dead conceptions.

Moreover, the insight of such a man is often so puerile, so weak and silly, that we must suppose that the excessive strain upon the faculty of indirect knowledge, which is concerned with abstractions, directly weakens the power of immediate perceptive knowledge, and the natural and clear vision is more and more blinded by the light of books.

At any rate the constant streaming in of the thoughts of others must confine and suppress our own, and indeed in the long run paralyse the power of thought if it has not that high degree of elasticity which is able to withstand that unnatural stream.

Therefore ceaseless reading and study directly injures the mind— the more so that completeness and constant connection of the system of our own thought and knowledge must pay the penalty if we so often arbitrarily interrupt it in order to gain room for a line of thought entirely strange to us.

To banish my own thought in order to make room for that of a book would seem to me like what Shakespeai censures in the tourists of his time, that they sold theii own land to see that of others. Yet the inclination foi reading of most scholars is a kind of fuga vacui, from the poverty of their own minds, which forcibly draws in the thoughts of others.

In order to have thoughts they must read something; just as lifeless bodies are only moved from without ; while the man who thinks for himself is like a living body that moves of itself. Indeed it is dangerous to read about a subject before we have thought about it ourselves.

For along with the new material the old point of view and treatment of it creeps into the mind, all the more so as laziness and apathy counsel us to accept what has already been thought, and allow it to pass for truth. This now insinuates itself, and henceforward our thought on the subject always takes the accustomed path, like brooks that are guided by ditches ; to find a thought