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

Thus in all mere reasonings of the above kind it becomes very apparent what errors that algebra with mere conceptions, uncontrolled by perception, is exposed to, and that therefore perception is for our intellect what the firm ground upon which it stands is for our body : if we forsake perception everything is instabilis tellus, innabilit unda. The reader will pardon the fulness of these expositions and examples on account of their instructivenesa. I have sought by means of them to bring forward and support the difference, indeed the opposition, between perceptive and abstract or reflected knowledge, which has hitherto been too little regarded, and the establishment 0: which is a fundamental characteristic of ray philosophy For many phenomena of our mental life are only ex plicable through this distinction. The connecting linl between these two such different kinds of knowledg< is the faculty of judgment, as I have shown in § 14 0 the first volume. This faculty is certainly also activ

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in the province of mere abstract knowledge, in which it compares conceptions only with conceptions ; therefore every judgment, in the logical sense of the word, is certainly a work of the faculty of judgment, for it always consists in the subsumption of a narrower conception under a wider one.

Yet this activity of the faculty of judgment, in which it merely compares conceptions with each other, is a simpler and easier task than when it makes the transition from what is quite particular, the perception, to the ..essentially general, the conception.

For by the analysis of conceptions into their essential predicates it must be possible to decide upon purely logical grounds whether they are capable of being united or not, and for this the mere reason which every one possesses is sufficient The faculty of judgment is therefore only active here in shortening this process, for he who is gifted with it sees at a glance what others only arrive at through a series of reflections.

But its activity in the narrower sense really only appears when what is known through perception, thus the real experience, has to be carried over into distinct abstract knowledge, subsumed under accurately corresponding conceptions, and thus translated into reflected rational knowledge. It is therefore this faculty which has to establish the firm basis of all sciences, which always consists of what is known directly and cannot be further denied.

Therefore here, in the fundamental judgments, lies the difficulty of the sciences, not in the inferences from these. To infer is easy, to judge is difficult. False inferences are rare, false judgments are always the order of the day. Not less in practical life has the faculty of judgment to give the decision in all fundamental conclusions and important determinations. Its office is in the main like that of the judicial sentence.

As the burningglass brings to a focus all the sun's rays, so when the understanding works, the intellect has to bring together all the data which it has upon the subject so closely that the understanding comprehends them at a glance, which

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it now rightly fixes, and then carefully makes the result distinct to itself. Further, the great difficulty of judging in most cases depends upon the fact that we have to proceed from the consequent to the reason, a path which is always uncertain ; indeed I have shown that the source of all error lies here. Yet in all the empirical sciences, and also in the affairs of real life, this way is for the most part the only one open to us. The experiment is an attempt to go over it again the other way; therefore it is decisive, and at least brings out error clearly ; provided always that it is rightly chosen and honestly carried out; not like Newton's experiments in connection with the theory of colours. But the experiment itself must also again be judged. The complete certainty of the a priori sciences, logic and mathematics, depends principally upon the fact that in them the path from the reason to the consequent is open to us, and it is always certain. This gives them the character of purely objective sciences, i.«., sciences with regard to whose truths all who understand them must judge alike ; and this is all the more remarkable as they are the very sciences which rest on the subjective forms of the intellect, while the empirical sciences alone have to do with what is palpably objective.