The World as Will and Idea, Vol. II — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp
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The translator’s English as printed (R. B. Haldane & J. Kemp). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
able physically. As for the motion of the projected bullet, so also for the thinking of the brain, a physical explanation must ultimately be in itself possible, which would make the latter just as comprehensible as is the former.
But even the former, which we imagine we understand so perfectly, is at bottom as obscure to us as the latter ; for what the inner nature of expansion in space may be — of impenetrability, mobility, hardness, elasticity, and gravity remains, after all physical explanations, a mystery, just as much as thought.
But because in the case of thought the inexplicable appears most immediately, a spring was at once made here from physics to metaphysics, and a substance of quite a different kind from all corporeal substances was hypostatised — a soul was set up in the brain.
But if one had not been so dull as only to be capable of being struck by the most remarkable of phenomena, one would have had to explain digestion by a soul in the stomach, vegetation by a soul in the plant, affinity by a soul in the reagents, nay, the falling of a stone by a soul in the stone. For the quality of every unorganised body is just as mysterious as the life in the living body.
In the same way, therefore, the physical explanation strikes everywhere upon what is metaphysical, by which it is annihilated, i.e., it ceases to be explanation. Strictly speaking, it may be asserted that no natural science really achieves anything more than what is also achieved by Botany : the bringing together of similars, classification.
A physical system which asserted that its explanations of things — in the particular from causes, and in general from forces — were really sufficient, and thus exhausted the nature of the world, would be the true Naturalism.
From Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus down to the Systeme de la Nature, and further, to Delamark, Cabanis, and to the materialism that has again been warmed up in the last few years, we can trace the persistent attempt to set up a system of physics without metaphysics, that is, a system which would make the phenomenon the thing in itself. But all their explanaONp. 379 tions seek to conceal from the explainers themselves and from others that they simply assume the principal matter without more ado. They endeavour to show that all phenomena, even those of mind, are physical. And they are right ; only they do not see that all that is physical is in another aspect also metaphysical. But, without Kant, this is indeed difficult to see, for it presupposes the distinction of the phenomenon from the thing in itself. Yet without this Aristotle, much as he was inclined to empiricism, and far as he was removed from the Platonic hyperphysics, kept himself free from this limited point of view. He says : " El fiev ovv fir} eon Tt? krepa ovaia irapa ra<i (f>vcrec avve<TT7jKVta<i, r) (pvaiKr) av eir) 7rpa>T7) eTn<TTwp.r)' et Se eorc Tt9 ovcrca a/avr)TO<;, avrrj irporepa kcu <f>iXoaro<f>ia Trpayrr),
Kdl KddoXoV OVTWS, OTl TTpOOTT}' Kdl 7T6/H TOV OVTOS 7) OV,
Tavrr}<; av eirj deayprjaai." (Si igitur noil est aliqua alia substantia, prceter eas, quae natura consistunt, physica profecto 'prima scientia esset : quodsi autem est aliqua substantia immobilis, hcec prior et philosophia prima, et universalis sic, quod prima ; et de ente, prout ens est, speculari hujus est), "Metaph." v. I. Such an absolute system of physics as is described above, which leaves room for no metaphysics, would make the Natura naturata into the Natura naturans; it would be physics established on the throne of metaphysics, yet it would comport itself in this high position almost like Holberg's theatrical would-be politician who was made burgomaster. Indeed behind the reproach of atheism, in itself absurd, and for the most part malicious, there lies, as its inner meaning and truth, which gives it strength, the obscure conception of such an absolute system of physics without metaphysics. Certainly such a system would necessarily be destructive of ethics ; and while Theism has falsely been held to be inseparable from morality, this is really true only of metaphysics in general, i.e., of the knowledge that the order of nature is not the only and absolute order of things. Therefore we may set up this as the necessary Credo of all just and
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