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

sufficient reason, § 23. From the above it is clear that Kant's "object of the idea" (2) is made up of what he has stolen partly from the idea (1), and partly from the thing in itself (3 ).

If, in reality, experience were only brought about by the understanding applying its twelve different functions in order to think through as many conceptions a priori, the objects which were previously merely perceived, then every real thing would necessarily as such have a number of determinations, which, as given a priori, absolutely could not be thought away, just like space and time, but would belong quite essentially to the existence of the thing, and yet could not be deduced from the properties of space and time.

But only one such determination is to be found — that of causality. Upon this rests materiality, for the essence of matter consists in action, and it is through and through causality (c/. Bk. II. ch. iv.) But it is materiality alone that distinguishes the real thing from the picture of the imagination, which is then only idea.

For matter, as permanent, gives to the thing permanence through all time, in respect of its matter, while the forms change in conformity with causality. Everything else in the thing consists either of determinations of space or of time, or of its empirical properties, which are all referable to its activity, and are thus fuller determinations of causality.

But causality enters already as a condition into the empirical perception, and this is accordingly a thing of the understanding, which makes even perception possible, and yet apart from the law of causality contributes nothing to experience and its possibilty. What fills the old ontologies is, with the exception of what is given here, nothing more than relations of things to each other, or to our reflection, and a farrago of nonsense.

The language in which the doctrine of the categories is expressed affords an evidence of its baselessness. What a difference in this respect between the Transcendental ^Esthetic and the Transcendental Analytic! In the

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former, what clearness, definiteness, certainty, firm conviction which is freely expressed and infallibly communicates itself ! All is full of light, no dark lurkingplaces are left : Kant knows what he wants and knows that he is right. In the latter, on the other hand, all is obscure, confused, indefinite, wavering, uncertain, the language anxious, full of excuses and appeals to what is coming, or indeed of suppression.

Moreover, the whole second and third sections of the Deduction of the Pure Conceptions of the Understanding are completely changed in the second edition, because they did not satisfy Kant himself, and they have become quite different from the first edition, though not clearer. We actually see Kant in conflict with the truth in order to carry out his hypothesis which he has once fixed upon.

In the Transcendental ^Esthetic all his propositions are really proved from undeniable facts of consciousness , in the Transcendental Analytic, on the contrary, we find, if we consider it closely, mere assertions that thus it is and must be. Here, then, as everywhere, the language bears the stamp of the thought from which it has proceeded, for style is the physiognomy of the mind.

We have still to remark, that whenever Kant wishes to give an example for the purpose of fuller explanation, he almost always takes for this end the category of causality, and then what he has said turns out correct ; for the law of causality is indeed the real form of the understanding, but it is also its only form, and the remaining eleven categories are merely blind windows.

The deduction of the categories is simpler and less involved in the first edition than in the second. He labours to explain how, according to the perception given by sensibility, the understanding produces experience by means of thinking the categories. In doing so, the words recognition, reproduction, association, apprehension, transcendental unity of apperception, are repeated to weariness, and yet no distinctness is attained. It is well worth noticing, however, that in this explanaCRITICISMp. 45