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

In nature, which consists of ideas of perception, everything that happens is necessary ; for it proceeds from iti cause. If, however, we consider this individual with re ference to everything else which is not its cause, w» know it as contingent; but this is already an abstrac reflection. Now, further, let us abstract entirely from i natural object its causal relation to everything else, thu its necessity and its contingency ; then this kind of know ledge comprehends the conception of the actual, in whic one only considers the effect, without looking for the cauw in relation to which one would otherwise have to call : necessary, and in relation to everything else contingen All this rests ultimately upon the fact that the modalit of the judgment does not indicate so much the objectiV nature of things as the relation of our knowledge to thei Since, however, in nature everything proceeds from cause, everything actual is also necessary, yet only so f; as it is at this time, in this place; for only so far do>

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determination by the law of causality extend. Let us leave, however, concrete nature and pass over to abstract thinking; then we can present to ourselves in reflection all the natural laws which are known to us partly a priori, partly only a posteriori, and this abstract idea contains all that is in nature at any time, in any place, but with abstraction from every definite time and place ; and just in this way, through such reflection, we have entered the wide kingdom of the possible. But what finds nc place even here is the impossible. It is clear that possibility and impossibility exist only for reflection, for abstract knowledge of the reason, not for knowledge of perception; although it is the pure forms of perception which supply the reason with the determination of the possible and impossible. According as the laws of nature, from which we start in the thought of the possible and impossible, are known a priori or a posteriori, is the possibility or impossibility metaphysical or physical.

From this exposition, which requires no proof because it rests directly upon the knowledge of the principle of sufficient reason and upon the development of the concep- ■. tions of the necessary, the actual, and the possible, it is sufficiently evident how entirely groundless is Kant's assumption of three special functions of the understanding for these three conceptions, and that here again he has allowed himself to be disturbed by no reflection in the carrying out of his architectonic symmetry.

To this, however, we have to add the other great mistake, that, certainly according to the procedure of earlier philosophy, he has confounded the conceptions of necessity and contingency with each other. That earlier philosophy has applied abstraction to the following mistaken use. It was clear that that of which the reason is given inevitably follows, i.e., cannot not be, and thus necessarily is. But that philosophy held to this last determination alone, and said that is necessary which cannot be otherwise, or the opposite of which is impossible. It left, however, the

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