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

makes it abstract knowledge in concepts, whereby its concrete or perceptible character is lost, but, on the other hand, combination of it becomes possible, which immeasurably extends the range of its applicability.

The material of our thought is, on the other hand, nothing else than our perceptions themselves, and not something which the perceptions did not contain, and which was added by the thought ; therefore the material of everything that appears in our thought must be capable of verification in our perception, for otherwise it would be an empty thought.

Although this material is variously manipulated and transformed by thought, it must yet be capable of being reduced to perception, and the thought traced back to this — just as a piece of gold can be reduced from all its solutions, oxides, sublimates, and combinations, and presented pure and undiminished. This could not happen if thought itself had added something, and, indeed, the principal thing, to the object

The whole of the chapter on the Amphiboly, which follows this, is merely a criticism of the Leibnitzian philosophy, and as such is on the whole correct, though the form or pattern on which it is constructed is chosen merely for the sake of architectonic symmetry, which here also is the guiding clue. Thus, to carry out the analogy with the Aristotelian Organon, a transcendental Topic is set up, which consists in this, that every conception is to be considered from four points of view, in order to make out to which faculty of knowledge it belongs. But these four points of view are quite arbitrarily selected, and ten others might be added to them with just as much right ; but their fourfold number corresponds to the titles of the categories, and therefore the chief doctrine of Leibnitz is divided among them as best it may be. By this critique, also, to some extent, certain errors are stamped as natural to the reason, whereas they were merely false abstractions of Leibnitz's, who, rather than learn from his great philosophical contemporaries, Spinoza and Locke, preferred to

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serve up his own strange inventions.

In the chapter on the Amphiboly of Reflection it is finally said that there may possibly be a kind of perception entirely different from ours, to which, however, our categories are applicable ; therefore the objects of that supposed perception would be noumena, things which can only be thought by us ; but since the perception which would give that thought meaning is wanting to us, and indeed is altogether quite problematical, the object of that thought would also merely be a wholly indefinite possibility.

I have shown above by quotations that Kant, in utter contradiction with himself, sets up the categories now as the condition of knowledge of perception, now as the function of merely abstract thought. Here they appear exclusively in the latter sense, and it seems quite as if he wished to attribute them merely to discursive thought.

But if this is really his opinion, then necessarily at the beginning of the Transcendental Logic, before specifying the different functions of thought at such length, he was necessarily bound to characterise thought in general, and consequently to distinguish it from perception ; he ought to have shown what knowledge is g by mere perception, and what that is new is added thought.

Then we would have known what he was re speaking about ; or rather, he would then have spoke quite differently, first of perception, and then of thought instead of which, as it is, he is always dealing with soi thing between the two, which is a mere delusion.

There would not then be that great gap between the transoM dental ^Esthetic and the transcendental Logic, where, aftei the exposition of the mere form of perception, he siinplj dismisses its content, all that is empirically apprehended with the phrase " It is given," and does not ask how i came about, whether with or without understanding ; bui with one spring, passes over to abstract thought ; and uc even to thought in general, but at once to certain forms ( thought, and does not say a word about what thoughflj what the concept is, what is the relation of abstract an