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

The categories were a procrustean bed for every possib thing, but the three kinds of syllogisms are so only for tl three so-called Ideas. The Idea of the soul was compell< to find its origin in the form of the categorical syllogisi It is now the turn of the dogmatic ideas concerning tl universe, so far as it is thought as an object in itself, b tween two limits — that of the smallest (atom), and that the largest (limits of the universe in time and space). The must now proceed from the form of the hypotheticp. 105 syllogism. Nor for this in itself is any special violence necessary. For the hypothetical judgment has its form from the principle of sufficient reason, and not the cosmological alone but all those so-called Ideas really have their origin in the inconsiderate and unrestricted application of that principle, and the laying aside of it at pleasure. For, in accordance with that principle, the mere dependence of an object upon another is ever sought for, till finally the exhaustion of the imagination puts an end to the journey \ and thus it is lost sight of that every object, and indeed the whole chain of objects and the principle of sufficient reason itself, stand in a far closer and greater dependence, the dependence upon the knowing subject, for whose objects alone, i.e., ideas, that principle is valid, for their mere position in space and time is determined by it. Thus, since the form of knowledge from which here merely the cosmological Ideas are derived, the principle of sufficient reason, is the source of all subtle hypostases, in this case no sophisms need be resorted to ; but so much the more is sophistry required in order to classify those Ideas according to the four titles of the categories.

(1.) The cosmological Ideas with regard to time and space, thus of the limits of the world in both, are boldly regarded as determined through the category of quantity, with which they clearly have nothing in common, except the accidental denotation in logic of the extent of the concept of the subject in the judgment by the word quantity, a pictorial expression instead of which some other might just as well have been chosen. But for Kant's love of symmetry this is enough. He takes advantage of the fortunate accident of this nomenclature, and links to it the transcendent dogmas of the world's extension.

(2.) Yet more boldly does Kant link to quality, i.e., the affirmation or negation in a judgment, the transcendent Ideas concerning matter; a procedure which has not even an accidental similarity of words as a basis. For it is just io6 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

to the quantity, and not to the quality of matter that its mechanical (not chemical) divisibility is related. But, what is more, this whole idea of divisibility by no means belongs to those inferences according to the principle of sufficient reason, from which, however, as the content of the hypothetical form, all cosmological Ideas ought to flow.

For the assertion upon which Kant there relies, that the relation of the parts to the whole is that of the condition to the conditioned, thus a relation according to the principle of sufficient reason, is certainly an ingenious but yet a groundless sophism.

That relation is rather based upon the principle of contradiction ; for the whole is not through the part, nor the parte through the whole, but both are necessarily together because they are one, and their separation is only an arbitrary act It depends upon this, according to the principle of contradiction, that if the parts are thought away, the whole is also thought away, and conversely ; and by no means upon the fact that the parts as the reason conditioned the whole as the consequent, and that therefore, in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason, we were necessarily led to seek the ultimate parts, in order, as its reason, to understand from them the whole. Such great difficulties are here overcome by the love of symmetry.