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.
If the proof of the thesis in the first conflict is to be held as valid, then it proves too much, for it would be just as applicable to time itself as to change in time, and would therefore prove that time itself must have had a beginning, which is absurd. Besides, the sophism consists in this, that instead of the beginninglessness of the series of states, which was at first the question, suddenly the endlessness (infinity) of the series is substituted ; and now it is proved that this is logically contradicted by completeness, and yet every present is the end of the past* which no one doubted. The end of a beginningless series can, however, always be thought, without prejudice to the fact that it has no beginning ; just as, conversely, the beginning of an endless series can also be thought. But against the real, true argument of the antithesis, that the changes of the world necessarily presuppose an infinite series of changes backwards, absolutely nothing is advanced. We can think the possibility that the causal chain will some day end in an absolute standstill, but we can by no means think the possibility of an absolute beginning.1 of the world in time is certainly not Maya, for they at once bring out a necessary thought of the reason very ingeniously the relativity of all may be also proved historically, for periods of time in the follow 1:
1 That the assumption of a limit this fleeting and baseless web of
the Hindus teach nothing of the thus (Polier, Mythologit dcM ^^^H kind, even in the religion of the vol. ii. p. 585). The four .-.
)>eople, much less in the Vedas, but the last of which we live, ei try to express mythological ly by together 4,320,000 yean. Each daj means of a monstrous chronology the of the creating Brahma li.
With reference to the spatial limits of the world, it is proved that, if it is to he regarded as a given whole, it must necessarily have limits. The reasoning is correct, onlyit was just the first link of it that was to be proved, and that remains unproved. Totality presupposes limits, and limits presuppose totality ; but here both together are arbitrarily presupposed.
For this second point, however, the antithesis affords no sucli satisfactory proof as for the first, because the law of causality provides us with necessary determinations only with reference to time, not to space, and affords us a priori the certainty that no occupied time can ever be bounded by a previous empty time, and that no change can be the first change, but not that an occupied space can have no empty space beside it.
So far no a priori decision on the latter point would be possible ; yet the difficulty of conceiving the world in space as limited lies in the fact that space itself is necessarily infinite, and therefore a limited finite world in space, however large it may be, becomes an infinitely small magnitude ; and in this incongruity the imagination finds an insuperable stumbling-block, because there remains for it only the choice of thinking the world either as infinitely large or infinitely small.
This was already seen by the ancient philosophers : MrjrpoBmpo^, 6 Kadryyqrris Eiriicovpov, <f>r]cnv wtottov eivai ev p,eya\q> 7re$i(p kva arayyv yevvr)dr]vai, kcli kva Koafiov ev r<p cnreiprp (Metrodorus, caput scholce Epicuri, absurdum ait, in magno campo spicam unam product, et unum in infinito mandum) Stob. Ech, i. c. 23. Therefore many of them taught (as immediately follows), aireipov? Koo-pbov? ev rep atreipw (infinitos mundos in infinito). This is also the sense of the Kantian argument for the nights have also 1000. His year Polier's work, voL ii. p. 594, from has 365 days and as many nights, the Puranas. In it a Rajah, after a
He lives 100 of his years, always visit of a few seconds to Vishnu in creating ; and if he dies, at once a his heaven, finds on his return to new Brahma is born, and so on from earth that several millions of years eternity to eternity. The same re- have elapsed, and a new age has lativity of time is also expressed in begun ; for every day of Vishnu is the special myth which is quoted in 100 recurrences of the four ages.
no CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.
antithesis, only he has disfigured it by a scholastic and ambiguous expression. The same argument might be used against the limitation of the world in time, only we have a far better one under the guidance of causality. In the case of the assumption of a world limited in space, there arises further the unanswerable question, What advantage lias the filled part of space enjoyed over the infinite space that has remained empty ? In the fifth dialogue of his book, "Del Infinite), Universo e Mondi" Giordano Bruno gives a full account of the arguments for and against the finiteness of the world, which is very well worth reading. For the rest, Kant himself asserts seriously, and upon objective grounds, the infinity of the world in space in his " Natural History of the Theory of the Heavens," part ii. ch. 7. Aristotle also acknowledges the same, " Phys.," iii. ch. 4, a chapter which, together with the following one, is very well worth reading with reference to this antinomy.
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