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

its entire intellectuality, by virtue of which, as Euler says, we apprehend the thing itself, and as external to us, finds an analogy in the way in which we feel the parts of our own bodies, especially when they suffer pain, which when we do feel them is generally the case. Just as we imagine that we perceive things where they are, while the perception really takes place in the brain, we believe that we feel the pain of a limb in the limb itself, while in reality it also is felt in the brain, to which it is conducted by the nerve of the affected part Therefore, only the affections of those parts whose nerves go to the brain are felt, and not those of the parts whose nerves belong to the sympathetic system, unless it be that an unusually strong affection of these parts penetrates by some roundabout way to the brain, where yet for the most part it only makes itself known as a dull sense of discomfort, and always without definite determination of its locality. Hence, also, it is that we do not feel injuries to a limb whose nerve-trunk has been severed or ligatured. And hence, finally, the man who has lost a limb still sometimes feels pain in it, because the nerves which go to the brain are still there. Thus, in the two phenomena here compared, what goes on in the brain is apprehended as outside of it ; in the case of perception, by means of the understanding, which extends its feelers into the outer world ; in the case of the feeling of our limbs, by means of the nerves.

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CHAPTEE IIL

ON THE SENSES.

It is not the object of my writings to repeat what has been said by others, and therefore I only make here some special remarks of my own on the subject of the senses.

The senses are merely the channels through which the brain receives from without (in the form of sensations) the materials which it works up into ideas of perception Those sensations which principally serve for the objective comprehension of the external world must in themselves be neither agreeable nor disagreeable. This really means that thoy must leave the will entirely unaffected. Otherwise the sensation itself would attract our attention, and we would remain at the effect instead of passing to the cause, which is what is aimed at here. For it would bring with it that marked superiority, as regards oui consideration, which the will always has over the mere idea, to which we only turn when the will is silent. Therefore colours and sounds are in themselves, and so long as their impression does not pass the normal degree, neither painful nor pleasurable sensations, but appear with the indifference that fits them to be the material of pure objective perception. This is as far the case as was possible in a body which is in itself through and through will; and just in this reppect it is worthy of admiration. Physiologically it rests upon the fact that in the organs of the nobler senses, thus in sight and hearing, the nerves which have to receive the specific outward impression are quite insusceptible to any sensation of pain, vol. u. N i94 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER III.

and know no other sensation than that which is specifically peculiar to them, and which serves the purpose of mere apprehension. Thus the retina, as also the optic nerve, is insensible to every injury ; and this is also the case with the nerve of hearing. In both organs pain is only felt in their other parts, the surroundings of the nerve of sense which is peculiar to them, never in this nerve itself.

In the case of the eye such pain is felt principally in the conjunctiva ; in the case of the ear, in the meatus auditorius. Even with the brain this is the case, for if it is cut into directly, thus from above, it has no feeling.

Thus only on account of this indifference with regard to the will which is peculiar to them are the sensations of the eye capable of supplying the understanding with such multifarious and finely distinguished data, out of which it constructs in our head the marvellous objective world, by the application of the law of causality upon the foundation of the pure perceptions of space and time.

Just that freedom from affecting the will which is characteristic of sensations of colour enables them, when their energy is heightened by transparency, as in the glow of an evening sky, in painted glass, and the like, to raise us very easily into the state of pure objective will-less perception, which, as I have shown in my third book, is one of the chief constituent elements of the aesthetic impression.

Just this indifference with regard to the will fits sounds to supply the material for denoting the infinite multiplicity of the conceptions of the reason.