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

already be there, because it is a condition of such perception. The one genuine proof that we are conscious of the law of causality before all experience lies in the necessity of making a transition from the sensation, which is only empirically given, to its cause, in order that it may become perception of the external world. Therefore I have substituted this proof for the Kantian, the incorrectness of which I have shown.

A most full and thorough exposition of the whole of this important subject, which is only touched on here, the a priori nature of the law of causality and the intellectual nature of empirical perception, will be found in my essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 21, to which 1 refer, in order to avoid the necessity of repeating here what is said there.

I have also shown there the enormous difference between the mere sensation of the senses and the perception of an objective world, and discovered the wide gulf that lies between the two. The law of causality alone can bridge across this gulf, and it presupposes for its application the two other forms which are related to it, space and time. Only by means of these three combined is the objective idea attained to.

Now whether the sensation from which we start to arrive at apprehension arises through the resistance which is suffered by our muscular exertion, or through the impression of light upon the retina, or of sound upon the nerves of the brain, &c &c, is really a matter of indifference.

The sensation always remains a mere datum for the understanding, which alone is capable of apprehending it as the effect of a cause different from itself, which the understanding now perceives as external. i.e., as something occupying and filling space, which if also a form inherent in the intellect prior to all experience.

Without this intellectual operation, for which tht forms must lie ready in us, the perception of an objecnM] external world could never arise from a mere sensatior within our skin. How can it ever be supposed that tht mere feeling of being hindered in intended motion, whicl

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occurs also in lameness, could be sufficient for this ? We may add to this that before I attempt to affect external things they must necessarily have affected me as motives. But this almost presupposes the apprehension of the external world. According to the theory in question (as I have remarked in the place referred to above), a man born without arms and legs could never attain to the idea of causality, and consequently could never arrive at the apprehension of the external world. But that this is not the case is proved by a fact communicated in Froriep's Notizen, July 1838, No. 133 — the detailed account, accompanied by a likeness, of an Esthonian girl, Eva Lauk, then fourteen years old, who was born entirely without arms or legs. The account concludes with these words: "According to the evidence of her mother, her mental development had been quite as quick as that of her brothers and sisters ; she attained just as soon as they did to a correct judgment of size and distance, yet without the assistance of hands. — Dorpat, 1st March 1838, Dr. A Hueck."

Hume's doctrine also, that the conception of causality arises from the custom of seeing two states constantly following each other, finds a practical refutation in the oldest of all successions, that of day and night, which no one has ever held to be cause and effect of each other. And the same succession also refutes Kant's false assertion that the objective reality of a succession is only known when we apprehend the two succeeding events as standing in the relation of cause and effect to each other, [ndeed the converse of this doctrine of Kant's is true. We know which of the two connected events is the cause ind which the effect, empirically, only in the succession, igain, on the other hand, the absurd assertion of several >rofessors of philosophy in our own day that cause and ffect are simultaneous can be refuted by the fact that in ases in which the succession cannot be perceived on ccount of its great rapidity, we yet assume it with

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