principle by which to explain the source of all explanation: just as the eye is unable to see itself, though it sees everything else.
There are of course series of motives, since the resolve to attain an end becomes the motive for the resolve to use a whole series of means; still this series invariably ends _à parte priori_ in a representation belonging to one of our two first classes, in which lies the motive which originally had the power to set this individual will in motion. The fact that it was able to do this, is a datum for knowing the empirical character here given, but it is impossible to answer the question why that particular motive acts upon that particular character; because the intelligible character lies outside Time and never becomes an Object. Therefore the series of motives, as such, finds its termination in some such final motive and, according to the nature of its last link, passes into the series of causes, or that of reasons of knowledge: that is to say, into the former, when that last link is a real object; into the latter, when it is a mere conception.
§ 51. _Each Science has for its Guiding Thread one of the Forms of the Principle of Sufficient Reason in preference to the others._ As the question _why_ always demands a sufficient reason, and as it is the connection of its notions according to the principle of sufficient reason which distinguishes science from a mere aggregate of notions, we have called that _why_ the parent of all science (§ 4).
In each science, moreover, we find one of the forms of that principle predominating over the others as its guiding-thread. Thus in pure Mathematics the reason of being is the chief guiding-thread (although the exposition of the proofs proceeds according to the reason of knowing only); in applied Mathematics the law of causality appears together with it, but in Physics, Chemistry, Geology, &c., that law entirely predominates. The principle of sufficient reason in knowing finds vigorous application throughout all the sciences, for in all of them the particular is known through the general; but in Botany, Zoology, Mineralogy, and other classifying sciences, it is the chief guide and predominates absolutely. The law of motives (_motivation_) is the chief guide in History, Politics, Pragmatic Psychology, &c. &c., when we consider all motives and maxims, whatever they may be, as data for explaining actions--but when we make those motives and maxims the object-matter of investigation from the point of view of their value and origin, the law of motives becomes the guide to Ethics. In my chief work will be found the highest classification of the sciences according to this principle.[160] edition (p. 139 of the 3rd edition).
I have endeavoured in this treatise to show that the Principle of Sufficient Reason is a common expression for four completely different relations, each of which is founded upon a particular law given _à priori_ (the principle of sufficient reason being a synthetical _à priori_ principle). Now, according to the principle of _homogeneity_, we are compelled to assume that these four laws, discovered according to the principle of specification, as they agree in being expressed by one and the same term, must necessarily spring from one and the same original quality of our whole cognitive faculty as their common root, which we should accordingly have to look upon as the innermost germ of all dependence, relativeness, instability and limitation of the objects of our consciousness--itself limited to Sensibility, Understanding, Reason, Subject and Object--or of that world, which the divine Plato repeatedly degrades to the ἀεὶ γιγνόμενον μὲν καὶ ἀπολλύμενον, ὄντως δὲ οὐδέποτε ὄν (ever arising and perishing, but in fact never existing), the knowledge of which is merely a δόξα μετ' αἰσθήσεως ἀλόγου, and which Christendom, with a correct instinct, calls _temporal_, after that form of our principle (Time) which I have defined as its simplest schema and the prototype of all limitation.
The general meaning of the Principle of Sufficient Reason may, in the main, be brought back to this: that every thing existing no matter when or where, exists _by reason of something else_. Now, the Principle of Sufficient Reason is nevertheless _à priori_ in all its forms: that is, it has its root in our intellect, therefore it must not be applied to the totality of existent things, the Universe, including that intellect in which it presents itself. For a world like this, which presents itself in virtue of _à priori_ forms, is just on that account mere phenomenon; consequently that which holds good with reference to it as the result of these forms, cannot be applied to the world itself, _i.e._ to the thing in itself, representing itself in that world. Therefore we cannot say, "the world and all things in it exist by reason of something else;" and this proposition is precisely the Cosmological Proof.
If, by the present treatise, I have succeeded in deducing the result just expressed, it seems to me that every speculative philosopher who founds a conclusion upon the Principle of Sufficient Reason or indeed talks of a reason at all, is bound to specify which kind of reason he means. One might suppose that wherever there was any question of a reason, this would be done as a matter of course, and that all confusion would thus be impossible. Only too often, however, do we still find either the terms reason and cause confounded in indiscriminate use; or do we hear basis and what is based, condition and what is conditioned, _principia_ and _principiata_ talked about in quite a _general_ way without any nearer determination, perhaps because there is a secret consciousness that these conceptions are being used in an unauthorized way. Thus even Kant speaks of the thing in itself as the _reason_[161] of the phenomenon, and also of a _ground_ of the _possibility_ of all phenomena,[162] of an _intelligible cause_ of phenomena, of an _unknown ground_ of the possibility of the sensuous series in general, of a _transcendental object_[163] as the _ground_ of all phenomena and of the _reason_ why our sensibility should have this rather than all other supreme conditions, and so on in several places.
Now all this does not seem to me to tally with those weighty, profound, nay immortal words of his,[164] "the contingency[165] of things is itself mere phenomenon, and can lead to no other than the empirical regressus which determines phenomena."
[161] Or _ground_.
590 of the 5th edition. (Pp. 483 to 486 of the English translation by M. Müller.)
466 of English translation.)
of English translation.)
[165] Empirical contingency is meant, which, with Kant, signifies as much as dependence upon other things. As to this, I refer my readers to my censure in my "Critique of Kantian Philosophy," p.
524 of the 2nd, and p. 552 of the 3rd edition.
That since Kant the conceptions reason and consequence, _principium_ and _principiatum_, &c. &c., have been and still are used in a yet more indefinite and even quite transcendent sense, everyone must know who is acquainted with the more recent works on philosophy.
The following is my objection against this promiscuous employment of the word _ground_ (reason) and, with it, of the Principle of Sufficient Reason in general; it is likewise the second result, intimately connected with the first, which the present treatise gives concerning its subject-matter proper. The four laws of our cognitive faculty, of which the Principle of Sufficient Reason is the common expression, by their common character as well as by the fact that all Objects for the Subject are divided amongst them, proclaim themselves to be posited by one and the same primary quality and inner peculiarity of our knowing faculty, which faculty manifests itself as Sensibility, Understanding, and Reason. Therefore, even if we imagined it to be possible for a new Fifth Class of Objects to come about, we should in that case likewise have to assume that the Principle of Sufficient Reason would appear in this class also under a different form. Notwithstanding all this, we still have no right to talk of an _absolute reason_ (ground), nor does a _reason in general_, any more than a _triangle in general_, exist otherwise than as a conception derived by means of discursive reflection, nor is this conception, as a representation drawn from other representations, anything more than a means of thinking several things in one. Now, just as every triangle must be either acute-angled, right-angled, or obtuse-angled, and either equilateral, isosceles or scalene, so also must every reason belong to one or other of the four possible kinds of reasons I have pointed out. Moreover, since we have only four well-distinguished Classes of Objects, every reason must also belong to one or other of these four, and no further Class being possible, Reason itself is forced to rank it within them; for as soon as we employ a reason, we presuppose the Four Classes as well as the faculty of representing (_i.e._ the whole world), and must hold ourselves within these bounds, never transcending them. Should others, however, see this in a different light and opine that a _reason in general_ is anything but a conception, derived from the four kinds of reasons, which expresses what they all have in common, we might revive the controversy of the Realists and Nominalists, and then I should side with the latter.
ON THE WILL IN NATURE.
AN ACCOUNT OF THE CORROBORATIONS RECEIVED BY THE AUTHOR'S PHILOSOPHY SINCE ITS FIRST APPEARANCE FROM THE EMPIRICAL SCIENCES.
BY ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER.
_Translated from the Fourth Edition published by_ JULIUS FRAUENSTÄDT.
Τοιαῦτ' ἐμοῦ λόγοισιν ἐξηγουμένου, Οὐκ ἠξίωσαν οὐδὲ προσβλέψαι τὸ πᾶν· Ἀλλ' ἐκδιδάσκει πάνθ' ὁ γηράσκων χρόνος.
ÆSCH.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
To my great joy I have lived to revise even this little work, after a lapse of nineteen years, and that joy is enhanced by the special importance of this treatise for my philosophy. For, starting from the purely empirical, from the observations of unbiassed physical investigators--themselves following the clue of their own special sciences--I here immediately arrive at the very kernel of my Metaphysic; I establish its points of contact with the physical sciences and thus corroborate my fundamental dogma, in a sense, as the arithmetician proves a sum: for by this I not only confirm it more closely and specially, but even make it more clearly, easily, and rightly understood than anywhere else.
The improvements in this new edition are confined almost entirely to the Additions; for scarcely anything that is worth mentioning in the First Edition has been left out, while I have inserted many and, in some cases, important new passages.
But, even in a general sense, it may be looked upon as a good sign, that a new edition of the present treatise should have been found necessary; since it shows that there is an interest in serious philosophy and confirms the fact that the necessity for real progress in this direction is now more strongly felt than ever. This is based upon two circumstances. The first is the unparalleled zeal and activity displayed in every branch of Natural Science which, as this pursuit is mostly in the hands of people who have learned nothing else, threatens to lead to a gross, stupid Materialism, the _more immediately_ offensive side of which is less the moral bestiality of its ultimate results, than the incredible absurdity of its first principles; for by it even vital force is denied, and organic Nature is degraded to a mere chance play of chemical forces.[166] These knights of the crucible and retort should be made to understand, that the mere study of Chemistry qualifies a man to become an apothecary, but not a philosopher. Certain other like-minded investigators of Nature, too, must be taught, that a man may be an accomplished zoologist and have the sixty species of monkeys at his fingers' ends, yet on the whole be an ignoramus to be classed with the vulgar, if he has learnt nothing else, save perhaps his school-catechism. But in our time this frequently happens. Men set themselves up for enlighteners of mankind, who have studied Chemistry, or Physics, or Mineralogy and nothing else under the sun; to this they add their only knowledge of any other kind, that is to say, the little they may remember of the doctrines of the school-catechism, and when they find that these two elements will not harmonize, they straightway turn scoffers at religion and soon become shallow and absurd materialists.[167] They may perhaps have heard at college of the existence of a Plato and an Aristotle, of a Locke, and especially of a Kant; but as these folk never handled crucibles and retorts or even stuffed a monkey, they do not esteem them worthy of further acquaintance. They prefer calmly to toss out of the window the intellectual labour of two thousand years and treat the public to a philosophy concocted out of their own rich mental resources, on the basis of the catechism on the one hand, and on that of crucibles and retorts or the catalogue of monkeys on the other. They ought to be told in plain language that they are ignoramuses, who have much to learn before they can be allowed to have any voice in the matter. Everyone, in fact, who dogmatizes at random, with the _naïve_ realism of a child on such arguments as God, the soul, the world's origin, atoms, &c. &c.
&c., as if the Critique of Pure Reason had been written in the moon and no copy had found its way to our planet--is simply one of the vulgar.
Send him into the servants' hall, where his wisdom will best find a market.[168] [166] And this infatuation has reached such a point, that people seriously imagine themselves to have found the key to the mystery of the essence and existence of this wonderful and mysterious world in wretched _chemical affinities_! Compared with this illusion of our physiological chemists, that of the alchymists who sought after the philosopher's stone, and only hoped to find out the secret of making gold, was indeed a mere trifle. [Add. to 3rd ed.]
[167] "_Aut catechismus, aut materialismus_," is their watchword.
[Add. to 3rd ed.]
[168] There too he will meet with people who fling about words of foreign origin, which they have caught up without understanding them, just as readily as he does himself, when he talks about "_Idealism_" without knowing what it means, mostly therefore using the word instead of Spiritualism (which being Realism, is the opposite to Idealism). Hundreds of examples of this kind besides other _quid pro quos_ are to be found in books, and critical periodicals. [Add. to 3rd ed.]
The other circumstance which calls for a real progress in philosophy, is the steady growth of unbelief in the face of all the hypocritical dissembling and the outward conformity to the Church. This unbelief necessarily and unavoidably goes hand in hand with the growing expansion of empirical and historical knowledge. It threatens to destroy not only the form, but even the spirit of Christianity (a spirit which has a much wider reach than Christianity itself), and to deliver up mankind to _moral_ materialism--a thing even more dangerous than the chemical materialism already mentioned. And nothing plays more into the hands of this unbelief, than the Tartuffianism _de rigueur_ impudently flaunting itself everywhere just now, whose clumsy disciples, fee in hand, hold forth with such unction and emphasis, that their voices penetrate even into learned, critical reviews issued by Academies and Universities, and into physiological as well as philosophical books, where however, being quite in their wrong place, they only damage their own cause by rousing indignation.[169] Under such circumstances as these, it is gratifying to see the public betray an interest in philosophy.
[169] They ought everywhere to be shown that their belief is not believed in. [Add. to 3rd ed.]
I have nevertheless one sad piece of news to communicate to our professors of philosophy. Their Caspar Hauser (according to Dorguth) whom they had so carefully secreted, so securely walled up for nearly forty years, that no sound could betray his existence to the world--their Caspar Hauser--I say, has escaped! He has escaped and is running about in the world;--some even say he is a prince. In plain language, the misfortune they feared more than anything has come to pass after all. In spite of their having done their best to prevent it for more than a generation by acting with united force, with rare constancy, secreting and ignoring to a degree that is without example, my books are beginning and henceforth will continue to be read. _Legor et legar_: there is no help for it. This is really dreadful and most inopportune; nay, it is a positive fatality, not to say calamity. Is this the recompense for all their faithful, snug secrecy; for having held so firmly and unitedly together? Poor time-servers! What becomes "Est et fideli tuta silentio Merces,----?"
For verily they have not been deficient in faithful reticence; rather do they excel in this quality wherever they scent merit. And, after all, it is no doubt the cleverest artifice; for what no one knows, is as though it did not exist. Whether the _merces_ will remain quite so _tuta_, seems rather doubtful--unless we are to take _merces_ in a _bad_ sense; and for this the support of many a classical authority might certainly be found. These gentlemen had seen quite rightly that the only means to be used against my writings, was to secrete them from the public by maintaining profound silence concerning them, while they kept up a loud noise at the birth of every misshapen offspring of professorial philosophy; as the voice of the new-born Zeus was drowned in days of yore by the clashing of the cymbals of the Corybantes.
But this expedient is now used up; the secret is out--the public has discovered me. The rage of our professors of philosophy at this is great, but powerless; for their only effective resource, so long successfully employed, being exhausted, no snarling can avail any longer against my influence, and in vain do they now take this, or that, or the other attitude. They have certainly succeeded, so far as the generation which was properly speaking contemporaneous with my philosophy, went to the grave in ignorance of it. But this was a mere postponement, and Time has kept its word, as it always does.
Now there are two reasons why these gentlemen "in the philosophical trade"--as they call themselves with incredible _naïveté_--hate my philosophy. The first of them is, that my writings spoil the taste of the public for tissues of empty phrases, for accumulations of unmeaning words piled one upon another, for hollow, superficial, brain-racking twaddle, for Christian dogmatics under the disguise of the most wearisome Metaphysics, for systematized Philistinism of the flattest kind made to represent Ethics and even accompanied by instructions for card-playing and dancing--in short, they unfit my readers for the whole method of philosophising _à la vieille femme_, which has scared so many for ever from the pursuit of philosophy.
The second reason is, that our gentlemen "in the trade" are absolutely bound in conscience not to let my philosophy pass and are therefore debarred from using it for the benefit of "the trade;"--and this they even heartily regret; for my abundance might have been admirably turned to account for the benefit of their own needy poverty. But even if it contained the greatest hoards of human wisdom ever unearthed, my doctrine could never find favour with them either now or in the future; for it is absolutely wanting in all Speculative Theology and Rational Psychology, and these, just these, are the very breath of life to these gentlemen, the _sine qua non_ of their existence. For they are anxious before all things in heaven and on earth, to hold their official appointments, and these appointments demand before all things in heaven and on earth a Speculative Theology and a Rational Psychology: _extra hæc non datur salus_. Theology there must and shall be, no matter whence it come; Moses and the Prophets must be made out to be in the right: this is the highest principle in philosophy; and there must be Rational Psychology to boot, as is proper. Now there is nothing of the sort to be found either in Kant's philosophy or in mine.
For, as we all know, the most cogent theological argumentation shivers to atoms like a glass thrown at a wall, when it is brought into contact with Kant's Critique of all Speculative Theology, and under his hands not a shred remains entire of the whole tissue of Rational Psychology!
As to myself, being the bold continuer of Kant's philosophy, I have entirely done away with all Speculative Theology and all Rational Psychology, as is only consistent and honest.[170] On the other hand, the task incumbent upon University Philosophy is at bottom this: to set forth the chief fundamental truths belonging to the Catechism under the veil of some very abstract, abstruse and difficult, therefore painfully wearisome formulas and sentences; wherefore, however confused, intricate, strange and eccentric the matter may seem at first sight, these truths invariably reveal themselves as its kernel. This proceeding may be useful, though to me it is unknown. All I know is, that philosophy, _i.e._ the search after truth--I mean the truth κατ' ἐξοχήν, by which the most sublime and important disclosures, more precious than anything else to the human race, are understood--will never advance a step, nay, an inch, by means of such manœuvring, by which its course is on the contrary impeded; therefore I found out long ago that University philosophy is the enemy of all genuine philosophy.
Now, this being the state of the case, when a really honest philosophy arises, which seriously has truth for its sole aim, must not these gentlemen "of the philosophical trade" feel as might stage-knights in paste-board armour, were a knight suddenly to appear in the midst of them clad in real armour, who made the stage-floor creak under his ponderous tread? Such philosophy as this _must_ therefore be bad and false and consequently places these gentlemen "of the trade" under the painful obligation of playing the part of him who, in order to appear what he is not, cannot allow others to pass for what they really are.
Out of all this however there unrolls itself the amusing spectacle we enjoy, when these gentlemen, now that ignoring has unfortunately come to an end, after forty years, at last begin to measure me by their own puny standard and pass judgment upon me from the heights of their wisdom, as though they were amply qualified to do so by their office; but they are most amusing of all when they assume airs of superiority towards me.
[170] For revelation goes for nothing in philosophy; therefore a philosopher must before all things be an unbeliever. [Add. to 3rd ed.].
Their abhorrence of Kant, though less openly expressed, is scarcely less great than their hatred of me; precisely because all speculative Theology and all Rational Psychology--the bread-winners of these gentlemen--have been undermined, not to say irrevocably ruined, by him in the eyes of all serious thinkers. What! Not hate him? him, who has made their "trade in philosophy" so difficult to them, that they hardly see how to pull through honourably! So Kant and I are accordingly both bad, and these gentlemen quite overlook us. For nearly forty years they have not deigned to cast a glance upon me, and now they look down condescendingly upon Kant from the heights of their wisdom, smiling in pity at his errors. This policy is both very wise and very profitable; since they are thus able to hold forth at their ease volume after volume upon God and the soul, as if these were personalities with whom they were intimately acquainted, and to discourse upon the relation in which the former stands to the world and the latter to the body, just as if there had never been such a thing as a Critique of Pure Reason.
When once the Critique of Pure Reason is done away with, all will go on splendidly! Now it is for this end that they have been endeavouring for many years quietly and gradually to set Kant aside, to make him obsolete, nay, to turn up their noses at him, and one being encouraged by the other in this, they are becoming bolder every day.[171] They have no opposition to fear from their own colleagues, since they all have the same aims and the same mission and all together form a numerous _coterie_, the brilliant members of which, _coram populo_, bow and scrape to each other on all sides. Thus by degrees things have come to such a point, that the wretchedest compilers of manuals have the presumption to treat Kant's grand, immortal discoveries as antiquated errors, nay, calmly to set them aside with the most ludicrous arrogance and most impudent dicta of their own, which they nevertheless lay down under the disguise of argumentation, because they know they may count upon a credulous public, to whom Kant's writings are not known.[172] And this is what happens to Kant on the part of writers, whose total incapacity strikes us in every page, not to say every line, we read of their unmeaning, stupefying verbiage! Were this to go on much longer, Kant would present the spectacle of the dead lion being kicked by the donkey. Even in France there is no lack of fellow-workers inspired by a similar orthodoxy, who are labouring towards the same end. A certain M. Barthélemy de St. Hilaire, for instance, in a lecture delivered in the _Académie des Sciences Morales_ in April, 1850, has presumed to criticize Kant with an air of condescension and to use most improper language in speaking of him; luckily however in such a way, that no one could fail to see the underlying purpose.[173] [171] One always says the other is right, so that the public in its simplicity at last imagines them really to be right. [Add. to 3rd ed.]
[172] Here it is especially Ernst Reinhold's "System of Metaphysics" (3rd edition, 1854) that I have in my eye. In my "Parerga" I have explained how it comes, that brain-perverting books like this go through several editions. See "Parerga," vol. i.
[173] Nevertheless, by Zeus, all such gentlemen, in France as well as Germany, should be taught that Philosophy has a different mission from that of playing into the hands of the clergy. We must let them clearly see before all things that we have no faith in their faith--from this follows what we think of them. [Add. to 3rd ed.]
Now others among our German "traders in philosophy" again try to get rid of the obnoxious Kant in a different way: instead of attacking his philosophy point-blank, they rather seek to undermine the foundations on which it is built. These people however are so utterly forsaken by all the gods and by all power of judgment, that they attack _à priori_ truths: that is to say, truths as old as the human understanding, nay, which constitute that understanding itself, and which it is therefore impossible to contradict without declaring war against that understanding also. So great however is the courage of these gentlemen.
I am sorry to say I know of three,[174] and I am afraid there are a good many more at work at this undermining process, who have the incredible presumption to maintain the _à posteriori_ origin of Space as a consequence, a mere relation, of the objects _within it_; for they assert that Space and Time are of empirical origin and attached to those bodies, so that [according to them] Space first arises through our perception of the juxtaposition of bodies and Time likewise through our perception of the succession of changes (_sancta simplicitas!_ as if the words "collateral" and "successive" would have any sense for us without the antecedent intuitions of Space and of Time to give them a meaning); consequently, that if there were no bodies, there would be no Space, therefore if they disappeared Space also must lapse, and that if all changes were to stop, Time also would stop.[175] [174] (_a_) Rosenkranz, "Meine Reform der Hegelschen Philosophie," 1852, especially p. 41, in a pompous, dictatorial tone: "I have explicitly said, that Space and Time would not exist if Matter did not exist. Æther spread out within itself first constitutes real Space, and the movement of this æther and consequent real genesis of everything individual and separate, constitutes real Time."
(_b_) L. Noack, "Die Theologie als Religionsphilosophie," 1853, pp.
der Natur" in the Heidelberg Annals, Nov.-Dec., 1850, and May-June, 1854.
[175] Time is the condition of the _possibility_ of succession, which could neither take place, nor be understood by us and expressed in words, without Time. And Space is likewise the condition of the _possibility_ of juxtaposition, and Transcendental Æsthetic is the proof that these conditions have their seat in the constitution of our head. [Add. to 3rd ed.]
And such stuff as this is gravely taught fifty years after Kant's death! The aim of it is, as we know, to undermine Kantian philosophy, and certainly if these propositions were true, _one_ stroke would suffice to overthrow it. Fortunately however these assertions are of a kind which is met by derision rather than by serious refutation. For, in them, the question is one of heresy, not so much against Kantian philosophy, as against common sense; and they are not so much an attack upon any particular philosophical dogma, as upon an _à priori_ truth which, as such, constitutes human understanding itself, and therefore must be instantaneously evident to every one who is in his senses, just as much as that 2 × 2 = 4. Fetch me a peasant from the plough; make the question intelligible to him; and he will tell you, that even if all things in Heaven and on Earth were to vanish, Space would nevertheless remain, and that if all changes in Heaven and on Earth were to cease, Time would nevertheless flow on. Compared with German pseudo-philosophers like these, how estimable does a man like the French physicist Pouillet appear, who, though he never troubles his head about Metaphysics, is careful to incorporate two long paragraphs, one on _l'Espace_, the other on _le Temps_, in the first chapter of his well-known Manual, on which public instruction in France is based, where he shows that if all Matter were annihilated, Space would still remain, and that Space is infinite; and that if all changes ceased, Time would still pursue its course without end. Now here he does not appeal, as in all other cases, to experience, because in this case experience is not possible; yet he speaks with apodeictic certainty.
For, as a physicist, professing a science which is absolutely immanent--_i.e._ limited to the reality that is empirically given--it never comes into his head to inquire whence he knows all this. It _did_ come into Kant's head, and it was this very problem, clothed by him in the severe form of an inquiry as to the possibility of synthetical _à priori_ judgments, that became the starting-point and the corner-stone of his immortal discoveries, or in other words, of Transcendental Philosophy which, precisely by answering this question and others related to it, shows what is the nature of that empirical reality itself.[176] [176] In the Scholium to the eighth of the definitions he has placed at the top of his "Principia," Newton quite rightly distinguishes _absolute_, that is, _empty_, from relative, or filled Time, and likewise absolute from relative Space. He says, p. 11: _Tempus, spatium, locum, motum, ut omnibus notissima, non definio. Notandum tamen quod_ VULGUS (that is, professors like those I have been mentioning) _quantitates hasce non aliter quam ex relatione ad sensibilia concipiat. Et inde oriuntur præjudicia quædam, quibus tollendis convenit easdem in absolutas et relativas, veras et apparentes, mathematicas et vulgares distingui._ And again (p. 12): I. _Tempus absolutum, verum et mathematicum, in se et natura sua sine relatione ad externum quodvis, æquabiliter fluit, alioque nomine dicitur Duratio: relativum, apparens et vulgare est sensibilis et externa quævis Durationis per motum mensura (seu accurata seu inæquabilis) quâ vulgus vice veri temporis utitur; ut Hora, Dies, Mensis, Annus._ II. _Spatiam absolutum, natura sua sine relatione ad externum quodvis, semper manet similare et immobile: relativum est spatii hujus mensura seu dimensio quælibet mobilis, quæ a sensibus nostris per situm suum ad corpora definitur, et a vulgo pro spatio immobili usurpatur: uti dimensio spatii subterranei, ærei vel coelestis definita per situm suum ad terram._ But even Newton never dreamt of asking how we know these two infinite entities, Space and Time; since, as he here impresses on us, they do not fall within the range of the senses; and how we know them moreover so intimately, that we are able to indicate their whole nature and rule down to the minutest detail. [Add. to 3rd ed.]
And seventy years after the Critique of Pure Reason had appeared and filled the world with its fame, these gentlemen dare to serve up such gross absurdities, which were done away with long ago, and to return to former barbarism. If Kant were to come back and see all this mischief, he would feel like Moses on returning from Mount Sinai, when he found his people worshipping the golden calf, and dashed the Tables to pieces in his anger. But if Kant were to take things as tragically as Moses, I should console him with the words of Jesus Sirach:[177] "He that telleth a tale to a fool speaketh to one in a slumber; when he hath told his tale, he will say, 'What is the matter?'" For that diamond in Kant's crown, Transcendental Æsthetic, never has existed for these gentlemen--it is tacitly set aside, as _non-avenue_. I wonder what they think Nature means by producing the rarest of all her works, a great mind, one among so many hundreds of millions, if the worshipful company of numskulls are to be able at their pleasure and by their mere counter-assertion to annul the weightiest doctrines emanating from that mind, let alone to treat them with disregard and do as if they did not exist.
[177] Ecclesiasticus xxii. 8.
But this degenerate, barbarous state of philosophy which, in the present day, emboldens every tyro to hold forth at random upon subjects