On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and On the Will in Nature · Arthur Schopenhauer
PHYSICAL ASTRONOMY.
But we say: everywhere where there is causality, there is will; and no will acts without causality. The _punctum controversiæ_ therefore, is, whether will and causality can and must subsist together in one and the same process at the same time. What makes the knowledge, that this is indeed the case, so difficult, is the circumstance, that we know causality and will in two fundamentally different ways: causality entirely from outside, quite indirectly, quite through the understanding; will entirely from inside, quite directly; and that accordingly the clearer the knowledge of the one in each given instance, the less clear is the knowledge of the other. Therefore we recognise the essence of the will least readily, where causality is most intelligible; and, where the will is most unmistakably evident, causality becomes so obscured, that the vulgar mind could venture to deny its existence altogether.--Now, as Kant has taught us, causality is nothing but the form of the understanding itself, knowable _à priori_: that is, the essence of _representation_, as such, which is one side of the world; the other side is _will_: which is the thing in itself. That relative increase and decrease of clearness in inverse proportion of causality and of the will, that mutual advancing and receding of both, depends consequently upon the fact, that the more a thing is given us as mere phenomenon, _i.e._ as representation, the more clearly does the _à priori_ form of representation, _i.e._ causality, manifest itself: this is the case in inanimate Nature; conversely, the more immediate our knowledge of the will, the more does the form of representation recede into the background: this is the case with ourselves. That is: the nearer one side of the world approaches to us, the more do we lose sight of the other.
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