On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and On the Will in Nature · Arthur Schopenhauer
THE UNDERSTANDING.
There is no difference whatever here, nor is there any difference either, as to their being or not being events, between my passing a troop of soldiers and their passing me. If we fix our eyes on a ship sailing close by the shore on which we are standing, it soon seems as if it were the ship that stood still and the shore that moved. Now, in this instance we are mistaken, it is true, as to the cause of the relative change of position, since we attribute it to a wrong cause; the real succession in the relative positions of our body towards the ship is nevertheless quite rightly and objectively recognised by us. Even Kant himself would not have believed that there was any difference, had he borne in mind that his own body was an object among objects, and that the succession in his empirical perceptions depended upon the succession of the impressions received from other objects by his body, and was therefore an objective succession: that is to say, one which takes place among objects _directly_ (if not indirectly) and independently of the will of the Subject, and which may therefore be quite well recognised without any causal connection between the objects acting successively on his body. [99] _Ibid._ p. 189 of the 1st edition; more fully, p. 232 of the 5th edition. (English translation by M. Müller, p. 166.)
Kant says, Time cannot be perceived; therefore no succession of representations can be empirically perceived as objective: _i.e._ can be distinguished as changes in phenomena from the changes of mere subjective representations. The causal law, being a rule according to which states follow one another, is the only means by which the objectivity of a change can be known. Now, the result of his assertion would be, that no succession in Time could be perceived by us as objective, excepting that of cause and effect, and that every other succession of phenomena we perceive, would only be determined so, and not otherwise, by our own will. In contradiction to all this I must adduce the fact, that it is quite possible for phenomena to _follow upon_ one another without _following from_ one another. Nor is the law of causality by any means prejudiced by this; for it remains certain that each change is the effect of another change, this being firmly established _à priori_; only each change not only follows upon the single one which is its cause, but upon all the other changes which occur simultaneously with that cause, and with which that cause stands in no causal connection whatever.
It is not perceived by me exactly in the regular order of causal succession, but in quite a different order, which is, however, no less objective on that account, and which differs widely from any subjective succession depending on my caprice, such as, for instance, the pictures of my imagination. The succession, in Time, of events which stand in no causal connection with each other is precisely what we call _contingency_.[100] Just as I am leaving my house, a tile happens to fall from the roof which strikes me; now, there is no causal connection whatever between my going out and the falling of the tile; yet the order of their succession--that is, that my going out preceded the falling of the tile--is objectively determined in my apprehension, not subjectively by my will, by which that order would otherwise have most likely been inverted. The order in which tones follow each other in a musical composition is likewise objectively determined, not subjectively by me, the listener; yet who would think of asserting that musical tones follow one another according to the law of cause and effect? Even the succession of day and night is undoubtedly known to us as an objective one, but we as certainly do not look upon them as causes and effects of one another; and as to their common cause, the whole world was in error till Copernicus came; yet the correct knowledge of their succession was not in the least disturbed by that error. Hume's hypothesis, by the way, also finds its refutation through this; since the following of day and night upon each other--the most ancient of all successions and the one least liable to exception--has never yet misled anyone into taking them for cause and effect of each other.
Kant and Hume have fallen into opposite errors in their proofs. Hume asserts that all _consequence_ is mere _sequence_; whereas Kant affirms that all _sequence_ must necessarily be _consequence_. Pure Understanding, it is true, can only conceive _consequence_ (causal result), and is no more able to conceive mere _sequence_ than to conceive the difference between right and left, which, like sequence, is only to be grasped by means of pure Sensibility. Empirical knowledge of the following of events in Time is, indeed, just as possible as empirical knowledge of juxtaposition of things in Space (this Kant denies elsewhere), but _the way in which_ things follow _upon_ one another in general in Time can no more be explained, than the way in which one thing follows _from_ another (as the effect of a cause): the former knowledge is given and conditioned by pure Sensibility; the latter, by pure Understanding. But in asserting that knowledge of the objective succession of phenomena can only be attained by means of the causal law, Kant commits the same error with which he reproaches Leibnitz:[102] that of "intellectualising the forms of Sensibility."--My view of succession is the following one. We derive our knowledge of the bare _possibility_ of succession from the form of Time, which belongs to pure Sensibility.
The succession of real objects, whose form is precisely Time, we know empirically, consequently as _actual_. But it is through the Understanding alone, by means of Causality, that we gain knowledge of the _necessity_ of a succession of two states: that is, of a change; and even the fact that we are able to conceive the necessity of a succession at all, proves already that the causal law is not known to us empirically, but given us _à priori_. The Principle of Sufficient Reason is the general expression for the fundamental form of the necessary connection between all our objects, _i.e._ representations, which lies in the innermost depths of our cognitive faculty: it is the form common to all representations, and the only source of the conception of _necessity_, which contains absolutely nothing else in it and no other import, than that of the following of the consequence, when its reason has been established. Now, the reason why this principle determines the order of succession in Time in the class of representations we are now investigating, in which it figures as the law of causality, is, that Time is the form of these representations, therefore the necessary connection appears here as the rule of succession. In other forms of the principle of sufficient reason, the necessary connection it always demands will appear under quite different forms from that of Time, therefore not as succession; still it always retains the character of a necessary connection, by which the identity of the principle under all its forms, or rather the unity of the root of all the laws of which that principle is the common expression, reveals itself.
Kant's proof would, consequently, be reduced to this: that, empirically, we only know _actuality_ of succession; but as besides we recognise _necessity_ of succession in certain series of occurrences, and even know before all experience that every possible occurrence must have a fixed place in some one of these series, the reality and the _à priority_ of the causal law follow as a matter of course, the only correct proof of the latter being the one I have given in § 21 of this work. Parallel with the Kantian theory: that the causal nexus alone renders objective succession and our knowledge of it possible, there runs another: that coexistence and our knowledge of it are only possible through reciprocity. In the "Critique of Pure Reason" they are presented under the title: "Third Analogy of Experience." Here Kant goes so far as to say that "the co-existence of phenomena, which exercise no reciprocal action on one another, but are separated by a perfectly empty space, could never become an object of possible perception"[104] (which, by the way, would be a proof _à priori_ that there is no empty space between the fixed stars), and that "the light which _plays between_ our eyes and celestial bodies"--an expression conveying surreptitiously the thought, that this starlight not only acts upon our eyes, but is acted upon by them also--"produces an intercommunity between us and them, and proves the co-existence of the latter." Now, even empirically, this last assertion is false; since the sight of a fixed star by no means proves its coexistence simultaneously with its spectator, but, at most, its existence some years, nay even some centuries before. Besides, this second Kantian theory stands and falls with the first, only it is far more easily detected; and the nullity of the whole conception of reciprocity has been shown in § 20.
From the foregoing exposition it follows, that the application of the causal law to anything but _changes_ in the material, empirically given world, is an abuse of it. For instance, it is a misapplication to make use of it with reference to physical forces, without which no changes could take place; or to Matter, _on_ which they take place; or to the world, to which we must in that case attribute an absolutely objective existence independently of our intellect; indeed in many other cases besides. I refer the reader to what I have said on this subject in my chief work.[109] Such misapplications always arise, partly, through our taking the conception of cause, like many other metaphysical and ethical conceptions, in far _too wide_ a sense; partly, through our forgetting that the causal law is certainly a presupposition which we bring with us into the world, by which the perception of things outside us becomes possible; but that, just on that account, we are not authorized in extending beyond the range and independently of our cognitive faculty a principle, which has its origin in the equipment of that faculty, nor in assuming it to hold good as the everlasting order of the universe and of all that exists. [109] "Die Welt a. W. u. V." 2nd edition, vol. ii. ch. iv. p. 42 _et seqq._; 3rd edition, vol. ii. p. 46 _et seqq._
It was accordingly reserved for the perspicacity of Aristotle to clear up this difficult point, which he has done profoundly and exhaustively in the sixth Book of Physics, chap. i.-viii. His proof that no change takes place suddenly (in Plato's ἐξαίφνης), but that each occurs only gradually and therefore occupies a certain time, is based entirely upon the pure, _à priori_ intuition of Time and of Space; but it is also very subtle. The pith of this very lengthy demonstration may, however, be reduced to the following propositions. When we say of objects that they limit each other, we mean, that both have their extreme ends in common; therefore only two extended things can be conterminous, never two indivisible ones, for then they would be _one_--_i.e._ only lines, but not mere points, can be conterminous. He then transfers this from Space to Time. As there always remains a line between two points, so there always remains a time between two _nows_; this is the time in which a change takes place--_i.e._ when _one_ state is in the first, and _another_ in the second, _now_. This time, like every other, is divisible to infinity; consequently, whatever is changing passes through an infinite number of degrees within that time, through which the second state gradually grows out of that _first_ one.--The process may perhaps be made more intelligible by the following explanation. Between two consecutive states the difference of which is perceptible to our senses, there are always several intermediate states, the difference between which is not perceptible to us; because, in order to be sensuously perceptible, the newly arising state must have reached a certain degree of intensity or of magnitude: it is therefore preceded by degrees of lesser intensity or extension, in passing through which it gradually arises. Taken collectively, these are comprised under the name of _change_, and the time occupied by them is called _the time of change_.
Now, if we apply this to a body being propelled, the first effect is a certain vibration of its inner parts, which, after communicating the impulse to other parts, breaks out into external motion.--Aristotle infers quite rightly from the infinite divisibility of Time, that everything which fills it, therefore every change, _i.e._ every passage from one state to another, must likewise be susceptible of endless subdivision, so that all that arises, does so in fact by the concourse of an infinite multitude of parts; accordingly its genesis is always gradual, never sudden. From these principles and the consequent gradual arising of each movement, he draws the weighty inference in the last chapter of this Book, that nothing indivisible, no mere _point_ can move. And with this conclusion Kant's definition of Matter, as "that which moves in Space," completely harmonizes.
This law of the continuity and gradual taking place of all changes which Aristotle was thus the first to lay down and prove, we find stated three times by Kant: in his "Dissertatio de mundi sensibilis et intelligibilis forma," § 14, in the "Critique of Pure Reason,"[111] and finally in his "Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science."[112] In all three places his exposition is brief, but also less thorough than that of Aristotle; still, in the main, both entirely agree. We can therefore hardly doubt that, directly or indirectly, Kant must have derived these ideas from Aristotle, though he does not mention him. Aristotle's proposition--οὐκ ἔστι ἀλλήλων ἐχόμενα τὰ νῦν ("the moments of the present are not continuous")--we here find expressed as follows: "between two moments there is always a time," to which may be objected that "even between two centuries there is none; because in Time as in Space, there must always be a pure limit."--Thus Kant, instead of mentioning Aristotle, endeavours in the first and earliest of his three statements to identify the theory he is advancing with Leibnitz' _lex continuitatis_. If they really were the same, Leibnitz must have derived his from Aristotle. Now Leibnitz[113] first stated this _Loi de la continuité_ in a letter to Bayle.[114] There, however, he calls it _Principe de l'ordre général_, and gives under this name a very general, vague, chiefly geometrical argumentation, having no direct bearing on the time of change, which he does not even mention. [111] Kant, "Krit. d. r. Vern." 1st edition, p. 207; 5th edition, p. 253. (English translation by M. Müller, p. 182.) [112] Kant, "Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft." End of the "Allgemeine Anmerkung zur Mechanik." [113] According to his own assertion, p. 189 of the "Opera philos." ed. Erdmann. [114] _Ibid._ p. 104.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.