On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and On the Will in Nature: Two Essays (revised edition)
Schopenhauer · en
should we be at all better off as to comprehension of the movements and
actions of animals and of human beings, which would also appear to us
as induced in some unaccountable way by their causes (motives), were
it not that here we are granted an insight into the inward part of the
process; we know, that is, by our own inward experience, that this is
an act of the will called forth by the motive, which consists in a mere
representation. Thus the effect produced by the motive, unlike that
produced by all other causes, is not only known by us from outside,
in a merely indirect way, but at the same time from inside, quite
directly, and therefore according to its whole mode of action. Here we
stand as it were behind the scenes, and learn the secret of the process
by which cause produces effect in its most inward nature; for here
our knowledge comes to us through a totally different channel and in
a totally different way. From this results the important proposition:
_The action of motives (motivation) is causality seen from within_.
Here accordingly causality presents itself in quite a different way,
in quite a different medium, and for quite another kind of knowledge;
therefore it must now be exhibited as a special and peculiar form of
our principle, which consequently here presents itself as the Principle
of the Sufficient Reason of Acting, _principium rationis sufficientis
agendi_, or, more briefly, as the _Law of Motives (Law of Motivation)_.
As a clue to my philosophy in general, I here add, that this Fourth
Class of Objects for the Subject, that is, the one object contained
in it, the _will_ which we apprehend within us, stands in the same
relation towards the First Class as the law of motives towards the
law of causality, as I have established it in § 20. This truth is the
corner-stone of my whole Metaphysic.
As to the way in which, and the necessity with which, motives act,
and as to the dependence of their action upon empirical, individual
character, and even upon individual capacity for knowledge, &c. &c., I
refer my readers to my Prize-essay on the Freedom of the Will, in which
I have treated all this more fully.
§ 44. _Influence of the Will over the Intellect._