On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and On the Will in Nature: Two Essays (revised edition)
Schopenhauer · en
Objective perception makes use, properly speaking, of only two senses;
touch and sight. These alone supply the data upon which, as its basis,
the Understanding constructs the objective world by the process just
described. The three other senses remain on the whole subjective; for
their sensations, while pointing to an external cause, still contain no
data by which its relations _in Space_ can be determined. Now _Space_
is the form of all perception, _i.e._ of _that_ apprehension, in which
alone _objects_ can, properly speaking, present themselves. Therefore
those other three senses can no doubt serve to announce the presence
of objects we already know in some other way; but no construction in
Space, consequently no objective perception, can possibly be founded on
their data. A rose cannot be constructed from its perfume, and a blind
man may hear music all his life without having the slightest objective
representation either of the musicians, or of the instruments, or of
the vibrations of the air. On the other hand, the sense of hearing
is of great value as a medium for language, and through this it is
the sense of _Reason_. It is also valuable as a medium for music,
which is the only way in which we comprehend numerical relations not
only _in abstracto_, but directly, _in concreto_. A musical sound or
tone, however, gives no clue to spacial relations, therefore it never
helps to bring the nature of its cause nearer to us; we stop short at
it, so that it is no datum for the Understanding in its construction
of the objective world. The sensations of touch and sight alone are
such data; therefore a blind man without either hands or feet, while
able to construct Space for himself _à priori_ in all its regularity,
would nevertheless acquire but a very vague representation of the
objective world. Yet what is supplied by touch and sight is not by any
means perception, but merely the raw material for it. For perception
is so far from being contained in the sensations of touch and sight,
that these sensations have not even the faintest resemblance to the
qualities of the things which present themselves to us through them,
as I shall presently show. Only what really belongs to sensation
must first be clearly distinguished from what is added to it by the
intellect in perception. In the beginning this is not easy, because
we are so accustomed to pass from the sensation at once to its cause,
that the cause presents itself to us without our noticing the sensation
apart from it, by which, as it were, the premisses are supplied to this
conclusion drawn by the Understanding.