The World as Will and Idea — Schopenhauer — John Shaqi
The World as Will and Idea
Schopenhauer · German
the data supplied by the senses; how by comparison of the impressions
which the various senses receive from the object, a child arrives at
perceptions; how this alone affords the solution of so many phenomena of
the senses; the single vision of two eyes, the double vision in the case
of a squint, or when we try to look at once at objects which lie at
unequal distances behind each other; and all illusion which is produced by
a sudden alteration in the organs of sense. But I have treated this
important subject much more fully and thoroughly in the second edition of
the essay on “The Principle of Sufficient Reason,” § 21. All that is said
there would find its proper place here, and would therefore have to be
said again; but as I have almost as much disinclination to quote myself as
to quote others, and as I am unable to explain the subject better than it
is explained there, I refer the reader to it, instead of quoting it, and
take for granted that it is known.
The process by which children, and persons born blind who have been
operated upon, learn to see, the single vision of the double sensation of
two eyes, the double vision and double touch which occur when the organs
of sense have been displaced from their usual position, the upright
appearance of objects while the picture on the retina is upside down, the
attributing of colour to the outward objects, whereas it is merely an
inner function, a division through polarisation, of the activity of the
eye, and lastly the stereoscope,—all these are sure and incontrovertible
evidence that perception is not merely of the senses, but
intellectual—that is, _pure knowledge through the understanding of the
cause from the effect_, and that, consequently, it presupposes the law of
causality, in a knowledge of which all perception—that is to say all
experience, by virtue of its primary and only possibility, depends. The
contrary doctrine that the law of causality results from experience, which
was the scepticism of Hume, is first refuted by this. For the independence
of the knowledge of causality of all experience,—that is, its _a priori_
character—can only be deduced from the dependence of all experience upon
it; and this deduction can only be accomplished by proving, in the manner
here indicated, and explained in the passages referred to above, that the
knowledge of causality is included in perception in general, to which all
experience belongs, and therefore in respect of experience is completely
_a priori_, does not presuppose it, but is presupposed by it as a
condition. This, however, cannot be deduced in the manner attempted by
Kant, which I have criticised in the essay on “The Principle of Sufficient
Reason,” § 23.