The World as Will and Idea — Schopenhauer — John Shaqi
The World as Will and Idea
Schopenhauer · German
of the numbers, fixed by a word, must take the place of the perception;
which does not therefore actually occur any longer, but is only indicated
in a thoroughly definite manner. Yet even so, by the important assistance
of the system of figures which enables us to represent all larger numbers
by the same small ones, intuitive or perceptive evidence of every sum is
made possible, even where we make such use of abstraction that not only
the numbers, but indefinite quantities and whole operations are thought
only in the abstract and indicated as so thought, as [sqrt](r^b) so that
we do not perform them, but merely symbolise them.
We might establish truth in geometry also, through pure _a priori_
perception, with the same right and certainty as in arithmetic. It is in
fact always this necessity, known through perception in accordance with
the principle of sufficient reason of being, which gives to geometry its
principal evidence, and upon which in the consciousness of every one, the
certainty of its propositions rests. The stilted logical demonstration is
always foreign to the matter, and is generally soon forgotten, without
weakening our conviction. It might indeed be dispensed with altogether
without diminishing the evidence of geometry, for this is always quite
independent of such demonstration, which never proves anything we are not
convinced of already, through another kind of knowledge. So far then it is
like a cowardly soldier, who adds a wound to an enemy slain by another,
and then boasts that he slew him himself.(22)