The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; the Art of Controversy
Schopenhauer · en
In this second thing, or rather in the upper end of it, called the
head, which on its exterior side looks like anything else--a body in
space, heavy, and so on--I found no less an object than the whole
world itself, together with the whole of the space in which all of
it exists, and the whole of the time in which all of it moves,
and finally everything that fills both time and space in all its
variegated and infinite character; nay, strangest sight of all, I
found myself walking about in it! It was no picture that I saw; it was
no peep-show, but reality itself. This it is that is really and truly
to be found in a thing which is no bigger than a cabbage, and which,
on occasion, an executioner might strike off at a blow, and suddenly
smother that world in darkness and night. The world, I say, would
vanish, did not heads grow like mushrooms, and were there not always
plenty of them ready to snatch it up as it is sinking down into
nothing, and keep it going like a ball. This world is an idea which
they all have in common, and they express the community of their
thought by the word "objectivity."
In the face of this vision I felt as if I were Ardschuna when Krishna
appeared to him in his true majesty, with his hundred thousand arms
and eyes and mouths.
When I see a wide landscape, and realise that it arises by the
operation of the functions of my brain, that is to say, of time,
space, and casuality, on certain spots which have gathered on my
retina, I feel that I carry it within me. I have an extraordinarily
clear consciousness of the identity of my own being with that of the
external world.
Nothing provides so vivid an illustration of this identity as a
_dream_. For in a dream other people appear to be totally distinct
from us, and to possess the most perfect objectivity, and a nature
which is quite different from ours, and which often puzzles,
surprises, astonishes, or terrifies us; and yet it is all our own
self. It is even so with the will, which sustains the whole of the
external world and gives it life; it is the same will that is in
ourselves, and it is there alone that we are immediately conscious of
it. But it is the intellect, in ourselves and in others, which makes
all these miracles possible; for it is the intellect which everywhere
divides actual being into subject and object; it is a hall of
phantasmagorical mystery, inexpressibly marvellous, incomparably
magical.