Артур Шопенгауэр
The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 2 of 3)
Chapter III. On The Senses
It is not the object of my writings to repeat what has been said by others, and therefore I only make here some special remarks of my own on the subject of the senses.
The senses are merely the channels through which the brain receives from without (in the form of sensations) the materials which it works up into ideas of perception. Those sensations which principally serve for the objective comprehension of the external world must in themselves be neither agreeable nor disagreeable. This really means that they must leave the will entirely unaffected. Otherwise the sensation itself would attract our attention, and we would remain at the effect instead of passing to the cause, which is what is aimed at here. For it would bring with it that marked superiority, as regards our consideration, which the will always has over the mere idea, to which we only turn when the will is silent. Therefore colours and sounds are in themselves, and so long as their impression does not pass the normal degree, neither painful nor pleasurable sensations, but appear with the indifference that fits them to be the material of pure objective perception. This is as far the case as was possible in a body which is in itself through and through will; and just in this respect it is worthy of admiration. Physiologically it rests upon the fact that in the organs of the nobler senses, thus in sight and hearing, the nerves which have to receive the specific outward impression are quite insusceptible to any sensation of pain, and know no other sensation than that which is specifically peculiar to them, and which serves the purpose of mere apprehension. Thus the retina, as also the optic nerve, is insensible to every injury; and this is also the case with the nerve of hearing. In both organs pain is only felt in their other parts, the surroundings of the nerve of sense which is peculiar to them, never in this nerve itself. In the case of the eye such pain is felt principally in the conjunctiva; in the case of the ear, in the meatus auditorius. Even with the brain this is the case, for if it is cut into directly, thus from above, it has no feeling. Thus only on account of this indifference with regard to the will which is peculiar to them are the sensations of the eye capable of supplying the understanding with such multifarious and finely distinguished data, out of which it constructs in our head the marvellous objective world, by the application of the law of causality upon the foundation of the pure perceptions of space and time. Just that freedom from affecting the will which is characteristic of sensations of colour enables them, when their energy is heightened by transparency, as in the glow of an evening sky, in painted glass, and the like, to raise us very easily into the state of pure objective will-less perception, which, as I have shown in my third book, is one of the chief constituent elements of the æsthetic impression. Just this indifference with regard to the will fits sounds to supply the material for denoting the infinite multiplicity of the conceptions of the reason.
Outer sense, that is, receptivity for external impressions as pure data for the understanding, is divided into five senses, and these accommodate themselves to the four elements, i. e., the four states of aggregation, together with that of imponderability. Thus the sense for what is firm (earth) is touch; for what is fluid (water), taste; for what is in the form of vapour, i. e., volatile (vapour, exhalation), smell; for what is permanently elastic (air), hearing; for what is imponderable (fire, light), sight. The second imponderable, heat, is not properly an object of the senses, but of general feeling, and therefore always affects the will directly, as agreeable or disagreeable. From this classification there also follows the relative dignity of the senses. Sight has the highest rank, because its sphere is the widest and its susceptibility the finest. This rests upon the fact that what affects it is an imponderable, that is, something which is scarcely corporeal, but is quasi spiritual. Hearing has the second place, corresponding to air. However, touch is a more thorough and well-informed sense. For while each of the other senses gives us only an entirely one-sided relation to the object, as its sound, or its relation to light, touch, which is closely bound up with general feeling and muscular power, supplies the understanding with the data at once for the form, magnitude, hardness, softness, texture, firmness, temperature, and weight of bodies, and all this with the least possibility of illusion and deception, to which all the other senses are far more subject. The two lowest senses, smell and taste, are no longer free from a direct affection of the will, that is, they are always agreeably or disagreeably affected, and are therefore more subjective than objective.
Sensations of hearing are exclusively in time, and therefore the whole nature of music consists in degrees of time, upon which depends both the quality or pitch of tones, by means of vibrations, and also their quantity or duration, by means of time. The sensations of sight, on the other hand, are primarily and principally in space; but secondarily, by reason of their duration, they are also in time.
Sight is the sense of the understanding which perceives; hearing is the sense of the reason which thinks and apprehends. Words are only imperfectly represented by visible signs; and therefore I doubt whether a deaf and dumb man, who can read, but has no idea of the sound of the words, works as quickly in thinking with the mere visible signs of conceptions as we do with the real, i. e., the audible words. If he cannot read, it is well known that he is almost like an irrational animal, while the man born blind is from the first a thoroughly rational being.
Sight is an active, hearing a passive sense. Therefore sounds affect our mind in a disturbing and hostile manner, and indeed they do so the more in proportion as the mind is active and developed; they distract all thoughts and instantly destroy the power of thinking. On the other hand, there is no analogous disturbance through the eye, no direct effect of what is seen, as such, upon the activity of thought (for naturally we are not speaking here of the influence which the objects looked at have upon the will); but the most varied multitude of things before our eyes admits of entirely unhindered and quiet thought. Therefore the thinking mind lives at peace with the eye, but is always at war with the ear. This opposition of the two senses is also confirmed by the fact that if deaf and dumb persons are cured by galvanism they become deadly pale with terror at the first sounds they hear (Gilbert's “Annalen der Physik,” vol. x. p. 382), while blind persons, on the contrary, who have been operated upon, behold with ecstasy the first light, and unwillingly allow the bandages to be put over their eyes again. All that has been said, however, can be explained from the fact that hearing takes place by means of a mechanical vibration of the nerve of hearing which is at once transmitted to the brain, while seeing, on the other hand, is a real action of the retina which is merely stimulated and called forth by light and its modifications; as I have shown at length in my physiological theory of colours. But this whole opposition stands in direct conflict with that coloured-ether, drum-beating theory which is now everywhere unblushingly served up, and which seeks to degrade the eye's sensation of light to a mechanical vibration, such as primarily that of hearing actually is, while nothing can be more different than the still, gentle effect of light and the alarm-drum of hearing. If we add to this the remarkable circumstance that although we hear with two ears, the sensibility of which is often very different, yet we never hear a sound double, as we often see things double with our two eyes, we are led to the conjecture that the sensation of hearing does not arise in the labyrinth or in the cochlea, but deep in the brain where the two nerves of hearing meet, and thus the impression becomes simple. But this is where the pons Varolii encloses the medulla oblongata, thus at the absolutely lethal spot, by the injury of which every animal is instantly killed, and from which the nerve of hearing has only a short course to the labyrinth, the seat of acoustic vibration. Now it is just because its source is here, in this dangerous place, in which also all movement of the limbs originates, that we start at a sudden noise; which does not occur in the least degree when we suddenly see a light; for example, a flash of lightning. The optic nerve, on the contrary, proceeds from its thalami much further forward (though perhaps its source lies behind them), and throughout its course is covered by the anterior lobes of the brain, although always separated from them till, having extended quite out of the brain, it is spread out in the retina, upon which, on stimulation by light, the sensation first arises, and where it is really localised. This is shown in my essay upon sight and colour. This origin of the auditory nerve explains, then, the great disturbance which the power of thinking suffers from sound, on account of which thinking men, and in general all people of much intellect, are without exception absolutely incapable of enduring any noise. For it disturbs the constant stream of their thoughts, interrupts and paralyses their thinking, just because the vibration of the auditory nerve extends so deep into the brain, the whole mass of which feels the oscillations set up through this nerve, and vibrates along with them, and because the brains of such persons are more easily moved than those of ordinary men. On the same readiness to be set in motion, and capacity for transmission, which characterises their brains depends the fact that in the case of persons like these every thought calls forth so readily all those analogous or related to it whereby the similarities, analogies, and relations of things in general come so quickly and easily into their minds; that the same occasion which millions of ordinary minds have experienced before brings them to the thought, to the discovery, that other people are subsequently surprised they did not reach themselves, for they certainly can think afterwards, but they cannot think before. Thus the sun shone on all statues, but only the statue of Memnon gave forth a sound. For this reason Kant, Gœthe, and Jean Paul were highly sensitive to every noise, as their biographers bear witness.13 Gœthe in his last years bought a house which had fallen into disrepair close to his own, simply in order that he might not have to endure the noise that would be made in repairing it. Thus it was in vain that in his youth he followed the drum in order to harden himself against noise. It is not a matter of custom. On the other hand, the truly stoical indifference to noise of ordinary minds is astonishing. No noise disturbs them in their thinking, reading, writing, or other occupations, while the finer mind is rendered quite incapable by it. But just that which makes them so insensible to noise of every kind makes them also insensible to the beautiful in plastic art, and to deep thought or fine expression in literary art; in short, to all that does not touch their personal interests. The following remark of Lichtenberg's applies to the paralysing effect which noise has upon highly intellectual persons: “It is always a good sign when an artist can be hindered by trifles from exercising his art. F – used to stick his fingers into sulphur if he wished to play the piano… Such things do not interfere with the average mind;… it acts like a coarse sieve” (Vermischte Schriften, vol. i. p. 398). I have long really held the opinion that the amount of noise which any one can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity, and therefore may be regarded as a pretty fair measure of it. Therefore, if I hear the dogs barking for hours together in the court of a house without being stopped, I know what to think of the intellectual capacity of the inhabitants. The man who habitually slams the door of a room, instead of shutting it with his hand, or allows this to go on in his house, is not only ill-bred, but is also a coarse and dull-minded fellow. That in English “sensible” also means gifted with understanding is based upon accurate and fine observation. We shall only become quite civilised when the ears are no longer unprotected, and when it shall no longer be the right of everybody to sever the consciousness of each thinking being, in its course of a thousand steps, with whistling, howling, bellowing, hammering, whip-cracking, barking, &c. &c. The Sybarites banished all noisy trades without the town; the honourable sect of the Shakers in North America permit no unnecessary noise in their villages, and the Moravians have a similar rule. Something more is said upon this subject in the thirtieth chapter of the second volume of the “Parerga.”
The effect of music upon the mind, so penetrating, so direct, so unfailing, may be explained from the passive nature of hearing which has been discussed; also the after effect which sometimes follows it, and which consists in a specially elevated frame of mind. The vibrations of the tones following in rationally combined numerical relations set the fibre of the brain itself in similar vibration. On the other hand, the active nature of sight, opposed as it is to the passive nature of hearing, makes it intelligible why there can be nothing analogous to music for the eye, and the piano of colours was an absurd mistake. Further, it is just on account of the active nature of the sense of sight that it is remarkably acute in the case of beasts that hunt, i. e., beasts of prey, while conversely the passive sense of hearing is specially acute in those beasts that are hunted, that flee, and are timid, so that it may give them timely warning of the pursuer that is rushing or creeping upon them.
Just as we have recognised in sight the sense of the understanding, and in hearing the sense of the reason, so we might call smell the sense of the memory, because it recalls to us more directly than any other the specific impression of an event or a scene even from the most distant past.
Chapter IV. On Knowledge A Priori
From the fact that we are able spontaneously to assign and determine the laws of relations in space without having recourse to experience, Plato concludes (Meno, p. 353, Bip.) that all learning is mere recollection. Kant, on the other hand, concludes that space is subjectively conditioned, and merely a form of the faculty of knowledge. How far, in this regard, does Kant stand above Plato!
Cogito, ergo sum, is an analytical judgment. Indeed Parmenides held it to be an identical judgment: “το γαρ αυτο νοειν εστι τε και ειναι” (nam intelligere et esse idem est, Clem. Alex. Strom., vi. 2, § 23). As such, however, or indeed even as an analytical judgment, it cannot contain any special wisdom; nor yet if, to go still deeper, we seek to deduce it as a conclusion from the major premise, non-entis nulla sunt prædicata. But with this proposition what Descartes really wished to express was the great truth that immediate certainty belongs only to self-consciousness, to what is subjective. To what is objective, on the other hand, thus to everything else, only indirect certainty belongs; for it is arrived at through self-consciousness; and being thus merely at second hand, it is to be regarded as problematical. Upon this depends the value of this celebrated proposition. As its opposite we may set up, in the sense of the Kantian philosophy, cogito, ergo est, that is, exactly as I think certain relations in things (the mathematical), they must always occur in all possible experience; – this was an important, profound, and a late apperçu, which appeared in the form of the problem as to the possibility of synthetic judgments a priori, and has actually opened up the way to a deeper knowledge. This problem is the watchword of the Kantian philosophy, as the former proposition is that of the Cartesian, and shows εξ οἱων εισ οἱα.
Kant very fitly places his investigations concerning time and space at the head of all the rest. For to the speculative mind these questions present themselves before all others: what is time? – what is this that consists of mere movement, without anything that moves it? – and what is space? this omnipresent nothing, out of which nothing that exists can escape without ceasing to be anything at all?
That time and space depend on the subject, are the mode in which the process of objective apperception is brought about in the brain, has already a sufficient proof in the absolute impossibility of thinking away time and space, while we can very easily think away everything that is presented in them. The hand can leave go of everything except itself. However, I wish here to illustrate by a few examples and deductions the more exact proofs of this truth which are given by Kant, not for the purpose of refuting stupid objections, but for the use of those who may have to expound Kant's doctrine in future.
“A right-angled equilateral triangle” contains no logical contradiction; for the predicates do not by any means cancel the subject, nor are they inconsistent with each other. It is only when their object is constructed in pure perception that the impossibility of their union in it appears. Now if on this account we were to regard this as a contradiction, then so would every physical impossibility, only discovered to be such after the lapse of centuries, be a contradiction; for example, the composition of a metal from its elements, or a mammal with more or fewer than seven cervical vertebra,14 or horns and upper incisors in the same animal. But only logical impossibility is a contradiction, not physical, and just as little mathematical. Equilateral and rectangled do not contradict each other (they coexist in the square), nor does either of them contradict a triangle. Therefore the incompatibility of the above conceptions can never be known by mere thinking, but is only discovered by perception – merely mental perception, however, which requires no experience, no real object. We should also refer here to the proposition of Giordano Bruno, which is also found in Aristotle: “An infinitely large body is necessarily immovable” – a proposition which cannot rest either upon experience or upon the principle of contradiction, since it speaks of things which cannot occur in any experience, and the conceptions “infinitely large” and “movable” do not contradict each other; but it is only pure perception that informs us that motion demands a space outside the body, while its infinite size leaves no space over. Suppose, now, it should be objected to the first mathematical example that it is only a question of how complete a conception of a triangle the person judging has: if the conception is quite complete it will also contain the impossibility of a triangle being rectangular and also equilateral. The answer to this is: assume that his conception is not so complete, yet without recourse to experience he can, by the mere construction of the triangle in his imagination, extend his conception of it and convince himself for ever of the impossibility of this combination of these conceptions. This process, however, is a synthetic judgment a priori, that is, a judgment through which, independently of all experience, and yet with validity for all experience, we form and perfect our conceptions. For, in general, whether a given judgment is analytical or synthetical can only be determined in the particular case according as the conception of the subject in the mind of the person judging is more or less complete. The conception “cat” contains in the mind of a Cuvier a hundred times more than in that of his servant; therefore the same judgments about it will be synthetical for the latter, and only analytical for the former. But if we take the conceptions objectively, and now wish to decide whether a given judgment is analytical or synthetical, we must change the predicate into its contradictory opposite, and apply this to the subject without a copula. If this gives a contradictio in adjecto, then the judgment was analytical; otherwise it was synthetical.
That Arithmetic rests on the pure intuition or perception of time is not so evident as that Geometry is based upon that of space.15 It can be proved, however, in the following manner. All counting consists in the repeated affirmation of unity. Only for the purpose of always knowing how often we have already affirmed unity do we mark it each time with another word: these are the numerals. Now repetition is only possible through succession. But succession, that is, being after one another, depends directly upon the intuition or perception of time. It is a conception which can only be understood by means of this; and thus counting also is only possible by means of time. This dependence of all counting upon time is also betrayed by the fact that in all languages multiplication is expressed by “time,” thus by a time-concept: sexies, ἑξακις, six fois, sex mal. But simple counting is already a multiplication by one, and for this reason in Pestalozzi's educational establishment the children are always made to multiply thus: “Two times two is four times one.” Aristotle already recognised the close relationship of number and time, and expounded it in the fourteenth chapter of the fourth book of the “Physics.” Time is for him “the number of motion” (“ὁ χρονος αριθμος εστι κινησεως”). He very profoundly suggests the question whether time could be if the soul were not, and answers it in the negative. If arithmetic had not this pure intuition or perception of time at its foundation, it would be no science a priori, and therefore its propositions would not have infallible certainty.
Although time, like space, is the form of knowledge of the subject, yet, just like space, it presents itself as independent of the subject and completely objective. Against our will, or without our knowledge, it goes fast or slow. We ask what o'clock it is; we investigate time, as if it were something quite objective. And what is this objective existence? Not the progress of the stars, or of the clocks, which merely serve to measure the course of time itself, but it is something different from all things, and yet, like them, independent of our will and knowledge. It exists only in the heads of percipient beings, but the uniformity of its course and its independence of the will give it the authority of objectivity.
Time is primarily the form of inner sense. Anticipating the following book, I remark that the only object of inner sense is the individual will of the knowing subject. Time is therefore the form by means of which self-consciousness becomes possible for the individual will, which originally and in itself is without knowledge. In it the nature of the will, which in itself is simple and identical, appears drawn out into a course of life. But just on account of this original simplicity and identity of what thus exhibits itself, its character remains always precisely the same, and hence also the course of life itself retains throughout the same key-note, indeed its multifarious events and scenes are at bottom just like variations of one and the same theme.
The a priori nature of the law of causality has, by Englishmen and Frenchmen, sometimes not been seen at all, sometimes not rightly conceived of; and therefore some of them still prosecute the earlier attempts to find for it an empirical origin. Maine de Biran places this in the experience that the act of will as cause is followed by the movement of the body as effect. But this fact itself is untrue. We certainly do not recognise the really immediate act of will as something different from the action of the body, and the two as connected by the bond of causality; but both are one and indivisible. Between them there is no succession; they are simultaneous. They are one and the same thing, apprehended in a double manner. That which makes itself known to inner apprehension (self-consciousness) as the real act of will exhibits itself at once in external perception, in which the body exists objectively as an action of the body. That physiologically the action of the nerve precedes that of the muscle is here immaterial, for it does not come within self-consciousness; and we are not speaking here of the relation between muscle and nerve, but of that between the act of will and the action of the body. Now this does not present itself as a causal relation. If these two presented themselves to us as cause and effect their connection would not be so incomprehensible to us as it actually is; for what we understand from its cause we understand as far as there is an understanding of things generally. On the other hand, the movement of our limbs by means of mere acts of will is indeed a miracle of such common occurrence that we no longer observe it; but if we once turn our attention to it we become keenly conscious of the incomprehensibility of the matter, just because in this we have something before us which we do not understand as the effect of a cause. This apprehension, then, could never lead us to the idea of causality, for that never appears in it at all. Maine de Biran himself recognises the perfect simultaneousness of the act of will and the movement (Nouvelles Considérations des Rapports du Physique au Moral, p. 377, 378). In England Thomas Reid (On the First Principles of Contingent Truths, Essay IV. c. 5) already asserted that the knowledge of the causal relation has its ground in the nature of the faculty of knowledge itself. Quite recently Thomas Brown, in his very tediously composed book, “Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect,” 4th edit., 1835, says much the same thing, that that knowledge springs from an innate, intuitive, and instinctive conviction; thus he is at bottom upon the right path. Quite unpardonable, however, is the crass ignorance on account of which in this book of 476 pages, of which 130 are devoted to the refutation of Hume, absolutely no mention is made of Kant, who cleared up the question more than seventy years ago. If Latin had remained the exclusive language of science such a thing would not have occurred. In spite of Brown's exposition, which in the main is correct, a modification of the doctrine set up by Maine de Biran, of the empirical origin of the fundamental knowledge of the causal relation, has yet found acceptance in England; for it is not without a certain degree of plausibility. It is this, that we abstract the law of causality from the perceived effect of our own body upon other bodies. This was already refuted by Hume. I, however, have shown that it is untenable in my work, “Ueber den Willen in der Natur” (p. 75 of the second edition, p. 82 of the third), from the fact that since we apprehend both our own and other bodies objectively in spatial perception, the knowledge of causality must already be there, because it is a condition of such perception. The one genuine proof that we are conscious of the law of causality before all experience lies in the necessity of making a transition from the sensation, which is only empirically given, to its cause, in order that it may become perception of the external world. Therefore I have substituted this proof for the Kantian, the incorrectness of which I have shown. A most full and thorough exposition of the whole of this important subject, which is only touched on here, the a priori nature of the law of causality and the intellectual nature of empirical perception, will be found in my essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 21, to which I refer, in order to avoid the necessity of repeating here what is said there. I have also shown there the enormous difference between the mere sensation of the senses and the perception of an objective world, and discovered the wide gulf that lies between the two. The law of causality alone can bridge across this gulf, and it presupposes for its application the two other forms which are related to it, space and time. Only by means of these three combined is the objective idea attained to. Now whether the sensation from which we start to arrive at apprehension arises through the resistance which is suffered by our muscular exertion, or through the impression of light upon the retina, or of sound upon the nerves of the brain, &c. &c., is really a matter of indifference. The sensation always remains a mere datum for the understanding, which alone is capable of apprehending it as the effect of a cause different from itself, which the understanding now perceives as external, i. e., as something occupying and filling space, which is also a form inherent in the intellect prior to all experience. Without this intellectual operation, for which the forms must lie ready in us, the perception of an objective, external world could never arise from a mere sensation within our skin. How can it ever be supposed that the mere feeling of being hindered in intended motion, which occurs also in lameness, could be sufficient for this? We may add to this that before I attempt to affect external things they must necessarily have affected me as motives. But this almost presupposes the apprehension of the external world. According to the theory in question (as I have remarked in the place referred to above), a man born without arms and legs could never attain to the idea of causality, and consequently could never arrive at the apprehension of the external world. But that this is not the case is proved by a fact communicated in Froriep's Notizen, July 1838, No. 133 – the detailed account, accompanied by a likeness, of an Esthonian girl, Eva Lauk, then fourteen years old, who was born entirely without arms or legs. The account concludes with these words: “According to the evidence of her mother, her mental development had been quite as quick as that of her brothers and sisters; she attained just as soon as they did to a correct judgment of size and distance, yet without the assistance of hands. – Dorpat, 1st March 1838, Dr. A. Hueck.”
