Артур Шопенгауэр - The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 3 of 3)

Our wonder at the origin of forms in matter is at bottom like that of the savage who looks for the first time in a mirror and marvels at his own image which he sees there. For our own inner nature is the will, whose mere visibility is matter. Yet matter never appears otherwise than with the visible , i. e. , under the outer shell of form and quality, and therefore is never directly apprehended, but always merely added in thought as that which is identical in all things, under all differences of quality and form. On this account it is more a metaphysical than a physical principle of explanation of things, and to make all existences arise from it is really to explain them from something which is very mysterious; which all know it to be except those who confound attacking with comprehending. In truth, the ultimate and exhaustive explanation of things is by no means to be sought in matter, although certainly the temporal origin both of unorganised forms and of organised beings is to be sought in it. Yet it seems that the origination of organised forms, the production of the species themselves, is almost as difficult for nature to accomplish as it is for us to comprehend. This is indicated by the entirely extravagant provision which nature always makes for maintaining the species which once exist. Yet on the present surface of this planet the will to live has gone through the scale of its objectification three times, quite independently of each other, in a different modulation, and also with great difference of perfection and fulness. The old world, America, and Australia have, it is well known, each their peculiar independent fauna, entirely different from that of the other two. Upon each of these great continents the species are throughout different, but yet, because all three belong to the same planet, they have a thorough analogy with each other running parallel through them; therefore the genera are for the most part the same. In Australia this analogy can only be very imperfectly followed because its fauna is very poor in mammalia, and contains neither beasts of prey nor apes. On the other hand, between the old world and America it is obvious, and in the following manner. In mammals America always produces the inferior analogue, but in birds and reptiles the better. Thus it has the advantage in the condor, the macaw, the humming-bird, and the largest batrachia and ophidia; but, for example, instead of the elephant it has only the tapir, instead of the lion the puma, instead of the tiger the jaguar, instead of the camel the lama, and instead of apes proper only monkeys. Even from this last defect it may be concluded that in America nature was not able to rise to man; for even from the nearest grade below man, the chimpanzee and the orang-outang or pongo, the step to man was still an excessively great one. Correspondingly we find that the three races of men which, both upon physiological and linguistic grounds, are undoubtedly equally original, the Caucasian, the Mongolian, and the Ethiopian, are only at home in the old world; while America, on the other hand, is peopled by a mixed or climatically modified Mongolian race, which must have come over from Asia. On the surface of the earth which immediately preceded the present surface apes were reached here and there, but not men.

From this standpoint of our consideration, which shows us matter as the direct visibility of the will which manifests itself in all things, nay, indeed, for the merely physical investigation which follows the guidance of time and causality, lets it pass as the origin of things, we are easily led to the question whether even in philosophy we could not just as well start from the objective as from the subjective side, and accordingly set up as the fundamental truth the proposition: “There is in general nothing but matter and its indwelling forces.” But, with regard to these “indwelling forces” here so easily used, we must remember that their assumption leads every explanation back to a completely incomprehensible miracle, and then leaves it beside it, or rather leaves it to begin from it. For every definite, inexplicable force of nature which lies at the foundation of the most different kinds of effects of an unorganised body, not less than the vital force which manifests itself in every organised body, is such an incomprehensible miracle, as I have fully explained in chap. 17, and have also shown that physics can never be set upon the throne of metaphysics, just because it leaves quite untouched the assumption referred to and also many others; whereby from the beginning it renounces all claim to give an ultimate explanation of things. I must further remind the reader here of the proof of the insufficiency of materialism, which is given towards the end of the first chapter, because, as was said there, it is the philosophy of the subject which forgets itself in its calculation. But all these truths rest upon the fact that everything objective , everything external, since it is always only something apprehended, something known, remains also always indirect and secondary, therefore absolutely never can become the ultimate ground of explanation of things or the starting-point of philosophy. Philosophy necessarily requires what is absolutely immediate for its starting-point. But clearly only that which is given in self-consciousness fulfils this condition, that which is within, the subjective . And hence it is so eminent a merit of Descartes that he first made philosophy start from self-consciousness. Since then, upon this path, the genuine philosophers, especially Locke, Berkeley, and Kant, have gone even further, each in his own manner, and in consequence of their investigations I was led to recognise and make use, not of one, but of two completely different data of immediate knowledge in self-consciousness, the idea and the will, by the combined application of which one can go further in philosophy, in the same proportion as in the case of an algebraical problem one can accomplish more if two known quantities are given than if only one is given.

In accordance with what has been said, the ineradicable falseness of materialism primarily consists in the fact that it starts from a petitio principii , which when more closely considered turns out indeed to be a πρωτον φευδος. It starts from the assumption that matter is something absolutely and unconditionally given, something existing independently of the knowledge of the subject, thus really a thing in itself. It attributes to matter (and consequently also to its presuppositions time and space) an absolute existence, i. e. , an existence independent of the perceiving subject; this is its fundamental error. Then, if it will go honestly to work, it must leave the qualities inherent in the given materials, i. e. , in the substances, together with the natural forces which manifest themselves in these, and finally also the vital force, unexplained, as unfathomable qualitates occultæ , and start from them; as physics and physiology actually do, because they make no claim to be the ultimate explanation of things. But just to avoid this, materialism – at least as it has hitherto appeared – has not proceeded honestly. It denies all those original forces, for it pretends and seems to reduce them all, and ultimately also the vital force, to the mere mechanical activity of matter, thus to manifestations of impenetrability, form, cohesion, impulsive power, inertia, gravity, &c., qualities which certainly have least that is inexplicable in themselves, just because they partly depend upon what is known a priori , consequently on the forms of our own intellect, which are the principle of all comprehensibility. But the intellect as the condition of all objects, and consequently of the whole phenomenal world, is entirely ignored by materialism. Its plan is now to refer everything qualitative to something merely quantitative, for it attributes the former to mere form in opposition to matter proper. To matter it leaves, of the properly empirical qualities, only gravity, because it already appears as something quantitative, the only measure of the quantity of the matter. This path necessarily leads it to the fiction of atoms, which now become the material out of which it thinks to construct the mysterious manifestations of all original forces. But here it has really no longer to do with empirically given matter, but with a matter which is not to be found in rerum natura , but is rather a mere abstraction of that real matter, a matter which would absolutely have no other than those mechanical qualities which, with the exception of gravity, can be pretty well construed a priori , just because they depend upon the forms of space, time, and causality, and consequently upon our intellect; to this poor material, then, it finds itself reduced for the construction of its castle in the air.