Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 21, ROT-Siam

Rupture
with his
mother.
450
SCHOPENHAUER
reason as ground of belief and reason as cause of a fact. The prin¬
ciple gives expression to the law that nothing singular and uncon¬
nected can be an object for us but only as forming part in a system.
This law has four main roots, according to the four classes of objects,
in each of which a special form of connexion prevails. These
objects are—(1) real objects of perception, where the relation of
cause and effect requires each state to be dependent on its ante¬
cedent ; (2) propositions, which are tied together as premises and
conclusions ; (3) the formal conditions of perception, viz., space and
time, -where each part is intuitively seen to be in reciprocal depend¬
ence on every other; (4) voluntary agents, where the law of motiva¬
tion prescribes the dependence of action upon the idea of an object
presented to the character of the agent.1 Modifying the Kantian
theory, that things are mental projections, he emphasizes the intel¬
lectual operation which elevates sensation to perception. The feeling
of alteration in an organ is taken by the intellect, whose one
category is causality, to refer to a real, i.e., material object which
generates the change in our body. But the reference is an intuitive
interpretation of a felt modification in the organism. Hence the
important place assigned to the human body : it is the first of
objects, the “immediate object,” the means by which all other
objects come within consciousness. As a perpetual correlative of
external perceptions, the body further serves as an instrument for
separating phantasm from fact. To detect and scare away hallucina¬
tion we have only to realize the presence of our bodies. In dealing
with motives Schopenhauer touches upon the relation between
volition and cognition. The ego—which is the subject that knows
—is a mere correlative to the known object: object perceived and
subject perceiving are not two things, but one, perpetually dividing
itself into two poles ; and what are called the several faculties o*f
the ego are only an inference or a reflex from the several classes
of mental object. The “ I ” in “ I know ” is already the implication
and virtual presence of knowledge. But the “I will” is a new
fact,—the revelation of another aspect of the world, the first fact
of inner and real existence. In this perception there is given us
the unity of the volitional self with the knowing subject; and this
identity of the “I” who “will” with the “I” who “know” is in
Schopenhauer’s words the miracle par excellence (das Wander ko.t
t&XW, § 43).
In November 1813 Schopenhauer returned to Weimar,
and for a few months boarded with his mother. But the
strain of daily association was too much for their antagon¬
istic natures. The mother felt herself genee in the pre¬
sence of a disputatious and gloomy son; she missed the
ease of her emancipated life; and her friends found their
movements watched by a suspicious eye, which was ready
to surmise evil in the open and light-hearted style of
housekeeping. . In short, his splenetic temper and her
volatility culminated in an open rupture in May 1814.
From that time till her death in 1838 Schojjenhauer never
saw his mother again. It was during these few months at
Weimar, however, that he made some acquaintances de¬
stined to influence the subsequent course of his thought.
Conversations with the Orientalist F. Mayer directed his
studies to the philosophical speculations of ancient India.
In 1808 Friedrich Schlegel had in his Language and Wis¬
dom of the Old Hindus brought Brahmanical philosophy
within the range of European literature. Still more in¬
structive for Schopenhauer was the imperfect and obscure
Latin translation of the Upanishads which in 1801-2
Anquetil Duperron had published from a Persian version
of the Sanskrit original. Another friendship of the same
period had more palpable immediate effect but not so per¬
manent. This was with Goethe, who succeeded in securing
his interest for those investigations on colours on which he
was himself engaged. Schopenhauer took up the subject
m earnest, and the result of his reflexions (and a few ele¬
mentary observations) soon after appeared (Easter 1816)
as a monograph, Ueber das Sehen und die Farben. The
essay, which must be treated as an episode or digression
fiom the direct path of Schopenhauer’s development, due
to the potent deflecting force of Goethe, was written at
Dresden, to which he had transferred his abode after the
7 11fi.clafS1!icattonScllopenhauersu1lse<luentlymodified,—substitu
mg for the first and fourth a graduated scale rising from cause propi
(in inorganic nature) to stimulus (in vegetative life) and motive (i
the animal world), the last again being either intuitive motive, as i
the lower animals, or rational motive, as in man.
rupture with his mother. It had been sent in MS. to
Goethe in the autumn of 1815, who, finding in it a trans¬
formation rather than an expansion of his own ideas, in¬
clined to regard the author as an opponent rather than an
adherent.
The pamphlet begins by re-stating with reference to sight the AW
general theory that perception of an objective world rests upon an Siqht
instinctive causal postulation, which even when it misleads still and
remains to. haunt us (instead of being, like errors of reason, open Colours
to extirpation by evidence), and proceeds to deal with physiological
colour, i.e., with colours as felt (not perceived) modifications of the
action of the retina. First of all, the distinction of white and
black, with their mean point in grey, is referred to the activity
or inactivity of the total retina in the graduated presence or
absence of full light. Further, the eye is endowed with polarity,
by which its activity is divided into two parts qualitatively dis¬
tinct. It is this circumstance which gives rise to the phenomenon
of colour. All colours are complementary, or go in pairs ; each
pair makes up the whole activity of the retina, and so is equivalent
to white ; and the two partial activities are so connected that when
the fiist is exhausted the other spontaneously succeeds. Such pairs
of colour may be regarded as infinite in number ; but there are
thi ee pairs which stand out prominently, and admit of easy expres¬
sion for the ratio in which each contributes to the total action.
These are red and green (each = J), orange and blue (2:1), and
yellow and violet (3 :1).“ This theory of complementary colours
as due to the polarity in the qualitative action of the retina is
followed by some criticism of Newton and the seven colours, by
an attempt to explain some facts noted by Goethe, and by some
reference to the external stimuli which cause colour.
The grand interest of his life at Dresden was the com¬
position of a work which should give expression in all its
aspects to the idea of man’s nature and destiny which had
been gradually forming within him. Without cutting
himself altogether either from social pleasures or from art,
he read and took notes with regularity. More and more
he learned from Cabanis and Helvetius to see in the will
and the passions the determinants of intellectual life, and
in the character and the temper the source of theories and
beliefs. The conviction was borne in upon him that scien¬
tific explanation could never do more than systematize and
classify the mass of appearances which to our habit-blinded
eyes seem to be the reality. To get at this reality and thus
to reach a standpoint higher than that of aetiology was the
problem of his as of all philosophy. It is only by such a
tower of speculation that an escape is possible from the
spectre of materialism, theoretical and practical; and so,
says Schopenhauer, “the just and good must all have this
creed : I believe in a metaphysic.” The mere reasonings
of theoretical science leave no room for art, and practical
prudence usurps the place of morality. The higher life of
aesthetic and ethical activity—the beautiful and the good
—can only be based upon an intuition which penetrates
the heart of reality. Towards the spring of 1818 the work
was nearing its end, and Brockhaus of Leipsic had agreed
to publish it and pay the author one ducat for every sheet
of printed matter. But, as the press loitered, Schopen¬
hauer, suspecting treachery, wrote so rudely and haughtily
to the publisher that the latter broke off correspondence
with his client. In the end of 1818, however, the book Weltcds
appeared (with the date 1819), in 725 pages 8vo, with the
title Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, in four books,
with an appendix containing a criticism of the Kantkui m9'
philosophy.
The first book of The World as Will and Idea resumes the argu- Book i.
ment of the earlier work, that all objects are constituted by intel¬
lectual relations, describable as forms of the causal principle. As
so apprehending a world of objects, man is said to possess in¬
telligence (Verstand), the perception of individual sequences and
coexistences. It is a faculty he shares with the animals, and by its
means the world presents itself as an endless number of objects in
space and time bound together by necessary laws of causality. But
man has also the power oi reason (Vernunft), by which he generalizes,
the vehicle of this generalization being language. By means of
In this doctrine, so far as the facts go, Schopenhauer is indebted
to a paper by R. Waring Darwin in vol. Ixxvi. of the Transactions of
the Philosophical Society.