Chapter VII.
The remaining class of objects for the subject is a very peculiar and important one. It comprehends only one object, the immediate object of inner sense, the subject in volition which becomes an object of knowledge, but only in inner sense, and therefore always in time and never in space; and in time only under limitations. There can be no knowledge of knowledge, for that would imply that the subject had separated itself from knowledge, and yet knew knowledge, which is impossible. The subject is the condition of the existence of ideas, and can never itself become idea or object. It knows itself therefore never as knowing, but only as willing. Thus what we know in ourselves is never what knows, but what wills, the will. The identity of the subject of volition with the subject of knowledge, through which the word “I” includes both, is the insoluble problem. The identity of the knowing with the known is inexplicable, and yet is immediately present. The operation of a motive is not, like that of all other causes, known only from without, and therefore indirectly, but also from within. Motivation is, in fact, causality viewed from within.