From this whole inquiry it follows with certainty and distinctness that it is absolutely impossible to attain to the comprehension of the inner nature of things upon the path of mere knowledge and perception. For knowledge always comes to things from without, and therefore must for ever remain outside them. This end would only be reached if we could find ourselves in the inside of things, so that their inner nature would be known to us directly. Now, how far this is actually the case is considered in my second book. But so long as we are concerned, as in this first book, with objective comprehension, that is, with knowledge, the world is, and remains for us, a mere idea, for here there is no possible path by which we can cross over to it.
But, besides this, a firm grasp of the point of view of idealism is a necessary counterpoise to that of materialism. The controversy concerning the real and the ideal may also be regarded as a controversy concerning the existence of matter. For it is the reality or ideality of this that is ultimately in question. Does matter, as such, exist only in our idea, or does it also exist independently of it? In the latter case it would be the thing in itself; and whoever assumes a self-existent matter must also, consistently, be a materialist, i.e., he must make matter the principle of explanation of all things. Whoever, on the contrary, denies its existence as a thing in itself is eo ipso an idealist. Among the moderns only Locke has definitely and without ambiguity asserted the reality of matter; and therefore his teaching led, in the hands of Condillac, to the sensualism and materialism of the French. Only Berkeley directly and without modifications denies matter. The complete antithesis is thus that of idealism and materialism, represented in its extremes by Berkeley and the [pg 176] French materialists (Hollbach). Fichte is not to be mentioned here: he deserves no place among true philosophers; among those elect of mankind who, with deep earnestness, seek not their own things but the truth, and therefore must not be confused with those who, under this pretence, have only their personal advancement in view. Fichte is the father of the sham philosophy, of the disingenuous method which, through ambiguity in the use of words, incomprehensible language, and sophistry, seeks to deceive, and tries, moreover, to make a deep impression by assuming an air of importance—in a word, the philosophy which seeks to bamboozle and humbug those who desire to learn. After this method had been applied by Schelling, it reached its height, as every one knows, in Hegel, in whose hands it developed into pure charlatanism. But whoever even names this Fichte seriously along with Kant shows that he has not even a dim notion of what Kant is. On the other hand, materialism also has its warrant. It is just as true that the knower is a product of matter as that matter is merely the idea of the knower; but it is also just as one-sided. For materialism is the philosophy of the subject that forgets to take account of itself. And, accordingly, as against the assertion that I am a mere modification of matter, this must be insisted upon, that all matter exists merely in my idea; and it is no less right. A knowledge, as yet obscure, of these relations seems to have been the origin of the saying of Plato, “ὑλη αληθινον ψευδος” (materia mendacium verax).
Realism necessarily leads, as we have said, to materialism. For if empirical perception gives us things in themselves, as they exist independently of our knowledge, experience also gives us the order of things in themselves, i.e., the true and sole order of the world. But this path leads to the assumption that there is only one thing in itself, matter; of which all other things are modifications; for the course of nature is here the absolute and only order of the world. To escape from these consequences, while [pg 177] realism remained in undisputed acceptance, spiritualism was set up, that is, the assumption of a second substance outside of and along with matter, an immaterial substance. This dualism and spiritualism, equally unsupported by experience and destitute of proof and comprehensibility, was denied by Spinoza, and was proved to be false by Kant, who dared to do so because at the same time he established idealism in its rights. For with realism materialism, as the counterpoise of which spiritualism had been devised, falls to the ground of its own accord, because then matter and the course of nature become mere phenomena, which are conditioned by the intellect, as they have their existence only in its idea. Accordingly spiritualism is the delusive and false safeguard against materialism, while the real and true safeguard is idealism, which, by making the objective world dependent upon us, gives the needed counterpoise to the position of dependence upon the objective world, in which we are placed by the course of nature. The world from which I part at death is, in another aspect, only my idea. The centre of gravity of existence falls back into the subject. What is proved is not, as in spiritualism, that the knower is independent of matter, but that all matter is dependent on him. Certainly this is not so easy to comprehend or so convenient to handle as spiritualism, with its two substances; but χαλεπα τα καλα.
In opposition to the subjective starting-point, “the world is my idea,” there certainly stands provisionally with equal justification the objective starting-point, “the world is matter,” or “matter alone is absolute” (since it alone is not subject to becoming and passing away), or “all that exists is matter.” This is the starting-point of Democritus, Leucippus, and Epicurus. But, more closely considered, the departure from the subject retains a real advantage; it has the start by one perfectly justified step. For consciousness alone is the immediate: but we pass over this if we go at once to matter and make it our starting-point. [pg 178] On the other hand, it would certainly be possible to construct the world from matter and its properties if these were correctly, completely, and exhaustively known to us (which is far from being the case as yet). For all that has come to be has become actual through causes, which could operate and come together only by virtue of the fundamental forces of matter. But these must be perfectly capable of demonstration at least objectively, even if subjectively we never attain to a knowledge of them. But such an explanation and construction of the world would not only have at its foundation the assumption of an existence in itself of matter (while in truth it is conditioned by the subject), but it would also be obliged to allow all the original qualities in this matter to pass current and remain absolutely inexplicable, thus as qualitates occultæ. (Cf. § 26, 27 of the first volume.) For matter is only the vehicle of these forces, just as the law of causality is only the arranger of their manifestations. Therefore such an explanation of the world would always remain merely relative and conditioned, properly the work of a physical science, which at every step longed for a metaphysic. On the other hand, there is also something inadequate about the subjective starting-point and first principle, “the world is my idea,” partly because it is one-sided, since the world is far more than that (the thing in itself, will), and indeed its existence as idea is to a certain extent only accidental to it; but partly also because it merely expresses the fact that the object is conditioned by the subject, without at the same time saying that the subject, as such, is also conditioned by the object. For the assertion, “the subject would still remain a knowing being if it had no object, i.e., if it had absolutely no idea,” is just as false as the assertion of the crude understanding, “the world, the object, would still exist, even if there were no subject.” A consciousness without an object is no consciousness. A thinking subject has conceptions for its object; a subject of sense perception has objects with the qualities corresponding [pg 179] to its organisation. If we rob the subject of all special characteristics and forms of its knowledge, all the properties of the object vanish also, and nothing remains but matter without form and quality, which can just as little occur in experience as a subject without the forms of its knowledge, but which remains opposed to the naked subject as such, as its reflex, which can only disappear along with it. Although materialism pretends to postulate nothing more than this matter—for instance, atoms—yet it unconsciously adds to it not only the subject, but also space, time, and causality, which depend upon special properties of the subject.
The world as idea, the objective world, has thus, as it were, two poles; the simple knowing subject without the forms of its knowledge, and crude matter without form and quality. Both are completely unknowable; the subject because it is that which knows, matter because without form and quality it cannot be perceived. Yet both are fundamental conditions of all empirical perception. Thus the knowing subject, merely as such, which is a presupposition of all experience, stands opposed as its pure counterpart to the crude, formless, and utterly dead (i.e., will-less) matter, which is given in no experience, but which all experience presupposes. This subject is not in time, for time is only the more definite form of all its ideas. The matter which stands over against it is, like it, eternal and imperishable, endures through all time, but is, properly speaking, not extended, for extension gives form, thus it has no spatial properties. Everything else is involved in a constant process of coming into being and passing away, while these two represent the unmoved poles of the world as idea. The permanence of matter may therefore be regarded as the reflex of the timelessness of the pure subject, which is simply assumed as the condition of all objects. Both belong to phenomena, not to the thing in itself, but they are the framework of the phenomenon. Both are arrived [pg 180] at only by abstraction, and are not given immediately, pure and for themselves.
The fundamental error of all systems is the failure to understand this truth. Intelligence and matter are correlates, i.e., the one exists only for the other, both stand and fall together, the one is only the reflex of the other. Indeed they are really one and the same thing regarded from two opposite points of view; and this one thing, I am here anticipating, is the manifestation of the will, or the thing in itself. Consequently both are secondary, and therefore the origin of the world is not to be sought in either of the two. But because of their failure to understand this, all systems (with the exception perhaps of that of Spinoza) sought the origin of all things in one of these two. Some of them, on the one hand, suppose an intelligence, νους, as the absolutely First and δημιουργος, and accordingly in this allow an idea of things and of the world to precede their actual existence; consequently they distinguish the real world from the world of idea; which is false. Therefore matter now appears as that through which the two are distinguished, as the thing in itself. Hence arises the difficulty of procuring this matter, the ὑλη, so that when added to the mere idea of the world it may impart reality to it. That original intelligence must now either find it ready to hand, in which case it is just as much an absolute First as that intelligence itself, and we have then two absolute Firsts, the δημιουργος and the ὑλη; or the absolute intelligence must create this matter out of nothing, an assumption which our understanding refuses to make, for it is only capable of comprehending changes in matter, and not that matter itself should come into being or pass away. This rests ultimately upon the fact that matter is essential, the correlate of the understanding. On the other hand, the systems opposed to these, which make the other of the two correlates, that is, matter, the absolute First, suppose a matter which would exist without being perceived; and it has been made sufficiently clear by all that [pg 181] has been said above that this is a direct contradiction, for by the existence of matter we always mean simply its being perceived. But here they encounter the difficulty of bringing to this matter, which alone is their absolute First, the intelligence which is finally to experience it. I have shown this weak side of materialism in § 7 of the first volume. For me, on the contrary, matter and intelligence are inseparable correlates, which exist only for each other, and therefore merely relatively. Matter is the idea of the intelligence; the intelligence is that in whose idea alone matter exists. The two together constitute the world as idea, which is just Kant's phenomenon, and consequently something secondary. What is primary is that which manifests itself, the thing in itself, which we shall afterwards discover is the will. This is in itself neither the perceiver nor the perceived, but is entirely different from the mode of its manifestation.
As a forcible conclusion of this important and difficult discussion I shall now personify these two abstractions, and present them in a dialogue after the fashion of Prabodha Tschandro Daya. It may also be compared with a similar dialogue between matter and form in the “Duodecim Principia Philosophiæ” of Raymund Lully, c. 1 and 2.
The Subject.
I am, and besides me there is nothing. For the world is my idea.
Matter.