Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/116

 of the organs of touch and sight, are instances of such illusions; likewise the apparently increased size of the rising moon; the image which forms in the focus of a concave mirror and exactly resembles a solid body floating in space; the painted relievo which we take for real; the apparent motion of a shore or bridge on which we are standing, if a ship happens to pass along or beneath it; the seeming proximity of very lofty mountains, owing to the absence of atmospheric perspective, which is the result of the purity of the air round their summits. In these and in a multitude of similar cases, our Understanding takes for granted the existence of the usual cause with which it is conversant and forthwith perceives it, though our Reason has arrived at the truth by a different road; for, the knowledge of the Understanding being anterior to that of the Reason, the intellect remains inaccessible to the teaching of the Reason, and thus the illusion—that is, the deception of the Understanding—remains immovable; albeit error—that is, the deception of the Reason—is obviated.—That which is correctly known by the Understanding is reality: that which is correctly known by the Reason is truth, or in other terms, a judgment having a sufficient reason; illusion (that which is wrongly perceived) we oppose to reality: error (that which is wrongly thought) to truth.

The purely formal part of empirical perception—that is, Space, Time, and the law of Causality—is contained à priori in the intellect; but this is not the case with the application of this formal part to empirical data, which has to be acquired by the Understanding through practice and experience. Therefore new-born infants, though they no doubt receive impressions of light and of colour, still do not apprehend or indeed, strictly speaking, see objects. The first weeks of their existence are rather passed in a kind of stupor, from which they awaken by degrees when their Understanding begins to apply its function to the