Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/142

 much, that his spirit might truly say to me, in the words of Homer:


 * Αχλύν δ αύ τοι ἀπ' ὀφθαλμῶν ἣ ἐπῆεν.

§ 24. Of the Misapplication of the Law of Causality.
From the foregoing exposition it follows, that the application of the causal law to anything but changes in the material, empirically given world, is an abuse of it. For instance, it is a misapplication to make use of it with reference to physical forces, without which no changes could take place; or to Matter, on which they take place; or to the world, to which we must in that case attribute an absolutely objective existence independently of our intellect; indeed in many other cases besides. I refer the reader to what I have said on this subject in my chief work. Such misapplications always arise, partly, through our taking the conception of cause, like many other metaphysical and ethical conceptions, in far too wide a sense; partly, through our forgetting that the causal law is certainly a presupposition which we bring with us into the world, by which the perception of things outside us becomes possible; but that, just on that account, we are not authorized in extending beyond the range and independently of our cognitive faculty a principle, which has its origin in the equipment of that faculty, nor in assuming it to hold good as the everlasting order of the universe and of all that exists.