Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/202

 and we call this something its reason, or, more correctly, the motive of the action which now follows. Without such a reason or motive, the action is just as inconceivable for us, as the movement of a lifeless body without being pushed or pulled. Motives therefore belong to causes, and have also been already numbered and characterized among them in § 20, as the third form of Causality. But all Causality is only the form of the Principle of Sufficient Reason in the First Class of Objects: that is, in the corporeal world given us in external perception. There it forms the link which connects changes one with another, the cause being that which, coming from outside, conditions each occurrence. The inner nature of such occurrences on the contrary continues to be a mystery for us: for we always remain on the outside. We certainly see this cause necessarily produce that effect; but we do not learn how it is actually enabled to do so, or what is going on inside. Thus we see mechanical, physical, chemical effects, as well as those brought about by stimuli, in each instance follow from their respective causes without on that account ever completely understanding the process, the essential part of which remains a mystery for us; so we attribute it to qualities of bodies, to forces of Nature, or to vital energy, which, however, are all qualitates occultæ. Nor should we be at all better off as to comprehension of the movements and actions of animals and of human beings, which would also appear to us as induced in some unaccountable way by their causes (motives), were it not that here we are granted an insight into the inward part of the process; we know, that is, by our own inward experience, that this is an act of the will called forth by the motive, which consists in a mere representation. Thus the effect produced by the motive, unlike that produced by all other causes, is not only known by us from outside, in a merely indirect way, but at the