Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/353

 ASTRONOMY. 321

What makes the knowledge, that this is indeed the case, so difficult, is the circumstance, that we know causality and will in two fundamentally different ways: causality entirely from outside, quite indirectly, quite through the under standing; will entirely from inside, quite directly; and that accordingly the clearer the knowledge of the one in each given instance, the less clear is the knowledge of the other. Therefore we recognise the essence of the will least readily, where causality is most intelligible; and, where the will is most unmistakably evident, causality becomes so obscured, that the vulgar mind could venture to deny its existence altogether. Now, as Kant has taught us, causality is nothing but the form of the understanding itself, knowable a priori: that is, the essence of representation, as such, which is one side of the world; the other side is will: which is the thing–in–itself. That relative increase and decrease of clearness in inverse proportion of causality and of the will, that mutual advancing and receding of both, depends consequently upon the fact, that the more a thing is given us as mere phenomenon, i.e. as representation, the more clearly does the a priori form of representation, i.e. causality, manifest itself: this is the case in inanimate Nature; conversely, the more immediate our knowledge of the will, the more does the form of representation recede into the background: this is the case with ourselves. That is : the nearer one side of the world approaches to us, the more do we lose sight of the other.