Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 1.djvu/106

&4 THE WORLD AS IDEA. possible ground of its existence, and referred it to the peculiar character of concepts, i.e., to the procedure of reason itself. Therefore, as my exposition has led me to it, though it is very easily understood, I will illustrate it in the following table by means of a schema. This table is intended to show how the spheres of concepts overlap each other at many points, and so leave room for a passage from each concept to whichever one we please of several other concepts. I hope, however, that no one will be led by this table to attach more importance to this little explanation, which I have merely given in passing, than ought to belong to it, from the nature of the subject. I have chosen as an illustration the concept of travelling. Its sphere partially includes four others, to any of which the sophist may pass at will; these again partly include other spheres, several of them two or more at once, and through these the sophist takes whichever way he chooses, always as if it were the only way, till at last he reaches, in good or evil, whatever end he may have in view. In passing from one sphere to another, it is only necessary always to follow the direction from the centre (the given chief concept) to the circumference, and never to reverse this process. Such a piece of sophistry may be either an unbroken speech, or it may assume the strict syllogistic form, according to what is the weak side of the hearer. Most scientific arguments, and especially philosophical demonstrations, are at bottom not much more than this, for how else would it be possible, that so much, in different ages, has not only been falsely apprehended (for error itself has a different source), but demonstrated and proved, and has yet afterwards been found to be fundamentally wrong, for example, the Leibnitz-Wolfian Philosophy, Ptolemaic Astronomy, Stahl's Chemistry, Newton's Theory of Colours, &c. &c.

§ 10. Through all this, the question presses ever more upon us, how certainty is to be attained, how judgments