Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 1.djvu/224

182 THE WORLD AS WILL. bk.ii. and the same force what originally belongs to different forces. Now this is the direct work of the faculty of judgment, and that is why so few men are capable of increasing our insight in physics, while all are able to enlarge experience. Indolence and ignorance make us disposed to appeal too soon to original forces. This is exemplified with an exaggeration that savours of irony in the entities and quidities of the schoolmen. Nothing is further from my desire than to favour their resuscitation. We have just as little right to appeal to the objectification of will, instead of giving a physical explanation, as we have to appeal to the creative power of God. For physics demands causes, and the will is never a cause. Its whole relation to the phenomenon is not in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason. But that which in itself is the will exists in another aspect as idea; that is to say, is phenomenon. As such, it obeys the laws which constitute the form of the phenomenon. Every movement, for example, although it is always a manifestation of will, must yet have a cause from which it is to be explained in relation to a particular time and space; that is, not in general in its inner nature, but as a particular phenomenon. In the case of the stone, this is a mechanical cause; in that of the movement of a man, it is a motive; but in no case can it be wanting. On the other hand, the universal common nature of all phenomena of one particular kind, that which must be presupposed if the explanation from causes is to have any sense and meaning, is the general force of nature, which, in physics, must remain a qualitas occulta, because with it the etiological explanation ends and the metaphysical begins. But the chain of causes and effects is never broken by an original force to which it has been necessary to appeal. It does not run back to such a force as if it were its first link, but the nearest link, as well as the remotest, presupposes the original force, and could otherwise explain nothing. A series of