Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 2.djvu/187

Rh realism remained in undisputed acceptance, spiritualism was set up, that is, the assumption of a second substance outside of and along with matter, an immaterial substance. This dualism and spiritualism, equally unsupported by experience and destitute of proof and comprehensibility, was denied by Spinoza, and was proved to be false by Kant, who dared to do so because at the same time he established idealism in its rights. For with realism materialism, as the counterpoise of which spiritualism had been devised, falls to the ground of its own accord, because then matter and the course of nature become mere phenomena, which are conditioned by the intellect, as they have their existence only in its idea. Accordingly spiritualism is the delusive and false safeguard against materialism, while the real and true safeguard is idealism, which, by making the objective world dependent upon us, gives the needed counterpoise to the position of dependence upon the objective world, in which we are placed by the course of nature. The world from which I part at death is, in another aspect, only my idea. The centre of gravity of existence falls back into the subject. What is proved is not, as in spiritualism, that the knower is independent of matter, but that all matter is dependent on him. Certainly this is not so easy to comprehend or so convenient to handle as spiritualism, with its two substances; but.

In opposition to the subjective starting-point, "the world is my idea," there certainly stands provisionally with equal justification the objective starting-point, "the world is matter," or "matter alone is absolute" (since it alone is not subject to becoming and passing away), or "all that exists is matter." This is the starting-point of Democritus, Leucippus, and Epicurus. But, more closely considered, the departure from the subject retains a real advantage; it has the start by one perfectly justified step. For consciousness alone is the immediate: but we pass over this if we go at once to matter and make it our starting-point.