Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 2.djvu/199

Rh which are perceived by us as external to us are only our ideas, and consequently are apprehended by us immediately. The whole observation given above in Euler's words, and which is quite correct, affords a fresh proof of Kant's Transcendental Æsthetic, and of my theory of perception which is founded upon it, as also of idealism in general. The directness and unconsciousness referred to above, with which in perception we make the transition from the sensation to its cause, may be illustrated by an analogous procedure in the use of abstract ideas or thinking. When we read or hear we receive mere words, but we pass from these so immediately to. the conceptions denoted by them, that it is as if we received the conceptions directly; for we are absolutely unconscious of the transition from the words to the conceptions. Therefore it sometimes happens that we do not know in what language it was that we read something yesterday which we now remember. Yet that such a transition always takes place becomes apparent if it is once omitted, that is, if in a fit of abstraction we read without thinking, and then become aware that we certainly have taken in all the words but no conceptions. Only when we pass from abstract conceptions to pictures of the imagination do we become conscious of the transposition we have made.

Further, it is really only in perception in the narrowest sense, that is, in sight, that in empirical apprehension the transition from the sensation to its cause takes place quite unconsciously. In every other kind of sense perception, on the contrary, the transition takes place with more or less distinct consciousness; therefore, in the case of apprehension through the four coarser senses, its reality is capable of being established as an immediate fact. Thus in the dark we feel a thing for a long time on all sides until from the different effects upon our hands we are able to construct its definite form as their cause. Further, if something feels smooth we sometimes reflect whether we may not have fat or oil upon our hands; and