Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 2.djvu/29

Rh is impossible, and criticism of pure reason takes its place. As opposed to the old dogmatism, Kant is here completely victorious; therefore all dogmatic attempts which have since appeared have been obliged to pursue an entirely different path from the earlier systems; and I shall now go on to the justification of my own system, according to the expressed intention of this criticism. A more careful examination, then, of the reasoning given above will oblige one to confess that its first fundamental assumption is a petitio principii. It lies in the proposition (stated with particular clearness in the Prolegomena, § 1): "The source of metaphysics must throughout be non-empirical; its fundamental principles and conceptions must never be taken from either inner or outer experience." Yet absolutely nothing is advanced in proof of tins cardinal assertion except the etymological argument from the word metaphysic. In truth, however, the matter stands thus: The world and our own existence presents itself to us necessarily as a riddle. It is now assumed, without more ado, that the solution of this riddle cannot be arrived at from a thorough understanding of the world itself, but must be sought in something entirely different from the world (for that is the meaning of "beyond the possibility of all experience"); and that everything must be excluded from that solution of which we can in any way have immediate knowledge (for that is the meaning of possible experience, both inner and outer); the solution must rather be sought only in that at which we can arrive merely indirectly, that is, by means of inferences from universal principles a priori. After the principal source of all knowledge has in this way been excluded, and the direct way to truth has been closed, we must not wonder that the dogmatic systems failed, and that Kant was able to show the necessity of this failure; for metaphysics and knowledge a priori had been assumed beforehand to be identical. But for this it was first necessary to prove that the material for the solution of the riddle absolutely