Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 2.djvu/329

Rh like a face without eyes. They are, however, a suitable occupation for men of good capacity who yet lack the highest faculties, which would even be a hindrance to minute investigations of such a kind. Such men concentrate their whole power and their whole knowledge upon one limited field, in which, therefore, on condition of remaining in entire ignorance of everything else, they can attain to the most complete knowledge possible; while the philosopher must survey all fields of knowledge, and indeed to a certain extent be at home in them; and thus that complete knowledge which can only be attained by the study of detail is necessarily denied him. Therefore the former may be compared to those Geneva workmen of whom one makes only wheels, another only springs, and a third only chains. The philosopher, on the other hand, is like the watchmaker, who alone produces a whole out of all these which has motion and significance. They may also be compared to the musicians of an orchestra, each of whom is master of his own instrument; and the philosopher, on the other hand, to the conductor, who must know the nature and use of every instrument, yet without being able to play them, all, or even one of them, with great perfection. Scotus Erigena includes all sciences under the name Scientia, in opposition to philosophy, which he calls Sapientia. The same distinction was already made by the Pythagoreans; as may be seen from Stobæus (Floril., vol. i. p. 20), where it is very clearly and neatly explained. But a much happier and more piquant comparison of the relation of the two kinds of mental effort to each other has been so often repeated by the ancients that we no longer know to whom it belongs. Diogenes Laertius (ii. 79) attributes it to Aristippus, Stobæus (Floril., tit. iv. 110) to Aristo of Chios; the Scholiast of Aristotle ascribes it to him (p. 8 of the Berlin edition), but Plutarch (De Puer. Educ., c. 10) attributes it to Bio – "Qui ajebat, sicut Penelopes proci,