Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 2.djvu/338

328 judgments; although we strive against this in order that we may be able to explain our thought to ourselves and others. But ordinarily it is in the obscure depths of the mind that the rumination of the materials received from without takes place, through which they are worked up into thoughts; and it goes on almost as unconsciously as the conversion of nourishment into the humours and substance of the body. Hence it is that we can often give no account of the origin of our deepest thoughts. They are the birth of our mysterious inner life. Judgments, thoughts, purposes, rise from out that deep unexpectedly and to our own surprise. A letter brings us unlooked-for and important news, in consequence of which our thoughts and motives are disordered; we get rid of the matter for the present, and think no more about it; but next day, or on the third or fourth day after, the whole situation sometimes stands distinctly before us, with what we have to do in the circumstances. Consciousness is the mere surface of our mind, of which, as of the earth, we do not know the inside, but only the crust.

But in the last instance, or in the secret of our inner being, what sets in activity the association of thought itself, the laws of which were set forth above, is the will, which urges its servant the intellect, according to the measure of its powers, to link thought to thought, to recall the similar, the contemporaneous, to recognise reasons and consequents. For it is to the, interest of the will that, in general, one should think, so that one may be well equipped for all cases that may arise. Therefore the form of the principle of sufficient reason which governs the association of thoughts and keeps it active is ultimately the law of motivation. For that which rules the sensorium, and determines it to follow the analogy or other association of thoughts in this or that direction, is the will of the thinking subject. Now just as here the laws of the connection of ideas subsist only upon the basis of the will, so also in the real world the causal connection