Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 2.djvu/340

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CHAPTER XV.

ON THE ESSENTIAL IMPERFECTIONS OF THE INTELLECT.

self-consciousness has not space but only time as its form, and therefore we do not think in three dimensions, as we perceive, but only in one, thus in a line, without breadth or depth. This is the source of the greatest of the essential imperfections of our intellect. We can know all things only in succession, and can become conscious of only one at a time, indeed even of this one only under the condition that for the time we forget everything else, thus are absolutely unconscious of everything else, so that for the time it ceases to exist as far as we are concerned. In respect of this quality our intellect may be compared to a telescope with a very narrow field of vision; just because our consciousness is not stationary but fleeting. The intellect apprehends only successively, and in order to grasp one thing must let another go, retaining nothing but traces of it, which are ever becoming weaker. The thought which is vividly present to me now must after a little while have escaped me altogether; and if a good night's sleep intervene, it may be that I shall never find it again, unless it is connected with my personal interests, that is, with my will, which always commands the field.

Upon this imperfection of the intellect depends the disconnected and often fragmentary nature of our course of thought, which I have already touched on at the close of last chapter; and from this again arises the unavoidable distraction of our thinking. Sometimes external