Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 2.djvu/88

78 totality of the directions of lines are supposed to correspond to the categories, which are so named according to the quantity of judgments.



The principle of the Permanence of Substance is deduced from the category of subsistence and inherence. This, however, we know only from the form of the categorical judgment, i.e., from the connection of two concepts as subject and predicate. With what violence then is that great metaphysical principle made dependent upon this simple, purely logical form! Yet this is only done pro forma, and for the sake of symmetry. The proof of this principle, which is given here, sets entirely aside its supposed origin in the understanding and in the category, and is based upon the pure intuition or perception of time. But this proof also is quite incorrect. It is false that in mere time there is simultaneity and duration; these ideas only arise from the union of space with time, as I have already shown in the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 18, and worked out more fully in § 4 of the present work. I must assume a knowledge of both these expositions for the understanding of what follows. It is false that time remains the same through all change; on the contrary, it is just time itself that is fleeting; a permanent time is a contradiction. Kant's proof is untenable, strenuously as he has supported it with sophisms; indeed, he falls into the most palpable contradictions. Thus, after he has falsely set up co-existence as a mode of time (p. 177; V. 219), he says, quite rightly (p. 183; V. 226), "Co-existence is not a mode of time, for in time there are absolutely no parts together, but all in succession." In truth, space is quite as much implicated in co-existence as time. For if two things are co-existent and yet not one, they are different in respect of space; if two states of one thing are co-existent (e.g., the glow and the heat of iron), then they are two contemporaneous effects of one thing,