Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/493

 APPENDIX.

ABSTRACT

OF

Schopenhauer's Essay on the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (Fourth Edition, Edited by Frauenstädt. The First Edition appeared in 1813).

essay is divided into eight chapters. The first is introductory. The second contains an historical review of previous philosophical doctrines on the subject. The third deals with the insufficiency of the previous treatment of the principle, and prescribes the lines of the new departure. The fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh treat of the four classes of objects for the subject, and the forms of the principle of sufficient reason which respectively characterise these classes. The eighth contains general remarks and results. It will be convenient to summarise these chapters severally.

CHAPTER I.

Schopenhauer points out that Plato and Kant agree in recommending, as the method of all knowledge, obedience to two laws: – that of Homogeneity, and that of Specification. The former bids us, by attention to the points of resemblance and agreement in things, get at their kinds, and combine them into species, and these species again into genera, until we have arrived at the highest concept of all, that which embraces everything. This law being transcendental, or an essential in our faculty of reason, assumes that nature is in