Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/78

62 Credat Judæus Apella! Certainly the nature of light is to us a secret; but it is better to confess this than to bar the way of future knowledge by bad theories. That light is something quite different from a mere mechanical movement, undulation, or vibration and tremor, indeed that it is material, is shown by its chemical effects, a beautiful series of which was recently laid before the Académie des sciences by Chevreul, who let sunlight act upon different coloured materials. The most beautiful thing in these experiments is, that a white roll of paper which has been exposed to the sunlight exhibits the same effects, nay, does so even after six months, if during this time it has been secured in a firmly closed metal tube. Has, then, the tremulation paused for six months, and does it now fall into time again? (Comptes rendus of 2Oth December 1858.) This whole hypothesis of vibrating ether atoms is not only a chimera, but equals in awkward crudeness the worst of Democritus, and yet is shameless enough, at the present day, to profess to be an established fact, and has thus brought it about that it is orthodoxly repeated by a thousand stupid scribblers of all kinds, who are devoid of all knowledge of such things, and is believed in as a gospel. But the doctrine of atoms in general goes still further: it is soon a case of Spartam, quam nactus es, orna! Different perpetual motions are then ascribed to all the atoms, revolving, vibrating, &c., according to the office of each; in the same way every atom has its atmosphere of ether, or some thing else, and whatever other similar fancies there may be. The fancies of Schelling's philosophy of nature and its disciples were for the most part ingenious, lofty, or at least witty; but these, on the contrary, are clumsy, insipid, paltry, and awkward, the production of minds which, in the first place, are unable to think any other reality than a fabulous, qualityless matter, which is also an absolute object, i.e., an object without a subject; and secondly can think of no other activity than motion and impact: these two alone are comprehensible to them, and that