Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/25

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EDITOR'S PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
xxi

support, confirm, and strengthen it. Thus we find him in this § 21 quoting an interesting fact he had himself observed in 1815; then the instances of Caspar Hauser and others (taken from Franz's book, "The Eye," &c. &c.); and again the case of Joseph Kleinhaus, the blind sculptor; and finally, the physiological confirmations he has found in Flourens' "De la vie et de l'intelligence des Animaux." An observation, too, concerning the value of Arithmetic for the comprehension of physical processes, which is inserted into this same paragraph, will be found very remarkable, and may be particularly recommended to those who are inclined to set too high a value on calculation.

Many interesting and important additions will be found in the other paragraphs also.

One thing I could have wished to see left out of this Third Edition: his effusions against the "professors of philosophy." In a conversation with Schopenhauer in the year 1847, when he told me how he intended to "chastise the professors of philosophy,"[1] I expressed my dissent on this point; for even in the Second Edition these passages had interrupted the measured progress of objective inquiry. At that time, however, he was not to be persuaded to strike them out; so they were left to be again included in this Third Edition, where the reader will accordingly once more find them, although times have changed since then.

Upon another point, more nearly touching the real issue, I had a controversy with Schopenhauer in the year 1852. In arguing against Fichte's derivation of the Non-Ego from the Ego in his chief work,[2] he had said:—

  1. See "Arthur Schopenhauer. Von ihm; über ihn. Ein Wort der Vertheidigung," von Ernst Otto Lindner, and "Memorabilien, Briefe und Nachlassstücke," von Julius Frauenstädt (Berlin, 1863), pp. 163-165.
  2. Schopenhauer, "Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung," second edition, i. t 37 (third edition, i., 39).