Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/90

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cut after the pattern of Judaism. Still, that severely tested truth, far from being disturbed by all this, as a sure datum and criterion, as a true δός μοι πού στῶ, proves the futility of all that old- woman's philosophy and the urgent need of a fundamentally different, incomparably deeper view of the Universe and of Man ;—no matter whether that view be compatible with the official duties of a professional philosopher or not.

§ 21. A priori character of the conception of Causality. Intellectual Character of Empirical Perception.

THE UNDERSTANDING.

In the professorial philosophy of our philosophy-professors we are still taught to this day, that perception of the outer world is a thing of the senses, and then there follows a long dissertation upon each of the five senses; whereas no mention whatever is made of the intellectual character of perception : that is to say, of the fact, that it is mainly the work of the Understanding, which, by means of its own peculiar form of Causality, together with the forms of pure sensibility, Time and Space, which are postulated by Causality, primarily creates and produces the objective, outer world out of the raw material of a few sensations. And yet in its principal features, I had stated this matter in the first edition of the present treatise [1] and soon after developed it more fully in my treatise "On Vision and Colours" (1816), of which Professor Rosas has shown his appreciation by allowing it to lead him into plagiarism.[2] But our professors of philosophy have not

  1. Anno 1813, pp. 53-55.
  2. For further details see my " Will in Nature," p. 19 of the 1st edition, and p. 14 of the 3rd. (P. 230 et seqq. of the translation of the "Will in Nature," which follows the "Fourfold Root" in the present volume.)