Thomas Whittaker

“ The other arts speak of the shadow, music of the substance. There is indeed a parallelism, an analogy, between Music and the Ideas; yet Music never expresses the phenomenon in which these are manifested, but only the inner essence behind the appearance, the Will itself. In a sense it renders not feeling in its particularity, but feeling in abstracto; joy, sorrow, not a joy, a sorrow. The phenomenal world and music are to be regarded as two different expressions of the same thing. The world might be called embodied Music as well as embodied Will. ”

“ CHAPTER III METAPHYSICS OF THE WILL
We have seen that scientific explanation does not go beyond presentations ordered in space and time. This is just as true of the sciences of causation—the 'ætiological' sciences—as it is of mathematical science. All that we learn from Mechanics, Physics, Chemistry and Physiology, is 'how, in accordance with an infallible rule, one determinate state of matter necessarily follows another: how a determinate change necessarily conditions and brings on another determinate change.' This knowledge does not satisfy us. We wish to learn the significance of phenomena ”

“ The whole world, with all its phenomena, is the objectivity of the one and indivisible Will; the Idea which is related to all other Ideas as the harmony to the single voices. The unity of the Will shows itself in the unison of all its phenomena as related to one [Pg 40] another. Man, its clearest and completest objectivation, is the summit of a pyramid, and could not exist without this. Inorganic and organic nature, then, were adapted to the future appearance of man, as man is adapted to the development that preceded him. But in thinking the reality, time is to be abstracted from. ”

“ It is, he says, as if there fell to the share of genius a measure of intelligence far beyond the needs of the individual will: and this makes possible the setting aside of individual interests, the stripping off of the particular personality, so that the subject becomes 'pure knowing subject,' 'clear world-eye,' in a manner sufficiently sustained for that which has been grasped to be repeated in the work of art. A necessary element in genius is therefore Imagination. ”

“ Art repeats in its various media the Ideas grasped by pure contemplation. Its only end is the communication of these. While Science, following the stream of events according to their determinate relations, never reaches an ultimate end, Art is always at the end. 'It stops the wheel of time; relations vanish for it: only the essence, the Idea, is its object.' The characteristic of genius is a pre [Pg 53] dominant capacity for thus contemplating things independently of the principle of sufficient reason. ”

“ Superinduced along with this contrivance for aid in the struggle, the world as presentation, with all its forms, subject and object, time, space, plurality and causality, is all at once there. 'Hitherto only will, it is now at the same time presentation, object of the knowing subject.' Then in man, as a higher power beyond merely intuitive intelligence, appears reason as the power of abstract conception. ”

“ Æsthetic pleasure in contemplation of the beautiful proceeds partly from recognition of the individual object not as one particular thing but as Platonic Idea, that is, as the enduring form of this whole kind of things; partly from the consciousness the knower has of himself not as individual, but as pure, will-less Subject of Knowledge. All volition springs out of need, therefore out of want, therefore out of suffering. No attained object of will can give permanent satisfaction. Thus, there can be no durable happiness or rest for us as long as we are subjects of will. ”

“ The Ideas, as we have seen, constitute the determinate stages of objectivation of the Will. The innumerable individuals of which the Ideas are the patterns are subject to the law of sufficient reason. They appear, that is to say, under the forms of time, space, and causality. The Idea is beyond these forms, and therefore is clear of plurality and change. Since the law of sufficient reason is the common form under which stands all the subject's knowledge so far as the subject knows as individual, the Ideas lie outside the sphere of knowledge of the individual as such. ”

“ True, the Will is 'endless' blind striving, and is essentially divided against itself. Everywhere in nature there is strife, and this takes the most horrible forms. Yet somehow there is in each individual manifestation of will a principle by which first the organism with its vital processes, and then the portion of it called the brain, in which is represented the intellect with its a priori forms, are evolved as aids in the strife. And, adapting all the manifestations to one another, there is a teleology of the universe. ”

“ When there is nothing in the world but irredeemable tyranny or anarchy, flight from it may be the greatest success possible as far as the individual life is concerned; but this is not the normal condition of humanity. Finally, may not some actual achievement, either practical or, like that of Schopenhauer, speculative, even if accompanied by real imperfections of character, possess a higher human value than the sanctity that rests always in itself? ”

“ It means in the last resort that the beholder is upheld by the consciousness that as pure subject of knowledge (not as individual subject) he himself bears within him all the worlds and all the ages, and is eternal as the forces that vainly seem to threaten him with annihilation. ”

“ Having arrived at the forces of nature on the one side and the forms of the subject on the other, science can go no further. The conception of Will can make known that which was so far concealed, because it proceeds from the most intimate consciousness that each has of himself, where the knower and the known coincide. ”