The reader whom this criticism of the Kantian philosophy interests should not neglect to read the supplement to it which is given in the second essay of the first volume of my “Parerga and Paralipomena,” under the title “_Noch einige Erläuterungen zur Kantischen Philosophie_” (Some Further Explanations of the Kantian Philosophy). For it must be borne in mind that my writings, few as they are, were not composed all at once, but successively, in the course of a long life, and with long intervals between them. Accordingly, it must not be expected that all I have said upon one subject should stand together in one place.
“ ‘Warum willst du dich von uns Allen Und unsrer Meinung entfernen?’ Ich schreibe nicht euch zu gefallen, Ihr sollt was lernen.”
First Half. The Doctrine Of The Idea Of Perception. (To § 1-7 of the First Volume.)
In boundless space countless shining spheres, about each of which, and illuminated by its light, there revolve a dozen or so of smaller ones, hot at the core and covered with a hard, cold crust, upon whose surface there have been generated from a mouldy film beings which live and know—this is what presents itself to us in experience as the truth, the real, the world. Yet for a thinking being it is a precarious position to stand upon one of those numberless spheres moving freely in boundless space without knowing whence or whither, and to be only one of innumerable similar beings who throng and press and toil, ceaselessly and quickly arising and passing away in time, which has no beginning and no end; moreover, nothing permanent but matter alone and the recurrence of the same varied organised forms, by means of certain ways and channels which are there once for all. All that empirical science can teach is only the more exact nature and law of these events. But now at last modern philosophy especially through Berkeley and Kant, has called to mind that all this is first of all merely a _phenomenon of the brain_, and is affected with such great, so many, and such different _subjective_ conditions that its supposed absolute reality vanishes away, and leaves room for an entirely different scheme of the world, which consists of what lies at the foundation of that phenomenon, _i.e._, what is related to it as the thing in itself is related to its mere manifestation.