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110 THE FOURFOLD ROOT. [CHAP. IV.
much, that his spirit might truly say to me, in the words
of Homer :
Ax\vv
d av TOI O.TT
1
e
6<}>9a\p,&v Xov, ?} Trplv tirfjtv.
24. Of the Misapplication of the Law of Causality.
From the foregoing it exposition follows, that the appli
cation of the causal law to anything but changes in the
material, empirically given world, is an abuse of it. For
instance, it is a misapplication to make use of it with refe
rence to physical forces, without which no changes could
take place ; or to Matter, on which they take place ; or to
the world, to which we must in that case attribute an
absolutely objective existence independently of our in
other cases besides. I refer the
tellect ; indeed in many
reader to what I have said on this subject in my chief
work. 2
Such misapplications always arise, partly, through
our taking the conception of cause, like many other meta
physical and ethical conceptions, in far too wide a sense ;
partly, through our forgetting that the causal law is cer
tainly a presupposition which we bring with us into the
world, by which the perception of things outside us becomes
possible; but that, just on that account, we are not
authorized in extending beyond the range and indepen
dently of our cognitive faculty a principle, which has its
origin in the equipment of that faculty, nor in assuming it
to hold good as the everlasting order of the universe and
of all that exists.
1 I lifted from thine eyes the darkness which covered them before.
(Tr. s Ad.)
* " Die Welt a. W. u. V." 2nd edition, vol. ii. ch. iv. p, 42 et seqq. ;
3rd edition, vol. ii. p. 46 et