We know that plurality in general is necessarily conditioned by time and space, and only in these is conceivable, and in this respect we call them the principium individuationis. But we have recognized time and space as forms of the principle of sufficient reason, and in this principle all our knowledge a priori is expressed. As explained above, however, this a priori knowledge, as such, applies only to the knowableness of things, not to the things themselves, i.e., it is only our form of knowledge, not a property of the thing-in-itself. The thing-in-itself, as such, is free from all forms of knowledge, even the most universal, namely that of being object for the subject; in other words, it is something entirely different from the representation. Now if this thing-in-itself, as I believe I have sufficiently proved and made clear, is the will, then, considered as such and apart from its phenomenon, it lies outside time and space, and accordingly knows no plurality, and consequently is one. Yet, as has been said already, it is not one as an individual or a concept is, but as something to which the condition of the possibility of plurality, that is, the principium individuationis, is foreign. Therefore, the plurality of things in space and time that together are the objectivity of the will, does not concern the will, which, in spite of such plurality, remains indivisible. It is not a case of there being a smaller part of will in the stone and a larger part in man, for the relation of part and whole belongs exclusively to space, and has no longer any meaning the moment we have departed from this form of intuition or perception. More and less concern only the phenomenon, that is to say, the visibility, the objectification. There is a higher degree of this objectification in the plant than in the stone, a higher degree in the animal than in the plant; indeed, the will’s passage into visibility, its objectification, has gradations as endless as those between the feeblest twilight and the brightest sunlight, the loudest tone and the softest echo. Later on, we shall come back to a consideration of these degrees of visibility that belong to the objectification of the will, to the reflection of its inner nature. But as the gradations of its objectification do not directly concern the will itself, still less is it concerned by the plurality of the phenomena at these different grades, in other words, the multitude of individuals of each form, or the particular manifestations of each force. For this plurality is directly conditioned by time and space, into which the will itself never enters. The will reveals itself just as completely and just as much in one oak as in millions. Their number, their multiplication in space and time, has no meaning with regard to the will, but only with regard to the plurality of the individuals who know in space and time, and who are themselves multiplied and dispersed therein. But that same plurality of these individuals again applies not to the will, but only to its phenomenon. Therefore it could be asserted that if, per impossible, a single being, even the most insignificant, were entirely annihilated, the whole world would inevitably be destroyed with it. The great mystic Angelus Silesius feels this when he says:
“I know God cannot live a moment without me;
If I should come to nought, He too must cease to be.”
[Cherubinischer Wandersmann, i, 8].
Men have attempted in various ways to bring the immeasurable greatness of the universe nearer to the power of comprehension of each one of us, and have then seized the opportunity to make edifying observations. They have referred perhaps to the relative smallness of the earth, and indeed of man; then again, in contrast to this, they have spoken of the greatness of the mind of this man who is so small, a mind that can decipher, comprehend, and even measure the greatness of this universe, and so on. Now this is all very well, yet to me, when I consider the vastness of the world, the most important thing is that the essence in itself, the phenomenon whereof is the world—be it whatever else it may—cannot have its true self stretched out and dispersed in such fashion in boundless space, but that this endless extension belongs simply and solely to its phenomenon or appearance. On the other hand, the inner being itself is present whole and undivided in everything in nature, in every living being. Therefore we lose nothing if we stop at any particular thing, and true wisdom is not to be acquired by our measuring the boundless world, or, what would be more appropriate, by our personally floating through endless space. On the contrary, it is acquired by thoroughly investigating any individual thing, in that we try thus to know and understand perfectly its true and peculiar nature.
Accordingly, what follows, and this has already impressed itself as a matter of course on every student of Plato, will be in the next book the subject of a detailed discussion. Those different grades of the will’s objectification, expressed in innumerable individuals, exist as the unattained patterns of these, or as the eternal forms of things. Not themselves entering into time and space, the medium of individuals, they remain fixed, subject to no change, always being, never having become. The particular things, however, arise and pass away; they are always becoming and never are. Now I say that these grades of the objectification of the will are nothing but Plato’s Ideas. I mention this here for the moment, so that in future I can use the word Idea in this sense. Therefore with me the word is always to be understood in its genuine and original meaning, given to it by Plato; and in using it we must assuredly not think of those abstract productions of scholastic dogmatizing reason, to describe which Kant used the word wrongly as well as illegitimately, although Plato had already taken possession of it, and used it most appropriately. Therefore, by Idea I understand every definite and fixed grade of the will’s objectification, in so far as it is thing-in-itself and is therefore foreign to plurality. These grades are certainly related to individual things as their eternal forms, or as their prototypes. Diogenes Laërtius (III, 12) gives us the shortest and most concise statement of this famous Platonic dogma: ó Πλάτων ϕησí, ἐν τη̣̃ ϕύσει τὰς ìδέας έστάναι, ϰαθάπερ παραδεíγµατα τὰ δ’ἄλλα ταύταις ἐοιϰέναι, τούτων óµοιώµατα ϰαθεστω̃τα. (Plato ideas in natura velut exemplaria dixit subsistere; cetera his esse similia, ad istarum similitudinem consistentia.)63 I take no further notice of the Kantian misuse of this word; the necessary remarks about it are in the Appendix.