Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 2.djvu/113

exists, time and space are intimately united, and the share of space in this product exhibits itself as the permanence of matter, while the share of time appears as the change of states. Purely in itself, matter can only be thought in abstracto, and not perceived; for to perception it always appears already in form and quality. From this conception of matter, substance is again an abstraction, consequently a higher genus, and arose in this way. Of the conception of matter, only the predicate of permanence was allowed to remain, while all its other essential properties, extension, impenetrability, divisibility, &c., were thought away. Like every higher genus, then, the concept substance contains less in itself than the concept matter, but, unlike every other higher genus, it does not contain more under it, because it does not include several lower genera besides matter; but this remains the one true species of the concept substance, the only assignable thing by which its content is realised and receives a proof. Thus the aim with which in other cases the reason produces by abstraction a higher conception, in order that in it several subordinate species may be thought at once through common determinations, has here no place; consequently that abstraction is either undertaken idly and entirely without aim, or it has a secret secondary purpose. This secret purpose is now brought to light; for under the conception substance, along with its true sub-species matter, a second species is co-ordinated – the immaterial, simple, indestructible substance, soul. But the surreptitious introduction of this last concept arose from the fact that the higher concept substance was framed illogically, and in a manner contrary to law. In its legitimate procedure the reason always frames the concept of a higher genus by placing together the concepts of several species, and now comparing them, proceeds discursively, and by omitting their differences and retaining the qualities in which they agree, obtains the generic concept which includes them all but has a smaller content. From this