________________
666
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
confined to the perception of these, we are like men who sit in a dark cave, bound so fast that they cannot turn their heads, and who see nothing but the shadows of real things which pass between them and a fire burning behind them, the light of which casts the shadows on the wall opposite them; and even of themselves and of each other they see only the shadows on the wall. Their wisdom would thus consist in predicting the order of the shadows learned from experiece. The real archetypes, on the other hand, to which these shadows correspond, the eternal Ideas, the original forms of all things, can alone be said to have true being, because they always are, but never become nor pass away. To them belongs no muliplicity; for each of them is according to its nature only one, for it is the archetype itself, of which all particular transitory things of the same kind which are named after it are copies or shadows. They have also no coming into being nor passing away, for they are truly being, never becoming nor vanishing, like their fleeting shadows. .The animal (individual) has no true existence, but merely an apparent existence, a constant becoming, a relative existence which may just as well be called non-being as being. Only the idea which expresses itself in that animal is truly being', or the animal in-itself, which is dependent upon nothing, but is in and for itself; it has not become, it will not end, but always is in the same way. If we now recognize its Idea in the animal, it is all one and of no importance, whether we have this animal now before us or its progenitor of a thousand years ago, whether it is here or in a distant land, whether it presents itself in this or that manner, position, or action; whether, lastly, it is this or any other individual of the same species; all this is nothing, and only concerns the phenomenon; the Idea of the animal alone has true being and is the object of real knowledge." *
And Schopenhauer himself adds :
"It is necessarily presupposed, however, in this negative definition, that time, space, and causality have no significance or validity for these Ideas, and that they do not exist in them. Time, space and causality are that arrangement of our intellect by virtue of which the one being of each kind which alone really is, manifests itself to us as a multiplicity of similar beings, constantly appearing and disappearing in endless succession."
*The World as Will and Idea', pp. 222-4.
Ibid, pages 222-224.
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org