184 INTRODUCTION 



to it by Leibniz. Again, Schopenhauer, reducing the cate- 

 gories of Kant to causality ( interpreted in a wide sense), 

 gives great importance to the principle of sufficient reason 

 which (in one or other of four different forms) he regards 

 as the governing principle of the phenomenal world. 

 'All our ideas \_VorsteUungen] stand to one another in a 

 regular [gesetzmassig} connexion, which as to its form is 

 determiiiable a priori, and on account of which nothing 

 self-sufficient and independent, nothing separate and de- 

 tached, can become an object for us. It is this connexion 

 which the principle of sufficient reason, in its univer- 

 sality, expresses 1 .' The principle of contradiction is 

 ostensibly subordinated to that of sufficient reason, it 

 being regarded as one of the general laws of thinking, 

 discovered by induction and used as a judgment 'meta- 

 logically true,' which may be the ground or sufficient 

 reason of other judgments 2 . But here there is clearly 

 an inconsistency between Schopenhauer's logical theory 

 and his metaphysic. His absolute, the ultimate will, is 

 (however far he may be from acknowledging it) really 

 determined by the principle of contradiction, in its 

 abstract form, for the will is conceived as that which 

 absolutely is, that which is apart from all relation, that 

 which may, in some mysterious way, produce a system 

 of differences, but which has an identity that is perfectly 

 independent of them. Accordingly, while Schopenhauer 

 indicates the deeper and more comprehensive interpreta- 

 tion of the principle of sufficient reason as underlying 

 that of contradiction, he does not allow it to mould his 

 system. 



Herbart. 



Another thinker who owes something to Leibniz and 

 something more to Kant and to Fichte, is Herbart (1776- 

 1841). He is not content to subordinate the principle of 



1 Ueber die vierfache Wurzel des Satees vom zureichenden Grunde, ch. 3, 

 16.. 



2 Cp. Ueber die vierfache Wurzel, &c., ch. 5, 33. 



