The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] The preceding discussion aimed to throw light on the relationship between knowing one’s essential being and knowing the objective nature of the world. What does it mean for us to become familiar with concepts (Erkenntnis) and to develop and practice science (Wissenschaft)? This was the question to which we sought the answer.

[ 2 ] We have seen that the innermost core of the world plays out in our knowing. The lawful harmony, by which the world-all will be governed, comes into human awareness through appearance. [ 3 ] It is therefore part of man's job to transfer the basic laws of the world, which otherwise govern all existence, but would never come into existence themselves, into the arena of apparent reality. This is the nature of knowing, that it represents the foundation of the world that can never be found in objective reality. Our familiarity with concepts, figuratively speaking, is a constant living into the foundation of the world.

[ 4 ] Such a conviction must also shed light on our practical view of life. [ 5 ] The entire character of one’s lifestyle is determined by moral ideals. These are the ideas we have about our tasks in life, or in other words, what we are supposed to accomplish through our actions.

[ 6 ] Our actions are part of general world events. It is therefore also subject to the general laws of these events. [ 7 ] If an event occurs somewhere in the universe, two things must be distinguished about it: its external course in space and time and its inner lawfulness.

[ 8 ] Awareness of this lawfulness for human activity is only a special case of awareness. The views we have derived about the nature of knowing must therefore also be applicable here. Recognizing oneself as an active personal entity, therefore, means maintaining familiarity (for our actions) with the corresponding laws, namely with moral concepts and ideals. If we have recognized this lawfulness, then our behavior is also our work. Lawfulness is then not something given, lying outside of the object, onto which happenings appear, but as the content of the activity of the object itself. The object in this case is our own self, our “I”, our ego. If our ego has thoroughly infused its essential behavior with real awareness, then it feels at once the master of its behavior. So long as this does not take place, the laws of action appear to us as something alien, they dominate us. What we accomplish is under the pressure they exert on us. Once they have been transformed from such a foreign entity into our very own activity, then this compulsion ceases. The compulsion has become our own nature. The law no longer rules over us, but rather within us over the events emanating from our ego. The realization of an event by means of a law that is external to the person who realizes it is an act of bondage, while the realization of an event by the person who realizes it is an act of freedom. Recognizing the laws of one's actions means being aware of one's freedom. According to our explanations, the process of knowing is the developmental process towards freedom.

[ 9 ] Not all human actions have this character. In many cases we do not have any knowledge of the laws that govern our actions. That part of our activity is the unfree part of our work. Opposite that is the activity in which we fully accept these laws. That is the free arena. Insofar as our life belongs to the free arena, it can only be described as moral. The transformation of the first area into one with the character of the second is the task of every individual’s development, as well as that of whole of mankind.

[ 10 ] The most important problem of all human thinking is this: to understand a person as a self-grounded, free personality.

Rudolf Steiner was awarded a doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Rostock in 1891. To his doctoral dissertation he added a preface and a final chapter,¹ and this was published as Wahrheit und Wissenschaft, now in its 6^th edition (GA3). This is a new English translation of this seminal work, in which he first puts forth a world-view that combines perceptions with concepts, as two sides of a whole.

Wahrheit is cognate with the English word awareness and Wissenschaft with the phrase wising-up-ship. Wahrheit is being aware of the truth of what is in the surrounding world, rather than what we want it to be. Wissenschaft is a more mature activity of seeing perceptions and concepts with clarity and logic, in the sense of "I see what you mean". Seeing comes from the Latin verb scire, the noun form of which is sciēns, and so the title becomes Truth and Science. In translating Wissenschaft as science, however, one must remember that the scientific method can be applied to more than just sense impressions and sensory-derived concepts.

Erkentnistheorie and Wissenschaftslehre occur frequently in the text, and unfortunately both have been translated as epistemology, a Latin-derived term introduced into English philosophy in 1854 by James Frederick Ferrier.² The term epistemology did not exist when Fichte wrote his Wissenschaftslehre in 1794. Steiner chose indigenous words rather than Latin-derived words whenever possible, and expounded on this in his 1919 lectures on the Genius of Language. I have tried to do the same. The stem word of Erkenntnistheorie is to know (in the Scottish dialect to ken), and the prefix er- makes it an inner knowing of concepts and intuitions. In this sense Erkenntnistheorie becomes the Theory of Knowing. Wissenschaftslehre becomes the “Principles of Science” itself, or one might say, the doctrine of scientific awareness.

Another problem arises in translating das Ich as the “I”, which sounds awkward in English and is how Steiner said people refer to their ego after death. We must remember that the ego is that part of a person out of which he can say “I am”. It is not used in the Freudian sense of the conscious self in relation to the unconscious id and the adopted cultural rules of the superego. We share soul-nature with the animals, and the divisions of psychology traditionally are thinking, feeling, and willing. We do not share ego-nature with the animals, for it involves spirit-activities such as art, music, humor, belief, recognition, scientific thinking, technique, laughter, and weeping.

Translating Geist as spirit was clouded over at the Council of Constantinople of 869, which declared that people had only soul, and not spirit. Whether this was due to evil intent ³ or due to limitations of the Latin language ⁴ is unclear, but it resulted in the split of Roman Catholicism (which used Latin) and Eastern Orthodox (which used Greek). For Greek speakers psyche continued to be distinct from pneuma, which persisted in German speakers with the indigenous words Seele and Geist. English speakers still have the indigenous word soul, but must use the word spirit rather than ghost (which has too many psychological associations).

John Riedel MD
3/19/2024

• 1. Martina Maria Sam, Prädikat nicht beantragt Zur Benotung von Rudolf Steiners Promotion, Das Goetheanum 3–4 · 2023, p12-15.
• 2. Ferrier posited, much like Steiner, that one cannot conceive of a thing-in-itself because the synthesis of subject-with-object is the minimum unit of cognition, of knowing. https://iep.utm.edu/ferrier/
• 3. R Steiner, Building Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, GA 175, Lecture I, Berlin, March 27th, 1917
• 4. John Bickford Heard, The Tripartate Nature of Man, Chapter 1, 1868.

By means ¹³ of an analysis going back to the fundamental elements of the activity of inner knowing (Erkanntnisakt), the task of this work is to correctly formulate the problem of knowing and to set out the path to its solution. Through a critique of Kant’s thoughts on the roots of the theory of knowing (Erkenntnistheorie), it will be shown that from his standpoint no solution to the problem is possible. In doing so it must be acknowledged that it would have been very difficult to find a solution without Johannes Volkelt's groundbreaking preparatory work with its basic investigation into the concept of experience, with its precise framing of the concept of what preexists for us, with what is just given to us, with what is at hand for us (das Gegeben).¹⁴

Also let us hope that this work lays the foundation for overcoming the subjective nature inherent in Kant's theory of knowing. This has been done beyond doubt by showing that the subjective form in which the world picture presents itself to us in the act of knowing (in cognition), prior to any scientific explanation of it, is merely a necessary transitional stage which is overcome in the very process of knowing.

The so-called experience given to us, which positivism ¹⁵ and neo-Kantianism ¹⁶ would like to present as the only certainty, is in fact the most subjective of all. Showing this establishes objective idealism ¹⁷ as a necessary consequence of a self-understood theory of knowing. It differs from Hegel's metaphysical, absolute idealism ¹⁸ in that the reason for dividing reality into given-to-us and concepts is sought in the subjectivity of knowing, and seeks to resolve this not in an objective world dialectic, ¹⁹ but in the subjective process of knowing itself.

I already outlined this point of view in my 1885 work Outline of Goethe’s Theory of Knowing, with Especial Consideration of Schiller, ²⁰ but my method differed significantly in that work, for it did not analyze the basic elements of the act of knowing.

[ 2 ] The recent literature relevant to these discussions is as follows. Cited is not only what this presentation directly relates to, but also to all those writings that deal with questions that are similar. I have refrained from specifically citing the writings of the actual philosophical classics.

1. R. Avenarius, Philosophie als Denken der Welt gemäß dem Prinzip des kleinsten Kraftsmaßes, usw.; Leipzig, 1876, Kritik, der reinen Erfahrung, Vol. I, Leipzig, 1888
2. J. F. A. Bahnsen, Der Widerspruch im Wissen und Wesen der Welt; Vol. I, Leipzig, 1882.
3. J. Baumann, Philosophie als Orientierung über die Welt; Leipzig, 1872.
4. J. S. Beck, Einzig möglicher Standpunkt, aus welchem die kritische Philosophie beurteilt werden muss; Riga, 1796.
5. Friedrich Ed. Benecke, System der Metaphysik und Religionsphilosophie, usw.; Berlin, 1839.
6. Julius Bergmann, Sein und Erkennen, usw.; Berlin, 1880.
7. A. E. Biedermann, Christliche Dogmatik; 2nd Edition, Berlin, 1884–5, Vol. I, pp. 51–173.
8. H. Cohen, Kants Theorie der Erfahrung; Berlin, 1871.
9. P. Deussen, Die Elemente der Metaphysik; 2nd Edition, Leipzig, 1890.
10. W. Dilthey, Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften, usw.; Leipzig, 1883.—Especially the introductory chapters dealing with the interrelation of the theory of cognition and the other sciences.—Further references in works by the same author: Beiträge zur Lösung der Frage von Ursprung unseres Glaubens an die Realität der Außenwelt und seinem Recht; Sitzungsberichte der Kgl. Preuss. Akademic der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (Contributions to the Solution of Our Belief in the Reality of the Outer World and its Justification. Reports of Meetings of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin), Berlin, 1890, p. 977.
11. A. Dorner, Das menschliche Erkennen usw.; Berlin, 1887.
12. E. Dreher, Ueber Wahrnehmung und Denken; Berlin, 1878.
13. G. Engel, Sein und Denken; Berlin, 1889.
14. W. Enoch, Der Begriff der Wahrnehmung; Hamburg, 1890.
15. B. Erdmann, Kants Kriticismus in der ersten und zweiten Auflage seiner Kritik der reinen Vernunft; Leipzig, 1878.
16. F. v. Feldegg, Das Gefühl als Fundament der Weltordnung; Vienna, 1890.
17. E. L. Fischer, Die Grundfragen der Erkenntnistheorie; Mainz, 1887
18. K. Fischer, System der Logik und Metaphysik oder Wissenschaftslehre; 2nd Edition, Heidelberg, 1865. Geschichte der neueren Philosophie; Mannheim, 1860, especially the parts concerning Kant.
19. A. Ganser, Die Wahrheit; Graz, 1890.
20. C. Göring, System der kritischen Philosophie; Leipzig, 1874. Über den Begriff der Erfahrung; In Vierteiljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie; Leipzig, 1st Year, 1877, p. 384.
21. E. Grimm, Zur Geschichte des Erkenntnisproblems, usw.; Leipzig, 1890.
22. F. Grung, Das Problem der Gewissheit; Heidelberg, 1886.
23. R. Hamerling, Die Atomistik des Willens; Hamburg, 1891.
24. F. Harms, Die Philosophie seit Kant; Berlin, 1876.
25. E. v. Hartmann, Kritische Grundlegung des transzendentalen Realismus; 2nd Edition Berlin, 1875. J. H. v. Kirchmanns erkenntnistheoretischer Realismus; Berlin, 1875. Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie, usw.; Leipzig, 889. Kritische Wanderungen durch die Philosophie der Gegenwart; Leipzig, 1889.
26. H. L. F. v. Helmholtz, Die Tatsachen in der Wahrnehmung; Berlin, 1879.
27. G. Heymans, Die Gesetze und Elemente des wissenschaftlichen Denkens; Leyden, 1890.
28. A. Hölder, Darstellung der Kantischen Erkenntnistheorie; Tübingen, 1874.
29. A. Horwicz, Analyse des Denkens, usw.; Halle, 1875.
30. F. H. Jacobi, David Hume über den Glauben oder Idealismus und Realismus; Breslau, 1787.
31. M. Kappes, Der “Common Sense” als Prinzip der Gewissheit in der Philosophie des Schotten Thomas Reid; Munich, 1890.
32. M. Kauffmann, Fundamente der Erkenntnistheorie und Wissenschaftslehre; Leipzig, 1890.
33. B. Kerry, System einer Theorie der Grenzgebiete; Vienna, 1890.
34. J. H. v. Kirchmann, Die Lehre vom Wissen als Einleitung in das Studium philosophischer Werke; Berlin, 1868.
35. E. Laas, Die Kausalitat des Ich (The Causality of the I), Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie; Leipzig, 4th Year, 1880, p. ff., 185ff.,311ff. Idealismus und Positivismus; Berlin, 1879.
36. F. A. Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus; Iserlohn, 1873–75.
37. A. v. Leclair, Beiträge zu einer monistischen Erkenntnistheorie; Breslau, 1882. Das kategorische Gepräge des Denkens; Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie; Leipzig, 7th Year, 1883, p. 257 ff.
38. O. Liebmann, Kant und die Epigonen; Stuttgart, 1865. Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit; Straßburg, 1880. Gedanken und Tatsachen; Straßburg, 1882. Die Klimax der Theorien; Straßburg, 1884.
39. Th. Lipps, Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebens; Bonn, 1883.
40. H. R. Lotze, System der Philosophie, I Teil: Logik Leipzig, 1874.
41. J. V. Mayer, Vom Erkennen; Freiburg i. Br., 1885.
42. A. Meinong, Hume-Studien; Vienna, 1877.
43. J. St. Mill, System der induktiven und deduktiven Logik; 1843; German translation, Braunschweig, 1849.
44. W Müntz, Die Grundlagen der Kantschen Erkenntnistheorie; 2nd Edition, Breslau, 1885.
45. G. Neudecker, Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie; Nordlingen, 1881.
46. F. Paulsen, Versuch einer Entwicklungsgeschichte der Kantschen Erkenntnistheorie; Leipzig, 1875.
47. J. Rehmke, Die Welt als Wahrnehmung und Begriff, usw.; Berlin, 1880.
48. Th. Reid, Untersuchungen uber den menschlichen Geist nach Prinzipien des gesunden Menschenverstandes; 1764; German translation, Leipzig, 1782.
49. A. Riehl, Der philosophische Kritizismus und seine Bedeutung für die positive Wissenschaft; Leipzig, 1887.
50. J. Rülf, Wissenschaft des Weltgedankens und der Gedankenwelt, System einer neuen Metaphysik; Leipzig, 1888.
51. R. v. Schubert-Soldern, Gund lagen einer Erkenntnistheorie; Leipzig, 1884.
52. G. E. Schulze, Aenesidemus, Helmstädt, 1792.
53. W. Schuppe, Zur voraussetzungslosen Erkenntnistheorie; Philosophische Monatschefte; Berlin, Leipzig, Heidelberg, 1882, Vol. XVIII, Nos. 6 and 7.
54. Rud. Seydel, Logik oder Wissenschaft vom Wissen; Leipzig, 1866.
55. Christoph v. Sigwart, Logik; Freiburg i. Br., 1878.
56. A. Stadler, Die Grundsätze der reinen Erkenntnistheorie in der Kantischen Philosophie; Leipzig, 1876.
57. H. Taine, De l'Intelligence, 5th Edition, Paris, 1888.
58. A. Trendelenburg, Logische Untersuchungen; Leipzig, 1862.
59. F. Ueberweg, System der Logik; 3rd Edition, Bonn, 1882.
60. H. Vaihinger, Hartmann, Dühring, Lange, Iserlohn, 1876.
61. Th. Varnbühler, Widerlegung der Kritik der reinen Vernunft; Leipzig, 1890.
62. J. Volkelt, Immanuel Kants Erkenntnistheorie, usw.; Hamburg, 1879. Erfahrung und Denken; Hamburg, 1886.
63. Richard Wahle, Gehirn und Bewusstsein; Vienna, 1884.
64. W. Windelband, Präluden; Freiburg i. Br., 1884. Die verschiedenen Phasen der Kantschen Lehre vom “Ding an sich”; Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie; Leipzig, 1st Year (1877), p. 229 ff.
65. J. H. Witte, Beiträge zur Verständnis Kants; Berlin, 1874. Vorstudien zur Erkenntnis des unerfahrbaren Seins; Bonn, 1876.
66. H. Wolff, Ueber den Zusammenhang unserer Vorstellungen mit Dingen ausser uns; Leipzig, 1874.
67. Joh. Wolff, Das Bewusstsein und sein Objekt; Berlin, 1889.
68. W. Wundt, Logik (Logic), Vol. I: Erkenntnislehre; Stuttgart, 1880.

For Fichte the following comes into consideration.:

1. F. C. Biedermann, De Genetica philosophandi ratione et methodo, praesertim Fichtii, Schellingii, Hegelii, Dissertationis particula prima, syntheticam Fichtii methodum exhibens, etc., Lipsiae, 1835.
2. F. Frederichs, Der Freiheitsbegriff Kants und Fichtes; Berlin, 1886.
3. O. Gühloff, Der transcendentale Idealismus; Halle, 1888.
4. P. Hensel, Ueber die Beizehung des reinen Ich bei Fichte zur Einheit der Apperception bei Kant; Freiburg i. Br., 1885.
5. G. Schwabe, Fichtes und Schopenhauers Lehre vom Willen mit ihren Consequenzen für Weltbegreifung und Lebensfuhrung; Jena, 1887.

[ 4 ] The numerous writings published on Fichte's anniversary in 1862 are of course not acknowledged here. At most, Trendelenburg's speech; which contains more important theoretical points of view, should be mentioned.

• 13. This chapter marks the beginning of Rudolf Steiner’s doctoral dissertation.
• 14. Johannes Volkelt, Erfahrung und Denken. Kritische Grundlegung der Erkenntnistheorie, Experience and Thinking. Critical Foundation for a Theory of Knowing. Hamburg and Leipzig, 1886.
• 15. t/n In Positivism, something is known by common sense (such as 2+2=4), or by reasoning about our sensory experience. Intuition is rejected.
• 16. t/n Neo-Kantianism, the extension of Kant’s terminology and methods, was dominant in German philosophy until WWI.
• 17. t/n Bishop Berkeley’s and Friedrich Schelling’s objective idealism holds that nothing exists except for what is in the mind of spirits. Everything in the minds of the multitude of spirits also exists is in the mind of God. Modern philosophy often calls this dogmatism. Steiner called it spiritism. Steiner’s objective idealism is slightly different.
• 18. t/n G.W.F. Hegel’s and later Josiah Royce’s absolute idealism holds that there is an identity of a person’s subjective consciousness and what is out there in the world, which is all that is conceivable. Realism, on the other hand, holds that what is manifest in subjective consciousness emerges from what preexists externally in the world.
• 19. t/n Dialectic is a logical attempt to combine two different viewpoints. It is a debate without emotional appeal or unconscious willfulness.
• 20. t/n GA 2, Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung, mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Schiller

[ 1 ] Certain objections raised from philosophical quarters immediately after the appearance of this book move me to add the following brief comments to this new edition. I can very well imagine that there are readers interested in the content of this book who will nevertheless regard the following as a superfluous, remote, and abstract spinning out of concepts. They can leave this brief presentation unread. However, within the philosophical way of looking at the world, problems arise which have their origin more in certain preconceptions of thinkers than in the natural course of general human thinking. What is otherwise taken upon in this book seems tome to be a task which concerns every person who is struggling for clarity with respect to the being of man and his relationship to the world. What follows, however, is more a problem that certain philosophers demand be taken up when the things presented in this boo are discussed, because, through their way of picturing things, these philosophers have created for themselves certain difficulties not generally present. If one completely bypasses such problems, then certain personalities are quick at hand with the reproach of dilettantism and the like. And there arises an opinion as though the author of a presentation like the one given in this book had not come to terms with views which he does not discuss within the book itself.

[ 2 ] The problem to which I refer is this; there are thinkers who are of the opinion that a particular difficulty arises when one wants to grasp how another human soul life could affect one's own (the observer's). They say that my conscious world is enclosed within me; and the other conscious world likewise within itself. I cannot see into the world of consciousness of another. How do I arrive at knowing myself to be in a common world with him? That world view which regards it as possible to infer, from the conscious world, an unconscious one that can never become conscious attempts to solve this difficulty in the following fashion. It says that the world which I have in my consciousness is a representation in me of a world of reality not consciously attainable by me. In this world of reality lie the unknown causes of my world of consciousness. In it lies also my real being, of which I likewise have only a representation in my consciousness. In it lies also my real being, of which I likewise have only a representation in my consciousness. In it lies also, however, the being of the other person who approaches me. Now what is experienced in the consciousness of this other person has its corresponding reality, independent of his consciousness, within his being This reality works in the realm that cannot become conscious upon my essential unconscious being, and through this a representation is created in my consciousness for that which is present in a consciousness that is completely independent of my conscious experience. One can see that here, in addition to the world accessible to my consciousness, a world is hypothetically constructed which cannot be experienced by this consciousness, because otherwise one believes oneself forced to maintain that all the outer word which I believe I have before me is only my word of consciousness, and that would result in the solipsistic absurdity that other people also live only within my consciousness.

[ 3 ] Clarity can also be gained on this question, raised by many epistemological tendencies of our day, if one undertakes to look at the matter from the point of view of observation in accordance with the spirit taken in the presentation of this book. What do I have before me then to begin with when I confront another personality? I look at what is most immediate. This is the bodily manifestation of the other person given to me as perception; then in addition perhaps the audible perception of what he says, and so on. I do not merely stare at all this, but rather it sets my thinking activity in motion. Inasmuch as I stand, thinking, before the other personality, the perception reveals to me its characteristic of being in a certain way transparent to the soul. I am obliged, in grasping the perception in thinking, to say to myself that it is not at all that which it appears to be to the outer senses. The physical manifestation reveals, within what it is directly, something else which it is indirectly. Its placing itself before me is at the same time its extinguishing as a merely physical manifestation. But what it brings to manifestation in this extinguishing compels me as a thinking being to extinguish my thinking during the time of its working and to set in the place of my thinking, its thinking. Its thinking, however, I grasp within my thinking as an experience like my own. I have really perceived the thinking of the other person. For the direct perception which extinguishes itself as a physical manifestation is grasped by my thinking, and this is an occurrence lying completely within my consciousness, an occurrence which consists in the fact that the other thinking takes the place of my thinking. Through the physical manifestation's extinguishing itself, the separation between the two spheres of consciousness is actually removed. This represents itself within my consciousness through the fact that, in experiencing the other content of consciousness, I experience my own consciousness just as little as I experience it in dreamless sleep. Just as in dreamless sleep my day consciousness is excluded, so in perceiving the other content of consciousness my own content is excluded. What keeps me from recognizing this is only the fact that, firstly, when I perceive the other person, unconsciousness does not enter the place where the content of my own consciousness is extinguished as in sleep, but rather the other content of consciousness enters, and secondly, that the alternating states of the extinguishing and lighting up again of my consciousness of myself succeed one another too quickly to be usually noticed.—The whole problem lying before us here is not to be solved by artificial constructs of concepts which infer something conscious-in-itself that can never become conscious, but rather by true experiencing of what results from the joining of thinking and perception. This is the case with very many of the questions which appear in philosophical literature. Thinkers should seek the way to unprejudiced observation in accordance with the spirit; instead of this they thrust an artificial construct of concepts in front of reality.

[ 4 ] In an essay by Eduard von Hartmann on “The Ultimate Questions of Epistemology and Metaphysics” (in the Journal of Philosophy and Philosophical Criticism, Vol. 108, p. 55ff.) ¹ my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is included in that philosophical discussion of thought which wishes to base itself upon an “epistemological monism.” Such a standpoint is rejected by Eduard von Hartmann as an impossible one. He does this for the following reasons. According to the way of picturing things brought to expression in his essay, there are only three possible epistemological standpoints. Either a person remains at the naive standpoint, which takes the manifestations it perceives to be real things outside of human consciousness. Then one would lack critical knowledge. One would not see that one is, with one's content of consciousness, still only within one's own consciousness. One would not recognize that one does not have to do with a “table-in-itself,” but rather only with an object of one's own consciousness. Whoever remains at this standpoint or returns to it again through some consideration or other, is a naive realist. But this standpoint is impossible, however, for it overlooks the fact that consciousness has only its own objects of consciousness. Or one recognizes this state of affairs and admits it to oneself fully. Then one becomes at first a transcendental idealist. But then one would have to reject the possibility that anything of a “thing-in-itself” could ever appear within human consciousness. Through this, however, one cannot escape absolute illusionism, if one is only consistent enough about it. For the world which one confronts transforms itself for one into a mere sum total of objects of consciousness, and in fact only of objects of one's own consciousness. One is then compelled—and this absurd—to think that even other people as objects are present only in one's own content of consciousness alone. Only the third standpoint, transcendental realism, is a possible one. It assumes that there are “things-in-themselves,” but that consciousness cannot in any way have anything to do with them in immediate experience. Beyond human consciousness, in a way that does not enter consciousness, they bring it about that within consciousness the objects of consciousness appear. One can come to these “things-in-themselves” only through inferences drawn from the content of one's consciousness which alone is experienced but which in fact is merely one's mental pictures. Now Eduard von Hartmann maintains, in the essay mentioned above, that an “epistemological monism,” which he considers my standpoint to be, would have to espouse one of the three standpoints; it does not do so only because it does not draw the actual conclusions lying within its presuppositions. And then in the essay it is said, “If one wants to find out which epistemological standpoint a supposed epistemological monist belongs, then one needs only to lay a few questions before him and to compel him to answer them. For of himself no such monist will ever venture any utterance on these points, and he will even seek in every way to evade answering direct questions, because every answer invalidates the claim of epistemological monism as to its being a different standpoint than the other three. These questions are the following: 1. Are things continuous or intermittent in their existence? If the answer is that they are continuous, then one has to do with naive realism in one form or anther. If the answer is that they are intermittent, then it is a case of transcendental idealism. But if the answer is that they are on the one hand (as content of the absolute consciousness, or as unconscious mental pictures or as perceptual possibilities) continuous, and on the other hand (as content of our limited consciousness) intermittent, then transcendental realism is established. 2. If three people are sitting at a table, how many specimens of the table are present? Whoever answers ‘one,’ is a naive realist; whoever answers ‘three’ is a transcendental idealist, but whoever answers ‘four,’ he is a transcendental realist. It is, to be sure, assumed in this, that one is allowed to draw together into one common appellation ‘specimens of the table,’ such unlike things as the table as thing-in-itself, and the three tables as objects of perception within the three consciousnesses. If this seems too great a liberty to anyone, he will have to give the answer ‘one and three’ instead of ‘four.’ 3. If two people are alone together in a room, how many specimens of these people are present? Whoever answers ‘two’ is a naive realist; whoever answers ‘four’ (namely, in each of the two consciousnesses, one ego and one other), he is a transcendental idealist; but whoever answers ‘six’ (namely, two people as things-in-themselves, and four mental pictures of people within the two consciousnesses), he is a transcendental realist. Whoever wanted to show that epistemological monism is a different standpoint than these three, would have to give to each of these three questions some different answer; I wouldn't know, however, what they could be.” The answers of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity would have to be: 1. Whoever grasps only the perceptual content of things and considers this to be reality is a naive realist, and he does not make it clear to himself that he should actually regard this perceptual content as existing only for as long as he is looking at the things, that therefore he would have to think of what he has before him as intermittent. As soon as he becomes clear about the fact, however, that reality is present only when the perceptible is permeated with thought, will he attain the insight that the content of perception, appearing as intermittent, if permeated by what is worked out in thinking, reveals itself to be continuous. We must therefore regard as continuous the perceptual content grasped by a thinking which is experienced; the part of this content that is only perceived would have to be thought of as intermittent, if—which is not the case—it were real.—2. If three people are sitting at a table, how many specimens of the table are present? There is only one table present; but as long as the three people wanted to stop short at their perceptual pictures, they would have to say that these perceptual pictures are definitely no reality. As soon as they proceed to the table grasped in their thinking, the one reality of the table reveals itself to them; they are united with their three contents of consciousness within this reality.—3. If two people are alone together in a room, how many specimens of these people are present? There are quite certainly not six—not even I the sense of the transcendental realist—specimens present, but only two. Only, each of the persons has at first, both of himself and of the other person, only his unreal perceptual picture. Of these pictures there are four present, through whose presence within the thinking activities of the two persons the grasping of reality takes place. In this thinking activity each of the persons reaches beyond his sphere of consciousness; the sphere of consciousness, the other person's and his own, comes to life in this activity. In the moment this comes to life the two people are enclosed just as little within their consciousness as they are in sleep. But in the other moments, the consciousness of this merging with the other consciousness arises again, in such a way that, in thinking experience the consciousness of each one of the two people grasps himself and the other. I know that the transcendental realist will call this a relapse into naive realism. However, I have already indicated in this book that naive realism still holds good for thinking which is experienced. The transcendental realist does not enter at all into the true state of affairs with respect to the cognitive process; he closes himself off from this through a web of thoughts and entangles himself in it. The monism which appears in Philosophy of Spiritual Activity should also not be called “epistemological,” bur rather, if one wishes a second name, thought-monism. All this was misunderstood by Eduard von Hartmann. He did not enter into that which is particular in what Philosophy of Spiritual Activity presents, but rather asserted that I had made the attempt to combine Hegel's universalistic panlogism with Hume's individualistic phenomenalism (p. 71 of the Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 108, footnote),² whereas in fact as such has absolutely nothing to do with these two standpoints which it is supposedly trying to unite. (This is also the reason I could not be concerned about coming to terms, for example, with the “epistemological monism” of Johannes Rehmke. The point of view of Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is, in fact, completely different from what Eduard von Hartmann and others call epistemological monism.)

• 1. “Die letzten Fragen der Erkenntnistheorie und Metaphysik,” Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik.
• 2. Zeitschrift fur Philosophie

[ 1 ] In the following there is given again, in all its essential points, what stood as a kind of preface to the first edition of this book. Since it gives more the mood of thought out of which I wrote the book twenty-five years ago than the book's content, I bring it here as an “appendix.” I do not want to leave it out entirely, for the reason that the view always comes upon again that because of my later spiritual-scientific writings I have something to suppress in my earlier writings.

[ 2 ] Our age can wish to draw the truth only out of the depths of man's being.¹ Of Schiller's well-known two ways, the second will especially benefit the present day:

Truth we both are seeking, you in the life without,
I within the heart, and so each finds it surely.
Is the eye healthy, it meets the creator without;
Is the heart so, it surely mirrors the world within.

A truth which comes to us from outside always bears the stamp of uncertainty about it. What appears to each one of us within his own inner life as truth, in this only do we want to believe.

[ 3 ] Only the truth can bring us certainty in the developing of our individual powers. Whoever is tormented by doubts, his powers are lamed. In a world which is a riddle to him, he can find no goal for his activity.

[ 4 ] We no longer want merely to believe; we want to know. Faith demands the acceptance of truths about which we do not have full insight. That about which we do not have full insight, however, goes against what is individual, which wants to experience everything with its deepest inner life. Only that knowing satisfies us which submits to no outer norm, but rather springs from the inner life of the personality.

[ 5 ] We also do not want any kind of knowing that has become frozen once and for all into rigid academic formulations and preserved in compendia valid for all time. We consider ourselves, each one, justified in taking our starting point from our immediate experiences, from what we live through directly and in ascending from there to knowledge of the whole universe. We are striving for a sure knowing, but each in his own way.

[ 6 ] Our scientific teachings should also no longer be formulated as though we were unconditionally compelled to accept them. No one would want to give a scientific work a title like Fichte once did: “A Crystal-clear Report to the Wider Public on the Actual Nature of the Newest Philosophy. An Attempt to Compel Readers to Understand.” Today, no one should be compelled to understand. If no definite individual need moves a person toward a certain view, we demand neither that he recognize nor agree with it. Today we do not want to funnel knowledge even into the still immature human being, the child, but rather we seek to develop his capacities so that he no longer needs to be compelled to understand, but rather wants to understand.

[ 7 ] I am under no illusions with respect to this characteristic of my times. I know how alive and extensive the tendency is to be stereotyped and without individuality. But I know just as well that many of my contemporaries are seeking to conduct their life in the sense and direction I have indicated. I would like to dedicate this book to them. It is not meant to be “the only possible” way to the truth, but it is meant to tell of that way which one person has taken, whose concern is for the truth.

[ 8 ] This book leads at first into more abstract regions, where thought must draw sharp outlines in order to reach sure points. But the reader will be led out of these dry concepts into concrete life also. I am altogether of the view that one must lift oneself also into the ethereal realm of concepts, if one wants to experience existence in all directions. Whoever knows only how to enjoy with his senses does not know the real delicacies of life. Oriental sages make their pupils lead lives of renunciation and asceticism for years before they communicate what they themselves know. The West no longer demands for science any devout exercises or asceticism, but it does require, instead of these, the good will to withdraw oneself for a short time from the immediate impressions of life, and to betake oneself into the realm of the world of pure thought.

[ 9 ] The realms of life are many. For each of these, particular sciences evolve. But life itself is a unity, and the more the sciences strive to deepen themselves in the individual realms, the more they distance themselves from a view of the living wholeness of the world. There must be a knowledge which seeks within the individual sciences the elements needed to lead man back again into full life. The scientific researcher in a particular field wants to acquire through his knowledge a consciousness of the world and its workings; in this book the goal is a philosophical one: the science itself is meant to become organically living. The individual sciences are preparatory stages of the science striven for here. A similar relationship holds sway in the arts. The composer works on the basis of the theory of composition. This last is a sum of knowledge whose acquirement is a necessary prerequisite for composing music. In composing, the laws of composition serve life, serve actual reality. In exactly the same sense philosophy is an art. All real philosophers were artists in concepts. For them human ideas become the artistic medium and the scientific method became the artistic technique. Abstract thinking thereby gains concrete individual life. Ideas become powers of life. We have the not merely a knowing about things, but rather we have made knowing into a real self-governing organism; our actual active consciousness has lifted itself above a merely passive taking up of truths.

[ 10 ] How philosophy as an art relates itself to the inner freedom of man, what inner freedom is, and whether we partake in it or can become partakers in it: that is the main question of my book. All other scientific discussions are included here only because they ultimately shed light on those questions which, in my view, concern the human being most immediately. A Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Freiheit) is meant to be given in these pages.

[ 11 ] All science would only be the satisfying of idle curiosity, if it did not strive toward raising the value of existence of the human personality. The sciences first acquire their true value through presenting the human significance of their results. The ennobling of one single soul faculty cannot be the end of all the abilities that slumber within us. Knowledge has value only through the fact that it contributes to the all-around unfolding of the whole nature of man.

[ 12 ] This book does not therefore consider the relationship between science and life to be such that man has to bow down to the idea and dedicate his forces to its service, but rather in the sense that man takes possession of the world of ideas in order to use them for his human goals which transcend merely scientific ones.

[ 13 ] One must be able to confront the idea, experiencing it; otherwise one falls into bondage to it.

• 1. Entirely left out here are only the very first introductory sentences (of the first edition) of these considerations which seem to me today completely unessential. But the rest of what is said seems to me necessary, even now, in spite of the scientific mode of thought of our contemporaries, nay precisely because of it.

[ 1 ] Is man,¹ in his thinking and doing, a spiritually free being, or does he stand under the compulsion of an iron necessity of purely natural lawfulness? Upon few questions has so much keen thought been focused as upon this one. The idea of the freedom of human will has found warm adherents as well as stubborn opponents in great number. There are people who, in their moral fervor, pronounce anyone narrow-minded who can deny so evident a fact as inner freedom. These are opposed by others who see it as eminently unscientific for someone to believe that the lawfulness of nature is interrupted in the sphere of human action and thinking. One and the same thing is here pronounced just as often to be the most prized possession of mankind as it is to be the worst illusion. Endless ingenuity has been expended to explain how human freedom can be compatible with the working of nature to which, after all, man also belongs. No less pains have been taken from another side to attempt to make comprehensible how such a delusion could have arisen. That we have here to do with one of the most important questions of life, of religion, of praxis, and of science—this anyone feels in whom the opposite of thoroughness is not the most outstanding feature of his character. And it is one of the sad indications of the superficiality of contemporary thinking that a book, which wants to formulate from the result of recent research into nature a “new belief” (David Friedrich Strauss, The New and the Old Belief ),² contains nothing about his question except the words: “We do not have to go into the question here of the freedom of human will. The supposedly neutral freedom of choice has always been recognized as an empty specter by every philosophy worthy of the name; the moral evaluation of human actions and attitudes, however, remains untouched by that question.” I do not quote this passage here because I believe that the book in which it stands has particular significance, but rather because it seems to me to express the opinion to which the majority of our thinking contemporaries is able to raise itself with respect to the matter in question. Everyone who claims to have outgrown his scientific childhood seem to know today that being free could not consist in choosing, wholly at will, one or the other of two possible actions. There is always, it is declared, a very definite reason why a person carries out just one particular action from a number of possible ones.

[ 2 ] That seems obvious. Nevertheless, right to the present day, the main attacks of the opponents of freedom direct themselves only against freedom of choice. Herbert Spencer for one, who lives in opinions that are becoming more widespread with each day, says in his Principles of Psychology:³ “But that every one is at liberty to desire or not to desire, which is the real proposition involved in the dogma of free will, is negated as much by the internal perception of every one as by the contents of the preceding chapters.” Other also start from the same point of view in combating the concept of free will. In germinal form all the expositions relating to this are to be found already in Spinoza. His clear and simple argument against the idea of freedom has been repeated innumerable times since then, but cloaked, for the most part, in the most hair-splitting theoretical doctrines, so that it becomes difficult to discern the plain thought process which alone matters Spinoza writes in a letter of October or November 1674: “I call a thing free, namely, which exists and acts out of the pure necessity of it nature, and I call a thing compelled which is determined in its existing and working by something else in a definite and fixed way. So, for example, God exists, although with necessity, still freely, because he exists out of the necessity of his nature alone In the same way, God knows himself and everything else freely, because it follows out of the necessity of his nature alone that he knows everything. You see, therefore, that I place freedom not in a free decision but rather in a free necessity.”

[ 3 ] “But let us come down to created things which are all of them determined by outer causes to exist and work in a fixed and definite way. In order to see this more distinctly let us picture to ourselves something completely simple. Let us say a stone, for example, receives from an external cause propelling it, a certain quantity of motion with which afterward, when the impact of the external cause has ceased, the stone necessarily continues to move itself along. This perseverance of the stone in its motion is compelled and not necessary, because it must be defined through the impact of an external cause. What here holds good for the stone, holds good for every other single thing, no matter how complex and versatile it may be, namely, that everything is determined with necessity by an external cause to exist and work in a fixed and definite way.”

[ 4 ] “Please suppose now that the stone, while moving along, is thinking, and knows that it is striving as hard as it can to continue in motion. This stone, which is only conscious of its striving and is not at all indifferent to what it is doing, will believe that it is completely free and that it is continuing in its motion for no other reason than because it wants to. This, however, is that human freedom which everyone claims to possess and which consists only in the fact that people are conscious of their desires, but do not know the cause by which people are determined. Thus the child believes that it is free in desiring milk, and the angry boy is free in demanding revenge, and the coward free in his flight. Furthermore, the drunken person believes it to be his free decision to say now what he would rather not have said when sober again; and since this biased view is innate to all people, one cannot easily free oneself from it. For although experience teaches us well enough that people are the least able to moderate their desires and that, when moved by two opposing passions, they see the better and do the worse, even so they consider themselves free, because in fact they do desire many things less strongly and many a desire can easily be restrained by the memory of some other preoccupation of theirs.”

[ 5 ] Because an opinion is here put forward that is clearly and definitely expressed, it is also easy to uncover the basic error that lies within it. One supposes that man carries out an action, when driven to it by some reason or other, with the same necessity as a stone carries out a definite motion after an impact. Only because man has a consciousness of his action does he consider himself to be the free originator of it. In doing so he overlooks, however, the fact that a cause is driving him which he must follow absolutely. The error in this thought process is soon discovered. Spinoza, and all who think like him, overlook the fact that man does not only have a consciousness of his action, but can also have a consciousness of the causes by which he is led. No one will dispute the fact that the child is unfree when it desires milk, that the drunken person is so, when he says things which he later regrets. Both know nothing of the causes that are active in the depths of their organism and under whose irresistible compulsion they stand. But is it right to lump together actions of this kind with those in which man is conscious not only of his action, but also of the reasons which move him? Are the actions of men of one and the same kind then? May the act of the soldier on the battlefield, that of the scientific researcher in his laboratory, of the statesman in complex diplomatic affairs be placed scientifically on the same level with that of a child when it desires milk? Certainly it is true that it is best to attempt the solution of a problem where the matter is at its simplest. But the lack of ability to make distinctions has often caused endless confusion. And it is after all a far-reaching difference whether I know why I do something, or whether that is not the case. At first sight this seems to be an entirely obvious truth. And yet it is never asked by the opponents of freedom whether, then, a stimulus to action which I know and understand signifies for me a compulsion in the same sense as the organic process which causes the child to cry for milk.

[ 6 ] Eduard von Hartmann maintains in Phenomenology of Moral Consciousness⁴ that human willing depends upon two main factors: upon the stimulus to action and upon one's character. If one looks upon human beings as all identical or at least upon their differences as negligible, then their willing appears as though determined from outside, that is, by the circumstances that come to meet them. Of one considers, however, that different people make a mental picture into a stimulus to action only if their character is such that it is moved by the corresponding mental picture to desire something, then the human being appears to be determined from within and not from without. Because he now, according to his character, must first make a mental image forced upon him from outside into a stimulus for action, the person believes that he is free, that is, independent of outer stimuli to action. The truth however is, according to Eduard von Hartmann, that: “Even if we ourselves, however, must first raise mental pictures into motives, still we do not do this arbitrarily, but rather according to the necessity of our characterological disposition, therefore anything but freely.” Here also no attention is paid to the difference that exists between stimuli to action which I first let work upon me after I have permeated them with my consciousness, and those which I follow without possessing a clear knowledge of them.

[ 7 ] And this leads us directly to the standpoint from which the subject is to be considered here. May the question of the freedom of our will be asked at all by itself, in a one-sided way? And if not: with what other question must it necessarily be linked?

[ 8 ] If there is a difference between a conscious stimulus to my action and an unconscious urge to do it, then the first will also bring with it an action that must be judged differently than one out of blind impulse. The question as to this difference will therefore be the first. And what this question yields will then determine what position we have to take with respect to the action question of inner freedom itself.

[ 9 ] What does it mean to know the reasons for one's action? One has given this question too little attention, because unfortunately one has always torn into two parts what is an inseparable whole: the human being. One differentiated between the doer and the knower, and only the one who matters the most was left out: the one who acts out of knowledge.

[ 10 ] One says that man is free when he stands only under the dominion of his reason and not under that of his animal desires, or that inner freedom means to be able to determine one's life and action according to purposes and decisions.

[ 11 ] Absolutely nothing is gained by assertions of this kind, however. For that is in fact the question, whether reason, whether purposes and decisions, exercise a compulsion on the human being in the same way animal desires do. If without my cooperation a rational decision rises up in me with exactly the same necessity as hunger and thirst, then I can only follow it by necessity, and my inner freedom is an illusion.

[ 12 ] Another form of expression runs: To be free does not mean to be able to want what one wants to, but rather, to be able to do what one wants to. The poet-philosopher Robert Hamerling has characterized this thought in sharply outlined words in his Atomistic Theory of Will:⁵ “The human being can, to be sure, do what he wants to—but he cannot want what he wants to, because his wanting is determined by motives!—He cannot want what he wants to? But let us consider these words again more closely. Is there a reasonable sense in them? Freedom of will would therefore have to consist in the fact that one could want something without reason, without motive? But what then does wanting mean other than having a reason for preferring to do, or to strive after, this rather than that? To want something without reason, without motive, would mean to want something, without wanting it. With the concept of wanting, the concept of motive is inseparably linked. Without a determining motive the will is an empty capability: only through the motive does it become active and real. It is therefore entirely correct that the human will is not “free” inasmuch as its direction is always determined by the strongest of its motives. But it must on the other hand be admitted that it is absurd, in the fact of this “unfreedom,” to speak of a conceivable “freedom” of the will which would end up being able to want what one does not want.”

[ 13 ] Here also, only motives in general are discussed, without taking into consideration the difference between unconscious and conscious ones. If a motive works upon me and I am compelled to follow it because it proves itself to be the “strongest” of its kind, then thinking about inner freedom ceases to make any sense. How should it be of any significance for me whether I can do something or not, if I am compelled by the motive to do it? The point here is not whether, when the motive has worked upon me, I can then do something or not, but rather whether there are only such motives that work with compelling necessity. If I must want something, then, under certain circumstances, it might be of the greatest indifference to me whether I can also do it. If, because of my character and because of circumstances prevailing in my environment, a motive is forced upon me that to my thinking shows itself to be irrational, then I would even have to be glad if I could not do what I want to.

[ 14 ] The main point is not whether I can carry out a decision made, but rather how the decision arises in me.

[ 15 ] That which distinguishes man from all other organic beings is based on his rational thinking. Activity he has in common with other organisms. Nothing is gained by searching for analogies in the animal kingdom to elucidate the concept of freedom for the actions of human beings. Modern natural science loves such analogies. And when it has succeeded in finding something among animals that is similar to human behavior, it believes it has touched upon the most important question of knowledge about the human being. To what misunderstandings this opinion leads, is shown for example, in the book The Illusion of Free Will⁶ by P. Rée. 1885, who says the following about freedom: “That it seems to us as though the motion of the stone were by necessity, and the willing of the donkey were not be necessity, is easily explainable. The causes which move the stone are of course external and visible. The causes, however, by virtue of which the donkey wills, are internal and invisible: between us and the place of their activity the donkey's skull is to be found ... One does not see the causal dependence, and supposes therefore that it is not present. The will, one explains, is indeed the cause of the donkey's turning around, but the willing itself is independent; it is an absolute beginning.” So here too actions of the human being in which he has a consciousness of the reasons for his action, are again simply passed over, for Rée explains: “Between us and the place of their activity the donkey's skull is to be found.” To judge already from these words,—Rée has no inkling of the fact that there are actions not of the donkey, to be sure, but certainly of people—for which the motive that has become conscious lies between us and the action. He also proves this one again a few pages later through the words: “We do not perceive the causes by which our willing is determined; therefore we suppose that it is not causally determined at all.”

[ 16 ] But enough of examples which prove that many fight against freedom without knowing at all what freedom is.

[ 17 ] It is entirely obvious that an action which the doer performs, without knowing why he does it, cannot be free. But how does the matter stand with the kind of action whose reasons are known? This leads us to the question: What is the origin and the significance of thinking? For without knowledge about the thinking activity of the soul, a concept of knowing about anything, including an action, is not possible. When we know what thinking in general signifies, then it will also be easy to become clear about the role of thinking in human action. “Only with thinking does the soul, with which the animal is also endowed, first become spirit,” says Hegel rightly, and therefore thinking will also give to human action its characteristic stamp.

[ 18 ] This is not to assert by any means that all our action flows only out of the sober deliberations of our intellect. To set forth only those actions as in the highest sense human which issue from abstract judgment, is very far from my intention. But the moment our action lifts itself up out of the area of the satisfaction of purely animal desires, what moves us to act is always intermixed with thoughts. Love, compassion, patriotism are mainsprings of action which do not let themselves be reduced into cold concepts of the intellect. One says: The heart, the Gemüt⁷ come here into their own. Without a doubt. But the heart and the Gemüt do not create what it is that moves us to act. They presuppose it and take it into their domain. Within my heart compassion appears when, in my consciousness, the mental picture arises of a person who arouses compassion. The way to the heart is through the head. Even love is no exception to this. When it is not the mere expression of the sex drive, it is then based upon the mental pictures which we make for ourselves of the loved one. And the more idealistic these mental pictures are, the more blissful is the love. Here also the thought is father to the feeling. One says: Love makes us blind to the weaknesses of the loved one. The matter can also be grasped the other way round and it can be maintained that love opens the eye in fact for precisely the good qualities of the loved one. Many pass these good qualities by without an inkling, without noticing them. One person sees them, and just because he does, love awakens in his soul. What has he done other than make for himself a mental picture of something of which a hundred others have none. They do not have the love because they lack the mental picture.

[ 19 ] We may grasp the subject however we want: it must become ever clearer that the question about the nature of human action presupposes the other about the origin of thinking. I will turn, therefore, first of all to this question.

• 1. Since English has not yet produced a neutral word for what we are (even “human being” has the word “man” in it), one must still ask the reader to remove any connotations of gender from such words.
  
  —Translator
• 2. Der alte und neue Glaube
• 3. Part IV, Chap. IX, par. 207.
• 4. Phaenomenolgie des sittlichen Bewusstseins
• 5. Atomistik des Willens
• 6. Die Illusion der Willensfreiheit
• 7. We have no word for Gemüt in English. It points more to the totality of man's inner being than “heart” does.
  
  —Translator's note.

Two souls alas! are dwelling in my breast;
And each is fain to leave its brother.
The one, fast clinging, to the world adheres
With clutching organs, in love's sturdy lust;
The other strongly lifts itself from dust
To yonder high ancestral spheres.

Faust I, Sc. 2
(Priest translation)

[ 1 ] With these words Goethe expresses a characteristic deeply founded in human nature. Man is not whole in the organization of his being. He demands always more than the world gives him of its own accord. Nature has given us needs; among these are such whose satisfaction it has left to our own activity. Abundant are the gifts apportioned us, but still more abundant is our desiring. We seem born to be discontented. One particular instance of this discontent is our urge to know. We look twice at a tree. The one time we see it branches at rest, the other time in motion. We do not content ourselves with this observation. Why does the tree present itself to us the one time at rest, the other time in motion? We ask about things in this way. Every look into nature produced a number of questions in us. With every phenomenon that comes our way a task is set us along with it. Every experience becomes a riddle for us. We see emerge from the egg a being that resembles the mother animal; we ask for the reason for this resemblance. We observe in a living being growth and development to a particular level of perfection; we seek the determining factors of this experience. Nowhere are we content with what nature spreads out before our senses. We seek everywhere what we call explanation of the facts.

[ 2 ] The fact that what we seek in things exceeds what is directly given us in them, splits our entire being in two parts; we become conscious of our polar opposition to the world. We confront the world as independent beings. The universe appears to us in the polarity: I and the world.

[ 3 ] We erect this wall of separation between us and the world as soon as consciousness lights up within us. But never do we lose the feeling that we belong even so to the world, that a bond endures that joins us to it, that we are not beings outside, but rather inside the universe.

[ 4 ] This feeling creates the striving to bridge the polarity. And the entire spiritual striving of mankind ultimately consists in the bridging of this polarity. The history of our spiritual life is a continuous searching for the unity between us and the world. Religion, art, and science all pursue this goal. The religious believer seeks, within the revelation which God allots to him, the solution to the world riddle that his “I,” not content with the world of mere phenomena, poses him. The artist seeks to fashion into matter the ideas of his “I,” in order to reconcile what lives in his inner being with the outer world. He too feels himself unsatisfied by the world of mere phenomena and seeks to mold into it that something more which his “I,” transcending the world of phenomena, contains. The thinker searches for the laws of phenomena; he strives, thinking, to penetrate what he experiences observing. Only when we have made the world content into our thought content, only then do we find again the connection from which we ourselves have detached ourselves. We will see later on that this goal will only be attained if the task of the scientific researcher is in fact grasped much more deeply than is often done. The whole relationship I have presented here confronts us in a world-historical manifestation: in the polarity of the one-word view or monism, to the two-world theory or dualism. Dualism directs its gaze only upon the separation between “I” and world brought about by the consciousness of man. Its whole striving is an ineffectual struggle to reconcile this polarity, which it sometimes calls spirit and matter, sometimes subject and object, sometimes thinking and phenomenon. It has a feeling that there must be a bridge between the two worlds, but it is not capable of finding it. In that the human being experiences himself as “I,” he cannot but think of this “I” as being on the side of the spirit; and in that he sets the world over against this “I,” he must reckon to this world, the world of perception given to the senses, the material world. Man places himself thereby into the polarity of spirit and matter. He must do this all the more since his own body belongs to the material world. The “I” belongs in this way to the spiritual as a part of it; the material things and processes that are perceived by the senses belong to the “world,” All the riddles relating to spirit and matter must be found again by man within the fundamental riddle of his own being. Monism directs its gaze upon the unity alone and seeks to deny or obliterate the polarities actually present. Neither of the two views can satisfy, for they do not do justice to the facts. Dualism sees spirit (“I”) and matter (world) as two fundamentally different entities, and therefore cannot grasp how the two can interact with each other. How should the spirit know what is going on in matter, if matter's essential nature is entirely alien to it? Or how should the spirit under these circumstances work upon matter in such a way that its intentions transform themselves into deeds? The most ingenious and most contradictory hypotheses were set up in order to solve these questions. Up to the present, however, monism is not in a much better position. It has sought help up till now in three ways: either it denies the spirit and becomes materialism; or it denies matter, in order to seek its salvation in spiritualism; or, it maintains that matter and spirit are already inseparably joined even in the most simple entity in the world, for which reason one need not be surprised if these two kinds of existence, which after all are nowhere separated, appear within the human being.

[ 5 ] Materialism can never provide a satisfactory explanation of the world. For every attempt at an explanation must begin with one's forming thoughts for oneself about the phenomena of the world. Materialism therefore takes its start with the thought of matter or of material processes. Thus it already has two different realms of facts before it: the material world and thoughts about it. It seeks to understand the latter by grasping them as a purely material process. It believes that thinking takes place in the brain in about the same way as digestion does in the animal organs. Just as it attributes to matter mechanical and organic effects, so it also ascribes to it the capability, under specific conditions, to think. It forgets that it has now only transferred the problem to another place. It attributes the capability of thinking not to itself but to matter. And in doing so it is back again at its starting point. How does matter come to reflect upon its own being? Why is it not simply satisfied with itself and accepting of its existence? The materialist has turned his gaze away form the specific subject, from our own “I,” and has arrived at an indefinite, hazy configuration. And here the same riddle comes to meet him. The materialistic view is not able to solve the problem, but only to shift it.

[ 6 ] How do matters stand with the spiritualistic view? The pure spiritualist denies matter in its independent existence and apprehends it only as product of the spirit. If he applies this world view to solving the riddle of his own human nature, he is, in doing so, driven into a corner. Confronting the “I,” which can be placed on the side of spirit, there stands, without intermediary, the sensory world. Into this, no spiritual entry seems to open; this world has to be perceived and experienced by the “I” through material processes. The “I” does not find any such material processes within itself, if it wants to be considered only as a spiritual entity. The sense world is never present in what the “I” works through spiritually for itself. It seems the “I” must admit that the world would remain closed to it, if the “I” were not to put itself into a relationship with it in an unspiritual way. In like manner, when we come to act, we must transform our intentions into reality with the help of the material substances and forces. We are, therefore, reliant on the outer world. The most extreme spiritualist, or if you will, the thinker presenting himself as extreme spiritualist through absolute idealism, is Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He attempted to derive the whole edifice of the world out of the “I.” What he actually achieved thereby is a magnificent thought picture of the world, without any content of experience. Just as little as it is possible for the materialist to banish spirit by decree, it is possible for the spiritualist to banish the outer material world by decree.

[ 7 ] Because the human being, when he directs his knowledge to the “I,” perceives to begin with the working of this “I” within the thinking elaboration of the world of ideas, the spiritualistically oriented world view can feel itself tempted, by looking at its own human nature, to acknowledge of the spirit only this world of ideas. Spiritualism becomes in this way one-sided idealism. It does not come to the point, through the world of ideas, of seeking a spiritual world; it sees in the world of ideas itself the spiritual world. It is compelled thereby to remain as though spellbound within the activity of the “I” itself.

[ 8 ] A curious variant of idealism is the view of Friedrich Albert Lange which he has presented in his widely read History of Materialism.¹ . He supposes that materialism is totally right when it explains all phenomena, including our thinking, as the product of purely material processes; but conversely, matter and its processes themselves are again a product of our thinking. “The senses give us ... effects of things, not accurate pictures, let alone the things themselves. To these mere effects belong however also the senses themselves, along with the brain and the movements of molecules thought to be in it.” That means our thinking is produced by the material processes, and these by the thinking of the “I.” Lange's philosophy is thereby nothing other than the story, translated into concepts, of the intrepid Münchhausen, who holds himself up freely in the air by his own pigtail.

[ 9 ] The third form of monism is that which sees within the simplest entity (atom) the two entities of matter and spirit already united. But all that is achieved here is that the question, which actually arises in our consciousness, is shifted to another arena. How does the simple entity come to manifest itself in a twofold way, if it is an undivided whole?

[ 10 ] With respect to all these standpoints we must note that the basic and original polarity comes to meet us first of all within our own consciousness. It is we who detach ourselves from the mother ground of nature, and place ourselves as “I” over against the “world.” Goethe expresses this classically in his essay, “Nature,” even though his approach may at first be considered completely unscientific: “We live in the midst of her (nature) and are foreign to her. She speaks unceasingly to us and does not betray her secret.” But Goethe also knows the reverse side: “Human beings are all within her and she within all human beings.”

[ 11 ] As true as it is that we have estranged ourselves from nature, it is just as true that we feel that we are within it and belong to it. It can only be its own working that also lives in us.

[ 12 ] We must find the way back to it again. A simple consideration can show us this way. We have, it is true, torn ourselves from nature; but we must nevertheless have taken something over with us into our own being. We must seek out this being of nature within us, and then we will also find the connection again. Dualism neglects to do this. It considers the inner being of man to be a spiritual entity totally foreign to nature and seeks to attach this entity onto nature. No wonder that it cannot find the connecting link. We can find nature outside us only when we first know it within us. What is akin to it in our own inner being will be our guide. Our course is thereby sketched out for us. We do not want to engage in any speculations about the interaction of nature and spirit. We want, however, to descend into the depths of our own being, in order to find there those elements which we have rescued in our flight from nature.

[ 13 ] The exploration of our being must bring us the solution to the riddle. We must come to the point where we can say to ourselves: here we are no longer merely “I,” here lies something that is more than “I.”

[ 14 ] I am prepared for the objection that many who have read this far will not find my expositions to be in conformity with “the present-day position of scholarship.” I can only reply that up till now I have not wanted to concern myself with scholarship, but rather with the simple description of what everyone experiences within his own consciousness. Individual sentences about attempts of consciousness to reconcile itself with the world have also been included only in order to make the actual facts clear. I have therefore also not thought it important to use such single expressions as “I,” “spirit,” “world,” “nature,” and so forth in the precise way that is usual in psychology and philosophy. Everyday consciousness does not know the sharp distinctions of scholarship, and until now we have merely been dealing with an assimilation of the everyday state of affairs. My concern is not how scholarship has interpreted consciousness until now, but rather how consciousness expresses itself in every moment.

• 1. Geschichte des Matrialismus

[ 1 ] When I observe how a billiard ball that is struck communicates its motion to another, I remain thereby completely without influence on the course of this observed occurrence. The direction of motion and the velocity of the second ball are determined by the direction and velocity of the first. As long as I act merely as observer, I can say something about the motion of the second ball only when the motion has occurred. The matter is different when I begin to reflect on the content of my observation. My reflection has the purpose of forming concepts about the occurrence. I bring the concept of an elastic ball into connection with certain other concepts of mechanics, and take into consideration the particular circumstances which prevail in the present case. I seek, that is, to add to the occurrence that runs its course without my participation a second occurrence that takes place in the conceptual sphere. The latter is dependent upon me. This shows itself through the fact that I can content myself with the observation and forgo any seeking for concepts, if I have no need of them. But if this need is present, then I will rest content only when I have brought the concepts ball, elasticity, motion, impact, velocity, etc. into a certain interconnection, to which the observed occurrence stands in a definite relationship. As certain as it is, now, that the occurrence takes place independently of me, it is just as certain that the conceptual process cannot occur without my participation.

[ 2 ] Whether this activity of mine really issues from my own independent being, or whether the modern physiologists are right who say that we cannot think as we want, but rather must think as determined by the thoughts and thought connections now present in our consciousness [cf. Ziehen, Guidelines of Physiological Psychology],¹ is a question that will be the subject of a later discussion. For the moment we merely want to establish the fact that, for the objects and occurrences given us without our participation, we feel ourselves constantly compelled to seek concepts and conceptual connections that stand in a certain relationship to what is given. Whether the activity is in truth our activity, or whether we perform it according to an unalterable necessity, this question we will leave aside for the moment. That this activity appears to us at first as our own is without question. We know full well that along with objects, their concepts are not given us at the same time. That I myself am the active one may rest on an illusion; to immediate observation in any case the matter presents itself that way. The question is now: What do we gain through the fact that we find a conceptual counterpart to an occurrence?

[ 3 ] There is for me a far-reaching difference between the way that the parts of an occurrence interact with each other before and after the discovery of the corresponding concepts. Mere observation can follow the parts of a given occurrence in progress; their connection, however, before recourse is taken to concepts, remains dark. I see the first billiard ball move toward the second in a certain direction and with a definite velocity; what will happen after the resulting impact, this I must wait for, and then again I also can only follow it with my eyes. Let us suppose that, at the moment of impact, this I must wait for, and then again I also can only follow it with my eyes. Let us suppose that, at the moment of impact, someone covered the field on which the occurrence that takes place; then I—as mere observer—am without knowledge of what happens afterwards. It is different if, for the constellation of relationships, I have found the corresponding concepts before the covering takes place. In this case I can say what will happen, even if the possibility of observation ceases. An occurrence or object that is merely observed does not of itself reveal anything about its connection with other occurrences or objects. This connection becomes visible only when observation joins itself with thinking.

[ 4 ] Observation and thinking are the two starting points for all the spiritual striving of man, insofar as he is conscious of such a striving. The workings of common sense and the most intricate scientific research rest on these two basic pillars of our spirit. The philosophers have started from various ultimate polarities: idea and reality, subject and object, phenomenon and thing-in-itself, “I” and not-“I,” idea and will, concept and matter, force and substance, conscious and unconscious. It is easily shown, however, that the polarity of observation and thinking must precede all these others as the most important for the human being.

[ 5 ] Whatever principle we may ever set up: we must show that it was somewhere observed by us, or express it in the form of a clear thought which can also be thought by everyone else. Every philosopher who begins to speak about his ultimate principles must make use of the conceptual form, and thereby of thinking. By doing so he admits indirectly that he already presupposes thinking as part of his activity. Whether thinking or something else is the main element of world evolution, about this nothing yet is determined here. But that the philosopher, without thinking, can gain no knowledge of world evolution, this is clear from the start. In the coming into being of world phenomena, thinking may play a secondary role; but in the coming into being of a view about them, a main role certainly does belong to thinking.

[ 6 ] Now with respect to observation, it lies in the nature of our organization that we need it. Our thinking about a horse and the object “horse” are two things which for us appear separately. And this object is accessible to us only through observation. As little as we are able, by mere staring at a horse, to make a concept of it for ourselves, just as little are we capable, by mere thinking, to bring forth a corresponding object.

[ 7 ] In sequence of time, observation comes in fact before thinking. For even thinking we must learn to know first through observation. It was essentially the description of an observation when we gave an account at the beginning of this chapter of how thinking is kindled by an occurrence but goes beyond what is thus given before our thinking participation. It is through observation that we first become aware of everything that enters the circle of our experiences. The content of sensations, of perceptions, of contemplations, our feelings, acts of will, dream and fantasy images, mental pictures, concepts and ideas, all illusions and hallucinations, re given to us trough observation.

[ 8 ] But as object of observation, thinking differs essentially from all other things. The observation of a table or of a tree occurs for me as soon as these objects arise on the horizon of my experiences. My thinking about these objects, however, I do not observe at the same time. I observe the table, I carry out my thinking about the table, but I do not observe my thinking at the same moment. I must first transfer myself to a standpoint outside of my own activity, if I want, besides the table, to observe also my thinking about the table. Whereas the observing of objects and occurrences, and the thinking about them, are the entirely commonplace state of affairs with which my going life is filled, the observation of thinking is a kind of exceptional state. This fact must be properly considered when it is a matter of determining the relationship of thinking to all other contents of observation. One must be clear about the fact that in the observation of thinking one is applying to it a way of doing things which constitutes the normal condition for the consideration of all other world content, but which, in the course of this normal state of affairs, does not take place with respect to thinking itself.

[ 9 ] Someone could make the objection that what I have observed here about thinking also hold good for feeling and for our other spiritual activities. When we, for example, have the feeling of pleasure, this is kindled also by an object, and I observe in fact this object, but not the feeling of pleasure. This objection rests however upon an error. Pleasure stands by no means in the same relationship to its object as does the concept which thinking forms. I am conscious in the most definite way that the concept of a thing is formed through my activity, whereas pleasure is produced in me through an object in the same way as, for example, the change which a falling stone effects in an object upon which it falls. For observation, pleasure is a given in exactly the same way as the occurrence causing it. The same is not true of the concept. I can ask why a particular occurrence produces in me the feeling of pleasure. But I can by now means ask why an occurrence produces in me a particular sum of concepts. That would simply make no sense. In my reflecting on an occurrence it is not at all a question of an effect upon me. I can experience nothing about myself through the fact that I know the appropriate concepts for the observed change which a stone, thrown against the windowpane, causes in the latter. But I very much do experience something about my personality when I know the feeling which a particular occurrence awakens in me. When I say with respect to an observed object that this is a rose, I do not thereby say the slightest thing about myself; when, however, I saw of the same thing that it gives me a feeling of pleasure, I have characterized thereby not only the rose, but also myself in my relationship to the rose.

[ 10 ] To regard thinking and feeling as alike in their relationship to observation is therefore out of the question. The same could also easily be demonstrated for the other activities of the human spirit. They belong, in contrast to thinking, in a category with other observed objects and occurrences. It belongs precisely to the characteristic nature of thinking that it is an activity which is directed solely upon the observed object and not upon the thinking personality. This manifests itself already in the way that we bring our thoughts about a thing to expression, in contrast to our feelings or acts of will. When I see an object and know it to be a table, I will not usually say that I am thinking about a table, but rather that this is a table. But I will certainly say that I am pleased with the table. In the first case it does not occur to me at all to express the fact that I enter into relationship with the table; in the second case, however, it is precisely a question of this relationship. With the statement that I am thinking about a table, I enter already into the exceptional state characterized above, in which something is made into an object of observation that always accompanies and is contained within our spiritual activity, but not as an observed object.

[ 11 ] That is the characteristic nature of thinking, that the thinker forgets his thinking while exercising it. It is not thinking that occupies him, but rather the object of thinking that he is observing.

[ 12 ] The first observation that we can make about thinking is therefore this: that it is the unobserved element of our ordinary spiritual life.

[ 13 ] The reason why we do not observe thinking in our everyday spiritual life is none other than that it depends upon our own activity. What I do not myself bring forth comes as something objective into my field of observation. I see myself before it as before something that has occurred without me; it comes to me; I have to receive it as the prerequisite for my thinking process. While I am reflecting on the object, I am occupied with it; my gaze is turned to it. This occupation is in fact thinking contemplation. My attention is directed now upon my activity, but rather upon the object of this activity. In other words: while I am thinking, I do not look at my thinking, which I myself bring forth, but rather at the object of my thinking, which I do not bring forth.

[ 14 ] I am, as a matter of fact, in the same position when I let the exceptional state arise and reflect on my thinking itself. I can never observe my present thinking; but rather I can only afterward make the experiences, which I have had about my thinking process, into the object of thinking. I would have to split myself into two personalities, into one who thinks, and into the other one who looks on during this thinking itself, if I wanted to observe my present thinking. This I cannot do. I can only carry this out in two separate acts. The thinking that is to be observed is never the one active at the moment, but rather another one. Whether for this purpose I make my observations in connection with my own earlier thinking, or whether I follow the thought process of another person, or finally whether, as in the above case of the motion of billiard balls, I set up an imaginary thought process, does not matter.

[ 15 ] Two things are incompatible with each other: active bringing forth and contemplative standing apart. This is recognized already in the first book of Moses. In the first six-world days God lets the world come forth, and only when it is there is the possibility present of looking upon it. “And God saw everything that He had made and behold, it was very good.” So it is also with our thinking. It must first be there if we want to observe it.

[ 16 ] The reason it is impossible for us to observe thinking in its present course at given moment is the same that allows us to know it more directly and more intimately than any other process of the world. Just because we bring it forth ourselves, we know the characteristics of its course, the way the happening to be considered takes place. What, in the other spheres of observation, can be found only in an indirect way—the factually corresponding connection, namely, and the interrelationship of the single objects—this we know in the case of thinking in a completely direct way. Why for my observation thunder follows lightning, I do not know at once; why my thinking joins the concept thunder with that of lightning, this I know directly out of the contents of the two concepts. Naturally the point is not at all whether I have the right concepts of lightning and thunder. The connection of those that I have is clear to me, and is so, in fact, through the concepts themselves.

[ 17 ] This transparent clarity with respect to our thinking process is entirely independent of our knowledge about the physiological basis of thinking. I am speaking here about thinking insofar as it presents itself to the observation of our spiritual activity.* How one material occurrence of my brain causes or influences another while I am carrying out a thought operation, does not come thereby at all into consideration. What I observe about thinking is not what occurrence in my brain joins the concept of lightning with that of thunder, but rather, what motivates me to bring the two concepts into a definite relationship. My observation shows that for my thought connections nothing is present for me by which to guide myself except the content of my thoughts; I do not guide myself by the material occurrences in my brain. For a less materialistic age than ours this observation would of course be altogether superfluous. In the present day, however, where there are people who believe that when we know what matter is we will also know how matter thinks, it must indeed by said that one may speak of thinking without heading right away into a collision with brain physiology. It is difficult for many people today to grasp the concept of thinking in its purity. Whoever raises as an objection to the picture of thinking painted here the statement of Cabanis that “The brain secrets thoughts as the liver does bile, the salivary glands saliva, etc.,” simply does not know what I am talking about. He tries to find thinking through a mere process of observation in the same way as we proceed with other objects from the content of the world. He cannot find it in this way, however, because just there it eludes our normal observation as I have shown. A person who cannot overcome materialism lacks the ability to call forth the characterized exceptional state which brings to his consciousness what remains unconscious to all other spiritual activity.² With someone who does not have the good will to take this standpoint, one could as little speak about thinking as with a blind person about color. Still he should not believe that we regard physiological processes as thinking. He does not explain thinking, because he simply does not see it at all.

[ 18 ] For everyone, however, who has the ability to observe thinking—and with good will every normally developed human being has it—this observation is the most important one he can possibly make. For he observes something that he himself brings forth; he does not see himself confronting an object at first foreign to him, but rather sees himself confronting his own activity. He knows how what he is observing comes about. He sees into its relationship and interconnections. A firm point has been won from which one can seek, with well-founded hope, the explanation of the rest of world phenomena.

[ 19 ] The feeling of having such a firm point caused the founder of modern philosophy, Descartes, to base all human knowing upon the statement, I think, therefore I am. All other things, everything else that happens is there without me; I do not know whether as truth, whether as illusion and dream. There is only one thing I know with altogether unqualified certainty, for I myself bring it to its certain existence: my thinking. Though it may have still another source of its existence, though it may come from God or from somewhere else; that it is there in that sense in which I myself bring it forth, of this I am certain. Descartes had at first no justification for imputing another meaning to his statement. He could only maintain that, within the content of the world I grasp myself in my thinking as within an activity most inherently my own. What the attached therefore I am is supposed to mean has been much disputed. It can mean something, however, on one condition only. The simplest statement I can make about a thing is that it is, that it exists. How then this existence is to be more closely determined cannot be stated right away with respect to anything that comes onto the horizon of my experiences. One must first examine every object in its relationship to others, in order to be able to determine in which sense it can be spoken of as something existing. An occurrence one experiences may be a sum of perceptions, but also a dream, a hallucination, and so on. In short, I cannot say in which sense it exists. This I cannot conclude from the occurrence itself, but rather I will learn this when I look at the occurrence in relation to other things. There again, however, I can know no more than how it stands in relation to these things. My searching first comes onto firm ground when I find an object from which I can derive the sense of its existence out of it itself. This I am myself, however, in that I think, for I give to my existence the definite, self-sustaining content of thinking activity. Now I can take my start from there and ask whether the other things exist in the same or in a different sense.

[ 20 ] When one makes thinking the object of observation, one adds to the rest of the observed content of the world something that otherwise eludes one's attention; one does not change, however, the way in which the human being conducts himself, also with respect to the other things. One adds to the number of objects of observation, but not to the method of observation. While we are observing the other things, there is mingling with world happening³ (to which I now reckon on observation as well)—a process that is overlooked. There is something present, different form all other happening, that is not taken into account. When I look at my thinking, however, there is no such element present that has not been taken into account. For, what is hovering now in the background is itself again only thinking. The observed object is qualitatively the same as the activity that directs itself upon it. And that is again a unique characteristic of thinking. When we make it an object to be looked at, we do not find ourselves compelled to do this with the help of something qualitatively different, but rather we can remain within the same element.

[ 21 ] When I weave into my thinking an object given without my participation, I go beyond my observation, and the question becomes: What gives me the right to do this? Why do I not simply let the object affect me? In what way is it possible that my thinking has a relation to the object? Those are the questions which each person must ask himself who reflects upon his own thought processes. They fall away when one reflects upon thinking itself. We add to thinking nothing foreign to it, and therefore do not also have to justify any such addition to ourselves.

[ 22 ] Schelling says that to know nature means to create nature.—Whoever takes literally these words of this bold philosopher will certainly have to renounce all knowledge of nature forever. For nature is already there once, and in order to create it a second time one must know the principles by which it has arisen. For a nature that one wanted first to create, one would have to detect, from the nature already existing, the conditions of its existence. This detecting, that would have to precede the creating, would however be knowing nature, and would indeed still be knowing nature in the case where, after the detecting is completed, the creating did not take place at all. Only a nature not yet present could one create before knowing it.

[ 23 ] What is impossible with respect to nature, namely, creating before knowing, we do accomplish with respect to thinking. If we wanted to wait with thinking until we knew it, we would never come to it. We must resolutely proceed with thinking, in order afterward, by means of observation of what we ourselves have done, to come to knowledge of it. We ourselves first create an object for thinking to observe. The existence of all other objects has been provided without our participation.

[ 24 ] Someone could easily oppose my statement that we must think before we can look at thinking, with another, and consider it equally valid, namely, that we cannot wait with digesting either until we have observed the occurrence of digestion. That would be similar to the objection which Pascal made to Descartes when he declared that one could also say, “I take a walk, therefore I am.” Certainly I must also resolutely digest before I have studied the physiological process of digestion. But that could only be compared with looking at thinking if I did not afterward want to look, in thinking, at the digestion, but rather wanted to eat and digest it. And it is in fact not without reason that while digestion cannot become the object of digestion, thinking can very well become the object of thinking.

[ 25 ] It is therefore beyond any doubt that in thinking we grasp world happening by one tip where we must be present if something is to come about. And that is after all exactly the point. That is exactly the reason why things confront me as such a riddle: because I am so uninvolved in their coming about. I simply find them before me; with thinking, however, I know how it is done. Thus there is no starting point for looking at all world happening[s] more primal than thinking.

[ 26 ] I would like still to mention a widespread error prevailing with respect to thinking. It consists in the statement that thinking, as it is in itself, is nowhere given us. The thinking which joins the observations we make of our experiences and interweaves them with a web of concepts, is said to be not at all the same as that thinking which we afterwards lift out of the objects of observation again and make the object of our study. What we first weave unconsciously into the things is said to be something entirely different from what we then extricate from them again with consciousness.

[ 27 ] Whoever draws these conclusions does not grasp the fact that it is not possible at all for him to escape thinking in this way. I absolutely cannot get outside of thinking if I want to look at thinking. If one makes a distinction between thinking as it is prior to my consciousness of it, and the thinking of which I am afterwards conscious, one should not then forget, in doing so, that this distinction is entirely superficial and has absolutely nothing to do with the matter itself. I do not in any way make a thing into a different one through the fact that I look at it in thinking. I can imagine that a being with sense organs of a completely different sort and with an intelligence that functions differently would have an entirely different mental picture of a horse than I do, but I cannot imagine to myself that my own thinking becomes a different one through the fact that I observe it. I myself observe what I myself carry out. How my thinking looks to an intelligence other than my own is not the question now; the question here is how it looks to me. In any case, however, the picture of my thinking within another intelligence cannot be truer than my own picture. Only if I were not myself the thinking being, but rather were to approach the thinking as an activity of a being foreign to me, could I saw that my picture of the thinking arises in a particular way, but that I could not know how the thinking of the being in itself is.

[ 28 ] But so far there is not the slightest motivation for me to look upon my own thinking from another standpoint. I consider, indeed, all the rest of the world with the help of thinking. How should I make an exception to this in the case of my thinking?

[ 29 ] With this I consider it to be well enough justified that I take my start from thinking in my consideration of the world. When Archimedes had discovered the lever, he believed that, with its help, he could lift the whole cosmos from its hinges, if he could only find a point upon which to rest his instrument. He needed something that is supported through itself, not through something else. In thinking we have a principle that exists in and through itself. Let us start here in our attempt to comprehend the world. Thinking we can grasp through thinking itself. The question is only whether through it we can also apprehend something else as well.

[ 30 ] I have spoken until now about thinking without taking any account of its bearer, human consciousness. Most philosophers of the present day will object that, before there can be a thinking, there must be a consciousness. Therefore consciousness and not thinking should be the starting point. There would be no thinking without consciousness. I must reply to this that if I want to clarify what the relationship is between thinking and consciousness, I must think about it. I thereby presuppose thinking. Now one can certainly respond to this that if the philosopher wants to understand consciousness, he then makes use of thinking; to this extent he does presuppose it; in the usual course of life, however, thinking arises within consciousness and thereby presupposed it. If this answer were given to the world creator, who wanted to create thinking, it would without a doubt be justified. One cannot of course let thinking arise without having brought about consciousness beforehand. For the philosopher, however, it is not a matter of creating the world, but of understanding it. He must therefore seek the starting point not for creating, but rather for understanding the world. I find it altogether strange when someone reproaches the philosopher for concerning himself before all else with the correctness of his principles, rather than working immediately with the objects he wants to understand. The world creator had to know above all how he could find a bearer for thinking; the philosopher, however, must seek a sure basis from which he can understand what is already there. What good does it do us to start with consciousness and to subject it to our thinking contemplation, if we know nothing beforehand about the possibility of gaining insight into things through thinking contemplation?

[ 31 ] We must first of all look at thinking in a completely neutral way, without any relationship to a thinking subject or conceived object. For in subject and object we already have concepts that are formed through thinking. It is undeniable that, before other things can be understood, thinking must be understood. Whoever does deny this, overlooks the fact that he, as human being, is not a first member of creation but its last member. One cannot, therefore, in order to explain the world through concepts, start with what are in time the first elements of existence, but rather with what is most immediately and intimately given us. We cannot transfer ourselves with one bound to the beginning of the world in order to begin our investigations there; we must rather start form the present moment and see if we can ascend from the later to the earlier. As long as geology spoke of imagined revolutions in order to explain the present state of the earth, it was groping in the dark. Only when it took as its starting point the investigation of processes which are presently still at work on the earth and drew conclusions about the past from these, did it gain firm ground. As long as philosophy assumes all kinds of principles, such as atoms, motion, matter, will, or the unconscious, it will hover in the air. Only when the philosopher regards the absolute last as his first, can he reach his goal. This absolute last, however, to which world evolution has come is thinking.

[ 32 ] There are people who say that we cannot, however, really determine with certainty whether our thinking is in itself correct or not. That to this extent, therefore, the starting point remains in any case a dubious one. That makes exactly as much sense as it would to harbor a doubt as to whether a tree is in itself correct or not. Thinking is a fact; and to speak of the correctness or incorrectness of a fact makes no sense. At most I can have doubts about whether thinking is put to a correct use, just as I can doubt whether a particular tree will provide wood appropriate for use in a certain tool. To show to what extent my use of thinking with respect to the world is a correct or incorrect one is precisely the task of this book. I can understand it if someone harbors doubt that something can be determined about the world through thinking; but it is incomprehensible to me how someone can doubt the correctness of thinking in itself.

Addendum to the Revised Edition of 1918

[ 33 ] In the preceding considerations the momentous difference between thinking and all other soul activities is pointed to as a fact that reveals itself to a really unprejudiced observation. Whoever does not strive for this unprejudiced observation will be tempted to raise objections against these considerations like the following: When I think about a rose this still expresses only a relationship of my “I” to the rose, just as when I feel the beauty of the rose. There exists in exactly the same way a relationship between “I” and object in thinking as there is for example in feeling or perceiving. Whoever makes this objection does not take into consideration that only in the activity of thinking does the “I” know itself to be of one being with what is active, right into every ramification of the activity. With no other soul activity is this absolutely the case. When, for example, a pleasure is felt, a more sensitive observation can very well distinguish to what extent the “I” knows itself as one with something active, and to what extent something passive is present in the “I” in such a way that the pleasure merely happens to the “I.” And it is also like this with the other soul activities. One should only not confuse “having thought pictures” with working through thoughts in thinking. Thought pictures can arise in the soul in a dream-like way, like vague intimations. This is not thinking.—To be sure, someone could say now that if thinking is meant in this way, then will is present in thinking, and one has then to do not merely with thinking, but also with the will in thinking. This, however, would only justify us in saying that real thinking must always be willed. But this has nothing to do with the characterization of thinking made in this book. The nature of thinking may in fact necessitate that thinking be willed; the point is that nothing is willed which, as it is taking place, does not appear before the ‘I” as totally its own surveyable activity. One must even say in fact, because of the nature of thinking presented here, that thinking appears to the observer as willed, through and through. Whoever makes an effort really to see into everything that comes into consideration for an evaluation of thinking, cannot but perceive that the characteristic spoken of here does apply to this soul activity.

[ 34 ] A personality valued very highly as a thinker by the author of this book has raised the objection that thinking cannot be spoken of in the way it is done here, because what one believes oneself to be observing as active thinking is only a semblance. In actuality one is observing only the result of an unconscious activity that underlies thinking. Only because this unconscious activity is in fact not observed, does the illusion arise that the observed thinking exists in and through itself, in the same way that one believes one sees a motion when a line of single electric sparks is set off in quick succession. This objection is also based upon an inexact view of the actual situation. Whoever makes it does not take into account that it is the “I” itself that, standing within thinking, observes its own activity. The “I” would have to stand outside of thinking if it could be fooled as in the case of the quick succession of the light of electric sparks. One could go still further and say that whatever makes such an analogy is deluding himself mightily, like someone, for example, who truly wanted to maintain of a light in motion, that it is newly lit, by unknown hand, at every point where it appears,—No, whoever wants to see in thinking something other than that which is brought forth within the “I” itself as a surveyable activity, such a person would have to first blind himself to the plain facts observable before him, in order then to be able to base thinking upon a hypothetical activity. Whoever does not blind himself in this way must recognize that everything which he “thinks onto” thinking in this way leads him out of the being of thinking. Unprejudiced observation shows that nothing can be attributed to the being of thinking that is not found within thinking itself. One cannot come to something that causes thinking, if one leaves the realm of thinking.

• 1. Leitfaden der physiologischen Psychologie
• 2. geistigen Tätigkeit
• 3. Weltgeschehen

[ 1 ] Through thinking, concepts and ideas arise. What a concept is cannot be said in words. Words can only make the human being aware of the fact that he has concepts. When someone sees a tree, his thinking reacts to his observation; to the object there comes then an ideal counterpart, and he regards the object and ideal counterpart as belonging together. When the object disappears from his field of observation, there remains behind only its ideal counterpart. The latter is the concept of the object. The more our experience broadens, the greater the sum of our concepts becomes. The concepts however by no means stand there isolated. They join themselves together into a lawful whole. The concept “organism” joins itself, for example, to the others of “lawful development” and “growth.” Other concepts formed in connection with single things merge totally into one. All the concepts that I make for myself of lions merge together into the overall concept “lion.” In this way the individual concept join themselves into a united system of concepts within which every one has its particular place. Ideas are not qualitatively different from concepts. They are only concepts that are fuller in content, more saturated, and wider in scope. I must particularly emphasize that heed be taken at this point of the fact that I have indicated thinking as my starting point and not concepts and ideas, which are first gained through thinking. These already presuppose thinking. What I have said therefore about the self-sustaining and self-determined nature of thinking cannot simply be transferred to concepts. (I state this here expressly, because herein lies my difference with Hegel. He posits the concept as primary and original.)

[ 2 ] The concept cannot be gained from observation. This is already evident from the fact that the maturing human being only slowly and gradually forms his concepts for the objects which surround him. The concepts are added to the observation.

[ 3 ] A widely read philosopher of the present day, Herbert Spencer, describes the mental process we carry out with respect to an observation in the following way:

[ 4 ] “If, when walking through the fields some day in September you hear a rustle a few yards in advance, and, on observing the ditch-side where it occurs, see the herbage agitated, you will probably turn toward the spot to learn by what this sound and motion are produced. As you approach, there flutters into the ditch a partridge; on seeing which your curiosity is satisfied—you have what you call an explanation of the appearances. The explanation, mark, amounts to this: that whereas through life you have had countless experiences of disturbance among small stationary bodies, accompanying the movement of other bodies among them, and have generalized the relation between such disturbances and such movements, you consider this particular disturbance explained on finding it to present an instance of the like relation.”¹ When viewed more closely the matter turns out to be completely different from what is described here. When I hear a sound, I seek first of all the concept corresponding to this observation. It is only this concept that first takes me beyond the sound. Whoever does not reflect further just hears the sound and is content with that. Through my reflection, however, it is clear to me that I have to comprehend a sound as an effect. Therefore, only when I join the concept effect with the perception of the sound, am I moved to go beyond the individual observation and seek the cause. The concept “effect” calls up the concept “cause,” and I then look for the causal object, which I find in the form of the partridge. These concepts, “cause” and “effect,” however, I can never gain through mere observation, no matter how many instances it may cover. Observation calls forth thinking, and this latter first shows me the way to join the single experience to another.

[ 5 ] If one demands of a “strictly objective science” that is take its content only from observation, one must demand at the same time that it renounce all thinking Because thinking by its very nature goes beyond what is observed.

[ 6 ] This is the place now to pass from thinking to the being who thinks. For, through him thinking is joined with observation. Human consciousness is the stage upon which concept and observation meet each other and where they become joined. But this (human) consciousness is thereby characterized at the same time. It is the mediator between thinking and observation. Insofar as the human being observes a thing, this thing appears to him as given; insofar as he thinks, he appears to himself as active. He considers the thing as object, himself as the thinking subject. Because he focuses his thinking upon the observation, he has consciousness of the objects; because he directs his thinking upon himself, he has consciousness of himself or self-consciousness. Human consciousness must necessarily be self-consciousness at the same time, because it is thinking consciousness. For then thinking directs its gaze upon its own activity, it then has its own inmost being, its subject, as object before it.

[ 7 ] But the fact must not be overlooked now that it is only with the help of thinking that we are able to designate ourselves as subject ad to set ourselves over against objects. Therefore thinking must never be considered to be a merely subjective activity. Thinking is beyond subject and object. It forms these two concepts just as much as all others. When we as thinking subject, therefore, relate the concept to an object, we must not, in so doing, consider this relationship to be something merely subjective. It is not the subject that brings about the relationship, but rather thinking. The subject does not think by virtue of being subject, but rather appears to itself as a subject because it is able to think. The activity which the human being as thinking entity, exercises is therefore no merely subjective one, but rather one that is neither subjective nor objective, one that goes beyond these two concepts. I must never say that my individual subject thinks; it is much more the case that my subject itself lives by the grace of thinking. Thinking is an element that leads me out of and above my self, and joins me with objects. But it separates me from them at the same time, inasmuch as it places me over against them a subject.

[ 8 ] This is the basis for the double nature of the human being: he thinks and thereby encompasses himself and the rest of the world; but he must, by means of thinking, at the same time designate himself as an individual that stands over and against the things.

[ 9 ] The next thing will now be to ask ourselves how the other element—which we have up to now merely called object of observation, and which encounters thinking within our consciousness—come into our consciousness?

[ 10 ] In order to answer this question we must exclude from our field of observation everything that has already been brought into it through thinking. For our content of consciousness at any given moment is already permeated with concepts in the most manifold way.

[ 11 ] We must picture to ourselves a being with fully developed human intelligence arising out of nothingness and approaching the world. What he would become aware of in it, before he brought his thinking into activity, is the pure content of observation. The world would then show this being only the bare aggregate, without interconnection of the objects of sensation: colors, tones, sensations of pressure, warmth, taste, and smell; then feelings of pleasure and displeasure. This aggregate is the content of pure observation without thoughts. Over against it stands thinking, which is ready to unfold its activity when a point of attack is found. Experience soon teaches us that a point is found. Thinking is capable of drawing threads from one element of observation to the other. Thinking connects definite concepts with these elements and brings them thereby into a relationship. We have already seen above, how a sound confronting us is joined with another observation through the fact that we designate the former as the effect of the latter.

[ 12 ] When we now recall that the activity of thinking is absolutely not to be taken as subjective, we will thus also not be tempted to believe that such connections, established through thinking, have a merely subjective validity.

[ 13 ] It will now be a matter, through thinking considerations of seeking the connection which the directly given content of observation described above has to our conscious subject.

[ 14 ] Because of the variability in the use of language it seems advisable for me to come to an understanding with my reader about the use of a word which I will have to employ in what follows. I will call the immediate objects of sensation enumerated above perceptions, insofar as the conscious subject takes cognizance of them through observation. I therefore use this word to indicate, not the process of observation, but rather the object of this observation.

[ 15 ] I do not choose the term sensation, because in physiology this has a definite meaning that is narrower than my concept of perception. An emotion within myself can certainly be called a perception, but not a sensation in the physiological sense. I come to know even my emotions through their becoming perceptions for me. And the way we come to know our thinking through observation is such, that we can also use the word perception for thinking as it first appears to our consciousness.

[ 16 ] The naive person considers his perceptions, in the way they immediately appear to him, as things having an existence completely independent of him. When he sees a tree, he believes right away that it is standing there in that spot toward which his gaze is directed, in the shape he sees, with the colors its parts have, etc. When the same person sees the sun appear in the morning as a disk on the horizon, and follows the course of this disk, he believes that all this exists and occurs in this way (in and for itself), just as he observes it to. He holds fast to his belief, until he meets other perceptions that contradict his former ones. The child, who does not yet have any experience of distance, reaches for the moon, and corrects the way he had first seen it to be only when a second perception is found to be in contradiction with the first. Every broadening of the circle of my perception obliges me to correct my picture of the world. This is evident in daily life just as much as in the spiritual development of mankind. The picture which the ancients made for themselves of the relationship of the earth to the sun and to the other heavenly bodies, had to be replaced by Copernicus with another one, because it did not accord with perceptions unknown to earlier times. A man born blind said, after Dr. Franz had operated on him, that before his operation he had formed a completely different picture of the size of objects through the perceptions of his sense of touch. He had to correct his perceptions of touch through his perceptions of sight.

[ 17 ] How is it that we are compelled to make such continuous corrections of our observations?

[ 18 ] A simple reflection brings the answer to this question. When I am standing at one end of an avenue of trees, the trees distant from me at the other end appear to me smaller and closer together than they do where I am standing. My perceptual picture becomes a different one when I change the place from which I make my observations. This picture, therefore, in the form in which it approaches me, is dependent upon a determining factor which is not due to the object, but which rather is attributable to me, the one doing the perceiving. For an avenue of trees it is a matter of complete indifference where I am standing. The picture, however, that I receive of it, is essentially dependent upon where I am standing. In the same way it is a matter of indifference to the sun and to the planetary system that human beings happen to view them from the earth. The perceptual picture, however, which presents itself to human beings is determined through this their dwelling place. This dependency of our perceptual picture upon our point of observation is the one that is easiest to recognize. The matter becomes more difficult, to be sure, when we learn to know the dependency of our perceptual world upon our bodily and spiritual organization. The physicist shows us that within the space in which we hear a sound, vibrations of the air take place, and that the body also, in which we seek the origin of the sound, exhibits a vibrating movement of its parts. We only perceive this movement as sound if we have a normally organized ear. Without such an ear the whole world would remain forever silent for us. Physiology teaches us that there are people who perceive nothing of the magnificent splendor of color that surrounds us. Their perceptual picture evinces only nuances of light and dark. Others do not perceive only one particular color, such as red, for example. This shade is missing from their world picture, which is therefore actually a different one than that of the average person. I would like to call the dependency of my perceptual picture upon my place of observation, “mathematical,” and the dependency upon my organization “qualitative.” Through the former, the size relationships and respective distances of my perceptions are determined; through the latter, the quality of my perceptions. That I see a red surface as red—this qualitative determination—depends upon the organization of my eye.

[ 19 ] My perceptual pictures are therefore at first subjective. Knowledge of the subjective character of our perceptions can easily lead to doubt as to whether anything objective underlies them at all. When we know that a perception—of a red color, for example, or of a particular tone—is not possible without a definite structure in our organism, one can arrive at the belief that this perception, apart from our subjective organism, has no reality, that the perception has no kind of existence without the act of perceiving, whose object it is. This view has found a classic proponent in George Berkeley, who was of the opinion that the human being, from the moment he has become conscious of the significance of the subject for the perception, can no longer believe in a world that is present without the conscious mind. He says, “Some truths there are, so near and obvious to the mind that man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, to wit, that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word, all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have any subsistence without a mind, that their being is to be perceived or known; that, consequently, so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some eternal spirit.”² For this view, nothing more of the perception remains, if one disregards the fact of its being perceived. There is no color when none is seen, no tone when none is heard. Just as little as color and tone, do dimension, shape, and motion exist outside of the act of perception. We nowhere see bare dimension or shape, but always see them connected with color or with other characteristics which indisputably depend upon our subjectivity. If these latter characteristics disappear along with our perception, then that must also be the case for the elements of dimension or shape that are bound to them.

[ 20 ] An objection can be made that, even if figure, color, tone, etc. do have not existence other than within my act of perception, there must still be things which are there without my act of perception, there must still be things which are there without my consciousness and to which my conscious perceptual pictures are similar; to this objection the above view responds by saying that a color can only be similar to a color, a figure similar to a figure. Our perceptions can only be similar to our perceptions, but not to any other things. Even what we call an object is nothing other than a group of perceptions which are connected in a definite way. If I take away from a table its shape, dimensions, color, etc.—everything in short that is only my perception—then nothing more remains. This view, consistently pursued, leads to the opinion that the objects of my perceptions are present only through me, and indeed only insofar as, and as long as, I perceive them; they disappear along with my act of perceiving and have no meaning without it. Other than my perceptions I know of no objects, however, and can know of none.

[ 21 ] No objection can be brought against this opinion as long as I am merely bringing into consideration in a general way the fact that the perception is codetermined by the organization of my subject. The matter would present itself in an essentially different way, however, if we were able to say what the function of our perceiving is in the genesis of a perception. We would then know what is happening with the perception during the act of perceiving, and could also determine what about it would already have to exist, before it is perceived.

[ 22 ] With this, our consideration of the object of perception leads over to the subject of perception. I do not perceive other things only; I also perceive my self. The perception of my self has at first the content that I am what endures in the face of perceptual pictures that continually come and go. The perception of my “I” can always appear in my consciousness while I am having other perceptions. When I am absorbed in the perception of a given object, I have for the moment only a consciousness of it. To this can then come the perception of my self. I am from then on conscious not merely of the object, but also of my personality, which stands before the object and observes it. I do not merely see a tree, but I also know that it is I who see it. I recognize also that something is occurring within me while I observe the tree. When the tree disappears from my field of vision, something of this occurrence remains behind for my consciousness: a picture of the tree. During my observation this picture has connected itself with my self. My self has become richer; its content has acquired a new element. This element I call my mental picture³ of the tree. I would never be in a position to speak of mental pictures, if I did not experience them within the perception of my self. Perceptions would come and go; I would let them pass before me. Only because I perceive my self and notice that its content also changes with ever perception, do I see myself compelled to bring my observation of the object into relationship with my own change in condition, and to speak of my mental picture.

[ 23 ] I perceive the mental picture connected to my self in the same sense as I perceive color, tone, etc. connected to other objects. I can also now make the distinction of calling these other objects which come before me outer world, while I designate the content of my self-perception as inner world. Misconceptions about the relationship of mental picture and object have brought about the greatest misunderstandings in modern philosophy. The perception of a change in us, the modification that my self undergoes, was pushed into the foreground, and the object causing this modification was totally lost from view. One said that we do not perceive the objects, but only our mental pictures. I supposedly know nothing about the table-in-itself, which is the object of my observation, but only about the change which takes place with my self while I am perceiving the table. This view should not be confused with that of Berkeley mentioned before. Berkeley maintains the subjective nature of the content of my perception, but he does not say I can only know about my mental pictures. He limits my knowledge to my mental pictures, because he is of the opinion that there are no objects outside of mental picturing. What I look upon as a table is for Berkeley no longer present as soon as I no longer direct my gaze upon it. Therefore Berkeley lets my perception arise directly through the power of God. I see a table because God calls forth this perception within me. Berkeley thus knows no other real beings except God and human spirits. What we call world is present only within spirits. What the naive person calls outer world, physical nature, does not exist for Berkeley. Over against this view there stands the Kantian one now predominating, which limits our knowledge of the world to our mental pictures, not because it is convinced that there can be nothing apart from our mental pictures, but because it believes us to be so organized that we can experience only the changes of our own self and not the things-in-themselves which cause these changes. From the fact that I know only my mental pictures, this view concludes not that there is no existence independent of these mental pictures, but only that the subject cannot take up such an existence directly into itself; it can do nothing with it except through the “medium of his subjective thoughts, to imagine it, to suppose it, to think it, to know it, or perhaps also not to know is” (O. Liebmann, Contribution to the Analysis of Reality).⁴ This view believes it is saying something absolutely certain, something directly obvious without any proof. “The first fundamental principle which the philosopher has to bring to distinct consciousness for himself consists in the recognition that our knowledge at first extends itself to nothing beyond our mental pictures. Our mental pictures are the only thing that we know directly, experience directly; and, just because we experience them directly, it is the case that even the most radical doubt cannot tear away from us our knowledge of our mental pictures. On the other hand, knowledge that goes beyond our mental picturing—whenever I use this expression I mean it in the widest sense, so that all psychic happenings come under it—is not secure from doubt. Therefore, at the beginning of any philosophizing, all knowledge which goes beyond our mental pictures must be expressly presented as doubtful”; thus Volkelt begins his book on Immanuel Kant's Epistemology. What is here presented in this way, as though it were an immediate and obvious truth, is in reality, however, the result of a thought-operation that runs as follows: The naive person believes that the objects, in the way he perceives them, are also present outside of his consciousness. Physics, physiology, and psychology seem to teach, however, that for our perceptions our organization is necessary, that we consequently can know about nothing except what our organization transmits to us from the things. Our perceptions are thus modifications of our organization, not things-in-themselves. Eduard von Hartmann has characterized the train of thought indicated here as in fact the one which must convince us of the principle that we can have a direct knowledge only of our mental pictures (see his Basic Problem of Epistemology).⁵ Because outside of our organism, we find vibrations of physical bodies and of the air which manifest to us as sound, it is concluded that what we call sound is nothing more than a subjective reaction of our organism to those motions in the outer world. In the same way one finds that color and warmth are only modifications of our organism. And one is in fact of the view that these two kinds of perceptions are called forth in us through the effect of occurrences in the outer world which are utterly different form what our warmth of color experience is. When such occurrences stimulate the nerves in my skin, I have the subjective perception of warmth; when such occurrences encounter the optic nerve, I perceive light and color. Light, color, and warmth, therefore, are that with which my sensory nerves respond to the stimuli from outside. Even my sense of touch transmits to me, not the objects of the outer world, but only my own states. In the sense of modern physics one could think, for example, that bodies consist of infinitely small particles, of molecules, and that these molecules do not border directly upon each other, but rather are at certain distances from each other. Between them, therefore, is empty space. Across these distances the molecules act upon each other by means of forces of attraction and repulsion. When I bring my hand toward a body, the molecules of my hand by no means directly touch those of the body, but rather there remains a certain distance between body and hand; and what I sense as the body's resistance is nothing more than the effect of the force of repulsion which its molecules exert upon my hand. I am altogether outside the body and only perceive its effect upon my organism.

[ 24 ] The doctrine put forward by J. Müller (1801–1858) about the so-called specific sense energies complements these reflections. It consists in declaring that each sense organ has the characteristic of responding to all outer stimuli in one specific way only. If the optic nerve is acted upon, a perception of light arises, no matter whether the stimulus occurs through what we call light, or whether a mechanical pressure or an electric current affects the nerve. Furthermore, different perceptions are called forth in the different sense organs by the same outer stimuli. This seems to indicate that our senses can transmit only what occurs within them, but nothing of the outer world. The senses, each according to its nature, determine the perceptions.

[ 25 ] Physiology shows that a direct knowledge of what the objects cause to happen within our sense organs is also out of the question. As the physiologist pursues the occurrences in our own body, he finds that, already in the sense organs, the effects of an outer motion are transformed in the most manifold way. We see that most distinctly with the eye and ear. Both are very complicated organs which essentially change the outer stimulus before they bring it to the corresponding nerve. From the peripheral end of the nerve, the already changed stimulus is now conducted further to the brain. Here first of all the central organs must be stimulated again. From this is inferred that the outer occurrence has undergone a series of transformations before it comes to consciousness. What takes place in the brain is connected with the outer occurrence through so many intermediary occurrences that any similarity between the two is inconceivable. What the brain finally communicates to the soul are neither outer occurrences nor occurrences in the sense organs, but only such as are in the brain. But the soul still does not perceive even these directly. What we finally have in our consciousness are not brain processes at all, but rather sensations. My sensation of red has absolutely no similarity to the process which takes place in my brain when I experience the red. The latter only appears again in the soul as an effect and is only caused by the brain process. Therefore Hartmann says (The Basic Problem of Epistemology), “What the subject perceives are therefore always only modifications of his own psychic states and nothing else.” When I have sensations thee are, however, still far from being grouped together into what I perceive as the things. Only single sensations, after all, can be communicated to me through the brain. The sensations of hard and soft are communicated to me through the sense of touch, sensations of color and light through the sense of sight. In spite of this the sensations find themselves united upon one and the same object. This union must therefore first be accomplished by the soul itself. This means that the soul assembles into physical objects the single sensations communicated through the brain. My brain transmits to me individually my sensations of sight, touch, and hearing—and does this, indeed, along entirely different paths—which my soul then assembles into the mental picture “trumpet.” It is this last part (mental picture of the trumpet) of a process that, for my consciousness, is given first of all. There is in this lat part nothing more to be found of what is outside me and originally made an impression on my senses. The external object, on its way to the brain, and through the brain to the soul, has been entirely lost.

[ 26 ] It would be difficult to find another edifice of thought in the history of the spiritual life of man which has been assembled with keener thought, and which nevertheless crumbles into nothingness upon closer examination. Let us take a closer look at the way it is built up. One starts first of all with what is given to naive consciousness, with the thing that is perceived. Then one shows that everything belonging to this thing would not be there for us if we had no senses. No eye: no color. Therefore the color is not yet present in that which works upon the eye. The color first arises through the interaction of the eye with the object. The latter is therefore colorless. But the color is also not present in the eye; for in it a chemical or physical process is present, which is first led to the brain through a nerve, and which there causes another process. Even this is not yet the color. The color is first called forth, through the brain process, within the soul. There the color still does not enter into my consciousness, but rather is first transferred outward by the soul onto a body. On this body I believe I finally perceive the color. We have made a complete circle. We become conscious of a colored body. That is first. Now the thought operation commences. If I had no eye, the body would be colorless for me. Thus, I cannot attribute the color to the body. I take up the search for the color. I look for it in the eye: in vain; in the nerve: in vain; in the brain: also in vain; in the soul: here I do find it, in fact, but not connected with the body. I find the colored body again only where I took my start. The circle is closed. I believe that I now recognize as a creation of my soul, what the naive person believes to be present outside of space.

[ 27 ] As long as one stops here, everything seems to be in excellent shape. But the matter must be taken up once more from the beginning. Until now I have been dealing with an object: with the outer perception about which earlier, as a naive person, I had a completely incorrect view. I was of the opinion that the perception had an objective existence, in the form that I perceive it. Now I notice that the perception disappears along with my mental picturing, that it is only a modification of my soul state. Now do I still have any right at all to start with the perception in my consideration? Can I say of the perception that it acts upon my soul? From now on I must treat the table, which I earlier believed acted upon me and brought forth a mental picture of itself in me, itself as a mental picture. But then my sense organs and the processes in them are also merely subjective. I have no right to speak of a real eye, but only of my mental picture of an eye. It is just the same with the nerves and the brain process, and no less so with the occurrence in the soul itself through which things are supposedly built up out of the chaos of manifold sensations. If, under the assumption of the correctness of the first circle of thought, I run through once more the parts of my act of knowledge, the latter shows itself to be a web of mental pictures that, as such, certainly cannot act upon each other. I cannot say that my mental picture of the object acts upon my mental picture of the eye and that out of this interaction emerges my mental picture of the color. But I also do not need to do this. For as soon as it is clear to me that my sense organs and their activity, my nerve and soul process, can also only be given me through perception, the train of thought described above reveals itself in its full impossibility. It is correct that for me there is no perception without the corresponding sense organ. But just as little is there a sense organ without perception. I can go over from my perception of the table to the eye that sees it, to the nerves of the hand which touch it; but what occurs within these I can again learn only from perception. And there I soon notice then that in the process which takes place in the eye, there is not a trace of similarity with what I perceive as color. I cannot do away with my perception of color just by showing the process in the eye that takes place in it during this perception. Just as little do I find the color again within the processes of the nerves and brain; I only connect new perceptions within my organism to the first ones which the native person places outside his organism. I only go from one perception to another.

[ 28 ] Moreover, there is a break in this whole line of reasoning. I am in a position to follow the occurrences in my organism up to the processes in my brain, even though my conclusions become every more hypothetical the more I approach the central occurrences of the brain. The path of external observation ends with the occurrences in my brain, with that occurrence, in fact, which I would perceive if I could study the brain with the help of physical and chemical means and methods. The path of inner observation begins with the sensation and extends to the construction of things out of the material of sensation. In the transition from brain process to sensation the path of observation is broken.

[ 29 ] The way of thinking characterized here, which calls itself “critical idealism” in contradistinction to the standpoint of the naive consciousness which calls itself “naive realism,” makes the mistake of characterizing the one perception as mental picture, while accepting the other in the very same sense as does the native realism which it seemingly had refuted. This way of thinking wants to prove that perceptions have the character of mental pictures, by accepting in naive fashion the perceptions made of one's own organism as objectively valid facts, and in all this still overlooking the fact that it is throwing together two realms of observation, between which it can find no mediation.

[ 30 ] Critical idealism can refute naive realism only if it itself accepts, in naive realistic fashion, that one's own organism exits objectively. The moment it becomes conscious of the total similarity in nature between the perceptions made of one's own organism and the perceptions accepted by native realism as existing objectively, it can no longer base itself upon the first kind of perceptions as though they afforded a sure foundation. It would also have to regard one's subjective organization as a mere complex of mental pictures. In so doing, however, it would lose the possibility of thinking that the content of the perceived world is caused by one's spiritual organization. One would have to assume that the mental picture “color” is only a modification of the mental picture “eye.” So-called critical idealism cannot be proven without borrowing from naive realism. The latter is only refuted through the fact that one accepts naive realism's own presuppositions as valid in another area, without examining them there.

[ 31 ] From all this, it is certain, at least that critical idealism cannot be proven through investigations within the realm of perception, and that thereby perception cannot be divested of its objective character.

[ 32 ] But even less can the thesis, “The perceived world is my mental picture,” be presented as obvious in itself and needing no proof. Schopenhauer begins his principal work, The World as Will and Mental Picture,⁶ with the word: “The world is my mental picture:—this is the truth which is valid with respect to every living and knowing being, even though man alone can bring it into reflective abstract consciousness; and if he really does this, then philosophical enlightenment has occurred for him. It will then become definite and certain for him that he knows no sun and no earth, but always only an eye that sees the sun, a hand that feels the earth; that the world which surrounds him is there only as mental picture, i.e., that it absolutely is there only in relationship to something else, to the one doing the mental picturing, which he himself is.—If ever a truth could be declared a priori, it is this one; for it is the expression of that form which every possible and imaginable experience has, that form which is more general than all others, such as time, space and causality; for all these already presuppose the first form ...” This whole thesis founders upon the fact I have already indicated above, that the eye and the hand are no less perceptions than the sun and the earth. And one could, in Schopenhauer's sense and in his own terms, confront his thesis with: My eye that sees the sun, and my hand that feels the earth are my mental pictures in just the same way as the sun and earth themselves are. That I thereby invalidate his thesis, however, is immediately clear. For only my real eye and my real hand could have, connected to them as their own modifications, the mental pictures sun and earth; my mental pictures of eye and hand could not however have these mental pictures. But only of these can critical idealism speak.

[ 33 ] Critical idealism is totally unfitted to gain a view of the relationship between perception and mental picture. To distinguish, as indicted on page 49, between what is happening with the perception during the act of perceiving, and what must already be there in the perception before it is perceived—this, critical idealism cannot undertake to do. In order to do this, therefore, another path must be taken.

• 1. First Principles, Part I, Par. 23.
• 2. Principles of Human Knowledge, Part I, Section 6
• 3. Vorstellung (often translated “representation”)
• 4. Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit
• 5. Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie
• 6. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (usually translated The World as Will and Representation).

[ 1 ] It follows from the preceding consideration that it is impossible, through investigation of the content of our observation, to prove that our perceptions are mental pictures. This was supposedly proven by showing that if the process of perception does take place in the way one pictures it in accordance with the naive-realistic assumptions about the psychological and physiological constitution of our individuality, then we do not have to do with things-in-themselves, but merely with our mental pictures of the things. Now if naive realism consistently pursued, leads to results which represent the exact opposite of its presuppositions, then these presuppositions must be deemed unfit for founding a world view and must be dropped. In any case it is inadmissible to reject the presuppositions and to allow what follows from them to hold good, as does the critical idealist, who bases his assertion that the world is my mental picture upon the line of argument above. (Eduard von Hartmann, in his book The Basic Problem of Epistemology, gives a detailed presentation of this line of argument.

[ 2 ] The correctness of critical idealism is one thing; the power of its proofs to convince in another. How matters stand with respect to the former will be shown later in the course of our considerations. But the power of its proof to convince is nil. If someone builds a house, and with the addition of the second floor, the ground floor collapses, the second floor falls along with it. Naive realism and critical idealism relate to each other as this ground floor to the second floor.

[ 3 ] Whoever is of the view that the entire perceived world is only a mental picture, and indeed the effect upon my soul of things unknown to me, for him the real question of knowledge has to do of course not with the mental pictures which are only present in my soul, but rather with the things which lie beyond our consciousness and are independent of us. He asks how much we can know indirectly about the latter, since they are not directly accessible to our observations. Someone taking this standpoint does not bother himself about the inner connection of his conscious perceptions, but only about their no longer conscious causes, which have an existence independent of him, while, in his view, the perceptions disappear as soon as he turns his senses away from the things. Our consciousness functions, from this point of view, like a mirror, whose images of specific things also disappear the moment its reflecting surface is not directed toward them. Someone, however, who does not see the things themselves, but only their mirror images, must, from the behavior of the latter, inform himself indirectly be inferences about the nature of the former. This is the stand-point of modern science, which uses perceptions only as a last resort to obtain information about the processes of matter which stand behind our perceptions and which alone truly exist. If the philosopher as critical idealist allows any real being to exist at all, then his striving for knowledge, using mental pictures as a means, directs itself only to this real being. His interest skips over the subjective world of mental pictures and goes straight for what produces these mental pictures.

[ 4 ] But the critical idealist can go so far as to say that I am closed off in my world of mental pictures and cannot get out of it. If I think a thing behind my mental pictures, this thought is also, after all, nothing more than my mental picture. Such an idealist will then either deny the thing-in-itself completely, or at least declare it to have absolutely no significance for human beings, which means that it is as good as not there, because we can know nothing about it.

[ 5 ] To a critical idealist of this sort, the whole world appears as a dream, in the face of which any urge for knowledge would be simply meaningless. For him there can be only two types of people: deluded ones, who consider their own dream-spinnings to be real things, and wise ones, who see into the nothingness of this dream world and who, by and by, must lose all desire to bother themselves further about it. From this standpoint even one's own personality can become a mere dream image. In exactly the same way as our own dream image appears among the images of our sleep-dreams, the mental picture of my own “I” joins the mental picture of the outer world within waking consciousness. We are given in our consciousness then, not our real “I,” but only our mental picture “I.” Now, whoever denies that things exist, or at least denies that we can know anything about them, must also deny the existence—or, at least the knowledge—of his own personality. The critical idealist comes then to the declaration, “All reality transforms itself into a wonderful dream, without a life that is dreamt, and without a spirit who is having the dream; into a dream that hangs together with a dream about itself.” (See Fichte, The Vocation of Man.)¹

[ 6 ] It does not matter whether the person who believes that he knows our immediate life to be a dream imagines there to be nothing behind this dream, or whether he relates his mental pictures to real things: life itself must lose all scientific interest for him. But while all science must be total nonsense for the person who believes that the universe accessible to us is limited to a dream, for the person who believes himself able to draw inferences about the things from his mental pictures, science will consist in investigating these “things-in-themselves.” The first view can be called absolute illusionism; the second view is called transcendental realism by Eduard von Hartmann, its most consequential proponent.²

[ 7 ] Both these views have in common with naive realism that they seek to gain a footing in the world through an investigation of perceptions. But within this realm they are nowhere able to find firm ground.

[ 8 ] A major question for the proponent of transcendental realism would have to be how the “I” brings about the world of mental pictures out of itself. A serious striving for knowledge about a world of mental pictures given to us, which disappears as soon as we close our senses to the outer world, can kindle itself only to the extent that such a world is a means of investigating indirectly the world of the “I”-in-itself. If the things of our experience were mental pictures, then our everyday life would be like a dream and knowledge of the true state of affairs would be like waking up. Our dream pictures also interest us as long as we are dreaming and therefore not recognizing them in their dream character. The moment we wake up we no longer ask about the inner connections of our dream pictures, but rather about the physical, physiological, and psychological processes that underlie them. Just as little can the philosopher, who considers the world to be his mental picture, interest himself in the inner connections of the details of this world. If he admits to an existing “I” at all, he will not then ask how one of his mental pictures relates to another, but rather what occurs, within the soul existing independently of him, while his consciousness contains a certain train of mental pictures. If I dream that I am drinking wine which causes a burning in my throat, and then wake up with an irritation in my throat that makes me cough (see Weygandt, How Dreams Arise, 1893),³ then the moment I wake up, the dream event ceases to have an interest for me. My attention is now directed only toward the physiological and psychological processes through which the irritation in my throat brings itself symbolically to expression in the dream picture. In the same way, as soon as he is convinced that the world given him has the character of mental pictures, the philosopher must skip over this world into the real soul existing behind it. The situation is far worse, to be sure, if illusionism totally denies the “I”-in-itself behind the mental pictures, or at least considers it to be unknowable. One can very easily be led to such a view by the observation that, in contrast to dreaming, there is indeed the waking state, in which we have the chance to see through our dreams and to relate them to real circumstances, but that we have no state which stands in a similar relationship to our life of waking consciousness. Whoever adopts this view lacks the insight that there is something which in fact does relate to mere perceiving in the same way that experience in the waking state relates to dreaming. This something is thinking.

[ 9 ] The naive person cannot be accused of the lack of insight referred to here. He gives himself over to life and takes things as real in the form they present themselves to him in experience. But the first step which is undertaken to go beyond this standpoint can only consist in the question of how thinking relates to the perception. Regardless of whether or not the perception continues to exist in the form presented to me before and after my mental picturing: if I want to say anything at all about the perception, this can happen only with the help of thinking. If I say that the world is my mental picture, I have expressed thereby the result of a thought process, and if my thinking is not applicable to the world, then this result is an error. Between the perception and any kind of statement about it, thinking presses in.

[ 10 ] We have already given the reason why, during the contemplation of things, thinking is for the most part overlooked (see page 28). The reason lies in the fact that we direct our attention only upon the object we are thinking about, but not at the same time upon our thinking. The naive consciousness therefore treats thinking as something which has nothing to do with the things, but which stands completely apart from them and carries on its contemplation of the world. The picture of the phenomena of the world that the thinker sketches is regarded, not as something which belongs to the things, but rather as something existing only in man's head; the world is also complete without this picture. The world is set and complete in all its substances and forces; and of this complete world man sketches a picture. One must only ask those who think in this way, what right they have to declare the world complete without thinking. Does not the world bring forth thinking in the head of man with the same necessity as it brings forth the blossom from the plant? Plant a seed in the earth. It puts forth root and stem. It opens into leaves and blossoms. Set the plant before you. It unites in your soul with a definite concept. Why does this concept belong any less to the whole plant than leaf and blossom do? You say that the leaves and blossoms are there without a perceiving subject; that the concept appears only when the human being stands before the plant. Quite so. But blossoms and leaves also arise on the plant only when earth is there, into which the seed can be placed, when light and air are there, within which leaves and blossoms can unfold. The concept of the plant arises in exactly the same way when a thinking consciousness approaches the plant.

[ 11 ] It is entirely arbitrary to regard the sum of what we experience of a thing through mere perception as a totality, as a complete whole, and to regard what results from thinking contemplation as something merely added on which has nothing to do with the thing itself. If I am given a rosebud today, the picture presented to my perception is complete only for the moment. If I set the bud in water, then I will be given a completely different picture of my object tomorrow. If I do not turn my eye from the rosebud, then I will see its present stage pass over continuously into tomorrow's through innumerable intermediary stages. The picture presented to me at any specific moment is only a chance part taken from an object that is continuously becoming. If I do not set the bud in water, then it will not bring to development a whole series of stages which lie in it as potential. Likewise I can be prevented from further observation of the blossom tomorrow, and thus have an incomplete picture.

[ 12 ] It is a completely unfounded opinion, bound to chance happenings, which would declare with reference to the picture presented at one particular time, that that is the thing.

[ 13 ] Just as little is it admissible to declare that the sum total of a thing's perceptual characteristics is the thing. It could very well be possible that a spirit was able to receive the concept at the same time as, and unseparated from, the perception. It would not occur at all to such a spirit to regard the concept as something not belonging to the thing. He would have to ascribe to the concept an existence inseparably bound up with the thing.

[ 14 ] Let me make myself even clearer through an example. If I throw a stone horizontally through the air, I see it in different places, one after another. I connect these places into a line in mathematics I learn to know different line forms, among them the parabola I know the parabola to be a line that arises when a point moves in a certain lawful way. When I investigate the conditions under which the thrown stone moves, I find that the line of its motion is identical with that which I know as a parabola. That the stone happens to move in a parabola is the result of the given conditions and follows necessarily from them. The form of the parabola belongs to the whole phenomenon just as much as everything else about it which comes into consideration. The spirit described above, who did not have to take the roundabout way of thinking, would not only be given a sum of sight sensations at different places, but also, unseparated from the phenomenon, the parabolic form of the trajectory, which we only then add to the phenomenon through thinking.

[ 15 ] It is not due to the objects that they are given to us at first without their corresponding concepts, but rather it is due to our spiritual organization. Our total being functions in such a way that, for each thing within reality, the elements which come into consideration about the thing flow to us from two sides: from the sides of perceiving and of thinking.

[ 16 ] How I am organized to grasp things has nothing to do with their nature. The split between perceiving and thinking is first present the moment I, the observing person, approach the things. Which elements do or do not belong to the thing cannot depend at all upon the way I arrive at knowledge about these elements.

[ 17 ] Man is a limited being. First of all he is a being among other beings. His existence belongs to space and time. Because of this fact there [is] only a limited part of the total universe can be given him. But this limited part connects on all sides, both in time and in space, with other things. Were our existence joined to things in such a way that every happening in the world would be at the same time our happening, then there would not be a distinction between us and things. But then there would also be no individual things for us. Then all happening would merge together into a continuum. The cosmos would be a unity and a self-enclosed whole. The flow of happening would be interrupted nowhere. Because of our limitations something appears to us as individual which is not in truth an individual thing. Nowhere, for example, is the individual quality of red present all by itself. It is surrounded on all sides by other qualities, to which it belongs, and without which it could not exist. For us, however, it is necessary to lift certain parts out of the world and to look at them in their own right. Our eye can grasp individual colors only one by one out of a complex of many colors; our intellect can grasp only individual concepts out of a system of interrelated concepts. This separating out is a subjective act, and is due to the fact that we are not identical with the world process, but are one being among other beings.

[ 18 ] Everything depends now on determining the place of that being, which we ourselves are, in relationship to the other beings. This determination must be distinguished from the mere becoming conscious of ourselves. This last is based on the act of perceiving, just as is our becoming conscious of every other thing. The perceptions of myself shows me a sum of characteristics, which I bring together into my personality as a whole, in the same way that I bring together the characteristics of yellow, metallically-shiny, hard, etc., into the unity “gold.” The perception of myself does not lead me out of the realm of what belongs to me. This perception of myself is to be distinguished from what I determine, thinking, about myself. Just as, through my thinking, I incorporate an individual perception of the outer world into the whole world complex, so do I incorporate the perceptions I have about myself into the world process through thinking. My perceiving of myself encloses me within definite limits; my thinking has nothing to do with these limits. In this sense I am a twofold being. I am enclosed within the region which I perceive as that of my personality, but I am the bearer of an activity which, from a higher sphere, determines my limited existence. Our thinking is not individual the way our experiencing and feeling are. It is universal. It receives an individual stamp in each single person only through the fact that it is related to his individual feeling and experiencing. Through these particular colorings of the universal thinking, individual people differ from one another. A triangle has only one single concept. For the content of this concept it is a matter of indifference whether the human bearer of consciousness who grasps it is A or B. But the content of this concept will be grasped in an individual way by each of the two bearers of consciousness.

[ 19 ] This thought is opposed by a preconception people have which is difficult to overcome. This bias does not attain to the insight that the concept of the triangle which my head grasps is the same as the one comprehended by the head of my neighbor. The naive person considers himself to be the creator of his concepts. He believes, therefore, that each person has his own concepts. It is a fundamental requirement of philosophical thinking that it overcome this preconception. The oneness of the concept “triangle” does not become a plurality through the fact that it is thought by many. For the thinking of the many is itself a oneness.

[ 20 ] In thinking we have given to us the element which fuses our particular individuality into one whole with the cosmos. Inasmuch as we experience and feel (and also perceive), we are separate beings; inasmuch as we think, we are the all-one being; which permeate all. This is the deeper basis of our twofold nature: we see an utterly absolute power come into existence within us, a power which is universal; but we learn to know it, not where it streams forth from the center of the world, but rather at a point on the periphery. If the first were the case, then the moment we came to consciousness, we would know the solution to the whole riddle of the world. Since we stand at a point on the periphery, however, and find our own existence enclosed within certain limits, we must learn to know the region which lies outside of our own being with the help of thinking, which projects into us out of the general world existence.

[ 21 ] Through the fact that the thinking in us reaches out beyond our separate existence and relates itself to universal existence, there arises in us the drive for knowledge. Beings without thinking do not have this drive. When other things confront them, no questions are aroused thereby. These other things remain external to such beings. With thinking beings, when confronted by an outer thing, the concept wells up. The concept is what we receive from the thing, not from without, but rather from within. Knowledge is meant to yield the balance, the union of the two elements, the inner and the outer.

[ 22 ] A perception⁴ is therefore nothing finished, closed off, but rather it is the one side of total reality. The other side is the concept. The act of knowledge is the synthesis of perception and concept. The perception and the concept of a thing, however, first constitute the entire thing.

[ 23 ] The preceding considerations yield proof that it is nonsensical to seek something which the individual entities of the world have in common beyond the ideal content with which thinking presents us. All attempts must founder which strive for any world unity other than this self-coherent ideal content which we acquire for ourselves through thinking contemplation of our perceptions. Not a human personal god, nor force or matter, nor will without idea (Schopenhauer) can be considered by us to be a valid universal world unity. These beings all belong to only one limited region of our observations. Humanly limited personality we perceive only with respect to ourselves, force and matter only with respect to outer things. With respect to the will, it can only be considered to be what our limited personality manifests as activity. Schopenhauer wants to avoid making “abstract” thinking into the bearer of world unity, and seeks, instead of it, something which presents itself to him directly as real. This philosopher believes that we will never really get at the world as long as we regard it as an outer world. “In actuality, the sought-for meaning of the world which confront me solely as my mental picture, or the transition from this world, as mere mental picture of the subject knowing it, over to what it might still be besides mental picture, could nevermore be found, if the researcher himself were nothing more than purely knowing subject (winged angel's head without body). But now he himself has roots in that world, finds himself in it, namely, as an individual, which means that this activity of knowing, which is the determining bearer of the whole world as a mental picture, is after all given entirely through the medium of a body, whose sensations, as shown, are the starting point for the intellect in viewing the world. For the purely knowing subject as such, this body is a mental picture like any other, an object among objects: the motions, the actions of it are known to him in that respect no differently than the changes in all other observable objects, and would be just as foreign and incomprehensible to him, if the significance of his own motions and actions were not disclosed to him somehow in a completely different way. ... To the knowing subject, which arises as an individual through its identification with the body, this body is given in two completely different ways: one is as a mental picture when the body is viewed intellectually, as object among objects, and subject to the laws of these objects but then at the same time in a completely different way also as that something, known directly by everyone, which the word “will” characterizes. Every true act of his will is immediately and unfailingly also a movement of his body; he cannot really will an act, without at the same time perceiving that it manifests as a movement of his body. The act of will and the action of the body are not two objectively known different states, connected by the bond of causality; they do not stand in the relationship of cause and effect; but they are rather one and the same, only given in two completely different ways: one completely direct and one for the intellect in contemplation.” By this train of thought Schopenhauer believe himself justified in finding the objectivity of will within the human body. He is of the opinion that, in the actions of the body, he feels directly a reality, the thing-in-itself in concrete. Against these arguments it must be objected that the actions of our body come to consciousness only through self-perceptions and as such have nothing over other perceptions. If we want to know their nature, we can do this only through thinking contemplation, that means through incorporating them into the ideal system of our concepts and ideas.

[ 24 ] Most deeply rooted in the naive consciousness of mankind is the opinion that thinking is abstract, without any concrete content. It can give at most an “ideal” reflection of the world whole, but definitely not this world whole itself. Whoever judges in this way has never made clear to himself what a perception is without its concept. But let us look at this world of perception: it appears as mere juxtaposition in space and succession in time, an aggregate of particulars without interconnection. Not one of the things which come and go there upon the stage of perception has anything, which can be perceived, to do directly with any other. There, the world is a multiplicity of objects of equal value. None plays a role greater than any other in the functioning of the world. If we want to become clear about whether this or that fact has greater significance than the other, then we must consult our thinking. If our thinking is not working, we see an animal's rudimentary organ, which has no significance for its life, as of equal value with its mot important bodily member. The individual facts come forth in their significance, both for themselves and with respect to the other parts of the world, only when thinking weaves its threads from being to being. This activity of thinking is one full of content. For only through an altogether definite and concrete content can I know why the snail stands at a lower stage of development than does the lion. Mere sight, mere perception gives me no content which could instruct me as to the level of organization.

[ 25 ] Thinking, out of man's world of concepts and ideas, brings this content to meet the perception. In contrast to the content of perception, which is given us from outside, the content of thought appears within us. Let us call the form in which it first arises, “intuition.” Intuition is for thinking what observation is for the perception. Intuition and observation are the sources of our knowledge. We confront an observed thing in the world as foreign to us, as long as we do not have within us the corresponding intuition which fills in the piece of reality missing in the perception. For someone who does not have the ability to find the intuitions which correspond to the things, full reality remains closed. Just as the colorblind person sees only differences in brightness without the qualities of color, so the person without intuition can only observe unconnected perceptual fragments.

[ 26 ] To explain a thing, to make it comprehensible, means nothing other than to set it into the context out of which it has been torn through the configuration of our organization described above. There is no such thing as an object separated off from the whole world. All separating off has only subjective validity for our organization. For us the whole world breaks down into above and below, before and after, cause and effect, thing and mental picture, matter and force, object and subject, etc. The single things which confront us in observation join themselves together, part by part, through the interconnected, unified world of our intuitions; and through thinking we join together again into oneness everything which we have separated through our perceiving.

[ 27 ] The puzzling aspect of an object lies in its separate existence. This puzzling aspect, however, is evoked by us, and can, within the conceptual world, also be dispelled again.

[ 28 ] Other than through thinking and perceiving, nothing is given us directly. The question now arises as to how things stand, in the light of these considerations, with respect to the significance of the perception. We have, to be sure, recognized that the proof which critical idealism brings of the subjective nature of our perceptions collapses; but along with this insight into the incorrectness of its proof, it is still not yet determined that the view itself is based on error. Critical idealism, in marshalling its proof, does not take its start form the absolute nature of thinking, but rather bases itself upon the fact that naive realism, consistently pursued, cancels itself out. How does the matter present itself if the absoluteness of thinking is recognized?

[ 29 ] Let us assume that a certain perception, red for example, arises in my consciousness. The perception shows itself, as I continue looking, to be connected with other perceptions, for example with that of a certain shape, with certain temperature and tactile perceptions. This combination I designate as an object of the sense world. I can now ask myself what else is to be found, besides this object, in that section of space within which the above perceptions appear to me. I will find mechanical, chemical, and other processes within this part of space. Now I go further and investigate the processes that I find on the way from the object to my sense organ. I can find processes of motion within an elastic medium which, by their very nature, do not have the least thing in common with the original perceptions. I get the same result when I investigate the further transmitting from sense organ to brain. In each of these areas I have new perceptions, but what weaves as a connecting medium through all these spatially and temporally separated perceptions is thinking. The vibrations of the air which transmit the sound are given to me as perceptions in exactly the same way as the sound itself. Only thinking joins all these perceptions to each other and reveals them in their mutual interrelationships. We cannot say that anything other than what is directly perceived exists except what is known through the ideal interconnections of our perceptions (ideal in that they are to be discovered through thinking). The relationship, going beyond what is merely perceived, of the object of perception to the subject of perception, is therefore a purely ideal one, that means, expressible only through concepts. Only in the event that I could perceive how the object of perception affects the subject of perception, or, the other way round, that I could observe the building up of the perceptible entity by the subject, would it be possible to speak as does modern physiology and the critical idealism founded upon it. This view confuses an ideal relationship (of the object to the subject) with a process which could only be spoken of if it were perceivable. The sentence: “No color without a color-sensitive eye,” therefore cannot mean that the eye brings forth the color, but rather only that an ideal connection, knowable through thinking, exists between the perception “color” and the perception “eye.” Empirical science will have to determine how the characteristics of the eye and those of colors relate to each other; through which configurations, the organ of sight transmits the perception of colors, etc. I can follow how one perception follows upon another, how it stands spatially in relationship with other perceptions; and I can bring this then into a conceptual formulation; but I cannot perceive how a perception comes forth out of the unperceivable. All endeavors to seek relationships between perceptions other than thought relationships must necessarily founder.

[ 30 ] What, then, is a perception? This question, when asked in a general way, is absurd. A perception always arises as an entirely specific one, as a definite content. This content is directly given, and is all that is in the given. One can only ask with respect to this given, what it is besides perception, i.e., what it is for thinking. Thus, the question about the “what” of a perception can only refer to the conceptual intuition that corresponds to it. From this point of view the question the question as to the subjectivity of the perception in the sense of critical idealism cannot be raised at all. Only that may be labeled as subjective which is perceived as belonging to the subject. To form the bond between subjective and objective is not the task of any real process in the naive sense, i.e. of any perceptible happening; rather, it is the task of thinking alone. For us, therefore, something is objective which presents itself to perception as situated outside of the perceiving subject. My perceiving subject remains perceptible to me when the table now standing in front of me will have disappeared from the circle of my observations. The observation of the table has called forth in me a change, which likewise remains. I retain the ability to create a picture of the table again later. This ability to bring forth a picture remains connected with me. Psychology calls this picture a memory picture. It is, however, that which alone can rightly be called the mental picture of the table. This picture corresponds, namely, to the perceptible change of my own state through the presence of the table within my field of vision. And indeed, this change does not refer to any “I-in-itself” standing behind the perceiving subject, but rather the change of the perceptible subject himself. The mental picture is therefore a subjective perception in contrast to the objective perception when the object is present on the horizon of perception. The confusing of the subjective with the objective perception leads to the mistaken view of idealism: that the world is my mental picture.

[ 31 ] It will now be our next task to determine more closely the concept of the mental picture. What we have brought forward so far about the mental picture is not its concept, but only indicates the path along which it is to be found within the field of perception. The exact concept of the mental picture will then also make it possible for us to gain a satisfactory explanation of the relationship of mental picture and object. This will then also lead us over the boundary where the relationship between human subject and the object belonging to the world will be led down from the purely conceptual field of knowing activity into our concrete individual life. Once we know what to make of the world, it will be an easy matter also to orient ourselves accordingly. We can be active with our full strength only when we know the object, belonging to the world, to which we are devoting our activity.

Addendum to the Revised Edition of 1918

[ 32 ] The view characterized here can be regarded as one to which man is at first as though naturally impelled when he begins to reflect upon his relationship to the world. He seems himself entangled in a thought configuration which unravels for him as he is forming it. This thought configuration is of such a kind that everything necessary for it is not yet fulfilled with its merely theoretical refutation. One must live it through in order, out of insight into the aberration into which it leads, to find the way out. It must appear within an investigation of the relationship of man to the world, not because one wants to refute others whom one believes to hold an incorrect view about this relationships, but rather because one must know what perplexity every first reflection upon such a relationship can bring. One must gain the insight as to how one can refute oneself with respect to these first reflections. This is the point of view from which the above line of argumentation is put forward.

[ 33 ] Whoever wants to develop for himself a view about the relationship of man to the world becomes conscious that he brings about at least a part of this relationship through the fact that he makes mental pictures for himself about the things and occurrences of the world. Through this, his gaze is drawn away from what is outside in the world and directed upon his inner world, upon his life of mental pictures. He begins to say to himself, “I can have a relationship to no thing and to no occurrence, if a mental picture does not arise in me.” From noting this fact, it is only a step to the opinion that I do, after all, experience only my mental picture: I know of a world outside of me only insofar as it is a mental picture within me. With this opinion the naive standpoint of reality is abandoned which the human being takes before any reflecting about his relationship to the world. From this standpoint, he believes he has to do with real things. Self-reflection forces him away from this standpoint. It does not let him look at all upon a reality such as naive consciousness believes to have before itself. It lets him look merely upon his mental pictures; these interpose themselves between one's own being and a supposed real world such as the naive standpoint believes itself justified in affirming. The human being can no longer look through the intervening world of mental images, upon a reality such as that. He must assume that he is blind to this reality. In this way there arises the thought of a “thing-in-itself” which is inaccessible to knowledge.—So long as one goes no further than to contemplate the relationship to the world into which man seem to enter through his life of mental pictures, one will not be able to escape this thought configuration. One cannot remain at the naive standpoint of reality if one does not want to close oneself off artificially to the desire for knowledge. The fact that this desire for knowledge about the relationship of man and world is present, shows that this naive standpoint must be abandoned. If the naive standpoint offered something which one can acknowledge as the truth, then one could not feel this desire.—But one does not arrive at something different which one could regard as the truth, if one merely abandons the naive standpoint, but—without noticing it—retains the kind of thinking which this standpoint imposes. One falls into just such an error when one says to oneself, “I experience only my mental pictures, and although I believe that I am dealing with realities, I am only conscious of my mental pictures of realities; I must therefore assume that only outside of the circle of my consciousness do the true realities, the ‘things-in-themselves,’ life, of which I know absolutely nothing directly, which somehow approach me and influence me in such a way that my world of mental pictures arises in me.” Whoever thinks in this way only adds in thought, to the world lying before him, another one; but, with respect to this world, he would actually have to start all over again from the beginning with his thought work. For the unknown “thing-in-itself” is thereby thought to be no different at all in its relationship to man's own being than the known thing of the naive standpoint of reality.—One escapes the perplexity into which one comes through pondering this standpoint critically only when one notices that there is something—within what a person can experience and perceive inside himself and outside in the world—that absolutely cannot suffer the fate of having the mental picture interpose itself between the occurrence and the contemplating human being. And this is thinking. With respect to thinking, the human being can remain upon the naive standpoint towards reality. If he does not do so, it is only because he has noticed that for something else he must abandon this standpoint, but does not become aware that the insight thus gained is not applicable to thinking. If he becomes aware of this, then he opens the way for himself to the other insight, that within thinking and through thinking, he must come to know that element to which man seems to blind himself through the fact that he must interpose his life of mental pictures between the world and himself.—The author of this book has been reproached by someone highly esteemed by him for remaining, in his consideration of thinking, at a naive realism of thinking like the sort which exists when one regards the real world and the mentally pictured world as one. But the author of these considerations believes that he has in fact shown that the validity of this “naive realism” for thinking does necessarily follow out of an unprejudiced observation of thinking; and that the naive realism which is otherwise not valid is overcome through the knowledge of the true being of thinking.

• 1. Die Bestimmung des Menschen
• 2. In terms of this world view, knowledge is called transcendental which believes itself to be conscious of the fact that nothing can be directly stated about the things-in-themselves, but which draws indirect inference, from the known subjective, about the unknown lying beyond the subjective (the transcendental). According to this view, the thing-in-itself is beyond the sphere of the world directly knowable for us: i.e., it is transcendent. Our world, however, can be related to the transcendental transcendentally. Hartmann's view is called realism, because it goes out beyond the subjective, the ideal, to the transcendental, the real.
• 3. Entstehung der Träume
• 4. By “perception” Rudolf Steiner still means the object of perception, not the act of perceiving. See pages 32–34.