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[ 1 ] There are two fundamental questions in the life of the human soul towards which everything to be discussed in this book is directed. One is: Is it possible to find a view of the essential nature of man such as will give us a foundation for everything else that comes to meet us—whether through life experience or through science—which we feel is otherwise not self-supporting and therefore liable to be driven by doubt and criticism into the realm of uncertainty? The other question is this: Is man entitled to claim for himself freedom of will, or is freedom a mere illusion begotten of his inability to recognize the threads of necessity on which his will, like any natural event, depends? It is no artificial tissue of theories that provokes this question. In a certain mood it presents itself quite naturally to the human soul. And one may well feel that if the soul has not at some time found itself faced in utmost seriousness by the problem of free will or necessity it will not have reached its full stature. This book is intended to show that the experiences which the second problem causes man's soul to undergo depend upon the position he is able to take up towards the first problem. An attempt is made to prove that there is a view of the nature of man's being which can support the rest of knowledge; and further, that this view completely justifies the idea of free will, provided only that we have first discovered that region of the soul in which free will can unfold itself.

[ 2 ] The view to which we here refer is one which, once gained, is capable of becoming part and parcel of the very life of the soul itself. The answer given to the two problems will not be of the purely theoretical sort which, once mastered, may be carried about as a conviction preserved by memory. Such an answer would, for the whole manner of thinking on which this book is based, be no real answer at all. The book will not give a ready-made self-contained answer of this sort, but will point to a field of experience in which man's inner soul activity supplies a living answer to these questions at every moment that he needs one. Whoever has once discovered the region of the soul where these questions unfold, will find that the very contemplation of this region gives him all that he needs for the solution of the two problems. With the knowledge thus acquired, he may then, as desire or destiny impels him, adventure further into the breadths and depths of this enigmatical life of ours. Thus it would appear that a kind of knowledge which proves its justification and validity by its own inner life as well as by the kinship of its own life with the whole life of the human soul, does in fact exist.

[ 3 ] This is how I thought about the content of this book when I first wrote it down twenty-five years ago. Today, once again, I have to set down similar sentences if I am to characterize the main ideas of the book. At the original writing I limited myself to saying no more than was in the strictest sense connected with the two fundamental questions which I have outlined. If anyone should be astonished at not finding in this book any reference to that region of the world of spiritual experience described in my later writings, I would ask him to bear in mind that it was not my purpose at that time to set down the results of spiritual research, but first to lay the foundations on which such results can rest.

The Philosophy of Freedom does not contain any results of this sort, any more than it contains special results of the natural sciences. But what it does contain is in my judgment absolutely necessary for anyone who seeks a secure foundation for such knowledge. What I have said in this book may be acceptable even to some who, for reasons of their own, refuse to have anything to do with the results of my researches into the spiritual realm. But anyone who feels drawn towards the results of these spiritual researches may well appreciate the importance of what I was here trying to do. It is this: to show that open-minded consideration simply of the two questions I have indicated and which are fundamental for every kind of knowledge, leads to the view that man lives in the midst of a genuine spiritual world.

In this book the attempt is made to show that a knowledge of the spirit realm before entering upon actual spiritual experience is fully justified. The course of this demonstration is so conducted that for anyone who is able and willing to enter into these arguments it is never necessary, in order to accept them, to cast furtive glances at the experiences which my later writings have shown to be relevant.

[ 4 ] Thus it seems to me that in one sense this book occupies a position completely independent of my writings on actual spiritual scientific matters. Yet in another sense it is most intimately connected with them. These considerations have moved me now, after a lapse of twenty-five years, to republish the contents of this book practically unaltered in all essentials. I have, however, made additions of some length to a number of chapters. The misunderstandings of my argument which I have met seemed to make these more detailed elaborations necessary. Changes of text have been made only where it appeared to me that I had said clumsily what I meant to say a quarter of a century ago. (Only ill will could find in these changes occasion to suggest that I have changed my fundamental conviction.)

[ 5 ] For many years my book has been out of print. In spite of the fact, which is apparent from what I have just said, that my utterances of twenty-five years ago about these problems still seem to me just as relevant today, I hesitated a long time about the completion of this revised edition. Again and again I have asked myself whether I ought not, at this point or that, to define my position towards the numerous philosophical views which have been put forward since the publication of the first edition. Yet my preoccupation in recent years with researches into the purely spiritual realm prevented me from doing this in the way I could have wished. However, a survey of the philosophical literature of the present day, as thorough as I could make it, has convinced me that such a critical discussion, tempting though it would be in itself, would be out of place in the context of this book. All that it seemed to me necessary to say about recent philosophical tendencies, from the point of view of the Philosophy of Freedom, may be found in the second volume of my Riddles of Philosophy.

[ 1 ] Rudolf Steiner,
April 1918.

[ 1 ] In the following is reproduced, in all essentials, what stood as a preface in the first edition of this book. Since it shows the mood of thought out of which I wrote this book twenty-five years ago, rather than having any direct bearing on its contents, I include it here as an appendix. I do not want to omit it altogether, because the opinion keeps cropping up that I need to suppress some of my earlier writings on account of my later ones on spiritual science. Only the very first introductory sentences of this preface (in the first edition) have been altogether omitted here, because today they seem to me quite irrelevant. But the rest of what was said seems to me necessary even today, in spite of, indeed, just because of the natural scientific manner of thinking of our contemporaries.

[ 2 ] Our age can only accept truth from the depths of human nature. Of Schiller's two well-known paths, it is the second that will mostly be chosen at the present time:

Truth seek we both—Thou in the life without thee and around;
I in the heart within. By both can Truth alike be found.
The healthy eye can through the world the great Creator track;
The healthy heart is but the glass which gives Creation back.

(Translation by E. Bulwer Lytton.)

A truth which comes to us from outside always bears the stamp of uncertainty. We can believe only what appears to each one of us in our own hearts as truth.

[ 3 ] Only the truth can give us assurance in developing our individual powers. Whoever is tortured by doubts finds his powers lamed. In a world full of riddles, he can find no goal for his creative energies.

[ 4 ] We no longer want merely to believe; we want to know. Belief demands the acceptance of truths which we do not fully comprehend. But things we do not fully comprehend are repugnant to the individual element in us, which wants to experience everything in the depths of its inner being. The only knowledge which satisfies us is one which is subject to no external standards but springs from the inner life of the personality.

[ 5 ] Again, we do not want any knowledge of the kind that has become frozen once and for all into rigid academic rules, preserved in encyclopedias valid for all time. Each of us claims the right to start from the facts that lie nearest to hand, from his own immediate experiences, and thence to ascend to a knowledge of the whole universe. We strive after certainty in knowledge, but each in his own way.

[ 6 ] Our scientific doctrines, too, should no longer be formulated as if we were unconditionally compelled to accept them. None of us would wish to give a scientific work a title like Fichte's “A Pellucid Account for the General Public concerning the Real Nature of the Newest Philosophy. An Attempt to Compel the Readers to Understand.” Today nobody should be compelled to understand. From anyone who is not driven to a certain view by his own individual needs, we demand no acknowledgment or agreement. Even with the immature human being, the child, we do not nowadays cram knowledge into it, but we try to develop its capacities so that it will no longer need to be compelled to understand, but will want to understand.

[ 7 ] I am under no illusion about these characteristics of my time. I know how much the tendency prevails to make things impersonal and stereotyped. But I know equally well that many of my contemporaries try to order their lives in the kind of way I have indicated. To them I would dedicate this book. It is not meant to give “the only possible” path to the truth, but is meant to describe the path taken by one for whom truth is the main concern.

[ 8 ] The book leads at first into somewhat abstract regions, where thought must draw sharp outlines if it is to reach clearly defined positions. But the reader will also be led out of these arid concepts into concrete life. I am indeed fully convinced that one must raise oneself into the ethereal realm of concepts if one would experience every aspect of existence. Whoever appreciates only the pleasures of the senses is unacquainted with life's sweetest savors. The oriental sages make their disciples live a life of renunciation and asceticism for years before they impart to them their own wisdom. The western world no longer demands pious exercises and ascetic habits as a preparation for science, but it does require the willingness to withdraw oneself awhile from the immediate impressions of life, and to betake oneself into the realm of pure thought.

[ 9 ] The realms of life are many. For each one, special sciences develop. But life itself is a unity, and the more deeply the sciences try to penetrate into their separate realms, the more they withdraw themselves from the vision of the world as a living whole. There must be a knowledge which seeks in the separate sciences the elements for leading man back once more to the fullness of life. The scientific specialist seeks through his findings to develop awareness of the world and its workings; in this book the aim is a philosophical one—that knowledge itself shall become organically alive. The separate sciences are stages on the way to that knowledge we are here trying to achieve. A similar relationship exists in the arts. The composer works on the basis of the theory of composition. This theory is a collection of rules which one has to know in order to compose. In composing, the rules of the theory become the servants of life itself, of reality. In exactly the same sense, philosophy is an art. All real philosophers have been artists in the realm of concepts. For them, human ideas were their artists' materials and scientific method their artistic technique. Abstract thinking thus takes on concrete individual life. The ideas become powerful forces in life. Then we do not merely have knowledge about things, but have made knowledge into a real self-governing organism; our actual working consciousness has risen beyond a mere passive reception of truths.

[ 10 ] How philosophy as an art is related to human freedom, what freedom is, and whether we do, or can, participate in it—this is the main theme of my book. All other scientific discussions are included only because they ultimately throw light on these questions, which are, in my opinion, the most immediate concern of mankind. These pages offer a “Philosophy of Freedom”.

[ 11 ] All science would be nothing but the satisfaction of idle curiosity did it not strive to raise the value of existence for the personality of man. The sciences attain their true value only by showing the human significance of their results. The ultimate aim of the individual can never be the cultivation of a single faculty, but only the development of all the capacities that slumber within us. Knowledge has value only in so far as it contributes to the all-round development of the whole nature of man.

[ 12 ] This book, therefore, conceives the relationship between science and life, not in such a way that man must bow down before an idea and devote his powers to its service, but in the sense that he masters the world of ideas in order to use them for his human aims, which transcend those of mere science.

[ 13 ] One must be able to confront an idea and experience it; otherwise one will fall into its bondage.

[ 1 ] Various criticisms on the part of philosophers with which this book met immediately upon its publication, induce me to add to this Revised Edition the following brief statement.

I can well understand that there are readers who are interested in the rest of the book, but who will look upon what follows as a tissue of abstract concepts which is unnecessary and makes no appeal to them. They may, if they choose, leave this brief statement unread. But in philosophic world contemplation problems present themselves which have their origin rather in certain prejudices on the thinker's part than in the natural progression of human thinking. With the main body of this book it seems to me to be a task for everyone to concern himself, who is striving for clearness about the essential nature of man and his relation to the world. What follows is rather a problem the discussion of which certain philosophers demand as necessary to a treatment of the topics of this book, because these philosophers, by their whole way of thinking, have created certain difficulties which do not otherwise occur. If I were to pass by these problems entirely, certain people would be quick to accuse me of dilettantism, etc. The impression would thus be created that the author of the views set down in this book has not thought out his position with regard to these problems because he has not discussed them in his book.

[ 2 ] The problem to which I refer is this: there are thinkers who find a particular difficulty in understanding how one's own soul can be affected by another's. They say: the world of my consciousness is a closed circle within me; so is the world of another's consciousness within him. I cannot look into the world of another's consciousness. How, then, do I know that he and I are in a common world? The theory according to which we can from the conscious world infer an unconscious world which never can enter consciousness, attempts to solve this difficulty as follows. The world, it says, which I have in my consciousness is a representative image in me of a real world to which I have no conscious access. In this transcendent world exist the unknown agents which cause the world in my consciousness. In it, too, exists my own real being, of which likewise I have only a representative image in my consciousness. In it, lastly, exists the essential being of the fellow-man who confronts me. Whatever passes in the consciousness of my fellow-man corresponds to a reality in his transcendent essence which is independent of his consciousness. This reality acts on my own unconscious being in the realm which cannot become conscious; and in this way in my consciousness a representative element is created which represents there what is present in another consciousness wholly beyond the reach of my conscious experience. Clearly the point of this theory is to imagine in addition to the world accessible to my consciousness an hypothetical world which is to my immediate experience inaccessible. This is done to avoid the supposed alternative of having to say that the external world, which I regard as existing before me, is nothing but the world of my consciousness, with the absurd—solipsistic—corollary that other persons likewise exist only within my consciousness.

[ 3 ] Several epistemological tendencies in recent speculation have joined in creating this problem. But it is possible to attain to clearness about it by surveying the situation from the point of view of spiritual perception which underlies the exposition of this book. What is it that, in the first instance, I have before me when I confront another person? To begin with, there is the sensuous appearance of the other's body, as given in perception. To this we might add the auditory perception of what he is saying, and so forth. All this I do not merely gaze at but it sets in motion my thinking activity. Through the thinking with which I now confront the other person, the percept of him becomes, as it were, psychically transparent. As my thinking apprehends the percept, I am compelled to judge that what I perceive is really quite other than it appears to the outer senses. The sensuous appearance, it being what it immediately is, reveals something else which it is mediately. In presenting itself to me, it at the same time extinguishes itself as a mere sensuous appearance. But in thus extinguishing itself it reveals something which compels me as a thinking being to extinguish my own thinking as long as I am under its influence and to put its thinking in the place of mine. Its thinking is then apprehended by my thinking as an experience like my own. Thus I have really perceived another's thinking. For the immediate percept, in extinguishing itself as sensuous appearance, is apprehended by my thinking. It is a process which passes wholly in my consciousness and consists in this, that the other's thinking takes the place of my thinking. Through the self-extinction of the sensuous appearance the separation between the spheres of the two consciousnesses is actually abolished. In my own consciousness this fusion manifests itself in that, so long as I experience the contents of the other's consciousness, I am aware of my own consciousness as little as I am aware of it in dreamless sleep. Just as my waking consciousness is eliminated from the latter, so are the contents of my own consciousness eliminated from my experience of the contents of another's consciousness. Two things tend to deceive us about the true facts. The first is that, in perceiving another person, the extinction of the contents of one's own consciousness is replaced not, as in sleep, by unconsciousness, but by the contents of the other's consciousness. The other is that my consciousness of my own self oscillates so rapidly between extinction and recurrence, that these alternations usually escape observation. The whole problem is to be solved, not through artificial construction of concepts, involving an inference from what is in consciousness to what can never become conscious, but through genuine experience of what results from the co-operation of thinking and perceiving. This applies to many other problems which appear in philosophical literature. Thinkers should seek the road to unprejudiced spiritual observation, instead of putting an artificial structure of concepts in front of reality.

[ 4 ] In a monograph by Eduard von Hartmann on The Ultimate Problems of Epistemology and Metaphysics (in the Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Philosophische Kritik, Vol. 108, p. 55), my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity has been classed with the philosophical tendency which seeks to build upon an “epistemological Monism.” Eduard von Hartmann rejects this position as untenable. This is explained as follows. According to the point of view maintained in his monograph, there are only three possible positions in the theory of knowledge. The first consists in remaining at the naive point of view, which regards perceived phenomena as real things existing outside the human consciousness. This, urges von Hartmann, implies a lack of critical reflection. I fail to realize that with all my contents of consciousness I remain imprisoned in my own consciousness. I fail to perceive that I am dealing, not with the “table-in-itself,” but only with an object in my own consciousness. If I stop at this point of view, or if for whatever reasons I return to it, I am a Naive Realist. But this whole position is untenable, for it ignores that consciousness has no other objects than its own contents. The second position consists in appreciating this situation and confessing it to oneself. As a result, I become a Transcendental Idealist. As such, says von Hartmann, I am obliged to deny that a “thing-in-itself” can ever appear in any way within the human consciousness. But, if developed with unflinching consistency, this view ends in Absolute Illusionism. For the world which confronts me is now transformed into a mere sum of objects of consciousness, and, moreover, of objects of my private consciousness. The objects of other human minds, too, I am then compelled to conceive—absurdly enough—as present solely in my own consciousness. Hence, the only tenable position, according to von Hartmann, is the third, viz., Transcendental Realism. On this view, there are “things-in-themselves,” but consciousness can have no dealings with them by way of immediate experience. Existing beyond the sphere of human consciousness, they cause, in a way of which we remain unconscious, the appearance of objects in consciousness. These “things-in-themselves” can be only inferred from the contents of consciousness, which are immediately experienced but for that very reason, purely representational. Eduard von Hartmann maintains in the monograph cited above, that “epistemological Monism”—for such he takes my point of view to be—is bound to declare itself identical with one or other of the above three positions; and that its failure to do so is due only to its inconsistency in not drawing the actual consequences of its presuppositions. The monograph goes on to say: “If we want to find out which epistemological position a so-called Epistemological Monist occupies, all we have to do is to put to him certain questions and compel him to answer them. For, out of his own initiative, no Monist will condescend to state his views on these points, and likewise he will seek to dodge in every way giving an answer to our direct questions, because every answer he may give will betray that Epistemological Monism does not differ from one or other of the three positions. Our questions are the following: (1) Are things continuous or intermittent in their existence? If the answer is ‘continuous,’ we have before us some or other form of Naive Realism. If the answer is ‘intermittent,’ we have Transcendental Idealism. But if the answer is: ‘They are, on the one hand, continuous, viz., as contents of the Absolute Mind, or as unconscious representations, or as possibilities of perception, but, on the other hand, intermittent, viz., as contents of finite consciousness,’ we recognize Transcendental Realism. (2) When three persons are sitting at a table, how many distinct tables are there? The Naive Realist answers ‘one’; the Transcendental Idealist answers ‘three’; but the Transcendental Idealist answers ‘four.’ This last answer does, indeed, presuppose that it is legitimate to group together in the single question, ‘How many tables?’ things so unlike each other as the one table which is the ‘thing-in-itself’ and the three tables which are the perceptual objects in the three consciousnesses. If this seems too great a license to anyone, he will have to answer ‘one and three,’ instead of ‘four.’ (3) When two persons are alone together in a room, how many distinct persons are there? If you answer ‘two’—you are a Naive Realist. If you answer ‘four,’ viz., in each of the two minds one ‘I’ and one ‘Other,’ you are a Transcendental Idealist. If you answer ‘six,’ viz., two persons as ‘things-in-themselves’ and four persons as representational objects in the two consciousnesses, you are a Transcendental Realist. In order to show that Epistemological Monism is not one of these three positions, we should have to give another answer than the above to each of these three questions. But I cannot imagine what answer this could be.” The answers of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity would have to be: (1) Whoever apprehends only perceptual contents of a thing and takes them for the reality of the thing, is a Naive Realist. He does not realize that, strictly, he ought to regard these perceptual contents as existing only so long as he is looking at the things, so that he ought to conceive the things before him as intermittent. As soon, however, as it becomes clear to him that reality is to be met with only in the percepts which are permeated by thinking, he attains to the insight that the percepts which appear as intermittent events, reveal themselves as continuously in existence as soon as they are permeated by the results of thinking. Hence continuity of existence must be predicated of the contents of perception which living thinking has grasped. Only that part which is merely perceived would have to be regarded as intermittent, if—which is not the case—it were real. (2) When three persons are sitting at a table, how many distinct tables are there? There is only one table. But so long as the three persons stop short at their perceptual images, they ought to say: “These percepts are not a reality at all.” As soon as they pass on to the table as apprehended by thinking, there is revealed to them the one reality of the table. They are then united with their three contents of consciousness in this one reality. (3) When two persons are alone together in a room, how many distinct persons are there? Most assuredly there are not six—not even in the sense of the Transcendental Realist's theory—but only two. Only, at first, each person has nothing but the unreal perceptual image of himself and of the other person. There are four such images, the presence of which is the stimulus for the apprehension, by the two persons, of reality by their thinking. In this activity of thinking each of the two persons transcends the sphere of his own consciousness. A living awareness of the consciousness of the other person as well as of his own arises in each. In these moments of living awareness the persons are as little imprisoned within their consciousness as they are in sleep. But at other moments consciousness of this identification with the other returns, so that the consciousness of each person, in the experience of thinking, apprehends both himself and the other person. I know that a Transcendental Realist describes this view as a relapse into Naive Realism. But, then, I have already pointed out in this book that Naive Realism retains its justification for our experienced thinking. The Transcendental Realist completely ignores the true situation in the process of cognition. He cuts himself off from the facts by a tissue of thoughts and entangles himself in it. Moreover, the Monism which appears in the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity ought not to be labeled “epistemological,” but, if an epithet is wanted, then a “Monism of Thought.” All this has been misunderstood by Eduard von Hartmann. Ignoring all that is specific in the argumentation of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, he has charged me with having attempted to combine Hegel's Universalistic Panlogism with Hume's Individualistic Phenomenalism (Zeitschrift für Philosophie, Vol. 108, p. 71, note). But, in truth, the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity has nothing whatever to do with the two positions which it is accused of trying to combine. (This, too, is the reason why I could not feel inclined to deal, e.g., with the Epistemological Monism of Johannes Rehmke. The point of view of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is simply quite different from what Eduard von .Hartmann and others call “Epistemological Monism.”)

[ 1 ] The following chapter reproduces, in all essentials, the pages which stood as a sort of “Introduction” in the first edition of this book. Inasmuch as it rather reflects the mood of thought out of which I composed this book twenty-five years ago, than has any direct bearing on its contents, I print it here as an “Appendix.” I do not want to omit it altogether, because the suggestion keeps cropping up that I want to suppress some of my earlier writings on account of my later works on the Science of Spirit.

[ 2 ] Our age is one which is willing to seek truth nowhere but out of the depths of human nature.¹ Of the following two well-known paths described by Schiller, it is the second which to-day will be found most useful:

Truth seek we both—Thou in the life without thee and around;
I in the heart within. By both can Truth alike be found.
The healthy eye can through the world the great Creator track;
The healthy heart is but the glass which gives Creation back.

E. BULWER LYTTON.

A truth which comes to us from without bears ever the stamp of uncertainty. Conviction attaches only to what appears as truth to each of us in our own hearts.

[ 3 ] Truth alone can give us confidence in developing our individual powers. He who is tortured by doubts finds his powers lamed. In a world the riddle of which baffles him, he can find no aim for his activity.

[ 4 ] We no longer want to believe; we want to know. Belief demands the acceptance of truths which we do not wholly comprehend. But the individuality which seeks to experience everything in the depths of its own being, is repelled by what it cannot wholly look through. Only that knowledge will satisfy us which springs from the inner life of the personality, and submits itself to no external norm.

[ 5 ] Again, we do not want any knowledge which has encased itself once and for all in frozen formulas, and which is preserved in encyclopædias valid for all time. Each of us claims the right to start from the facts that lie nearest to hand, from his own immediate experiences, and thence to ascend to a knowledge of the whole universe. We strive after certainty in knowledge, but each in his own way.

[ 6 ] Our scientific theories, too, are no longer to be formulated as if we were unconditionally compelled to accept them. None of us would wish to give a scientific work a title like Fichte's A Pellucid Account for the General Public concerning the Real Nature of the Newest Philosophy. An Attempt to Compel the Readers to Understand. Nowadays there is no attempt to compel anyone to understand. We claim no acknowledgment or agreement from anyone who is not driven to a certain view by his own needs. We do not seek nowadays to cram facts of knowledge even into the immature human being, the child. We seek rather to develop his faculties in such a way that his understanding may depend no longer on our compulsion, but on his will.

[ 7 ] I am under no illusion concerning these characteristics of the present age. I know how much of a stereotypical attitude which lacks all individuality is prevalent everywhere. But I know also that many of my contemporaries strive to order their lives in the direction I have indicated. To them I would dedicate this book. It does not pretend to offer the “only possible” way to Truth, it describes the path chosen by one whose heart is set upon Truth.

[ 8 ] The reader will be led at first into somewhat abstract regions, where thought must draw sharp outlines, if it is to reach secure conclusions. But he will also be led out of these arid concepts into concrete life. I am fully convinced that one cannot do without soaring into the ethereal realm of concepts, if one's experience is to penetrate life in all directions. He who is limited to the pleasures of the senses misses the sweetest enjoyments of life. The Oriental sages make their disciples live for years a life of resignation and asceticism before they impart to them their own wisdom. The Western world no longer demands pious exercises and ascetic practices as a preparation for science, but it does require a sincere willingness to withdraw oneself awhile from the immediate impressions of life, and to betake oneself into the realm of pure thought.

[ 9 ] The spheres of life are many, and for each there develop special sciences. But life itself is one, and the more the sciences strive to penetrate deeply into their separate spheres, the more they withdraw themselves from the vision of the world as a living whole. There must be one supreme knowledge which seeks in the separate sciences the elements for leading man back once more to the fullness of life. The scientific specialist seeks in his studies to gain a knowledge of the world and its workings. This book has a philosophical aim: science itself is here infused with organic life. The special sciences are stages on the way to the science intended here. A similar relation is found in the arts. The composer in his work employs the rules of the theory of composition. This latter is an accumulation of principles, knowledge of which is a necessary presupposition for composing. In the act of composing, the rules of theory become the servants of life, of reality. In exactly the same way philosophy is an art. All genuine philosophers have been artists in concepts. Human Ideas have been the material of their art, and scientific method their artistic technique. Abstract thinking thus gains concrete individual life. Ideas turn into life-forces. We have no longer merely a knowledge about things, but we have now made knowledge a real self-determining organism. Our consciousness, real and active, has risen beyond a mere passive reception of truths.

[ 10 ] How philosophy, as an art, is related to freedom; what freedom is; and whether we do, or can, participate in it—this is the principal problem of my book. All other scientific discussions are put in only because they ultimately throw light on these questions which are, in my opinion, the most immediate concern of mankind. These pages offer a “Philosophy of Freedom.”

[ 11 ] All science would be nothing but the satisfaction of idle curiosity did it not strive to enhance the existential value of human personality. The true value of the sciences is reached only by showing the human range of their results. The final aim of an individual can never be the cultivation of any single faculty, but only the development of all capacities which slumber within us. Knowledge has value only in so far as it contributes to the all-round unfolding of the whole nature of man.

[ 12 ] This book, therefore, does not conceive the relation between science and life in such a way that man must bow down before the Idea and devote his powers to its service. On the contrary, it shows that he takes possession of the world of Ideas in order to use them for his human aims, which transcend those of mere science.

[ 13 ] Man must be able to confront the Idea and experience it; or else he will fall into its bondage.

• 1. Only the very first opening sentences (in the first edition) of this argument have been altogether omitted here, because they seem to me to-day wholly irrelevant. But the rest of the chapter seems to me even to-day relevant and necessary, in spite, nay, because, of the natural scientific manner of thinking of our contemporaries.

[ 1 ] Is man in his thinking and acting a spiritually free being, or is he compelled by the iron necessity of natural laws? There are few questions on which so much ingenuity has been expended. The idea of the freedom of the human will has found enthusiastic supporters and stubborn opponents in plenty. There are those who, in their moral fervour, label anyone a man of limited intelligence who can deny so patent a fact as freedom. Opposed to them are others who regard it as the acme of unscientific thinking for anyone to believe that the uniformity of natural law is broken in the sphere of human action and thought. One and the same thing is thus proclaimed, now as the most precious possession of humanity, now as its most fatal illusion. Infinite subtlety has been employed to explain how human freedom can be consistent with the laws working in nature, of which man, after all, is a part. Others have been at no less pains to explain how such a delusion as this could have arisen. That we are dealing here with one of the most important questions for life, religion, conduct, science, must be felt by anyone whose most prominent trait is not the reverse of thoroughness. It is one of the sad signs of the superficiality of present-day thought, that a book which attempts to develop a new faith out of the results of recent scientific research (David Friedrich Strauss, Der alte und neue Glaube), has nothing more to say on this question than these words: “With the question of the freedom of the human will we are not concerned. The alleged freedom of indifferent choice has been recognized as an empty illusion by every philosophy worthy of the name. The moral valuation of human action and character remains untouched by this problem.” It is not because I consider that the book in which it occurs has any special importance that I quote this passage, but because it seems to me to express the view to which the thinking of the majority of our contemporaries is able to rise in this matter. Everyone who has grown beyond the kindergarten-stage of science appears to know nowadays that freedom cannot consist in choosing, at one's pleasure, one or other of two possible courses of action. There is always, so we are told, a perfectly definite reason why, out of several possible actions, we carry out just one and no other.

[ 2 ] This seems obvious. Nevertheless, down to the present day, the main attacks of the opponents of freedom are directed only against freedom of choice. Even Herbert Spencer, in fact, whose doctrines are gaining ground daily, says, “That everyone is at liberty to desire or not to desire, which is the real proposition involved in the dogma of free will, is negatived as much by the analysis of consciousness, as by the contents of the preceding chapter.” (The Principles of Psychology, Part IV, Chap. ix., par. 219.) Others, too, start from the same point of view in combating the concept of free will. The germs of all the relevant arguments are to be found as early as Spinoza. All that he brought forward in clear and simple language against the idea of freedom has since been repeated times without number, but as a rule enveloped in the most sophisticated doctrines, so that it is difficult to recognize the straightforward train of thought which is alone in question. Spinoza writes in a letter of October or November, 1674, “I call a thing free which exists and acts from the pure necessity of its nature, and I call that unfree, of which the being and action are precisely and fixedly determined by something else. Thus, e.g., God, though necessary, is free because he exists only through the necessity of his own nature. Similarly, God cognizes himself and all else freely, because it follows solely from the necessity of his nature that he cognizes all. You see, therefore, that for me freedom consists not in free decision, but in free necessity.

[ 3 ] “But let us come down to created things which are all determined by external causes to exist and to act in a fixed and definite manner. To perceive this more clearly, let us imagine a perfectly simple case. A stone, for example, receives from an external cause acting upon it a certain quantity of motion, by reason of which it necessarily continues to move, after the impact of the external cause has ceased. The continued motion of the stone is due to compulsion, not to the necessity of its own nature, because it requires to be defined by the thrust of an external cause. What is true here for the stone is true also for every other particular thing, however complicated and many-sided it may be, namely, that everything is necessarily determined by external causes to exist and to act in a fixed and definite manner.

[ 4 ] Now, pray, assume that this stone during its motion thinks and knows that it is striving to the best of its power to continue in motion. This stone which is conscious only of its striving and is by no means indifferent, will believe that it is absolutely free, and that it continues in motion for no other reason than its own will to continue. Now this is that human freedom which everybody claims to possess and which consists in nothing but this, that men are conscious of their desires, but ignorant of the causes by which they are determined. Thus the child believes that he desires milk of his own free will, the angry boy regards his desire for vengeance as free, and the coward his desire for flight. Again, the drunken man believes that he says of his own free will what, sober again, he would fain have left unsaid, and as this prejudice is innate in all men, it is difficult to free oneself from it. For, although experience teaches us often enough that man least of all can temper his desires, and that, moved by conflicting passions, he sees the better and pursues the worse, yet he considers himself free because there are some things which he desires less strongly, and some desires which he can easily inhibit through the recollection of something else which it is often possible to recall.”

[ 5 ] It is easy to detect the fundamental error of this view, because it is so clearly and definitely expressed. The same necessity by which a stone makes a definite movement as the result of an impact, is said to compel a man to carry out an action when impelled thereto by any reason. It is only because man is conscious of his action, that he thinks himself to be its originator. In doing so, he overlooks the fact that he is driven by a cause which he must obey unconditionally. The error in this train of thought is easily brought to light. Spinoza, and all who think like him, overlook the fact that man not only is conscious of his action, but also may become conscious of the causes which guide him. Anyone can see that a child is not free when he desires milk, nor the drunken man when he says things which he later regrets. Neither knows anything of the causes, working deep within their organisms, which exercise irresistible control over them. But is it justifiable to lump together actions of this kind with those in which a man is conscious not only of his actions but also of the reasons which cause him to. act? Are the actions of men really all of one kind? Should the act of a soldier on the field of battle, of the scientific researcher in his laboratory, of the statesman in the most complicated diplomatic negotiations, be placed scientifically on the same level with that of the child when he desires milk? It is, no doubt, true that it is best to seek the solution of a problem where the conditions are simplest. But lack of ability to see distinctions has before now caused endless confusion. There is, after all, a profound difference between knowing why I am acting and not knowing it. At first sight this seems a self-evident truth. And yet the opponents of freedom never ask themselves whether a motive of action which I recognize and see through, is to be regarded as compulsory for me in the same sense as the organic process which causes the child to cry for milk.

[ 6 ] Eduard von Hartmann, in his Phaenomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins (p. 451), asserts that the human will depends on two chief factors, the motives and the character. If one regards men as all alike, or at any rate the differences between them as negligible, then their will appears as determined from without, viz., by the circumstances which come to meet them. But if one bears in mind that men adopt a “representation”¹ as the motive of their action, only if their character is such that this representation arouses a desire in them, then men appear as determined from within and not from without. Now, because a representation given to us from without, must first in accordance with our characters be adopted as a motive, men believe that they are free, i.e., independent of external impulses. The truth, however, according to Eduard von Hartmann, is that “even though we (must) first adopt a representation as a motive, we do so not arbitrarily, but according to the characterological disposition, that is, we are anything but free.” Here again the difference between motives which I allow to influence me only after I have permeated them with my consciousness, and those which I follow without any clear knowledge of them, is absolutely ignored.

[ 7 ] This leads us straight to the standpoint from which the subject will be treated here. Have we any right to consider the question of the freedom of the will by itself at all? And if not, with what other question must it necessarily be connected?

[ 8 ] If there is a difference between a conscious motive and an unconscious impulse of action, then those actions which result from the former should be judged otherwise than one springing from blind impulse. Hence our first question will concern this difference, and on the result of this inquiry will depend what attitude we ought to take up towards the question of freedom proper.

[ 9 ] What does it mean to have knowledge of the motives of one's action? Too little attention has been paid to this question, because, unfortunately, we have torn asunder into two parts that which is an inseparable whole: Man. The agent has been divorced from the knower, whilst he who matters more than everything else, viz., the man who acts because he knows, has been utterly overlooked.

[ 10 ] It is said that man is free when he is controlled only by his reason, and not by his animal passions. Or, again, that to be free means to be able to determine one's life and action by purposes and deliberate decisions.

[ 11 ] Nothing is gained by assertions of this sort. For the question is just whether reason, purposes, and decisions exercise the same kind of compulsion over a man as his animal passions. If without my doing, a rational decision emerges in me with the same necessity with which hunger and thirst happen to me, then I must needs obey it, and my freedom is an illusion.

[ 12 ] Another form of expression runs: to be free means, not that we can will what we will, but that we can do what we will. This thought has been expressed with great clearness by the poet-philosopher Robert Hamerling in his Atomistik des Willens. “Man can, it is true, do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills, because his will is determined by motives! He cannot will what he wills? Let us consider these phrases more closely. Have they any intelligible meaning? Does freedom of will, then, mean being able to will without ground, without motive? What does willing mean if not to have grounds for doing, or striving to do, this rather than that? To will anything without ground or motive would mean to will something without willing it. The concept of motive is indissolubly bound up with that of will. Without the determining motive the will is an empty faculty; it is the motive which makes it active and real. It is, therefore, quite true that the human will is not ‘free,’ inasmuch as its direction is always determined by the strongest motive. But, on the other hand, it must be admitted that it is absurd to speak, in contrast with this ‘unfreedom,’ of a conceivable ‘freedom’ of the will, which would consist in being able to will what one does not will.” (Atomistik des Willens, p. 213 ff.)

[ 13 ] Here, again, only motives in general are mentioned, without taking into account the difference between unconscious and conscious motives. If a motive affects me, and I am compelled to act on it because it proves to be the “strongest” of its kind, then the thought of freedom ceases to have any meaning. How should it matter to me whether I can do a thing or not, if I am forced by the motive to do it? The primary question is, not whether I can do a thing or not when impelled by a motive, but whether there are any motives except such as impel me with absolute necessity. If I am compelled to will something, then I may well be absolutely indifferent as to whether I can also do it. And if, through my character, or through circumstances prevailing in my environment, a motive is forced on me which to my thinking is unreasonable, then I should even have to be glad if I could not do what I will.

[ 14 ] The question is, not whether I can carry out a decision once made, but how the decision is brought about within me.

[ 15 ] What distinguishes man from all other organic beings is his rational thinking. Activity is common to him with other organisms. Nothing is gained by seeking analogies in the animal world to clear up the concept of freedom as applied to the actions of human beings. Modern science loves these analogies. When scientists have succeeded in finding among animals something similar to human behaviour, they believe they have touched on the most important question of the science of man. To what misunderstandings this view leads is seen, for example, in the book Die Illusion der Willensfreiheit, by P. Rée, 1885, where, on page 5, the following remark on freedom appears: “It is easy to explain why the movement of a stone seems to us necessary, while the volition of a donkey does not. The causes which set the stone in motion are external and visible, while the causes which determine the donkey's volition are internal and invisible. Between us and the place of their activity there is the skull cap of the ass ... The causal nexus is not visible and, therefore, thought to be non-existent. The volition, it is explained, is, indeed, the cause of the donkey's turning round, but is itself unconditioned; it is an absolute beginning.” Here again human actions in which there is a consciousness of the motives are simply ignored, for Rée declares, “that between us and the sphere of their activity there is the skull cap of the ass.” As these words show, it has not so much as dawned on Rée that there are actions, not indeed of the ass, but of human beings, in which the motive that has become conscious, lies between us and the action. Rée demonstrates his blindness once again, a few pages further on, when he says, “We do not perceive the causes by which our will is determined, hence we think it is not causally determined at all.”

[ 16 ] But enough of examples which prove that many argue against freedom without knowing in the least what freedom is.

[ 17 ] That an action cannot be free, of which the agent does not know why he performs it, goes without saying. But what of the freedom of an action about the motives of which we know? This leads us to the question of the origin and meaning of thinking. For without the recognition of the thinking activity of the soul, it is impossible to understand what is meant by knowledge of something or what is meant by action. When we know what thinking in general means, it will be easier to see clearly the role which thinking plays in human action. As Hegel rightly says, “It is thinking which turns the soul, common to us and animals, into spirit.” Hence it is thinking which we may expect to give to human action its characteristic stamp.

[ 18 ] I do not mean to imply that all our active doing springs only from the sober deliberations of our reason. I am very far from calling only those actions “human” in the highest sense, which proceed from abstract judgments. But as soon as our conduct rises above the sphere of the satisfaction of purely animal desires, our motives are always permeated by thoughts. Love, pity, and patriotism are springs of action which cannot be analysed away into cold concepts of the understanding. It is said that here the heart, the mood of the soul, hold sway. This is no doubt true. But the heart and the mood of the soul do not create the motives. They presuppose them and let them enter. Pity enters my heart when the representation of a person who arouses pity comes forward in my consciousness. The way to the heart is through the head. Love is no exception. Whenever it is not merely the expression of bare sexual instinct, it depends on the representation we form of the loved one. And the more idealistic these representations are, just so much the more blessed is our love. Here, too, thought is the father of feeling. It is said that love makes us blind to the failings of the loved one. But the opposite view can be taken, namely, that it is precisely for the good points that love opens the eyes. Many pass by these good points without notice. One, however, perceives them, and just because he does, love awakens in his soul. What else has he done except to have achieved a representation of what hundreds have failed to see? Love is not theirs, because they lack the representation.

[ 19 ] From whatever point we regard the subject, it becomes more and more clear that the question of the nature of human action presupposes that of the origin of thinking. I shall, therefore, turn next to this question.

• 1. Vorstellung, cf. Translator's Preface

Two souls, alas! reside within my breast,
And each withdraws from, and repels, its brother.
One with tenacious organs holds in love
And clinging lust the world in its embraces;
The other strongly sweeps, this dust above,
Into the high ancestral spaces.

—Faust, I, Scene 2. (tr. Bayard Taylor)

[ 1 ] In these words Goethe expresses a trait which is deeply ingrained in human nature. Man is not a self-contained unity. He demands ever more than the world, of itself, offers him. Nature has endowed us with needs: among them are some the satisfaction of which she leaves to our own activity. However abundant the gifts which we have received, still more abundant are our desires. We seem born to be dissatisfied. And our desire for knowledge is but a special instance of this dissatisfaction. Suppose we look twice at a tree. The first time we see its branches at rest, the second time in motion. We are not satisfied with this observation. Why, we ask, does the tree appear to us now at rest, then in motion? Every glance at nature evokes in us a multitude of questions.

Every phenomenon we meet presents a new problem to be solved. Every experience is to us a riddle. We observe that from the egg there emerges a creature like the mother animal, and we ask for the reason of the likeness. We observe a living being grow and develop to a determinate degree of perfection, and we seek the conditions of this experience. Nowhere are we satisfied with what nature spreads out before our senses. Everywhere we seek what we call the explanation of the facts.

[ 2 ] The something more which we seek in things, over and above what is immediately given to us in them, splits our whole being into two parts. We become conscious of our opposition to the world. We oppose ourselves to the world as independent beings. The universe has for us two opposite poles: I and World.

[ 3 ] We erect this barrier between ourselves and the world as soon as consciousness is first kindled in us. But we never cease to feel that, in spite of all, we belong to the world, that there is a connecting link between it and us, and that we are beings within, and not without, the universe.

[ 4 ] This feeling makes us strive to bridge over this opposition, and ultimately the whole spiritual striving of mankind is nothing but the bridging of this opposition. The history of our spiritual life is a continuous seeking after the unity between ourselves and the world. Religion, Art, and Science follow, one and all, this goal. The religious believer seeks in the revelation which God grants him, the solution of the world problem, which his I, dissatisfied with the world of mere phenomena, sets him as a task. The artist seeks to embody in his material the Ideas which are in his I, that he may thus reconcile that which lives within him and the outer world. He, too, feels dissatisfied with the world of mere appearances, and seeks to mould into it that something more which his I contains and which transcends appearances. The thinker searches for the laws of phenomena. He strives to master by thinking what he experiences by observing. Only when we have made the world-content into our thought-content do we again find the unity from which we had separated ourselves. We shall see later that this goal can be reached only if the problem of scientific research is comprehended much more deeply than is often done. The whole situation, as I have here stated it, meets us, on the stage of history, in the conflict between the one-world theory, or Monism, and the two-world theory, or Dualism. Dualism pays attention only to the separation between the I and the World, which the consciousness of man has brought about. All its efforts consist in a vain struggle to reconcile these opposites, which it calls now Spirit and Matter, now Subject and Object, now Thinking and Appearance. The Dualist feels that there must be a bridge between the two worlds, but is not able to find it. In so far as man is aware of himself as “I,” he cannot but put down this “I” in thinking on the side of Spirit; and in opposing to this “I” the world, he is bound to reckon on the world's side the realm of percepts given to the senses, i.e., the Material World. In doing so, man assigns a position to himself within this very antithesis of Spirit and Matter. He is the more compelled to do so because his own body belongs to the Material World. Thus the “I,” or Ego, belongs as a part to the realm of Spirit; the material objects and processes which are perceived by the senses belong to the “World.” All the riddles which belong to Spirit and Matter, man must inevitably rediscover in the fundamental riddle of his own nature. Monism pays attention only to the unity and tries either to deny or to slur over the opposites, present though they are. Neither of these two points of view can satisfy us, for they do not do justice to the facts. The Dualist sees in Spirit (I) and Matter (World) two essentially different entities, and cannot, therefore, understand how they can interact with one another. How should Spirit be aware of what goes on in Matter, seeing that the essential nature of Matter is quite alien to Spirit? Or how in these circumstances should Spirit act upon Matter, so as to translate its intentions into actions? The most acute and the most absurd hypotheses have been propounded to answer these questions. However, up to the present the Monists are not in a much better position. They have tried three different ways of meeting the difficulty. Either they deny Spirit and become Materialists; or they deny Matter in order to seek their salvation in Spiritualism; [Editor's footnote: The author refers to philosophical “Spiritualism,” as opposed to philosophical “Materialism.” Cf. p. 15, last lines.] or they assert that, even in the simplest entities in the world, Spirit and Matter are indissolubly bound together, so that there is no need to marvel at the appearance in man of these two modes of existence, seeing that they are never found apart.

[ 5 ] Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of the world. For every attempt at an explanation must begin with the formation of thoughts about the phenomena of the world. Materialism, thus, begins with the thought of Matter or material processes. But, in doing so, it is ipso facto confronted by two different sets of facts, viz., the material world and the thoughts about it. The Materialist seeks to make these latter intelligible by regarding them as purely material processes. He believes that thinking takes place in the brain, much in the same way as digestion takes place in the animal organs. Just as he ascribes mechanical and organic processes to Matter, so he credits it with the capacity to think in certain circumstances. He overlooks that, in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem from one place to another. Instead of to himself he ascribes the power of thinking to Matter. And thus he is back again at his starting-point. How does Matter come to think about its own nature? Why is it not simply satisfied with itself and content to accept its own existence? The Materialist has turned his attention away from the definite subject, his own I, and occupies himself with an indefinite shadowy something. And here the old problem meets him again. The materialistic conception cannot solve the problem: it can only shift it to another place.

[ 6 ] What of the Spiritualistic theory? The Spiritualist denies to Matter all independent existence and regards it merely as a product of Spirit. But when he tries to apply this theory to the solution of the riddle of his own human nature, he finds himself in an awkward position. Over against the “I,” or Ego, which can be ranged on the side of Spirit, there stands directly the world of the senses. No spiritual approach to it seems open. It has to be perceived and experienced by the “I” with the help of material processes. Such material processes the “I” does not discover in itself, so long as it regards its own nature as exclusively spiritual. Within all that it achieves by its own spiritual effort, the sensible world is never to be found. It seems as if the “I” had to concede that the world would be a closed book to it, unless it could establish a non-spiritual relation to the world. Similarly, when it comes to acting, we have to translate our purposes into realities with the help of material things and forces. We are, therefore, dependent on the outer world. The most extreme Spiritualist, or, if you prefer it, Idealist, is Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He attempts to deduce the whole edifice of the world from the “I.” What he has actually accomplished is a magnificent thought-picture of the world, without any empirical content. As little as it is possible for the Materialist to argue the Spirit away, just as little is it possible for the Idealist to argue away the outer world of Matter.

[ 7 ] When man directs his consideration upon the “I,” he perceives, in the first instance, the work of this “I” in the conceptual elaboration of the world of Ideas. Hence a philosophy the direction of which is spiritualistic may feel tempted, in view of man's own essential nature, to acknowledge nothing of spirit except this world of Ideas. In this way Spiritualism becomes one-sided Idealism. Instead of going on to penetrate through the world of Ideas to the spiritual world, Idealism identifies the spiritual world with the world of Ideas itself. As a result, it is compelled to remain fixed with its world-view in the circle of the activity of the Ego, as if it were bewitched.

[ 8 ] A curious variant of Idealism is to be found in the theory which F. A. Lange has put forward in his widely read History of Materialism. He holds that the Materialists are quite right in declaring all phenomena, including our thoughts, to be the product of purely material processes, but, in turn, Matter and its processes are for him themselves the product of our thinking. “The senses give us only the effects of things, not true copies, much less the things themselves. But among these mere effects we must include the senses themselves together with the brain and the molecular vibrations which we assume to go on there.” That is, our thinking is produced by the material processes, and these by the thinking of our I. Lange's philosophy is thus nothing more than the philosophical analogy of the story of honest Baron Münchhausen, who holds himself up in the air by his own pigtail.

[ 9 ] The third form of Monism is that which finds even in the simplest being (the atom) the union of both Matter and Spirit. But nothing is gained by this either, except that the question, the origin of which is really in our consciousness, is shifted to another place. How comes it that the simple being manifests itself in a two-fold manner, if it is an indivisible unity?

[ 10 ] Against all these theories we must urge the fact that we meet with the basic and primary opposition first in our own consciousness. It is we, ourselves, who break away from the bosom of Nature and contrast ourselves as “I” with the “World.” Goethe has given classic expression to this in his essay Nature although his manner may at first sight be considered quite unscientific: “Living in the midst of her (Nature) we are strangers to her. Ceaselessly she speaks to us, yet betrays none of her secrets.” But Goethe knows the reverse side too: “Mankind is all in her, and she in all mankind.”

[ 11 ] However true it may be that we have estranged ourselves from Nature, it is none the less true that we feel we are in her and belong to her. It can be only her own working which pulsates also in us.

[ 12 ] We must find the way back to her again. A simple reflection may point this way out to us. We have, it is true, torn ourselves away from Nature, but we must none the less have taken with us something of her in our own nature. This quality of Nature in us we must seek out, and then we shall restore our connection with her. Dualism neglects to do this. It considers the human interior as a spiritual entity utterly alien to Nature and attempts somehow to hitch it on to Nature. No wonder that it cannot find the coupling link. We can find Nature outside of us only if we have first learnt to know her within us. What is allied to her within us must be our guide to her. This marks out our path of inquiry. We shall attempt no speculations concerning the interaction of Nature and Spirit. We shall rather probe into the depths of our own being, to find there those elements which we saved in our flight from Nature.

[ 13 ] The examination of our own being must bring the solution of the problem. We must reach a point where we can say, “Here we are no longer merely ‘I,’ here is something which is more than ‘I.’“

[ 14 ] I am well aware that many who have read thus far will not consider my discussion in keeping with “the present position of science.” To such criticism I can reply only that I have so far not been concerned with any scientific results, but simply with the description of what every one of us experiences in his own consciousness. That a few phrases have been added about attempts to reconcile man's consciousness and the World serves solely to elucidate the actual facts. I have, therefore, made no attempt to give to the expressions “I,” “Spirit,” “World,” “Nature,” the precise meaning which they usually bear in Psychology and Philosophy. The ordinary consciousness ignores the sharp distinctions of the sciences, and so far my purpose has been solely to record the facts of everyday experience. I am concerned, not with the way in which science, so far, has interpreted consciousness, but with the way in which we experience it in every moment of our lives.

[ 1 ] When I observe how a billiard ball, when struck, communicates its motion to another, I remain entirely without influence on the course of this observed process before me. The direction and velocity of the motion of, the second ball is determined by the direction and velocity of the first. As long as I remain a mere spectator, I cannot tell anything about the motion of the second ball until it has happened. It is quite different when I begin to reflect on the content of my observations. The purpose of my reflection is to form concepts of the occurrence. I connect the concept of an elastic ball with certain other concepts of mechanics, and consider the special circumstances which obtain in the instance in question. I try, in other words, to add to the occurrence which takes place without my assistance a second process which takes place in the conceptual sphere. This latter one is dependent on me. This is shown by the fact that I can rest content with the observation, and renounce all search for concepts if I have no need of them. If, however, this need is present, then I am not content until I have established a certain connection among the concepts, ball, elasticity, motion, impact, velocity, etc., so that they apply to the observed process in a definite way. As surely as the occurrence goes on independently of me, so surely is the conceptual process unable to take place without my activity.

[ 2 ] We shall have to consider whether this activity of mine really proceeds from my own independent being, or whether those modern physiologists are right who say that we cannot think as we will, but that we must think exactly as the thoughts and thought-connections determine, which happen to be in our consciousness at any given moment. (Cp. Ziehen, Leitfaden der Physiologischen Psychologie, Jena, 1893, p. 171.) For the present we wish merely to establish the fact that we constantly feel obliged to seek for concepts and connections of concepts, which stand in a certain relation to the objects and processes which are given independently of us. Whether this activity is really ours, or whether we are determined to it by an unalterable necessity, is a question which we need not decide at present. What is unquestionable is that the activity appears, in the first instance, to be ours. We know for certain that together with the objects we are not given their concepts. My being the agent in the conceptual process may be an illusion; but there is no doubt that to immediate observation it appears so. Our present question is, What do we gain by supplementing a process with a conceptual counterpart?

[ 3 ] There is a far-reaching difference between the ways in which, for me, the parts of a process are related to one another before, and after, the discovery of the corresponding concepts. Mere observation can trace the parts of a given process as they occur, but their connection remains obscure without the help of concepts. I observe the first billiard ball move towards the second in a certain direction and with a certain velocity. What will happen after the impact I cannot tell in advance. I can once more only watch it happen with my eyes. Suppose someone obstructs my view of the field where the process is happening, at the moment when the impact occurs, then, as mere spectator, I remain ignorant of what happens after. The situation is very different, if prior to the obstruction of my view I have discovered the concepts corresponding to the nexus of events. In that case I can say what occurs, even when I am no longer able to observe. There is nothing in a merely observed process or object to show its connection with other processes or objects. This connection becomes obvious only when observation is combined with thinking.

[ 4 ] Observation and Thinking are the two points of departure for all the spiritual striving of man, in so far as he is conscious of such striving. The workings of common sense, as well as the most complicated scientific researches, rest on these two fundamental pillars of our Spirit. Philosophers have started from various primary antitheses, Idea and Reality, Subject and Object, Appearance and Thing-in-itself, Ego and Non-Ego, Idea and Will, Concept and Matter, Force and Substance, the Conscious and the Unconscious. It is, however, easy to show that the antithesis of Observation and Thinking must precede all other antitheses, the former being for man the most important.

[ 5 ] Whatever principle we choose to lay down, we must either prove that somewhere we have observed it, or we must enunciate it in the form of a clear thought which can be re-thought by any other thinker. Every philosopher who sets out to discuss his fundamental principles must express them in conceptual form and thus use thinking. He therefore indirectly admits that his activity presupposes thinking. We leave open here the question whether thinking or something else is the chief factor in the development of the world. But it is at any rate clear that the philosopher can gain no knowledge of this development without thinking. In the occurrence of phenomena thought may play a secondary part, but it is quite certain that it plays a chief part in the forming of a view about them.

[ 6 ] As regards observation, our need of it is due to our organization. Our thought about a horse and the object “horse” are two things which for us emerge separate from each other. The object is accessible to us only by means of observation. As little as we can form a concept of a horse by merely staring at the animal, just as little are we able by mere thinking to produce the corresponding object.

[ 7 ] In sequence of time observation even precedes thinking. For we become familiar with thinking itself in the first instance by observation. It was essentially a description of an observation when, at the beginning of this chapter, we gave an account of how thinking is kindled by an objective event and transcends what is merely given without its activity. Whatever enters the circle of our experiences becomes an object of apprehension to us first through observation. All contents of sensations, all perceptions, feelings, acts of will, dreams and fancies, representations, concepts, Ideas, all illusions and hallucinations, are given to us through observation.

[ 8 ] But thinking as an object of observation differs essentially from all other objects. The observation of a table, or a tree, occurs in me as soon as those objects appear within the horizon of my field of consciousness. Yet I do not, at the same time, observe my thinking about these things. I observe the table, and I carry out the thinking about the table, but I do not at the same moment observe it. I must first take up a standpoint outside of my own activity, if I want to observe my thinking about the table, as well as the table. Whereas the observation of things and processes, and the thinking about them, are everyday occurrences making up the continuous current of my life, the observation of the thinking itself is a sort of exceptional state. This fact must be taken into account, when we come to determine the relation of thinking to all other objects. We must be quite clear about the fact that, in observing the thinking, we are applying to it a method which is our normal attitude in the study of all other contents of the world, but which in the ordinary course of that study is not usually applied to thinking itself.

[ 9 ] Someone might object that what I have said about thinking applies equally to feeling and to all other spiritual activities. Thus it is said that when, e.g., I have a feeling of pleasure, the feeling is kindled by the object, but it is this object I observe, not the feeling of pleasure. This objection, however, is based on an error. Pleasure does not stand at all in the same relation to its object as the concept formed by thinking. I am conscious, in the most positive way, that the concept of a thing is formed through my activity; whereas a feeling of pleasure is produced in me by an object in a way similar to that in which, e.g., a change is caused in an object by a stone which falls on it. For observation, a pleasure is given in exactly the same way as the event which causes it. The same is not true of the concept. I can ask why an event arouses in me a feeling of pleasure. But I certainly cannot ask why an occurrence causes in me a certain number of concepts. The question would be simply meaningless. In thinking about an occurrence, I am not concerned with an effect on me. I learn nothing about myself from knowing the concepts which correspond to the observed change caused in a pane of glass by a stone thrown against it. But I do learn something about my personality when I know the feeling which a certain occurrence arouses in me. When I say of an object which I perceive, “this is a rose,” I say absolutely nothing about myself; but when I say of the same thing that “it causes a feeling of pleasure in me,” I characterize not only the rose, but also myself in my relation to the rose.

[ 10 ] There can, therefore, be no question of putting thinking and feeling on a level as objects of observation. And the same could easily be shown of other activities of the human spirit. Unlike thinking, they must be classed with any other observed objects or events. The peculiar nature of thinking lies just in this, that it is an activity which is directed solely on the observed object and not on the thinking personality. This is apparent even from the way in which we express our thoughts about an object, as distinct from our feelings or acts of will. When I see an object and recognize it as a table, I do not as a rule say, “I am thinking of a table,” but, “this is a table.” On the other hand, I do say, “I am pleased with the table.” In the former case, I am not at all interested in stating that I have entered into a relation with the table; whereas, in the second case, it is just this relation which matters. In saying, “I am thinking of a table,” I enter already the exceptional state characterized above, in which something is made the object of observation which is always present in our spiritual activity, without being itself normally an observed object.

[ 11 ] The peculiar nature of thinking consists just in this, that the thinker forgets his thinking while actually engaged in it. It is not thinking which occupies his attention, but rather the object of the thinking which he observes.

[ 12 ] The first observation which we make about thinking is that it is the unobserved element in our ordinary spiritual life.

[ 13 ] The reason why we do not notice the thinking which goes on in our ordinary life is no other than this, that it is caused by our own activity. Whatever I do not myself produce appears in my field of consciousness as an object; I contrast it with myself as something the existence of which is independent of me. It comes to meet me. I must accept it as the presupposition of my thinking. As long as I think about the object, I am absorbed in it, my attention is turned on it. To be thus absorbed in the object is just to contemplate it by thinking. I attend, not to my activity, but to its object. In other words, whilst I am thinking, I pay no heed to my thinking which is of my own making, but only to the object of my thinking which is not of my making.

[ 14 ] I am, moreover, in exactly the same position when I enter into the exceptional state and reflect on own thinking. I can never observe my present thinking, I can only subsequently take my experiences about the process of my thinking as the object of fresh thinking. If I wanted to watch my present thinking, I should have to split myself into two persons, one to think, the other to observe this thinking. But this is impossible. I can only accomplish it in two separate acts. The thinking to be observed is never that in which I am actually engaged, but a different one. Whether, for this purpose, I make observations of my own former thinking, or follow the thinking-process of another person, or finally, as in the example of the motions of the billiard balls, assume an imaginary thinking-process, is immaterial.

[ 15 ] There are two things which are incompatible with one another: productive activity and the contemplation of it. This is recognized even in the First Book of Moses. It represents God as creating the world in the first six days, and only after its completion is any contemplation of the world possible: “And God saw everything that he had made and, behold, it was very good.” The same applies to our thinking. It must be there first, if we would observe it.

[ 16 ] The reason why it is impossible to observe the thinking in its actual occurrence at any given moment, is the same as that which makes it possible for us to know it more immediately and more intimately than any other process in the world. Just because it is our own creation do we know the characteristic features of its course, the manner in which the process, in detail, takes place. What in the other spheres of observation we can discover only indirectly, viz., the relevant objective nexus and the relations of the individual objects, that is known to us immediately in the case of thinking. I do not know off-hand why, for perception, thunder follows lightning, but I know immediately, from the content of the two concepts why my thinking connects the concept of thunder with that of lightning. It does not matter for my argument whether my concepts of thunder and lightning are correct. The connection between those concepts which I have is clear to me, and that by means of the very concepts themselves.

[ 17 ] This transparent clearness concerning our thinking-processes is quite independent of our knowledge of the physiological basis of thinking. I am speaking here of thinking as it appears to our observation of our own spiritual activity. For this purpose it is quite irrelevant how one material process in my brain causes or influences another, whilst I am carrying on a process of thinking. What I observe in thinking is not what process in my brain connects the concept of thunder with that of lightning, but what impels me to bring these two concepts into a definite relation. Observation shows that, in linking thought with thought, I am guided by nothing but their content, not by the material processes in the brain. This remark would be quite superfluous in a less materialistic age than ours. To-day, however, when there are people who believe that, when we know what matter is, we shall know also how it thinks, it is necessary to affirm the possibility of speaking of thinking without trespassing on the domain of brain physiology. Many people to-day find it difficult to grasp the concept of thinking in its purity. Anyone who challenges the description of thinking which I have given here, by quoting Cabanis' statement that “the brain secretes thoughts as the liver does gall or the spittle-glands spittle, etc.,” does not indeed know of what I am talking. He attempts to discover thinking by the same method of mere observation which we apply to the other objects that make up the world. But he cannot find it in this way, because, as I have shown, it eludes just this ordinary observation. Whoever cannot transcend Materialism lacks the ability to lead himself to the exceptional state I have described, in which he becomes conscious of what in all other spiritual activity remains unconscious. It is useless to discuss thinking with one who is not willing to adopt this attitude, just as it would be to discuss colour with a blind man. Let him not imagine, however, that we regard physiological processes as thinking. He fails to explain thinking because he does not see it at all.

[ 18 ] For everyone, however, who has the ability to observe thinking, and with goodwill every normal man has this ability, this observation is the most important he can make. For he observes something which he himself produces. He is not confronted by what is, to begin with, a foreign object, but by his own activity. He knows how that which he observes comes to be. He perceives clearly its connections and relations. He has gained a firm point from which he can, with well-founded hopes, seek an explanation of the other phenomena of the world.

[ 19 ] The feeling that he had found such a firm foundation, induced the father of modern philosophy, Descartes, to base the whole of human knowledge, on the principle, “I think, therefore I am.” All other things, all other processes, are there independently of me. Whether they be truth, or illusion, or dream, I know not. There is only one thing of which I am absolutely certain, for I myself am the author of its indubitable existence; and that is my thinking. Whatever other origin it may have in addition, whether it come from God or from elsewhere, of one thing I am sure, that it is there in the sense that I myself produce it. Descartes had, to begin with, no justification for reading any other meaning into his principle. All he had a right to assert was that, in apprehending myself as thinking, I apprehend myself, within the world-system, in that activity which is most uniquely my own. What the added words “therefore I am” are intended to mean has been much debated. They can have a meaning on one condition only. The simplest assertion I can make of a thing is, that it is, that it exists. What kind of existence, in detail, it has, can in no case be determined on the spot, as soon as the thing enters within the horizon of my experience. Each object must be studied in its relations to others, before we can determine the sense in which we can speak of its existence. An experienced process may be a complex of percepts, or it may be a dream, an hallucination, etc. In short, I cannot say in what sense it exists. I can never read off the kind of existence from the process itself, for I can discover it only when I consider the process in its relation to other things. But this, again, yields me no knowledge beyond just its relation to other things. My inquiry touches firm ground only when I find an object, the reason of the existence of which I can gather from itself. Such an object I am myself in so far as I think, for I qualify my existence by the determinate and self-contained content of my thinking activity. From here I can go on to ask whether other things exist in the same or in some other sense.

[ 20 ] When thinking is made an object of observation, something which usually escapes our attention is added to the other observed contents of the world. But the usual kind of behaviour, such as is employed also for other objects, is in no way altered. We add to the number of objects of observation, but not to the number of methods. When we are observing other things, there enters among the world-processes—among which I now include observation—one process which is overlooked. There is present something different from every other kind of process, something which is not taken into account. But when I observe my own thinking, there is no such neglected element present. For what hovers now in the background is just thinking itself over again. The object of observation is qualitatively identical with the activity directed upon it. This is another characteristic feature of thinking. When we make it an object of observation, we are not compelled to do so with the help of something qualitatively different, but can remain within the same element.

[ 21 ] When I weave a tissue of thoughts round an independently given object, I transcend my observation, and the question then arises: What right have I to do this? Why do I not passively let the object impress itself on me? How is it possible for my thinking to be related to the object? These are questions which everyone must put to himself who reflects on his own thought-processes. But all these questions lapse when we think about thinking itself. We then add nothing to our thinking that is foreign to it, and, therefore, have no need to justify any such addition.

[ 22 ] Schelling says: “To know Nature means to create Nature.” If we take these words of this daring philosopher of Nature literally, we shall have to renounce for ever all hope of gaining knowledge of Nature. For Nature after all exists, and if we have to create it over again, we must know the principles according to which it has originated in the first instance. We should have to borrow from Nature as it exists the conditions of existence for the Nature which we are about to create. But this borrowing, which would have to precede the creating, would be a knowing of Nature, and would be this even if after the borrowing no creation at all were attempted. Only a kind of Nature which does not yet exist could be created without prior knowledge.

[ 23 ] What is impossible with regard to Nature, namely, creating before knowing, is accomplished with regard to thinking. Were we to refrain from thinking until we had first gained knowledge of it, we should never attain it. We must resolutely think straight ahead, and then afterwards gain knowledge of the thinking we have done by observing it. When we want to observe thinking, we must ourselves first create the object to be observed: the existence of all other objects is provided for us without any activity on our part.

[ 24 ] My contention that we must think before we can examine thinking, might easily be countered by the apparently equally valid contention that we cannot wait with digesting until we have first observed the process of digestion. This objection would be similar to that brought by Pascal against Descartes, when he asserted we might also say “I walk, therefore I am.” Certainly I must digest resolutely and not wait until I have studied the physiological process of digestion. But I could only compare this with the analysis of thinking if, after digestion, I set myself not to analyse it by thinking, but to eat and digest it. It is not without reason that, while digestion cannot become the object of digestion, thinking can very well become the object of thinking.

[ 25 ] This then is indisputable, that in thinking we have got hold of one bit of the world-process which requires our presence if anything is to happen. And that is the very point that matters. The very reason why things seem so puzzling is just that I play no part in their production. They are simply given to me, whereas in the case of thinking I know how it is done. Hence there can be no more fundamental starting-point than thinking from which to regard all world-happenings.

[ 26 ] I should like to mention a widely current error which prevails with regard to thinking. It is often said that thinking, in its original nature, is never given. The thinking-processes which connect our perceptions with one another, and weave about them a network of concepts, are not at all the same as those which our analysis afterwards extracts from the objects of perception, in order to make them the object of study. What we have unconsciously woven into things is, so we are told, something widely different from what subsequent analysis recovers out of them.

[ 27 ] Those who hold this view do not see that it is impossible in this way to escape from thinking. I cannot get outside thinking when I want to study it. We should never forget that the distinction between thinking which goes on unconsciously and thinking which is consciously analysed is a purely external one and irrelevant to our discussion. I do not in any way alter a thing by making it an object of thinking. I can well imagine that a being with quite different sense-organs, and with a differently constructed intelligence, would have a very different representation of a horse from mine, but I cannot think that my own thinking becomes different because I observe it. I myself observe what I produce. We are not talking here of how my thinking appears to an intelligence different from mine, but how it appears to me. In any case, the representation which another intelligence forms of my thinking cannot be truer than the one which I form myself. Only if I were not myself the thinking being, but the thinking were transmitted to me as the activity of a quite foreign being, might I then so speak that my picture of thinking appeared indeed in a definite manner; but how the thinking of the being may be itself, that I should not be able to know.

[ 28 ] So far, there is not the slightest reason why I should regard my own thinking from any other point of view than my own. I contemplate the rest of the world by means of thinking. How should I make of my thinking an exception?

[ 29 ] I think I have given sufficient reasons for making thinking the starting-point for my study of the world. When Archimedes had discovered the lever, he thought he could lift the whole cosmos from its hinges, if only he could find a point of support for his instrument. He needed a point which was self-supporting. In thought we have a principle which is self-subsisting. Let us try, therefore, to understand the world starting from this basis. Thinking can be grasped by itself. The question is whether we can also grasp anything else through it.

[ 30 ] I have so far spoken of thinking without taking account of its vehicle, the human consciousness. Most present-day philosophers would object that before there can be thinking, there must be consciousness. Hence we ought to start, not from thinking, but from consciousness. There is no thinking, they say, without consciousness. In reply I would urge that, in order to clear up the relation between thinking and consciousness, I must think about it. Hence I presuppose thinking. One might, it is true, retort that, though a philosopher who wishes to understand consciousness, naturally makes use of thinking, and so far presupposes it; in the ordinary course of life, however, thinking arises within consciousness and, therefore, presupposes that.

Were this answer given to the world-creator, when he was about to create thought, it would, without doubt, be to the point. Thinking cannot, of course, come into being before consciousness. The philosopher, however, is not concerned with the creation of the world, but with the understanding of it. Hence he is in search of the starting-point, not for creation, but for the understanding of the world. It seems to me very strange that a philosopher is reproached for troubling himself, above all, about the correctness of his principles, instead of turning straight to the objects which he seeks to understand. The world-creator had above all to know how to find a vehicle for thinking; the philosopher must seek a firm basis for the understanding of what is existent. What does it help us to start with consciousness and make it an object of thinking, if we do not first know how far it is possible at all to gain any insight into things by thinking?

[ 31 ] We must first consider thinking quite impartially without relation to a thinking subject or to an object of thought. For subject and object are both concepts formed by thinking. There is no denying that thinking must be understood before anything else can be understood. Whoever denies this, fails to realize that man is not the first link in the chain of creation but the last. Hence, in order to explain the world by means of concepts, we cannot start from the elements of existence which came first in time, but we must begin with that element which is nearest and most intimately connected with us. We cannot, with a leap, transport ourselves to the beginning of the world, in order to begin our analysis there, but we must start from the present moment and see whether we cannot advance from the later to the earlier. As long as Geology fabled fantastic revolutions to account for the present state of the earth, it groped in darkness. It was only when it began to study the processes at present at work on the earth, and from these to argue back to the past, that it gained a firm foundation. As long as Philosophy assumes all sorts of principles, such as atom, motion, matter, will, the unconscious, it will hang in the air. The philosopher can reach his goal only if he adopts that which is last in time as the first in his theory. This absolutely last thing in the world-process is indeed Thinking.

[ 32 ] There are people who say it is impossible to ascertain with certainty whether our thinking is right or wrong, and that, so far, our starting-point is a doubtful one. It would be just as intelligent to raise doubts as to whether a tree is in itself right or wrong. Thinking is a fact, and it is meaningless to speak of truth or falsity of a fact. I can, at most, be in doubt as to whether thinking is rightly employed, just as I can doubt whether a certain tree supplies wood adapted to the making of this or that useful object. It is just the purpose of this book to show how far the application of thinking to the world is right or wrong. I can understand anyone doubting whether, by means of thinking, we can gain any knowledge of the world, but it is unintelligible to me how anyone can doubt that thinking in itself is right.

Addition to the Revised Edition, 1918

[ 33 ] In the preceding discussion I have pointed out the important difference between thinking and all other soul activities. This difference is a fact which is patent to genuinely unprejudiced observation. Anyone who does not try to apply this unprejudiced observation will be tempted to bring against my argumentation such objections as these: When I think about a rose, there is involved nothing more than a relation of my “I” to the rose, just as when I feel the beauty of the rose. There subsists likewise a relation between “I” and object in thinking as there does, e.g., in feeling or perceiving. Those who urge this objection fail to bear in mind that it is only in the activity of thinking that the “I,” or Ego, knows itself to be identical, right into all the ramifications of the activity, with that which is active. Of no other soul activity can we say the same. For example, in a feeling of pleasure it is easy for a more intimate observation to discriminate between the extent to which the Ego knows itself to be identical with what is active in the feeling, and the extent to which there is something passive in the Ego, so that the pleasure is merely something which happens to the Ego. The same applies to the other soul activities. The main thing is not to confuse the “having of thought images” with the elaboration of thought by thinking. Images may appear in the soul dream-wise, like vague intimations. But this is not thinking. True, someone might now urge: If this is what you mean by “thinking,” then your thinking contains willing, and you have to do, not with mere thinking, but with the will to think as well. However, this would justify us only in saying: Genuine thinking must always be willed thinking. But this is quite irrelevant to the characterization of thinking as this has been given in the preceding discussion. Let it be granted that the nature of thinking necessarily implies its being willed, the point which matters is that nothing is willed which, in being carried out, fails to appear to the Ego as an activity completely its own and under its own supervision. Indeed, we must say that thinking appears to the observer as through and through willed, precisely because of its nature as above defined. If we genuinely try to master all the facts which are relevant to a judgment about the nature of thinking, we cannot fail to observe that this soul activity has the unique character which is here in question.

[ 34 ] A personality of whose powers as a thinker the author of this book has a very high opinion, has objected that it is impossible to speak about thinking as we are here doing, because the presumably observed active thinking is nothing but an illusion. In reality, what is observed is only the results of an unconscious activity which lies at the basis of thinking. It is only because, and just because, this unconscious activity escapes observation, that the deceptive appearance of the self-subsistence of the observed thinking arises, just as when an illumination by means of a rapid succession of electric sparks makes us believe that we see a movement. This objection, likewise, rests solely on an inaccurate view of the facts. The objection ignores that it is the Ego itself which, standing inside thinking, observes from within its own activity. The Ego would have to stand outside the thinking in order to suffer the sort of deception which is caused by an illumination with a rapid succession of electric sparks. One might rather say that to indulge in such an analogy is to deceive oneself by force, just as if someone, seeing a moving light, were obstinately to affirm that it is being freshly lit by an unknown hand at every point where it appears. No, whoever is bent on seeing in thinking anything else than an activity produced—and supervised by—the Ego has first to shut his eyes to the plain facts that are there for the looking, in order then to invent a hypothetical activity as the basis of thinking. If he does not blind himself by force, he must recognize that all these “hypothetical additions” to thinking take him away from its real nature. Unprejudiced observation shows that nothing is to be counted as belonging to the nature of thinking except what is found in thinking itself. It is impossible to discover what causes thinking if one leaves the realm of thinking.

[ 1 ] Concepts and Ideas ¹ arise through thinking. What a concept is cannot be expressed in words. Words can do no more than draw our attention to the fact that we have concepts. When someone sees a tree, his thinking reacts to the stimulus of this observation. Thus an ideal element is added to the perceived object, and the perceiver regards the object and its ideal complement as belonging together. When the object disappears from the field of his observation, the ideal counterpart alone remains. This latter is the concept of the object. The wider the range of our experience, the larger becomes the sum of our concepts. Moreover, concepts are not by any means found in isolation one from the other. They combine to form a whole ruled by law. The concept “organism,” e.g., combines with those of “development according to law,” “growth,” and others. Other concepts based on particular objects fuse completely with one another. All concepts formed from particular lions fuse in the collective concept “lion.” In this way, all the separate concepts combine to form a closed, conceptual system within which each has its special place. “Ideas” do not differ qualitatively from concepts. They are but fuller, more saturated, more comprehensive concepts. I must attach special importance to the necessity of bearing in mind, here, that I make thinking my starting-point, and not concepts and Ideas which are first gained by means of thinking. These latter presuppose thinking. My remarks regarding the self-dependent, self-sufficient character of thinking cannot, therefore, be simply transferred to concepts. (I make special mention of this, because it is here that I differ from Hegel, who regards the concept as something primary and original.)

[ 2 ] Concepts cannot be gained from observation. This is apparent from the fact that, as man grows up, he slowly and gradually forms the concepts corresponding to the objects which surround him. Concepts are added to observation.

[ 3 ] A philosopher, widely read at the present day—Herbert Spencer—describes the mental process which we perform upon observation as follows:

[ 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 towards the spot to learn by what this sound and motion are produced. As you approach there flutters into the ditch a partridge; on seeing this your curiosity is satisfied—you have what you call an explanation of the appearances. The explanation, mark, amounts to this—that whereas throughout 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” (First Principles, Part I, par. 23). A closer analysis leads to a very different description from that here given. When I hear a noise, my first demand is for the concept which fits this observation. It is this concept only which points beyond the noise. Whoever does not reflect further, hears just the noise and is satisfied with that. But my reflecting makes it clear to me that the noise is to be regarded as an effect. Thus it is only when I combine the concept of effect with the percept of a noise that I am led to go beyond the particular observation and seek for its cause. The concept of “effect” calls up that of “cause,” and my next step is to look for the agent, which I find, say, in a partridge. But these concepts, cause and effect, can never be gained through mere observation, however many instances we bring under review. Observation evokes thinking, and it is this which shows me how to link separate experiences together.

[ 5 ] If one demands of a “strictly objective science” that it should take its data from observation alone, one must demand also that it abandon all thinking. For thinking, by its very nature, transcends the objects of observation.

[ 6 ] It is time now to pass from thought to the thinking being. For it is through the thinker that thinking is combined with observation. The human consciousness is the stage on which concept and observation meet and are linked to one another. In saying this, we already characterize this (human) consciousness. It mediates between thinking and observation. In so far as we observe an object, it seems to be given; in so far as we think, we appear to ourselves as being active. We regard the thing as object and ourselves as the thinking subject. When thinking is directed upon the observation we have consciousness of objects; when it is directed upon ourselves we have consciousness of ourselves or self-consciousness. Human consciousness must, of necessity, be at the same time self-consciousness, because it is a consciousness which thinks. For, when thinking contemplates its own activity it makes an object for study of its own essential nature, it makes an object of itself as subject.

[ 7 ] It must not be overlooked that it is only by means of thinking that I am able to determine myself as subject and contrast myself with objects, Therefore, thinking must never be regarded as a merely subjective activity. Thinking transcends the distinction of subject and object. It produces these two concepts just as it produces all others. When, therefore, I, as thinking subject, refer a concept to an object, we must not regard this reference as something purely subjective. It is not the subject, but thinking which makes the reference. The subject does not think because it is a subject, rather it conceives itself to be a subject because it can think. The activity performed by man as a thinking being is thus not merely subjective. Rather it is neither subjective nor objective; it transcends both these concepts. I ought never to say that my individual subject thinks but rather that I myself, as “subject,” exist by the grace of thinking. Thinking is thus an element which leads me beyond myself and relates me to objects. At the same time it separates me from them, inasmuch as it sets me, as subject, over against them.

[ 8 ] It is just this which constitutes the double nature of man. He thinks and thereby embraces himself and the rest of the world. But by this same act of thought he determines himself also as an individual, standing over against the things, as subject.

[ 9 ] We must next ask ourselves how the other element, which we have so far simply called the object of observation and which comes, in consciousness, into contact with thinking, enters into consciousness at all?

[ 10 ] In order to answer this question, we must eliminate from the field of observation everything which has been imported by thinking. For, at any moment, the content of our consciousness is always shot through with concepts in the most varied ways.

[ 11 ] Let us imagine that a being with fully developed human intelligence originated out of nothing and confronted the world. All that it there perceived before its thinking began to act would be the pure content of observation. The world so far would appear to this being as a mere chaotic aggregate of objects of sensation—colours, sounds, sensations of pressure, of warmth, of taste, of smell, and, further, feelings of pleasure and pain. This aggregation constitutes the world of pure unthinking observation. Over it stands thinking, ready to begin its activity as soon as it can find a point of attack. Experience shows that the opportunity is not long in coming. Thinking is able to draw threads from one element of observation to another. It links definite concepts with these elements and thus establishes a relation between them. We have seen above how a noise which we hear is connected with another observation by our identifying the first as the effect of the second.

[ 12 ] If now we recollect that the activity of thinking is on no account to be considered as merely subjective, then we shall not be tempted to believe that the relations thus established by thinking have merely subjective validity.

[ 13] Our next task is to discover by means of thinking reflection what relation the above-mentioned immediately given content of observation has to the conscious subject.

[ 14 ] The ambiguity of current speech makes it advisable for me to come to an agreement with my readers concerning the meaning of a word which I shall have to employ in what follows. I shall apply the word “percepts” to the immediate objects of sensation enumerated above, in so far as the conscious subject apprehends them through observation. It is, then, not the process of observation, but the object of observation which I call the “percept.”

[ 15 ] I do not choose the term “sensation,” because this has a definite meaning in Physiology which is narrower than that of my concept of “percept.” I can speak of a feeling as a percept, but not as a sensation in the physiological sense of the term. I have knowledge of my feeling through its becoming a percept for me. The manner in which, through observation, we gain knowledge of our thinking is such that thinking, too, may be called a percept, when it first appears before our consciousness.

[ 16 ] The unreflective man regards his percepts, such as they appear to his immediate apprehension, as things having an existence wholly independent of him. When he sees a tree he believes in the first instance that it stands in the form which he sees, with the colours of all its parts, etc., there on the spot towards which his gaze is directed. When the same man sees the sun in the morning appear as a disc on the horizon, and follows the course of this disc, he believes that the phenomenon exists and occurs (by itself) exactly as he observes it. To this belief he clings until he meets with further percepts which contradict his former ones. The child who has as yet had no experience of distance grasps at the moon, and does not correct its first impression as to the real distance until a second percept contradicts the first. Every extension of the circle of my percepts compels me to correct my picture of the world. We see this in everyday life, as well as in the spiritual development of mankind. The picture which the ancients made for themselves of the relation of the earth to the sun and other heavenly bodies had to be replaced by another when Copernicus found that it was not in accordance with some percepts which in those early days were unknown. A man who had been born blind said, when operated on by Dr. Franz, that the idea of the size of objects which he had formed before his operation by his sense of touch was a very different one. He had to correct his tactual percepts by his visual percepts.

[ 17 ] How is it that we are compelled to make these continual corrections in our observations?

[ 18 ] A simple reflection supplies the answer to this question. When I stand at one end of an avenue, the trees at the other end, away from me, seem smaller and nearer together than those where I stand. My percept-picture changes when I change the place from which I am looking. The form in which it presents itself to me is, therefore, dependent on a condition which inheres, not in the object, but in me, the percipient. It is all the same to the avenue where I stand. But the picture of it which I receive depends essentially on my standpoint. In the same way, it makes no difference to the sun and the planetary system that human beings happen to look at them from the earth; but the percept-picture of the heavens which human beings have is determined by the fact that they inhabit the earth. This dependence of our percept-picture on our places of observation is most easy to understand. The matter becomes more difficult when we realize further that our perceptual world is dependent on our bodily and spiritual organization. The physicist teaches us that within the space in which we hear a sound there are vibrations of the air, and that also there are vibrations in the particles of the body in which we seek the cause of the sound. These vibrations are perceived as sounds only if we have normally constructed ears. Without them the whole world would be for us for ever silent. Again, physiology teaches us that there are men who perceive nothing of the wonderful display of colours which surrounds us. In their percept-picture there are only degrees of light and dark. Others are blind only to one colour, e.g., red. Their world picture lacks this colour tone, and hence it is actually a different one from that of the average man. I should like to call the dependence of my percept-picture on my point of observation “mathematical,” and its dependence on my organization “qualitative.” The former determines the proportions of size and mutual distances of my percepts, the latter their quality. The fact that I see a red surface as red—this qualitative determination—depends on the organization of my eye.

[ 19 ] My percept-pictures, then, are in the first instance subjective. The recognition of the subjective character of our percepts may easily lead us to doubt whether there is any objective basis for them at all. When we know that a percept, e.g., that of a red colour or of a certain tone, is not possible without a specific structure of our organism, we may easily be led to believe that it has no being at all apart from our subjective organization, that it has no kind of existence apart from the act of perceiving of which it is the object. The classical representative of this theory is George Berkeley, who held that from the moment we realize the importance of the subject for perception, we are no longer able to believe in the existence of a world apart from a conscious Spirit. “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, viz., that all the choir of heaven and the furniture of the earth—in a word, all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world—have not any subsistence without a mind; that their being consists in their being 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.” (Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, Part I, Section 6.)

On this view, when we take away the fact of its being perceived, nothing remains of the percept. There is no colour when none is seen, no sound when none is heard. Extension, form, and motion exist as little as colour and sound apart from the act of perception. We never perceive bare extension or shape. These are always joined with colour or some other quality, which are undoubtedly dependent on our subjectivity. If these latter disappear when we cease to perceive, the former, being connected with them, must disappear likewise.

[ 20 ] If it is urged that, even though figure, colour, sound, etc., have no existence except within the act of perception, yet there must be things which exist apart from consciousness and to which the conscious percept-pictures are similar, then the view we have mentioned would answer, that a colour can be similar only to a colour, a figure to a figure. Our percepts can be similar only to our percepts and to nothing else.. Even what we call a thing is nothing but a collection of percepts which are connected in a definite way. If I strip a table of its shape, extension colour, etc.—in short, of all that is merely my percepts—then nothing remains over. If we follow this view to its logical conclusion, we are led to the assertion that the objects of my perceptions exist only through me, and indeed only in as far as, and as long as, I perceive them. They disappear with my perceiving and have no meaning apart from it. Apart from my percepts, however, I know of no objects and cannot know of any.

[ 21 ] No objection can be made to this assertion as long as we take into account merely the general fact that the percept depends partly on the organization of the subject. The matter would be far otherwise if we were in a position to say what part exactly is played by our perceiving in the bringing forth of a percept. We should know then what happens to a percept whilst it is being perceived, and we should also be able to determine what character it must already possess before it comes to be perceived.

[ 22 ] This leads us to turn our attention from the object of a percept to the perceiving subject. I am aware not only of other things but also of myself. The content of my percept of myself consists, in the first instance, in being something stable in contrast with the ever coming and going flux of percept-pictures. The perception of the I can always come forth in my consciousness alongside of all other percepts. When I am absorbed in the perception of a given object I am, for the time being, aware only of this object. To this, then, the percept of my Self can come. I am then conscious, not only of the object, but also of my Self as opposed to and observing the object. I do not merely see a tree, I know also that it is I who see it. I know, moreover, that some process takes place in me when I observe the tree. When the tree disappears from my field of vision, an after-effect of this process remains in my consciousness, viz., an image of the tree. This image has become associated with my Self during my observation. My Self has become enriched; to its content a new element has been added. This element I call my representation ² of the tree. I should never have occasion to talk of representations did I not experience them in the percept of my own Self. Percepts would come and go; I should let them slip by. Only because I perceive my Self, and observe that with each percept the content of the Self, too, is changed, I am compelled to connect the observation of the object with the changes in my own condition, and to speak of my representation.

[ 23 ] I perceive the representation in my Self in the same sense as I perceive colour, sound, etc., in other objects. I am now also able to distinguish these other objects, which stand over against me, by the name of the outer world, whereas the contents of my percept of my Self form my inner world. The failure to recognize the true relation between representation and object has led to the greatest misunderstandings in modern philosophy. The fact that I perceive a change in my Self, that my Self undergoes a modification, has been thrust into the foreground, whilst the object which causes these modifications is altogether lost sight of. It has been said that we perceive, not objects, but only our representations. I know, so it is said, nothing of the table in itself, which is the object of my observation, but only of the changes which occur within me when I perceive a table. This view should not be confused with the Berkeleyan theory mentioned above. Berkeley maintains the subjective nature of my perceptual contents, but he does not say that I can know only my own representations. He limits my knowledge to my representations because, in his opinion, there are no objects outside the act of representing. What I take as a table no longer exists, according to Berkeley, when I cease to look at it. This is why Berkeley holds that our percepts are created directly by the omnipotence of God. I see a table because God causes this percept in me. For Berkeley therefore, nothing is real except God and human spirits. What we call the “world” exists only in spirits. What the naive man calls the outer world, or corporeal nature, is for Berkeley non-existent. This theory is confronted by the now predominant Kantian view which limits our knowledge of the world to our representations, not because of any conviction that nothing beyond these representations exists, but because it holds that we are so organized that we can experience only the changes of our own selves, not the things which cause these changes. This view concludes from the fact that I know only my representations, not that there is no reality independent of them, but only that the subject cannot have direct knowledge of such reality. The subject can merely “through the medium of its subjective thoughts imagine it, invent it, think it, cognize it, or perhaps even fail to cognize it.” (O. Liebmann, Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit, p. 28.) This (Kantian) conception believes it gives expression to something absolutely certain, indeed immediately evident, without any proof. “The most fundamental principle which the philosopher must bring to clear consciousness, consists in the recognition that our knowledge, in the first instance, is limited to our representations. Our representations are all that we immediately experience, and just because we have immediate experience of them the most radical doubt cannot rob us of our knowledge of them. On the other hand, the knowledge which transcends my representations—taking representations here in the widest possible sense, so as to include all psychical processes—is not proof against doubt. Hence, at the very beginning of all philosophizing we must explicitly set down all knowledge which transcends representations as open to doubt.” These are the opening sentences of Volkelt's book on Kant's Theory of Knowledge. What is here put forward as an immediate and self-evident truth is, in reality, the conclusion of a line of argument which runs as follows. Naive common sense believes that things, just as we perceive them, exist also outside our consciousness. Physics, Physiology, and Psychology, however, seem to teach us that for our percepts our organization is necessary, and that, therefore, we cannot know anything about external objects except what our organization transmits to us. Our percepts are thus modifications of our organization, not things-in-themselves. This train of thought has, in fact, been characterized by Ed. von Hartmann as the one which leads necessarily to the conviction that we can have direct knowledge only of our own representations (cf. his Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie, pp. 16 – 40). Because outside our organisms we find vibrations of physical bodies and of air, which are perceived by us as sounds, it is concluded that what we call sound is nothing more than a subjective reaction of our organisms to these motions in the external world. Similarly, colour and heat are inferred to be merely modifications of our organisms. And, further, these two. kinds of percepts are held to be produced in us through processes in the external world which are utterly different from what we experience as heat or as colour. When these processes stimulate the nerves in the skin of my body, I have the subjective percept of heat; when they stimulate the optical nerve I perceive light and colour. Light, colour, and heat, then, are the reactions of my sensory nerves to external stimuli. Similarly, the sense of touch reveals to me, not the objects of the outer world, but only states of my own body. In the sense of modern Physics one could somehow think that bodies are composed of infinitely small particles called molecules, and that these molecules are not in direct contact with one another, but have definite intervals between them. Between them, therefore, is empty space. Across this space they act on one another by attraction and repulsion. If I put my hand on a body, the molecules of my hand by no means touch those of the body directly, but there remains a certain distance between body and hand, and what I experience as the body's resistance is nothing but the effect of the force of repulsion which its molecules exert on my hand. I am absolutely external to the body and perceive only its effects on my organism.

[ 24 ] The theory of the so-called Specific Nervous Energy, which has been advanced by J. Müller (1801–1858), supplements these considerations. It asserts that each sense has the peculiarity that it reacts to all external stimuli in only one definite way. If the optic nerve is stimulated, light sensations result, irrespective of whether the stimulation is due to what we call light, or to mechanical pressure, or an electrical current. On the other hand, the same external stimulus applied to different senses gives rise to different percepts. The conclusion from these facts seems to be, that our sense-organs can only transmit what occurs in themselves, but nothing of the external world. They determine our percepts, each according to its own nature.

[ 25 ] Physiology shows, further, that there can be no direct knowledge even of the effects which objects produce on our sense-organs. Through following up the processes which occur in our own bodies, the physiologist finds that, even in the sense-organs, the effects of the external vibrations are modified in the most diverse ways. We can see this most clearly in the case of eye and ear. Both are very complicated organs which modify the external stimulus considerably, before they conduct it to the corresponding nerve. From the peripheral end of the nerve the modified stimulus is then conducted to the brain. Here the central organs must in turn be stimulated. The conclusion is, therefore, drawn that the external process undergoes a series of transformations before it reaches consciousness. What goes on in the brain is connected by so many intermediate links with the external process, that any similarity to the latter is out of the question. What the brain ultimately transmits to the soul is neither external processes, nor processes in the sense-organs, but only such as occur in the brain. But even these are not perceived immediately by the soul. What we finally have in consciousness are not brain processes at all, but sensations. My sensation of red has absolutely no similarity to the process which occurs in the brain when I sense red. The sensation, again, occurs as an effect in the soul, and the brain process is only its cause. This is why Hartmann (Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie, p. 37) says, “What the subject perceives is therefore only modifications of his own physical states and nothing else.” However, when I have sensations, they are very far as yet from being grouped in what I perceive as “things.” Only single sensations can be transmitted to me by the brain. The sensations of hardness and softness are transmitted to me by the organ of touch, those of colour and light by the organ of sight. Yet all these are to be found united in one and the same object. The unification must, therefore, be brought about by the soul itself; that is, the soul combines the separate sensations, mediated through the brain, into bodies. My brain conveys to me singly, and by widely different paths, the visual, tactual, and auditory sensations which the soul then combines into the representation of a trumpet. Thus, this last link of a process (i.e., the representation of a trumpet), is for my consciousness the primary datum. In this result nothing can any longer be found of what exists outside me and originally impressed my sense-organs. The external object is lost entirely on the way to the brain and through the brain to the soul.

[ 26 ] It would be hard to find in the history of human spiritual life another edifice of thought which has been built up with greater ingenuity, and which yet, on closer analysis, collapses into nothing. Let us look a little closer at the way it has been constructed. The theory starts with what is given in naive consciousness, i.e., with things as perceived. It proceeds to show that none of the qualities which we find in these things would exist for us, had we no sense-organs. No eye—no colour. Therefore, the colour is not, as yet, present in that which affects the eye. It arises first through the interaction of the eye and the object. The latter is, therefore, colourless. But neither is the colour in the eye, for in the eye there is only a chemical, or physical, process which is first conducted by the optic nerve to the brain, and there initiates another process. Even this is not yet the colour. That is only produced in the soul by means of the brain process. Even then it does not yet enter my consciousness, but is first referred by the soul to a body in the external world. There, upon this body, I finally believe myself to perceive it. We have traveled in a complete circle. We are conscious of a coloured object. That is the starting-point. Here the thought-operation begins. If I had no eye, the object would be, for me, colourless. I cannot, therefore, attribute the colour to the object. I start on the search for it. I look for it in the eye—in vain; in the nerve—in vain; in the brain—in vain once more; in the soul—here I find it indeed, but not attached to the object. I recover the coloured body only on returning to my starting-point. The circle is completed. I believe that I am cognizing as a product of my soul that which the naive man regards as existing outside him, in space.

[ 27 ] As long as one stops here everything seems to fit beautifully. But we must go over the circle once more from the beginning. Hitherto I have used, as my starting-point, the object, i.e., the external percept of which up to now, from my naive standpoint, I had a totally wrong conception. I thought that the percept, just as I perceive it, had objective existence. But now I observe that it disappears with my act of representation, that it is only a modification of my soul condition. Have I, then, any right at all to start from it in my arguments? Can I say of it that it acts on my soul? I must henceforth treat the table of which formerly I believed that it acted on me and produced a representation of itself in me, as itself a representation. But from this it follows logically that my sense-organs, and the processes in them are also merely subjective. I have no right to talk of a real eye but only of my representation of the eye. Exactly the same is true of the nerve paths, and the brain process, and even of the process in the soul itself, through which things are supposed to be constructed out of the chaos of manifold sensations. If assuming the truth of the first circle of argumentation, I run through the steps of my act of cognition once more, the latter reveals itself as a tissue of representations which, as such, cannot act on one another. I cannot say that my representation of the object acts on my representation of the eye, and that from this interaction, results my representation of colour. Nor is it necessary that I should say this. For as soon as I see clearly that my sense-organs and their activity, my nerve- and soul-processes, can also be known to me only through perception, the train of thought which I have outlined reveals itself in its full absurdity. It is quite true that I can have no percept without the corresponding sense-organ. But just as little can I be aware of a sense-organ without perception. From the percept of a table I can pass to the eye which sees it, or the nerves in the skin which touch it, but what takes place in these I can, in turn, learn only from perception. And then I soon notice that there is no trace of similarity between the process which takes place in the eye and the colour which I perceive. I cannot get rid of my colour percept by pointing to the process which takes place in the eye during this perception. No more can I rediscover the colour in the nerve- or brain-processes. I only add new percepts, localized within the organism, to the first percept which the naive man localizes outside his organism. I only pass from one percept to another.

[ 28 ] Moreover, there is a break in the whole argument. I can follow the processes in my organism up to those in my brain, even though my assumptions become more and more hypothetical as I approach the central processes of the brain. The method of external observation ceases with the process in my brain, more particularly with the process which I should observe, if I could treat the brain with the instruments and methods of Physics and Chemistry. The method of internal observation begins with the sensation, and continues up to the combination of things out of the material of sensation. At the point of transition from brain-process to sensation, there is a break in the sequence of observation.

[ 29 ] The view which I have here described, and which calls itself Critical Idealism, in contrast to the standpoint of naive consciousness which it calls Naive Realism, makes the mistake of characterizing the one percept as representation, whilst taking the other in the very same sense as the Naive Realism which it apparently refutes. It establishes the representational (ideal) character of percepts by accepting naively, as objectively valid facts, the percepts connected with one's own organism; and, in addition, it fails to see that it confuses two spheres of observation, between which it can find no connecting link.

[ 30 ] Critical Idealism can refute Naive Realism only by itself assuming, in naive-realistic fashion, that one's own organism has objective existence. As soon as the Idealist realizes that the percepts connected with his own organism are exactly of the same nature as those which Naive Realism assumes to have objective existence, he can no longer use the former as a safe foundation for his theory. He would, to be consistent, have to regard his own organism also as a mere complex of representations. But this removes the possibility of regarding the content of the perceptual world as a product of the spiritual organization. One would have to assume that the representation “colour” was only a modification of the representation “eye.” So-called Critical Idealism can be established only by borrowing the assumptions of Naive Realism. The apparent refutation of the latter is achieved only by uncritically accepting in another sphere its own assumptions as valid.

[ 31 ] This much, then, is certain: Analysis within the world of percepts cannot establish Critical Idealism, and, consequently, cannot strip percepts of their objective character.

[ 32 ] Still less is it legitimate to represent the principle that “the perceived world is my representation” as self-evident and needing no proof. Schopenhauer begins his chief work, The World as Will and Idea, with the words: “The world is my idea ³—this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and cognizes, though man alone can bring it into reflective and abstract consciousness. If he really does this, he has attained to philosophical self-consciousness. It then becomes clear and certain to him that what he knows is not a sun and an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun, a hand that feels an earth; that the world which surrounds him is there only as idea, i.e., only in relation to something else, the consciousness which is himself. If any truth can be asserted a priori, it is this; for it is the expression of the most general form of all possible and thinkable experience, a form which is more general than time, or space, or causality, for they all presuppose it ...” (The World as Will and Idea, Book I, par. I.) This whole theory is wrecked by the fact, already mentioned above, that the eye and the hand are just as much percepts as the sun and the earth. Using Schopenhauer's vocabulary in his own sense, I might maintain against him that my eye which sees the sun, and my hand which feels the earth, are my ideas (representations) just like the sun and the earth themselves. That, put in this way, the whole theory cancels itself, is clear without further argument. For only my real eye and my real hand could have the representations “sun” and “earth” as their own modifications; the representations “eye” and “hand” cannot have them. Yet it is only in terms of representations that Critical Idealism is allowed to speak.

[ 33 ] Critical Idealism is totally unable to gain an Insight into the relation of percept to representation. It cannot make the distinction between what happens to the percept in the process of perception and what must be inherent in it prior to perception. We must, therefore, attempt this problem in another way.

• 1. On the use of the term “Idea” see Preface to the Revised Translation
• 2. See Translator's Preface
• 3. Editor's footnote: The term “idea,” as used in the current translations of Schopenhauer, would be “representation” according to our translation.

[ 1 ] From the foregoing considerations it follows that it is impossible to prove, by analysis of the content of our observation, that our percepts are representations. This is supposed to be proved by showing that, if the process of perceiving takes place in the way in which we conceive it in accordance with the naive-realistic assumptions concerning the psychological and physiological constitution of human individuals, then we have to do, not with things themselves, but merely with our representations of things. Now, if Naive Realism, when consistently thought out, leads to results which directly contradict its presuppositions, then these presuppositions must be discarded as unsuitable for the foundation of a conception of the world. In any case, it is inadmissible to reject the presuppositions and yet accept the consequences, as the Critical Idealist does who bases his assertion that the world is my representation on the line of argument indicated above. (Eduard von Hartmann gives in his work Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie a full account of this line of argument.)

[ 2 ] The truth of Critical Idealism is one thing, the persuasiveness of its proof another. How it stands with the former will appear later in the course of this book, but the persuasiveness of its proof is nil. If one builds a house, and the ground floor collapses while the first floor is being built, then the first floor collapses, too. Naive Realism and Critical Idealism are related just as the ground floor to the first floor in this simile.

[ 3 ] For one who holds that the whole perceptual world is only representational, and, moreover, the effect of things unknown to him acting on his soul, the real problem of knowledge is naturally concerned, not with the representations present only in the soul, but with the things which lie outside his consciousness, and which are independent of him. He asks: How much can we learn about them indirectly, seeing that we cannot observe them directly? From this point of view, he is concerned, not with the inner connection of his conscious percepts with one another, but with their causes which transcend his consciousness and exist independently of him, whereas the percepts, on his view, disappear as soon as he turns his senses away from the things. Our consciousness, on this view, works like a mirror from which the pictures of definite things disappear the very moment its reflecting surface is not turned towards them. If, now, we do not see the things themselves, but only their reflections, we must obtain knowledge of the nature of the former indirectly by drawing conclusions from the character of the latter. The whole of modern science adopts this point of view, when it uses percepts only as an ultimate means of obtaining information about the processes of matter which lie behind them, and which alone really “are.” If the philosopher, as Critical Idealist, admits real existence at all, then his sole aim is to gain knowledge of this real existence indirectly by means of his representations. His interest skips over the subjective world of representations and pursues instead that which produces these representations.

[ 4 ] The Critical Idealist can, however, go even further and say, I am confined to the world of my representations and cannot escape from it. If I think a thing behind my representations, this thought, once more, is nothing but my representation. An Idealist of this type will either deny the thing-in-itself entirely or, at any rate, assert that it has no significance for human minds, i.e., that it is as good as non-existent since we can know nothing of it.

[ 5 ] To this kind of Critical Idealist the whole world seems a dream, in the face of which all striving for knowledge is simply meaningless. For him there can be only two sorts of men: (1) victims of the illusion that the dreams they have themselves woven are real things, and (2) wise men who see through the nothingness of this dream world, and who gradually lose all desire to trouble themselves further about it. From this point of view, even one's own personality may become a mere dream phantom. Just as during sleep there appears among my dream-images an image of myself, so in waking consciousness the representation of my own I is added to the representation of the outer world. I have then given to me in consciousness, not my real I, but only my representation of my I. Whoever denies that things exist, or, at least, that we can know anything of them, must also deny the existence, or the knowledge, of one's own personality. This is how the Critical Idealist comes to maintain that “All reality transforms itself into a wonderful dream, without a life which is the object of the dream, and without a spirit which has the dream; into a dream which hangs together in a dream of itself.” (Cf. Fichte, Die Bestimmung des Menschen.)

[ 6 ] Whether he who believes that he recognizes immediate life to be a dream, postulates nothing more behind this dream, or whether he relates his representations to actual things, is immaterial. In both cases life itself must lose all scientific interest for him. However, whereas for those who believe that the whole of the accessible universe is exhausted in dreams, all science is an absurdity, yet for those who feel compelled to argue from representations to things, science consists in inquiring into these “things-in-themselves.” The first of these theories of the world may be called Absolute Illusionism, the second is called Transcendental Realism by its most rigorously logical exponent, Eduard von Hartmann.¹

[ 7 ] These two points of view have this in common with Naive Realism, that they seek to gain a footing in the world by means of an analysis of percepts. Within this sphere, however, they are unable to find any stable point.

[ 8 ] One of the most important questions for an adherent of Transcendental Realism would have to be, how the Ego produces the world of representations out of itself. A world of representations which was given to us, and which disappeared as soon as we shut our senses to the external world, might provoke an earnest desire for knowledge, in so far as it was a means for investigating indirectly the world of the I existing in itself. If the things of our experience were “representations” then our everyday life would be like a dream, and the discovery of the true facts like waking. Even our dream-images interest us as long as we dream and, consequently, do not detect their dream character. But as soon as we wake, we no longer look for the inner connections of our dream-images among themselves, but rather for the physical, physiological, and psychological processes which underlie them. In the same way, a philosopher who holds the world to be his representation, cannot be interested in the reciprocal relations of the details within it. If he admits the existence of a real Ego at all, then his question will be, not how one of his representations is linked with another, but what takes place in the Soul which is independent of him, while a certain train of representations passes through his consciousness. If I dream that I am drinking wine which makes my throat burn, and then wake up with a tickling sensation in the throat (cp. Weygandt, Entstehung der Träume, 1893) I cease, the moment I wake, to be interested in the dream-drama for its own sake. My attention is now concerned only with the physiological and psychological processes by means of which the irritation, which causes me to cough, comes to be symbolically expressed in the dream-picture. Similarly, once the philosopher is convinced that the given world consists of nothing but representations, his interest is bound to switch from them at once to the soul which is the reality lying behind them. The matter is more serious, however, for the Illusionist who denies the existence of an Ego-in-itself behind the representations, or at least holds this Ego to be unknowable. We might 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 opportunity to look through our dreams, and to refer them to the real relations of things, but that there is no state of the Self which is related similarly to our waking conscious life. Every adherent of this view fails entirely to see that there is, in fact, something which is to mere perception what our waking experience is to our dreams. This something is thinking.

[ 9 ] The naive man cannot be charged with the lack of insight referred to here. He accepts life as it is, and regards things as real just as they present themselves to him in experience. The first step, however, which we take beyond this standpoint can be only this, that we ask how thinking is related to perception. It makes no difference whether or no the percept, in the shape given to me, continues to exist before and after my forming a representation. If I want to assert anything whatever about it, I can do so only with the help of thinking. When I assert that the world is my representation, I have enunciated the result of an act of thinking, and if my thinking is not applicable to the world, then this result is false. Between a percept and every kind of assertion about it there intervenes thinking.

[ 10 ] The reason why, in our consideration of things, we generally overlook thinking, has already been given above (p. 24). It lies in the fact that our attention is concentrated only on the object about which we think, but not at the same time on the thinking itself. The naive consciousness, therefore, treats thinking as something which has nothing to do with things, but stands altogether aloof from them and contemplates them. The picture which the thinker constructs concerning the phenomena of the world is regarded, not as part of the things, but as existing only in men's heads. The world is complete in itself even without this picture. It is all ready-made and finished with all its substances and forces, and of this ready-made world man makes himself a picture. Whoever thinks thus need only be asked one question. What right have you to declare the world to be complete without thinking? Does not the world produce thinking in the heads of men with the same necessity as it produces the blossom on a plant? Plant a seed in the earth. It puts forth roots and stem, it unfolds into leaves and blossoms. Set the plant before yourselves. It connects itself, in your soul, with a definite concept. Why should this concept belong any less to the whole plant than leaf and blossom? You say the leaves and blossoms exist quite apart from a perceiving subject, but the concept appears only when a human being confronts the plant. Quite so. But leaves and blossoms also appear on the plant only if there is soil in which the seed can be planted, and light and air in which the leaves and blossoms can unfold. Just so the concept of a plant arises when a thinking consciousness approaches the plant.

[ 11 ] It is quite arbitrary to regard the sum of what we experience of a thing through bare perception as a totality, a whole, while that which reveals itself through thinking consideration is regarded as a mere accretion which has nothing to do with the thing itself. If I am given a rosebud to-day, the picture that offers itself to my perception is complete only for the moment. If I put the bud into water, I shall to-morrow get a very different picture of my object. If I watch the rosebud without interruption, I shall see to-day's state gradually change into to-morrow's through an infinite number of intermediate stages. The picture which presents itself to me at any one moment is only a chance segment out of an object which is in a continual process of becoming. If I do not put the bud into water, a whole series of states, the possibility of which lay in the bud, will not be evolved. Similarly I may be prevented to-morrow from observing the blossom further, and thus have an incomplete picture of it.

[ 12 ] It would be a quite unobjective opinion clinging to temporal features which declared of any haphazard appearance of a thing, this is the thing.

[ 13 ] It is no more legitimate to regard the sum of perceptual characteristics as the thing. It might be quite possible for a spirit to receive the concept at the same time as, and together with, the percept. To such a spirit it would never occur that the concept did not belong to the thing. It would have to ascribe to the concept an existence indivisibly bound up with the thing.

[ 14 ] Let me make myself clearer by another example. If I throw a stone horizontally through the air, I perceive it in different places one after the other. I connect these places so as to form a line. Mathematics teaches me to know various kinds of lines, one of which is the parabola. I know the parabola to be a line which is produced by a point moving according to certain well-defined law. If I analyse the conditions under which the stone thrown by me moves, I find the path traversed is identical with the line I know as a parabola. That the stone moves just in a parabola is a result of the given conditions and follows necessarily from them. The form of the parabola belongs to the whole phenomenon as much as any other feature of it. The spirit described above who has no need of the detour of thinking, would find itself presented, not only with a sequence of visual percepts at different points, but, as part and parcel of these phenomena, also with the parabolic form of the path which we add to the phenomenon only by thinking.

[ 15 ] It is not due to the objects that they appear to us at first without their corresponding concepts, but to our mental organization. Our whole being functions in such a way that from every real thing the relevant elements come to us from two sources, viz., from perception and from thinking.

[ 16 ] The nature of things has nothing to do with the way I am organized for apprehending them. The breach between perception and thinking exists only from the moment that I as spectator confront the things. Which elements do, and which do not, belong to the object, cannot depend at all on the manner in which I obtain my knowledge of 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. Hence but a limited portion of the total universe can ever be given to him. This limited portion, however, is linked up with other parts on every side both in time and in space. If our existence were so linked with things that every world occurrence were also an occurrence in us, there would not be the distinction between us and things. Neither would there be any individual objects for us. All occurrences would then pass continuously one into the other. The cosmos would be a unity and a whole complete in itself. The stream of events would nowhere be interrupted. But owing to our limitations there appears as a single thing what, in truth, is not a single thing. Nowhere, e.g., is the particular quality “red” to be found by itself in isolation. It is surrounded on all sides by other qualities to which it belongs, and without which it could not subsist. For us, however, it is necessary to isolate certain sections of the world and to consider them by themselves. Our eye can seize only single colours one after another out of a manifold colour-whole, our understanding only single concepts out of a connected conceptual system. This separating off is a subjective act, which is due to the fact that we are not identical with the world-process, but are a single being among other beings.

[ 18 ] It is of the greatest importance for us to determine the relation of the beings which we, ourselves, are to the other beings. The determining of this relation must be distinguished from merely becoming conscious of ourselves. For this self-awareness we depend on perception just as we do for our awareness of any other thing. The perception of myself reveals to me a number of qualities which I combine into my personality as a whole, just as I combine the qualities, yellow, metallic, hard, etc., in the unity “gold.” The perception of self does not take me beyond the sphere of what belongs to me. Hence it must be distinguished from the determination of myself by thinking. Just as I link up, by thinking, any single percept of the external world into the whole world system, so I fit by thinking what I perceive in myself into the world-process. My self-perception restricts me within definite limits, but my thinking has nothing to do with these limits. In this sense I am a two-sided being. I am enclosed within the sphere which I perceive as that of my personality, but I am also the bearer of an activity, which, from a higher sphere, determines my finite existence. Our thinking is not individual like our sensing and feeling; it is universal. It receives an individual stamp in each separate human being only because it comes to be related to his individual feelings and sensations. By means of these particular colourings of the universal thinking, individual men are distinguished from one another. There is only one single concept of “triangle.” It is quite immaterial for the content of this concept whether it is grasped in A's consciousness or in B's. It will, however, be grasped by each of the two in his own individual way.

[ 19 ] This thought conflicts with a common prejudice which is very hard to overcome. The victims of this prejudice are unable to see that the concept of a triangle which my head grasps is the same as the concept which my neighbour's head grasps. The naive man believes himself to be the creator of his concepts. Hence he believes that each person has his private concepts. It is a fundamental demand of philosophic thinking to overcome this prejudice. The one uniform concept of “triangle” does not split up into a multiplicity because it is thought by many persons. For the thinking of the many is itself a unity.

[ 20 ] In thinking we have the element which welds each man's special individuality into one whole with the cosmos. In so far as we sense and feel (and also perceive), we are single beings; in so far as we think, we are the All-One Being which pervades everything. This is the deeper meaning of our two-sided nature: We see a simply absolute force revealing itself in us, which is universal. But we learn to know it, not as it issues from the centre of the world, but rather at a point of the periphery. Were the former the case, we should know, as soon as ever we became conscious, the solution of the whole world problem. But since we stand at a point on the periphery, and find that our own being is confined within definite limits, we must explore the region which lies beyond our own being with the help of thinking, which projects into us out of the general world-existence.

[ 21 ] The fact that thinking, in us, reaches out beyond our separate existence and relates itself to the general world-existence, gives rise to the desire for knowledge in us. Beings without thinking do not experience this desire. When they are faced with other things no questions arise for them. These other things remain external to such beings. But in thinking beings the concept rises up when they confront the external thing. It is that part of the thing which we receive not from without, but from within. To produce the agreement, the union of the two elements, the inner and the outer, that is the task of knowledge.

[ 22 ] The percept, thus, is not something finished and self-contained, but one side only of the total reality. The other side is the concept. The act of cognition is the synthesis of percept and concept. Only the percept and concept together constitute the whole thing.

[ 23 ] The preceding elucidation shows clearly that it is nonsensical to seek for any other common element in the separate beings of the world than the ideal content which thinking supplies. All efforts to look for another unity in the world than this internally coherent ideal content, which we gain by a thinking investigation of our percepts, are bound to fail. Neither a humanly personal God, nor force, nor matter, nor the blind will (Schopenhauer), can be accepted by us as the universal unity in the world. These principles all belong only to a limited sphere of our observation. Humanly limited personality we perceive only in ourselves; force and matter in external things. The will, again, can be regarded only as the expression of the activity of our finite personality. Schopenhauer wants to avoid making “abstract” thinking the bearer of unity in the world, and seeks instead something which presents itself to him immediately as real. This philosopher holds that we can never approach the world so long as we regard it as an “external” world. “In fact, the meaning for which we seek of that world which is present to us only as our ‘representation,’ [See footnote on page 55.] or the transition from the world as mere representation of the knowing subject to whatever it may be besides this, would never be found if the investigator himself were nothing more than the pure knowing subject (a winged cherub without a body). But he himself is rooted in that world: he finds himself in it as an individual, that is to say, his knowledge, which is the necessary supporter of the whole world as representation, is yet always given through the medium of a body, whose affections are, as we have shown, the starting-point for the understanding in the perception of that world. This body is, for the pure knowing subject, a representation like every other representation, an object among objects. Its movements and actions are so far known to him in precisely the same way as the changes of all other perceived objects, and would be just as strange and incomprehensible to him if their meaning were not explained for him in an entirely different way ... The body is given in two entirely different ways to the subject of knowledge, who becomes an individual only through his identity with it. It is given as a representation in intelligent perception, as an object among objects and subject to the laws of objects. And it is also given in quite a different way as that which is immediately known to everyone, and is signified by the word ‘will.’ Every true act of his will is also at once and without exception a movement of his body. He cannot will the act without perceiving at the same time that it appears as a movement of the body. The act of will and the movement of the body are not two different things objectively known, which the bond of causality unites; they do not stand in the relation of cause and effect; they are one and the same, but they are given in two entirely different ways—immediately, and again in perception for the understanding.” (The World as Will and Idea, Book 2, par. 18.) Schopenhauer considers himself entitled by these arguments to find in the human body the “objectivity” of the will. He believes that in the activities of the body he feels immediately a reality—the thing-in-itself in the concrete. Against these arguments we must urge that the activities of our body come to our consciousness only through self-perception, and that, as such, they are in no way superior to other percepts. If we want to cognize their real nature, we can do so only by a thinking investigation, i.e., by fitting them into the ideal system of our concepts and Ideas.

[ 24 ] Rooted most deeply in the naive consciousness is the opinion that thinking is abstract and empty of any concrete content. At best, we are told, it supplies but an “ideal” counterpart of the unity of the world, but never that unity itself. Whoever so judges has never made clear to himself what a percept apart from concepts really is. Let us see what this world of bare percepts is. A mere juxtaposition in space, a mere succession in time, an aggregate of disconnected particulars—that is how it appears. None of the things which come and go on the stage of perception has any perceptible connection with any other. The world is a multiplicity of objects of equal value. None plays any greater part in the nexus of the world than any other. In order to make obvious that this or that fact has a greater importance than another we must go to thinking. Without thinking fulfilling its function, the rudimentary organ of an animal which has no significance in its life appears equal in value to the most important limb. The particular facts reveal their meaning, in themselves and for other parts of the world, only when thinking spins its threads from Being to Being. This activity of thinking is one full of content. For it is only through a perfectly definite concrete content that I can know why the snail belongs to a lower type of organization than the lion. The mere appearance, the percept, gives me no content which could inform me as to the degree of perfection of the organization.

[ 25 ] Thinking contributes this content to the percept from the world of concepts and Ideas. In contrast with the content of perception which is given to us from without, the content of thinking appears inwardly. The form in which the latter first appears in consciousness we will call “intuition.” Intuition is for the content of thinking what observation is for the percept. Intuition and observation are the sources of our knowledge. An observed object of the world remains unintelligible to us, until we have the corresponding intuition which adds that part of the reality which is lacking in the percept. To anyone who is incapable of finding the intuitions corresponding to the things, the full reality remains inaccessible. Just as the colour-blind person sees only differences of brightness without any colour qualities, so a person who lacks intuition observes only disconnected fragments of percepts.

[ 26 ] To explain a thing, to make it intelligible, means nothing else than to place it in the context from which it has been torn by the peculiar character of our organization described above. A thing cut off from the world-whole does not exist. Hence all isolation of objects has only subjective validity for our organization. For us the universe disrupts itself into above and below, before and after, cause and effect, object and representation, matter and force, object and subject, etc. What appears in observation, as separate parts, becomes combined, bit by bit, through the coherent, unified world of our intuitions. By thinking we fuse again into one whole all that we have separated through perception.

[ 27 ] The enigmatic character of an object consists in its separateness. But this separation is our own making and can be remedied again within the world of concepts.

[ 28 ] Except through thinking and perception nothing is given to us directly. The question now arises as to the significance of percepts within our line of thought. We have learnt that the proof which Critical Idealism offers for the subjective nature of percepts collapses. But the exhibition of the falsity of the proof is not, by itself, sufficient to show that the doctrine itself is an error. Critical Idealism does not base its proof on the absolute nature of thinking, but relies on the argument that Naive Realism, when followed to its logical conclusion, contradicts itself. How does the matter appear when we have recognized the absoluteness of thinking?

[ 29 ] Let us assume that a certain percept, e.g., red, appears in consciousness. To continued observation, the percept shows itself to be connected with other percepts, e.g., a certain figure, temperature, and touch-qualities. This combination I call an object in the world of sense. I can now ask myself: Over and above the percepts just mentioned, what else is there in the section of space in which they appear? I shall then find mechanical, chemical, and other processes in that section of space. I next go farther and study the processes which take place in the transition between the object and my sense-organs. I can find movements in an elastic medium, which have not the least in common with the percepts from which I started. I get the same result if I trace farther the transition between sense-organs and brain. In each of these inquiries I gather new percepts, but the connecting medium which binds all these spatially and temporally separated percepts into one whole, is thinking. The air vibrations which carry sound are given to me as percepts just like the sound itself. Thinking alone links all these percepts one to the other and exhibits them in their reciprocal relations. We have no right to say that over and above our immediate percepts there is anything except the ideal nexus of percepts (which thinking has to reveal). The relation of perceptual objects to the perceiving subject, which relation transcends the mere perceptible, is, therefore, purely ideal, i.e., capable of being expressed only through concepts. Only if it were possible to perceive how the object of perception affects the perceiving subject, or, alternatively, only if we could watch the building up of the perceptual complex through the subject, could we speak as modern Physiology, and the Critical Idealism which is based on it, speak. Their view confuses an ideal relation (that of the object to the subject) with a process of which we could speak only if it were possible to perceive it. The proposition, “No colour without a colour-sensing eye,” cannot be taken to mean that the eye produces the colour, but only that an ideal relation, recognizable by thinking, subsists between the percept “colour” and the percept “eye.” Empirical science will have to ascertain how the properties of the eye and those of the colours are related to one another: by means of what structures the organ of sight mediates the perception of colours, etc. I can trace how one percept succeeds another and how one is related to others in space, and I can formulate these relations in conceptual terms, but I can never perceive how a percept originates out of the non-perceptible. All attempts to seek any relations between percepts other than thought relations must of necessity fail.

[ 30 ] What then is a percept? This question, asked in this general way, is absurd. A percept emerges always as a perfectly determinate, concrete content. This content is immediately given and is completely contained in the given. The only question one can ask concerning the given content is, what it is apart from perception, that is, what it is for thinking. The question concerning the “what” of a percept can, therefore, only refer to the conceptual intuition which corresponds to this percept. From this point of view, the question of the subjectivity of percepts, in the sense in which the Critical Idealists debate it, cannot be raised at all. Only that which is perceived as belonging to the subject can be termed “subjective.” To form a link between that which is subjective and that which is objective is impossible for any real process, in the naive sense of the word “real,” in which it means a process which can be perceived. That is possible only for thinking. For us, then, “objective” means that which, for perception, presents itself as external to the perceiving subject. As subject of perception I remain perceptible to myself after the table which now stands before me has disappeared from my field of observation. The observation of the table has produced a modification in me which likewise persists. I preserve the faculty to produce later on an image of the table. This faculty of producing a picture remains connected with me. Psychology terms this image a “memory-idea.” Now this is the only thing which has any right to be called the representation [See Translator's Preface, p. ix.] of the table. For it corresponds to the perceptible modification of my own state through the presence of the table in my visual field. Moreover, it does not mean a modification in some “Ego-in-itself” standing behind the perceiving subject, but the modification of the perceptible subject itself. The representation is, therefore, a subjective percept, in contrast with the objective percept which occurs when the object is present in the field of vision. The false identification of the subjective with this objective percept leads to the misunderstanding of Idealism: The world is my representation.

[ 31 ] Our next task must be to define the concept of “representation” more nearly. What we have said about it so far does not give us the concept, but only shows us where in the perceptual field representations are to be found. The exact concept of “representation” will also make it possible for us to obtain a satisfactory understanding of the relation of representation and object. This will then lead us over the border-line, where the relation of human subject to object in the world is brought down from the purely conceptual field of concepts into concrete individual life. Once we know how to think of the world, it will be an easy task to adapt ourselves to it. We can only be active with full energy when we know the object belonging to the world to which we are to devote our activity.

Addition to the Revised Edition, 1918

[ 32 ] The view which I have here outlined may be regarded as one to which man is impelled as though by a natural force, as soon as he begins to reflect about his relation to the world. He then finds himself caught in a system of thoughts which dissolves for him as fast as he frames it. The thought formation is such that the purely theoretical refutation of it does not exhaust our task. We have to live through it, in order to understand the aberration into which it leads us, and to find the way out. It must figure in any discussion of the relation of man to the world, not for the sake of refuting others whom one believes to be holding mistaken views about this relation, but because it is necessary to understand the confusion to which every first effort at reflection about such a relation is apt to lead. One needs to gain insight into how to refute oneself with respect to these first reflections. This is the point of view from which the arguments of the preceding chapter are considered.

[ 33 ] Whoever tries to work out for himself a view of the relation of man to the world, becomes aware of the fact that he creates this relation, at least in part, by forming representations about the things and events in the world. In consequence, his attention is deflected from what exists outside in the world and directed towards his inner world, the life of his representations. He begins to say to himself: It is impossible for me to stand in relation to any thing or event, unless a representation appears in me. From this fact, once noticed, it is but a step to the opinion: All that I experience is after all only my representation; of a world outside I know only in so far as it is a representation in me. With this opinion, man abandons the standpoint of naive reality which he occupies prior to all reflection about his relation to the world. So long as he stands there, he believes that he is dealing with real things, but reflection about himself drives him away from this position. Reflection prevents him from turning his gaze towards a real world such as naive consciousness claims to have before it. Reflection turns his gaze only towards his representations; they interpose themselves between his own nature and a supposedly real world, such as the naive point of view believes it should affirm. Man can no longer look through the intervening world of representations upon such a real world. He must suppose that he is blind to such a reality. Thus arises the thought of a “thing-in-itself” which is inaccessible to knowledge.

So long as we consider only the relationship to the world into which man appears to enter through the life of his representations, we can hardly escape from this kind of thought. Yet one cannot remain at the point of view of Naive Realism except at the price of closing one's mind artificially to the desire for knowledge. The existence of this desire for knowledge about the relation of man to the world proves that the naive point of view must be abandoned. If the naive point of view yielded anything which we could acknowledge as truth, we could not experience this desire.

But mere abandonment of the naive point of view does not lead to any other view which we could regard as true, so long as we retain, without noticing it, the kind of thought which the naive point of view imposes on us. This is the mistake made by the man who says: I experience only my representations, and though I believe that I am dealing with real things, I am actually conscious of nothing but my representations of real things; I must, therefore, suppose that genuine realities, “things-in-themselves,” exist only outside the boundary of my consciousness; that they are inaccessible to my immediate knowledge; but that they somehow approach me and influence me so as to make a world of representations arise in me. Whoever thinks thus, duplicates in thought the world before him by adding another. But, strictly he ought to begin his whole thinking activity over again with regard to this second world. For the unknown “thing-in-itself,” in its relation to man's own nature, is conceived in exactly the same way as is the known thing of the naively realistic point of view.—There is only one way of escaping from the confusion into which one falls by critical reflection on this naive point of view. This is to observe that, inside everything we can experience through perception, be it within ourselves or outside in the world, there is something which does not share the fate of a representation interposing itself between the real event and the contemplating human being. This something is thinking. With regard to thinking we can maintain the point of view of Naive Realism. If we fail to do so, it is only because we have learnt that we must abandon it for other things, but overlook that, what we have found to be true for other activities, does not apply to thinking. When we realize this, we gain access to the further insight that, in thinking and through thinking, man necessarily comes to cognize the very thing to which he appears to blind himself by interposing between the world and himself the realm of his representations.—A critic highly esteemed by the author of this book has objected that this discussion of thinking stops at a naively realistic theory of thinking, as shown by the fact that the real world and the world of representations are held to be identical. However, the author believes himself to have shown in this very discussion that the validity of “Naive Realism,” as applied to thinking, results inevitably from an unprejudiced study of thinking; and that Naive Realism, in so far as it is invalid for other things, is overcome through the recognition of the true nature of thinking.

• 1. Cognition is transcendental in the sense of this world conception when it believes itself to be conscious that nothing can be asserted directly about the thing-in-itself, but makes (indirect inferences from the subjective which is known to the unknown which lies beyond the subjective (Transcendental). The thing-in-itself is, according to this view, beyond the sphere of the immediately cognizable world; in other words, it is transcendent. Our world can, however, be transcendentally related to the transcendent. Hartmann's theory is called Realism because it proceeds from the subjective, the ideal, to the transcendent, the real.

[ 1 ] We have established that the elements for the explanation of reality are to be taken from the two spheres of perception and thinking. It is due, as we have seen, to our organization that the full totality of reality, including our own selves as subjects, appears at first as a duality. Knowledge overcomes this duality by fusing the two elements of reality, the percept and the concept gained by thinking, into the complete thing. Let us call the manner in which the world presents itself to us, before by means of knowledge it has taken on its true nature, “the world of appearance,” in distinction from the unified whole composed of percept and concept. We can then say: The world is given to us as a duality, and knowledge transforms it into a unity. A philosophy which starts from this basic principle may be called a Monistic philosophy, or Monism. Opposed to this is the theory of two worlds, or Dualism. The latter does not indeed assume that there are two sides of a single reality, which are kept apart merely by our organization, but that there are two worlds absolutely distinct from one another. It then tries to find in one of these two worlds the principles of explanation for the other.

[ 2 ] Dualism rests on a false conception of what we call knowledge. It divides the whole of existence into two spheres, each of which has its own laws, and it leaves these two worlds standing opposite and outside one another.

[ 3 ] It is from a Dualism such as this that there arises the distinction between the object of perception and the thing-in-itself, which Kant introduced into science, and which, to the present day, we have not succeeded in expelling. According to our interpretation, it is due to the nature of our spiritual organization that a particular thing can be given to us only as a percept. Thinking then overcomes this particularity by assigning to each percept its legitimate place in the world as a whole. As long as we determine the separated parts of the cosmos as percepts, we are simply following, in this sorting out, a law of our subjectivity. If, however, we regard all percepts, taken together, merely as one part, and contrast with this a second part, viz., the things-in-themselves, then our philosophy is building castles in the air. We are then engaged in mere playing with concepts. We construct an artificial opposition, but we can gain no content for the second of these opposites, for such a content for a particular thing can be gathered only from perception.

[ 4 ] Every kind of existence which is assumed outside the realm of percept and concept must be relegated to the sphere of unjustified hypotheses. To this category belongs the “thing-in-itself.” It is quite natural that a Dualistic thinker should be unable to find the connection between the world-principle which he hypothetically assumes and the things given in experience. For the hypothetical world-principle itself a content can be found only by borrowing it from the world of experience and shutting one's eyes to the fact of the borrowing. Otherwise it remains an empty concept, a non-concept which has only the form of a concept. In this case the Dualistic thinker generally asserts that the content of this concept is inaccessible to our knowledge. We can know only that such a content exists, but not what it is. In either case it is impossible to overcome Dualism. Even though one were to import a few abstract elements from the world of experience into the concept of the thing-in-itself, it would still remain impossible to reduce the rich concrete life of experience to those few qualities which are, after all, themselves taken from perception. Du Bois-Reymond lays it down that the imperceptible atoms of matter produce sensation and feeling by means of their position and motion, and then comes to the conclusion that we can never find a satisfactory explanation of how matter and motion produce sensation and feeling, for “it is absolutely and for ever unintelligible that it should be other than indifferent to a number of atoms of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen, etc., how they lie and move, how they lay and moved, or how they will lie and will move. It .is in no way intelligible how consciousness can come into existence through their interaction.” This conclusion is characteristic of the tendency of this whole trend of thought. Position and motion are abstracted from the rich world of percepts. They are then transferred to the fictitious world of atoms. And then astonishment arises that life cannot be evolved out of this self-made principle borrowed from the world of percepts.

[ 5 ] That the Dualist, working as he does with a completely empty concept of the thing-in-itself, can reach no explanation of the world, follows already from the very definition of his principle which has been given above.

[ 6 ] In any case, the Dualist finds it necessary to set impassable barriers to our faculty of knowledge. The follower of a Monistic world-conception knows that all he needs to explain any given phenomenon in the world is to be found within this world itself. What prevents him from reaching it can be only contingent limitations in space and time, or defects of his organization, i.e., not of human organization in general, but only of his own particular one.

[ 7 ] It follows from the concept of knowledge, as defined by us, that there can be no talk of limits of knowledge. Knowledge is not a concern of the universe in general, but one which men must settle for themselves. Things claim no explanation. They exist and act on one another according to laws which thinking can discover. They exist in indivisible unity with these laws. Our Egohood confronts them, grasping at first only what we have called percepts. However, within our Egohood we find the power to discover also the other part of reality. Only when the I has combined for itself the two elements of reality which are indivisibly bound up with one another in the world, is our thirst for knowledge stilled. The I has then again attained reality.

[ 8 ] The presuppositions for the arising of the act of knowledge thus exist through and for the I. It is the I which sets itself the problems of knowledge. It takes them from thinking, an element which in itself is absolutely clear and transparent. If we set ourselves questions which, we cannot answer, it must be because the content of the questions is not in all respects clear and distinct. It is not the world which sets questions to us, but we who set them.

[ 9 ] I can imagine that it would be quite impossible for me to answer a question which I happened to find written down somewhere, without knowing the sphere from which the content of the question was taken.

[ 10 ] In knowledge we are concerned with questions which arise for us through the fact that a sphere of percepts, conditioned by time, space, and our subjective organization, stands over against a sphere of concepts pointing to the totality of the universe. My task consists in reconciling these two spheres, with both of which I am well acquainted. There is no room here for speaking of limits of knowledge. It may be that, at a particular moment, this or that remains unexplained because, through our place in life, we are prevented from perceiving the things involved. What is not found to-day, however, may be found to-morrow. The limits due to these causes are only transitory, and must be overcome by the progress of perception and thinking.

[ 11 ] Dualism makes the mistake of transferring the opposition of object and subject, which has meaning only within the perceptual realm, to purely fictitious entities outside this realm. Now the distinct and separate things within the perceptual field remain separated only so long as the perceiver refrains from thinking. For thinking cancels all separation and reveals it as due to purely subjective conditions. The Dualist, therefore, transfers to entities behind the percepts determinations which, by themselves, have no absolute, but only relative, validity. He thus divides the two factors concerned in the process of knowledge, viz., percept and concept, into four: (1) the object in itself; (2) the percept which the subject has of the object; (3) the subject; (4) the concept which relates the percept to the object in itself. The relation between subject and object is “real”; the subject is really (dynamically) influenced by the object. This real process is supposed not to appear in consciousness. But it is said to evoke in the subject a response to the stimulation from the object. The result of this response is said to be the percept. This, at length, is supposed to appear in consciousness. The object is thought to have an objective (independent of the subject) reality, the percept a subjective reality. This subjective reality is said to be referred by the subject to the object. This latter reference is called an ideal one. Dualism thus divides the process of knowledge into two parts. The one part, viz., the production of the perceptual object by the thing-in-itself, he conceives of as taking place outside consciousness, whereas the other, the combination of percept with concept and the letter's reference to the thing-in-itself, takes place, according to him, within consciousness.

With such presuppositions, it is clear why the Dualist regards his concepts merely as subjective representatives of what lies before his consciousness. The objectively real process in the subject by means of which the percept is produced, and still more the objective relations between, things-in-themselves, remain for the Dualist inaccessible to direct knowledge. According to him, man can get only conceptual representatives of the objectively real. The bond of unity of things which connects them with one another, and also objectively with the individual spirit (as things-in-themselves) of each of us, lies beyond our consciousness in a Being in itself of whom, once more, we may have in our consciousness merely a conceptual representative.

[ 12 ] The Dualist believes that the whole world would be dissolved into a mere abstract scheme of concepts, did he not posit real connections beside the conceptual ones. In other words, the ideal principles which thinking discovers seem too airy for the Dualist, and he seeks, in addition, “real principles” with which to support them.

[ 13 ] Let us examine these real principles a little more closely. The naive man (Naive Realist) regards the objects of external experience as realities. The fact that his hands can grasp, and his eyes see these objects, is for him sufficient proof of their reality. “Nothing exists that cannot be perceived” is, in fact, the first axiom of the naive man; and it is held to be equally valid in its converse: “Everything which can be perceived exists.” The best proof for this assertion is the naive man's belief in immortality and in ghosts. He thinks of the soul as a fine kind of sensible matter which, in special circumstances, may actually become visible to the ordinary man (naive belief in ghosts).

[ 14 ] In contrast with this, his real world, the Naive Realist regards everything else, especially the world of Ideas, as unreal, or “merely ideal.” What we add to objects by thinking is merely thoughts about the objects. Thought adds nothing real to the percept.

[ 15 ] But it is not only with reference to the existence of things that the naive man regards sense-perception as the sole proof of reality, but also with reference to the occurrences (processes). A thing, according to him, can act on another only when a force actually present to perception issues from the one and seizes upon the other. The older physicists thought that very. fine kinds of substances emanate from the objects and penetrate through the sense-organs into the soul. The actual seeing of these substances is impossible only because of the coarseness of our sense-organs relatively to the fineness of these substances. In principle, the reason for attributing reality to these substances was the same as that for attributing it to the objects of the sensible world, viz., their form of existence, which was conceived to be analogous to that of sense reality.

[ 16 ] The self-contained character of that which is of the nature of thought is not regarded by the naive mind as real in the same sense. An object conceived “merely in Idea” is regarded as a chimera until sense-perception can furnish conviction of its reality. In short, the naive man demands, in addition to the ideal evidence of his thinking, the real evidence of his senses. In this need of the naive man lies the ground for the origin of primitive forms of the belief in revelation. The God who is given through thinking remains always a God merely “thought.” The naive consciousness demands that God should manifest Himself in ways accessible to sense-perception. God must appear in the flesh, and little value is attached to the testimony of thinking, but only to the divine nature being proved by the changing of water into wine in a way which can be testified by the senses.

[ 17 ] Even knowledge itself is conceived by the naive man as a process analogous to sense-perception. Things, it is thought, make an impression on the soul, or send out images which enter through our senses, etc.

[ 18 ] What the naive man can perceive with his senses he regards as real, and what he cannot thus perceive (God, soul, knowledge, etc.) he regards as analogous to what he perceives.

[ 19 ] On the basis of Naive Realism, science can consist only in an exact description of the content of perception. Concepts are only means to this end. They exist to provide ideal counterparts of percepts. For the things themselves they do not matter. For the Naive Realist only the individual tulips, which we see or can see, are real. The Idea of the tulip is to him an abstraction, the unreal thought-picture which the soul combines for itself out of the characteristics common to all tulips.

[ 20 ] Naive Realism, with its fundamental principle of the reality of all perceived things, contradicts experience, which teaches us that the content of percepts is of a transitory nature. The tulip I see is real to-day; in a year it will have vanished into nothingness. What persists is the species “tulip.” This species is, however, for the Naive Realist “merely” an Idea, not a reality. Thus this theory of the world finds itself in the position of seeing its realities arise and perish, while that which, by contrast with its realities, it regards as unreal, endures. Hence Naive Realism is compelled to acknowledge the existence of something ideal by the side of percepts. It must include within itself entities which cannot be perceived by the senses. In admitting them, it escapes contradicting itself by conceiving their existence as analogous to that of objects of sense. Such hypothetical realities are the invisible forces by means of which the objects of sense-perception act on one another. Another such reality is heredity, the effects of which survive the individual, and which is the reason why from the individual a new being develops which is similar to it, and by means of which the species is maintained. The life-principle permeating the organic body, the soul, is another such reality which the naive mind is always found conceiving in analogy to sense-realities. And, lastly, the Divine Being, as conceived by the naive mind, is a reality of this kind. This Being is thought of as acting in a manner exactly corresponding to that which we can perceive in man himself, i.e., the Deity is conceived anthropomorphically.

[ 21 ] Modern Physics traces sensations back to processes of the smallest particles of bodies and of an infinitely fine substance, called ether, or the like. What we experience, e.g., as warmth is a movement of the parts of a body which causes the warmth in the space occupied by that body. Here again something imperceptible is conceived on the analogy of what is perceptible. Thus, the perceptible analog to the concept “body” is, say, the interior of a room, shut in on all sides, in which elastic balls are moving in all directions, impinging one on another, bouncing on and off the walls, etc.

[ 22 ] Without such assumptions the world of Naive Realism would collapse into a disconnected chaos of percepts, without mutual relations, and having no unity within itself. It is clear, however, that Naive Realism can make these assumptions only by an inconsistency. If it would remain true to its fundamental principle, that only what is perceived is real, then it ought not to assume a reality where it perceives nothing. The imperceptible forces of which perceptible things are the bearers are, in fact, illegitimate hypotheses from the standpoint of Naive Realism. And because Naive Realism knows no other realities, it invests its hypothetical forces with perceptual content. It thus transfers a form of existence (the perceptible existence) to a sphere where the only means of making any assertion concerning such existence, viz., sense-perception, is lacking.

[ 23 ] This self-contradictory theory leads to Metaphysical Realism. The latter constructs, beside the perceptible reality, an imperceptible one which it conceives on the analogy of the former. Metaphysical Realism is, therefore, of necessity Dualistic.

[ 24 ] Wherever the Metaphysical Realist observes a relation between perceptible things (mutual approach through movement, the entrance of an object into consciousness, etc.), there he posits a reality. However, the relation which he notices can only be expressed by means of thinking, but not perceived. The ideal relation is thereupon arbitrarily imagined as something perceptible. Thus, according to this theory, the real world is composed of the objects of perception which are in ceaseless flux, arising and disappearing, and of imperceptible forces by which the perceptible objects are produced, and which are permanent.

[ 25 ] Metaphysical Realism is a heterogeneous mixture of Naive Realism and Idealism. Its hypothetical forces are imperceptible entities endowed with the qualities proper to percepts. The Metaphysical Realist has made up his mind to acknowledge, in addition to the sphere for the existence of which he has an instrument of knowledge in sense-perception, the existence of another sphere for which this instrument fails, and which can be known only by means of thinking. But he cannot make up his mind at the same time to acknowledge that the mode of existence which thinking reveals, viz., the concept (or Idea), has equal rights with percepts. If we are to avoid the contradiction of imperceptible percepts, we must admit that, for us, the relations which thinking traces between percepts can have no other mode of existence than that of concepts. If one rejects the untenable part of Metaphysical Realism, there remains the concept of the world as the sum of percepts and their conceptual (ideal) relations. Metaphysical Realism, then, merges itself in a view of the world according to which the principle of perceptibility holds for percepts, and that of conceivability for the relations between the percepts. This view of the world has no room, in addition to the perceptual and conceptual worlds, for a third sphere, in which both principles, the so-called “real” principle and the “ideal” principle, are simultaneously valid.

[ 26 ] When the Metaphysical Realist asserts that, beside the ideal relation between the perceived object and the perceiving subject, there must exist a real relation between the “thing-in-itself” of the percept and the “thing-in-itself” of the perceptible subject (i.e., of the so-called individual spirit), he is basing his assertion on the false assumption of a real process, analogous to the processes in the sense-world, but imperceptible. Further, when the Metaphysical Realist asserts that we enter into a conscious ideal relation to our world of percepts, but that to the real world we can have only a dynamic (force) relation, he repeats the mistake we have already criticized. One can talk of a dynamic relation only within the world of percepts (in the sphere of the sense of touch), but not outside that world.

[ 27 ] Let us call the view which we have just characterized, and into which Metaphysical Realism merges when it discards its contradictory elements, Monism, because it combines one-sided Realism and Idealism into a higher unity.

[ 28 ] For Naive Realism, the real world is an aggregate of objects of perception; for Metaphysical Realism, reality belongs not only to percepts but also to imperceptible forces; Monism replaces forces by ideal connections which are supplied by thinking. Such connections are the Laws of Nature. A Law of Nature is nothing but the conceptual expression for the connection of certain percepts.

[ 29 ] Monism is never called upon to ask for any other principles of explanation for reality than percepts and concepts. It knows that in the whole range of the real there is no occasion for this question. In the perceptual world, as it lies before perception, it sees one-half of reality: in the union of this world with the world of concepts it finds full reality. The Metaphysical Realist may reply to the adherent of Monism that, for our organization, our knowledge may be complete in itself, that no part may be lacking; but we do not know how the world is mirrored in an Intelligence organized differently from our own. To this the Monist will reply: Maybe there are Intelligences other than human; if their percepts are different from ours, all that concerns me is what reaches me from them through perception and concept. Through my perceiving, i.e., through this specifically human mode of perceiving, I, as subject, am confronted with the object. The connection of things is thereby broken. The subject restores this connection by means of thinking. In doing so it re-inserts itself into the context of the world as a whole. As it is only through the subject that the whole appears rent in two at the place between our percept and concept, the reunion of those two factors gives us true knowledge. For beings with a different perceptual world (e.g., if they had twice our number of sense-organs) the nexus would appear broken in another place, and the reconstruction would accordingly have to take a form specific for such beings. The question concerning the limits of knowledge exists only for Naive and Metaphysical Realism, both of which see in the contents of the soul only an ideal representative of the real world. For, to these theories, whatever falls outside the subject is something absolute, a self-contained whole, and the subject's mental content is a picture thereof which is wholly external to this absolute. The completeness of knowledge depends on the greater or lesser degree of resemblance between the picture and the absolute object. A being with fewer senses than man will perceive less of the world, one with more senses will perceive more. The former's knowledge will, therefore, be less complete than the latter's.

[ 30 ] For Monism, the situation is different. The form in which the connection of the world appears to be rent asunder into subject and object depends on the organization of the perceiving being. The object is no absolute one but merely a relative one in reference to this particular subject. The bridging of the opposition, therefore, can again take place only in the quite specific way which is characteristic of the human subject. As soon as the I, which in perception is separated from the world, again reinserts itself into the world-nexus by thinking investigation, all further questioning ceases, having been but a consequence of the separation.

[ 31 ] A differently constituted being would have a differently-constituted knowledge. Our own knowledge, suffices to answer the questions put by our own nature.

[ 32 ] Metaphysical Realism must ask: How are our percepts given? What is it that affects the subject?

[ 33 ] Monism holds that percepts are determined through the subject. But, in thinking, the subject has, at the same time, the instrument for canceling this self-produced determination.

[ 34 ] The Metaphysical Realist is faced by a further difficulty when he seeks to explain the similarity of the world-pictures of different human individuals. He has to ask himself: How is it that my picture of the world, built up out of subjectively determined percepts and out of concepts, turns out to be like that which another individual is also building up out of these same two subjective factors? How, in any case, can I draw conclusions from my own subjective picture of the world on that of another human being? The Metaphysical Realist thinks he can infer the similarity of the subjective world-pictures of different human beings from their ability to get on with one another in practical life. From this similarity of world-pictures he then infers the likeness to one another of the “Individual Spirits” underlying the single human perceiving subjects, or the “I-in-itself” underlying the subjects.

[ 35 ] We have here an inference from a sum of effects to the character of the underlying causes. We believe we can, out of a sufficiently large number of instances, recognize the case sufficiently to know how the inferred causes will act in other instances. Such an inference is called an inductive inference. We shall be obliged to modify its results, if further observation yields some unexpected element, because the character of our conclusion is, after all, determined only by the particular shape of our actual observations. The Metaphysical Realist asserts that this knowledge of causes, though relative, is quite sufficient for practical life.

[ 36 ] Inductive inference is the methodical basis of modern Metaphysical Realism. At one time it was thought that out of concepts we could evolve something that is no longer a concept. It was thought that the metaphysical real Beings, which Metaphysical Realism after all requires, could be known by means of concepts. This kind of philosophizing is now out of date. Instead it is thought that from a sufficiently large number of perceptual facts one can infer the character of the thing-in-itself which underlies these facts. Formerly it was from concepts, now it is from percepts, that people seek to evolve the metaphysical. Since one has concepts before oneself in transparent clearness, it was thought that one might deduce from them the metaphysical with absolute certainty. Percepts are not given with the same transparent clearness. Each subsequent one is a little different from others of the same kind which preceded it. Actually, therefore, anything inferred from past percepts is somewhat modified by each subsequent percept. The character of the metaphysical thus obtained can, therefore, be only relatively true, for it is open to correction by further instances. The character of von Hartmann's Metaphysics is determined by this methodological principle. The motto on the title-page of his first important book is, “Speculative results gained by the inductive method of Natural Science.”

[ 37 ] The form which the Metaphysical Realist at the present day gives to his things-in-themselves is obtained by inductive inferences. Through considerations of the process of knowledge he is convinced of the existence of an objectively-real world-nexus, over and above the “subjective” world-nexus which we know by means of percepts and concepts. The nature of this reality he thinks he can determine by inductive inferences from his percepts.

Addition to the Revised Edition, 1918

[ 38 ] The unprejudiced study of experience, in perceiving and conceiving, such as we have attempted to describe it in the preceding chapter, is liable to be disturbed again and again by certain representations which spring from the soil of natural science. Thus, taking one's stand on science, one says that the eye perceives in the spectrum colours from red to violet. But beyond violet there lie forces within the compass of the spectrum to which corresponds, not a colour perceived by the eye, but a chemical effect. Similarly, beyond the activity of red, there are rays which have only heat effects. These and similar phenomena lead, on reflection, to the view that the range of man's perceptual world is defined by the range of his senses, and that he would have before himself a very different world if he had additional, or altogether different, senses. Those who like to indulge in far-roaming fancies for which the brilliant discoveries of recent scientific research in this direction provide a highly tempting occasion, may well be led to confess that nothing enters the field of man's observation except what-can affect his senses, as these have been determined by his organization. Man has no right to regard his percepts, limited as these are by his organization, as in any way a standard to which reality must conform. Every new sense would confront him with a different picture of reality. Within its proper limits, this is a wholly justified view. But if anyone lets himself be confused by this view in the unprejudiced study of the relation of percept and concept, as set forth in these chapters, he blocks the path for himself to a knowledge of man and the world which is rooted in reality. The experiencing of the essential nature of thinking, i.e., the active appropriation of the world of concepts, is something wholly different from the experiencing of a perceptible object through the senses. Whatever additional senses man might have, not one would give him reality, if his thinking did not permeate with concepts whatever he perceived by means of such a sense. Every sense, whatever its kind, provided only it is thus permeated, enables man to live amidst the real. The fancy-picture of other perceptual worlds, made possible by other senses, has nothing to do with the problem of how man stands in the midst of reality. We must clearly understand that every perceptual picture of the world owes its form to the organization of the perceiving being, but that only that perceptual picture which has been thoroughly permeated by a thinking investigation leads us into reality. Fanciful speculations concerning how different the world would appear to other than human senses, can give us no occasion to seek for knowledge of man's relation to the world; but only the recognition that every percept presents only a part of the reality it contains, and that, consequently, it leads us away from its own proper reality. This recognition is supplemented by the further one that thinking leads us into the part of reality which the percept conceals in itself. Another difficulty in the way of the unprejudiced study of the relation we have here described, between percept and concept as elaborated by thinking, may be met with, when in the field of physical experience the necessity arises of speaking, not of immediately perceptible elements, but of non-perceptible magnitudes, such as, e.g., lines of electric or magnetic force.

It may seem as if the elements of reality of which physicists speak, had no connection either with what is perceptible, or with the concepts which active thinking has elaborated. Yet such a view would rest on self-deception. The main point is that all the results of physical research, except illegitimate hypotheses which ought to be excluded, have been gained through perceiving and conceiving. Elements which are seemingly non-perceptible, are placed by the physicists' sound instinct for knowledge into the field in which percepts lie, and they are thought of in concepts which are commonly applied in this field. The magnitudes in a field of electric or magnetic force are reached, in their essence, by no other cognitive process that the one which connects percept and concept.—An increase or a modification of human senses would yield a different perceptual picture, an enrichment or a modification of human experience. But genuine knowledge could be gained also concerning this new experience only through the mutual co-operation of concept and percept. The deepening of knowledge depends on the powers of intuition which express themselves in thinking (see p. 70). This Intuition may, in the living experience which expresses itself in thinking, dive either into deeper or shallower levels of reality. An expansion of the perceptual picture may supply stimuli for, and thus indirectly promote, this diving of intuition. But this diving into the depth, through which we attain reality, ought never to be confused with the contrast between a wider and a narrower perceptual picture, which always contains only half of reality, as that is conditioned by the structure of the cognizing organization. He who does not lose himself in abstractions will understand how for a knowledge of human nature the fact is relevant, that physics must infer the existence, in the field of percepts, of elements for which no sense is tuned as for colour or sound. Human nature, taken concretely, is determined not only by what, in virtue of his organization, man faces as immediate percept, but also by all else which he excludes from this immediate percept. Just as life needs unconscious sleep alongside of conscious waking experience, so man's experience of himself needs over and above the range of his sense-perception another sphere—and a much bigger one—of non-perceptible elements belonging to the same field from which the percepts of the senses come. All this was laid down by implication in the original argument of this book. The author adds the present amplification of the argument, because he has found by experience that some readers have not read attentively enough.

It is to be remembered, too, that the Idea of percept, developed in this book, is not to be confused with the Idea of external sense-percept which is but a special instance of the other. The reader will gather from what has preceded, but even more from what will be expounded later, that everything is here taken as “percept,” which sensuously or spiritually approaches man, so long as it has not yet been grasped by the actively elaborated concept. No “senses,” as we ordinarily understand the term, are necessary in order to have percepts of a physical or spiritual kind. It may be urged that this extension of ordinary usage is illegitimate. But the extension is absolutely necessary, unless we are to be prevented by the current sense of a word from enlarging our knowledge of certain realms of facts. He who uses “percept” only as meaning “sense-percept,” will never arrive at a concept fit for the purposes of knowledge even regarding sense-percept. It is sometimes necessary to enlarge a concept in order that it may get its appropriate meaning within a narrower field. Again, it is at times necessary to add to the original content of a concept, in order that the original concept may be justified or, perhaps, readjusted. Thus we find it said here in this book (p. 80): “A representation is an individualized concept.” It has been objected that this is an unusual use of the word. But this use is necessary if we are to find out what a representation really is. How can we expect any progress in knowledge, if everyone who finds himself compelled to readjust concepts, is to be met by the objection: “This is an unusual use of the word”?