The Philosophy of Spritual Activity Part 2

The moment a perception appears in my field of observation, thinking also becomes active through me. A member of my thought-system, a definite intuition, a concept, unites itself with the perception. Then when the perception disappears from my field of vision, what do I retain? My intuition, with the reference to the particular perception which formed itself in the moment of perceiving. The degree of vividness with which I can recall this reference later depends on the manner in which my intellectual and bodily organism is working. A representation is nothing but an intuition related to a particular perception; it is a concept that once was connected with a perception and retains the reference to this perception. My concept of a lion is not formed out of my perceptions of lions. But my representation of a lion is indeed formed according to my perception. I can convey to someone who has never seen a lion, the concept of a lion. But I can never bring about in him a vivid representation of a lion, without his perceiving one.

A representation therefore is an individualized concept. And now we have the explanation as to why our representations can represent reality to us. The complete reality of something is submitted to us in the moment of observation through the flowing together of concept and perception. The concept acquires, through a perception, an individual form, a relation to this particular perception. In this individual form which has as a characteristic feature the reference to the perception, the concept lives on in us as the representation of the thing in question. If we come across a second thing with which the same concept connects itself, we recognize the second as belonging to the same kind as the first; if we come across the same thing twice, we find in our conceptual system not only a corresponding concept, but the individualized concept with its characteristic relation to the same object, and thus we recognize the object again.

The representation, therefore, stands between perception and concept. It is the definite concept which points to the perception.

The sum of those things about which I can form representations may be called my practical experience.40 The man who has the greater number of individualized concepts will be the man of richer practical experience. A man who lacks all power of intuition is not capable of acquiring practical experience. He again loses the objects from his field of vision because he lacks the concepts which should bring him into relation with them. A man whose power of thinking is well developed, but whose ability to perceive functions poorly due to clumsy sense-organs, will be no better able to gather practical experience. It is true that he can acquire concepts by one means and another, but his intuitions lack vivid reference to definite things. The unthinking traveller and the scholar living in abstract conceptual systems are both incapable of acquiring rich practical experience.

Reality appears to us as perception and concept, and the subjective representative of this reality is - representation. If our personality expressed itself only in cognition, the totality of all that is objective would be given in perception, concept and representation.

However, we are not satisfied merely to refer the perception, by means of thinking, to the concept, but we relate it also to our own subjectivity, to our individual I. The expression of this individual relations.h.i.+p is feeling, which we experience as pleasure or displeasure.

Thinking and feeling correspond to the twofold nature of our being, which we have already considered. Thinking is the element through which we take part in the universal process of the cosmos; feeling, that through which we can withdraw into the narrow confines of our own soul life.

Our thinking unites us with the world; our feeling leads us back into ourselves, and this makes us individuals. If we were merely thinking and perceiving beings, our whole life would flow along in monotonous indifference. If we could only cognize ourself as a self, we would be totally indifferent to ourself. Only because with self-knowledge we experience self-feeling, and with the perception of objects pleasure and pain, do we live as individual beings whose existence is not exhausted by the conceptual relations in which we stand to the rest of the world, but who have a special value for themselves as well.

One might be tempted to see in the life of feeling an element more richly saturated with reality than is our thinking contemplation of the world. But the answer to this is that the life of feeling, after all, has this richer meaning only for my individual self. For the world my life of feeling can attain value only if, as perception of my self, the feeling enters into connection with a concept and, in this roundabout way, links itself to the cosmos. Our life is a continual oscillation between our living with the universal world process and our own individual existence. The further we ascend into the universal nature of thinking where what is individual ultimately interests us only as example, as instance of the concept, the more the character of the quite definite individual personality is lost within us. The further we descend into the depths of our own soul life and let our feelings resound with the experiences of the outer world, the more we cut ourselves off from universal life. A true individuality will be one who reaches up with his feelings farthest into the region of the ideal. There are people in whom even the most general ideas that enter their heads bear, nevertheless, that particular coloring which shows unmistakably their connection with the individual who thinks them. There are others whose concepts come before us without the least trace of individual coloring, as if they had not been produced by a being of flesh and blood at all.

The act of representing already gives our conceptual life an individual stamp. For each one of us has his special place from which he looks out upon the world. His concepts link themselves to his perceptions. He will think the general concepts in his own particular way. This particular determination comes about through the place we occupy in the world and from the perceptions belonging to our sphere of life.

Distinct from this determination is another, which depends on our particular organization.

Our organization is, indeed, a special, definite, individual unity. Each of us combines particular feelings, and these in the most varying degrees of intensity, with his perceptions. This is the individual aspect of our personality. It is what remains over when we have allowed fully for all the determining factors in our milieu.

A life of feeling devoid of all life of thought would gradually lose all connection with the world. But because it is inherent in man to develop his whole nature, his knowledge of things will go hand-in-hand with the education and development of his feeling-life.

Feeling is the means whereby, to begin with, concepts attain concrete life.

ARE THERE LIMITS TO KNOWLEDGE?.

We have established that the elements for explaining reality are to be taken from the two spheres: perceiving and thinking. As we have seen, it is our organization that determines the fact that the full, complete reality of things, our own subject included, appears at first as a duality. Cognition overcomes this duality by combining the two elements of reality: the perception and the concept gained by thinking, into the complete thing. If we call the world as it confronts us before it has attained its true aspect by means of cognition, "the world of appearance," in contrast to the unified whole composed of perception and concept, then we can say: The world is given us as a duality (dualistic), and cognition transforms it into a unity (monistic). A philosophy which starts from this basic principle may be called a monistic philosophy, or monism, in contrast to the theory of two worlds, or dualism. The latter does not a.s.sume that there are two sides of a single reality, which are kept apart merely by our organization, but, rather, that there are two worlds, completely different from each other. Then in the one world it tries to find the principles that can explain the other.

Dualism rests on a misunderstanding of what we call knowledge. It divides the whole of existence into two spheres, each of which has its own laws, and it lets these spheres stand opposite to and outside of each other.

It is from a dualism such as this that there arises the distinction between the perceived object and the thing-in-itself which Kant41 introduced into science and which so far has not been expelled. From our discussion can be seen that it is due to the nature of our intellectual organization that a particular thing can be given us only as perception.

Thinking then overcomes this separateness by referring each perception to its rightful place in the world whole. As long as the separated parts of the world whole are defined as perceptions, in this elimination we are simply following a law of our subjectivity. If, however, we consider the sum-total of all perceptions as const.i.tuting one part, and confront it with the "thing-in-itself" as a second part, then our philosophising loses all foundation. It then becomes a mere playing with concepts. An artificial opposition is constructed, but it is not possible to attain a content for the second part of this opposition, since such content for a particular thing can be drawn only from perception.

Every kind of existence which is a.s.sumed outside the realm of perception and concept belongs to the sphere of unjustified hypotheses. The "thing-in-itself" belongs in this category. It is quite natural that a dualistic thinker should be unable to find the connection between a universal principle which he hypothetically a.s.sumes, and the given, known by experience. One can obtain a content for the hypothetical universal principle only by borrowing a content from the sphere of experience and then shutting one's eyes to the fact of the borrowing. Otherwise it remains an empty concept, a non-concept, which is nothing but a sh.e.l.l of a concept. Then the dualistic thinker usually maintains that the content of this concept is not accessible to our knowledge. We can know only that such a content must be present, but not what it is. In both cases it is impossible to overcome dualism. Even if one brings a few abstract elements from the sphere of experience into the concept of the thing-in-itself, it still remains impossible to derive the rich concrete life of experience from those few qualities which, after all, are themselves taken from perception only. Du-Bois Reymond42 thinks that the imperceptible atoms of matter produce sensation and feeling by means of their position and motion, and then comes to the conclusion: We can never find a satisfactory explanation of how matter and motion produce sensation and feeling, for "It is absolutely and forever 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 impossible to see how consciousness could come into existence through their interaction." This conclusion is characteristic of this whole trend of thought. Position and motion are abstractions derived from the rich sphere of perceptions. They are then transferred to the imagined world of atoms. Then astonishment arises that real life cannot be evolved out of this principle which is self-made and borrowed from the sphere of perceptions. That the dualist who works with a completely empty concept of the "in-itself" of things can reach no explanation of the world, already follows from the definition of his principle indicated above.

A dualist is always compelled to set impa.s.sable barriers to our faculty of knowledge. The follower of a monistic world view knows that everything he needs for the explanation of any given phenomenon in the world must lie within this world itself. What hinders him from reaching the explanation can be only contingent limitations in s.p.a.ce and time, or shortcomings of his organization. And, indeed, not of the human organization in general, but only of his own particular one.

It follows from the concept of cognition, as defined by us, that one cannot speak of limits to knowledge. Cognition 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 perceptions. In the inner core of our egohood, however, we find the power to discover the other part of reality also. Only when the egohood has again combined for itself the two elements of reality which are indivisibly united in the world, is the thirst for knowledge satisfied: the I has again come to reality.

Therefore, the conditions required for cognition to arise, come about through and for the I. The I sets itself the problems of cognition. And it takes them from the element of thinking, in itself absolutely clear and transparent. If we ask questions we cannot answer, then the content of the question cannot be clear and distinct in all its details. The world does not set us the questions; it is we ourselves who set them.

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.

In knowledge we are concerned with questions which arise for us through the fact that a sphere of perceptions, conditioned by time, s.p.a.ce, and our subjective organization, is confronted by a sphere of concepts pointing to a world which is a unity. My task is to reconcile these two spheres, well known to me. One cannot speak here of a limit 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 all that is involved.

What is not found to-day, however, may be found tomorrow. The limits due to these causes are only transitory, and can be overcome by the progress of perceiving and thinking.

Dualism makes the mistake of transferring the ant.i.thesis of object and subject, which has significance only within the sphere of perceptions, to purely invented ent.i.ties outside this sphere. But as the separate things within the field of perception remain separated only as long as the perceiver refrains from thinking, which cancels all separation and shows it to be due to merely subjective factors, so the dualist, in fact, transfers to ent.i.ties behind the sphere of perceptions definitions which, even for perceptions, have no absolute but only relative validity. In doing this he splits up the two factors concerned in the process of cognition, perception and concept, into four: 1) the object-in-itself, 2) the perception which the subject has of the object, 3) the subject, 4) the concept which relates the perception to the object-in-itself. The relation between object and subject is considered to be real, that is, the subject is considered to be really (dynamically) influenced by the object. This real process is said not to appear in consciousness. But it is supposed to evoke in the subject a response to the stimulation from the object. The result of this response is said to be the perception. This at last enters our consciousness. The object is said to have an objective reality (independent of the subject), the perception a subjective reality. This subjective reality is said to be referred by the subject to the object. This latter reference is said to be an ideal one. The dualist, in other words, splits up the process of cognition into two parts. One part, i.e., the production of the perceptual object out of the thing-in-itself, takes place, according to him, outside of consciousness, the other part, the union of perception with concept and the reference of this to the object, within consciousness. These presuppositions make it clear that the dualist believes he receives in his concepts only something subjective, which represents what confronts his consciousness. The objectively real process in the subject, by means of which the perception comes about, and still more the objective relations.h.i.+ps between things-in- themselves, remain inaccessible to direct cognition for such a dualist. In his opinion, man can obtain only concepts that represent the objectively real. The bond of unity which connects things with one another and also objectively with our individual spirit (as thing- in-itself), lies beyond consciousness in a being-in-itself of whom we likewise can have in our consciousness only a concept that represents it. The dualist believes that the whole world would be nothing but a mere abstract scheme of concepts if he did not insist on "real" connections between the objects beside the conceptual ones. In other words, the ideal principles which can be discovered by thinking seem too airy for the dualist, and he seeks, in addition, "real principles" with which to support them.

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 can see these objects is for him the proof of their reality. "Nothing exists that cannot be perceived" is, in fact, the basic 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 a.s.sertion is the naive man's belief in immortality and in ghosts. He thinks of the soul as a fine kind of physical matter which, in special circ.u.mstances, may actually become visible to the ordinary man (naive belief in ghosts). In contrast to this real world of his, the naive realist regards everything else, especially the world of ideas, as unreal, as "merely ideal." What we add to objects by, thinking is mere thoughts about the objects.

Thought adds nothing real to perception.

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 happenings.

According to him, one thing can act upon another only when a force actually present to sense perception issues from the one and seizes upon the other. The older physicists thought that very fine substances emanate from the objects and penetrate through the sense-organs into the soul. They thought the actual seeing of these substances to be impossible only because of the coa.r.s.eness of our sense organs in comparison with 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 physical world, namely, the form of their existence, which was thought to be a.n.a.logous to that of physical reality. The self-dependent nature of what can be experienced, not physically but ideally, is not regarded by naive consciousness as being real in the same sense.

Something grasped "merely as idea" is regarded as a chimera until sense perception can provide conviction of its reality. In short, in addition to the ideal evidence of his thinking, the naive man demands the real evidence of his senses. This need of naive man is the reason why primitive forms of belief in revelation arise. For naive consciousness, the G.o.d who is given through thinking always remains a G.o.d merely "thought." Naive consciousness demands that the manifestation should be through means accessible to physical perception. G.o.d must appear in bodily form; little value is attached to the evidence 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. The act of cognition, too, is regarded by naive man as a process a.n.a.logous to sense-perception. Things must make an impression on the soul or send out images which penetrate the senses, etc.

What the naive man can perceive with his senses he regards as real, and that of which he has no such perception (G.o.d, soul, cognition, etc.) he regards as a.n.a.logous to what is perceived.

A science based on naive realism will consist in an exact description of the content of perception. Concepts are only means to this end. They exist to provide ideal counterparts of perceptions. For things themselves, they have no significance. For the naive realist, only the individual tulips which are seen or could be seen, are real. The one idea of the tulip, is to him an abstraction, is to him an unreal thought-picture, which the soul has put together for itself out of the characteristics common to all tulips. Naive realism, with its fundamental principle of the reality of all perceived things, is contradicted by experience, which shows us that the content of perceptions 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, however, for the naive realist is "merely" an idea, not a reality. Thus, this worldview finds itself in the position of seeing its realities arise and perish, while what it regards as unreal, in contrast to the real, persists. Hence the naive realist has to allow for the existence of something ideal besides the perceptions. He has to accept ent.i.ties which he cannot perceive by means of the senses. He justifies this by imagining their existence to be a.n.a.logous to that of physical objects. Such hypothetically a.s.sumed realities are the invisible forces by means of which objects perceptible to the senses act on one another. Heredity is thought of in this way; it goes beyond the individual and is the reason why a new being develops from the individual which is similar to it, and by means of it the species is maintained. The life principle permeating the organic body is also thought of in this way, and so is the soul, for which one always finds in naive consciousness a concept based on an a.n.a.logy to sense reality, and finally so, too, the naive man thinks of the Divine Being. This Divine Being is thought of as active in a manner exactly corresponding to what can be perceived as actions of men, that is, the Divine Being is thought of anthropomorphically .

Modern physics traces sense-impressions back to processes in the smallest particles of bodies and to the infinitely fine substance, the ether, or to something similar. For example, what we sense as warmth, is, within the s.p.a.ce occupied by the warmth-giving body, movement of its parts. Here again, something imperceptible is thought of on the a.n.a.logy of what is perceptible. The physical a.n.a.logue to the concept "body" is, in this sense, something like the interior of a totally enclosed s.p.a.ce in which elastic b.a.l.l.s are moving in all directions, impinging on one another, bouncing on and off the walls, etc.

Without such a.s.sumptions, for naive realism, the world would collapse into a disconnected chaos of perceptions with no mutual relations.h.i.+ps to unite them. It is clear, however, that naive realism can arrive at these a.s.sumptions only by inconsistency. If it remained true to its fundamental principle that only what is perceived is real, then it would not a.s.sume a reality where it perceives nothing. The imperceptible forces which proceed from perceptible things are essentially unjustified hypotheses from the standpoint of naive realism itself. And as the naive realist acknowledges no other realities, he invests his hypothetical forces with perceptual content. In doing this he applies a form of existence (perceptual existence) to a sphere where he lacks the only means that can give any evidence of such existence: perceiving by means of physical senses. This self- contradictory world view leads to metaphysical realism. Beside the perceptible reality, the metaphysical realist constructs an imperceptible one which he thinks of on the a.n.a.logy of the former. Metaphysical realism therefore, is of necessity dualistic.

Where the metaphysical realist observes a relation between perceptible things (mutual approach through movement, becoming conscious of an object, etc.), there he regards a reality as existing. But the relation that he notices he can, however, express only by means of thinking; he cannot perceive it. The relation, which is purely ideal, is arbitrarily made into something similar to what is perceptible. Thus, according to this line of thought, the real world is composed of perceptual objects which are in ceaseless flux, arising and disappearing, and of imperceptible forces which are permanent and produce the perceptual objects.

Metaphysical realism is a contradictory mixture of naive realism and idealism. Its hypothetical forces are imperceptible ent.i.ties endowed with the qualities of perceptions.

In addition to the sphere, for the form of existence of which he has a means of cognition in its perceptibility, the metaphysical realist has decided to acknowledge another sphere to which this means is not applicable, a sphere which can be ascertained only by means of thinking. But he cannot at the same time decide also to acknowledge the form of existence which thinking mediates, namely the concept (the idea), as being of equal importance with perceptions. If one is to avoid the contradiction of imperceptible perceptions, then it must be admitted that the relation thinking mediates between perceptions can have no other form of existence for us than that of the concept. When the untenable part of metaphysical realism is rejected, we then have the world before us as the sum of perceptions and their conceptual (ideal) relations. Then metaphysical realism merges into a world view which requires the principle of perceptibility for perceptions and that of "thinkability" for the relations between the perceptions. Side by side with the realm of perceptions and that of concepts, this world view cannot acknowledge a third realm for which both principles, the so-called real principle and the ideal principle, have equal validity.

When the metaphysical realist maintains that beside the ideal relation between the perceptual object and the perceiving subject, there must also exist a real relation between the "thing-in-itself" of the perception and the "thing-in-itself" of the perceptible subject (of the so-called individual spirit), then this a.s.sertion is due to the mistaken a.s.sumption of the existence of a process, a.n.a.logous to a process in the sense-world, but imperceptible. Further, when the metaphysical realist says: I have a conscious ideal relations.h.i.+p with my world of perceptions, but with the real world I can have only a dynamic (force) relations.h.i.+p, he then makes the above mistake to an even greater degree.

One can only speak of a force-relations.h.i.+p within the world of perceptions (in the sphere of the sense of touch), not outside that sphere.

Let us call the world view characterized above, into which metaphysical realism merges if it discards its contradictory elements, monism, because it unites one-sided realism with idealism in a higher unity.

For the naive realist, the real world is an aggregate of objects of perception; for the metaphysical realist also the imperceptible forces are realities. Instead of forces, the monist has ideal connections which he attains by means of his thinking. The laws of nature are such connections. For a law of nature is nothing other than the conceptual expression for the connection of certain perceptions. The monist never has any need to ask for factors other than perceptions and concepts, with which to explain reality. He knows that in the whole sphere of reality there is no need to ask for this. In the sphere of perceptions, directly accessible to his perceiving, he sees half of a reality; in the union of this sphere with the sphere of concepts, he finds the full reality. The metaphysical realist may make the objection to the adherent of monism: It could be that for your organization your knowledge is complete in itself, that no part is lacking; but what you do not know is how the world is mirrored in an intelligence organized differently from your own. To this the monist would reply: If there are intelligences other than human, if their perceptions have a different form than ours, then all that would be of significance for me would be what reaches me from them by means of perceptions and concepts. By means of my perceiving and, in fact, by means of this specifically human manner of perceiving, as subject I am placed over against the object. The connection of things is thereby broken.

The subject restores this connection by means of thinking. In doing so, things are re- inserted into the world whole. Since it is only through our subject that this whole appears rent in two at the place between our perception and our concept, so likewise the union of these two factors gives us a true knowledge. For beings with a different world of perceptions (if, for example, they had twice as many sense-organs), the connection would appear broken in another place, and the restoration would, accordingly, have a form specific for such beings. The question concerning limits of knowledge exists only for the naive and metaphysical realists, both of whom see in the content of the soul only an ideal representation of the world. For them, what exists outside the subject is something absolute, something self-dependent, and the content of the subject is a picture of this absolute and is completely external to it. How complete is knowledge of this absolute would depend on the greater or lesser degree of resemblance between the picture and the absolute object. A being with fewer senses than man would perceive less of the world, one with more senses would perceive more. The former's knowledge would therefore be less complete than that of the latter.

For the monist, things are different. It is the organization of the perceiving being that determines how the world unity appears to be torn apart into subject and object. The object is not something absolute, but is only something relative in relation to this particular subject. The bridging of the contrasting ent.i.ties can, therefore, take place again only in the quite specific way that is characteristic of the human subject. As soon as the I, which, in perceiving, is separated from the world, reinserts itself into the connection of things through thinking investigation, all further questioning ceases, since all questions arose only as a result of the separation.

A differently const.i.tuted being would have a differently const.i.tuted knowledge. Our knowledge suffices to answer the questions asked by our nature.

The metaphysical realist should ask: How does what is given as perception come to be the given; what is it that affects the subject?

For the monist, the perception is determined by the subject. But in thinking, the subject has, at the same time, the means for cancelling this determination, caused through the subject itself.

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 cannot but ask himself: How is it that the world picture which I build up out of my subjectively determined perceptions and out of my concepts, turns out to be like that which another individual builds up out of the same two subjective factors? How, from my subjective world picture, can I infer anything about that of another human being? The metaphysical realist believes he can infer, from the fact that people come to terms with one another in practical life, that their subjective world pictures must be similar. From the similarity of these world pictures he then further infers that the "individual spirits" behind the single perceiving human subjects, or the "I-in-itself" behind the subjects, must also be similar.

Therefore this inference is drawn from a sum of effects to the nature of their underlying causes. It is believed that from a sufficiently large number of instances, the situation can be so recognized that one can know how the inferred causes will behave in other instances. Such an inference is called an inductive inference. It will be necessary to modify the results if, from further observation, some unexpected element is discovered, because the result, after all, is determined only by the particular form of the earlier observation. The metaphysical realist maintains that this stipulated knowledge of causes is quite sufficient for practical life. Inductive inference is the methodical foundation of modern metaphysical realism. At one time it was believed that out of concepts could be evolved something that is no longer a concept. It was believed that from concepts could be derived the metaphysical realities which of necessity, metaphysical realism must have. This kind of philosophizing is now superseded. Instead, it is believed that from a sufficiently large number of perceptual facts one can infer the character of the thing-in-itself which underlies these facts. Just as in the past one tried to derive the metaphysical from concepts, so to-day one tries to derive it from perceptions. As concepts are transparent in their clarity, it was believed that one could also deduce the metaphysical from them with absolute certainty.

Perceptions are not of such transparency. Each later perception is always a little different from those of the same kind that preceded it. Therefore, anything inferred from the earlier perception is, in reality, somewhat modified by each following one. The aspect of the metaphysical arrived at in this way, therefore, can be said to be only relatively correct, for it is subject to correction by future instances. Eduard von Hartmann's metaphysics is of a kind that is determined by this methodical principle. This is expressed in the motto he gave on the t.i.tle-page of his first major work: "Speculative results according to the inductive method of natural science."

The form which the metaphysical realist gives to his things-in-themselves today is obtained by inductive inferences. His consideration of the process of knowledge has convinced him that a connection of things, which is objectively real, exists side by side with the "subjective" connection that can be known through perception and concept. The nature of this objective reality he believes he can determine by inductive inferences from his perceptions.

Addition to the Revised Edition, (1918): Certain representations which arise from investigations of natural phenomena tend, again and again, to disturb unprejudiced observation - as the effort has been made to describe it above - of how we experience concepts and perceptions. Such investigations show that in the light-spectrum the eye perceives colors from red to violet. However, within the spectrum's sphere of radiation, but beyond the violet there are forces to which corresponds no color perception of the eye, but a chemical effect and, similarly, beyond the limit of the red there exist radiations which have only effects of warmth. Investigation of these and similar phenomena has led to the opinion that the range of man's sphere of perceptions is determined by the range of his senses, and that he would have before him a very different world if he had more or altogether different senses. Those who are inclined to flights of imagination, for which the glittering discoveries of recent scientific research in particular offer such tempting opportunities, may come to the conclusion: Nothing can enter man's field of observation except what is able to affect the senses of his bodily organization, and he has no right to regard what he perceives, by means of his limited organization, as being in any way a standard for ascertaining reality. Every new sense would give him a different picture of reality. - Within its proper limits, this opinion is entirely correct. But one who allows this opinion to prevent him from observing without prejudice the relations.h.i.+p between concept and perception, as explained here, will put obstacles in the way to any realistic knowledge of man and world. To experience thinking in its own nature, that is, to experience the active working-out of the sphere of concepts, is something entirely different from the experience of something perceptible through the senses. Whatever senses man might possibly have, not one would give him reality if through the activity of thinking, he did not permeate with concepts the perceptions they conveyed to him; and indeed, every sense, of whatever kind, if thus permeated, gives man the possibility to live within reality. Speculations about quite different perceptual pictures conveyed by other senses, has nothing to do with the question concerning man's relation to reality. It is essential to recognize that every perceptual picture derives its form from the organization of the perceiving being, but the perceptual picture when permeated by thinking which is livingly experienced leads man into reality. A fanciful description of how different the world would appear to other than human senses cannot act as an incentive to man to seek for knowledge concerning his relations.h.i.+p to the world; rather will this happen through the insight that every perception gives us only a part of the reality it conceals, that, therefore, it leads away from its reality. This then brings us to the further insight that it is thinking which leads into that part of reality which the perception conceals within itself.

An unprejudiced observation of the relation between perceptions, and concepts worked out by thinking, as here described, may also be disturbed by the fact that in the sphere of applied physics it becomes necessary to speak not at all of directly perceptible elements, but of non-perceptible magnitudes, such as lines of electric or magnetic force, etc. It may appear as if the elements of reality, spoken of in physics, had nothing to do either with what is perceptible or with concepts actively worked out by thinking. But such a view is based on self-deception. What matters is that all that is worked out in physics - as long as it is not based on unjustifiable hypotheses which must be excluded - is obtained by means of perceptions and concepts. By a correctly working instinct for knowledge in the physicist, what is apparently a non-perceptible content will always be placed into the field of perceptions, and will be thought of in concepts belonging to this field. The magnitudes in electric and magnetic fields, etc., are attained, owing to their nature, by no other process of cognition than the one which takes place between perception and concept. - An increase or a transformation of the human senses would give a different perceptual picture; it would be an enrichment or a transformation of human experience.

But a real knowledge of this experience also could be attained only through the interplay of concept and perception. A deepening of knowledge depends upon the active power of intuition contained in thinking (see p. 113). In the living experience within thinking, this intuition can dive down into lesser or greater depths of reality. Through extension of the perceptual picture this diving down of intuition can receive stimulation and thus be indirectly strengthened. But never should this diving into the depths to attain reality be confused with being confronted with a wider or narrower perceptual picture, in which there would always be contained only a half-reality determined by the organization of the cognizing being. If one avoids getting lost in abstractions, it will be recognized how significant, also for knowledge of the being of man, is the fact that in physics one has to include the existence, in the field of perceptions, of elements for which no sense organ is directly tuned as for color or sound. The essential being of man is determined not only by what confronts him through his organization as direct perception, but also by the fact that he excludes something else from this direct perception. Just as life needs, in addition to the conscious waking state, an unconscious sleeping state, so, for man's self-experience is needed besides the sphere of his sense perceptions, another sphere also - indeed, a much larger one - of elements not perceptible to the senses, but existing within the same field where sense-perceptions originate. All this was already indirectly indicated in the first edition of this book. The author here adds these amplifications to the content because he has found by experience that many readers have not read accurately enough. - Another thing to be considered is that the idea of perception, as presented in this book, is not to be confused with the idea of external sense-perception, which is but a special instance of perception. The reader will gather from what has already been said, but even more from what will follow, that here perception includes everything that man meets, physically or spiritually, before he has grasped it in actively worked out concepts. We do not need what we usually mean by senses in order to have perceptions of a soul or spiritual kind. It may be said that such extension of the ordinary use of a word is inadmissible. Yet such extension is absolutely necessary if one is not to be barred by the current use of a word from enlarging the knowledge of certain fields. If the word perception is applied to physical perception only, then one cannot arrive at a concept that can be of use for attaining knowledge even of this (physical) perception. Often it is necessary to enlarge a concept in order that it may preserve in a narrower field the meaning appropriate to it. Or it is sometimes necessary to add something different to the previous content of a concept in order that its first content may be justified or even readjusted. For example, it is said in this book (p. 124): "A representation, therefore, is an individualized concept." It has been objected that this is an unusual use of the word. But this use of the word is necessary if we are to find out what a representation really is. What would become of the progress of knowledge if, when compelled to readjust concepts, one is always to be met with the objection: "This is an unusual use of the word"?

THE FACTORS OF LIFE.

Let us recapitulate the results arrived at in the previous chapters. The world confronts man as a multiplicity, as a sum of separate ent.i.ties. Man himself is one of these separate ent.i.ties, a being among other beings. This aspect of the world we characterized simply as that which is given, and inasmuch as we do not evolve it by conscious activity, but find it present, we called it perception. Within the world of perceptions we perceive ourself.

This self perception would remain merely one among the many other perceptions, did not something arise from the midst of this self-perception which proves capable of connecting perceptions in general and therefore also the sum of all other perceptions with that of ourself. This something which emerges is no longer mere perception, neither is it, like perceptions, simply given. It is brought about by our activity. To begin with, it appears united with what we perceive as ourself. But in accordance with its inner significance it reaches out beyond the self. It bestows on the separate perceptions ideal definitions, and these relate themselves to one another and stem from a unity. What is attained by self-perception, it defines ideally in the same way as it defines all other perceptions, placing this as subject, or "I," over against the objects. This something is thinking, and the ideal definitions are the concepts and ideas. Thinking, therefore, first manifests itself in the perception of the self, but it is not merely subjective, for the self characterizes itself as subject only with the help of thinking. This relations.h.i.+p to oneself by means of thoughts is a life-definition of our personality. Through it we lead a purely ideal existence. Through it we feel ourselves to be thinking beings. This life-definition would remain a purely conceptual (logical) one if no other definitions of our self were added to it. We should then be beings whose life would be exhausted in establis.h.i.+ng purely ideal relations between perceptions themselves, and between them and ourself. If we call the establis.h.i.+ng of such a thought connection, an act of cognition, and the resulting condition of our self knowledge, then according to the abovementioned presupposition, we should have to consider ourselves as beings who merely cognize or know.

However, the presupposition does not correspond to the facts. We relate perceptions to ourselves not merely ideally, through concepts, but also, as we have seen, through feeling. Therefore we are not beings with a merely conceptual life-content. The naive realist even sees in the life of feeling a more genuine life of the personality than in the purely ideal element of knowledge. And from his standpoint he is right in interpreting the matter in this way. For feeling on the subjective side to begin with, is exactly the same as perception on the objective side. From the basic principle of naive realism, that everything that can be perceived is real, it follows that feeling is the guarantee of the reality of one's own personality. Monism, however, as understood here, must confer upon feeling the same supplement that it considers necessary for all perceptions if these are to be present as a complete reality. For monism, feeling is an incomplete reality which, in the form it is first given to us, does not as yet contain its second factor, the concept or idea. This is why in actual life, feelings, like perceptions, appear before cognition has occurred. At first we have merely a feeling of existence, and it is only in the course of gradual development that we reach the point where the concept of our self dawns within the dim feeling of our existence. But what for us appears only later is fundamentally and indivisibly bound up with feeling. This fact leads the naive man to the belief that in feeling, existence is present directly, in knowledge only indirectly. Therefore the development of the feeling-life appears to him more important than anything else. He will believe that he has grasped the connection of things only when he has felt it. He attempts to make feelings rather than knowing the means of cognition. But as feeling is something quite individual, something equivalent to perception, a philosopher of feeling makes into the universal principle, a principle which has significance only within his personality. He tries to permeate the whole world with his own self. What the monist, in the sense we have described, strives to grasp by means of concepts, the philosopher of feeling tries to attain by means of feeling, and considers this relations.h.i.+p with objects to be the one that is most direct.

The view just characterized, the philosophy of feeling, is often called mysticism. The error in mysticism based on feeling alone is that the mystic wants to experience43 in feeling what should be attained as knowledge; he wants to develop something which is individual, into something universal.

Feeling is purely individual, it is the relation of the external world to our subject, insofar as this relation comes to expression in merely subjective experience. There is yet another expression of the human personality. The I, through its thinking, lives within the universal life of the world; through thinking the "I" relates purely ideally (conceptually) the perception to itself, and itself to the perception. In feeling, it experiences a relation of the object to its own subject. In the will, the opposite is the case. In will, we are again confronted with a perception, namely that of the individual relation of our own self to the object. Everything in the will which is not a purely ideal factor is just as much a merely perceived object as any object in the external world.

Nevertheless, here again the naive realist believes that he has before him something far more real than can be reached by thinking. He sees in the will an element in which he is directly aware of a process, a causation, in contrast to thinking, which must first grasp the process in concepts. What the I brings about by its will represents to such a view, a process which is experienced directly. An adherent of this philosophy believes that in the will he has really got hold of a corner of the universal process. Whereas all other events he can follow only by perceiving them from outside, he believes that in his will he is experiencing a real process quite directly. The form of existence in which the will appears to him within the self becomes for him a direct principle of reality. His own will appears to him as a special case of the universal process, and he therefore considers the latter to be universal will. The will becomes the universal principle just as in mysticism of feeling, feeling becomes the principle of knowledge. This view is a Philosophy of the Will (Thelism).44 Here something which can be experienced only individually is made into the const.i.tuent factor of the world.

The philosophy of will can be called a science as little as can mysticism of feeling. For both maintain that to permeate things with concepts is insufficient. Both demand, side by side with an ideal-principle of existence, a real principle also. And this with a certain justification. But since for this so-called real principle, perceiving is our only means of comprehension, it follows that mysticism of feeling and philosophy of will are both of the opinion that we have two sources of knowledge: thinking and perceiving, perceiving being mediated through feeling and will as individual experience. According to mysticism of feeling and philosophy of will, what flows from the source of experience44a cannot be taken up directly into what flows from the source of thinking; therefore the two forms of knowledge, perceiving and thinking, remain standing side by side without a higher mediation. Besides the ideal principle attainable through knowledge, there is also supposed to exist a real principle which, although it can be experienced cannot be grasped by thinking. In other words: mysticism of feeling and philosophy of will are both forms of naive realism; they both adhere to the principle: What is directly perceived is real. Compared with naive realism in its original form, they are guilty of the further inconsistency of making one definite kind of perceiving (feeling or will) into the one and only means of knowing existence; and this they should not do when they adhere in general to the principle: What is perceived is real. According to this, for cognition, external perceptions should have equal value with inner perceptions of feeling Philosophy of will becomes metaphysical realism when it considers will also to be present in those spheres of existence where a direct experience of it, as in one's own subject, is not possible. It hypothetically a.s.sumes a principle outside the subject, for which subjective experience is the sole criterion of reality. The philosophy of will as a form of metaphysical realism is open to the criticism indicated in the preceding chapter; it has to overcome the contradictory element inherent in every form of metaphysical realism, and acknowledge that the will is a universal world process only insofar as it relates itself ideally to the rest of the world.

Addition to the Revised Version, 1918. The reason it is so difficult to observe and grasp the nature of thinking lies in the fact that its nature all too easily eludes the contemplating soul, as soon as one tries to focus attention on it. What then is left is something lifeless, abstract, the corpse of living thinking. If this abstract alone is considered, then it is easy, by contrast, to be drawn into the "living" element in mysticism of feeling, or into the metaphysics of the will, and to find it strange that anyone should expect to grasp the nature of reality in "mere thought." But one who really penetrates to the life within thinking will reach the insight that to experience existence merely in feeling or in will cannot in any way be compared with the inner richness, the inwardly at rest yet at the same time alive experience, of the life within thinking, and no longer will he say that the other could be ranked above this. It is just because of this richness, because of this inner fullness of living experience, that its reflection in the ordinary life of soul appears lifeless and abstract. No other human soul-activity is so easily underestimated as thinking. Will and feeling warm the human soul even when experienced only in recollection. Thinking all too easily leaves the soul cold in recollection; the soul-life then appears to have dried out. But this is only the strong shadow cast by its warm luminous reality, which dives down into the phenomena of the world. This diving down is done by a power that flows within the thinking activity itself, the power of spiritual love. The objection should not be made that to see love in active thinking is to transfer into thinking a feeling, namely love.

This objection is in truth a confirmation of what is said here. For he who turns toward the living essence of thinking will find in it both feeling and will, and both of these in their deepest reality; whereas for someone who turns away from thinking and instead turns toward "mere" feeling or will, for him these will lose their true reality. One who is willing to experience intuitively in thinking, will also be able to do justice to what is experienced in the realm of feeling and in the element of will, whereas mysticism of feeling and metaphysics of will are incapable of doing justice to the activity of permeating existence with intuitive thinking. They all too easily come to the conclusion that they have found reality, whereas the intuitive thinker produces in abstract thoughts without feeling, and far removed from reality, a shadowy, chilling picture of the world.

THE IDEA OF FREEDOM.

For cognition the concept of a tree is conditioned by the perception of the tree. When confronted with a particular perception I can lift out only one definite concept from the general system of concepts. The connection between concept and perception is determined indirectly and objectively through thinking according to the perception. The connection of the perception with its concept is recognized after the act of perception; but that they belong to one another is already inherent in the object itself. The process is different when the relation of man to the world is considered, as it arises within knowledge. In the preceding explanation the attempt has been made to show that it is possible to throw light on this relation if one observes it without prejudice. A real understanding of such an observation leads to the insight that thinking can be directly experienced as a self-contained reality. In order to explain thinking as such, those who find it necessary to add something to it, such as physical brain-processes or unconscious spiritual processes lying behind the conscious thinking which is being observed, underestimate what can be seen when thinking is observed without prejudice. During his observation of thinking, the observer lives directly within a spiritual, self-sustaining activity of a living reality. Indeed one can say that he who wants to grasp the reality of spirit in the form in which it first presents itself to man, can do this in his own self- sustaining thinking.

When thinking is observed, two things coincide which elsewhere must always appear apart: concept and perception. If this is not recognized, then in the concepts which have been worked out according to perceptions, one is unable to see anything but shadowy copies of the perceptions, and will take the perceptions to be the full reality. Further, one will build up a metaphysical sphere on the pattern of the perceived world, and each person, according to his views, will call this world a world of atoms, a world of will, a world of unconscious spirit, and so on. And he will not notice that with all this he merely hypothetically builds up a metaphysical world on the pattern of his world of perceptions.

But if he realizes what he has before him in thinking, then he will also recognize that in the perception only a part of reality is present, and that the other part that belongs to it and first allows it to appear as full reality, is experienced in the act of permeating the perception with thinking. Then in what arises in consciousness as thinking, he will also see not a shadowy copy of some reality, but spiritual reality itself. And of this he can say that it becomes present in his consciousness through intuition. Intuition is a conscious experience of a purely spiritual content, taking place in the sphere of pure spirit. Only through an intuition can the reality of thinking be grasped.

Only when, by observing thinking without prejudice, one has wrestled one's way through to recognizing the truth that the nature of thinking is intuitive, is it possible to gain a real understanding of the body-soul organization of man. Then one recognizes that this organization cannot affect the nature of thinking. Quite obvious facts seem to contradict this at first. For ordinary experience, human thinking only takes place connected with, and by means of, the organization. This comes so strongly to the fore that the true facts can only be seen when it has been recognized that nothing from the organization plays into thinking as such. And then it is impossible not to notice how extraordinary is the relation of the human organization to thinking. For this organization has no effect at all on thinking; rather it withdraws when the activity of thinking takes place; it suspends its own activity, it makes room, and in the s.p.a.ce that has become free, thinking appears. The spiritual substance that acts in thinking has a twofold task: first it presses back the human organization in its activity, and next, it steps into the place of it. The first, the pressing back of the bodily organization, is also a consequence of the thinking activity, and indeed of that part of this activity which prepares the manifestation of thinking. This explains the sense in which thinking finds its counterpart in the bodily organization. And when this is recognized, one will no longer mistake this counterpart for thinking itself. If someone walks over soft ground, his feet leave impressions in the soil. But one is not tempted to say that the forces of the ground have formed these imprints from below. One will not ascribe to these forces any partic.i.p.ation in the creating of the footprints. So too, one who, without prejudice, observes the nature of thinking will not ascribe to the imprints in the bodily organization any partic.i.p.ation in the nature of thinking, for the imprints in the organization come about through the fact that thinking prepares its manifestation through the body."

[footnote: The significance of the above view in relation to psychology, physiology, etc., in various directions has been set forth by the author in works published after this book.

Here the aim is only to characterize what can be recognized by an unprejudiced observation of thinking.]

Now a significant question arises. If the human organism does not partake in the spiritual substance of thinking, what significance has this organism within man's being as a whole? Now what happens in this organism through thinking has nothing to do with the nature of thinking, but indeed it has to do with the arising of the I-consciousness within thinking. The real "I" exists within the being of thinking, but not so the I-consciousness.

This will be recognized if only thinking is observed without prejudice. The "I" is to be found within thinking; the "I-consciousness" arises through the fact that the imprints of the activity of thinking are engraved upon the general consciousness in the sense explained above. (The I-consciousness therefore arises through the bodily organism. But by this is not meant that the I-consciousness, once it has arisen, remains dependent on the bodily organism. Once arisen, it is taken up into thinking and henceforth shares its spiritual nature.) The human organism is the foundation of the "I-consciousness." It is also the source of will-activity. It follows from the preceding explanation that an insight into the connection between thinking, conscious I, and will activity can only be obtained if we first observe how will-activity issues from the human organism.44b The factors to be considered in a particular act of will are the motive and the driving force. The motive is either a concept or a representation; the driving force is the will element and is directly conditioned by the human organism. The conceptual factor, or motive, is the momentary source from which the will is determined; the driving force is the permanent source of determination in the individual. A motive of will may be a pure concept or a concept with a definite reference to what is perceived, i.e. a representation.

General and individual concepts (representations) become motives of will by influencing the human individual and determine him to act in a particular direction. But one and the same concept, or one and the same representation, influences different individuals differently. It impels different people to different actions. Will, therefore, does not come about merely as a result of the concept, or representation, but also through the individual disposition of human beings. This individual disposition we will call - in this respect one can follow Eduard von Hartmann45 - the characterological disposition. The way in which concepts and representations influence the characterological disposition of a person gives his life a definite moral or ethical stamp.

The characterological disposition is formed through the more or less constant life-content of our subject, that is, through the content of our representations and feelings. Whether a present representation stimulates me to will or not, depends on how the representation is related to the content of the rest of my representations, and also to my particular feelings.

The content of my representations is determined in turn by all those concepts which in the course of my individual life have come into contact with perceptions, that is, have become representations. This again depends on my greater or lesser capacity for intuition, and on the range of my observations, that is, on the subjective and the objective factors of experience,46 on my inner determination and my place in life. The characterological disposition is more particularly determined by the life of feeling. Whether I make a definite representation or concept the motive of my action will depend on whether it gives me pleasure or pain. - These are the elements which come into consideration in an act of will. The immediately present representation or concept which becomes motive, determines the aim, the purpose of my will; my characterological disposition determines me to direct my activity toward this aim. The representation, to go for a walk in the next half-hour, determines the aim of my action. But this representation is elevated to a motive of will only if it meets with a suitable characterological disposition, that is, if during my life until now I have formed representations concerning the purpose of walking, its value for health, and further, if the representation of walking combines in me with a feeling of pleasure.

We therefore must distinguish: 1) the possible subjective dispositions which are suitable for turning definite representations and concepts into motives; and 2) the possible representations and concepts which are capable of so influencing my characterological disposition that willing is the result. The first represents the driving force, the second, the aims of morality.

We can find the driving force of morality by investigating the elements which comprise individual life.

The first level of individual life is perceiving, more particularly, perceiving by means of the senses. Here we are concerned with that region of our individual life where perceiving, without a feeling or a concept coming between, is directly transformed into willing. The driving force in man, which comes into consideration here, we shall simply call instinct. The satisfaction of our lower, purely animal needs (hunger, s.e.xual intercourse, etc.) takes place in this way. What is most characteristic of