A Theory of Knowledge
GA 2
V. Examination of the Content of Experience
[ 1 ] Let now fix our attention upon pure experience. In what does this consist when it comes into our consciousness, not elaborated by our thinking? It is merely juxtaposition in space and succession in time; an aggregate of nothing but unrelated single entities. No one of the objects which there come and go has anything to do with any other. At this stage, the facts of which we become aware, and which mingle with our inner life, are absolutely without bearing one upon another.
[ 2 ] There the world is a multiplicity of things of uniform importance. No thing, no occurrence, can lay claim to any greater function in the fabric of the world than any other constituent in the realm of experience. If it is to become clear to us that this or that fact possesses greater significance than another, we must not merely observe things but arrange them in thought-relationships. The rudimentary organ of an animal, which may not have the least significance in its organic functioning, possesses just as much value for our experience as the most important organ of the animal's body. That distinction between greater and lesser importance does not become apparent to us till we think back over the relationships of the individual constituents; that is, until we work over our experience.
[ 3 ] For our experience the snail, which belongs to a lower stage in organization, is of equal value with the most highly evolved animal. The distinctions between degrees of perfection in organization become evident to us only when we lay hold conceptually upon the multiplicity given to us in experience, and work it through. From this point of view, likewise, the culture of the Eskimo and that of the educated European are of equal value; Caesar's significance in the history of human evolution appears to mere experience no greater than that of one of his soldiers. In the history of literature, Goethe stands no higher than Gottsched so long as we are considering mere experiential actualities.
[ 4 ] At this stage of observation, the world appears to our minds as an absolutely flat surface. No part of this surface rises above any other; none reveals to our minds any distinction as compared with others. Only when the spark of thinking strikes this surface do there come to light elevations and depressions; one thing appears more or less lifted above the other, all takes on a certain sort of form, lines run out from one form to another; the whole becomes a self-sufficient harmony.
[ 5 ] The illustrations we have chosen seem to us to show with sufficient clearness what we mean in speaking of the greater or lesser significance of the objects of perception (here considered as identical with the things of experience): what we mean by that knowledge which first comes into existence when we observe these objects in their interrelationship. These illustrations, we believe, insure us against the objection that the realm of our experience already reveals endless distinctions among its objects before thinking appears on the field: that a red surface, for instance, is different from a green surface even without any activity of thought. That is true. But any one who would bring this argument to bear against us has entirely misconstrued our assertion. This is just what we maintain: that what is presented to us by experience is an endless mass of single entities. These single entities must naturally be different one from another; otherwise they would not appear to us as an endless unrelated multiplicity. We do not refer to an indistinguishableness among the things perceived, but to the absolute want of meaning in the single facts of the senses for the totality of our image of reality. It is just because we recognize this endless qualitative difference that we are driven to the conclusion indicated.
[ 6 ] If we were met by a unity, well defined, composed of harmoniously ordered constituents, we could not speak of the lack of distinction in significance among the constituents in relation to one another.
[ 7 ] Whoever for such a reason considers the comparison we have used inapplicable must have failed to take hold of it at the real point of similarity. It would certainly be fallacious if we should compare the perceptual world, with its endlessly varied forms, to the uniform monotony of a surface. But our surface was not intended to resemble the manifold world of phenomena, but the unified total image that we have of this world so long as thinking has not come in contact with it. After the action of thought, each single entity in this total image appears, not as it was mediated by mere experience, but with the significance which it bears in relation to the whole of reality. At the same time, each appears with characteristics which were wholly wanting in its experiential form.
[ 8 ] According to our conviction, Johannes Volkelt has been remarkably successful in delineating within clear outlines that which we are justified in designating as pure experience. Five years ago [1881] this was strikingly described in his book Kants Erkenntnistheorie;5Johannes Volkelt: Immanuel Kants Erkenntnistheorie (Kant's Theory of Knowledge), Leipzig, 1879. and in his latest publication, Erfahrung und Denken,6Johannes Volkelt: Erfahrung und Denken. Kritische Grundlegung der Erkenntnistheorie (Experience and Thought), Hamburg and Leipzig, 1886. he has pursued the subject still further. He has done this, to be sure, in support of a point of view fundamentally different from ours and a purpose unlike that of the present book. But this need not hinder us from setting down here his remarkable characterization of pure experience. This description simply shows us the images which pass before our consciousness in a brief period in a manner utterly void of interrelationships. Volkelt says:7Kants Erkenntnistheorie, p. 168 f. “For example, my consciousness now has as its content the impression that I have worked diligently to-day; immediately thereto is linked the impression that I can with a clear conscience take a walk; again there suddenly appears the perceptual image of the door opening and the postman entering; the image of the postman soon appears with out-stretched hand, then with mouth opening, then doing the opposite; at the same time there blend with the perceptual content of the opening mouth all sorts of impressions of hearing—among others, that of rain beginning outside. The image of the postman vanishes from my consciousness and the impressions which now enter have as their content, one by one: grasping the scissors, opening the letters, a critical feeling at illegible writing, visual images of the most varied written symbols, and, united with these, manifold imaginative images and thoughts; scarcely is this series at an end when there reappears the impression of having worked diligently and—accompanied by depression—the consciousness of the continuing rain; then both of these vanish from my consciousness and there emerges an impression whose content is that a difficulty supposed to have been overcome in to-day's work has not been overcome; accompanying this there enter the impressions: freedom of will, empirical necessity, responsibility, the value of virtue, incomprehensibility, etc., and these unite with one another in the most varied and complicated ways—and so it continues.”
[ 9 ] Here is described for us, with regard to a certain limited space of time, what we really experience, that form of reality in which thinking has no participation.
[ 10 ] It need not be supposed that a different result would have been attained if, instead of this every-day experience, we had described what occurs in a piece of scientific research or in an unusual natural phenomenon. In these cases as in that, what passes before consciousness consists of unrelated images. Thinking for the first time institutes interrelationship.
[ 11 ] We must also attribute to the pamphlet of Dr. Richard Wahle, Gehirn und Bewusstsein8Brain and Consciousness (Vienna 1884), the service of having indicated in clear contours that which is given to us by experience void of any element of thought, only we must make the reservation that what Wahle describes as characteristics pertaining without restriction to the phenomena of the outer and the inner world holds good only for the first stage of our observation of the world, that stage which we have described. According to Wahle, we know only a juxtaposition in space and succession in time. There can be, according to him, no talk of a relationship between the things appearing beside one another or after one another. For example, there may be somewhere and somehow an inner relationship between the warm sunbeam and the warming of the stone, but we know nothing of a causal relationship; to us the only thing that is clear is that the second fact comes after the first. There may likewise be somewhere, in a world inaccessible to us, an inner relationship between our brain-mechanism and our mental activity; but we know only that the two are occurrences running in parallel lines; we are not at all justified, for example, in assuming a causal relationship between the two.
[ 12 ] Of course, when Wahle sets forth this assertion as the ultimate truth of science, we must oppose this extension of the assertion; but it is entirely correct as applied to the first form in which we become aware of reality.
[ 13 ] Not only are the things of the outer world and the processes of the inner void of interrelationship at this stage of our knowledge, but even our own personality is an isolated unit in comparison with the rest of the world. We perceive ourselves as one of the numberless percepts without relationship to the objects which surround us.
5. Hinweis auf den Inhalt der Erfahrung
[ 1 ] Sehen wir uns nun die reine Erfahrung einmal an. Was enthält sie, wie sie an unserem Bewußtsein vorüberzieht, ohne daß wir sie denkend bearbeiten? Sie ist bloßes Nebeneinander im Raume und Nacheinander in der Zeit; ein Aggregat aus lauter zusammenhanglosen Einzelheiten. Keiner der Gegenstände, die da kommen und gehen, hat mit dem anderen etwas zu tun. Auf dieser Stufe sind die Tatsachen, die wir wahrnehmen, die wir innerlich durchleben, absolut gleichgültig füreinander.
[ 2 ] Die Welt ist da eine Mannigfaltigkeit von ganz gleichwertigen Dingen. Kein Ding, kein Ereignis darf den Anspruch erheben, eine größere Rolle in dem Getriebe der Welt zu spielen als ein anderes Glied der Erfahrungswelt. Soll uns klar werden, daß diese oder jene Tatsache größere Bedeutung hat als eine andere, so müssen wir die Dinge nicht bloß beobachten, sondern schon in gedankliche Beziehung setzen. Das rudimentäre Organ eines Tieres, das vielleicht nicht die geringste Bedeutung für dessen organische Funktionen hat, ist für die Erfahrung ganz gleichwertig mit dem wichtigsten Organe des Tierkörpers. Jene größere oder geringere Wichtigkeit wird uns eben erst klar, wenn wir über die Beziehungen der einzelnen Glieder der Beobachtung nachdenken, das heißt, wenn wir die Erfahrung bearbeiten.
[ 3 ] Für die Erfahrung ist die auf einer niedrigen Stufe der Organisation stehende Schnecke gleichwertig mit dem höchst entwickelten Tiere. Der Unterschied in der Vollkommenheit der Organisation erscheint uns erst, wenn wir die gegebene Mannigfaltigkeit begrifflich erfassen und durcharbeiten. Gleichwertig in dieser Hinsicht sind auch die Kultur des Eskimo und jene des gebildeten Europäers; Cäsars Bedeutung für die geschichtliche Entwickelung der Menschheit erscheint der bloßen Erfahrung nicht größer als die eines seiner Soldaten. In der Literaturgeschichte ragt Goethe nicht über Gottsched empor, wenn es sich um die bloße erfahrungsmäßige Tatsächlichkeit handelt.
[ 4 ] Die Welt ist uns auf dieser Stufe der Betrachtung gedanklich eine vollkommen ebene Fläche. Kein Teil dieser Fläche ragt über den anderen empor; keiner zeigt irgendeinen gedanklichen Unterschied von dem anderen. Erst wenn der Funke des Gedankens in diese Fläche einschlägt, treten Erhöhungen und Vertiefungen ein, erscheint das eine mehr oder minder weit über das andere emporragend, formt sich alles in bestimmter Weise, schlingen sich Fäden von einem Gebilde zum anderen; wird alles zu einer in sich vollkommenen Harmonie.
[ 5 ] Wir glauben durch unsere Beispiele wohl hinlänglich gezeigt zu haben, was wir unter jener größeren oder geringeren Bedeutung der Wahrnehmungsgegenstände (hier gleichbedeutend genommen mit Dingen der Erfahrung) verstehen, was wir uns unter jenem Wissen denken, das erst entsteht, wenn wir diese Gegenstände im Zusammenhange betrachten. Damit glauben wir zugleich vor dem Einwande gesichert zu sein, daß unsere Erfahrungswelt ja auch schon unendliche Unterschiede in ihren Objekten zeigt, bevor das Denken an sie herantritt. Eine rote Fläche unterscheide sich doch auch ohne Betätigung des Denkens von einer grünen. Das ist richtig. Wer uns aber damit widerlegen wollte, hat unsere Behauptung vollständig mißverstanden. Das gerade behaupten wir ja, daß es eine unendliche Menge von Einzelheiten ist, die uns in der Erfahrung geboten wird. Diese Einzelheiten müssen natürlich voneinander verschieden sein, sonst würden sie uns eben nicht als unendliche, zusammenhanglose Mannigfaltigkeit gegenübertreten. Von einer Unterschiedlosigkeit der wahrgenommenen Dinge ist gar nicht die Rede, sondern von ihrer vollständigen Beziehungslosigkeit, von der unbedingten Bedeutungslosigkeit der einzelnen sinnenfälligen Tatsache für das Gaze unseres Wirklichkeitsbildes. Gerade weil wir diese unendliche qualitative Verschiedenheit anerkennen, werden wir zu unseren Behauptungen gedrängt.
[ 6 ] Träte uns eine in sich geschlossene, harmonisch gegliederte Einheit gegenüber, so könnten wir doch nicht von einer Gleichgültigkeit der einzelnen Glieder dieser Einheit in bezug aufeinander sprechen.
[ 7 ] Wer unser oben gebrauchtes Gleichnis deswegen nicht entsprechend fände, hätte es nicht beim eigentlichen Vergleichungspunkte gefaßt. Es wäre freilich falsch, wenn wir die unendlich verschieden gestaltete Wahrnehmungswelt mit der einförmigen Gleichmäßigkeit einer Ebene vergleichen wollten. Aber unsere Ebene soll durchaus nicht die mannigfaltige Erscheinungswelt versinnlichen, sondern das einheitliche Gesamtbild, das wir von dieser Welt haben, solange das Denken nicht an sie herangetreten ist. Auf diesem Gesamtbilde erscheint nach der Betätigung des Denkens jede Einzelheit nicht so, wie sie die bloßen Sinne vermitteln, sondern schon mit der Bedeutung, die sie für das Ganze der Wirklichkeit hat. Sie erscheint somit mit Eigenschaften, die ihr in der Form der Erfahrung vollständig fehlen.
[ 8 ] Nach unserer Überzeugung ist es Johannes Volkelt vorzüglich gelungen, das in scharfen Umrissen zu zeichnen, was wir reine Erfahrung zu nennen berechtigt sind. Schon vor fünf Jahren in seinem Buche über «Kants Erkenntnistheorie» 4«Immanuel Kants Erkenntnistheorie [nach ihren Grundprincipien analysirt]», Hamburg 1879. ist sie vortrefflich charakterisiert und in seiner neuesten Veröffentlichung: «Erfahrung und Denken» 5«Erfahrung und Denken. Kritische Grundlegung der Erkenntnistheorie», Hamburg und Leipzig 1886. hat er die Sache dann weiter ausgeführt. Er hat das nun freilich zur Unterstützung einet Ansicht getan, die von der unsrigen grundverschieden ist und in einer wesentlich anderen Absicht, als die unsere gegenwärtig ist. Das kann uns aber nicht hindern, seine vorzügliche Charakterisierung der reinen Erfahrung hierher zu setzen. Sie schildert uns einfach die Bilder, die in einem beschränkten Zeitabschnitte in völlig zusammenhangloser Weise vor unserem Bewußtsein vorüberziehen. Volkelt sagt: «Jetzt hat zum Beispiel mein Bewußtsein die Vorstellung, heute fleißig gearbeitet zu haben, zum Inhalte; unmittelbar daran knüpft sich der Vorstellungsinhalt, mit gutem Gewissen spazieren gehen zu können; doch plötzlich tritt das Wahrnehmungsbild der sich öffnenden Türe und des hereintretenden Briefträgers ein; das Briefträgerbild erscheint bald handausstreckend, bald mundöffnend, bald das Gegenteil tuend; zugleich verbinden sich mit dem Wahrnehmungsinhalte des Mundöffnens allerhand Gehörseindrücke, unter anderen auch einer, daß es draußen zu regnen anfange. Das Briefträgerbild verschwindet aus meinem Bewußtsein, und die Vorstellungen, die nun eintreten, haben der Reihe nach zu ihrem Inhalte: Ergreifen der Schere, Öffnen des Briefes, Vorwurf unleserlichen Schreibens, Gesichtsbilder mannigfachster Schriftzeichen, mannigfache sich daran knüpfende Phantasiebilder und Gedanken; kaum ist diese Reihe vollendet, als wiederum die Vorstellung, fleißig gearbeitet zu haben, und die mit Mißmut begleitete Wahrnehmung des fortfahrenden Regens eintreten; doch beide verschwinden aus meinem Bewußtsein, und es taucht eine Vorstellung auf mit dem Inhalte, daß eine während des heutigen Arbeitens gelöst geglaubte Schwierigkeit nicht gelöst sei; damit zugleich sind die Vorstellungen: Willensfreiheit, empirische Notwendigkeit, Verantwortlichkeit, Wert der Tugend, absoluter Zufall, Unbegreiflichkeit usw. eingetreten und verbinden sich miteinander in der verschiedenartigsten, kompliziertesten Weise; und ähnlich geht es weiter.» 6Kants Erkenntnistheorie, Seite 168 f.
[ 9 ] Da haben wir für einen gewissen, beschränkten Zeitabschnitt das geschildert, was wir wirklich erfahren, diejenige Form der Wirklichkeit, an der das Denken gar keinen Anteil hat.
[ 10 ] Man darf nun durchaus nicht glauben, daß man zu einem anderen Resultate gekommen wäre, wenn man statt dieser alltäglichen Erfahrung etwa die geschildert hätte, die wir an einem wissenschaftlichen Versuche oder an einem besonderen Naturphänomen machen. Hier wie dort sind es einzelne zusammenhanglose Bilder, die vor unserem Bewußtsein vorüberziehen. Erst das Denken stellt den Zusammenhang her.
[ 11 ] Das Verdienst, in scharfen Konturen gezeigt zu haben, was uns eigentlich die von allem Gedanklichen entblößte Erfahrung gibt, müssen wir auch dem Schriftchen: «Gehirn und Bewußtsein» von Dr. Richard Wahle (Wien 1884) zuerkennen; nur mit der Einschränkung, daß, was Wahle als unbedingt gültige Eigenschaften der Erscheinungen der Außen- und Innenwelt hinstellt, nur von der ersten Stuft der Weltbetrachtung gilt, die wir charakterisiert haben. Wir wissen nach Wahle nur von einem Nebeneinander im Raume und einem Nacheinander in der Zeit. Von einem Verhältnisse der nebenoder nacheinander bestehenden Dinge kann nach ihm gar keine Rede sein. Es mag zum Beispiel immerhin irgendwo ein innerer Zusammenhang zwischen dem warmen Sonnenstrahl und dem Erwärmen des Steines bestehen; wir wissen nichts von einem ursächlichen Zusammenhange; uns wird allein klar, daß auf die erste Tatsache die zweite folgt. Es mag auch irgendwo, in einer uns unzugänglichen Welt-, ein innerer Zusammenhang zwischen unserem Gehirnmechanismus und unserer geistigen Tätigkeit bestehen; wir wissen nur, daß beides parallel verlaufende Vorkommnisse sind; wir sind durchaus nicht berechtigt, zum Beispiel einen Kausalzusammenhang beider Erscheinungen anzunehmen.
[ 12 ] Wenn freilich Wahle diese Behauptung zugleich als letzte Wahrheit der Wissenschaft hinstellt, so bestreiten wir diese Ausdehnung derselben; sie gilt aber vollkommen für die erste Form, in der wir die Wirklichkeit gewahr werden.
[ 13 ] Nicht nur die Dinge der Außen- und die Vorgänge der Innenwelt stehen auf dieser Stufe unseres Wissens zusammenhanglos da, sondern auch unsere eigene Persönlichkeit ist eine isolierte Einzelheit gegenüber der übrigen Welt. Wir finden uns als eine der unzähligen Wahrnehmungen ohne Beziehung zu den Gegenständen, die uns umgeben.
5. reference to the content of the experience
[ 1 ] Let us now take a look at pure experience. What does it contain as it passes by our consciousness without us thinking about it? It is mere juxtaposition in space and succession in time; an aggregate of nothing but incoherent details. None of the objects that come and go has anything to do with the other. At this level, the facts that we perceive, that we experience inwardly, are absolutely indifferent to one another.
[ 2 ] The world is a multiplicity of completely equal things. No thing, no event may claim to play a greater role in the workings of the world than another member of the world of experience. If we are to realize that this or that fact is of greater significance than another, we must not merely observe things, but relate them intellectually. The rudimentary organ of an animal, which perhaps has not the slightest importance for its organic functions, is for experience quite equivalent to the most important organ of the animal body. This greater or lesser importance only becomes clear to us when we think about the relationships between the individual elements of observation, that is, when we work on experience.
[ 3 ] For experience, the snail standing on a low level of organization is equivalent to the most highly developed animal. The difference in the perfection of organization only appears to us when we grasp and work through the given diversity conceptually. The culture of the Eskimo and that of the educated European are also equal in this respect; Caesar's significance for the historical development of mankind appears to mere experience no greater than that of one of his soldiers. In the history of literature, Goethe does not rise above Gottsched when it comes to mere experiential factuality.
[ 4 ] At this level of contemplation, the world is a perfectly flat surface in our minds. No part of this surface rises above the other; none shows any mental difference from the other. Only when the spark of thought strikes this surface do elevations and depressions occur, does one appear to rise more or less far above the other, does everything form itself in a certain way, do threads wind themselves from one structure to another; does everything become a perfect harmony in itself.
[ 5 ] We believe that our examples have sufficiently shown what we understand by the greater or lesser significance of the objects of perception (here taken as synonymous with things of experience), what we think of as the knowledge that only arises when we consider these objects in context. In this way we also believe that we are protected against the objection that our world of experience already shows infinite differences in its objects before thinking approaches them. A red surface differs from a green one even without the activity of thought. That is correct. But anyone who wanted to refute us with this has completely misunderstood our assertion. That is precisely what we claim, that there is an infinite number of details offered to us in experience. These particulars must of course be different from one another, otherwise they would not confront us as an infinite, incoherent multiplicity. We are not talking about the indistinguishability of perceived things, but about their complete lack of relationship, about the unconditional insignificance of the individual sensory fact for the gazes of our image of reality. It is precisely because we recognize this infinite qualitative difference that we are forced to make our assertions.
[ 6 ] If we were faced with a self-contained, harmoniously structured unity, we could not speak of an indifference of the individual members of this unity in relation to one another.
[ 7 ] Those who would not find our parable used above appropriate for this reason would not have grasped it at the actual point of comparison. Of course, it would be wrong if we wanted to compare the infinitely varied world of perception with the uniform uniformity of a plane. But our plane is by no means intended to make sense of the manifold world of appearances, but of the uniform overall picture that we have of this world as long as thought has not approached it. On this overall picture, after the activity of thinking, every detail does not appear as it is conveyed by the mere senses, but already with the meaning it has for the whole of reality. It thus appears with qualities that it completely lacks in the form of experience.
[ 8 ] In our opinion, Johannes Volkelt has succeeded excellently in drawing a clear outline of what we are entitled to call pure experience. Already five years ago in his book on "Kant's Epistemology" 4"Immanuel Kant's Epistemology [analyzed according to its basic principles]", Hamburg 1879, it is excellently characterized and in his latest publication: "Experience and Thought" 5"Experience and Thought. Kritische Grundlegung der Erkenntnistheorie", Hamburg and Leipzig 1886, he then elaborated on the matter. Admittedly, he did so in support of a view that is fundamentally different from ours and with a substantially different intention than ours at present. But this cannot prevent us from including his excellent characterization of pure experience here. It simply describes the images that pass before our consciousness in a limited period of time in a completely incoherent manner. Volkelt says: "Now, for example, my consciousness has as its content the idea of having worked diligently today; immediately attached to this is the imaginary content of being able to go for a walk with a clear conscience; but suddenly the perceptual image of the door opening and the letter carrier entering enters; the letter carrier's image appears sometimes stretching out his hand, sometimes opening his mouth, sometimes doing the opposite; at the same time all kinds of auditory impressions are connected with the perceptual content of opening his mouth, among others also one that it is beginning to rain outside. The picture of the letter carrier disappears from my consciousness, and the ideas that now enter my mind have as their content, one after the other: Grasping the scissors, opening the letter, reproach of illegible writing, facial images of manifold characters, manifold imaginary images and thoughts connected with them; hardly has this series been completed when again the idea of having worked diligently and the perception of the continuing rain, accompanied by displeasure, enter; but both disappear from my consciousness, and an idea emerges with the content that a difficulty which I had thought solved during today's work has not been solved; at the same time the ideas: Freedom of the will, empirical necessity, responsibility, the value of virtue, absolute chance, incomprehensibility, etc., enter and combine with each other in the most various and complicated ways; and it goes on in a similar way." 6Kant's Theory of Knowledge, page 168 f.
[ 9 ] There we have described, for a certain, limited period of time, what we really experience, that form of reality in which thought has no part at all.
[ 10 ] No one should believe that we would have arrived at a different result if, instead of this everyday experience, we had described that which we make in a scientific experiment or in a particular natural phenomenon. Here, as there, it is individual incoherent images that pass before our consciousness. Only thinking establishes the context.
[ 11 ] The merit of having shown in sharp contours what experience, stripped of all thought, actually gives us, we must also give to the little book: "Brain and Consciousness" by Dr. Richard Wahle (Vienna 1884). Richard Wahle (Vienna 1884); only with the restriction that what Wahle presents as absolutely valid properties of the phenomena of the external and internal world only applies to the first level of the world view that we have characterized. According to Wahle, we only know of a juxtaposition in space and a succession in time. According to him, there can be no question of a relationship between things existing side by side or one after the other. There may, for example, be an inner connection somewhere between the warm ray of sunshine and the warming of the stone; we know nothing of a causal connection; it is only clear to us that the first fact is followed by the second. There may also be somewhere, in a world inaccessible to us, an inner connection between our brain mechanism and our mental activity; we only know that both are parallel occurrences; we are not at all entitled, for example, to assume a causal connection between the two phenomena.
[ 12 ] If, of course, Wahle simultaneously presents this assertion as the ultimate truth of science, we dispute this extension of it; but it applies entirely to the first form in which we become aware of reality.
[ 13 ] Not only are the things of the external world and the processes of the internal world incoherent at this stage of our knowledge, but our own personality is also an isolated entity in relation to the rest of the world. We find ourselves as one of the countless perceptions without any relationship to the objects that surround us.