The Science of Knowing
GA 2
IV. Determining the Concept of Experience
[ 1 ] Two regions confront each other therefore: our thinking, and the objects with which thinking concerns itself. To the extent that these objects are accessible to our observation, one calls them the content of experience (Erfahrung). For the moment let us leave aside entirely the question as to whether, outside our field of observation, there are yet other objects of thinking and what their nature might be.
Our immediate task will be to define sharply the boundaries of the two regions indicated: experience and thinking. We must first have experience in its particular delineation before us and then investigate the nature of thinking. Let us proceed with the first task.
[ 2 ] What is experience? Everyone is conscious of the fact that his thinking is kindled in conflict with reality. The objects in space and in time approach us; we perceive a highly diversified outer world of manifold parts, and we experience a more or less richly developed inner world. The first form in which all this confronts us stands finished before us. We play no part in its coming about. Reality at first presents itself to our sensible and spiritual grasp as though springing from some beyond unknown to us. To begin with we can only let our gaze sweep across the manifoldness confronting us.
[ 3 ] This first activity of ours is grasping reality with our senses. We must hold onto what it thus presents us. For only this can be called pure experience.a3It is evident from the whole bearing of this epistemology that the point of its deliberations is to gain an answer to the question, What is knowledge? In order to attain this goal we looked, to begin with, at the world of sense perception on the one hand, and at penetration of it with thought, on the other. And it is shown that in the interpenetration of both, the true reality of sense existence reveals itself. With this the question, What is the activity of knowing? is answered in principle. This answer becomes no different when the question is extended to the contemplation of the spiritual. Therefore, what is said in this book about the nature of knowledge is valid also for the activity of knowing the spiritual worlds, to which my later books refer. The sense world, in its manifestation to human contemplation, is not reality. It attains its reality when connected with what reveals itself about the sense world in man when he thinks. Thoughts belong to the reality of what the senses behold; but the thought-element within sense existence does not bring itself to manifestation outside in sense existence but rather inside of man. Yet thought and sense perception are one existence. Inasmuch as the human being enters the world and views it with his senses, he excludes thought from reality; but thought then just appears in another place: inside the soul. The separation of perception and thought is of absolutely no significance for the objective world; this separation occurs only because man places himself into the midst of existence. Through this there arises for him the illusion that thought and sense perception are a duality. It is no different for spiritual contemplation. When this arises—through soul processes that I have described in my later book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment—it again constitutes only one side of spiritual existence; the corresponding thoughts of the spirit constitute the other side. A difference arises only insofar as sense perception completes itself, attains reality, through thoughts upward, in a certain way, to where the spiritual begins, whereas spiritual contemplation is experienced in its true being from this beginning point downward. [ Ein Unterschied tritt nur insofern auf, als die Sinneswahrnehmung durch den Gedanken gewissermaßen nach oben zum Anfang des Geistigen hin in Wirklichkeit vollendet, die geistige Anschauung von diesem Anfang an nach unten hin in ihrer wahren Wesenheit erlebt wird.] The fact that the experience of sense perception occurs through the senses that nature has formed, whereas the experience of spiritual contemplation occurs through spiritual organs of perception that are first developed in a soul way, does not make a principle difference.
It is true to say that in none of my later books have I diverged from the idea of knowing activity that I developed in this one; rather I have only applied this idea to spiritual experience.
[ 4 ] We feel the need right away to penetrate with organizing intellect the endless manifoldness of shapes, forces, colors, sounds, etc., that arises before us. We try to become clear about the mutual interdependencies of all the single entities confronting us. If we encounter an animal in a certain region, we ask about the influence of this region upon the life of the animal; if we see a stone begin to roll, we seek the other events with which this is connected. But what results from such asking and seeking is no longer pure experience. It already has a twofold origin: experience and thinking.
[ 5 ] Pure experience is the form of reality in which reality appears to us when we confront it to the complete exclusion of what we ourselves bring to it.
[ 6 ] The words Goethe used in his essay Nature a4In my writings in connection with the “Goethe Society,” I have tried to show that this essay has its origin in the fact that Tobler—who was in contact with Goethe in Weimar at the time this essay came into being—after conversations with Goethe, wrote down ideas that lived in Goethe as ones he recognized. What he wrote down then appeared in the Tiefurt Journal, which at that time was circulated only in a handwritten form. One finds in Goethe's writings a much later essay about this earlier publication. There Goethe states expressly that he does not remember whether the essay was his but that it contains ideas that were his at the time of its appearance. In my discussion in the writings of the “Goethe Society,” I attempted to show that these ideas, in their further development, flowed into the whole Goethean view of nature. There have subsequently been published arguments claiming for Tobler the full rights of authorship for this essay “Nature.” I do not wish to enter into the controversy on this question. Even if one credits Tobler with full originality in this essay, the fact still remains that these ideas did live in Goethe at the beginning of the 1780's and did so in such a way that—even according to his own admission—they prove to be the starting point of his comprehensive view of nature. Personally I have no reason to abandon my own view in this regard, which is that the ideas arose in Goethe. But even if they did not do so, they experienced in his spirit an existence that has become immeasurably fruitful. For the observer of the Goethean world view they are not of significance in themselves, but rather in relation to what has become of them. are applicable to this form of reality: “We are surrounded and embraced by her. She takes us up, unasked and unwarned, into the orbit of her dance.”
[ 7 ] With objects of the external sense world, this leaps so obviously to the eye that scarcely anyone would deny it. A body confronts us at first as a multiplicity of forms, colours, warmth and light impressions, which are suddenly before us as though sprung from some primal source unknown to us.
[ 8 ] The conviction in psychology that the sense world, as it lies before us, is nothing in itself but is only a product of the interworking of an unknown molecular outer world with our organism does not contradict our statement. Even if it were really true that color, warmth, etc., were nothing more than the way our organism is affected by the outer world, still the process that transforms the happening of the outer world into color, warmth, etc., lies entirely outside consciousness. No matter what role our organism may play in this, it is not molecular processes that lie before our thinking as the finished form in which reality presses in upon us (experience); rather it is those colors, sounds, etc.
[ 9 ] The matter is not so clear with respect to our inner life. But closer consideration will banish all doubt here about the fact that our inner states also appear on the horizon of our consciousness in the same form as the things and facts of the outer world. A feeling presses in upon me in the same way that an impression of light does. The fact that I bring it into closer connection with my own personality is of no consequence in this regard. We must go still further. Even thinking itself appears to us at first as an object of experience. Already in approaching our thinking investigatively, we set it before us; we picture its first form to ourselves as coming from something unknown to us.
[ 10 ] This cannot be otherwise. Our thinking, especially if one looks at the form it takes as individual activity within our consciousness, is contemplation; i.e., it directs its gaze outward upon something that is before it. In this it remains at first mere activity. It would gaze into emptiness, into nothingness, if something did not confront it.
[ 11 ] Everything that is to become the object of our knowing must accommodate itself to this form of confrontation. We are incapable of lifting ourselves above this form. If, in thinking, we are to gain a means of penetrating more deeply into the world, then thinking itself must first become experience. We must seek thinking among the facts of experience as just such a fact itself.
[ 12 ] Only in this way will our world view have inner unity. It would lack this unity at once if we wanted to introduce a foreign element into it. We confront experience pure and simple and seek within it the element that sheds light upon itself and upon the rest of reality.
4. Feststellung des Begriffes der Erfahrung
[ 1 ] Zwei Gebiete stehen also einander gegenüber, unser Denken und die Gegenstände, mit denen sich dasselbe beschäftigt. Man bezeichnet die letzteren, insofern sie unserer Beobachtung zugänglich sind, als den Inhalt der Erfahrung. Ob es außer unserem Beobachtungsfelde noch Gegenstände des Denkens gibt und welcher Natur dieselben sind, wollen wir vorläufig ganz dahingestellt sein lassen. Unsere nächste Aufgabe wird es sein, jedes von den zwei bezeichneten Gebieten, Erfahrung und Denken, scharf zu umgrenzen. Wir müssen erst die Erfahrung in bestimmter Zeichnung vor uns haben und dann die Natur des Denkens erforschen. Wir treten an die erste Aufgabe heran.
[ 2 ] Was ist Erfahrung? Jedermann ist sich dessen bewußt, daß sein Denken im Konflikte mit der Wirklichkeit angefacht wird. Die Gegenstände im Raume und in der Zeit treten an uns heran; wir nehmen eine vielfach gegliederte, höchst mannigfaltige Außenwelt wahr und durchleben eine mehr oder minder reichlich entwickelte Innenwelt. Die erste Gestalt, in der uns das alles gegenübertritt, steht fertig vor uns. Wir haben an ihrem Zustandekommen keinen Anteil. Wie aus einem uns unbekannten Jenseits entspringend, bietet sich zunächst die Wirklichkeit unserer sinnlichen und geistigen Auffassung dar. Zunächst können wir nur unseren Blick über die uns gegenübertretende Mannigfaltigkeit schweifen lassen.
[ 3 ] Diese unsere erste Tätigkeit ist die sinnliche Auffassung der Wirklichkeit. Was sich dieser darbietet, müssen wir festhalten. Denn nur das können wir reine Erfahrung nennen.a3Man sieht aus der ganzen Haltung dieser Erkenntnistheorie, daß es bei ihren Auseinandersetzungen darauf ankommt, eine Antwort auf die Frage zu gewinnen: Was ist Erkenntnis? Um dieses Ziel zu erreichen, wird zunächst die Welt der sinnlichen Anschauung einerseits und die gedankliche Durchdringung andrerseits ins Auge gefaßt. Und es wird nachgewiesen, daß im Durchdringen der beiden die wahre Wirklichkeit des Sinnenseins sich offenbart. Damit ist die Frage: «Was ist Erkennen?» dem Prinzipe nach beantwortet. Diese Antwort wird keine andere dadurch, daß die Frage ausgedehnt wird auf die Anschauung des Geistigen. Deshalb gilt, was in dieser Schrift über das Wesen der Erkenntnis gesagt wird, auch für das Erkennen der geistigen Welten, auf das sich meine später erschienenen Schriften beziehen. Die Sinnenwelt ist in ihrer Erscheinung für das menschliche Anschauen nicht Wirklichkeit. Sie hat ihre Wirklichkeit im Zusammenhange mit dem, was sich im Menschen über sie gedanklich offenbart. Die Gedanken gehören zur Wirklichkeit des Sinnlich-Angeschauten; nur daß sich, was im Sinnensein Gedanke ist, nicht draußen an diesem, sondern drinnen im Menschen zur Erscheinung bringt. Aber Gedanke und Sinneswahrnehmung sind ein Sein. Indem der Mensch sinnlich anschauend in der Welt auftritt, sondert er von der Wirklichkeit den Gedanken ab; dieser erscheint aber nur an einer anderen Stelle: im Seelen-Innern. Die Trennung von Wahrnehmung und Gedanke hat für die objektive Welt gar keine Bedeutung; sie tritt nur auf, weil der Mensch sich mitten in das Dasein hineinstellt. Für ihn entsteht dadurch der Schein, als ob Gedanke und Sinneswahrnehmung eine Zweiheit seien. Nicht anders ist es für die geistige Anschauung. Wenn diese durch die Seelenvorgänge auftritt, die ich in meiner späteren Schrift «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten?» beschrieben habe, dann bildet sie wieder die eine Seite des - geistigen - Seins; und die entsprechenden Gedanken vom Geistigen bilden die andere Seite. Ein Unterschied tritt nur insofern auf, als die Sinneswahrnehmung durch den Gedanken gewissermaßen nach oben zum Anfang des Geistigen hin in Wirklichkeit vollendet, die geistige Anschauung von diesem Anfang an nach unten hin in ihrer wahren Wesenheit erlebt wird. Daß das Erleben der Sinneswahrnehmung durch die von der Natur gebildeten Sinne, das der Anschauung des Geistigen durch die erst auf seelische Art ausgebildeten geistigen Wahrnehmungsorgane geschieht, macht nicht einen prinzipiellen Unterschied. In Wahrheit ist in meinen späteren Veröffentlichungen kein Verlassen der Idee des Erkennens vorhanden, die ich in dieser Schrift ausgebildet habe, sondern nur die Anwendung dieser Idee auf die geistige Erfahrung.
[ 4 ] Wir fühlen sogleich das Bedürfnis, die unendliche Mannigfaltigkeit von Gestalten, Kräften, Farben, Tönen usw., die vor uns auftritt, mit dem ordnenden Verstande zu durchdringen. Wir sind bestrebt, die gegenseitigen Abhängigkeiten aller uns entgegentretenden Einzelheiten aufzuklären. Wenn uns ein Tier in einer bestimmten Gegend erscheint, so fragen wir nach dem Einflusse der letzteren auf das Leben des Tieres; wenn wir sehen, wie ein Stein ins Rollen kommt, so suchen wir nach anderen Ereignissen, mit denen dieses zusammenhängt. Was aber auf solche Weise zustande kommt, ist nicht mehr reine Erfahrung. Es hat schon einen doppelten Ursprung: Erfahrung und Denken.
[ 5 ] Reine Erfahrung ist die Form der Wirklichkeit, in der diese uns erscheint, wenn wir ihr mit vollständiger Entäußerung unseres Selbstes entgegentreten.
[ 6 ] Auf diese Form der Wirklichkeit sind die Worte anwendbar, die Goethe in dem Aufsatze «Die Natur» a4Ich habe in den Schriften der «Goethe-Gesellschaft» zu zeigen versucht, daß dieser Aufsatz so entstanden ist, daß Tobler, der zur Zeit der Entstehung desselben mit Goethe in Weimar verkehrt hat, Ideen, die in Goethe als von diesem anerkannte gelebt haben, nach Gesprächen mit ihm niedergeschrieben hat. Diese Niederschrift ist dann im damals nur handschriftlich verbreiteten «Tiefurter Journal» erschienen. Man findet nun in Goethes Schriften einen von diesem viel später geschriebenen Aufsatz über die frühere Veröffentlichung. Da sagt Goethe ausdrücklich, daß er sich nicht erinnere, ob der Aufsatz von ihm sei, daß er aber Ideen enthalte, die zur Zeit seiner Erscheinung die seinigen waren. In meiner Abhandlung in den Schriften der «Goethe-Gesellschaft» habe ich nachzuweisen versucht, daß diese Ideen in ihrer Fortentwicklung in die ganze Goethesche Naturanschauung eingeflossen sind. Es sind nun nachträglich Ausführungen veröffentlicht worden, die für Tobler das volle Autorrecht des Aufsatzes «Die Natur in Anspruch nehmen. Ich möchte mich in das Streiten über diese Frage nicht mischen. Auch wenn man für Tobler die volle Originalität behauptet, so bleibt noch immer bestehen, daß in Goethe diese Ideen im Anfange der achtziger Jahre des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts gelebt haben, und zwar so, daß sie sieh - auch nach seinem eigenen Bekenntnis - als der Anfang seiner umfassenden Naturanschauung erweisen. Persönlich habe ich keinen Grund, von meiner Ansicht in dieser Beziehung abzugehen, daß die Ideen in Goethe entstanden sind. Aber auch, wenn sie es nicht wären, so erlebten sie in seinem Geist ein Dasein, das unermeßlich fruchtbar geworden ist. Für den Betrachter der Goetheschen Weltanschauung sind sie nicht an sieh, sondern im Verhältnisse zu dem, was aus ihnen geworden ist, von Bedeutung. ausgesprochen hat: «Wir sind von ihr umgeben und umschlungen. Ungebeten und ungewarnt nimmt sie uns in den Kreislauf ihres Tanzes auf.»
[ 7 ] Bei den Gegenständen der äußeren Sinne springt das so in die Augen, daß es wohl kaum jemand leugnen wird. Ein Körper tritt uns zunächst als eine Vielheit von Formen, Farben, von Wärme- und Lichteindrücken entgegen, die plötzlich vor uns sind, wie aus einem uns unbekannten Urquell hervorgegangen.
[ 8 ] Die psychologische Überzeugung, daß die Sinnenwelt, wie sie uns vorliegt, nichts an sich selbst ist, sondern bereits ein Produkt der Wechselwirkung einer uns unbekannten molekularen Außenwelt und unseres Organismus, widerspricht unserer Behauptung nicht. Wenn es auch wirklich wahr wäre, daß Farbe, Wärme usw. nichts weiter sind, als die Art, wie unser Organismus von der Außenwelt affiziert wird, so liegt doch der Prozeß, der das Geschehen der Außenwelt in Farbe, Wärme usw. umwandelt, gänzlich jenseits des Bewußtseins. Unser Organismus mag dabei welche Rolle immer spielen: unserem Denken liegt als fertige, uns aufgedrungene Wirklichkeitsform (Erfahrung) nicht das molekulare Geschehen, sondern jene Farben, Töne usw. vor.
[ 9 ] Nicht so klar liegt die Sache mit unserem Innenleben. Eine genauere Erwägung wird aber hier jeden Zweifel schwinden lassen, daß auch unsere inneren Zustände in derselben Form in den Horizont unseres Bewußtseins eintreten wie die Dinge und Tatsachen der Außenwelt. Ein Gefühl drängt sich mir ebenso auf wie ein Lichteindruck. Daß ich es in nähere Beziehung zu meiner eigenen Persönlichkeit bringe, ist in dieser Hinsicht ohne Belang. Wir müssen noch weiter gehen. ,Auch das Denken selbst erscheint uns zunächst als Erfahrungssache. Schon indem wir forschend an unser Denken herantreten, setzen wir es uns gegenüber, stellen wir uns seine erste Gestalt als von einem uns Unbekannten kommend vor.
[ 10 ] Das kann nicht anders sein. Unser Denken ist, besonders wenn man seine Form als individuelle Tätigkeit innerhalb unseres Bewußtseins ins Auge faßt, Betrachtung, das heißt es richtet den Blick nach außen, auf ein Gegenüberstehendes. Dabei bleibt es zunächst als Tätigkeit stehen. Es würde ins Leere, ins Nichts blicken, wenn sich ihm nicht etwas gegenüberstellte.
[ 11 ] Dieser Form des Gegenüberstellens muß sich alles fügen, was Gegenstand unseres Wissens werden soll. Wir sind unvermögend, uns über diese Form zu erheben. Sollen wir an dem Denken ein Mittel gewinnen, tiefer in die Welt einzudringen, dann muß es selbst zuerst Erfahrung werden. Wir müssen das Denken innerhalb der Erfahrungstatsachen selbst als eine solche aufsuchen.
[ 12 ] Nur so wird unsere Weltanschauung der inneren Einheitlichkeit nicht entbehren. Sie würde es sogleich, wenn wir ein fremdes Element in sie hineintragen wollten. Wir treten der bloßen reinen Erfahrung gegenüber und suchen Innerhalb ihrer selbst das Element, das über sich und über die übrige Wirklichkeit Licht verbreitet.
4. Establishing the concept of experience
[ 1 ] There are thus two opposing areas: our thinking and the objects with which it is concerned. The latter, insofar as they are accessible to our observation, are referred to as the content of experience. Whether there are objects of thought apart from our field of observation, and what their nature is, we will leave entirely undecided for the time being. Our next task will be to sharply delimit each of the two designated areas, experience and thought. We must first have experience before us in a definite outline and then investigate the nature of thought. We approach the first task.
[ 2 ] What is experience? Everyone is aware that his thinking is fueled by conflict with reality. Objects in space and time approach us; we perceive a highly structured, extremely diverse external world and experience a more or less richly developed inner world. The first form in which all this confronts us is ready before us. We have no part in its creation. The reality initially presents itself to our sensory and spiritual perception as if emerging from an unknown beyond. At first, we can only let our gaze wander over the diversity that confronts us.
[ 3 ] This first activity of ours is the sensory perception of reality. We must hold on to what presents itself to it. For this is the only thing we can call pure experience.a3You can see from the whole attitude of this epistemology that what matters in its arguments is to find an answer to the question: What is knowledge? In order to achieve this goal, the world of sensory perception on the one hand and mental penetration on the other are considered. And it is shown that the true reality of the senses is revealed in the interpenetration of the two. Thus the question: "What is cognition?" is answered in principle. This answer becomes no other by extending the question to the contemplation of the spiritual. Therefore, what is said in this writing about the nature of cognition also applies to the cognition of the spiritual worlds, to which my later writings refer. The sense world in its appearance is not a reality for human perception. It has its reality in connection with that which is revealed in man's thoughts about it. Thought belongs to the reality of what is sensually perceived, except that what is thought in the senses does not manifest itself outside the senses, but inside the human being. But thought and sense perception are one being. By appearing in the world through sensory perception, the human being separates thought from reality; however, this only appears in a different place: within the soul. The separation of perception and thought has no meaning at all for the objective world; it only occurs because man places himself in the midst of existence. For him this creates the appearance as if thought and sense perception were a duality. It is no different for spiritual perception. If this occurs through the processes of the soul, which I described in my later writing "How does one attain knowledge of the higher worlds?", then it again forms the one side of - spiritual - being; and the corresponding thoughts of the spiritual form the other side. A difference arises only in so far as sense perception is, as it were, completed upwards through thought towards the beginning of the spiritual in reality, while spiritual perception is experienced from this beginning downwards in its true essence. The fact that the experience of sense perception occurs through the senses formed by nature and that of the perception of the spiritual through the spiritual organs of perception, which are only formed in a soul-like manner, does not make a principal difference. In truth, in my later publications there is no abandonment of the idea of cognition that I have developed in this writing, but only the application of this idea to spiritual experience.
[ 4 ] We immediately feel the need to penetrate the infinite variety of forms, forces, colors, sounds, etc. that appear before us with the organizing mind. We endeavor to elucidate the interdependence of all the details that confront us. If an animal appears to us in a certain region, we ask about the influence of the latter on the life of the animal; if we see a stone rolling, we look for other events with which it is connected. But what comes about in this way is no longer pure experience. It already has a dual origin: experience and thought.
[ 5 ] Pure experience is the form of reality in which it appears to us when we confront it with the complete externalization of our self.
[ 6 ] The words that Goethe used in the essay "Nature" a4in the writings of the "Goethe-Gesellschaft" are applicable to this form of reality, that this essay originated in such a way that Tobler, who was in contact with Goethe in Weimar at the time of its composition, wrote down ideas that lived in Goethe as recognized by him after conversations with him. This transcript was then published in the "Tiefurter Journal", which was only distributed in manuscript form at the time. In Goethe's writings we now find an essay written much later about the earlier publication. Goethe expressly states that he does not remember whether the essay was his own, but that it contains ideas that were his own at the time of its publication. In my essay in the Schriften der "Goethe-Gesellschaft" I have tried to prove that these ideas, in their further development, flowed into Goethe's entire view of nature. Subsequent remarks have now been published which claim for Tobler the full right of authorship of the essay "Die Natur in Anspruch. I do not wish to get involved in the dispute over this question. Even if full originality is claimed for Tobler, it still remains the case that these ideas were alive in Goethe at the beginning of the eighties of the eighteenth century, and in such a way that they prove - even according to his own admission - to be the beginning of his comprehensive view of nature. Personally, I have no reason to depart from my view in this respect, that the ideas originated in Goethe. But even if they were not, they experienced an existence in his mind that has become immeasurably fruitful. For the observer of Goethe's world view, they are not significant in themselves, but in relation to what they have become. has said: "We are surrounded and embraced by it. Uninvited and unwarned, it takes us into the cycle of its dance."
[ 7 ] With the objects of the external senses, this is so obvious that hardly anyone will deny it. A body first confronts us as a multiplicity of forms, colors, impressions of warmth and light, which suddenly appear before us as if emerging from a source unknown to us.
[ 8 ] The psychological conviction that the sensory world as it is presented to us is nothing in itself, but already a product of the interaction of an unknown molecular external world and our organism, does not contradict our assertion. Even if it were really true that color, warmth, etc. are nothing more than the way in which our organism is affected by the external world, the process that transforms the events of the external world into color, warmth, etc. lies entirely beyond consciousness. Our organism may play whatever role in this process: the finished form of reality (experience) imposed on our thinking is not the molecular event, but those colors, sounds, etc.
[ 9 ] The matter with our inner life is not so clear. However, closer consideration will dispel any doubt that our inner states also enter the horizon of our consciousness in the same form as the things and facts of the outside world. A feeling imposes itself on me in the same way as an impression of light. The fact that I relate it more closely to my own personality is irrelevant in this respect. We must go still further. 'Thinking itself also appears to us at first as a matter of experience. Even as we approach our thinking inquiringly, we confront it, we imagine its first form as coming from something unknown to us.
[ 10 ] This cannot be otherwise. Our thinking, especially if we consider its form as an individual activity within our consciousness, is observation, that is, it directs its gaze outwards, towards something opposite. In doing so, it initially stops as an activity. It would gaze into emptiness, into nothingness, if it were not confronted by something.
[ 11 ] Everything that is to become the object of our knowledge must submit to this form of confrontation. We are incapable of rising above this form. If we are to gain from thinking a means of penetrating deeper into the world, then it must first become experience itself. We must seek out thinking as such within the facts of experience itself.
[ 12 ] Only in this way will our worldview not lack inner unity. It would do so immediately if we wanted to introduce a foreign element into it. We confront mere pure experience and seek within it the element that sheds light on itself and on the rest of reality.