Goethe's World View
GA 6
Part I.5: Personality and World View
[ 1 ] Man learns to know the outer side of nature through perception; its deeper-lying driving powers reveal themselves within his own inner life as subjective experiences. In philosophical contemplation of the world and in artistic feeling and creating, his subjective experiences permeate his objective perceptions. What had to split itself into two parts in order to penetrate into the human spirit becomes again one whole. The human being satisfies his highest spiritual needs when he incorporates into the objectively perceived world what the world manifests to him within his inner life as its deeper mysteries. Knowledge and artistic creations are nothing other than perceptions filled with man's inner experiences. In the simplest judgment about a thing or event of the outer world, there can be found a human soul experience and an outer perception in inner association with one another. When I say that one body strikes another, I have already brought an inner experience into the outer world. I see a body in motion; it hits another one; this one also comes into motion as a consequence. The content of the perception cannot tell me more than this. I am not satisfied by this, however. For I feel that still more is present in the whole phenomenon than what mere perception gives me. I reach for an inner experience that will enlighten me about the perception. I know that I myself can set a body into motion by applying force, by striking it. I carry this experience over into the phenomenon and say that the one body strikes the other. “The human being never realizes just how anthropomorphic he is” (Goethe, Aphorisms in Prose, Kuerschner edition, Vol. 36, 2, p. 353). There are people who, from the presence of this subjective component in every judgment about the outer world, draw the conclusion that reality's objective core of being is inaccessible to man. They believe that man falsifies the immediate and objective factual state of reality when he lays his subjective experiences into reality. They say that because man can picture the world to himself only through the lens of his subjective life, all his knowledge is only a subjective, limitedly human one. Someone, however, who comes to consciousness about what manifests itself within the inner life of man will want to have nothing to do with such unfruitful assertions. He knows that truth comes about precisely through the fact that perception and idea permeate each other in the human process of knowledge. It is clear to him that in the subjective there lives what is most archetypically and most profoundly objective. “When the healthy nature of man works as a whole, when he feels himself in the world as though in a great, beautiful, worthy, and precious whole, when his harmonious sense of well-being imparts to him a pure free delight, then the universe, if it could experience itself, would; as having achieved its goal, exult with joy and marvel at the pinnacle of its own becoming and being.” The reality accessible to mere perception is only one half of complete reality; the content of the human spirit is the other half. If no human being ever confronted the world, then this second half would never come to living manifestation, to full existence. It would work, it is true, as a hidden world of forces; but the possibility would be taken from it of revealing itself in its own form. One would like to say that, without man, the world would reveal an untrue countenance. The world would be as it is, through its deeper forces, but these deeper forces would themselves remain cloaked by what they bring about. Within man's spirit they are delivered from their enchantment. Man is not there in order merely to make a picture for himself of a completed world; no, he himself works along with the coming into being of this world.
[ 2 ] The subjective experiences of different people take different forms. For those who do not believe in the objective nature of the inner world, that is one more reason to deny man the ability to penetrate into the being of things. For how can something be the being of things which appears to one person one way and to another person another way. For the person who recognizes the true nature of the inner world, there follows from the differences of inner experiences only that nature can express its rich content in different ways. The truth appears to each individual person in an individual garb. It adapts itself to the particularities of his personality. This is especially the case with the highest truths that are most important to man. In order to attain them, man carries over into the perceptible world his most intimate spiritual experiences, and along with them what is most individual in his personality. There are also generally accepted truths that every human being takes up without giving them an individual coloring. These are, however, the most superficial and trivial ones. They correspond to the general characteristics of man as a species which are the same for everyone. Certain qualities that are the same in all human beings also produce the same judgments about things. The way people regard things according to measurement and number is the same for everyone. Therefore everyone finds the same mathematical truths. But within the particular qualities by which the individual personality lifts himself from the general characteristics of his species, there also lies the basis for the individual forms which he gives to truth. The point is not whether the truth appears differently in one person than in another but rather whether all the individual forms coming into view belong to one single whole, to the one unified ideal world. The truth speaks different languages and dialects within the inner life of individual people; in every great human being it speaks an individual language which belongs only to this one personality. But it is always one truth which speaks there. If I know my relationship to myself and to the outer world, then I call it truth. And in this way each person can have his own truth, and it is after all always the same one.” This is Goethe's view. The truth is not some petrified, dead system of concepts, capable of assuming only one form; it is a living sea, within which the spirit of man lives, and which can show on its surface waves of the most varied form. “Theory, in and for itself, is of no use, but only inasmuch as it makes us believe in the connections of phenomena,” says Goethe. He values no theory that claims completeness once and for all and is supposed to represent in this form an eternal truth. He wants living concepts by which the spirit of the individual person, according to his individual nature, draws his perceptions together. To know the truth means for him to live in the truth. And to live in the truth is nothing other than, when looking at each individual thing, to watch what inner experience occurs when one stands in front of this thing. Such a view of human knowledge cannot speak of limits of knowing, nor of a restriction of knowing imposed by man's nature. For the questions which knowledge, according to this view, poses itself do not spring from the things; they ale also not imposed upon man by any other power lying outside of his personality. They spring from the nature of his personality itself. When man directs his gaze upon a thing, there then arises in him the urge to see more than what approaches him in his perception. And as far as this urge reaches, so far does his need for knowledge also reach. Where does this urge originate? Actually only from the fact that an inner experience feels itself stimulated within the soul to enter into a connection with the perception. As soon as the connection is accomplished, the need for knowledge is also satisfied. Wanting to know is a demand of human nature and not of the things. These can tell man no more about their being than he demands from them. Someone who speaks of a limitation of knowledge's capabilities does not know where the need for knowledge originates. He believes that the content of truth lies stored up somewhere, and that in man there lives only the indistinct wish to find access to the place where it is stored. But it is the very being of the things that works itself out of the inner life. of man and strives to where it belongs: to the perception. It is not after something hidden that man strives in the knowledge process but rather after the balancing out of two forces which work upon him from two sides. One can well say that without man there would be no knowledge of the inner life of things, for without him there would be nothing there through which this inner life could express itself. But one cannot say that there is something in the inner life of things which is inaccessible to man. The fact that still something else is present in things than what perception gives him, this man knows only because this something else lives within his own inner life. To speak of a further unknown something in things means to make up words about something which is not present.
[ 3 ] Those who are not able to recognize that it is the language of the things which is spoken in the inner life of man are of the view that all truth must penetrate into man from outside. Such persons hold fast either to mere perception and believe they can know the truth only through seeing, hearing, touching, through gathering together historical events, and through comparing, counting, calculating, weighing what is taken up out of the world of facts; or they are of the view that the truth can come to man only when it is revealed to him in a way set apart from knowledge; or, finally, they want through forces of a particular kind, through ecstasy or mystical vision, to come into possession of the highest insights which, in their view, the world of ideas accessible to thinking cannot offer them. In addition, metaphysicians of a particular sort connect themselves to those who think in the Kantian sense and to the one-sided mystics. To be sure, these seek through thinking to form concepts of the truth for themselves. But they seek the content for these concepts not in the human world of ideas but rather in a second reality lying behind the things. They believe themselves able, through pure concepts, either to determine something certain about a content of this kind or, at least, through hypotheses, to be able to form mental pictures of it. I am speaking here, to begin with, about the kind of people mentioned first, the fact fanatics. Every now and then they become conscious of the fact that, in counting and calculating, there already takes place with the help of thinking a working through of the content of perception. Then, however, they say that this thought work is merely the means by which man struggles to know the relationship of the facts. What flows from thinking in the act of working upon the outer world represents to them something merely subjective; they consider to be the objective content of truth, the valid content of knowledge, only what approaches them from outside with the help of thinking. They catch the facts, to be sure, in the net of their thoughts but allow objective validity only to what is caught. They overlook the fact that what is thus caught by thinking undergoes an exposition, an ordering, an interpretation, which it does not have in mere perception. Mathematics is a result of pure thought processes; its content is a spiritual, subjective one. And the mechanic, who pictures the processes of nature in mathematical relationships, can do this only under the presupposition that these relationships are founded in the nature of these processes. But this means nothing other than that within perception a mathematical order is hidden which only that person sees who has developed the mathematical laws within his spirit. Between the mathematical and mechanical perceptions and the most intimate spiritual experiences, however, there is no difference in kind but only in degree. And man can carry other inner experiences, other areas of his world of ideas over into his perceptions with the same justification as he does the results of mathematical research. The fact fanatic only seems to ascertain purely outer processes. He usually does not reflect upon' his world of ideas and its character as subjective experience. His inner experiences are also bloodless abstractions, poor in content, which are obscured by the powerful content of facts. The illusion to which he surrenders himself can last only as long as he remains at the lowest level of interpreting nature, as long as he merely counts, weighs, and calculates. At the higher levels the true nature of knowledge is soon borne in upon him. But one can observe about the fact fanatics that they stick primarily to the lower levels. They are therefore like an aesthetician who wants to judge a piece of music only by what can be calculated and counted in it. They want to separate the phenomena of nature from man. Nothing subjective must flow into observation. Goethe condemns this approach with the words, “Man in himself, insofar as he uses his healthy senses, is the greatest and most accurate physical apparatus that there can be, and that is precisely what is of the greatest harm to modern physics, that one has, as it were, separated experiments from man and wants to know nature merely through what manmade instruments show, yes wants to limit and prove thereby what nature can do.” It is fear of the subjective which leads to such a way of doing things and which comes from a misapprehension of the true nature of the subjective. “But man stands so high precisely through the fact that what otherwise could not manifest itself does manifest itself in him. For what is a string and all its mechanical divisions compared to the ear of the musician? Yes, one can say, what are the elemental phenomena of nature themselves compared to man who must first tame and modify them all in order to be able to assimilate them to some extent?” In Goethe's view the natural scientist should be attentive not only to how things appear but rather to how they would appear if everything that works in them as ideal driving forces were also actually to come to outer manifestation. Only when the bodily and spiritual organism of man places itself before the phenomena do they then reveal their inner being.
[ 4 ] Whoever approaches the phenomena in a spirit of observing them freely and openly, and with a developed inner life in which the ideas of things manifest themselves, to him the phenomena, it is Goethe's view, reveal everything about themselves. There stands in opposition to Goethe's world view, therefore, the one which does not seek the being of things within experienceable reality but rather within a second reality lying behind this one. In Fr. H. Jacobi Goethe encountered an adherent of such a world view. Goethe gives vent to his displeasure in a remark in the Tag- und Jahresheft (1811): “Jacobi's Of Divine Things made me unhappy; how could the book of such a beloved friend be welcome to me when I had to see developed in it the thesis that nature conceals God. With my pure, deep, inborn, and trained way of looking at things, which had taught me absolutely to see God in nature, nature in God, such that the way of picturing things constituted the foundation of my whole existence, would not such a peculiar, one-sidedly limited statement estrange me forever in spirit from this most noble man whose heart I revered and loved?” Goethe's way of looking at things gives him the certainty that he experiences an eternal lawfulness in his permeation of nature with ideas, and this eternal lawfulness is for him identical with the divine. If the divine did conceal itself behind the things of nature and yet constituted the creative element in them, it could not then be seen; man would have to believe in it. In a letter to Jacobi, Goethe defends his seeing in contrast to faith: [ 5 ] “God has punished you with metaphysics and set a thorn in your flesh but has blessed me with physics. I will stick to the reverence for God of the atheist (Spinoza) and leave to you everything you call, and would like to call, religion. You are for faith in God; I am for seeing.” Where this seeing ends, the human spirit then has nothing to seek. We read in his Aphorisms in Prose: “Man is really set into the midst of a real world and endowed with such organs that he can know and bring forth what is real and what is possible along with it. All healthy people are convinced of their existence and of something existing around them. For all that, there is a hollow spot in the brain, which means a place where no object is mirrored, just as in the eye itself there is a little spot that does not see. If a person becomes particularly attentive to this place, becomes absorbed with it, he then succumbs to an illness of the spirit, has inklings here of things of another world, which, however, are actually non-things and have neither shape nor limitations but rather, as empty night-spaces, cause fear and pursue in a more than ghost-like way the person who does not tear himself free,” Out of this same mood there is the aphorism, “The highest would be to grasp that everything factual is already theory, The blue of the heavens reveals to us the basic law of the science of colors. Only do not seek anything behind the phenomena; they are themselves the teaching.”
[ 6 ] Kant denies to man the ability to penetrate into the region of nature in which its creative forces become directly visible. In his opinion concepts are abstract units into which the human intellect draws together the manifold particulars of nature but which have nothing to do with the living unity, with the creative wholeness of nature from which these particulars really proceed. The human being experiences in this drawing together only a subjective operation. He can relate his general concepts to his empirical perception; but these concepts in themselves are no alive, productive, in such a way that man could see what is individual proceed out of them. For Kant concepts are dead units present only in man. “Our intellect is a capacity for concepts, i.e., it is a discursive intellect, for which, to be sure, it must be a matter of chance what and how different the particular thing might be which is given to it in nature and what can be brought under its concepts.” This is how Kant characterizes the intellect (¶ 77 of Critique of Judgment). The following necessarily results from this: “It is a matter of infinite concern to our reason not to let go of the mechanism of nature in its creations and not to pass it by in explaining them, because without this mechanism no insight into the nature of things can be attained. If one right away concedes to us that a supreme architect has directly created the forms of nature just as they have been from the very beginning, or has predetermined them in such a way that they, in nature's course, continually shape themselves upon the very same model, then even so our knowledge of nature has not thereby been furthered in the least; because we do not at all know that architect's way of doing things, nor his ideas which supposedly contain the principles of the possibilities of the beings of nature, and we are not able by him to explain nature from above downward, as it were (a priori)” (¶ 78 of the Critique of Judgment). Goethe is convinced that man, in his world of ideas, experiences directly how the creative being of nature does things. “When we, in fact, lift ourselves in the moral sphere into a higher region through belief in God, virtue, and immortality and mean to draw near to the primal being, so likewise, in the intellectual realm, it could very well be the case that we would make ourselves worthy, through beholding an ever-creating nature, of participating spiritually in its productions.” Man's knowledge is for Goethe a real living into nature's creating and working. It is given to his knowledge' 'to investigate, to experience how nature lives in creating.”
[ 7 ] It conflicts with the spirit of the Goethean world view to speak of beings that lie outside the world of experience and ideas accessible to the human spirit and that nevertheless are supposed to contain the foundations of this world. All metaphysics are rejected by this world view. There are no questions of knowledge which, rightly posed, cannot also be answered. If science at any given time can make nothing of a certain area of phenomena, then the reason for this does not lie with the nature of the human spirit but rather with the incidental fact that experience of this region is not yet complete at this time. Hypotheses cannot be set up about things which lie outside the region of possible experience but rather only about1 things which can sometime enter this region. A hypothesis can always state only that it is likely that within a given region of phenomena one will have this or that experience. In this way of thinking one cannot speak at all about things and processes which do not lie within man's sensible or spiritual view. The, assumption of a “thing-in-itself,” which causes perceptions in' man but which itself can never be perceived, is an inadmissible hypothesis. “Hypotheses are scaffolding which one erects before the building and which one removes when the building is finished; they are indispensable to the workman; only he must, not consider the scaffolding to be the building.” When confronted by a region of phenomena, for which all perceptions are; present and which has been permeated with ideas, the human spirit declares itself satisfied. It feels that within the spirit a living harmony of idea and perception is playing itself out.
[ 8 ] The satisfying basic mood which Goethe's world view has for] him is similar to that which one can observe with the mystics. Mysticism sets out to find, within the human soul, the primal ground of things, the divinity. The mystic, just like Goethe, is convinced that the being of the world becomes manifest to him in inner experiences. Only many a mystic does not regard immersion in the world of ideas to be the inner experience which matters the most to him. Many a one-sided mystic has approximately the same view as Kant about the clear ideas of reason. For him they stand outside the creative wholeness of nature and belong only to the human intellect. A mystic of this son seeks, therefore, by developing unusual states, for example, through ecstasy, to attain the highest knowledge, a vision of a; higher kind. He deadens in himself sense observation and the thinking based on reason and seeks to intensify his life of feeling. Then he believes he has a direct feeling of spirituality working in him, as divinity, in fact. He believes that in the moments when he succeeds in this God is living in him. The Goethean world view also arouses a similar feeling in the person who adheres to it. But the Goethean world view does not draw its knowledge from experiences that occur after observation and thinking have been deadened but rather draws them precisely from these two activities. It does not flee to abnormal states of human spiritual life but rather is of the view that the spirit's usual, naive ways of going about things are capable of such perfecting, that man can experience within himself nature's creating. “There are, after all, in the long run, I think, only the practical and self-rectifying operations of man's ordinary intellect that dares to exercise itself in a higher sphere.” Many a mystic immerses himself in a world of unclear sensations and feelings; Goethe immerses himself in the clear world of ideas. The one-sided mystics disdain the clarity of ideas. They regard this clarity as superficial. They have no inkling of what those persons sense who have the gift of immersing themselves in the living world of ideas, Such a mystic is chilled when he surrenders himself to the world of ideas. He seeks a world content that radiates warmth. But the content which he finds does not explain the world, It consists only of subjective excitements, in confused mental pictures, Whoever speaks of the coldness of the world of ideas can only think ideas, not experience them. Whoever lives the true life in the world of ideas, feels in himself the being of the world working in a warmth that cannot be compared to anything else. He feels the fire of the world mystery flame up in him. This is how Goethe felt as there opened up for him in Italy the view of nature at work, Then he knew how that longing is to be stilled which in Frankfurt he has his Faust express with the words:
Where shall I, endless nature, seize on thee?
Thy breasts are—where? Ye, of all life the spring,
To whom both Earth and Heaven cling,
Toward which the withering breast doth strain—(Priest's translation)
Persönlichkeit und Weltanschauung
[ 1 ] Die Außenseite der Natur lernt der Mensch durch die Anschauung kennen; ihre tiefer liegenden Triebkräfte enthüllen sich in seinem eigenen Innern als subjektive Erlebnisse. In der philosophischen Weltbetrachtung und im künstlerischen Empfinden und Hervorbringen durchdringen die subjektiven Erlebnisse die objektiven Anschauungen. Das wird wieder ein Ganzes, Was sich in zwei Teile spalten mußte, um in den menschlichen Geist einzudringen. Der Mensch befriedigt seine höchsten geistigen Bedürfnisse, wenn er der objektiv angeschauten Welt einverleibt, was sie in seinem Innern ihm als ihre tieferen Geheimnisse offenbart. Erkenntnisse und Kunsterzeugnisse sind nichts anderes, als von menschlichen inneren Erlebnissen erfüllte Anschauungen. In dem einfachsten Urteile über ein Ding oder Ereignis der Außenwelt können ein menschliches Seelenerlebnis und eine äußere Anschauung im innigen Bunde miteinander gefunden werden. Wenn ich sage: ein Körper stößt den andern, so habe ich bereits ein inneres Erlebnis auf die Außenwelt übertragen. Ich sehe einen Körper in Bewegung; er trifft auf einen andern; dieser kommt infolgedessen auch in Bewegung. Mit diesen Worten ist der Inhalt der Wahrnehmung erschöpft. Ich bin aber dabei nicht beruhigt. Denn ich fühle: es ist in der ganzen Erscheinung noch mehr vorhanden, als was die bloße Wahrnehmung liefert. Ich greife nach einem inneren Erlebnis, das mich über die Wahrnehmung aufklärt. Ich weiß, daß ich selbst durch Anwendung von Kraft, durch Stoßen, einen Körper in Bewegung versetzen kann. Dieses Erlebnis übertrage ich auf die Erscheinung und sage: der eine Körper stößt den andern. «Der Mensch begreift niemals, wie anthropomorphisch er ist» (Goethe, Sprüche in Prosa. Kürschner Band 36,2, S. 353). Es gibt Menschen, die aus dem Vorhandensein dieses subjektiven Bestandteiles in jedem Urteile über die Außenwelt die Folgerung ziehen, daß der objektive Wesenskern der Wirklichkeit dem Menschen unzugänglich sei. Sie glauben, der Mensch verfälsche den unmittelbaren, objektiven Tatbestand der Wirklichkeit, wenn er seine subjektiven Erlebnisse in diese hineinlegt. Sie sagen: weil der Mensch sich die Welt nur durch die Brille seines subjektiven Lebens vorstellen kann, ist alle seine Erkenntnis nur eine subjektive, beschränkt-menschliche. Wem es aber zum Bewußtsein kommt, was im Innern des Menschen sich offenbart, der wird nichts mit solchen unfruchtbaren Behauptungen zu tun haben wollen. Er weiß, daß Wahrheit eben dadurch zustande kommt, daß Wahrnehmung und Idee sich im menschlichen Erkentnisprozeß durchdringen. Ihm ist klar, daß in dem Subjektiven das eigentlichste und tiefste Objektive lebt. «Wenn die gesunde Natur des Menschen als ein Ganzes wirkt, wenn er sich in der Welt als in einem großen, schönen würdigen und werten Ganzen fühlt, wenn das harmonische Behagen ihm ein reines, freies Entzücken gewährt, dann würde das Weltall wenn es sich selbst empfinden könnte, als an sein Ziel gelangt, aufjauchzen und den Gipfel des eigenen Werdens und Wesens bewundern.» (Kürschner, Band 27, S. 42.) Die der bloßen Anschauung zugängliche Wirklichkeit ist nur die eine Hälfte der ganzen Wirklichkeit; der Inhalt des menschlichen Geistes ist die andere Hälfte. Träte nie ein Mensch der Welt gegenüber, so käme diese zweite Hälfte nie zur lebendigen Erscheinung, zum vollen Dasein. Sie wirkte zwar als verborgene Kräftewelt; aber es wäre ihr die Möglichkeit entzogen, sich in einer eigenen Gestalt zu zeigen. Man möchte sagen, ohne den Menschen würde die Welt ein unwahres Antlitz zeigen. Sie wäre so, wie sie ist, durch ihre tieferen Kräfte, aber diese tieferen Kräfte blieben selbst verhüllt durch das, was sie wirken. Im Menschengeiste werden sie aus ihrer Verzauberung erlöst. Der Mensch ist nicht bloß dazu da, um sich von der fertigen Welt ein Bild zu machen; nein, er wirkt selbst mit an dem Zustandekommen dieser Welt.
[ 2 ] Verschieden gestalten sich die subjektiven Erlebnisse bei verschiedenen Menschen. Für diejenigen, welche nicht an die objektive Natur der Innenwelt glauben, ist das ein Grund mehr, dem Menschen das Vermögen abzusprechen, in das Wesen der Dinge zu dringen. Denn wie kann Wesen der Dinge sein, was dem einen so, dem andern anders erscheint. Für denjenigen, der die wahre Natur der Innenwelt durchschaut, folgt aus der Verschiedenheit der Innenerlebnisse nur, daß die Natur ihren reichen Inhalt auf verschiedene Weise aussprechen kann. Dem einzelnen Menschen erscheint die Wahrheit in einem individuellen Kleide. Sie paßt sich der Eigenart seiner Persönlichkeit an. Besonders für die höchsten, dem Menschen wichtigsten Wahrheiten gilt dies. Um sie zu gewinnen, überträgt der Mensch seine geistigen, intimsten Erlebnisse auf die angeschaute Welt und mit ihnen zugleich das Eigenartigste seiner Persönlichkeit. Es gibt auch allgemeingültige Wahrheiten, die jeder Mensch aufnimmt, ohne ihnen eine individuelle Färbung zu geben. Dies sind aber die oberflächlichsten, die trivialsten. Sie entsprechen dem allgemeinen Gattungscharakter der Menschen, der bei allen der gleiche ist. Gewisse Eigenschaften, die in allen Menschen gleich sind, erzeugen über die Dinge auch gleiche Urteile. Die Art, wie die Menschen die Dinge nach Maß und Zahl ansehen, ist bei allen gleich. Daher finden alle die gleichen mathematischen Wahrheiten. In den Eigenschaften aber, in denen sich die Einzelpersönlichkeit von dem allgemeinen Gattungscharakter abhebt, liegt auch der Grund zu den individuellen Ausgestaltungen der Wahrheit. Nicht darauf kommt es an, daß in dem einen Menschen die Wahrheit anders erscheint als in dem andern, sondern darauf, daß alle zum Vorschein kommenden individuellen Gestalten einem einzigen Ganzen angehören, der einheitlichen ideellen Welt. Die Wahrheit spricht im Innern der einzelnen Menschen verschiedene Sprachen und Dialekte; in jedem großen Menschen spricht sie eine eigene Sprache, die nur dieser einen Persönlichkeit zukommt. Aber es ist immer die eine Wahrheit, die da spricht. «Kenne ich mein Verhältnis zu mir selbst und zur Außenwelt, so heiß' ich's Wahrheit. Und so kann jeder seine eigene Wahrheit haben, und es ist doch immer dieselbige.» Dies ist Goethes Meinung. Nicht ein starres, totes Begriffssystem ist die Wahrheit, das nur einer einzigen Gestalt fähig ist; sie ist ein lebendiges Meer, in welchem der Geist des Menschen lebt, und das Wellen der verschiedensten Gestalt an seiner Oberfläche zeigen kann. «Die Theorie an und für sich ist nichts nütze, als insofern sie uns an den Zusammenhang der Erscheinungen glauben macht», sagt Goethe. Er schätzt keine Theorie, die ein für allemal abgeschlossen sein will, und in dieser Gestalt eine ewige Wahrheit darstellen soll. Er will lebendige Begriffe, durch die der Geist des einzelnen nach seiner individuellen Eigenart die Anschauungen zusammenfaßt. Die Wahrheit erkennen heißt ihm in der Wahrheit leben. Und in der Wahrheit leben ist nichts anderes, als bei der Betrachtung jedes einzelnen Dinges hinzusehen, welches innere Erlebnis sich einstellt, wenn man diesem Dinge gegenübersteht. Eine solche Ansicht von dem menschlichen Erkennen kann nicht von Grenzen des Wissens, nicht von einer Eingeschränktheit desselben durch die Natur des Menschen sprechen. Denn die Fragen, die sich nach dieser Ansicht das Erkennen vorlegt, entspringen nicht aus den Dingen; sie sind dem Menschen auch nicht von irgend einer andern außerhalb seiner Persönlichkeit gelegenen Macht auferlegt. Sie entspringen aus der Natur der Persönlichkeit selbst. Wenn der Mensch den Blick auf ein Ding richtet, dann entsteht in ihm der Drang, mehr zu sehen, als ihm in der Wahrnehmung entgegentritt. Und so weit dieser Drang reicht, so weit reicht sein Erkenntnisbedürfnis. Woher stammt dieser Drang? Doch nur davon, daß ein inneres Erlebnis sich in der Seele angeregt fühlt, mit der Wahrnehmung eine Verbindung einzugehen. Sobald die Verbindung vollzogen ist, ist auch das Erkenntnisbedürfnis befriedigt. Erkennen wollen ist eine Forderung der menschlichen Natur und nicht der Dinge. Diese können dem Menschen nicht mehr über ihr Wesen sagen, als er ihnen abfordert. Wer von einer Beschränktheit des Erkenntnisvermögens spricht, der weiß nicht, woher das Erkenntnisbedürfnis stammt. Er glaubt, der Inhalt der Wahrheit liege irgendwo aufbewahrt, und in dem Menschen lebe nur der unbestimmte Wunsch, den Zugang zu dem Aufbewahrungsorte zu finden. Aber es ist das Wesen der Dinge selbst, das sich aus dem Innern des Menschen herausarbeitet und dahin strebt, wohin es gehört: zu der Wahrnehmung. Nicht nach einem Verborgenen strebt der Mensch im Erkenntnisprozeß, sondern nach der Ausgleichung zweier Kräfte, die von zwei Seiten auf ihn wirken. Man kann wohl sagen, ohne den Menschen gäbe es keine Erkenntnis des Innern der Dinge, denn ohne ihn wäre nichts da, wodurch dieses Innere sich aussprechen könnte. Aber man kann nicht sagen, es gibt im Innern der Dinge etwas, das dem Menschen unzugänglich ist. Daß an den Dingen noch etwas anderes vorhanden ist, als was die Wahrnehmung liefert, weiß der Mensch nur, weil dieses andere in seinem eigenen Innern lebt. Von einem weiteren unbekannten Etwas der Dinge sprechen, heißt Worte über etwas machen, was nicht vorhanden ist.
[ 3 ] Die Naturen, die nicht zu erkennen vermögen, daß es die Sprache der Dinge ist, die im Innern des Menschen gesprochen wird, sind der Ansicht, alle Wahrheit müsse von außen in den Menschen eindringen. Solche Naturen halten sich entweder an die bloße Wahrnehmung und glauben, allein durch Sehen, Hören, Tasten, durch Auflesung der geschichtlichen Vorkommnisse und durch Vergleichen, Zählen, Rechnen, Wägen des aus der Tatsachenwelt Aufgenommenen die Wahrheit erkennen zu können; oder sie sind der Ansicht, daß die Wahrheit nur zu dem Menschen kommen könne, wenn sie ihm auf eine außerhalb des Erkennens gelegene Art offenbart werde, oder endlich, sie wollen durch Kräfte besonderer Natur, durch Ekstase oder mystisches Schauen in den Besitz der höchsten Einsichten kommen, die ihnen, nach ihrer Ansicht, die dem Denken zugängliche Ideenwelt nicht darbieten kann. Den im Kantschen Sinne Denkenden und den einseitigen Mystikern reihen sich noch besonders geartete Metaphysiker an. Diese suchen zwar durch das Denken sich Begriffe von der Wahrheit zu bilden. Aber sie suchen den Inhalt für diese Begriffe nicht in der menschlichen Ideenwelt, sondern in einer hinter den Dingen liegenden zweiten Wirklichkeit. Sie meinen, durch reine Begriffe über einen solchen Inhalt entweder etwas Sicheres ausmachen zu können, oder wenigstens durch Hypothesen sich Vorstellungen von ihm bilden zu können. Ich spreche hier zunächst von der zuerst angeführten Art von Menschen, von den Tatsachenfanatikern. Ihnen kommt es zuweilen zum Bewußtsein, daß in dem Zählen und Rechnen bereits eine Verarbeitung des Anschauungsinhaltes mit Hilfe des Denkens stattfindet. Dann aber sagen sie, die Gedankenarbeit sei bloß das Mittel, durch das der Mensch den Zusammenhang der Tatsachen zu erkennen bestrebt ist. Was aus dem Denken bei Bearbeitung der Außenwelt fließt, gilt ihnen als bloß subjektiv; als objektiven Wahrheitsgehalt, als wertvollen Erkenntnisinhalt sehen sie nur das an, was mit Hilfe des Denkens von außen an sie herankommt. Sie fangen zwar die Tatsachen in ihre Gedankennetze ein, lassen aber nur das Eingefangene als objektiv gelten. Sie übersehen, daß dieses Eingefangene durch das Denken eine Auslegung, Zurechtrückung, eine Interpretation erfährt, die es in der bloßen Anschauung nicht hat. Die Mathematik ist ein Ergebnis reiner Gedankenprozesse, ihr Inhalt ist ein geistiger, subjektiver. Und der Mechaniker, der die Naturvorgänge in mathematischen Zusammenhängen vorstellt, kann dies nur unter der Voraussetzung, daß diese Zusammenhänge in dem Wesen dieser Vorgänge begründet sind. Das heißt aber nichts anderes als: in der Anschauung ist eine mathematische Ordnung verborgen, die nur derjenige sieht, der die mathematischen Gesetze in seinem Geiste ausbildet. Zwischen den mathematischen und mechanischen Anschauungen und den intimsten geistigen Erlebnissen ist aber kein Art-, sondern nur ein Gradunterschied. Und mit demselben Rechte wie die Ergebnisse der mathematischen Forschung kann der Mensch andere innere Erlebnisse, andere Gebiete seiner Ideenwelt auf die Anschauungen übertragen. Nur scheinbar stellt der Tatsachenfanatiker rein äußere Vorgänge fest. Er denkt zumeist über die Ideenwelt und ihren Charakter, als subjektives Erlebnis, nicht nach. Auch sind seine inneren Erlebnisse inhaltsame, blutleere Abstraktionen, die von dem kraftvollen Tatsacheninhalt verdunkelt werden. Die Täuschung, der er sich hingibt, kann nur so lange bestehen, als er auf der untersten Stufe der Naturinterpretation stehen bleibt, solange er bloß zählt, wägt, berechnet. Auf den höheren Stufen drängt sich die wahre Natur der Erkenntnis bald auf. Man kann es aber an den Tatsachenfanatikern beobachten, daß sie sich vorzüglich an die unteren Stufen halten. Sie gleichen dadurch einem Ästhetiker, der ein Musikstück bloß danach beurteilen will, was an ihm berechnet und gezählt werden kann. Sie wollen die Erscheinungen der Natur von dem Menschen absondern. Nichts Subjektives soll in die Beobachtung einfließen. Goethe verurteilt dieses Verfahren mit den Worten: «Der Mensch an sich selbst, insofern er sich seiner gesunden Sinne bedient, ist der größte und genaueste physikalische Apparat, den es geben kann, und das ist eben das größte Unheil der neueren Physik, daß man die Experimente gleichsam vom Menschen abgesondert hat, und bloß in dem, was künstliche Instrumente zeigen, die Natur erkennen, ja, was sie leisten kann, dadurch beschränken und beweisen will.» Es ist die Angst vor dem Subjektiven, die zu solcher Verfahrungsweise führt, und die aus einer Verkennung der wahrhaften Natur desselben herrührt. «Dafür steht ja aber der Mensch so hoch, daß sich das sonst Undarstellbare in ihm darstellt. Was ist denn eine Saite und alle mechanische Teilung derselben gegen das Ohr des Musikers? Ja man kann sagen, was sind die elementarischen Erscheinungen der Natur selbst gegen den Menschen, der sie alle erst bändigen und modifizieren muß, um sie sich einigermaßen assimilieren zu können?» (Kürschner, Band 36, 2, S.351) Nach Goethes Ansicht soll der Naturforscher nicht allein darauf aufmerksam sein, wie die Dinge erscheinen, sondern wie sie erscheinen würden, wenn alles, was in ihnen als ideelle Triebkräfte wirkt, auch wirklich zur äußeren Erscheinung käme. Erst wenn sich der leibliche und geistige Organismus des Menschen den Erscheinungen gegenüberstellt, dann enthüllen sie ihr Inneres.
[ 4 ] Wer mit freiem, offenem Beobachtungsgeist und mit einem entwickelten Innenleben, in dem die Ideen der Dinge sich offenbaren, an die Erscheinungen herantritt, dem enthüllen diese, nach Goethes Meinung, alles, was an ihnen ist. Goethes Weltanschauung entgegengesetzt ist daher diejenige, welche das Wesen der Dinge nicht innerhalb der Erfahrungswirklichkeit, sondern in einer hinter derselben liegenden zweiten Wirklichkeit sucht. Ein Bekenner einer solchen Weltanschauung trat Goethe in Fr. H. Jacobi entgegen. Goethe macht seinem Unwillen in einer Bemerkung der Tag- und Jahreshefte (zum Jahre 1811) Luft: « Jacobi ˂Von den göttlichen Dingen˃ machte mir nicht wohl; wie konnte mir das Buch eines so herzlich geliebten Freundes willkommen sein, worin ich die These durchgeführt sehen sollte: die Natur verberge Gott. Mußte, bei meiner reinen, tiefen, angebotenen und geübten Anschauungsweise, die mich Gott in der Natur, die Natur in Gott zu sehen unverbrüchlich gelehrt hatte, so daß diese Vorstellungsart den Grund meiner ganzen Existenz machte, mußte nicht ein so seltsamer, einseitig-beschränkter Ausspruch mich dem Geiste nach von dem edelsten Manne, dessen Herz ich verehrend liebte, für ewig entfernen?» Goethes Anschauungsweise gibt ihm die Sicherheit, daß er in der ideellen Durchdringung der Natur ein ewig Gesetzmäßiges erlebe, und das ewig Gesetzmäßige ist ihm mit dem Göttlichen identisch. Wenn das Göttliche hinter den Naturdingen sich verbergen würde und doch das schöpferische Element in ihnen bildete, könnte es nicht angeschaut werden; der Mensch müßte an dasselbe glauben. In einem Briefe an Jacobi nimmt Goethe sein Schauen gegenüber dem Glauben in Schutz:
[ 5 ] «Gott hat Dich mit der Metaphysik gestraft und dir einen Pfahl ins Fleisch gesetzt, mich mit der Physik gesegnet. Ich halte mich an die Gottesverehrung des Atheisten (Spinoza) und überlasse Euch alles, was ihr Religion heißt und heißen mögt. Du hältst aufs Glauben an Gott; ich aufs Schauen.» Wo dieses Schauen aufhört, da hat der menschliche Geist nichts zu suchen. In den Sprüchen in Prosa lesen wir: «Der Mensch ist wirklich in die Mitte einer wirklichen Welt gesetzt und mit solchen Organen begabt, daß er das Wirkliche und nebenbei das Mögliche erkennen und hervorbringen kann. Alle gesunden Menschen haben die Überzeugung ihres Daseins und eines Daseienden um sich her. Indessen gibt es auch einen hohlen Fleck im Gehirn, d.h. eine Stelle, wo sich kein Gegenstand ab spiegelt, wie denn auch im Auge selbst ein Fleckchen ist, das nicht sieht. Wird der Mensch auf diese Stelle besonders aufmerksam, vertieft er sich darin, so verfällt er in eine Geisteskrankheit, ahnet hier Dinge einer andern Welt, die aber eigentlich Undinge sind und weder Gestalt noch Begrenzung haben, sondern als leere Nacht-Räumlichkeit ängstigen und den, der sich nicht losreißt, mehr als gespensterhaft verfolgen.» (Kürschner, Band 36, 2, S. 458.) Aus derselben Gesinnung heraus ist der Ausspruch: «Das Höchste wäre, zu begreifen, daß alles Faktische schon Theorie ist. Die Bläue des Himmels offenbart uns das Grundgesetz der Chromatik. Man suche nur nichts hinter den Phänomenen; sie selbst sind die Lehre.»
[ 6 ] Kant spricht dem Menschen die Fähigkeit ab, in das Gebiet der Natur einzudringen, in dem ihre schöpferischen Kräfte unmittelbar anschaulich werden. Nach seiner Meinung sind die Begriffe abstrakte Einheiten, in die der menschliche Verstand die mannigfaltigen Einzelheiten der Natur zusammenfaßt, die aber nichts zu tun haben mit der lebendigen Einheit, mit dem schaffenden Ganzen der Natur, aus der diese Einzelheiten wirklich hervorgehen. Der Mensch erlebt in dem Zusammenfassen nur eine subjektive Operation. Er kann seine allgemeinen Begriffe auf die empirische Anschauung beziehen; aber diese Begriffe sind nicht in sich lebendig, produktiv, so daß der Mensch das Hervorgehen des Individuellen aus ihnen anschauen könnte. Eine tote, bloß im Menschen vorhandene Einheit sind für Kant die Begriffe. «Unser Verstand ist ein Vermögen der Begriffe, d. i. ein diskursiver Verstand, für den es freilich zufällig sein muß, welcherlei und wie verschieden das Besondere sein mag, das ihm in der Natur gegeben werden, und was unter seine Begriffe gebracht werden kann.» Dies ist Kants Charakteristik des Verstandes (§ 77 der «Kritik der Urteilskraft»). Aus ihr ergibt sich folgendes mit Notwendigkeit: «Es liegt der Vernunft unendlich viel daran, den Mechanismus der Natur in ihren Erzeugungen nicht fallen zu lassen und in der Erklärung derselben nicht vorbei zu gehen. weil ohne diesen keine Einsicht in die Natur der Dinge erlangt werden kann. Wenn man uns gleich einräumt: daß ein höchster Architekt die Formen der Natur, so wie sie von je her da sind, unmittelbar geschaffen, oder die, so sich in ihrem Laufe kontinuierlich nach eben demselben Muster bilden, prädeterminiert habe, so ist doch dadurch unsere Erkenntnis der Natur nicht im mindesten gefördert; weil wir jenes Wesens Handlungsart und die Ideen desselben, welche die Prinzipien der Möglichkeit der Naturwesen enthalten sollen, gar nicht kennen, und von demselben als von oben herab (apriori) die Natur nicht erklären können» (§ 78 der «Kritik der Urteilskraft»). Goethe ist der Überzeugung, daß der Mensch in seiner Ideenwelt die Handlungsart des schöpferischen Naturwesens unmittelbar erlebt. «Wenn wir ja im Sittlichen, durch Glauben an Gott, Tugend und Unsterblichkeit uns in eine obere Region erheben und an das erste Wesen annähern sollen: so dürfte es wohl im Intellektuellen derselbe Fall sein, daß wir uns durch das Anschauen einer immer schaffenden Natur zur geistigen Teilnahme an ihren Produktionen würdig machten.» Ein wirkliches Hineinleben in das Schaffen und Walten der Natur ist für Goethe die Erkenntnis des Menschen. Ihr ist es gegeben: «zu erforschen, zu erfahren, wie Natur im Schaffen lebt.»
[ 7 ] Es widerspricht dem Geist der Goetheschen Weltanschauung, von Wesenheiten zu sprechen, die außerhalb der dem menschlichen Geiste zugänglichen Erfahrungs- und Ideenwelt liegen und die doch die Gründe dieser Welt enthalten sollen. Alle Metaphysik wird von dieser Weltanschauung abgelehnt. Es gibt keine Fragen der Erkenntnis, die, richtig gestellt, nicht auch beantwortet werden können. Wenn die Wissenschaft zu irgend einer Zeit über ein gewisses Erscheinungsgebiet nichts ausmachen kann, so liegt das nicht an der Natur des menschlichen Geistes, sondern an dem zufälligen Umstande, daß die Erfahrung über dieses Gebiet zu dieser Zeit noch nicht vollständig vorliegt. Hypothesen können nicht über Dinge aufgestellt werden, die außerhalb des Gebietes möglicher Erfahrung liegen, sondern nur über solche, die einmal in dieses Gebiet eintreten können. Eine Hypothese kann immer nur besagen: es ist wahrscheinlich, daß innerhalb eines Erscheinungsgebietes diese oder jene Erfahrung gemacht werden wird. Über die Dinge und Vorgänge, die nicht innerhalb der menschlichen sinnlichen oder geistigen Anschauung liegen, kann innerhalb dieser Denkungsart gar nicht gesprochen werden. Die Annahme eines «Dinges an sich», das die Wahrnehmungen in dem Menschen bewirkt, aber nie selbst wahrgenommen werden kann, ist eine unstatthafte Hypothese. «Hypothesen sind Gerüste, die man vor dem Gebäude aufführt, und die man abträgt, wenn das Gebäude fertig ist; sie sind dem Arbeiter unentbehrlich; nur muß er das Gerüste nicht für das Gebäude ansehen.» Einem Erscheinungsgebiete gegenüber, für das alle Wahrnehmungen vorliegen und das ideell durchdrungen ist, erklärt sich der menschliche Geist befriedigt. Er fühlt, daß sich in ihm ein lebendiges Zusammenklingen von Idee und Wahrnehmung abspielt. Die befriedigende Grundstimmung, die Goethes Weltanschauung für ihn hat, ist derjenigen ähnlich, die man bei den Mystikern beobachten kann. Die Mystik geht darauf aus, in der menschlichen Seele den Urgrund der Dinge, die Gottheit zu finden. Der Mystiker ist gerade so wie Goethe davon überzeugt, daß ihm in inneren Erlebnissen das Wesen der Welt offenbar werde. Nur gilt manchem Mystiker die Versenkung in die Ideenwelt nicht als das innere Erlebnis, auf das es ihm ankommt. Über die klaren Ideen der Vernunft hat mancher einseitige Mystiker ungefähr dieselbe Ansicht wie Kant. Sie stehen für ihn außerhalb des schaffenden Ganzen der Natur und gehören nur dem menschlichen Verstande an. Ein solcher Mystiker sucht deshalb zu den höchsten Erkenntnissen durch Entwicklung ungewöhnlicher Zustände, z. B. durch Ekstase, zu einem Schauen höherer Art zu gelangen. Er tötet die sinnliche Beobachtung und das vernunftgemäße Denken in sich ab, und sucht sein Gefühlsleben zu steigern. Dann meint er in sich die wirkende Geistigkeit sogar als Gottheit unmittelbar zu fühlen. Er glaubt in Augenblicken, in denen ihm das gelingt, Gott lebe in ihm. Eine ähnliche Empfindung ruft auch die Goethesche Weltanschauung in dem hervor, der sich zu ihr bekennt. Nur schöpft sie ihre Erkenntnisse nicht aus Erlebnissen, die nach Ertötung von Beobachtung und Denken eintreten, sondern eben aus diesen beiden Tätigkeiten. Sie flüchtet nicht zu abnormen Zuständen des menschlichen Geisteslebens, sondern sie ist der Ansicht, daß die gewöhnlichen naiven Verfahrungsarten des Geistes einer solchen Vervollkommnung fähig sind, daß der Mensch das Schaffen der Natur in sich erleben kann. «Es sind am Ende doch nur, wie mich dünkt, die praktischen und sich selbst rektifizierenden Operationen des gemeinen Menschenverstandes, der sich in einer höheren Sphäre zu üben wagt.» (Vgl. Goethes Werke in der Sophien-Ausgabe. z. Abt., Band II, S. 41) In eine Welt unklarer Empfindungen und Gefühle versenkt sich mancher Mystiker; in die klare Ideenwelt versenkt sich Goethe. Die einseitigen Mystiker verachten die Klarheit der Ideen. Sie halten diese Klarheit für oberflächlich. Sie ahnen nicht, was Menschen empfinden, welche die Gabe haben, sich in die belebte Welt der Ideen zu vertiefen. Es friert einen solchen Mystiker, wenn er sich der Ideenwelt hingibt. Er sucht einen Weltinhalt, der Wärme ausströmt. Aber der, welchen er findet, klärt über die Welt nicht auf. Er besteht nur in subjektiven Erregungen, in verworrenen Vorstellungen. Wer von der Kälte der Ideenwelt spricht, der kann Ideen nur denken, nicht erleben. Wer das wahrhafte Leben in der Ideenwelt lebt, der fühlt in sich das Wesen der Welt in einer Wärme wirken, die mit nichts zu vergleichen ist. Er fühlt das Feuer des Weltgeheimnisses in sich auflodern. So hat Goethe empfunden, als ihm die Anschauung der wirkenden Natur in Italien aufging. Damals wußte er, wie jene Sehnsucht zu stillen ist, die er in Frankfurt seinen Faust mit den Worten aussprechen läßt:
Wo faß' ich dich, unendliche Natur?
Euch Brüste, wo? Ihr Quellen alles Lebens,
An denen Himmel und Erde hängt,
Dahin die welke Brust sich drängt...
Personality and worldview
[ 1 ] Man gets to know the outside of nature through contemplation; its underlying driving forces are revealed within himself as subjective experiences. In the philosophical contemplation of the world and in artistic perception and production, subjective experiences permeate objective views. This again becomes a whole, which had to split into two parts in order to penetrate the human spirit. Man satisfies his highest spiritual needs when he incorporates into the objectively observed world what it reveals to him inwardly as its deeper secrets. Insights and artistic products are nothing other than views filled with human inner experiences. In the simplest judgment about a thing or event in the external world, a human soul experience and an external perception can be found in intimate union with each other. When I say: one body pushes another, I have already transferred an inner experience to the outer world. I see a body in motion; it encounters another body, which consequently also begins to move. With these words the content of perception is exhausted. But I am not reassured. For I feel that there is still more present in the whole phenomenon than what mere perception provides. I reach for an inner experience that enlightens me about perception. I know that I myself can set a body in motion by applying force, by pushing. I transfer this experience to the phenomenon and say: one body pushes the other. "Man never realizes how anthropomorphic he is" (Goethe, Proverbs in Prose. Kürschner Vol. 36,2, p. 353). There are people who draw the conclusion from the presence of this subjective component in every judgment of the external world that the objective essence of reality is inaccessible to man. They believe that man falsifies the immediate, objective facts of reality when he puts his subjective experiences into them. They say: because man can only imagine the world through the lens of his subjective life, all his knowledge is only subjective, limited-human knowledge. But anyone who becomes aware of what is revealed within man will want nothing to do with such unfruitful assertions. He knows that truth comes about precisely through the interpenetration of perception and idea in the human process of cognition. It is clear to him that the most real and profound objective lives in the subjective. "If the healthy nature of man acts as a whole, if he feels himself in the world as in a great, beautiful, worthy and valuable whole, if the harmonious pleasure grants him a pure, free delight, then the universe, if it could feel itself as having reached its goal, would rejoice and admire the summit of its own becoming and being. " (Kürschner, vol. 27, p. 42.) The reality accessible to mere contemplation is only one half of the whole reality; the content of the human spirit is the other half. If a human being never confronted the world, this second half would never come to a living appearance, to full existence. It would work as a hidden world of forces, but it would be deprived of the opportunity to show itself in its own form. One might say that without man the world would show an untrue face. It would be as it is because of its deeper forces, but these deeper forces themselves would remain concealed by what they do. In the human spirit they are released from their enchantment. Man is not merely there to form an image of the finished world; no, he himself participates in the creation of this world.
[ 2 ] The subjective experiences of different people are different. For those who do not believe in the objective nature of the inner world, this is one more reason to deny man the ability to penetrate the essence of things. For how can the essence of things be what appears one way to one person and another way to another? For those who see through the true nature of the inner world, it only follows from the diversity of inner experiences that nature can express its rich content in different ways. Truth appears to the individual in an individual guise. It adapts itself to the characteristics of his personality. This is especially true for the highest truths that are most important to man. In order to gain them, man transfers his spiritual, most intimate experiences to the world he sees and with them the most unique aspects of his personality. There are also universally valid truths that every person absorbs without giving them an individual coloring. But these are the most superficial, the most trivial. They correspond to the general generic character of human beings, which is the same for everyone. Certain characteristics that are the same in all people also produce the same judgments about things. The way people look at things in terms of measure and number is the same for everyone. Therefore they all find the same mathematical truths. But in the qualities in which the individual personality stands out from the general generic character lies the reason for the individual formations of truth. What matters is not that truth appears differently in one person than in another, but that all the individual forms that come to light belong to a single whole, the unified ideal world. Truth speaks different languages and dialects within each individual person; in every great person it speaks a language of its own, which belongs only to that one personality. But it is always the one truth that speaks. "If I know my relationship to myself and to the outside world, I call it truth. And so everyone can have their own truth, but it is always the same." This is Goethe's opinion. Truth is not a rigid, dead conceptual system that is only capable of a single form; it is a living sea in which the spirit of man lives and which can show waves of the most diverse forms on its surface. "Theory in and of itself is of no use except in so far as it makes us believe in the connection of phenomena," says Goethe. He does not appreciate a theory that wants to be completed once and for all, and in this form is supposed to represent an eternal truth. He wants living concepts through which the spirit of the individual summarizes the views according to his individual characteristics. To him, recognizing the truth means living in the truth. And living in the truth is nothing other than looking at each individual thing to see what inner experience arises when one confronts this thing. Such a view of human cognition cannot speak of the limits of knowledge, of its being restricted by the nature of man. For the questions which, according to this view, cognition poses to itself do not arise from things; nor are they imposed on man by any other power outside his personality. They arise from the nature of the personality itself. When man directs his gaze towards an object, the urge arises in him to see more than he perceives. And as far as this urge extends, so far does his need for knowledge. Where does this urge come from? But only from the fact that an inner experience in the soul feels stimulated to enter into a connection with perception. As soon as the connection is made, the need for knowledge is satisfied. The desire to recognize is a demand of human nature and not of things. These cannot tell man more about their nature than he demands of them. Anyone who speaks of a limitation of the faculty of knowledge does not know where the need for knowledge comes from. He believes that the content of truth is stored somewhere and that there is only a vague desire in man to find access to the place where it is stored. But it is the essence of things itself that works its way out from within man and strives to where it belongs: to perception. It is not something hidden that man strives for in the process of cognition, but the balancing of two forces that act on him from two sides. One can certainly say that without man there would be no knowledge of the interior of things, for without him there would be nothing through which this interior could express itself. But one cannot say that there is something within things that is inaccessible to man. Man only knows that there is something else in things than what perception provides because this something else lives within himself. To speak of another unknown something of things is to make words about something that is not there.
[ 3 ] Natures who are unable to recognize that it is the language of things that is spoken within man are of the opinion that all truth must penetrate man from without. Such natures either cling to mere perception and believe that they can recognize the truth solely by seeing, hearing, touching, by reading historical events and by comparing, counting, calculating and weighing what they perceive from the world of facts; or they are of the opinion that truth can only come to man if it is revealed to him in a way that lies outside of cognition, or finally, they want to come into possession of the highest insights through powers of a special nature, through ecstasy or mystical vision, which, in their view, the world of ideas accessible to thinking cannot offer them. The thinkers in the Kantian sense and the one-sided mystics are joined by metaphysicians of a special kind. These seek to form concepts of truth through thinking. But they do not seek the content for these concepts in the human world of ideas, but in a second reality lying behind things. They believe that they can either make out something certain about such a content through pure concepts, or at least form ideas about it through hypotheses. I am speaking here of the first type of people mentioned, the factual fanatics. They sometimes realize that in counting and calculating a processing of the visual content already takes place with the help of thinking. But then they say that thought-work is merely the means by which man endeavours to recognize the connection of facts. What flows out of thinking when processing the external world is considered merely subjective; they only regard as objective truth content, as valuable cognitive content, what comes to them from outside with the help of thinking. Although they capture the facts in their networks of thought, they only allow what they capture to be considered objective. They overlook the fact that this captured information is given an interpretation, an adjustment, an interpretation through thinking that it does not have in mere observation. Mathematics is a result of pure thought processes, its content is a mental, subjective one. And the mechanic who presents natural processes in mathematical contexts can only do so on the condition that these contexts are grounded in the nature of these processes. But this means nothing other than: a mathematical order is concealed in the perception, which can only be seen by those who form the mathematical laws in their minds. Between mathematical and mechanical views and the most intimate spiritual experiences, however, there is no difference of kind, but only of degree. And with the same right as the results of mathematical research, man can transfer other inner experiences, other areas of his world of ideas to his views. Only apparently does the factual fanatic establish purely external processes. For the most part, he does not think about the world of ideas and its character as a subjective experience. His inner experiences are also contentless, bloodless abstractions that are obscured by the powerful factual content. The illusion he indulges in can only exist as long as he remains at the lowest level of interpreting nature, as long as he merely counts, weighs and calculates. At the higher levels, the true nature of knowledge soon becomes apparent. But one can observe in the fanatics of facts that they prefer to stick to the lower levels. They thus resemble an aesthete who only wants to judge a piece of music according to what can be calculated and counted in it. They want to separate the phenomena of nature from man. Nothing subjective should flow into the observation. Goethe condemns this procedure with the words: "Man in himself, in so far as he makes use of his healthy senses, is the greatest and most exact physical apparatus that can exist, and that is precisely the greatest misfortune of modern physics, that one has, as it were, separated experiments from man, and merely wants to recognize nature in what artificial instruments show, indeed, to limit and prove what it can achieve." It is the fear of the subjective that leads to this approach, and which stems from a misjudgment of its true nature. "But man stands so high that the otherwise unrepresentable is represented in him. What is a string and all its mechanical divisions compared to the musician's ear? Indeed, one could say, what are the elementary phenomena of nature itself compared to man, who must first tame and modify them all in order to be able to assimilate them to some extent?" (Kürschner, vol. 36, 2, p.351) In Goethe's view, the natural scientist should not only be attentive to how things appear, but how they would appear if everything that works in them as ideal driving forces actually came to external manifestation. Only when the bodily and spiritual organism of man confronts the phenomena do they reveal their inner being.
[ 4 ] Those who approach phenomena with a free, open spirit of observation and with a developed inner life, in which the ideas of things reveal themselves, reveal to them, in Goethe's opinion, everything that is in them. Goethe's world view is therefore opposed to that which seeks the essence of things not within the reality of experience but in a second reality lying behind it. Goethe encountered a confessor of such a world view in Fr. Goethe expressed his displeasure in a comment in the Tag- und Jahreshefte (for the year 1811): "Jacobi ˂Von den göttlichen Dingen˃ made me uncomfortable; how could I welcome the book of such a warmly beloved friend in which I was to see the thesis realized that nature conceals God. With my pure, profound, proffered and practiced way of looking at things, which had taught me to see God in nature and nature in God without fail, so that this way of looking at things formed the basis of my entire existence, did not such a strange, one-sided and limited statement have to distance me in spirit from the noblest man, whose heart I adoringly loved, forever?" Goethe's way of looking at things gives him the certainty that he experiences an eternal lawfulness in the ideal interpenetration of nature, and for him the eternal lawfulness is identical with the divine. If the divine were concealed behind natural things and yet formed the creative element in them, it could not be looked at; man would have to believe in it. In a letter to Jacobi, Goethe defends his looking against belief:
[ 5 ] "God has punished you with metaphysics and put a stake in your flesh, blessed me with physics. I adhere to the worship of the atheist (Spinoza) and leave to you whatever you may call and call religion. You hold to believing in God; I hold to looking." Where this looking ceases, the human spirit has no place. In the Proverbs in prose we read: "Man is really placed in the midst of a real world and endowed with such organs that he can recognize and produce the real and, incidentally, the possible. All healthy people have the conviction of their existence and of a Being around them. However, there is also a hollow spot in the brain, i.e. a place where no object is reflected, just as there is a spot in the eye itself that does not see. If man becomes particularly attentive to this spot, if he immerses himself in it, he falls into a mental illness, senses here things of another world, but which are actually non-things and have neither form nor boundary, but frighten as empty night-spatiality and haunt the one who does not tear himself away more than ghost-like." (Kürschner, vol. 36, 2, p. 458.) From the same mindset comes the statement: "The highest thing would be to realize that everything factual is already theory. The blueness of the sky reveals to us the fundamental law of chromatics. Just don't look for anything behind the phenomena; they themselves are the teaching."
[ 6 ] Kant denies man the ability to penetrate the realm of nature in which its creative forces become immediately visible. In his opinion, concepts are abstract units into which the human mind summarizes the manifold details of nature, but which have nothing to do with the living unity, with the creative whole of nature, from which these details really emerge. In summarizing, man experiences only a subjective operation. He can relate his general concepts to the empirical view; but these concepts are not alive in themselves, productive, so that man could see the emergence of the individual from them. For Kant, the concepts are a dead unity existing only in man. "Our understanding is a faculty of concepts, i.e. a discursive understanding, for which it must of course be accidental what and how different the particular may be that is given to it in nature, and what can be brought under its concepts." This is Kant's characterization of the intellect (§ 77 of the Critique of Judgment). From it the following necessarily follows: "It is infinitely important to reason not to abandon the mechanism of nature in its productions and not to pass it by in its explanation, because without it no insight into the nature of things can be gained. If we concede at once that a supreme architect has directly created the forms of nature as they have always existed, or has predetermined those that are continuously formed in their course according to the same pattern, our knowledge of nature is not in the least furthered by this; because we do not know at all that being's mode of action and its ideas, which are supposed to contain the principles of the possibility of natural beings, and cannot explain nature from it as from above (a priori)" (§ 78 of "Critique of Judgment"). Goethe is convinced that man directly experiences the mode of action of the creative natural being in his world of ideas. "If in the moral realm, through faith in God, virtue and immortality, we are to elevate ourselves to an upper region and approach the first being: so it should probably be the same case in the intellectual realm that we make ourselves worthy of spiritual participation in its productions through the contemplation of an ever-creating nature." For Goethe, a real immersion in the creation and activity of nature is the knowledge of man. It is given to her: "to explore, to experience how nature lives in creation."
[ 7 ] It contradicts the spirit of Goethe's worldview to speak of entities that lie outside the world of experience and ideas accessible to the human mind and yet are supposed to contain the reasons for this world. All metaphysics is rejected by this world view. There are no questions of knowledge which, if asked correctly, cannot be answered. If at any time science cannot make out anything about a certain field of phenomena, this is not due to the nature of the human mind, but to the accidental circumstance that experience of this field is not yet complete at that time. Hypotheses cannot be made about things that lie outside the realm of possible experience, but only about things that can enter this realm. A hypothesis can only ever say: it is probable that this or that experience will be made within a field of phenomena. Things and processes that are not within human sensory or mental perception cannot be discussed within this way of thinking. The assumption of a "thing in itself" that causes perceptions in the human being but can never be perceived itself is an inadmissible hypothesis. "Hypotheses are scaffolds which are erected in front of the building and which are taken down when the building is finished; they are indispensable to the worker, but he need not regard the scaffolding as the building." The human mind declares itself satisfied with a field of appearance for which all perceptions are available and which is permeated with ideas. It feels that a living harmony of idea and perception is taking place within it. The satisfying basic mood that Goethe's world view has for him is similar to that which can be observed among mystics. Mysticism aims to find the source of things, the Godhead, in the human soul. The mystic, like Goethe, is convinced that the essence of the world is revealed to him in inner experiences. But for some mystics, immersion in the world of ideas is not the inner experience that matters to them. Some one-sided mystics have roughly the same view of the clear ideas of reason as Kant. For him they stand outside the creative whole of nature and belong only to the human mind. Such a mystic therefore seeks to attain the highest knowledge through the development of unusual states, e.g. through ecstasy, to a higher kind of seeing. He kills sensual observation and rational thinking within himself and seeks to increase his emotional life. Then he even thinks he can directly feel the working spirituality within himself as a deity. In moments when he succeeds in this, he believes that God lives in him. Goethe's world view also evokes a similar feeling in those who profess it. Only it does not draw its insights from experiences that occur after the extinction of observation and thinking, but precisely from these two activities. It does not take refuge in abnormal states of human spiritual life, but is of the opinion that the ordinary naive modes of the spirit are capable of such perfection that man can experience the workings of nature within himself. "In the end, it is only, it seems to me, the practical and self-rectifying operations of common sense that dare to exercise themselves in a higher sphere." (Cf. Goethe's works in the Sophien edition. z. Abt., Vol. II, p. 41) Many a mystic immerses himself in a world of unclear sensations and feelings; Goethe immerses himself in the clear world of ideas. The one-sided mystics despise the clarity of ideas. They regard this clarity as superficial. They have no idea what people feel who have the gift of immersing themselves in the living world of ideas. Such a mystic feels cold when he devotes himself to the world of ideas. He seeks a world content that radiates warmth. But the one he finds does not shed light on the world. It consists only in subjective excitements, in confused ideas. He who speaks of the coldness of the world of ideas can only think ideas, not experience them. He who lives the true life in the world of ideas feels the essence of the world working within him in a warmth that is incomparable to anything else. He feels the fire of the mystery of the world flaring up within him. This is how Goethe felt when he was struck by the contemplation of nature at work in Italy. At that time he knew how to satisfy the longing that he expresses in his Faust in Frankfurt with the words:
Where do I grasp you, infinite nature?
You breasts, where? You sources of all life,
On which heaven and earth hang,
Towards which the withered breast presses...