The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The World as Illusion

[ 1 ] In addition to the worldview current that seeks to bring full unity to the conception of natural and spiritual phenomena through the idea of development, there is another current that emphasizes this contrast in the sharpest form imaginable. It too was born out of natural science. Its proponents ask themselves: What do we rely on when we build a world view from observation through thinking? We hear, see and feel the physical world through our senses. We then think about what the senses tell us about the world. So we form our thoughts about the world based on the testimony of the senses. But are the statements of our senses infallible? Let us ask observation. The eye brings us light phenomena. We say that a body sends us red light when the eye perceives red. But the eye also gives us a sensation of light in other cases. When it is pushed or pressed, when an electric current flows through the head, the eye also has a sensation of light. Thus, even in cases where we perceive a body as luminous, something could be going on in the body that bears no resemblance to our perception of light: the eye would still transmit light to us. The physiologist Johannes Müller (1801-1858) concluded from these facts that what a person feels does not depend on external processes, but on their organization. Our nerves convey the sensations to us. Just as we do not feel the knife that cuts us, but a state of our nerves that appears painful to us; just as we do not feel a process of the outside world when light appears to us, but a state of our optic nerves. Whatever may be going on outside, the optic nerve translates this external process into the sensation of light. "Sensation is not the conduction of a quality or a state of the external body to consciousness, but the conduction of a quality, a state of our nerves to consciousness, caused by an external cause." Johannes Müller called this law the law of specific sense energies. If it is correct, then we have given nothing of the external world in our observations, but only the sum of our own states. What we perceive has nothing to do with the outside world; it is a product of our own organization. Basically, we only perceive what is inside us.

[ 2 ] Significant natural scientists see this idea as an irrefutable basis for their understanding of the world. Hermann Helmholtz (1821-1894) found in it the Kantian idea that all our knowledge does not refer to things outside us, but to processes within us (cf. Volume 1 of this Weltanschauungsgeschichte) translated into the natural sciences. He is of the opinion that our sensory world only gives us signs of the processes in the bodies outside in the world. "I believed that I had to formulate the relationship between sensation and its object in such a way that I declared sensation to be only a sign of the influence of the object. The essence of a sign is only that the same sign is always given for the same object. Moreover, no kind of similarity is necessary between it and its object, any more than between the spoken word and the object which we designate by it. - We cannot even call our sensory impressions pictures; for the picture represents the same thing by the same thing. In a statue we give body form by body form, in a drawing the perspective view of the object by the same of the picture, in a painting color by color." Our perceptions of what is going on outside in the world must therefore be more different than images of what is depicted. In our sensory view of the world, we are not dealing with something objective, but with something entirely subjective, which we construct ourselves on the basis of the effects of an external world that never penetrates us.

[ 3 ] The physical view of sensory phenomena approaches this conception from a different angle. A sound that we hear points us to a body in the outside world whose parts are in a certain state of motion. A taut string vibrates and we hear a sound. The string causes the air to vibrate. These vibrations spread out and reach our ears: a sound sensation is communicated to us. The physicist examines the laws according to which the parts of the body outside move while we hear this or that sound. It is said that the subjective perception of sound is based on the objective movement of body parts. The physicist sees similar relationships with regard to the perception of light. Light is also based on movement. However, this movement is not transmitted to us by the vibrating air particles, but by the vibrations of the ether, the finest substance that flows through all the spaces of the universe. Through every self-luminous body, the ether is set into wave-like vibrations that spread to the retina of our eye and excite the optic nerve, which then evokes the sensation of light in us. What appears as light and color in our image of the world is movement outside in space. Schleiden expresses this view with the words: "The light outside us in nature is movement of the ether, a movement can be slow and fast, have this or that direction, but it obviously makes no sense to speak of a light or dark, of a green or red movement; in short: apart from us, the sentient beings, there is no light and dark, no colors."

[ 4 ] The physicist thus pushes colors and light out of the external world because he finds only movement in it; the physiologist feels compelled to take them into the soul because he believes that the nerve only indicates its own state, no matter what excites it. The view thus given speaks sharply H. Taine in his book "The Mind" (German edition, Bonn 1880). In his opinion, external perception is a hallucination. The hallucinarian who sees a skull three steps away from him has exactly the same perception as the one who receives the rays of light sent to him by a real skull. The same inner phantom is present in us, regardless of whether we have a real skull in front of us or whether we have a hallucination. The only difference between the one and the other perception is that in the one case the outstretched hand gropes in the void, in the other it encounters a firm resistance. The sense of touch therefore supports the sense of sight. But is the support really such that it provides an infallible testimony? What applies to one sense naturally also applies to the other. The tactile sensations also prove to be hallucinations. The anatomist Henle expresses the same view in his "Anthropological Lectures" (1876): "Everything by which we believe to be informed of an external world are forms of consciousness to which the external world relates only as a stimulating cause, as a stimulus in the sense of physiologists. The external world has no colors, no sounds, no tastes; what it really has we learn only in a roundabout way or not at all; what it is by which it affects one sense we infer only from its relation to the others, as, for example, we see the sound, i.e., the vibrations of the tuning-fork, with the eye and feel it with the fingers; the nature of some stimuli which reveal themselves to only one sense, for example, the stimuli of the sense of smell, is still inaccessible to us today. The number of the properties of matter depends on the number and acuteness of the senses; if one sense is lacking, a group of properties is irreplaceably lost to him; if one sense were more, he would possess an organ for grasping qualities that we suspect as little as the blind man grasps color."

[ 5 ] A survey of physiological literature from the second half of the nineteenth century shows that this view of the subjective nature of the perceptual image has spread far and wide. One will repeatedly come across variations on the idea expressed by J. Rosenthal in his "General Physiology of Muscles and Nerves" (1877): "The sensations which we receive through external impressions are not dependent on the nature of these impressions, but on the nature of our nerve cells. We do not feel what acts on our body, but only what goes on in our brain."

[ 6 ] In his "Physiological Optics", Helmholtz gives us an idea of the extent to which our subjective view of the world gives us signs of the objective outside world: "It is pointless to ask whether vermilion is really red, as we see it, or whether this is merely a sensory illusion. The sensation of red is the normal reaction of normally formed eyes to the light reflected by cinnabar. A red-blind person will see the cinnabar as black or dark grayish-yellow; this is also the correct reaction for his specially formed eye. He only has to know that his eye is of a different nature than that of other people. In itself, the one sensation is no more correct and no more incorrect than the other, even if those who see red are in the majority. In general, the red color of vermilion exists only in so far as there are eyes similar to those of the majority of men. By exactly the same right it is a property of cinnabar to be black, namely for the red-blind. In general, the light reflected by cinnabar cannot be called red per se; it is only red for certain types of eyes. - It is a different matter if we claim that the wavelengths of the light reflected by cinnabar have a certain length. This is a statement that we can make independently of the particular nature of our eye, but which is then only a matter of relationships between the substance and the various ether wave systems."

[ 7 ] It is clear that for such a view the entire sum of world phenomena falls apart into a duality, into a world of states of motion, which is independent of the particular nature of our perceptive faculty, and into a world of subjective states, which are only within the perceiving beings. The physiologist Du Bois-Reymond expressed this view in a sharply pointed manner in his lecture "On the Limits of Natural Cognition" at the forty-fifth meeting of German naturalists and physicians in Leipzig on August 14, 1872. Recognizing nature is tracing the processes we perceive in the world back to the movements of the smallest parts of the body, "or dissolving natural processes into the mechanics of atoms". For it is "a fact of psychological experience that, where such a resolution succeeds", our need for explanation is satisfied for the time being. Now our nervous system and our brain are also of a physical nature. The processes that take place in them can also only be processes of movement. If sound or light vibrations propagate to my sensory organs and from there to my brain, they can also be nothing but movements. I can only say that a certain process of movement is taking place in my brain, and I feel "red". For if it is meaningless to say of cinnabar that it is red, it is no less meaningless to say of a movement of the parts of the brain that it is light or dark, green or red. The world is "mute and dark in itself, i.e. devoid of properties" for the view gained through scientific observation, which "instead of sound and light only knows vibrations of a property-less primordial substance that has become ponderable there and imponderable matter here.... . The Mosaic statement that there was light is physiologically false. Light only appeared when the first red eye spot of an infusorium distinguished light and dark for the first time. Without sight and without hearing, this glowing, colorful, sounding world around us would be dark and mute." (Grenzen des Naturerkennens, p. 6f.) According to this view, the processes in our visual and auditory senses conjure up a sounding and colorful world from the mute and dark world. The dark and mute world is physical; the sounding and colorful world is spiritual. How does the latter rise from the former; how does movement become sensation? Here, according to Du Bois-Reymond, we see a "limit to the recognition of nature". In our brain and in the outside world there are only movements; sensations appear in our soul. We will never be able to understand how one arises from the other. "On superficial observation, it does seem as if knowledge of the material processes in the brain could make certain mental processes and systems comprehensible to us. I include memory, the flow and association of ideas, the consequences of exercise, specific talents and the like. The slightest reflection teaches us that this is deception. We would only be informed about certain inner conditions of mental life, which are approximately equivalent to the outer conditions set by sense impressions, not about the coming into being of mental life through these conditions. - What conceivable connection exists between certain movements of certain atoms in my brain on the one hand, and on the other hand in the facts that are original to me, that cannot be further defined, that cannot be denied: I feel pain, I feel pleasure, I taste sweet, I smell the scent of roses, I hear the sound of an organ, I see red, and the equally immediate certainty that flows from this: So I am? It is absolutely and forever incomprehensible that a number of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen etc. atoms should not be indifferent. atoms should not be indifferent to how they lie and move, how they lay and moved, how they will lie and move." There is no bridge for knowledge from movement to sensation: that is Du Bois-Reymond's creed. We cannot get from movement in the material world into the spiritual world of sensations. We know that sensation arises through moving matter; but we do not know how this is possible. But in the world of movement we cannot get beyond movement either. We can indicate certain forms of movement for our subjective perceptions, because we can deduce the course of the movements from the course of the perceptions. But we have no idea what is moving outside in space. We say: matter is moving. We follow its movements through the statements of our mental states. But since we do not perceive the moving itself, but only a subjective sign of it, we can never know what matter is. Perhaps, says Du Bois-Reymond, we would also be able to solve the riddle of sensation if that of matter were first laid open before us. If we knew what matter is, we would probably also know how it feels. Both are inaccessible to our knowledge. Those who want to get over this boundary should meet Du Bois-Reymond's words: "Let them try the only way out, that of supranaturalism. Only that where supranaturalism begins, science ends."

[ 8 ] Modern natural science is characterized by two sharp contrasts. One, the monistic current, seems to be on the way to penetrating from the field of natural knowledge to the most important questions of worldview; the other declares itself unable to get any further with scientific means than the realization: this or that subjective state corresponds to this or that process of movement. And the representatives of both currents are sharply opposed to each other. Du Bois-Reymond dismissed Haeckel's "creation story" as a novel. (Cf. Du Bois-Reymond's speech "Darwin versus Galiani".) The family trees that Haeckel draws up on the basis of comparative anatomy, the history of germination and palaeontology are "worth about as much to him as the family trees of Homeric heroes" in the eyes of historical critics. Haeckel, however, sees Du Bois-Reymond's view as an unscientific dualism, which must naturally provide support for the regressive views of the world. "The jubilation of the spiritualists over Du Bois-Reymond's 'Grenzrede' was all the brighter and more justified because E. Du Bois-Reymond had until then been regarded as an important and principled representative of scientific materialism."

[ 9 ] What captivates many for the division of the world into external processes of movement and internal (subjective) processes of sensation and imagination is the applicability of mathematics to the first kind of processes. If one assumes material parts (atoms) with forces, one can calculate how these atoms must move under the influence of these forces. The attraction that astronomy has with its strict mathematical methods has been carried into the smallest of bodies. The astronomer uses the laws of celestial mechanics to calculate the way in which the world's bodies move. The discovery of Neptune was a triumph of this celestial mechanics. Such laws as the movements of the heavenly bodies can now be applied to the movements that take place in the outer world when we hear a sound or see a color; perhaps one day it will be possible to calculate the movements that take place in our brain while we make the judgment: two times two is four. The moment you can calculate everything that can be reduced to mathematical formulas, the world is mathematically explained. In his "Essai philosophique sur les Probabilités" (1814), Laplace gave a captivating description of the ideal of such an explanation of the world: "A mind that knows for a given moment all the forces that animate nature, and the mutual position of the beings that compose it, if otherwise it were comprehensive enough to subject these particulars to analysis, would comprehend in the same formula the movements of the largest bodies of the world and of the lightest atom: nothing would be uncertain to it, and future as well as past would be present to its gaze. The human mind, in the perfection which it has known how to give to astronomy, presents a faint image of such a spirit." And Du Bois-Reymond follows up these words by saying: "Just as the astronomer predicts the day when, after years, a comet will reappear from the depths of space in the firmament, so that spirit would read in its equations the day when the Greek cross will flash from St. Sophia's Mosque and when England will burn its last coal."

[ 10 ] It cannot be doubted that even by the most perfect mathematical knowledge of a process of motion I gain nothing which enlightens me as to why this process of motion appears as a red color. When one ball collides with another, we can - it seems - explain the direction of the second ball. We can specify mathematically what kind of movement arises from another. However, we cannot specify in the same way how the red color arises from a certain movement. We can only say: If this or that movement is present, this or that color is present. In this case, we can only describe a fact. So while we can explain what can be determined by calculation - seemingly in contrast to mere description - we can only arrive at a description of everything that eludes calculation.

[ 11 ] Kirchhoff made a significant scientific statement in 1874 when he summarized the task of mechanics in the words that it should "describe the movements occurring in nature completely and in the simplest possible way". Mechanics applies mathematics. Kirchhoff admits that nothing can be achieved with the help of mathematics other than a complete and simple description of the processes in nature. For those personalities who demand something essentially different from an explanation than a description according to certain points of view, Kirchhoff's confession could serve as a confirmation of their view that there are "limits to the knowledge of nature". Du Bois-Reymond praised the "wise restraint of the master" (Kirchhoff), who set the task of mechanics as describing the movements of bodies, and contrasted it with Ernst Haeckel, who spoke of "atomic souls".

[ 12 ] In his "History of Materialism" (1864), Friedrich Albert Lange (1828-1875) made a significant attempt to build the world view on the idea that everything we perceive is only the result of our own organization. He had the boldness and consistency to really think this basic idea through to the end. Lange's strength lay in his sharp and all-round character. He was one of those personalities who could grasp many things and whose skills were sufficient for what they grasped.

[ 13 ] And Kant's way of perceiving things, which he renewed particularly effectively with the help of modern natural science, became significant: we do not perceive things as they demand it, but as our organization demands it. Lange basically produced no new ideas; but he shone a light into given worlds of thought that has something rare in its brightness. Our organization, our brain with its senses, produces the world of our sensations. I see "blue", I feel "hardness" because I am organized in such and such a way. But I also connect the sensations to objects. For example, from the sensations of "white" and "soft" etc. I connect the idea of wax. When I think about my sensations, I am not moving in any external world. My mind brings coherence into my world of sensations, according to the laws of my mind. If I say that the qualities I perceive in a body presuppose matter with processes of movement, then I cannot get out of myself either. I find myself compelled by my organization to add material processes of movement to the sensations that I perceive. The same mechanism that produces all our sensations also produces our idea of matter. Matter is just as much a product of my organization as color or sound. Even when we speak of things in themselves, we must realize that we cannot get out of our own realm. We are so organized that we cannot possibly get out of ourselves. Indeed, we can only visualize that which lies beyond our realm through our imagination. We sense a boundary of our realm; we tell ourselves that there must be something beyond the boundary that causes sensations in us. But we only get as far as the boundary. We also set this limit for ourselves because we can go no further. "The fish in the pond can swim in the water, not in the earth; but it can still bump its head against the ground and walls." Thus we can live within our imaginative and sensory being, but not in external things; but we come up against a limit where we can go no further, where we cannot say more to ourselves than: Beyond lies the unknown. All ideas that we form about this unknown are unjustified; for we could do nothing but transfer the ideas we have gained within ourselves to the unknown. If we wanted to do this, we would be just as clever as the fish that says to itself: I can't go any further here, so from here on there is another water in which I want to try swimming differently. It can only swim in water and nowhere else.

[ 14 ] But now comes another turn of thought. It belongs to the first. It has long been used as a spirit of relentless consistency. What about me when I look at myself? Am I not just as well bound by the laws of my own organization as when I look at something else? My eye looks at the object, rather: it creates it. Without an eye there is no color. I believe I have an object before me and find, if I look more closely, that my eye, that is, I, produce the object. But now I want to look at my eye itself. Can I do this in any other way than with my organs? Is not the idea that I form of myself also only my imagination? The sensory world is a product of our organization. Our visible organs, like all other parts of the phenomenal world, are only images of an unknown object. Our real organization therefore remains just as hidden from us as the real external things. We only ever have the product of both before us. On the basis of a world unknown to us, we create an imaginary world out of a self unknown to us, which is all we can occupy ourselves with.

[ 15 ] Lange asks himself: Where does consistent materialism lead? Let it be that all our intellectual conclusions and sensory perceptions are produced by the activity of our brain, which is bound to material conditions, and the likewise material organs. Then we are faced with the necessity of examining our organism in order to see how it is active. Again, we can only do this with our organs. No color without an eye; but also no eye without an eye. "The consistently materialistic view immediately turns into a consistently idealistic one. There is no gap to be assumed in our being. We do not have to ascribe individual functions of our being to a physical nature and others to a spiritual nature, but we are in our right when we presuppose physical conditions for everything, even for the mechanism of thought, and do not rest until we have found them. We are no less in our right, however, if we regard not only the external world that appears to us, but also the organs with which we perceive it, as mere images of what is truly present. The eye with which we think we see is itself only a product of our imagination, and if we find that our visual images are produced by the equipment of the eye, we must never forget that the eye together with its equipment, the optic nerve together with the brain and all the structures which we would like to discover there as causes of thought, are also only ideas which form a world coherent in itself, but a world which points beyond itself.... . The senses give us, as Helmholtz says, effects of things, not faithful images, or even the things themselves. But these mere effects also include the senses themselves, together with the brain and the molecular movements conceived in it". (History of Materialism, p. 734 f.) Lange therefore assumes a world beyond ours, whether this is based on things in themselves or whether it consists in something that does not even have anything to do with the "thing in itself", since even this concept, which we form at the limit of our realm, belongs only to our imagination.

[ 16 ] Long worldview thus leads to the opinion that we only have a world of imagination. This, however, forces us to accept something beyond itself; but it also proves to be quite unsuitable for making any kind of statement about this something. This is the worldview of absolute ignorance, of agnosticism.

[ 17 ] That all scientific endeavor must remain unfruitful that does not adhere to the statements of the senses and to the logical understanding that links these statements: this is Lange's conviction. But that the senses and reason together provide us with nothing but a result of our own organization is clear to him from his reflections on the origin of knowledge. For him, therefore, the world is basically a fiction of the senses and the intellect. This opinion leads him to no longer raise the question of the truth of ideas. Lange does not recognize a truth that enlightens us about the nature of the world. Now he believes that precisely by not conceding any truth to the knowledge of the senses and the intellect, he also clears the way for the ideas and ideals that the human mind forms beyond what the senses and the intellect give it. He unhesitatingly considers everything that goes beyond sensory observation and rational cognition to be fiction. Whatever an idealist philosopher has conceived about the nature of facts: it is fiction. The turn that Lange gave to materialism necessarily raises the question: Why should the higher poetry of ideas not apply, since the senses themselves write poetry? How does one type of poetry differ from the other? There must be a quite different reason for the one who thinks in this way why he accepts an idea than for the one who believes that he must accept it because it is true. And Lange finds this reason in the fact that an idea has value for life. What matters is not that an idea is true, but that it is valuable for man. Only one thing must be clearly recognized: that I see a rose red, that I connect the effect with the cause, is something I have in common with all sentient and thinking creatures. My senses and my intellect cannot create extra values for themselves. But if I go beyond what my senses and intellect create, then I am no longer bound to the organization of the entire human species. Schiller, Hegel Hinz and Kunz see a flower in the same way what Schiller writes about the flower what Hegel thinks about it, Hinz and Kunz do not write and think in the same way But just as Hinz and Kunz are mistaken if they regard their idea of the flower as an entity outside themselves, so Schiller and Hegel were mistaken if they regarded their ideas as something other than poetry that corresponds to their spiritual needs. What the senses and the intellect compose belongs to the whole human species; neither can deviate from the other. What goes beyond the poetry of the senses and the intellect is a matter for the individual. But Lange ascribes this poetry of the individual a value for the whole human species, if the individual who "produces it, richly and normally gifted and typical in his way of thinking, is called to be a leader through his intellectual power". Lange thus believes that he is securing the value of the ideal world by also turning the so-called real world into poetry. He sees only poetry everywhere we can look, from the lowest level of sensory perception, where "the individual still appears to be completely bound to the basic features of the genre, right up to the creative workings of poetry". "One can call the functions of the senses and the connecting intellect, which produce reality for us, low in comparison with the high flight of the spirit in freely creative art. On the whole, however, and in their interrelation, they cannot be subordinated to any other mental activity. As little as our reality is a reality according to the desire of our heart, it is nevertheless the firm foundation of our entire spiritual existence. The individual grows out of the soil of the species, and general and necessary cognition forms the only sure basis for the elevation of the individual to an aesthetic conception of the world." (History of Materialism, 1887, p. 824 f.)

[ 18 ] Lange does not see this as the error of idealistic world views, that they have gone beyond the sensory and intellectual world with their ideas, but rather their belief that more can be achieved with these ideas than individual poetry. One should build up an ideal world; but one should be aware that this ideal world is nothing more than poetry. If one asserts that it is more than that, then materialism will always appear again and again, saying: I have the truth; idealism is fiction. Well, says Lange, idealism is poetry, but materialism is also poetry. In idealism the individual writes poetry, in materialism the genus. If both are aware of their essence, then everything is in order: the science of sense and understanding with its strict proofs that are binding for the whole species, the poetry of ideas with its higher worlds of imagination generated by the individual but nevertheless valuable for the species. "One thing is certain: that man needs to supplement reality with an ideal world created by himself, and that the highest and noblest functions of his spirit work together in such creations. But should this free act of the spirit take on the illusory form of a proving science again and again? Then materialism, too, will again and again come forward and destroy the bolder speculations by seeking to correspond to the unifying instinct of reason with a minimum of elevation above the real and provable". (History of Materialism, p. 828.)

[ 19 ] A complete idealism goes hand in hand with Lange's complete abandonment of truth. The world is poetry to him, but a poetry that he values as such no less than if he could recognize it as reality. Two currents with a sharply defined scientific character stand in stark contrast to each other within the modern development of worldview. The monistic one, in which Haeckel's way of thinking operates, and a dualistic one, whose most energetic and consistent defender is Friedrich Albert Lange. Monism sees a true reality in the world that man can observe and does not doubt that he can also gain knowledge of essential significance about this reality with his thinking based on observation. He does not imagine that he can exhaust the fundamental nature of the world with a few boldly conceived formulas; he proceeds on the basis of facts and forms ideas about the connections between these facts. But he is convinced that these ideas give him knowledge of a true existence. Lange's dualistic view divides the world into a known and an unknown. The former is treated in the same way as monism, on the basis of observation and contemplative thinking. But it has the belief that through this observation and through this thinking not the slightest thing can be known about the true essence of the world. Monism believes in the truth of the real and sees the best support for the human world of ideas in the fact that it bases it firmly on the world of observation. In the ideas and ideals that it draws from natural existence, it sees entities that fully satisfy its mind, its moral need. In nature he finds the highest existence, which he not only wants to recognize by thinking, but to which he gives his heartfelt devotion, his whole love. Lange's dualism considers nature unsuitable to satisfy the spirit's highest needs. It must assume a special world of higher poetry for this spirit, which leads it beyond what observation and thought reveal. Monism is given a supreme spiritual value in true knowledge, which, because of its truth, also gives man the purest moral and religious pathos. To dualism, knowledge cannot grant such satisfaction. It must measure the value of life by entities other than truth. Ideas do not have value because they are of truth. They have value because they serve life in its highest forms. Life is not judged by ideas, but ideas are judged by their fruitfulness for life. It is not true knowledge that man strives for, but valuable thoughts.

[ 20 ] In his recognition of the scientific way of thinking, Friedrich Albert Lange agrees with monism insofar as he denies the legitimacy of any other source for the knowledge of reality; he only denies this way of thinking any ability to penetrate into the essence of things. To ensure that he is on safe ground, he clips the wings of the human way of thinking. What Lange does in a forceful way corresponds to a tendency of thought deeply rooted in the development of the world view of modern times. This can also be seen with perfect clarity in another area of the nineteenth-century world of ideas. Through various phases, this world of ideas developed into points of view from which Herbert Spencer founded a dualism in England around the same time as Lange in Germany, which on the one hand strives for complete scientific knowledge of the world and on the other hand professes agnosticism towards the nature of existence. When Darwin published his work on the "Origin of Species" and thus gave monism one of its firm pillars, he was able to praise Spencer's scientific way of thinking: "In one of his essays (1852) Herbert Spencer contrasts the theory of creation and that of organic development in a strangely clever and effective way. He concludes from the analogy with the products of breeding, from the modification to which the embryos of many species are subject, from the difficulty of distinguishing species from variety, and from the principle of a general series of stages, that species have been modified. He makes these modifications dependent on the changed conditions. The author has also (1855) treated psychology according to the principle of the necessarily gradual acquisition of every mental power and faculty." Like the founder of the modern view of the processes of life, other scientific thinkers are also attracted to Spencer, who strives to explain reality from the inorganic fact up to psychology in the direction expressed in the above statement by Darwin. But Spencer is also on the side of the agnostics, so that Friedrich Albert Lange can say: "Herbert Spencer, related to our own point of view, pays homage to a materialism of appearance whose relative justification in natural science finds its limits in the idea of an unknowable absolute."

[ 21 ] It can be imagined that Spencer was led to his point of view from similar starting points as Lange. He was preceded in the development of English thought by spirits who were guided by a double interest. They wanted to determine what man actually possesses in his knowledge. But they also did not want to shake the essential nature of the world by any doubt or reason. In a more or less pronounced way, they were all dominated by the feeling that Kant expresses when he says: "I had to abolish knowledge in order to make room for faith." (Cf. Volume I. of this Weltanschauungsgeschichte, p. 149 ff.)

[ 22 ] In England, Thomas Reid (1710-1796) stands at the beginning of the development of the world view in the nineteenth century. The fundamental trait of this man's conviction is what Goethe also expressed as his view with the words: "In the end, it is only, methinks, the practical and self-rectifying operations of the common sense of man that dares to exercise itself in a higher sphere." (Cf. Goethe's Works, vol. 36, p. 595 in Kürschner's German National Literature). This common sense does not doubt that he is dealing with real, essential things and processes when he looks at the facts of the world. Reid considers only such a worldview viable that adheres to this basic view of common sense. If we ourselves admitted that our observation could deceive us, and that the true nature of things was quite different from what our senses and reason tell us, we would not need to worry about such a possibility. We can only get along in life if we believe our observation; everything else is none of our business. It is from this point of view that Reid believes he arrives at truly satisfying truths. He does not seek to arrive at a view of things by complicated reasoning, but by going back to the views instinctively accepted by the soul. And instinctively, unconsciously, the soul already possesses what is right before it undertakes to shine the torch of consciousness into its own being. Instinctively it knows what to think of the qualities and processes in the physical world; instinctively, however, it also has the direction of its moral behavior, a judgment of good and evil. Reid directs thought towards the observation of the soul by appealing to the truths inherent in common sense. From then on, this trait of soul observation remained characteristic of the development of the English world view. Outstanding personalities who stand within this development are William Hamilton (1788-1856), Henry Mansel (1820-1871), William Whewell (,794 to 1866), John Herschel (1792-1871), James Mill (1773 to 1836), John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), Alexander Bair (1818-1903), Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). They all put psychology at the center of their worldview.

[ 23 ] For Hamilton, too, what the soul originally finds itself compelled to accept as true is considered true. Proof and comprehension cease in the face of original truths; one can simply note their emergence on the horizon of consciousness. In this sense they are incomprehensible. But it also belongs to the original statements of consciousness that every thing in this world is dependent on something that we do not know. In the world in which we live we find only dependent things, nowhere an absolutely independent one. But there must be such a thing. When something dependent is encountered, an independent must be presupposed. We cannot enter the independent with our thinking. Human knowledge is calculated for the dependent and becomes entangled in contradictions when it applies its thoughts, which are very suitable for the dependent, to the independent. Knowledge must therefore give way when we reach the entrance to the independent. Religious faith is there in its place. Only by confessing that he can know nothing of the essence of the world can man be a moral being. He can accept a God who brings about a moral order in the world. No logic can rob this belief in an infinite God as soon as it is recognized that all logic is directed only to the dependent, not to the independent. - Mansel is a student and continuator of Hamilton. He only dresses his views in even more extreme forms. It is not going too far to say that Mansel is an advocate of faith, who does not judge impartially between religion and knowledge, but is biased in favor of religious dogma. He is of the opinion that the religious truths of revelation necessarily entangle cognition in contradictions. However, this does not stem from a deficiency in the truths of revelation, but from the fact that the human mind is limited and can never reach the regions about which revelation makes statements. - William Whewell believes that the best way to gain a view of the meaning, origin and value of human knowledge is to examine how pioneering minds in the sciences arrived at their findings. His "History of the Inductive Sciences" (1837) and his "Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences" (1840) aim to understand the psychology of scientific research. From the outstanding scientific discoveries he seeks to recognize how much of our ideas belong to the external world and how much to man himself. Whewell finds that the soul in all science supplements observation of its own accord. Kepler had the concept of the ellipse before he found that the planets move in ellipses. The sciences, therefore, do not come about by mere reception from without, but by the active intervention of the human spirit, which impresses its laws on what it receives. But the sciences do not reach to the ultimate essences of things. They deal with the details of the world. But just as one assumes a cause for every single thing, for example, one must also assume such a cause for the whole world. Since knowledge fails in the face of such a cause, religious dogma must step in to supplement it. Like Whewell, Herschel also seeks to gain a view of the origin of knowledge in the human mind by considering numerous examples. ("A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy" was published in 1831.)

[ 24 ] John Stuart Mill belongs to the type of thinkers who are imbued with the sentiment that one cannot be too careful when it comes to determining what is certain and what is uncertain in human knowledge. The fact that he was introduced to the most diverse branches of knowledge as a boy must have given his mind its peculiar character. He was taught Greek at the age of three, and soon afterwards arithmetic. The other subjects came to him at a correspondingly early age. His father, the eminent thinker James Mill, had an even greater influence on the way he was taught, so that the sharpest logic became second nature to John Stuart. From his biography we learn: "What could be found out by thinking, my father never told me until I had exhausted my powers to find it out for myself." For such a person, the things that occupy his thoughts must become the fate of his life in the truest sense of the word. "I have never been a child, I have never played cricket; it is better to let nature take its own course," says John Stuart Mill, not without reference to the experiences of one whose destiny is so solely to think. The questions about the meaning of knowledge must have weighed heavily on him, who had undergone this development. To what extent can the knowledge that is his life also lead to the sources of world phenomena? The direction that Mill's development of thought took in order to gain insight into these questions was probably also determined early on by his father. James Mill's thinking was based on psychological experience. He observed how, in man, conception attaches itself to conception. Man gains his knowledge of the world by attaching one idea to another. He must therefore ask himself: What is the relationship between the structure of ideas and the structure of things in the world? Through such an approach, thinking becomes suspicious of itself. In man the ideas could possibly be connected in a completely different way than the things outside in the world. John Stuart Mill's logic, which was published in 1843 as his main work under the title "System of Logic", is based on this mistrust.

[ 25 ] It is hard to imagine a sharper contrast in matters of worldview than this Milian "Logic" and Hegel's "Science of Logic", which appeared twenty-seven years earlier. In Hegel we find the highest confidence in thinking, the complete certainty that what we experience in ourselves cannot deceive us. Hegel feels himself to be a member of the world. What he experiences in himself must therefore also belong to the world. And since he recognizes himself most directly, he believes in what he recognizes in himself and judges the rest of the world by it. He says to himself: "When I perceive an external thing, it can perhaps only show me its outside, and its essence remains concealed. This is impossible with myself. I can see through myself. But then I can compare the things outside with my own being. If they reveal something of my own being on the outside, then I can also attribute something of my being to them. This is why Hegel confidently seeks the spirit, the connections of thought that he finds within himself, also outside in nature. Mill does not initially feel like a member of the world, but as a spectator. The things outside are unknown to him, and he is suspicious of the thoughts that people have about these things. One perceives people. Until now, we have always observed that people have died. That is why the judgment has been formed: All people are mortal. "All men are mortal; the Duke of Wellington is a man; therefore the Duke of Wellington is mortal." So people conclude. What gives them a right to do so? asks John Stuart Mill. If a single man were once proved to be immortal, the whole judgment would be overturned. Can we therefore assume, because all men have died so far, that they will do so in the future? All knowledge is uncertain. For we infer from observations we have made things about which we can know nothing until we have made the observations in question on them. What would someone who thinks in Hegel's sense have to say about such a view? It is not difficult to form an idea about it. We know from certain concepts that in every circle all radii are equal. If one encounters a circle in reality, one also asserts of this real circle that its radii are equal. If one observes the same circle after a quarter of an hour and finds its radii to be unequal, one does not decide to make the judgment:

[ 26 ] In a circle, under certain circumstances, the radii can also be unequal, - but one says to oneself: what was once a circle has for some reason lengthened into an ellipse. Thus, for example, someone thinking in Hegel's sense came to the judgment: All men are mortal. Man has not formed the concept of man through observation, but as an inner experience of thought, just as he has formed the concept of the circle. Mortality belongs to the concept of man, just as the equality of radii belongs to the concept of the circle. If one encounters a being in reality that has all the other characteristics of man, then this being must also have that of mortality, just as all the other characteristics of the circle entail that of equality of radii. If Hegel were to encounter a being that does not die, he could only say to himself: This is not a human being - but not: A human being can also be immortal. He presupposes that the concepts in us are not formed arbitrarily, but that they are rooted in the essence of the world, just as we ourselves belong to this essence. Once the concept of man has been formed in us, it comes from the essence of things; and we have the full right to apply it to this essence as well. Why has the concept of mortal man arisen in us? Only because it has its foundation in the nature of things. He who believes that man stands entirely outside things and forms his judgments as an outsider can say to himself: We have seen men die so far, so we form the concept of spectators: mortal men. He who is aware that he himself belongs to things, and that these things express themselves in his thoughts, says to himself: so far all men have died; therefore it is part of their nature to die; and he who does not die is not a man, but something else. Hegel's logic has become a logic of things; for Hegel the language of logic is an effect of the essence of the world; not something added to this essence by the human spirit from without. Mill's logic is a spectator logic, which initially cuts the thread that connects it to the world.

[ 27 ] Mill points out how thoughts that appear to be absolutely certain inner experiences to a certain age are nevertheless overturned by a subsequent one. For example, in the Middle Ages it was believed that it was impossible for there to be opposites, and that the stars would have to fall down if they were not attached to fixed spheres. Man will therefore only be able to gain a proper relationship to his knowledge if, despite the awareness that the logic of the world expresses itself in him, he forms a judgment that requires continual correction only by methodically examining his conceptual connections on the basis of observation. And it is the methods of observation that John Stuart Mill seeks to establish in a coldly calculating way in his logic. An example of this is the following:

[ 28 ] Suppose a phenomenon to have always occurred under certain conditions. In a certain case, a whole series of these conditions occur again; only some of them are missing. The phenomenon does not occur. Then one must conclude that the conditions that did not occur are causally related to the phenomenon that did not occur. If two substances have always combined to form a chemical compound, and they do not do so once, we must investigate what is not there this time and was always there otherwise. By such a method we arrive at ideas about factual connections which we justifiably regard as having their basis in the nature of things. Mill wants to pursue the methods of observation. Logic, of which Kant said that it had not advanced a single step since Aristotle, is a means of orientation within thought itself. It shows how to get from one correct thought to another. Mill's logic is a means of orientation within the world of facts. It aims to show how one arrives at valid judgments about things from observations. Mill makes no distinction between human judgments. For him, everything that man thinks about things emerges from observation. He does not even make an exception for mathematics. Mathematics, too, must gain its basic knowledge from observation. In all the cases we have observed so far, we have seen that two straight lines that have intersected once diverge and have not intersected a second time. From this we conclude that they cannot intersect. But we do not have perfect proof of this. For John Stuart Mill, then, the world is something alien to man. Man looks at its phenomena and orders them according to the statements it makes to him in his imagination. He perceives regularity in the phenomena and arrives at natural laws through logical and methodical investigations of these regularities. But nothing leads to the foundation of things themselves. It is therefore quite easy to imagine that everything in the world could be different. Mill is convinced that anyone who is accustomed to abstraction and analysis, and applies his faculties honestly, will, after sufficient exercise of his imagination, find no difficulty in the idea that in a star system other than our own there could be none of the laws that apply in our own. It is only logical for Mill to extend this view of the world to man's own ego. Ideas come and go, combine and separate within him; man perceives this. He does not perceive a being that remains the same as an "I" in this coming and going, separating and connecting of ideas. Up to now he has seen ideas emerge within himself and assumes that this will continue to be the case. The idea of the "I" arises from this possibility that a world of ideas is structured around a center. Man is also a spectator to his own "I". He lets his ideas tell him what he can know about himself. Mill looks at the facts of memory and expectation. If all that I know of myself is to be exhausted in ideas, I cannot say: I remember an idea I had of myself in the past, or I expect the occurrence of a certain experience; but: an idea remembers itself or expects its future occurrence. "When we speak," says Mill, "of the mind as a series of perceptions, we must speak of a series of perceptions which is conscious of itself as becoming and past. And now we are in the dilemma of either saying that the 'I' or the mind is something distinct from the perceptions; or of asserting the paradox that a mere series of perceptions can have a consciousness of its past and future." Mill does not get beyond this dilemma. For him it holds an unsolvable riddle. He has just torn the bond between himself, the observer, and the world, and is unable to tie it again. The world remains for him the unknown beyond, which makes impressions on man. All that he knows of the unknown beyond is that the possibility exists that it could evoke perceptions in him. So instead of speaking of real things outside himself, man can basically only speak of the fact that possibilities of perception exist. He who speaks of things in themselves is indulging in empty words; only he who speaks of the constant possibility of the occurrence of sensations, perceptions, ideas, moves on the ground of the actual.

[ 29 ] John Stuart Mill has a strong aversion to all thoughts that are gained in any other way than by comparing facts, by pursuing the similar, analogous and related in phenomena. He believes that the greatest harm can only be done to human life if one is lulled into the belief that one can arrive at any truth in any other way than through observation. In this aversion, one senses Mill's reluctance to behave towards things in any way other than in a purely receptive (passive) manner in the pursuit of knowledge. They should dictate to man what he should think about them. If he tries to go beyond receiving and say something about things out of himself, he lacks any guarantee that his own product really has anything to do with things. Ultimately, the point of this view is that its proponent cannot decide to include his own independent thinking in the world. It is precisely the fact that he is self-acting that disturbs him. He would prefer to eliminate his self altogether so as not to mix anything false into what the phenomena say about himself. He does not properly appreciate the fact that his thinking is as much a part of nature as the growth of a blade of grass. As clear as it is that one must observe the blade of grass if one wants to know something about it, it should be just as clear that one must also question one's own independent thinking if one wants to learn something about it. How, in Goethe's words, is one to get to know one's relationship to oneself and to the outside world if one wants to eliminate oneself completely in the process of cognition? However great the merits of Mill's discovery of the methods by which man recognizes all that does not depend on him, no such method can give a view of the relation of man to himself and of his self to the external world. All these methods are therefore valid for the individual sciences, but not for a comprehensive world view. No observation can teach what self-acting thinking is; only thinking can experience this from within itself. And since thinking can only say something about itself through itself, it can also only say something to itself about its relationship to the outside world. Mill's way of conceiving thus completely excludes the acquisition of a world view. Such a world view can only be gained through a way of thinking that immerses itself in itself and thereby surveys itself and its relationship to the outside world. The fact that John Stuart Mill harbored an antipathy to this kind of self-referential thinking is easy to understand from his character. Gladstone said in a letter (cf. Gomperz, John Stuart Mill, Vienna 1889) that he used to call Mill the "saint of rationalism" in conversations. A man who lives himself out entirely in thinking in this way makes great demands on thinking and seeks the greatest possible precautions to ensure that it cannot deceive him. He thus becomes suspicious of thinking. He believes that he can easily become uncertain if he loses firm points of reference. And uncertainty towards all questions that go beyond strict observational knowledge is a fundamental trait of Mill's personality. Anyone who follows his writings will see everywhere how Mill regards such questions as open questions, on which he does not dare to make a certain judgment.

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[ 30 ] Herbert Spencer also holds fast to the unknowability of the true nature of things. He first asks himself: How do I arrive at what I call truths about the world? I observe individual things and form judgments about them. I observe that hydrogen and oxygen combine to form water under certain conditions. I form a judgment about this. This is a single truth that only applies to a small circle of things. I then also observe the conditions under which other substances combine. I compare the individual observations and thereby arrive at more comprehensive, more general truths about how substances combine chemically. All cognition is based on the fact that man proceeds from individual truths to ever more general truths in order to end up with the highest truth, which he cannot trace back to any other; which he must therefore accept without being able to comprehend it further. In this path of knowledge, however, we have no means of penetrating to the absolute essence of the world. Thinking, according to this opinion, can do nothing but compare the different things with each other and form general truths about what is similar in them. But the unconditioned world being, in its uniqueness, cannot be compared with any other thing. That is why thinking fails in relation to it. It does not come close to it.

[ 31 ] We always hear the thought that has also developed on the basis of the physiology of the senses (cf. above p. 422 ff.). For many thinkers this thought is so interwoven with their spiritual life that they consider it to be the most certain thing that can exist. They say to themselves that man only recognizes things by becoming conscious of them. They now, more or less involuntarily, transform this thought into the other: One can only know of that which enters consciousness; but it remains unknown how things were before they entered consciousness. That is why we regard sensations as if they were in consciousness, for we think that they must first enter it, i.e. become parts of it (ideas), if we want to know anything about them.

[ 32 ] Spencer also maintains that it depends on us humans how we can recognize and that we must therefore assume something unrecognizable beyond what our senses and our thinking convey to us. We have a clear awareness of everything that our perceptions tell us. But this clear consciousness is mixed with an indeterminate consciousness that says that everything we observe and think is based on something that we can no longer observe and think. We know that we are dealing with mere appearances, not with full realities existing for themselves. But precisely because we know that our world is only an appearance, we also know that it is based on an unimaginable reality. By such turns of thought Spencer believes he can bring about the full reconciliation of religion and knowledge. There is something that is not accessible to cognition; therefore there is also something that religion can grasp in faith; in a faith that impotent cognition cannot shake.

[ 33 ] Now that area which Spencer considers accessible to knowledge, he makes entirely the field of scientific ideas. Where he undertakes to explain, he does so only in a scientific sense.

[ 34 ] Spencer conceives of the process of cognition in scientific terms. Every organ of a living being has come into being because this being has adapted itself to the conditions under which it lives. One of the conditions of human life is that man finds his way in the world by thinking. His organ of cognition arises through the adaptation of his imaginative life to the conditions of the external world. When man says something about a thing or a process, this means nothing other than that he adapts himself to the world around him. All truths have arisen in this way of adaptation. But what is acquired through adaptation can be passed on to descendants. Those are not right who maintain that man, by his nature, has a certain disposition to general truths once and for all. What appears to be such a disposition was not once present in man's ancestors, but has been acquired by adaptation and has been passed on to descendants. When certain philosophers speak of truths which man does not need to draw from his own individual experience, but which are inherent in his organization from the outset, they are right to a certain extent. But such truths are also acquired, not by man as an individual, but as a species. The individual has fully inherited what he acquired in earlier times. - Goethe says that he attended many a conversation about Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and saw that the old main question was being renewed: "How much does our self and how much does the outside world contribute to our spiritual existence?" And he continues: "I had never separated the two, and when I philosophized in my own way about objects, I did so with unconscious naivety, and really believed that I saw my opinions before my eyes." Spencer placed this "old main question" in the light of the scientific way of looking at things. He believed he was showing that the developed human being does indeed have to contribute to his spiritual existence from his own self; but this self is also made up of the heirlooms that our ancestors acquired in the struggle with the outside world. If today we think we see our opinions before our eyes, these were not always our opinions, but were once observations that were really made with our eyes of the outside world. Spencer's path, like Mill's, is therefore one that starts from psychology. But Mill stops at the psychology of the individual. Spencer ascends from the individual to its ancestors. Individual psychology is in the same position as the germinal history of zoology. Certain phenomena of germination can only be explained if they are traced back to phenomena of phylogeny. In the same way, the facts of individual consciousness cannot be understood by themselves. One must ascend to the genus, indeed one must go beyond the human species as far as the acquisitions of knowledge which the animal ancestors of man have already made. Spencer uses his great acumen to support this history of the development of the cognitive process. He shows how the mental faculties have gradually developed from lowly beginnings through ever more appropriate adaptations of the mind to the external world and through the inheritance of these adaptations. Everything that the individual human being gains without experience, through pure thinking about things, has been gained by mankind or its ancestors through observation, through experience. Leibniz believed that he could only explain the correspondence of the human inner being with the outer world by assuming a harmony predetermined by the Creator. Spencer explains this harmony in scientific terms. It is not predetermined, but has become. Here we have the continuation of scientific thought up to the highest facts given to man. Linné explains that every living form of being exists because the Creator has made it as it is. Darwin explains that it is the way it has gradually developed through adaptation and heredity. Leibniz explains that thinking corresponds to the outside world because the Creator has created this correspondence. Spencer explains that this correspondence exists because it has developed through adaptation and inheritance of the world of thought.

[ 35 ] Spencer started from the need for a natural explanation of mental phenomena. Lyell's geology gave him the direction for such an explanation (cf. p. 360). In it the idea is still opposed that the organic forms have been formed by gradual evolution; but it receives an important support in that the inorganic (geological) formations of the earth's surface are explained by such gradual evolution, not by violent catastrophes. Spencer, who had a scientific education and had also worked for some time as a civil engineer, immediately recognized the full implications of the evolutionary idea and applied it, despite Lyell's opposition. Indeed, he even applied it to mental processes. As early as 1850, in his work "Social Statics", he described social development by analogy with organic development. He also familiarized himself with Harvey's and Wolff's (cf. vol. I, p. 286 ff.) studies on the germinal history of organisms and delved into the work of Carl Ernst von Baer (cf. p. 397 f. above), which showed him how development consists in the fact that from a state of uniformity, of uniformity, a state of diversity, of variety, of richness develops. In the first germinal stages, organisms resemble each other; later they become different from each other (cf. p. 397 ff. above). This idea of development was then fully confirmed by Darwin. The entire wealth of today's diverse world of forms has developed from a few primordial organisms.

[ 36 ] From the idea of development, Spencer wanted to ascend to the most general truths which, in his opinion, constitute the goal of human striving for knowledge. He believed that the idea of development could already be found in the simplest phenomena. When a cloud forms in the sky from scattered particles of water, or a heap of sand from scattered bodies of sand, we are dealing with a process of development. Scattered matter is drawn together (concentrated) into a whole. No other process is involved in the Kant-Laplace hypothesis of world formation. Scattered parts of a chaotic world nebula have been drawn together. The organism arises in precisely this way. Scattered elements are concentrated in tissues. The psychologist can observe how man draws together scattered observations into general truths. Within the concentrated whole, what has been drawn together is then structured (differentiated). The primordial mass divides itself into the individual celestial bodies of the solar system; the organism differentiates itself into manifold organs.

[ 37 ] Dissolution alternates with contraction. When a developmental process has reached a certain climax, equilibrium occurs. Man develops, for example, until the greatest possible harmony has been achieved between his inner abilities and his outer nature. However, such a state of equilibrium cannot last; external forces8 will approach it destructively. Development must be followed by the descending process of dissolution; the contracted expands again; the cosmic becomes chaos again. The process of development can begin anew. Spencer thus sees a rhythmic play of movement in the world process.

[ 38 ] It is certainly not an uninteresting observation for the comparative history of the development of world views that Spencer comes here from the observation of the becoming of world phenomena to a similar thought, which Goethe also expressed on the basis of his ideas about the becoming of life. The latter describes the growth of the plant as follows: "The plant may sprout, blossom or bear fruit, but it is always only the same organs that fulfill nature's prescription in manifold determinations and under often changed forms. The same organ that has expanded as a leaf on the stem and taken on a highly diverse form now contracts in the calyx, expands again in the petal, contracts in the reproductive organs and expands for the last time as fruit." If we transfer this idea to the whole world process, we arrive at Spencer's contraction and dispersion of matter.

[ 39 ] Spencer and Mill have had a great influence on the development of the world view in the last half of the century. The strict emphasis on observation and the one-sided treatment of the methods of observational cognition by Mill; the application of scientific ideas to the whole scope of human knowledge by Spencer: they must have corresponded to the sentiments of an age which saw in the idealistic world-views of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel only degenerations of human thought, and from which the successes of scientific research alone were not appreciated, while the disunity of idealistic thinkers and the, in the opinion of many, utter unfruitfulness of self-deepening thought produced a profound distrust of idealism. It is fair to say that a widespread view over the last four decades expresses what Rudolf Virchow said in 1893 in his speech "The foundation of Berlin University and the transition from the philosophical to the scientific age": "Since the belief in magic formulas had been pushed back into the outermost circles of the people, the formulas of the natural philosophers also found little favor." And one of the most important philosophers of the second half of the century, Eduard von Hartmann, summarized the character of his world view in the motto he placed at the head of his book "Philosophy of the Unconscious": "Speculative results according to the inductive-natural scientific method." Indeed, he is of the opinion that one must recognize the "greatness of the progress brought about by Mill", through which "all attempts at deductive philosophizing have been overcome forever". (Cf. E. von Hartmann, Geschichte der Metaphysik. 2nd part, p. 479.)

[ 40 ] The recognition of certain limits of human cognition shown by many natural scientists also had a sympathetic effect on religiously-minded people. They said to themselves: "Natural scientists observe the inorganic and organic facts and, by linking the individual phenomena, seek to find general laws with the help of which processes can be explained and even the regular course of future phenomena can be predicted. The summarizing view of the world should proceed in the same way; it should stick to the facts, investigate general truths from them within modest limits and make no claim to penetrate into the realm of the "incomprehensible". Spencer, with his complete separation of the "comprehensible" and the "incomprehensible", met such religious needs to the highest degree. In contrast, these religiously-minded spirits regarded the idealistic mode of conception as an absurdity. In principle, it cannot acknowledge the incomprehensible, because it must hold on to the idea that by immersing oneself in human inner life, it is possible to recognize not only the outside of the world, but also the real core of it.

[ 41 ] The thinking of influential naturalists, such as Huxley, who professes a complete agnosticism towards the being of the world and declares a monism in the sense of Darwin's findings to be applicable only to the outside of nature given to man, also moves in the direction of such religiously inclined minds. He was one of the first to advocate Darwin's ideas, but at the same time he is one of the most resolute representatives of the limitations of this way of thinking. The physicist John Tyndall (1820-1893) professed a similar view, recognizing in the world process a force completely inaccessible to the human mind. For precisely when one assumes that everything in the world arises through natural development, one can never admit that the substance, which is the carrier of all development, is nothing more than what our intellect can comprehend of it.

[ 42 ] A phenomenon characteristic of his time is the personality of the English statesman James Balfour (1848-1930), who in 1879 (in his book "A defense of philosophic doubt, being an Essay on the foundations of belief") made a profession of faith that is undoubtedly similar to that of wider circles. With regard to everything that man can explain, he places himself entirely on the ground of scientific thinking. He allows all knowledge to be exhausted in the recognition of nature. At the same time, however, he maintains that only those who recognize that man's emotional and rational needs can never be satisfied by scientific knowledge can understand it correctly. One need only realize that in the end, even in the natural sciences, everything depends on believing the ultimate truths that can no longer be proven. But it does no harm that we merely arrive at a belief in this direction, for this belief guides us securely in our actions in daily life. We believe in the laws of nature and control them through this faith; through it we force nature to serve us for our purposes. Religious faith is meant to establish an equal correspondence between man's actions and the higher needs that transcend the mundane.

[ 43 ] The world views, which appear here summarized by the term "The World as Illusion", show that they are based on a search for the satisfying relationship of the idea of the self-conscious ego to an overall world view. They appear particularly significant precisely because they do not regard this search as their conscious philosophical goal and do not direct their investigations explicitly towards this goal, but rather because they instinctively give their way of conceiving the world the character that is determined by this search as an unconscious impulse. And the nature of this search is such as had to be determined by the newer scientific conceptions. - One comes close to the basic character of these ideas if one adheres to the concept of "consciousness". This concept has clearly only entered the newer worldview since Descartes. Before that, the concept of the "soul" as such was adhered to. Less attention was paid to the fact that the soul only lives part of its life in conscious phenomena. In sleep the soul does not live consciously. In contrast to conscious life, its essence must therefore consist of deeper forces, which it raises to consciousness from the basis of this essence only when awake. But the more one came to ask about the justification and value of knowledge on the basis of plausible ideas, the more one also came to feel that the most certain of all knowledge is found by the soul when it does not go beyond itself and does not go deeper into itself than consciousness reaches. One thought: "Even if everything else is uncertain, what is in consciousness is at least certain as such. Even if the house I pass by does not exist apart from me, I may claim that the image of this house now lives in my consciousness. But as soon as one turns one's attention to consciousness, it cannot fail to happen that the concept of the I grows together with that of consciousness. No matter what kind of being the "I" may be apart from consciousness: as far as consciousness goes, so far may the realm of the "I" be imagined. Now it cannot be denied that it can be said of the sensory image of the world standing consciously before the soul that it comes about through the impression made on man by the world. But as soon as one clings to this statement' one cannot easily get away from it. For the judgment is imposed: the processes of the world are cause; that which presents itself in consciousness is effect. Since one thus believes to have the effect in consciousness alone, one thinks that the cause must be present entirely in a world outside man as an imperceptible "thing in itself". The above descriptions show how the more recent physiological findings lead to the confirmation of such an opinion. It is now this opinion through which the "I" with its subjective experiences finds itself completely enclosed in its own world. This intellectual, astutely created illusion cannot be destroyed, once it has been formed, as long as the "I" does not find something in itself of which it knows that, although it is represented in consciousness, it nevertheless has its being outside of subjective consciousness. The ego must feel itself touched outside of sensual consciousness by beings that vouch for their being through themselves. It must find something in itself that leads it outside itself. What has been said about the thought coming to life can bring this about. If the ego has only experienced the thought within itself, it feels itself with it within itself. If the thought begins its own life, it snatches the ego from its subjective life. A process takes place which the ego experiences subjectively, but which is objective by its own nature, and which tears the "ego" away from everything it can only experience as subjective. It can be seen that the ideas to which the world becomes illusion also push towards the goal that lies in the further development of Hegel's world view into thought that has become alive. These conceptions form themselves in the way that the world view must become, which is unconsciously driven by the impulse lying in this goal, but does not have the strength to work its way through to this goal. This goal reigns in the subsoil of the newer world-view development. The world-views that appear lack the power to break through to it. Even in their imperfection they receive their character from this goal; and the ideas that arise are the external symptoms of will-powers that remain hidden.