The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] It appears, however, as if we ourselves had here introduced the very subjective element we were so determined to exclude from our theory of knowledge. Although the rest of the perceptual world does not possess a subjective character—so it might be deduced from our explanation—yet thoughts, even according to our own opinion, do bear such a character.

[ 2 ] This objection rests upon a confusion of two things—the theater in which our thoughts play their role and that element from which they derive the determination of their content, the inner law of their nature. We do not at all produce a thought-content in such fashion that, in this production, we determine into what interconnections our thoughts shall enter. We merely provide the occasion through which the thought-content unfolds according to its own nature. We grasp thought a and thought b and give them the opportunity to enter into a connection according to principle by bringing them into mutual interaction one with the other. It is not our subjective organization which determines this interrelation between a and b in a certain manner, but the content ofa andb is the sole determinant. The fact that a is related to b in a certain manner and not in another,—upon this fact we have not the slightest influence. Our mind brings about the interconnection between thought masses only according to the measure of their own content. Thus we fulfill the principle of experience in its very baldest form in the case of thinking.

[ 3 ] This refutes the opinion of Kant and Schopenhauer, and in a broader sense of Fichte also, that the laws we assume in order to explain the world are merely an effect of our own mental organization, and that we inject them into the world only because of our own mental individuality.

[ 4 ] Another objection might be raised from a subjective point of view. Even though the law-controlled relationship of the thought masses is not brought about according to our own organization, but depends upon the thought-content, yet this very content may be a mere subjective product, a mere quality of our mind, so that we should merely be uniting elements produced first by ourselves. In this case our thought-world would be none the less a subjective appearance. But it is very easy to meet this objection. That is, if it were well founded, we should be uniting the content of our thoughts according to laws while remaining wholly unaware as to whence these laws come. If these do not spring from our subjective being—a supposition we have already taken under consideration and set aside as untenable—what, then, could provide us with laws of interconnection for a content produced by ourselves?

[ 5 ] In other words, our thought-world is an entity resting wholly upon itself, a totality self-enclosed, complete and entire within itself. Here we perceive which of the two aspects of the thought-world is the essential one: the objective aspect of its content and not the subjective aspect of its mode of emergence.

[ 6 ] This insight into the inner purity and completeness of thought appears at its clearest in the scientific system of Hegel. No one else has attributed to thinking a power so complete that it could form a foundation in itself for a world-conception. Hegel has absolute confidence in thinking. Indeed, it is the only factor of reality which he trusts in the fullest sense of the word. Yet, although his point of view is in the main highly correct, he more than any one else has destroyed confidence in thought by the excessively unqualified form in which he has applied it. The way in which he has presented his view is responsible for the irremediable confusion which has found its way into our “thinking about thinking.” He desired to make the importance of thought, of the idea, evident by defining rational necessity in the same terms as factual necessity. In doing so he has given rise to the fallacy that thought-determinations are not purely ideal, but factual. His point of view was soon so conceived as if he had sought for thought itself as one of the facts in the world of sensible reality. Indeed, he failed to make himself entirely clear in regard to this. The truth must be firmly grasped that the sphere of thought is in human consciousness alone. Then it must be shown that the thought-world does not thereby sacrifice in the least its objectivity. Hegel exposed to view only the objective aspects of thought; but most persons see only what is easier to be seen—the subjective aspect—and it seems to them that Hegel treats something purely ideal as a thing—that is, that he indulged in a mystification. Even many scholars of the present time cannot be said to be quite free of this fallacy. They condemn Hegel because of a defect which he himself did not possess, but which can certainly be interjected into him because he failed to explain the matter in question with sufficient clearness.

[ 7 ] We admit that we are here faced by something which is difficult for us to judge with the capacities we possess. Yet we believe it can be mastered by every energetic thinker. We must form two different conceptions: first, that by our own activity we bring the ideal world to manifestation; and, secondly, at the same time that what we by our activity call into existence rests, nevertheless, upon its own laws. It is true that we are accustomed so to conceive a phenomenon as if we needed only to stand passive before it, observing it. But this is not at all an absolute necessity. No matter how unfamiliar the conception may be to us, that we by our activity bring an objective entity to manifestation—that is, in other words, that we do not merely become aware of a phenomenon, but at the same time produce it—this conception is not at all invalid.

[ 8 ] It is only necessary that we should abandon the customary idea that there are as many thought-worlds as there are human individuals. This idea is nothing more than an ancient preconception. It is tacitly presupposed everywhere without any consciousness that another conception is at least equally possible, and that the arguments for the validity of one or the other must, therefore, at least be weighed. Let us for a moment imagine, in place of the above preconception, the following: that there is one sole thought-content, and that our individual thinking is nothing more than the act of working ourselves, our individual personalities, into the thought-center of the world. This is not the place to investigate whether this point of view is correct or not; but it is possible, and we have attained what we wished to attain: that is, we have shown that it is entirely in order to postpone for the present undertaking to prove that the objectivity of thought, which we have declared to be a matter of necessity, is not a self-contradictory conception.

[ 9 ] From the point of view of its objectivity, the work of the thinker may very appropriately be compared with that of a mechanic. Just as the latter brings natural forces into reciprocal action and thus brings about a purposeful activity and exertion of forces, so the thinker causes thought-elements to come into reciprocal activity, and these evolve into the thought-systems which compose our sciences.

[ 10 ] There is no better means of throwing light upon a conception than by exposing the fallacies arrayed against it. Here again let us resort to this method, already profitably employed more than once.

[ 11 ] It is generally supposed that the reason why we unite certain concepts into greater complexes, or why we think at all in certain ways, is because we sense a certain inner (logical) compulsion to do this. Volkelt also has appropriated this opinion. But how can this be harmonized with the transparent clearness with which our whole thought-world is present in consciousness? We know nothing in the world more thoroughly than we know our thoughts. Must we, then, assume a certain connection on the ground of an inner compulsion when everything is so clear? What need have I of the compulsion when I know the nature of what is to be united—know it through and through—and can guide myself according to this nature? All the operations of our thinking are processes which come to pass by reason of insight into the essential nature of the thoughts, and not according to compulsion. Such compulsion contradicts the nature of thinking.

[ 12 ] We might certainly admit the possibility that it may be a part of the essential nature of thinking to stamp its content directly upon its manifestation, but that, nevertheless, we cannot immediately perceive this content by means of our mental organization. But such is not the case. The way in which the thought-content meets us is a guarantee to us that we here have the essential nature of the thing before us. We are assuredly aware that we accompany with our mind every process in the thought-world. Yet we can only think that the form of manifestation of a thing is determined by its essential nature. How could we reproduce the form of appearance if we did not know the essential nature of the thing? It is possible to conceive that the form of appearance emerges before us as an existent whole and we then seek for its central core. But it is impossible to maintain the point of view that we cooperate in producing the appearance without effecting this production by means of its own central core.

[ 1 ] Let us draw one step nearer to thought. Hitherto we have been considering the place of thought in relation to the rest of the world of experience. We have reached the conclusion that it holds a unique position in that world, that it plays a central role. We shall for the present turn our attention elsewhere. We shall here restrict ourselves to a consideration of the inner nature of thinking. We shall investigate the very character of the thought-world itself, in order to perceive how one thought depends upon another; how thoughts are related to one another. From this inquiry we shall derive the means requisite for reaching a conclusion as to the question: “What is cognition in general?” Or, in other words, what is the meaning of forming thoughts about reality? What is the meaning of wishing to interpret the world by means of thinking?

[ 2 ] Here we must keep our minds free from any preconceived opinion. We should be holding such a preconception if we should assume that a concept (thought) is an image within our consciousness by means of which we reach a solution concerning an object existing outside of consciousness. Here we are not concerned with this and similar preconceptions. We take thoughts just as we find them. The question as to whether they sustain a relationship to anything else whatever and, if so, what sort of relationship is just what we shall investigate. Therefore, we must not posit such a relationship here as our point of departure. This very opinion concerning the relationship between concept and object is very widespread. Indeed, the concept is often defined as the mental counterpart of an object existing outside the mind. The concept is supposed to reproduce the object, mediating to us a true photograph of it. Very often, when thinking is the subject of discussion, what people have in mind is only this preconceived relationship. Practically never does any one consider the idea of traversing the realm of thoughts, within their own sphere, in order to discover what is to be found there.

[ 3 ] We will here investigate this realm just as if nothing whatever existed outside its boundaries, as if thought were the whole of reality. For a certain time we shall turn our attention away from all the rest of the world.

[ 4 ] The fact that this sort of research has been neglected in those investigations concerning the theory of knowledge which are based upon Kant has been ruinous to this science. This omission has given an impulse to this science in a direction which is the very opposite of our own. This scientific trend can never, by reason of its whole character, comprehend Goethe. It is, in the truest sense of the word, un-Goethean to take as point of departure an assumption which is not found through observation, but actually injected into the thing observed. But this is what actually occurs when one sets at the very culmination of scientific knowledge the preconception that the relation mentioned above does exist between thinking and reality, between the idea and the world. The only way to treat this matter after the manner of Goethe is to enter deeply into the nature of thinking itself and then observe what relation comes about when thinking, thus known according to its own nature, is brought into relationship with experience.

[ 5 ] Goethe always takes the path of experience in the strictest sense. He first takes the objects as they are, and, while banishing entirely every subjective opinion, seeks to penetrate into their nature; he then creates the conditions under which the objects can appear in reciprocal action and watches to see the results. He seeks to give Nature the opportunity to bring her laws into operation under especially characteristic circumstances, which he brings about—an opportunity, as it were, to express her own laws.

[ 6 ] How does our thinking appear to us when observed in itself? It is a multiplicity of thoughts which are woven and bound organically together in the most complicated fashion. But, when we have once penetrated this multiplicity from all directions, it becomes again a unity, a harmony. All the elements are related one to another; they exist for one another; one modifies another, restricts it, etc. The moment our mind conceives two corresponding thoughts, it observes at once that these really flow together to form a unit. It finds everywhere in its whole realm the interrelated; this concept unites with that, a third illuminates or supports a fourth, and so on. If, for example, we find in our consciousness the concept “organism,” and we then scan our conceptual world, we meet with another concept, “systematic evolution, growth.” It becomes clear that these two concepts belong together; that they represent merely two aspects of one and the same thing. But this is true of our entire thought-system. All individual thoughts are parts of a great whole which we call our conceptual world.

[ 7 ] When any single thought emerges in consciousness, I cannot rest until this is brought into harmony with the rest of my thinking. Such an isolated concept, apart from the rest of my mental world, is entirely unendurable. I am simply conscious of the fact that there exists an inwardly sustained harmony among all thoughts; that the thought-world is of the nature of a unit. Therefore, every such isolation is an abnormality, an untruth.

[ 8 ] When we have arrived at that state of mind in which our whole thought-world bears the character of a complete inner harmony, we gain thereby the satisfaction for which our mind is striving. We feel that we are in possession of truth.

[ 9 ] Since we perceive truth in the thorough-going agreement of all concepts in our possession, the question at once forces itself upon us: “Has thought, apart from all perceptible reality of the phenomenal world of the senses, a content of its own? When we have removed all sense-content, is not the remainder an utter emptiness, a mere phantasm?”

[ 10 ] It might well be a widespread opinion that this is true; hence we must consider this opinion a little more closely. As we have already remarked above, it is very frequently assumed that the whole system of concepts is merely a photograph of the external world. It is firmly maintained that knowledge evolves in the form of thought; but it is demanded of “strictly scientific knowledge” that it shall receive its content from without. According to this view, the world must provide the substance which flows into our concepts; without that, these are mere empty forms void of content. If the external world should vanish, then concepts and ideas would no longer have any meaning, for they exist by reason of that world.

[ 11 ] This point of view might be called the negation of the concept; for there it no longer possesses any significance in relation to objectivity. It is something added to the latter. The world would thus exist in all completeness even were there no concepts whatever, for these contribute nothing new to the world. They contain nothing which would not be there without them. They are there only because the cognizing subject wills to use them in order to possess in a form suitable to him what is otherwise already there. They are mere mediators to the subject of a content which is of a non-conceptual character. Such is the point of view under discussion.

[ 12 ] If it were well founded, one of the following assumptions would necessarily be true.

[ 1 ] That the conceptual world stands in such a relationship to the external world that it merely repeats the whole content of this in another form. (Here the term “external world” means the sense-world). If such were the case, one could not perceive any necessity for lifting oneself at all above the sense-world. In this latter everything relating and pertaining to knowledge would already be given.

[ 13 ] That the conceptual world takes as its content merely a part of the “appearance for the senses.” We may imagine the thing somewhat like this. We make a series of observations. We meet in these the most diverse objects. We discover in the process that certain characteristics which we observe in a certain object have already been observed by us. A series of objects pass in survey before our eyes: A, B, C, D, etc. Suppose A had the characteristics p q a r; B shows i m b n; C, k h c g; D, p u a v. Here in the case of D we meet again the characteristics a and p previously observed in connection with A. We designate these characteristics as essential. And, in so far as A and D possess essential characteristics in common, we say they are of the same kind. Thus we unite A and D in that we lay hold of their essential characteristics in our thinking. Here we have a thought which does not entirely coincide with the sense-world and to which the charge of superfluity mentioned above cannot be applied, and yet it is far from bringing anything new to the sense-world. Against this, we may say, first of all, that to determine which characteristics of a thing are essential requires, to begin with, a certain norm which will enable us to distinguish between essential and unessential. This norm cannot exist in the object itself for this includes both the essential and the unessential in inseparable unity. This norm must belong to the very content of our thinking.

[ 14 ] But this objection does not wholly refute this point of view. One holding this view might meet the objection thus. He might admit that we have no justification for classifying any characteristic as essential or unessential, but might declare that this need not disturb us; that we simply classify things together when we observe similar characteristics in them without any regard to the essential or unessential nature of these characteristics.

This view, however, requires a presupposition which by no means squares with the facts. So long as we confine ourselves to sense-experience, there is nothing really in common between two things of the same class. An example will make this clear. The simplest is the best because it can best be surveyed.

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[ 15 ] Let us observe the two triangles above. What is there really in common between them when we confine ourselves to sense-experience? Nothing whatever. That which they possess in common—that is, the principle on which they are formed and which causes them to be classed under the concept triangle—is attained only when we cross over the boundary of the sense-experience. The concept triangle comprises all triangles. We do not attain to it by merely observing all individual triangles. This concept always remains the same, however frequently I may conceive it, whereas it will scarcely ever happen that I shall see two identical triangles. That by reason of which a single triangle is “this” triangle and no other has nothing to do with the concept. A specific triangle is this specific one, not because it corresponds to the concept, but because of elements which lie entirely outside the concept:—the length of its sides, the measurements of its angles, its position, etc. Yet it is quite incorrect to maintain that the content of the concept is borrowed from the external sense-world, since it is evident that its content is not to be found in any sense-phenomenon.

[ 16 ] a third view is possible. The concept may be the mediator through which to apprehend certain entities which are not perceptible to the senses but which possess a self-sustaining character. This character would be the non-conceptual content of the conceptual form of our thought. Whoever assumes such entities existing beyond the boundaries of experience, and attributes to us the possibility of a knowledge of these entities, must necessarily see in the concept the interpreter of this cognition.

[ 17 ] The inadequacy of this point of view we shall later make especially clear. For the moment we need only remark that, in any case, it does not run counter to the contentual character of the conceptual world. For, if the object about which we think really lay beyond the boundaries of experience and of thinking, thought would all the more have to contain within itself the content upon which it rests. It could still not think about objects of which no trace could be found within the thought-world.

[ 18 ] In any case it is clear that thought is no empty vessel, but that in and of itself it is possessed of content and that its content does not square with that of any other form of phenomenon.

[ 1 ] Knowledge permeates perceived reality with the concepts apprehended and worked through by our thinking. It supplements and deepens that which is passively received by means of what our mind through its own activity has lifted out of the darkness of the merely potential into the light of reality. This presupposes that perception needs to be supplemented by the mind; that perception is not in itself something definitive, final, conclusive.

[ 2 ] The fundamental fallacy of modern science consists in the fact that it looks upon sense-perception as something conclusive, complete. For this reason it sets itself the task simply to photograph this existence, complete in itself. The only view which is logical in this respect is positivism, which simply rejects every advance beyond perception. Yet one observes nowadays in almost all branches of science an endeavor to look upon this point of view as being correct. In the true sense of the word, such a demand would be adequate only for such a science as merely enumerates and describes things as they exist beside one another in space, and occurrences as they follow one another in time. Natural history of the older type comes closest to meeting this requirement. The newer type makes the same demand, to be sure, and sets forth a complete theory of experience—only, however, to transgress this at once the moment it undertakes the first step into real knowledge.

[ 3 ] If we should wish to lay hold upon pure experience, we should have to empty ourselves completely of our thinking. To deny to thinking the capacity for perceiving in itself entities which are inaccessible to the senses is a degradation of thought. Apart from the factor of sensible qualities, there must be within reality a factor which is apprehended by thought. Thinking is an organ of man ordained to observe something higher than is afforded by the senses. To thinking is accessible that side of reality of which a mere sense-being could never become aware. What thought exists for is not merely to repeat the sensible, but to penetrate into what is concealed from the senses. The sense-percept gives us only one side of reality. The other side is the apprehending of the world through thinking. At first appearance, thought seems to us something quite alien to perception; for perception enters into us from without, while thinking works from within outward. The content of thought appears to us as an inwardly complete organism; all is in the closest interrelationship. The individual members of the thought system mutually determine one another; each single concept has its ultimate roots in the totality of our thought structure.

[ 4 ] At first glance, it seems as if the inner freedom from contradiction which characterizes thought, its self-sufficiency, rendered any transition to the percept an impossibility. Were the thought-characterizations such that they could be satisfied in one way alone, thinking would really be confined within itself; we could not emerge from within it. But this is not the case. These characterizations are such that they may be satisfied in a variety of different ways; only the element which produces this multifarious-ness must not be sought within thinking itself. Let us take the thought-characterization: “The earth attracts every other body.” We shall observe at once that the thought admits of the possibility of being fulfilled in the most diverse ways. But these are variations which can no longer be reached by thinking. There is room for another element. This element is the sense-percept. This percept affords such a form of specialization of thought-characterizations, which is left open by thought itself.

[ 5 ] It is in this specialization that the world meets us when we make use of mere experience. Psychologically, that comes first which in point of fact is the derivative.

[ 6 ] In all working over of reality through cognition, the process is as follows: We meet with a concrete percept. It confronts us as a riddle. Within us the impulse manifests itself to investigate its “What?”—its real nature—which the percept itself does not express. This impulse is nothing but the upward working of a concept out of the darkness of our consciousness. We then hold this concept firmly while the sense percept moves on a parallel line with this thought-process. The mute percept suddenly speaks a language intelligible to us; we know that the concept which we have taken hold of is that real nature of the percept for which we have been seeking.

[ 7 ] What has here come about is a judgment. It is different from that form of judgment which unites two concepts without reference to percepts. When I say: “Freedom is the determination of a being from within itself,” I have here also formed a judgment. The constituents of this judgment are concepts not given to me in perception. Upon such judgments rests that inner unity of our thought which we discussed in the preceding chapter.

[ 8 ] The judgment which we now consider has for its subject a percept and for predicate a concept. “This animal before me is a dog.” In such a judgment, a percept is injected into my thought system at a determinate place. Let us call such a judgment a perceptual judgment.

[ 9 ] By means of the perceptual judgment we cognize that a determinate sensible object corresponds by nature with a determinate concept.

[ 10 ] If, then, we are to comprehend what we perceive, the percept must have been formed within us beforehand as a determinate concept. Any object of which this were not true we should pass by without its being intelligible to us.

[ 11 ] That such is the case is best shown by the fact that persons who have lived a rich mental life also penetrate far deeper into the world of experience than do others of whom this is not true. Much that passes over others without leaving a trace makes a deep impression upon these persons. (‘If the eye were not sun-like, it could never see the sun.') But, if may be asked, do we not meet in our lives innumerable things of which we have not previously had the slightest conception?—and do we not on the spot form concepts of these? Undoubtedly. But is the sum of all potential concepts identical with the sum of those which I have already formed in the previous part of my life? Is not my conceptual system capable of evolving? In the presence of a reality which is unintelligible to me, can I not set my thinking in action in order that it may evolve on the spot the concept with which I must match the object? I need only possess the capacity of drawing a determinate concept out of the store of the thought-world. It is not that a determinate concept was already consciously known to me in the previous part of my life but that this concept can be drawn forth from the world of thoughts accessible to me. Where and when I grasp the concept is not essential to its content. Indeed, I bring forth thought-characterizations out of the thought-world. Nothing whatever flows from the sensible object into this content. I simply recognize in the sensible object the thought which I draw forth from within myself. This object induces me, to be sure, to call forth at a certain moment from the unity of all potential thoughts just this one thought-content, but it does not by any means furnish me the material for constructing the thought. This I must draw from within myself.

[ 12 ] When we cause our thinking to become active, only then does reality attain to true characterizations. Previously mute, it now speaks a clear language.

[ 13 ] Our thinking is the interpreter that explains the dumb show of experience.

[ 14 ] Men are so accustomed to look upon the world of concepts as void of content, and to contrast with this world the percept as being filled with content and thoroughly determinate, that it will be difficult for the true facts of the case to win the place belonging to them. The truth is entirely overlooked that mere beholding is the emptiest thing imaginable and that it receives content only from thinking. The sole truth in regard to the object is that it holds the constant flux of thought in a determinate form without our having to cooperate actively in thus holding it. When one who has a rich mental life sees a thousand things which are nothing to the mentally poor, this shows as clearly as sunlight that the content of reality is only the reflection of the content of our minds and that we receive from without merely the empty form. Of course, we must possess the inner power to recognize ourselves as the creator of this content; otherwise we shall forever see only the reflection and never our own mind which is reflected. Indeed, one who perceives himself in an actual mirror must know himself as a personality in order to recognize himself in the reflected image.

[ 15 ] All sense-perception finally resolves itself, as to its essential nature, into ideal content. Only then does it appear to us transparent and clear. The sciences are to a large extent wholly unaffected by the consciousness of this truth. Thought-characterizations are considered the attributes of objects, like colors, odors, etc. Thus it is supposed that all bodies are characterized by the definition that they remain in the state wherein they are—of rest or motion—until an influence from without alters their state. It is in this form that the law of inertia plays its role in natural science. But the actual fact is something quite different. In my conceptual system the concept body exists in many modifications. One of these is the concept of a thing which can of itself set itself in motion or come to rest; another is the concept of a body which alters its state only under an external influence. These latter bodies we designate as inorganic. If, then, I meet a certain body which reflects in the percept the above conceptual definition, I designate it as inorganic and unite with it all characterizations which follow from the concept of an inorganic body.

[ 16 ] All sciences should be permeated by the conviction that their content is solely a thought-content and that they sustain no other relationship to perception than that they see in the perceptual object a specialized form of the concept.

[ 1 ] The simplest form of action in Nature seems to us to be that in which an occurrence results wholly from factors external to one another. Here is an occurrence, or a relationship between two objects, not necessitated by an entity which manifests itself in the external forms of appearance—an individuality which exhibits its capacities and character in an effect produced outwardly. The occurrence or relationship has been called forth merely by the fact that one thing which has occurred has, in its occurrence, produced a certain effect upon another thing, has transferred its own state to some other thing. The states of one thing appear as results of those of another. The system of actions which happen in this fashion, so that one fact is always the result of others of similar sort, is called inorganic Nature.

[ 2 ] Here the course of an occurrence or the characteristic of a relationship depends upon external determinants; the facts bear marks in themselves which are the results of these determinants. If the form is altered in which these external factors meet, the result of their combined existence is also naturally altered; the phenomenon thus brought about is altered.

[ 3 ] What is, now, the manner of this combined existence in the case of inorganic Nature as it enters directly into our field of observation? It bears altogether the character which we designated above as that of immediate experience. We have here merely a special case of that experience in general. We have to deal here with connections between facts of the senses. But it is just these connections which seem to us in the experience not to be clear or transparent. The fact a confronts us, but at the same moment also numerous others. When we cast our glance over the multiplicity here presented to us, we are in complete uncertainty as to which of these other facts stand in closer and which in more remote relationships to the fact a, now under discussion. There may be some present of such sort that the event could not occur without them, and others which merely modify it but without which it could nevertheless occur, except that it would have, under the different circumstances, another form.

[ 4 ] In this way we see at once the path which cognition must take in this field. If the combination of facts in immediate experience does not suffice us, then we must go forward to another combination satisfying to our need for explanation. We have to create such conditions that an occurrence will appear to us in transparent clarity as the inevitable result of these conditions.

[ 5 ] We recall why it is that thought contains its own essential nature in immediate experience. It is because we stand within and not without that process which creates thought combinations out of the single thought elements. Here, therefore, we are given, not only the finished process, the product, but that which produces. And the important point is that, when we confront any occurrence in the external world, we shall above all perceive the impelling forces which bring this forth from the center of the world-totality to its periphery. The opacity or obscurity of any phenomenon or relationship in the sense-world can be overcome only when we perceive adequately that it is the result of a certain association of facts. We must know that the occurrence we now see arises through the interaction of this and that element of the sense-world. Then the manner of this interaction must be completely penetrable by our intellect. The relation into which the facts are brought must be an ideal relation, one suited to our minds. Of course, in the relationships into which things are brought by our intellect, they comport themselves according to their own natures.

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[ 6 ] We see at once what is hereby gained. If I look haphazard into the sense-world, I see occurrences brought about by the interaction of so many factors that it is impossible for me to see directly what really stands behind this effect as the causative element. I observe an occurrence and at the same time the facts \(a\), \(b\), \(c\), \(d\). How shall I know at once which of these facts participate to greater and which to lesser extent in the occurrence? The thing becomes transparent when I first inquire which of the four facts is absolutely necessary if the process is to occur at all. I find for example that \(a\) and \(c\) are absolutely necessary. Then I find that without \(d\) the process occurs, indeed, but with important modification; and, on the contrary, that \(b\) has no essential significance but could be replaced by some other factor. In the above diagram let \(I\) represent symbolically the grouping of the elements for mere sense-perception; \(II\) that for the mind. Thus the mind so groups the facts of the inorganic world that it perceives in an occurrence or a condition the result of the relationship of the facts. Thus the mind introduces necessity into the midst of chance. We will make this clear by an example. When I have before me a triangle \(abc\), I do not see at first glance that the sum of the three angles is always equal to two right angles. This becomes clear when I group the facts in the following manner.

From the figures by the side of the triangle it becomes clear at once that the angle \(a'\) equals the angle \(a\); the angle \(b'\) equals the angle \(b\). (\(AB\) and \(CD\) are parallel to \(A'B'\) and \(C'D'\) respectively.) [ 7 ] If, now, I draw through the apex \(C\) of a triangle a line parallel to the base \(AB\),I find, when I apply the above example, that the angle \(a'\) equals the angle \(a\); \(b'\) equals \(b\). Since, now, \(c\) equals itself, then of necessity the three angles of the triangle equal together two right angles. Here I have explained a complicated combination of facts by reducing it to such simple facts that, by reason of the condition presented to the mind, the corresponding relationship is necessarily inferred from the nature of the things given.

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[ 8 ] Another example is the following. I throw a stone in a horizontal direction. It describes a path which we have represented in the line \(ll'\). When I consider the impelling forces which are here to be taken into account, I find: 1. the propelling force which I exerted. 2. the force with which the earth attracts the stone. 3. the force of the atmospheric resistance

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[ 9 ] Upon closer examination, I find that the first two forces are essential and determine the character of the path, while the third is subsidiary. If only the first two were present, the stone would describe the path \(LL'\). This latter I find when I ignore the third force and bring into combination only the former two. To carry this out in actual fact is neither possible nor necessary. I cannot eliminate all resistance. But for my purpose I need only apprehend in thought the nature of the first two forces, and then bring them into the necessary relationship likewise in thought, and I deduce the path \(LL'\) as that which must necessarily result when only these two forces interact.

[ 10 ] In this way the mind resolves all phenomena of the inorganic world into those in which the effect seems to the mind to come directly and of necessity from the causative factor.

[ 11 ] If, then, after arriving at the law of the motion of the stone under the influence of the two forces, one introduces the third force, the result is path \(ll'\). Additional conditions might complicate the matter still further. Every composite occurrence in the sense-world appears as a web of such simple facts, which can be penetrated by the mind; and it is reducible to these.

[ 12 ] Now, a phenomenon in which the character of the occurrence can be seen in transparently clear fashion to result directly from the nature of the factors under consideration is called a primal phenomenon, or fundamental fact.

[ 13] This primal phenomenon is identical with objective natural law. For in it there is expressed the fact, not only that an occurrence happened under certain definite conditions, but that it had to happen. It has been seen clearly that the occurrence had to happen because of the very nature of the thing under consideration. The reason why empiricism is to-day so generally demanded is that it is supposed that any assumption which goes beyond what is empirically given leaves us groping in the uncertain. We see that we may remain wholly within the phenomena and yet meet with the inevitable. The inductive method, to-day so much espoused, can never do this. In reality it proceeds in the following manner. It observes a phenomenon which comes about in a definite manner under given conditions. Again it sees the same phenomenon occur under similar conditions. From this it concludes that there exists a general law according to which this occurrence must take place, and postulates this law as such. Such a method remains entirely external to the phenomena. It does not penetrate into the depths. Its laws are generalizations from individual facts. It must always await the establishment of the rule by the individual facts. Our method knows that its laws are simply facts which are torn out of the confusion of chance and made into matters of necessity. We know that, when the factors a and b are present, a definite effect must appear. We do not go beyond the world of phenomena. The content of knowledge, as we view it, is nothing more than objective occurrence. The only change is in the form of the combination of facts. But this change advances one step deeper into objectivity than experience enables one to penetrate. We so combine the facts that they act according to their own natures and only thus, and that this effect cannot be modified by this or that circumstance.

[ 14 ] We attach the greatest importance to the fact that these discussions can be confirmed wherever one may look into the real functioning of science. They are contradicted only by the fallacious opinions that are held in regard to the scope and nature of scientific principles. While many of our contemporaries contradict their own theories when they enter the field of practical research, the harmony between our explanation and all true research can easily be shown in every single instance.

[ 15 ] Our theory demands for every natural law a definite form. It presupposes a combination of facts and maintains that, when this appears anywhere in reality, a definite occurrence must take place.

[ 16 ] Every natural law, therefore, has this form: When this fact interacts with that, this phenomenon arises. It would be easy to show that all natural laws really have this form: When two bodies of unequal temperature are in contact, heat passes from the warmer to the less warm until the temperature of the two is the same. If a fluid is contained in two vessels which are connected, the level becomes identical in the two vessels. If a body stands between a source of light and another body, it casts a shadow upon the latter. In mathematics, physics, and mechanics, anything which is not mere description must be a primal phenomenon.

[ 17 ] All advance in knowledge rests upon the perception of primal phenomena. When we are able to remove an occurrence from its connection with other occurrences and explain it as the effect of definite elements of experience, then we have penetrated a step deeper into the fabric of the world.

[ 18 ] We have seen that the primal phenomenon yields itself wholly to thinking when the factors concerned are brought together in thought according to their nature. But one can also create artificially the necessary conditions. This happens in scientific research. There we have in our own control the occurrence of definite factors. Naturally we cannot ignore all related circumstances. Yet there is a way by which we may surmount the latter. We may produce a phenomenon under various modifications. We allow first one and then another contributing circumstance to be active. We then find that one constant persists through all these modifications. We must retain the essential thing in all the combinations. We find that in all these individual experiences a factual component of these is constant. This is higher experience within experience. It is the fundamental fact, or primal phenomenon.

[ 19 ] The experiment is intended to convince us that nothing else influences a definite occurrence except what we take into account. We bring together certain conditions whose nature is known to us and observe what follows from these. Here we have an objective phenomenon on the basis of subjective creation. We have something objective which is at the same time thoroughly subjective. The experiment is, therefore, the true mediator between subject and object in inorganic science.

[ 20 ] The germ of the view we have here developed is to be found in the correspondence between Goethe and Schiller. Goethe's letters 410 and 413 and Schiller's 412 and 414 are concerned with this. They designate this method as rational empiricism, because it takes as content for knowledge nothing except objective occurrences, but these objective occurrences are held together by a web of concepts (laws) which our minds discover in them. Sensible occurrences in an interconnection which only thought can grasp—this is rational empiricism. If these letters are compared with Goethe's essay Der Versuch als Vermittler von Subjekt and Object,¹¹ the theory given above will be found to be the logical conclusion to be drawn from them.

[ 21 ] Thus the general relation we have defined between experience and knowledge is valid everywhere in inorganic Nature. Ordinary experience is only one half of reality. To the senses this half alone exists. The other half is present only to the conceptual capacities of our minds. The mind raises experience from an “appearance for the senses” to something belonging to itself. We have shown how it is possible in this realm to raise oneself from the product to the producing. It is the mind that finds this latter when it confronts the former.

[ 22 ] Scientific satisfaction will come to us from a point of view only when it leads us into a totality complete in itself. But the sense-world as inorganic does not appear at any point as brought to a conclusion; nowhere does an individual whole appear. Every occurrence points to another upon which it depends; this to a third; etc. Where is there any conclusion in this? The sense-world as inorganic does not arrive at individuality. Only in its totality is it complete in itself. We must strive, therefore, if we would have a whole, to conceive the assemblage of the inorganic as a system. Such a system is the cosmos.

[ 23 ] A thorough understanding of the cosmos is the goal and ideal of inorganic natural science. Every scientific endeavor which does not attain to this is merely preparatory: a member of the whole, but not the whole itself.

• 11. The Experiment as Mediator between Subject and Object.

[ 1 ] For a long time science came to a standstill in the presence of the organic. Its methods were not considered adequate to grasp life and its manifestations. Indeed, it was believed that every conformity to law such as is effective in inorganic Nature here ceases to exist. What was admitted with reference to the inorganic world—that a phenomenon is intelligible to us when we know its natural prerequisite conditions—was here simply denied. The organism was supposed to have been designed purposefully by the Creator according to a determinate plan. Each organ was supposed to have its predestined function; all questions here could be directed only to the discovery of what the purpose of this or that organ is; for what end this or that is present. Whereas, in the inorganic world, one gave attention to the prerequisite conditions of a thing, this was considered quite futile for the facts of life, and primary importance was attached to the purpose of a thing. Likewise in regard to the processes which accompany life, the question asked was not so much concerning the natural causes, as in the case of the physical phenomena, but these processes were supposed to be attributable to a special vital force. What was formed in the organism was supposed to be a product of this force, which simply took a position above other natural laws. In short, up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, science did not know how to deal with organisms. It was restricted to the sphere of the inorganic.

[ 2 ] In thus seeking the laws governing the organism, not in the nature of the objects, but in the thought which the Creator followed in forming them, men were cut off from any possibility of an explanation. How is that thought to be made known to me P I am limited to what I have before me. If this thing itself does not lay bare its laws within my thoughts, then my knowledge ceases. We cannot discuss in a scientific sense the divination of a plan held by a Being outside the thing itself.

[ 3 ] At the close of the eighteenth century, the point of view which almost universally prevailed was that there is no science which interprets the phenomena of life in the sense in which, for example, physics is an interpretive science. Indeed, Kant sought to give a philosophic basis for this opinion. He considered our intellect to be of such a nature that it can proceed only from the particular to the general. The particulars, the single things, are given to the intellect, he thought, and from these it abstracts its general laws. This form of thinking Kant called discursive, and he considered it the sole form belonging to man. Therefore, according to his opinion, there could not be any science except as regards those things in which the particular, of and for itself, is quite void of a concept, and is only subsumed under an abstract concept. In the case of organisms, Kant did not find this condition fulfilled. Here the single organism betrays a purposive—that is, a conceptual—arrangement. The particular bears traces of the concept in itself. But, according to the Königsberg philosopher, we are wholly lacking in capacity to grasp such an entity. We can understand only that in which concept and single thing are separated, where one represents the general, the other the particular. Nothing then remains for us but to make of the idea of purpose the basis for our observations of organisms: to deal with the creature as if a system of purposes lay at the basis of its phenomena. Thus Kant here established the unscientific scientifically, so to speak.

[ 4 ] Against such unscientific procedure Goethe protested vigorously. He could never see why our thoughts are not also qualified to ask in regard to the organ of a creature: “Whence comes it?” instead of, “What purpose does it serve?” This was in keeping with his nature, which always impelled him to look into every entity in its inner completeness. It seemed to him an unscientific form of observation to concern oneself only with the external purpose of an organ—that is, its usefulness to something else. What could this have to do with the inner essential nature of a thing? Therefore, it never concerns him to know for what purpose a thing serves, but always rather to know how it evolves. He wished to observe an object, not as a completed thing, but in its becoming, in order that he might know its primal origin. He was especially attracted to Spinoza because the latter did not give prominence to the external purpose of organs and organisms. Goethe demanded for the knowledge of the organic world a method which is thoroughly scientific in the sense in which that method is scientific which we apply to the inorganic world.

[ 5 ] Not with so much genius as in Goethe, yet none the less insistently, appeared the craving over and over again for such a method in natural science. Nowadays only a very small section of the scientists doubts its possibility. But whether the attempts which are being made here and there to introduce such a method have been successful or not,—this is naturally another question.

[ 6 ] First of all, a great error has been committed in this matter. It has been supposed that the methods of inorganic science should simply be transferred to the organic. The methods applied in the former field have simply been considered as the only scientific methods possible, and it has been thought that, if a science of “organics” is possible, it must be so in the same sense as physics. But the possibility has been ignored that the concept of the nature of science might be far broader than the definition “interpretation of the universe according to the laws of the physical world.” Even today men have not come to recognize this truth. Instead of seeking to learn what constitutes the scientific character of the inorganic sciences, and then seeking for a method which might be applied to the living world without sacrificing the requirements resulting from this inquiry, the laws discovered at those lower stages of existence are simply postulated as universal.

[ 7 ] But the inquiry should be, first of all, as to the basis upon which scientific thinking rests. In our treatment we have followed this principle. In the preceding chapter we have also learned that the conformity to law which characterizes the inorganic is not something isolated, but a special instance of all possible conformities to law. The method of physics is merely a special instance of a general scientific method of research in which consideration is given to the nature of the object under examination and to the field served by this science. If this method is extended to the organic, then the specific character of the latter is effaced. Instead of investigating the organic according to its nature, we force upon it a law alien to it. But so long as we negate the organic we shall never come to know it. Such scientific behavior merely repeats upon a higher plane that which it has gained on a lower plane; and, while it expects to bring the higher form of existence under these ready-made laws applicable elsewhere, this higher form eludes the investigator's efforts, since he does not know how to lay hold upon it and handle it according to its own characteristics.

[ 8 ] All this comes from the fallacious opinion that the method of a science is something external to the objects of that science, prescribed not by their nature but by ours. It is supposed that we must think about the objects in a certain manner, and indeed about all—the whole universe—in the same manner. Investigations are undertaken which are intended to show that, by reason of the nature of our minds, we can think only inductively, only deductively, etc.

[ 9 ] But in all this the fact is overlooked that the objects may perhaps refuse to yield to the methods of observation which we would vindicate upon them.

[ 10 ] That the charge which we make against the organic natural science of our time is fully justified—that is, that it carries over to organic Nature, not the scientific principle in general, but that of inorganic Nature—is evident if we glance at the opinions of the most distinguished of contemporary scientific theorists—Haeckel.

[ 11 ] When he requires of all scientific endeavor that “the causal interconnection of all the phenomena shall be made evident”—when he says: “If the psychic mechanics were not so infinitely complicated, if we were in position to survey fully the historic evolution of the psychic functions also, we should be able to reduce them all to a mathematical soul-formula”—it is clear what he wishes to do: to deal with the entire world according to the stereotyped pattern of the physical sciences.

[ 12 ] But this requirement is fundamental also in Darwinism, not in its original form, but in its contemporary interpretation. We have seen that the explanation of an occurrence in inorganic Nature means to show its derivation according to law from other sensible realities, to deduce it from other objects which belong like it to the sense world. But how does the contemporary science of “organics” apply the principles of adaptation and the survival of the fittest?—neither of which will be challenged by us as an expression of a complex of facts. It is supposed that the character of a certain species can be deduced from the external conditions under which it has existed, just as we can derive the heating of a body from the sunbeam falling on it. It is entirely overlooked that this character, according to its contentual characterizations, can never be derived as a result of these conditions. The conditions may have a definite influence, but they are not a creative cause. We are entirely safe in asserting that a species must so evolve under the influence of this or that set of facts as to develop this or that organ in a special way; but the essential (inhaltliche), the specific-organic, is not to be deduced from external conditions. Suppose that an organic entity had the essential characteristics abc and then evolved under definite influences so that its characteristics have assumed the particular form a'b'c'. When we take this influence into account, we shall understand that a has evolved into the form a'; b into b'; c into c. But the specific nature of abc can never be derived from external influences.

[ 13 ] Before everything else, we must direct our thought to this question: Whence do we derive the content of the general class of which we consider the single organic entity a particular instance? We know perfectly well that the specialization is due to the external influences, but the specialized form itself we must derive from an inner principle. The fact that this specialized form itself has evolved we can explain when we study the environment of the entity. Yet this special form is, none the less, something in and of itself; we find it possessed of certain characteristics. We see what is the essential matter. There comes into relation with the external phenomenal world a certain self-formed content which provides us with what we need in order to deduce these characteristics. In inorganic Nature we become aware of a certain fact and we seek a second fact and a third in order to explain this; and the result of the inquiry is that the first seems to us the inevitable consequence of the second. In the organic world this is not the case. Here we need still another factor besides the facts. We must conceive at a deeper level than the influences of external conditions something which does not passively allow itself to be determined by these conditions but actively determines itself under their influence.

[ 14 ] But what is this fundamental element? It cannot be anything else than that which appears in the particular in the form of the general. But what always appears in the particular is a definite organism. That basic element is, therefore, an organism in the form of the general: a general form of the organism which includes within itself all particular forms.

[ 15 ] This general organism we shall call, after the precedent of Goethe, the type. Whatever may be the meaning of the word typeaccording to its etymology, we use it in this sense intended by Goethe and mean by it nothing more than what is expressed. This type is not elaborated in all its entirety in any single organism. Only our rationalizing thought is capable of grasping this by abstracting it as a general image out of the phenomenal. The type is thus the Idea of the organism; the animality in the animal, the general plant in the specific plants.

[ 16 ] Under this term type we must not imagine anything fixed. It has absolutely nothing to do with what Agassiz, the most notable adversary of Darwin, called “an incarnate creative idea of God.” The type is something entirely “fluidic” out of which may be derived all separate species and families, which we may consider sub-types, specialized types. The type does not exclude the theory of descent. It does not contradict the fact that organic forms evolve one from another. It is only the rational protest against the idea that organic evolution proceeds merely in the successively appearing objective (sense-perceptible) forms. It is that which is basic in this entire evolution. It is the type that establishes the interconnection amid all the infinite multiplicity. It is the inner aspect of that which we experience as the outer forms of living creatures. The Darwinian theory presupposes the type.

[ 17 ] The type is the true primal organism; either primal plant or primal animal according as it specializes ideally. It cannot be any single sensibly-real living entity. What Haeckel or other naturalists look upon as the primal form is a form already specialized: the simplest form of the type. The fact that it first appears in the time sequence in the simplest form does not render it necessary that the forms appearing later in time are the results of the chronologically preceding forms. All forms are the results of the type; the first and equally the last are manifestations of the type. It is this type which we must take as the basis for a true organics, not undertaking simply to deduce the single species of animals and plants one from another. Like a red line does the type manifestitself through all the evolutionary stages of the organic world. We must firmly grasp it and then follow it in its course through all this great multiform kingdom. Then does this become intelligible. Otherwise, like all the rest of the world of experience, it disintegrates into a mass of unrelated units. Indeed, even when we believe we have reduced the later, more complex, compounded forms to the earlier simpler form, and that in the latter we have an original, we merely deceive ourselves; for we have simply derived one specialized form from another.

[ 18 ] Friedrich Theodor Vischer once expressed the opinion in regard to the Darwinian theory that it would render necessary a revision of our concept of time. Here we have arrived at a point which makes manifest to us in what sense such a revision would have to occur. It would have to show that the deducing of a later from an earlier is no explanation; that the first in time is not the first in principle. Every derivation must be out of what constitutes the principle, and at most it would be necessary to show what factors were effective in bringing it about that one sort of entity evolved in time before another.

[ 19 ] The type plays in the organic world the same role as that of the natural law in the inorganic. As the latter gives us the possibility of recognizing each single occurrence as a member of a greater whole, so the type puts us in position to look upon the single organism as a particular shaping of the primal form.

[ 20 ] We have already pointed out that the type is no circumscribed crystallized conceptual form, but is fluid: that it can assume the most manifold formations. The number of these formations is unlimited, because that by reason of which the primal form becomes a single specialized form has for the primal form no significance. The case is just like that of a natural law which controls innumerable single manifestations, because the special determinants which appear in the single instances have nothing to do with the natural law.

[ 21 ] But we are here dealing with something essentially unlike inorganic Nature. There our task is to show that a certain sensible fact can appear so and not otherwise because of the existence of this or that natural law. That fact and that law face one another as two separate factors, and no other mental work is required than that, when we behold a fact, we shall recall the law which is determinative. In the case of a living entity and its manifestations, the case is different. There our task must be to evolve the single form which meets us in direct experience from the type—which we must have apprehended. We must perform a mental process of an entirely different sort. We must not simply set the type as something finished, like a natural law, over against the single manifestation.

[ 22 ] That every body, unless prevented by some accompanying circumstance, falls to the earth in such a way that the distances covered in successive intervals of time are in the ratio 1:3:5:7 etc., is a definite law once for all fixed. This is a primal phenomenon which appears whenever two masses (the earth and bodies thereon) come into reciprocal relationship. If, now, a more special instance enters the field of our observation in which this law is applicable, we need only bring the sensibly observable facts into that relationship which gives us the law, and we shall find it confirmed. We trace the single case back to the law. The natural law expresses the interrelationship of the separate facts of the sense-world; but it continues to exist and confront the single facts. In the case of the type we must evolve out of the primal form each specialized instance that meets us. We must not confront the single forms with the type in order to see how the latter governs the former; we must cause the former to issue from the latter. Natural law governs a manifestation as something standing above this; the type flows into the single living entity, identifies itself with this.

[ 23 ] Therefore, a science of organics that sets out to be scientific in the sense in which physics or mechanics is scientific must show the type as the most universal form and then in various ideal separate forms. Mechanics also is such a grouping together of various natural laws in which the requirements of reality are presupposed theoretically throughout. The same must be true in organics. Here also, if we are to have a rational science, we must presuppose hypothetically determined forms in which the type takes shape. One must then show how these hypothetical forms can always be reduced to a definite form lying before our eyes.

[ 24 ] Just as we trace a phenomenon in the inorganic to a law, so here we evolve a specific form from the primal form. Organic science does not come about through the external comparison of special and general, but through the evolution of the former out of the latter.

[ 25 ] As mechanics is a system of natural laws, so organics must be a succession of forms evolved from the type; only that in the former case we bring together the single laws and arrange them into a whole, whereas here we must cause the single forms to proceed in living stream one from another.

[ 26 ] Here an objection may be raised. If the typical form is something altogether fluid, how then is it at all possible to set up a chain of special types in a series as the content of an organics? It may well be imagined that, in each special instance observed, a particular form of the type is to be recognized, and yet we cannot merely assemble such actually observed instances in the name of science.

[ 27 ] But we can do something else. We can allow the type to follow its course through the series of possibilities and then fix (hypothetically) in each case this or that form. In this way we arrive at a series of forms deduced by thought from the type, as the content of a rational organics.

[ 28 ] An organics is possible which will be scientific in the strictest sense just as mechanics is scientific. Only the method is different. The method of mechanics is that of proof. Each proof rests upon a certain rule. There always exists a definite presupposition (that is, prerequisites accessible to experience are given) and we then determine what occurs when these presuppositions are realized. We then comprehend a single phenomenon under the basic law. We think thus:—Under these conditions, the phenomenon occurs; the conditions are present and, therefore, the phenomenon must occur. This is the thought process we employ to explain an occurrence of the inorganic world when we meet it. This is the method of proof. It is scientific because it completely permeates an occurrence with the concept; because it brings about a coincidence of experience and thought.

[ 29 ] Through this method of proof, however, we can make no headway in the science of the organic. The type does not require that, under certain conditions, a definite phenomenon occur; it does not fix anything in regard to a relationship of elements mutually alien which confront one another. It determines only the conformity to law of its own parts. It does not point beyond itself like a natural law. The particular organic forms can be evolved only from the universal type-form, and every organic entity which appears in experience must coincide with some one of these derivative forms of the type. Here the evolutionary method must replace the method of proof. Here it is not to be established that the external conditions act upon one another in this way and for that reason bring about a definite result, but that a special form has been developed under definite external conditions out of the type. This is the radical difference between inorganic and organic science. This distinction is not made basic in any other method of research so consistently as in Goethe's. No one else recognized as Goethe did that an organics must be possible apart from all vague mysticism, without teleology, without the assumption of special creative thoughts. But neither has any one else more definitely rejected the demand to apply to this field the methods of inorganic science.

[ 30 ] The type, as we have seen, is a more complete scientific form than the primal phenomenon. Moreover, it presupposes a more intensive activity of our minds than that required by the other. In reflecting about the things of inorganic nature, our sense-perception provides us with the content. Here it is our sense-organization which yields to us what, in the case of the organic, we lay hold of only by means of our minds. In order to become aware of sweetness, sourness, warmth, light, color, etc., one needs only healthy senses. There we have to discover by means of thought only the form of the substance. But, in the type, content and form are intimately united one with the other. Therefore, the type does not determine the content in a merely formal way as does the law, but permeates it vitally from within outward as its very own. The task which is required of our mind is to participate productively in creating the contentual element while dealing with the formal.

[ 31 ] A mode of thinking in which the formal and the contentual appear in direct connection has always been called intuitive.

[ 32 ] Intuition appears repeatedly as a scientific principle. The English philosopher Reidt classifies as an intuition the act of creating a conviction of the real being of external phenomena directly from our perception of the phenomena (sense-impressions). Jacobi thought that in our feeling of God we are given, not merely this feeling, but the guarantee that God is. This judgment also is called intuitive. The characteristic of intuition, as we see, is that more must be given in the content than this itself; that one knows of a thought-characterization, without proof, merely through direct conviction. It is not considered necessary to prove such thought-characterizations as that of existence, etc. of the material of perception, but we are believed to possess these in inseparable unity with the content.

[ 33 ] But, in the case of the type, this is really true. Therefore it cannot furnish any means of proof but merely suggests the possibility of evolving each special form out of the type. For this reason, the mind must work with far greater intensity in apprehending the type than in grasping the natural law. It must create the content with the form. It must take upon itself an activity which is the function of the senses in inorganic science and which we call perception (Anschauung). The mind itself, therefore, must be perceptive on this higher plane. Our power of judgment must perceive in thinking and think in perceiving. Here we have to do with a perceptive power of thought, as was first explained by Goethe.¹² Goethe thereby pointed out as a necessary form of apprehension in the human mind that which Kant wished to prove to be quite unattainable by man because of the nature of his whole endowment.

[ 34 ] As the type in organic nature replaces natural law (the primal phenomenon) in the inorganic, so intuition (perceptive power of thought) replaces the power of judgment through proof (reflective judgment). As it has been supposed that the same laws may be applied to organic nature which are determinative at a lower stage of knowledge, so it has been supposed that the same methods hold good here as there. Both suppositions are fallacious.

[ 35 ] Intuition has often been treated with scant respect in science. It has been considered a defect in Goethe's mind that he expected to reach scientific truths by means of intuition. What is attained by way of intuition is considered by many persons as very important, to be sure, when this has to do with a scientific discovery. There, it is said, a chance idea often carries one farther than trained, methodical thought. For it is generally said to be an intuition when one has hit by chance upon something which is true but whose truth is discovered by investigators only in a roundabout way. It is always denied, however, that intuition itself can be a principle of science. Whatever intuition chances upon must afterward be proved—so it is thought—if it is to have scientific value.

[ 36 ] So Goethe's scientific achievements have also been looked upon as brilliant chance ideas which only later have attained to confirmation by the rigid methods of science.

[ 37 ] For organic science, however, intuition is the right method. It becomes quite clear, we believe, from our exposition that Goethe's mind, just because it was fundamentally intuitive, found the right way in organics. The method proper to organics harmonized with the constitution of his mind. For this reason it became all the clearer to him how far organics differs from inorganic science. The one became clear to him in connection with the other. For this reason he sketched with sharp lines the essential nature also of the inorganic.

[ 38 ] The slight value attached to intuition is due in no small measure to the fact that its achievements are not supposed to be deserving of that degree of confidence which is reposed in the achievement of knowledge through proof. Often only that which has been proved is called knowledge; all else is called belief.

[ 39 ] It must be borne in mind that intuition possesses a significance for the scientific attitude represented by the present writer (based upon the conviction that in thought we grasp in its very essence the central core of the world) altogether different from the significance it possesses according to the point of view which places this core of the world in a Beyond not accessible to our research. Whoever sees in this world lying before us, so far as we either experience it or penetrate it through thought, nothing more than a reflection, a copy of a Beyond, an unknown, an activating, which remains hidden behind this shell, not only at first glance but also in spite of all scientific research,—such a person can see only in the method of proof a substitute for our lack of insight into the real nature of things. Since he does not penetrate to the opinion that a thought-combination comes about through the essential content given in the thoughts themselves, and therefore through the thing itself, he necessarily thinks that he can support such combinations only on the ground that they harmonize with certain basic convictions (axioms) which are so simple as to be neither susceptible of proof nor in need thereof. If, then, a scientific postulate is offered him without proof—even one which in its whole nature excludes the method of proof—this seems to him to have been thrust upon him from without; a truth appears before him without his recognizing what are the grounds of its validity. He does not think he has an item of knowledge, an insight into the thing, but thinks he can only yield himself to a belief that some sort of reasons for this validity exists beyond the reach of his thought.

[ 40 ] Our view of the world is not exposed to the danger that it must look upon the limits of the method of proof as coinciding with the limits of scientific certitude. It has led us to the point of view that the central essence of the world flows into our thinking; that we do not merely think concerning the nature of the world but that thinking is an entrance into connection with the nature of reality. Intuition does not thrust a truth upon us from without, for from one point of view there is no such thing as an outer and an inner in the manner in which these are presupposed by the scientific attitude we have described, which is the opposite of our own. For us, intuition is the actual being-within, an entrance into the truth which gives to us all that comes in any way under consideration in regarding truth. It merges completely with what is given to us in our intuitive judgment. The characteristic which is significant in belief—that only existent truth is given us and not the reasons therefore, and that we lack a penetrating insight into the thing concerned—is here wholly wanting. Insight gained by way of intuition is just as scientific as that won by proof.

[ 41 ] Every single organism is the molding of the type in a special form. It is an individuality which governs and determines itself from a center outward. It is a totality complete in itself—which in inorganic Nature is true of the cosmos alone.

[ 42 ] The ideal of inorganic science is to grasp the totality of all phenomena as a unitary system, in order that we may approach each phenomenon with the consciousness that we recognize it as a member of the cosmos. In organic science, on the contrary, the ideal must be to have in the utmost entirety possible in the type and its phenomenal forms that which we see evolving in the series of single beings. Tracing the type back through all phenomena is here that which matters. In inorganic science the system exists; in organic the comparison (of each single form with the type).

[ 43 ] Spectral analysis and the perfecting of astronomy extend to the universe the truths attained on the limited sphere of the earth. Hereby these sciences approach the first ideal. The second will be fulfilled when the comparative method applied by Goethe is recognized in its full scope.

• 12. See footnote, p. 119.

[ 1 ] We have exhausted the realm of the knowledge of Nature. Organics is the highest form of natural science. What lies still higher is the spiritual, or cultural, sciences. These require an essentially different attitude of the human mind toward objects from that characterizing the natural sciences. In the latter the mind has a universal role to play. Its task is, so to speak, to bring the world process itself to a conclusion. What existed without the mind was only one half of reality; it was incomplete, at every point only a fragment. There the mind has to call forth into phenomenal existence the innermost impelling forces of reality—even though these would have possessed validity without its subjective intervention. If man were a mere sense-being without mental conception, inorganic Nature would be, none the less, dependent upon natural laws; but these would never come as such into manifest existence. Beings would certainly exist who would perceive the product (the sense-world) but they would never perceive the producing (the inner conformity to law). It is really the genuine, and indeed the truest, form of Nature which comes to manifestation in the human mind, whereas for a mere sense-being only Nature's external aspect would exist. Knowledge plays here a role of world significance. It is the conclusion of the work of creation. What takes place in human consciousness is the interpretation of Nature to itself. Thought is the last member in the series of processes whereby Nature is formed.

[ 2 ] Not so is it in the case of cultural science. Here our consciousness has to do with spiritual content itself; with the individual human spirit, with the creations of culture, of literature, with the successive scientific convictions, with the creations of art. The spiritual is grasped by the spirit. Reality possesses here in itself the ideal, conformity to law, which elsewhere appears first in mental conception. What appears in the natural sciences only as a product of reflection about the object is here born in the object. Knowledge plays a different role; essential being would be present in the objects here without the work of knowledge. It is human actions, creations, ideas with which we have to do. It is an interpretation of the human being to himself and to his race. Knowledge has here a different mission to discharge from that in connection with Nature.

[ 3 ] Here again this mission first becomes manifest as a human need. Just as the necessity of finding, in connection with the reality of Nature, the Idea of Nature appears at first as a need of our minds, so here also the function of cultural science exists first as a human impulse. Again it is only an objective fact announcing itself as a subjective need.

[ 4 ] The human being should not, like a being of inorganic Nature, act upon another being according to external norms, according to law which dominates him; nor should he be the single form of a general type; but he should himself fix the purpose, the goal, of his existence, of his activity. If his actions are the results of laws, these laws must be such as he gives to himself. What he is in himself, what he is among his own kind, in state and in history,—this he must not be by reason of external determinations. He must be this of himself. How he fits himself into the texture of the world depends upon himself. He must find the point at which to participate in the mechanism of the world. It is here that the cultural sciences receive their function. Man must know the spiritual world in order to take his share in that world according to this knowledge. Here originates the mission which psychology, the science of peoples,¹³ and the science of history have to achieve.

[ 5 ] This is the essence of Nature: that law and activity fall apart from each other, and activity seems to be controlled by law; but this, on the contrary, is the essence of freedom: that the two coincide, that the producing shall exist immediately in the product and that the product shall be master of itself.

[ 6 ] Therefore, the cultural sciences are in the highest degree sciences of freedom. The idea of freedom must be their central point, their dominant idea. It is for this reason that Schiller's letters on aesthetics take such high rank, because they undertake to find the nature of beauty in the idea of freedom, because freedom is the principle which permeates them.

[ 7 ] The spirit takes only that place in the universal, in the totality of the world, which it gives to itself as an individual. While the universal, the type Idea, must be kept constantly in mind in organics, the idea of personality is to be held fast in the spiritual sciences. Not the Idea as it lives in the general (the type) but as it appears in the single being (the individual), is here the matter in question. Naturally, it is not the casual personality, not this or that personality, which is determinative, but personality as such; not, however, as this evolves from itself outward into specialized forms and so comes first to sensible existence, but sufficient in itself, within itself circumscribed, finding in itself its destiny.

[ 8 ] The destiny of the type is to find itself realized in the individual. The destiny of the person is to achieve, even as an ideal entity, actual self-sustaining existence. When we speak of humanity in general and when we speak of a general natural law, these are two quite different things. In the latter case the particular is determined by the general; in the idea of humanity, the general is determined by the particular. If we are able to discern general laws of history, these are such only in so far as they were set up by historical personalities as goals, or ideals. This is the inner contrast between Nature and spirit. The former requires a knowledge which ascends from the immediately given, as the conditioned, to that which can be grasped by the mind, to the conditioning; the latter requires such a knowledge as proceeds from the given as the conditioning to the conditioned. That the particular establishes the law is characteristic of the spiritual sciences; that this role belongs to the general characterizes the natural sciences.

[ 9 ] That which is valuable to us in the natural sciences only as a transitional point—the particular—is our sole interest in the spiritual sciences. That which we seek in the former case, the general, is in the latter considered only to the extent that it interprets to us the particular.

[ 10 ] It would be contrary to the spirit of science if in the presence of Nature we should limit ourselves to the particular. But it would be utterly fatal to the spirit if we should comprehend Greek history, for example, in a general scheme of concepts. In the former case, the senses, cleaving to the phenomenal, would achieve no science; in the latter the mind, proceeding according to a general pattern, would lose all sense for the individual.

• 13. Volkskunde

[ 1 ] The first science in which the human spirit deals with itself is psychology. The mind here stands observing itself.

[ 2 ] Fichte assigned an existence to man only to the extent that man ascribes this to himself. In other words, human personality has only those traits, characteristics, capacities which it ascribes to itself through insight into its own being. A human capacity of which a man knew nothing would not be recognized by him as his own but would be attributed to some one alien to him. When Fichte supposed that he could base the whole knowledge of the universe on this truth, he was in error. It is ordained to be the highest principle of psychology. It determines the method of psychology. If the human spirit possesses a characteristic only in so far as it attributes this to itself, then the psychological method consists in the immersion of the mind in its own activity. Here, then, self-apprehension is the method.

[ 3 ] It is obvious that in this discussion we do not restrict psychology to being the science of the fortuitous characteristics of any one human individual (this one or that one). We release the single mind from its fortuitous limitations, from its accessory traits, and seek to raise ourselves to a consideration of the human individual in general.

[ 4 ] Indeed, what is determinative is not that we consider the wholly fortuitous individuality but that we clarify our minds as to the self-determining individual in general. Whoever should say at this point that we should in that case be dealing with nothing more than the type of humanity confuses the type with the generalized concept. It is essential to the type that it, as the general, confronts its single forms. Not so with the concept of the human individual. Here the general is active immediately in the individual being, except that this activity expresses itself in various ways according to the object toward which it is directed. The type exists in single forms and in these comes into reciprocal activity with the external world. The human spirit has only one form. But in one case certain objects move his feelings; in another this ideal inspires him to actions; etc. It is not a specialized form of the human spirit; it is always the entire and complete man with whom we have to deal. He must be released from his surroundings if he is to be comprehended. If we wish to arrive at the type, we must ascend from the single form to the primal form; if we wish to arrive at the human spirit, we must ignore the expressions in which it manifests itself, the special acts which it performs, and observe it in and of itself. We must discover how it behaves in general, not how it has behaved in this or that situation. In the case of the type we must separate the universal form, by comparison, from the single forms; in psychology we must separate the single forms only from their surroundings.

[ 5 ] Here the case is no longer the same as in organics, that in the particular being we recognize the molding of the primal form; but here, in perceiving the single forms, we recognize the primal form itself. The spiritual being of man is not one formation of its Idea, but the formation thereof. When Jacobi believes that, in becoming aware of our inner entity, we at the same time attain to the conviction that a unitary being lies at the basis of this entity (intuitive self-apprehension) his thought is in error, because we really become aware of this unitary being itself. What is otherwise intuition becomes here self-contemplation. In regard to the highest form of being this is also an objective necessity. What the human spirit can read out of phenomena is the highest form of content which it can attain at all. If the spirit then reflects upon itself, it must recognize itself as the direct manifestation of this highest: as, indeed, its very bearer. What the spirit finds as unity in multiform reality, this it must find in its own singleness as immediate existence. What it contrasts with particularization as the general,—this it must attribute to its own individuality as its very nature.

[ 6 ] From all this it becomes clear that a true psychology can be attained only when we enter into the character of the human spirit in its activity. Nowadays in place of this method the effort has been made to set up another in which the subject matter of psychology has been, not the human spirit itself, but the phenomena in which the spirit expresses its existence. It is supposed that the external expressions of the mind can be brought into an external interrelationship, as can be done with the facts of inorganic Nature. In this way the effort is made to found a “theory of the soul without any soul.” From our reflections it becomes evident that, by such a method, we lose sight of the very thing that is important. [ 7 ] What ought to be done is to separate the human spirit from its manifestations and return to the spirit itself as the producer of these. Psychologists restrict themselves to the former and lose sight of the latter. Just here they have allowed themselves to be brought to the false standpoint which would apply to all sciences the methods of mechanics, physics, etc.

[ 8 ] The unitary soul is given to us in experience just as are its single actions. Every man is conscious of the fact that his thinking, feeling, and willing proceed from his ego. Every activity of our personality is bound up with this center of our being. If, in the case of any action, we ignore this union with the personality, it ceases to be a manifestation of the soul. It belongs under the concept either of inorganic or of organic nature. If two balls lie on the table, and I thrust one against another, all that happens is resolved into physical or physiological occurrence, if my purpose and will are ignored. In all manifestations of the human spirit—thinking, feeling, willing—the important thing is to recognize these in their essential nature as expressions of the personality. It is upon this that psychology rests.

[ 9 ] But man does not belong to himself alone; he belongs also to society. What manifests itself in him is not merely his own individuality, but at the same time that of the folk-group to which he belongs. What he performs proceeds from the folk-force of his people as well as from his own force. In his mission he fulfills a part of that of his folk-kindred. The important thing is that his place among his people shall be such that he may bring to complete effectiveness the power of his individuality. [ 10 ] This is possible only when the folk-organism is of such sort that the single person can find the place where he may plant his lever. It must not be left to chance whether or not he shall find this place.

[ 11 ] The way to inquire how the individual lives within the social group of his people is a matter for the science of peoples and the science of the state. The folk-individuality is the subject of this science. It has to show what form the organism of the state must assume if the folk-individuality is to come to expression within it. The constitution which a people gives to itself must be evolved out of its innermost nature. Here also there are current fallacies of no small importance. The science of the state is held not to be an experiential science. It is held that the constitution of every people can be determined according to a certain stereotyped pattern.¹⁴

[ 12 ] But the constitution of a people is nothing else than its individual character brought into well determined forms of law. Whoever would indicate beforehand the direction in which a definite activity of a people has to move must not impose upon this anything from without: he must simply express what lies unconscious in the character of the people. “It is not the intelligent person who controls, but intelligence; not the rational person, but reason,” says Goethe.

[ 13 ] To grasp the folk-individuality as rational is the method in the science of the peoples. Man belongs to a whole whose nature consists in the organization of the reason. Here also we may cite a significant word of Goethe's: “The rational world is to be conceived as a great Immortal Individuality which unceasingly brings to pass what is necessary and thus makes itself master over the fortuitous.” As psychology investigates the nature of the individual, so the science of the peoples must investigate that “immortal individuality.”

• 14. Omitted from the new edition.

[ 1 ] Our view as to the sources of our knowledge cannot be with out influence upon our view in regard to practical conduct. Man behaves according to thought characterizations which lie within him. What he performs is directed according to purposes, goals, which he sets up for himself. But it is obvious that these goals, purposes, ideals, etc., will bear the same character as the rest of man's thought world. Thus a dogmatic science must result in a practical truth essentially unlike that which follows from our theory of knowledge. If the truths to which a person attains in knowledge are determined by objective necessity residing outside of thought, such also will be the ideals which he sets up as the bases of his conduct. In that case a person behaves according to laws in whose establishment he has no part in any real sense: he thinks a norm for himself which is fore-ordained for his behavior from without. But this is the character of a commandment which man has to obey. Dogma as a practical truth is moral commandment.

[ 2 ] The case is entirely different when the theory of knowledge here presented is made basic. This recognizes no other basis for truths than the thought content residing within these. When, therefore, a moral ideal comes into existence, it is the inner power lying in its content which governs our conduct. It is not because an ideal is given to us as a law that we conduct ourselves according to it, but because the ideal, by virtue of its content, is active within us, directs us. The impulse toward conduct lies, not without us, but within us. If we felt ourselves subjected to the commandment of duty, we should be compelled to behave in a definite manner, because it was so ordered. Here shall comes first and afterwards will, which must unite itself to the former. This is not true according to our point of view. The will is sovereign. It performs only what lies as thought-content in the human personality. Man does not receive laws from an external Power; he is his own lawgiver.

[ 3 ] Who, indeed, according to our world view, should give these to him? The World-Fundament has poured itself out completely into the world; it has not drawn back from the world in order to control it from without, but impels it from within; it has not withheld itself from the world. The highest form in which it emerges within the reality of ordinary life is that of thought and, with this, human personality. If, then, the World-Fundament has goals, these are identical with the goals which man sets up for himself as he manifests his own being. Man is not behaving in accordance with the purposes of the Guiding Power of the world when he investigates one or another of His commandments, but when he behaves in accordance with his own insight. For in him the Guiding Power of the world manifests Himself. He does not live as Will somewhere outside of man; He has renounced his own will in order that all might depend upon the will of man. If man is to be enabled to become his own lawgiver, all thought about world-determinations outside of man must be abandoned.

[ 4 ] We take this opportunity to call attention to the very excellent treatment of the subject by Kreyenbühl inPhilosophische Monatsheften(Vol. 18, No. 3). This paper correctly explains how the maxims of our conduct result directly from the determination of our individuality; how everything which is ethically great is not given through the power of the moral law but is performed on the basis of the direct impulse of an individual idea.

[ 5 ] Only from such a point of view is a true human freedom possible. If man does not bear within himself the reason for his conduct, but must guide himself in accordance with commandments, he then acts under a compulsion; he stands under a necessity almost like a mere entity of Nature.

[ 6 ] Our philosophy is, therefore, in the highest sense a philosophy of freedom. It shows first theoretically how every force which controls the world from without must fall away in order to make man his own master, in the best of all senses of that word. When man acts morally, this is not, from our point of view, the fulfillment of duty, but the expression of his wholly free nature. Man acts, not because he ought, but because he wills. This point of view Goethe also had in mind when he said: “Lessing, who was reluctantly conscious of many sorts of limitations, causes one of his characters to say, ‘No one must, must.' A brilliant and happy man said: ‘He who wills must.' A third—to be sure, an educated person—added, ‘He who has insight also wills.'” There is no impulse, therefore, for our conduct save our own insight. The free man acts according to his insight, without the intrusion of any sort of compulsion, according to commands which he gives to himself.

[ 7 ] It is about these truths that the well known Kant-Schiller controversy revolves. Kant took the standpoint of the commandment of duty. He thought it degrading to the moral law to make it dependent upon human subjectivity. According to his view, man acts morally only when he banishes all subjective motives in his conduct and simply bows to the majesty of duty. Schiller saw in this point of view a degradation of human nature. Must this be so evil that its own impulses must be thus completely set aside if it is to be moral! Schiller and Goethe's world-conception can recognize only the point of view we have set forth. The point of departure for human action is to be sought in man himself.

[ 8 ] For this reason, in history also, the subject of which is man, we must not speak of influences upon man's conduct from without, of ideas which reside in the age, etc. Least of all must we speak of a plan constituting the basis of history. History is nothing but the evolution of human action, points of view, etc. Goethe said: “In all ages it is only the individuals that have been effectual for science, not the age. It was the age that put Socrates to death with poison; the age that burned Huss; the ages have always remained alike.” All a priori constructions of plans which are supposed to form the basis of history are contrary to the historical method as this issues from the nature of history. The goal of history is to learn what men contribute for the advancement of their race; to learn what goal this or that personality has set for himself, what direction he has given to his age. History is to be based entirely on human nature. The will, the tendencies of human nature, are to be grasped. Our science of knowledge excludes all possibility that a purpose should be ascribed to history, as if men were educated from a lower stage of perfection to a higher, etc. In the same way it seems fallacious from our point of view when the effort is made (as Herder does in Ideas for a Philosophy of History of Humanity ) to set historical events in due order like facts of Nature, according to the succession of cause and effect. The laws of history are of a far higher sort. One fact in physics is so determined by another that the law stands above the phenomenon. A historical fact, as something ideal, is determined by the ideal. Here one can speak of cause and effect only when one depends wholly upon the external. Who could believe that he is in keeping with the facts when he calls Luther the cause of the Reformation? History is a science of ideas. Its reality consists of ideas. Therefore devotion to the object is the sole correct method. Every step beyond that is unhistorical.

[ 9 ] Psychology, the science of peoples, and history are the leading forms of spiritual, or cultural, science. Their methods, as we have seen, are based upon the direct grasp of the ideal reality. Their subject is the Idea, the spiritual, as that of inorganic science is the natural law and that of organics is the type.

By the Translator

Date of publication of book: 1886

A. Preliminary Questions

1. The Point of Departure. Philosophy alone, the central and unifying branch of knowledge, is uninfluenced by the great “classic age” of German thought—especially by Goethe. Hence, it fails to provide the inner certitude at present so deeply needed. Goethe possessed a profound philosophical sense. Completely centered and many-sided, he employed the appropriate form of cognition for each object of research.

2. Goethe's Science Considered According to the Method of Schiller. The present inquiry will interpret and justify Goethe's mode of cognition as applied to the living world. It will follow Schiller's method in doing this. It will not deal with mere formulae.—The return to Kant will not benefit philosophy, but the understanding of Goethe will.

3. The Function of This Branch of Science. Each of the sciences seeks to discover the relationships among objects in its special field—these being wholly unrelated in the form of pure experience. But there must be one branch of knowledge which seeks to determine the relationship between experience as a whole and the totality of thoughts, between human thoughts and the objects of reality.

B.Experience

4. Definition of the Concept of Experience. Without our participation, except in passive sense-receptivity, the world appears as if from an unknown source. This, in its first form of appearance, we term experience. It includes our feelings, our impulses of will. It includes also our thoughts. This becomes clear upon adequate observation of our thinking. For thinking is contemplation, an activity directed outward, and it would be directed into a void if an inner object of contemplation did not meet it. This object is a thought.

5. Examination of the Content of Experience. Experience is merely a juxtaposition in space and succession in time of single things, wholly unrelated—different in their impressions on the senses but undifferentiated in significance. Our own personality is, at this stage, one item of experience, also unrelated. Thinking alone establishes relationships and significance.

6. Correction of an Erroneous Conception of Experience As a Totality. The opinion that the world of experience is wholly within us, mere subjective “representations” Vorstellungswelt generated through our senses by an unknown source, is very widespread. This opinion certainly does not come from experience itself, for the untutored person never holds it. It could result only from much reflection. Therefore, it is utterly illogical to postulate such a characterization of the nature of experience, and then proceed from this point to inquire into the nature of human knowledge.

7. Reference to the Experience of the Individual Reader. The characterization of experience in 5, above, is not intended dogmatically. It is only a definition of the use of the term, merely directing attention to the nature of the first appearance of reality in consciousness before any concept arises. The best name for this is “appearance for the senses”—meaning both inner and outer senses. If this is the real nature of things, no knowledge whatever is possible beyond the registering of single unrelated sense impressions. But, if it is only the outer shell of reality, and is capable of being penetrated, knowledge is possible.

C. Thought

8. Thinking As a Higher Experience within Experience. Thought—one item of experience—is the key to all others. It differs from all others in that it appears at once in its completeness and its relationships. (For example, the thought of cause brings with it the thought of effect.) The demand of science that we must limit ourselves to experience, but must discover the inner laws within experience, becomes possible only through this one item. The requirement is fulfilled immediately in the case of this item itself, and is fulfilled in all other cases through the application of this item. Goethe practiced this principle to the full. He declared that it is impossible to get outside of Nature; that all higher views of Nature give also only Nature.—We must bear in mind two aspects of the thought world:—1. the content of ideas, law-conforming, complete in itself; 2. my inner activity, prerequisite to their appearance in consciousness. Since we ourselves permeate thought completely, we can rightly use this one item of experience to interpret all experience.

9. Thought and Consciousness. But thought is not subjective. Evidence is this.—1. We combine thoughts wholly according to their content; not at all according to our subjective nature. 2. We do not create the content subjectively; for, if we did, how could anything else than ourselves determine the combinations. What is essential is not the subjective activity prerequisite to the appearance of thoughts, but their objective content. Each personality, working with the one thought content of the world, brings to manifestation in his own consciousness thoughts which are objectively real. As a mechanic brings natural forces into interaction and produces mechanical effects, so a thinker brings thoughts into connection and creates thought combinations—ideas and whole systems.—Thoughts do not merely reflect their essential nature in their manifestations in consciousness while the essential nature is not actually present. Observation of our thinking will show that the real content is present in the manifestation.

10. The Inner Nature of Thought. Our thought realm consists of a multitude of single thoughts all interrelated. A new thought is disturbing until it is interrelated. The fixing of a harmonious relation among all thoughts creates the assurance of truth.—Thoughts are not mere photographs of experience, for the following reasons:—1. If thoughts completely copy the sense world, this world gives us all we need, and thought is superfluous. We have shown that this is not the case. 2. Thoughts do not copy essential characteristics from the sense world; for experience, as we have seen, gives no clue to what qualities are essential. 3. Nor do thoughts select even identical characteristics—without regard to what is essential—since identical characteristics practically never appear in experience.

    If, for the sake of argument, we should assume that thoughts give only a reflection of real content, while this lies beyond our reach, we should have at least indirect access in this way to real content. As to this detail of the question, we need go no further at this stage.

D. Knowledge

11. Thought and Perception. The perceptual aspect of reality, passively received, is permeated by the conceptual aspect, actively apprehended and elaborated. This union constitutes reality. Thinking is the organ for perceiving something above the level of sense-perception.—The self-sufficing harmony of thoughts seems to separate them completely from the world of percepts. But this is not true, since general thought characterizations can be made particular and concrete only by means of percepts.—Experience comes psychologically before thought, but it is really derivative. The process is as follows:—A percept stimulates me to seek for its inner nature. This seeking is really a concept working its way upward from below into consciousness. Then percept and concept unite to form one item in my thought realm. To discover the inner nature of a percept, we must have the corresponding concept already within us, or be able to evolve it from the world of concepts. In the concept we bring to manifestation the content of the empty form of the percept.

12. Intellect and Reason. Thinking is twofold:—I. It forms clearly differentiated concepts; and, 2. it establishes relationships among these. The former capacity is called the intellect; the latter, the reason. In modern science, the intellect is much more common and more highly valued. Intellectual activity is essential, for the creation of sharply differentiated parts, but only as preliminary to the development by the reason of a harmonious whole.—Kant declared all ideas—combinations of related concepts—to be merely subjective, without content, only regulative norms of our own subjective nature. This is false. Reason does strive for unity, but it can establish this only where unity is inherent in the content of the concepts. Where experience cannot function without the use of certain ideas, Kant admitted the validity of these ideas for merely practical purposes. But Kant's explanation of the creation of such ideas is incorrect; they are intuitive.

13. The Act of Cognition. All reality is in two realms; experience and thought. Experience may be considered from two points of view:—1. to what extent it is inherent in the nature of reality that it can manifest itself only as experience; 2. to what extent it is inherent in the nature of our mind, whose form of action is contemplation, that it requires this form of manifestation. From this point of view, we may consider two possibilities:—1. That the experiential form is only transitional, and is to be overcome in reaching the essential nature of the “appearance for the senses.” 2. That the experiential form is identical with the essential nature of what we experience, but that our minds require an effort in order to discover this fact. The second is true of thought; the first is true of all other items of experience.—The two realms of experience and thought must be united through thought activity. Thinking is an organ of perception. As the eye perceives light and the ear perceives sound, so does thinking perceive concepts, ideas. There is one world of ideas, but many minds.—The external is merely the form; the inner is the real nature.

14. Cognition and the Ultimate Foundation of Things. Kant achieved an important step in philosophy in pointing out that man must seek the reasons for certitude in his affirmations in his own spiritual faculties, and not in any truth imposed upon him from without. But Kant did not adequately differentiate the two scientific trends thus indicated.

    Two kinds of judgment are formed by: 1. the union of a percept with a concept; and: 2. the union of two concepts. Example of 2: “No effect without a cause.” If the content of the two concepts, as this is given to me, does not include the reason for their being united, then I can never reach that objective reason, and the real meaning of the assertion is in a world inaccessible to me. Such judgments would then be dogmas—dogmas of revelation. Moreover, those who insist that we must limit ourselves to pure experience, would condemn us to remain likewise ignorant of reality. But the author's view has shown that there is no Fundament of Being lying beyond the reach of thought: that this Fundament of Being has poured itself out in thought. According to this view, every judgment is a union of two elements in our thought, which means two elements of reality. It has shown also that thought must give a knowledge of experience, not as product but as productive—in its productive aspect.

    The real being of things exists only in connection with man. Truth is anthropomorphic. Not only is the world known to us as it appears, but it appears—to thinking contemplation—as it is.

E. The Science of Nature

15. Inorganic Nature. The simplest action in Nature occurs when two factors are external to each other. Example: a rolling stone setting another stone in motion. The whole system of such occurrences constitutes inorganic Nature. This appears first as one form of our experience. Cognition arises here only when we discover causes through our thinking. The process is the elimination of one factor after another until it becomes evident that one or more specific factors are prerequisite to the occurrence. Or it may be simplification: reducing a complex problem to a simpler form till it becomes transparent.

    An occurrence which must result inevitably and directly from observed factors is called a primal phenomenon. Identical with a law of Nature. All natural laws may be stated thus: “If this is present, that must occur.” This mode of thinking is superior to induction, which requires the observation of innumerable instances, and can never be absolutely certain. Scientific progress demands the discovery of primal phenomena. A primal phenomenon is higher experience within experience.—An experiment creates the conditions needed for discovering prerequisite factors. It is a mediator between subject and object in inorganic science.—The mind raises objects in Nature from “appearance for the senses” to appearance for the mind itself.

    A scientific insight gives satisfaction only when it leads to a self-sufficing totality. In inorganic Nature, only the cosmos is such a totality; therefore, the cosmos must be the ultimate goal in this part of science.

16. Organic Nature. Until the nineteenth century, the determinative forces in living entities were supposed to be in the mind of the Creator. Human minds were considered incapable of understanding living things. This was Kant's view. It was opposed by Goethe, who sought to discover the evolution of organs and organisms. Later came a gradual change of view but the fundamental error occurred of applying the methods of the physical sciences to living things. Scientific methods as a whole were falsely identified with methods in one branch of science.

    Environment does not create living entities. The inner forces create; environment can only modify the result of the action of the inner forces.—The essence present in each specialized form is the general which is manifest in the special. This general thus manifest is the type: the primal organism, either plant or animal. It evolves into all the specialized forms. The type corresponds in the living world to the natural law in the inorganic world.

    The activity of thought in this realm must be entirely different. In the inorganic realm, natural law determines the single phenomenon. In the organic realm, the type actually manifests itself in the single entity. Here we must first apprehend the type; then apprehend all potential modifications of the type; and finally trace the actual living form back to one of the potential modifications of the type. This demands intuitive thinking. The mind must acquire the power of perception in the supersensible realm: it must be able to perceive in thinking and think in perceiving. Goethe called this capacity the “perceptive power of thought.”

    Intuition is generally distrusted, but it is the sole mode of cognition applicable to the living world. According to the author's theory of knowledge—which he considers to be the theory implicit in Goethe's mode of scientific work—it is entirely logical to seek to develop this form of knowledge. For, according to this theory of knowledge, all thinking is a direct apprehension of reality. Limits of proof—required in the inorganic realm—do not constitute limits of knowledge.—Intuition means being within truth.

F. The Spiritual, or Cultural Sciences

17. Introduction: Spirit and Nature.Above the level of “organics” are the cultural, or spiritual, sciences. Here, again, the mind must alter its form of activity. In the natural sciences, the human mind completes the world process by bringing to manifestation (in human consciousness) the reality within phenomena, which otherwise would never reach manifestation. The mind interprets Nature to herself. Human knowledge is the conclusion of the work of creation, the final link in the process which constitutes Nature. In the spiritual sciences, the mind deals with spiritual realities already in manifestation,—human actions, thoughts, creations. Here, the human spirit comes to an understanding of itself.

    These sciences, likewise, arise out of a sense of inner need. Their function is to know the spiritual world in order that the human spirit may freely choose and play its own role. Here the idea of freedom is central. In place of the determining law (in inorganic Nature) and the evolving type (in organic Nature), we have the single personality, who determines instead of being determined.

18. Psychological Cognition. The method in psychological cognition is immersion of the mind in the contemplation of its own activity—that is, self-apprehension; but apprehension of the essential self, not of its casual manifestations. We must seek the fundamental human being in each personality. The individual here is not a specialized form of the general, but is the general. In thought applied to objects observed in external reality, man discovers the highest form of content. In contemplating himself, he finds that he is this highest content.

    Modern psychology fails because it applies in its own field the methods of inorganic science, seeking through observed phenomena to infer the activating being within. This central being is given to us in direct experience just as truly as are the phenomenal manifestations.

    But the single personality acts also partly out of the forces of his people. Hence we must add to psychology the science of folk-psychology, the psychology of a whole people.—The scientific study of any people must be based upon the inner nature of this people—the folk-personality.

19. Human Freedom. Human action is determined by human thinking. Hence a personality will act freely or under compulsion according as he knows the reality in his own intuitions or accepts dogmas dictated from without. The World Fundament has poured itself out into the world. Its highest form is manifested in human thought. Thus the Guiding Power of the world lives in human thoughts. Hence man is in harmony with this Guiding Power when he acts according to his own true intuitions. History also is determined by the thoughts of individuals.

20. Optimism and Pessimism. Since man is the central point of the world process, and his thought its highest manifestation, he is self-sufficing. Only he can determine his own happiness or unhappiness. Happiness or unhappiness bestowed upon him from without would negate his nature.

G. Conclusion

21. Scientific Knowledge and Artistic Creation. The Idea is the content of knowledge. It is the product of the activity of the mind. In cognition, man arises from the phenomenal, the product, to the Idea, the creative reality. He strips all unessentials from the manifested form, and apprehends the essential in the Idea. In art, the human spirit imprints the same eternal Idea upon an object of Nature. In doing this, it is necessary to subdue to the eternal Idea all that is casual and unessential in the object used to receive this imprint. Art is a product of the eternal laws of Nature, as Goethe discovered in contemplating the great masterpieces in Italy. In both science and art, the human spirit masters the sensible characteristics and brings to manifestation the innermost reality.

[ 1 ] When Professor Kürschner did me the honor of intrusting to me the task of editing the scientific writings of Goethe for the Deutsche National-Literatur, I was fully aware of the difficulties confronting me in such an undertaking. It would be necessary for me to oppose a point of view which had become almost universally established.

[ 2 ] While the conviction is everywhere gaining ground that Goethe's poetical writings are the basis of our whole culture, even those who go farthest in recognition of his scientific writings see in these nothing more than premonitions of truths which have been fully confirmed in the later progress of science. Because of his genius—so it is held—it was possible for him at a glance to attain to premonitions of natural laws that were later discovered again by strictly scientific methods quite independently of him. What is admitted in the highest degree as regards the other activities of Goethe—that every well informed person must reach a judgment with regard to these—is not admitted as regards his scientific point of view. It is by no means acknowledged that, by familiarizing ourselves with the scientific works of the poet, something may be gained which science does not also afford us apart from him.

[ 3 ] When I was introduced by my beloved teacher, Karl Julius Schröer, to the world-conception of Goethe, my thinking had already taken a direction which made it possible for me to direct my attention, beyond the single discoveries of the poet, to the fundamentals: to the manner in which Goethe blended such a single discovery with the totality of his conception of Nature; the manner in which he made use of this discovery in order to arrive at an insight into the interrelationships of the entities of Nature, or—to use the striking expression he himself employed in the paperAnschauende Urteilskraft ¹—in order to participate mentally in the productions of Nature. I soon recognized that those achievements which contemporary science attributes to Goethe were not the essential thing, while the really significant matter was overlooked. Those single discoveries would really have been made without Goethe's researches; but his lofty conception of Nature will be absent from science so long as this conception is not derived from Goethe himself. It was thus that the direction to be taken by my introductions for the edition was determined. These must show that each single detailed opinion expressed by Goethe is to be derived from the totality of his genius.²

[ 4 ] The principles according to which this must be carried out constitute the subject matter of the present brief treatise. It undertakes to show that what we set forth as Goethe's scientific views is capable of being established upon its own self-sufficing foundation.

[ 5 ] With this, I have said all that seemed to me necessary as a preface to the following discussion, except that I must discharge a pleasing duty—the expression of my most heartfelt thanks to Professor Kürschner, who has lent me his assistance in this composition with the same extraordinary friendliness that he has always shown toward my scientific undertakings.

Rudolf Steiner
The end of April, 1886

• 1. perceptive power of thought.Cf. Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, inKürschners Deutsche National-Literatur,Vol. I, p. 115.
• 2. The manner in which my opinions blend with the totality of Goethe's world-conception is discussed by Schröer in his foreword toKürschners Deutsche National-Literatur,Vol. I, pp. I-XIV. Cf. also his edition ofFaust, Vol. II, 2nd edition, p. VII.