[ { "id": "GA002_pnote", "title": "Publisher's Notes", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_pnote.html", "content": "This volume is a translation of the treatise Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung , published in 1886. This was originally prepared by Rudolf Steiner as a supplement to Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Schriften , as edited by him, with ample introductory and interpretive notes, for Kürschner's collective work Deutsche National-Literatur . The English version is rendered from the second edition, of 1924, and includes the prefatory and supplementary comments of that edition.\nA few comments on the translator's usage may be called for.\nWissenschaft has been translated knowledge, scientific knowledge , or science according to the apparent requirement of the context. Erkennen has generally been translated cognition, but in one or more passages the act of cognition , and, where it seemed necessary, knowledge . Erkenntnis has been translated knowledge , where this seemed adequate, but in one or more instances, for greater exactitude, item of knowledge .\nDenken has seemed to the translator generally no more verbal in character than thought , when this appears in English without the definite or indefinite article. On the other hand, thinking seems at times to suggest rather the effort to apprehend than the achievement of apprehension — the search for right concepts rather than the attainment of right concepts. Hence Denken has most frequently been translated thought, though also rather frequently thinking .\nWahrnehmung is translated either perception or percept , according as the context seemed to require the sense the act of perceiving or the perceived.\nIdea has been printed with initial capital letter in a few instances where the context seemed to emphasize the sense of objective reality in its usage." }, { "id": "GA002_transpref", "title": "Translator's Preface", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_transpref.html", "content": "When Rudolf Steiner, still a student and tutor in Vienna, published this terse little volume just after his twenty-fifth birthday, he concluded an intellectual struggle in which he had been engaged since childhood. He arrived at a solution of the problem: What is the relation between man's inner and his outer world?\nFor him the inner world had always been unmistakably a world of reality, not of mere reflections from without and subjective reactions within. His endeavor had been, not to establish the reality of either the inner or the outer world, but — through intense observation of the outer world and intense contemplation of his own mind in its activity — to discover the interrelationship between the mind and the world. Very early — perhaps, by his fifteenth year — he had rejected Kant's theory of the nature of human knowledge, saying to himself: “That may be true for him, but it is not true for me.” When he was later brought into contact with Goethe, first as poet and then as thinker, he discovered that, in the world of living things, Goethe's mode of contemplative, intuitive cognition was identical with his own; and that, through such a direct channel, Goethe had acquired knowledge essential to the innermost nature of plant, animal, and man. Hence, after editing one volume of Goethe's scientific writings, he paused in that task to build an adequate foundation upon which to base Goethe's mode of intuitive thinking and his own interpretation of Goethe.\nBut he not only solved the central problem with which he had been battling since youth. He also laid foundations deep in the human spirit for all his own creative thinking during the remaining thirty-nine years of his life. The whole wealth of his writings and lectures, dealing with so great a range of themes of deepest human concern, rests solidly upon this foundation. It rests upon this exposition of the reality, the spiritual nature, of human thinking: the truth he had apprehended in inner certitude of experience, and had confirmed under the rigid tests of the intellect, that “becoming aware of the Idea within reality is the true communion of man.” Later writings and lectures which set forth the potential and nascent capacity of the human spirit to rise above the low horizons of our every-day cognitions into a higher and clearer spiritual atmosphere of self-confirming intuitions rests, like everything else he has affirmed, upon the inherent nature of man's cognitive faculties as set forth, explicitly or implicitly, in this first published volume by the still youthful investigator. This compact volume represents a milestone in the history of the human mind, a crucial achievement in the struggle of man to know himself.\nIn essence, the argument is as follows.\nOne constituent of direct experience — thought, which appears before our inner activity of contemplation — is unique in manifesting immediately its essential nature and its interrelationships. It thus becomes the only key to disclose the hidden nature of all other experience.\nThought is not subjective in itself, but only as regards the prerequisite activity of our contemplation. This is evidenced by the clearly observable fact that we combine thoughts solely according to their inherent content. Our contemplation, as an organ of perception, only brings to manifestation in consciousness objectively real elements of the one thought content of the world. Through the intellectual cognition of single elements of this reality — concepts — and the rational combination of inherently related elements into harmonious complexes — ideas — we are capable of knowing gradually expanding aspects of the total reality. This knowledge is real, not a mere phantasm of the subjective mind.\nBut the mode of cognition suited to the inorganic is not suited to the organic. In relation to the inorganic, we possess truth when we grasp the cause of a phenomenon. In relation to the organic, we must apprehend the supersensible type, which manifests itself in the single members of a species of plant or animal. This requires direct, intuitive cognition: the mind must perceive in thinking and think in perceiving. Moreover, when we deal with the human being, we must apprehend the central reality — the ego — manifest as a self-sufficing spiritual being in its uniqueness in each single human personality.\nThrough this mode of intuitive cognition, we may attain to the knowledge that the universal Creative Spirit is in the single human being; that His highest manifestation is in human thought; that man is in harmony with this Guiding Power of the world when he follows freely, as an individual, the guidance of his own intuitions.\nThe heartfelt thanks of the translator are due to several competent specialists who have rendered important service in this difficult task: to Miss Ruth Hofrichter, of Vassar College, who painstakingly scrutinized the manuscript in its first form some years ago, in comparison with the German text, and pointed out a number of deficiencies; to Dr. Hermann Poppelbaum and Dr. Egbert Weber for very helpful detailed criticisms and suggestions.\nO. D. W.\nNew York City July 1940" }, { "id": "GA002_preface", "title": "Preface to the New Edition", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_preface.html", "content": "This study of the theory of knowledge implicit in Goethe's world-conception was written in the middle of the decade 1880–90. My mind was then vitally engaged in two activities of thought. One was directed toward the creative work of Goethe, and strove to formulate the view of life and of the world which revealed itself as the impelling force in this creative work. The completely and purely human seemed to me to be dominant in everything that Goethe gave to the world in creative work, in reflection, and in his life. Nowhere in the modern age did that inner assurance, harmonious completeness, and sense of reality in relation to the world seem to me to be as fully represented as in Goethe. From this thought there necessarily arose the recognition of the fact that the manner, likewise, in which Goethe comported himself in the act of cognition is that which issues out of the very nature of man and of the world.\nIn another direction my thought was vitally absorbed in the philosophical conceptions prevalent at that time regarding the essential nature of knowledge. In these conceptions, knowledge threatened to become sealed up within the being of man himself. The brilliant philosopher Otto Liebmann had asserted that human consciousness cannot pass beyond itself; that it must remain within itself. Whatever exists, as the true reality, beyond that world which consciousness forms within itself — of this it can know nothing. In brilliant writings Otto Liebmann elaborated this thought with respect to the most varied aspects of the realm of human experience. Johannes Volkelt had written his thoughtful books dealing with Kant's theory of knowledge and with Experience and Thought . He saw in the world as given to man only a combination of representations 1 Vorstellungen , single concepts corresponding to single percepts. based upon the relationship of man to a world in itself unknown. He admitted, to be sure, that an inevitability manifests itself in our inner experience of thinking when this lays hold in the realm of representations. When engaged in the activity of thinking, we have the sense, in a manner, of forcing our way through the world of representations into the world of reality. But what is gained thereby? We might for this reason feel justified, during the process of thinking, in forming judgments concerning the world of reality; but in such judgments we remain wholly within man himself; nothing of the nature of the world penetrates therein.\nEduard von Hartmann, whose philosophy had been of great service to me, in spite of the fact that I could not admit its fundamental presuppositions or conclusions, occupied exactly the same point of view in regard to the theory of knowledge set forth exhaustively by Volkelt.\nThere was everywhere manifest the confession that human knowledge arrives at certain barriers beyond which it cannot pass into the realm of genuine reality.\nIn opposition to all this stood in my case the fact, inwardly experienced and known in experience, that human thinking, when it reaches a sufficient depth, lives within the reality of the world as a spiritual reality. I believed that I possessed this knowledge in a form which can exist in consciousness with the same clarity that characterizes mathematical knowledge.\nIn the presence of this knowledge, it is impossible to sustain the opinion that there are such boundaries of cognition as were supposed to be established by the course of reasoning to which I have referred.\nIn reference to all this, I was somewhat inclined toward the theory of evolution then in its flower. In Haeckel this theory had assumed forms in which no consideration whatever could be given to the self-existent being and action of the spiritual. The later and more perfect was supposed to arise in the course of time out of the earlier, the undeveloped. This was evident to me as regards the external reality of the senses, but I was too well aware of the self-existent spiritual, resting upon its own foundation, independent of the sensible, to yield the argument to the external world of the senses. But the problem was how to lay a bridge from this world to the world of the spirit.\nIn the time sequence, as thought out on the basis of the senses, the spiritual in man appears to have evolved out of the antecedent non-spiritual. But the sensible, when rightly conceived, manifests itself everywhere as a revelation of the spiritual. In the light of this true knowledge of the sensible, I saw clearly that “boundaries of knowledge,” as then defined, could be admitted only by one who, when brought into contact with this sensible, deals with it like a man who should look at a printed page and, fixing his attention upon the forms of the letters alone without any idea of reading, should declare that it is impossible to know what lies behind these forms.\nThus my look was guided along the path from sense-observation to the spiritual, which was firmly established in my inner experiential knowledge. Behind the sensible phenomena, I sought, not for a non-spiritual world of atoms, but for the spiritual, which appears to reveal itself within man himself, but which in reality inheres in the objects and processes of the sense-world itself. Because of man's attitude in the act of knowing, it appears as if the thoughts of things were within man, whereas in reality they hold sway within the things themselves. It is necessary for man, in experiencing the apparent, 2 in einem Schein-Erleben to separate thoughts from things; but, in a true experience of knowledge, he restores them again to things.\nThe evolution of the world is thus to be understood in such fashion that the antecedent non-spiritual, out of which the succeeding spirituality of man unfolds, possesses also a spiritual beside itself and outside itself. The later spirit-permeated sensible, amid which man appears, comes to pass by reason of the fact that the spiritual progenitor of man unites with imperfect, non-spiritual forms, and, having transformed these, then appears in sensible forms.\nThis course of thought led me beyond the contemporary theorists of knowledge, even though I fully recognized their acumen and their sense of scientific responsibility. It led me to Goethe.\nI am impelled to look back from the present to my inner struggle at that time. It was no easy matter for me to advance beyond the course of reasoning characterizing contemporary philosophies. But my guiding star was always the self-substantiating recognition of the fact that it is possible for man to behold himself inwardly as spirit, independent of the body and dwelling in a world of spirit.\nPrior to my work dealing with Goethe's scientific writings and before the preparation of this theory of knowledge, I had written a brief paper on atomism, which was never printed. This was conceived in the direction here indicated. I cannot but recall what pleasure I experienced when Friedrich Theodor Vischer, to whom I sent that paper, wrote me some words of approval.\nBut in my Goethe studies it became clear to me that my way of thinking led to a perception of the character of the knowledge which is manifest everywhere in Goethe's creative work and in his attitude toward the world. I perceived that my point of view afforded me a theory of knowledge which was that belonging to Goethe's world-conception.\nDuring the 'eighties of the last century I was invited through the influence of Karl Julius Schröer, my teacher and fatherly friend, to whom I am deeply indebted, to prepare the introductions to Goethe's scientific writings for the Kürschner National-Literatur , and to edit these writings. During the progress of this work, I traced the course of Goethe's intellectual life in all the fields with which he was occupied. It became constantly clearer to me in detail that my own perception placed me within that theory of knowledge belonging to Goethe's world-conception. Thus it was that I wrote this theory of knowledge in the course of the work I have mentioned.\nNow that I again turn my attention to it, it seems to me to be also the foundation and justification, as a theory of knowledge, for all that I have since asserted orally or in print. It speaks of an essential nature of knowledge which opens the way from the sense world to a world of spirit.\nIt may seem strange that this youthful production, written nearly forty years ago, should now be published again, unaltered and expanded only by means of notes. In the manner of its presentation, it bears the marks of a kind of thinking which had entered vitally into the philosophy of that time, forty years ago. Were I writing the book now, I should express many things differently. But the essential nature of knowledge I could not set forth in any different light. Moreover, what I might write now could not convey so truly within itself the germ of the spiritual world-conception for which I stand. In such germinal fashion one can write only at the beginning of one's intellectual life. For this reason, it may be well that this youthful production should again appear in unaltered form. The theories of knowledge existing at the time of its composition have found their sequel in later theories of knowledge. What I have to say in regard to these I have said in my book Die Rätsel der Philosophie . 3 The Riddles of Philosophy — not yet translated into English This also will be issued in a new edition at the same time by the same publishers. That which I outlined many years ago as the theory of knowledge implicit in Goethe's world-conception seems to me just as necessary to be said now as it was forty years ago.\nRudolf Steiner\nThe Goetheanum, Dornach bei Basel, Switzerland, November 1923" }, { "id": "GA002_foreword", "title": "Foreword to the First Edition", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_foreword.html", "content": "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.\nWhile 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.\nWhen 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 paper Anschauende Urteilskraft 1 perceptive power of thought .Cf. Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, in Kürschners Deutsche National-Literatur ,Vol. I, p. 115. — 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 The manner in which my opinions blend with the totality of Goethe's world-conception is discussed by Schröer in his foreword to Kürschners Deutsche National-Literatur , Vol. I, pp. I-XIV. Cf. also his edition of Faust, Vol. II, 2nd edition, p. VII.\nThe 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.\nWith 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.\nRudolf Steiner\nThe end of April, 1886" }, { "id": "GA002_c01", "title": "The Point of Departure", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c01.html", "content": "When we trace any one of the intellectual currents of the present time back to its source, we invariably arrive at one of the great spirits of our “classical age.” Goethe or Schiller, Herder or Lessing gave an impulse; and from this impulse has issued this or that intellectual movement which continues even to-day. Our whole German culture is based so squarely upon the great writers of that epoch that many who consider themselves entirely original achieve nothing more than the expression of what was long ago intimated by Goethe or Schiller. We have entered into such a living union with the world created by them that any one who would turn aside from the track already pointed out by them can scarcely count upon being understood by us. Our way of looking upon life and the world is determined by them to such an extent that no one can arouse our sympathetic interest who does not seek for points of contact with our world as thus determined.\nOnly as regards one branch of our intellectual life must we admit that it has not yet found such a point of contact. It is that branch of knowledge which proceeds beyond the mere assemblage of observed data, beyond the cognizance of single experiences, and seeks to provide a satisfying total view of the world and of life. It is that which is generally called philosophy. For this, our classical period actually seems to be non-existent. It seeks its salvation in an artificial seclusion and aristocratic isolation from all the rest of our intellectual life. This statement cannot be disproved by reference to the fact that a number of older and younger philosophers and scientists have undertaken to interpret Goethe and Schiller. For these have not attained to their scientific standpoints by developing the germs existing in the scientific works of these heroes of the mind. They have arrived at their scientific standpoints apart from the world-conception represented by Goethe and Schiller, and have afterwards compared them with this. And this they have done, not for the purpose of gaining from the scientific opinions of the great thinkers something to serve as a means of guidance for themselves, but rather to test these opinions and see whether they could be maintained in the face of their own course of reasoning. This point we shall later treat more thoroughly. First, however, we should like to point out the effects which this attitude toward the highest stage of evolution in contemporary culture produces in that field of knowledge with which we are concerned.\nA large part of the educated reading public of the present time will at once lay aside unread any literary-scientific work which lays claim to being philosophical. Seldom, if ever, has philosophy enjoyed so little favor as at present. Except for the writings of Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann, who have dealt with problems of life and the world of the most widespread interest and have, therefore, gained a wide circulation, it is not too much to say that philosophical works are at present read only by professional philosophers. Nobody except these persons concerns himself with such writings. The educated man who is not a specialist has the vague feeling: “These writings contain nothing suited to a person of my intellectual needs. What is there discussed does not concern me; it is in no way related to what I require for my mental satisfaction.” This lack of interest in philosophy cannot be due to anything other than the circumstance to which I have referred; for there exists, face to face with this indifference, an ever increasing need for a satisfying conception of the world and of life. The dogmas of religion, which were for a long time an adequate substitute, are more and more losing their convincing power. The need is steadily growing to attain through thought to that which man once owed to faith in revelation — the satisfaction of his spirit. The interest of cultured persons could not, therefore, be lacking if this particular branch of knowledge marched in step with the whole evolution of culture, if its representatives would take up a position with reference to the great questions that move humanity.\nIn this matter we must always keep before our minds the truth that the proper procedure is never that of creating a spiritual need artificially, but quite the contrary: that of discovering the need which exists and satisfying this need. The task of science is not that of propounding questions but that of giving careful attention to these when they are put forth by human nature and by the contemporary stage of evolution, and of answering them. Our modern philosophers set tasks for themselves that are not at all the outflow of that stage of culture whereon we now stand — questions for which no one is seeking answers. Those questions which must be propounded by our culture, because of the position to which our great thinkers have elevated it, are passed over by science. Thus we possess a philosophical knowledge which no one is seeking and suffer from a philosophical need which no one satisfies.\nOur central branch of knowledge, that which ought to solve for us the real world-riddle, must not be an exception in comparison with all other branches of the intellectual life. It must seek for its sources where these have been found by the others. It must not only take cognizance of the great classic thinkers, but also seek in them the germs for its own evolution. The same wind must blow through this as through the rest of our culture. This is a necessity inhering in the very nature of things. To this necessity must we ascribe the fact that modern researchers have undertaken to interpret our classic writers as we have explained above. These interpretations reveal nothing more than a vague feeling that it will not suffice simply to pass over the convictions of those thinkers and proceed with the order of the day. But they prove only that no one has arrived at the point of a further developing of their opinions. This is evidenced by the manner in which the approach is made to Lessing, Herder, Goethe, and Schiller. In spite of all the excellence of many productions of this class, it must be said of almost everything that has been written in regard to the scientific works of Schiller and Goethe that it is not developed organically from Schiller's or Goethe's own views but takes a retrospective relationship to them. Nothing can more strongly substantiate this than the fact that representatives of the most diverse tendencies in science have seen in Goethe the genius who experienced beforehand premonitions of their points of view. Representatives of world-conceptions which possess absolutely nothing in common refer with seemingly equal justification to Goethe, when they feel the need to see their respective points of view recognized at a high point in human history. One can scarcely imagine a sharper contrast than that between the teachings of Hegel and Schopenhauer. The latter calls Hegel a charlatan and his philosophy a meaningless rubbish of words, mere nonsense, barbaric word-combinations. The two men actually have nothing whatever in common except their unlimited admiration for Goethe, and their belief that he acknowledged himself as adhering to their respective views of the world.\nNor is the case different as regards more recent scientific tendencies. Haeckel, who has elaborated Darwinism with the gift of genius and with a logic as inflexible as iron, and whom we must consider by far the most significant follower of the English investigator, sees in Goethe's point of view the anticipation of his own. Another contemporary scientific investigator, A. F. W. Jessen, writes in regard to the theory of Darwin: “The stir which has been created among many specialists in research and many laymen by this theory — often before brought forward and as often disproved by thorough investigation, but now supported by many apparently sound arguments — shows how little, unfortunately, the results of scientific research are known and understood by people.” 1 Cf. Jessen: Botanik, der Gegenwart und Vorzeit , p. 459. In regard to Goethe, the same investigator says that he rose “to comprehensive researches in both inanimate and animate Nature,” 2 Ibid ., p. 343. in that he found through a “thoughtful, deeply penetrating observation of Nature the fundamental law of all plant-formation.” 3 Ibid ., p. 332. Each of these two investigators is able to cite a wearisome number of illustrations to show the harmony existing between his own scientific tendency and the “thoughtful observations of Goethe.” But, if each of these standpoints could justly refer to Goethe's thought, this must cast a dubious light upon the unity of that thinking. The basis of this phenomenon, however, lies in the very fact that neither of these points of view really grows out of Goethe's world-conception, but each has its roots quite outside that conception. The phenomenon arises from the fact that men seek out external agreement as to details, torn out of the totality of Goethe's thought and thus deprived of their meaning, but are not willing to attribute to this totality the inner fitness to serve as the basis for a scientific trend of thought. Goethe's opinions have never been made points of departure for scientific researches but always only material for instituting comparisons. Those who have busied themselves with these opinions have seldom been students surrendering themselves with unprejudiced minds to his ideas, but usually critics sitting in judgment upon him.\nIt is even said that Goethe had far too little scientific sense; that he was all the worse philosopher for being so excellent a poet; that for this reason it would be impossible to find in him the basis for a scientific point of view. This is an utter misconception of Goethe's nature. Goethe was, to be sure, no philosopher in the ordinary sense of the term, but it must not be forgotten that the wonderful harmony of his personality led Schiller to declare: “The poet is the only true human being.” What Schiller here intended by the expression “true human being,” — this Goethe was. No element belonging to the very highest form of the universally human was lacking in his personality. But all these elements united in him to form a totality which is, as such, effectual. Thus it comes about that his opinions regarding Nature rest upon a profound philosophical sense even though this philosophical sense does not enter his consciousness in the form of definite scientific statements. Whoever immerses himself in that totality will be able — provided he brings with him philosophic capacities — to release this philosophic sense and set it forth as Goethe's form of knowledge. But he must take his point of departure from Goethe and not approach him with a ready-made opinion. Goethe's intellectual powers are always effective in the manner requisite to the most rigid philosophy, even though he has not left such a philosophy as a complete system.\nGoethe's view of the world is the most many-sided imaginable. It proceeds from a central point which rests in the unified nature of the poet, and it always brings to the fore that side which corresponds to the nature of the object. The unity of the activity of intellectual forces lies in the nature of Goethe; the temporary form of that activity is determined by the object concerned. Goethe borrowed his manner of observation from the external world instead of obtruding his own upon the world. Now, the thinking of many men is effectual only in one definite way; it serves only for a certain type of objects; it is not unified, as was Goethe's, but only uniform. Let us endeavor to express this more thoroughly: — There are men whose intellects are especially adapted to think out merely mechanical interdependencies and effects; they conceive the entire universe as a mechanism. Others have the impulse to take into consciousness everywhere the secret mystical element of the external world; they become adherents of mysticism. All sorts of errors arise from the fact that such a way of thinking, entirely appropriate to one type of objects, is declared to be universal. This explains the conflict between various world-conceptions. If a thinker holding such a one-sided conception confronts Goethe's view, which is unlimited — because it always takes its manner of observation, not from the mind of the observer, but from the nature of the thing observed — then it may easily be understood that this one-sided thinker lays hold upon that element in Goethe's thought which harmonizes with his own. Goethe's view of the world includes within itself, in just the sense indicated, many tendencies of thought, whereas it cannot in turn be penetrated by any one-sided conception.\nThe philosophical sense, which is an essential element in the organism of the genius of Goethe, is also significant from the point of view of his poetry. Though it was alien to Goethe's mind to set forth in clear conceptual form what was mediated to him by this sense, as was done by Schiller, yet the philosophical sense was an active factor in his artistic creative work as in that of Schiller. Goethe's and Schiller's poetic productions are unthinkable apart from their world-conception, which was the background. In this matter we are concerned more with the actually formulated basic principles in Schiller, but in Goethe rather with the manner in which he looked at things. But the fact that the greatest poets of our nation at the climax of their creative work could not do without that philosophical element proves more than all else that this is a necessary constituent in the history of human evolution. Resting upon Goethe and Schiller will enable us to tear our central science away from its academic isolation and incorporate it into the rest of our cultural evolution. The scientific convictions of our great thinkers of the classic age are bound by a thousand ties to their other endeavors; they are such as were demanded by the cultural epoch which created them." }, { "id": "GA002_c02", "title": "Goethe's Science Considered According to the Method of Schiller", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c02.html", "content": "In the preceding pages we have determined the direction that is to be taken by the following inquiries. They are to constitute a development of that which became manifest in Goethe as a scientific sense; an interpretation of his way of observing the world.\nThe objection may be raised that this is not the way in which to present a point of view scientifically. A scientific opinion must never under any circumstances rest upon authority, but must always rest upon principles. Let us at once discuss this objection. An opinion based upon Goethe's world-conception is not accepted by us as truth simply because it can be deduced from this conception, but because we believe that Goethe's view of the world can be supported by tenable basic principles and can be represented as a self-sustaining view. The fact that we take our point of departure from Goethe shall not prevent us from being just as much concerned to show grounds for the opinions maintained by us as are the exponents of any science which claims to be free from presuppositions. We represent Goethe's view of the world, but we shall confirm this according to the requirements of science.\nThe road that must be taken by such inquiries has already been indicated by Schiller. No one perceived the greatness of Goethe's genius so clearly as did he. In his letters to Goethe he held up before the latter an image of Goethe's own nature; in his letters concerning the aesthetic education of the human race he develops the ideal of the artist as he had recognized this in Goethe; and in his essays on naïve and sentimental poetry he describes the nature of genuine art as he had come to know this in the poetical works of Goethe. This is our justification for designating our discussion as being built upon the foundation of the Goethe-Schiller world-conception. Its purpose is to consider the scientific thought of Goethe according to the method for which Schiller has already provided a model. Goethe's look is directed toward Nature and toward life; and the manner of observation followed by him shall be the subject (the content) of our discussion. Schiller's look is directed toward the mind of Goethe, and the manner of observation which he followed shall be the ideal of our own method.\nIn this manner we believe the scientific endeavors of Goethe and Schiller are made fruitful for the present age.\nAccording to the customary scientific terminology, our work must be conceived as a theory of knowledge. The questions discussed will, indeed, be of a very different sort from those which are now almost always posed by that branch of philosophy. We have seen why this is so. Where similar inquiries appear nowadays, they almost invariably take Kant as their point of departure. It has been altogether overlooked in scientific circles that, beside the science of knowledge set up by the great thinker of Königsberg, there is at least the possibility of another trend of thought in this field, no less capable than that of Kant of dealing profoundly with the facts.\nOtto Liebmann at the beginning of the 'sixties gave expression to the conviction that we must return to Kant if we would attain to a view of the world free of contradictions. This is the reason why we possess to-day a Kant literature almost beyond the possibility of survey. But this road also will fail to afford any assistance to philosophical thinking, which will not again play a role in our cultural life until, instead of returning to Kant, it enters more deeply into the scientific conceptions of Goethe and Schiller.\nAnd now we shall touch upon one of the basic questions of a science of knowledge corresponding to these preliminary remarks." }, { "id": "GA002_c03", "title": "The Function of This Branch of Science", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c03.html", "content": "With regard to all knowledge, that holds true which Goethe expressed so aptly in the words: “Theory is of no use in and of itself save as it causes us to believe in the interrelationship of phenomena.” By means of science, we are always bringing separate facts of experience into relationship. We perceive in inorganic Nature causes and effects separated, and we seek for their connection in the appropriate sciences. In the organic world we become aware of species and genera of organisms, and we endeavor to establish the reciprocal relationships among them. Single cultural epochs of humanity appear before us in history, and we endeavor to learn the inner dependence of one evolutionary stage upon another. Thus every branch of science has to work in some definite field of phenomena in the sense conveyed by the statement quoted above from Goethe.\nEach branch of science has its sphere in which it seeks for the interrelationship among phenomena. But there yet remains a great antithesis in our scientific endeavors: on one side, the ideal world 4 die ideele Welt — the world of ideas gained by the sciences, and, on the other, the objects upon which that world is based. There must be a branch of science which here also clarifies the interrelationships. The ideal and the real world, the antithesis between idea and reality, — these constitute the problem of such a science. These contrasting elements also must be understood in their reciprocal relationships.\nIt is the purpose of the following discussion to seek for these relationships. The facts of science on the one hand and Nature and history on the other are to be brought into relationship. What is the significance of the reflection of the external world in human consciousness? What relationship exists between our thinking about the objects of reality and these objects themselves?" }, { "id": "GA002_c04", "title": "Definition of the Concept of Experience", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c04.html", "content": "Two spheres thus stand over against one another, — our thinking and the objects with which this is occupied. These latter are designated, in so far as they are accessible to our observation, as the content of experience. Whether or not there are other objects of thought outside the field of our observation, and of what sort these may be, we shall for the moment leave undetermined. Our first task shall be to fix sharply the boundaries of the two spheres, experience and thought. We must first have experience before us in determinate outlines and then investigate the nature of thought. Here we enter upon the first task.\nWhat is experience? Every one is conscious of the fact that his thinking is kindled through collision with reality. Objects meet us in space and time; we become aware of an external world of many parts very highly complicated, and we live in a more or less richly elaborated inner world. The first form in which all this meets us is already fixed. We have no share in its coming to pass. It is as if springing forth from an unknown Beyond that reality first offers itself to the grasp of our senses and our minds. At first we can do nothing more than to permit our look to sweep over the multiplicity which meets us.\nThis first activity of ours is the grasp of the senses upon reality. We must grasp firmly what is offered to the senses, for it is only this that we can call pure experience.\nWe feel forthwith the need to penetrate by means of the classifying intellect into the unending multiplicity of forms, forces, colors, tones, etc., which appear to us. We are impelled to explain the mutual interdependencies of all the single entities that come to meet us. When an animal appears in a determinate region, we inquire regarding the influence of the latter upon the life of this animal; if we see that a stone begins to roll, we seek for other occurrences with which this is connected. But what comes about in this fashion is no longer pure experience. It has already a twofold origin — experience and thinking.\nPure experience is that form of reality in which it appears to us when we meet it with the complete exclusion of ourselves.\nIt is to this form of reality that we may apply the words Goethe used in his essay entitled Nature: “We are surrounded and encircled by her. Unbidden and without warning, she takes us up in the round of her dance.”\nAs regards the objects of the external senses, this fact stares us in the face, so that it will scarcely be denied by any one. A body appears at first before us as a complex of forms, colors, sensations of heat and light, which are suddenly there as if they had come forth from a primal source to us quite unknown.\nThe psychological conviction that the sense world, as it lies before us, is in itself nothing but a product of the interaction between our organism and an external world of molecules unknown to us does not contradict our assertion. If it were really true that color, heat, etc., were nothing more than the manner in which our organism is affected by the external world, yet the process which metamorphoses the occurrences of the external world into color, heat, etc., lies entirely beyond our consciousness. Whatever may be the role played in this by our organism, what appears to our thought as the already existent form of reality, not subject to our control — that is, experience — is not the molecular occurrence; it is those colors, tones, etc.\nThe matter is not so clear in the case of our inner life. But adequate consideration will here remove all doubt that our inner states also appear on the horizon of consciousness in the same form as do the things and facts of the external world. A feeling makes its impact upon me as does a sensation of light. The fact that I bring it into nearer relationship with my own personality has no significance from this point of view. We must go still further. Even thought itself appears to us at first as an item of experience. In the very act of examining our thought, we set it over against ourselves, we conceive its first form as coming from an unknown source.\nThis cannot be otherwise. Our thinking, especially when we lay hold upon its form as an individual activity within consciousness, is contemplation — that is, it directs the look outward toward what stands before it. Here it remains at first as activity. It would look into emptiness, into nothing, if something did not exist over against it.\nEverything which is to become an object of our knowledge must adapt itself to this form of setting itself before us. We are incapable of lifting ourselves above this form. If we are to win in thinking a means for deeper penetration into the world, then thought itself must first become experience. We must seek for thought itself as one among the facts of experience.\nOnly thus will our world-conception avoid the loss of inner unity. This would occur at once should we attempt to bring into it an alien element. We stand facing pure experience and seeking within experience for that element which sheds light over itself and over the rest of reality." }, { "id": "GA002_c05", "title": "Examination of the Content of Experience", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c05.html", "content": "Let now fix our attention upon pure experience. In what does this consist when it comes into our consciousness, not elaborated by our thinking? It is merely juxtaposition in space and succession in time; an aggregate of nothing but unrelated single entities. No one of the objects which there come and go has anything to do with any other. At this stage, the facts of which we become aware, and which mingle with our inner life, are absolutely without bearing one upon another.\nThere the world is a multiplicity of things of uniform importance. No thing, no occurrence, can lay claim to any greater function in the fabric of the world than any other constituent in the realm of experience. If it is to become clear to us that this or that fact possesses greater significance than another, we must not merely observe things but arrange them in thought-relationships. The rudimentary organ of an animal, which may not have the least significance in its organic functioning, possesses just as much value for our experience as the most important organ of the animal's body. That distinction between greater and lesser importance does not become apparent to us till we think back over the relationships of the individual constituents; that is, until we work over our experience.\nFor our experience the snail, which belongs to a lower stage in organization, is of equal value with the most highly evolved animal. The distinctions between degrees of perfection in organization become evident to us only when we lay hold conceptually upon the multiplicity given to us in experience, and work it through. From this point of view, likewise, the culture of the Eskimo and that of the educated European are of equal value; Caesar's significance in the history of human evolution appears to mere experience no greater than that of one of his soldiers. In the history of literature, Goethe stands no higher than Gottsched so long as we are considering mere experiential actualities.\nAt this stage of observation, the world appears to our minds as an absolutely flat surface. No part of this surface rises above any other; none reveals to our minds any distinction as compared with others. Only when the spark of thinking strikes this surface do there come to light elevations and depressions; one thing appears more or less lifted above the other, all takes on a certain sort of form, lines run out from one form to another; the whole becomes a self-sufficient harmony.\nThe illustrations we have chosen seem to us to show with sufficient clearness what we mean in speaking of the greater or lesser significance of the objects of perception (here considered as identical with the things of experience): what we mean by that knowledge which first comes into existence when we observe these objects in their interrelationship. These illustrations, we believe, insure us against the objection that the realm of our experience already reveals endless distinctions among its objects before thinking appears on the field: that a red surface, for instance, is different from a green surface even without any activity of thought. That is true. But any one who would bring this argument to bear against us has entirely misconstrued our assertion. This is just what we maintain: that what is presented to us by experience is an endless mass of single entities. These single entities must naturally be different one from another; otherwise they would not appear to us as an endless unrelated multiplicity. We do not refer to an indistinguishableness among the things perceived, but to the absolute want of meaning in the single facts of the senses for the totality of our image of reality. It is just because we recognize this endless qualitative difference that we are driven to the conclusion indicated.\nIf we were met by a unity, well defined, composed of harmoniously ordered constituents, we could not speak of the lack of distinction in significance among the constituents in relation to one another.\nWhoever for such a reason considers the comparison we have used inapplicable must have failed to take hold of it at the real point of similarity. It would certainly be fallacious if we should compare the perceptual world, with its endlessly varied forms, to the uniform monotony of a surface. But our surface was not intended to resemble the manifold world of phenomena, but the unified total image that we have of this world so long as thinking has not come in contact with it. After the action of thought, each single entity in this total image appears, not as it was mediated by mere experience, but with the significance which it bears in relation to the whole of reality. At the same time, each appears with characteristics which were wholly wanting in its experiential form.\nAccording to our conviction, Johannes Volkelt has been remarkably successful in delineating within clear outlines that which we are justified in designating as pure experience. Five years ago [1881] this was strikingly described in his book Kants Erkenntnistheorie ; 5 Johannes Volkelt: Immanuel Kants Erkenntnistheorie (Kant's Theory of Knowledge) , Leipzig, 1879. and in his latest publication, Erfahrung und Denken , 6 Johannes Volkelt: Erfahrung und Denken. Kritische Grundlegung der Erkenntnistheorie (Experience and Thought) , Hamburg and Leipzig, 1886. he has pursued the subject still further. He has done this, to be sure, in support of a point of view fundamentally different from ours and a purpose unlike that of the present book. But this need not hinder us from setting down here his remarkable characterization of pure experience. This description simply shows us the images which pass before our consciousness in a brief period in a manner utterly void of interrelationships. Volkelt says: 7 Kants Erkenntnistheorie , p. 168 f. “For example, my consciousness now has as its content the impression that I have worked diligently to-day; immediately thereto is linked the impression that I can with a clear conscience take a walk; again there suddenly appears the perceptual image of the door opening and the postman entering; the image of the postman soon appears with out-stretched hand, then with mouth opening, then doing the opposite; at the same time there blend with the perceptual content of the opening mouth all sorts of impressions of hearing — among others, that of rain beginning outside. The image of the postman vanishes from my consciousness and the impressions which now enter have as their content, one by one: grasping the scissors, opening the letters, a critical feeling at illegible writing, visual images of the most varied written symbols, and, united with these, manifold imaginative images and thoughts; scarcely is this series at an end when there reappears the impression of having worked diligently and — accompanied by depression — the consciousness of the continuing rain; then both of these vanish from my consciousness and there emerges an impression whose content is that a difficulty supposed to have been overcome in to-day's work has not been overcome; accompanying this there enter the impressions: freedom of will, empirical necessity, responsibility, the value of virtue, incomprehensibility, etc., and these unite with one another in the most varied and complicated ways — and so it continues.”\nHere is described for us, with regard to a certain limited space of time, what we really experience, that form of reality in which thinking has no participation.\nIt need not be supposed that a different result would have been attained if, instead of this every-day experience, we had described what occurs in a piece of scientific research or in an unusual natural phenomenon. In these cases as in that, what passes before consciousness consists of unrelated images. Thinking for the first time institutes interrelationship.\nWe must also attribute to the pamphlet of Dr. Richard Wahle, Gehirn und Bewusstsein 8 Brain and Consciousness (Vienna 1884), the service of having indicated in clear contours that which is given to us by experience void of any element of thought, only we must make the reservation that what Wahle describes as characteristics pertaining without restriction to the phenomena of the outer and the inner world holds good only for the first stage of our observation of the world, that stage which we have described. According to Wahle, we know only a juxtaposition in space and succession in time. There can be, according to him, no talk of a relationship between the things appearing beside one another or after one another. For example, there may be somewhere and somehow an inner relationship between the warm sunbeam and the warming of the stone, but we know nothing of a causal relationship; to us the only thing that is clear is that the second fact comes after the first. There may likewise be somewhere, in a world inaccessible to us, an inner relationship between our brain-mechanism and our mental activity; but we know only that the two are occurrences running in parallel lines; we are not at all justified, for example, in assuming a causal relationship between the two.\nOf course, when Wahle sets forth this assertion as the ultimate truth of science, we must oppose this extension of the assertion; but it is entirely correct as applied to the first form in which we become aware of reality.\nNot only are the things of the outer world and the processes of the inner void of interrelationship at this stage of our knowledge, but even our own personality is an isolated unit in comparison with the rest of the world. We perceive ourselves as one of the numberless percepts without relationship to the objects which surround us." }, { "id": "GA002_c06", "title": "Correction of an Erroneous Conception of Experience As a Totality", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c06.html", "content": "This is the proper point at which to refer to a preconception, persisting since the time of Kant, which has been so absorbed into the very life of certain circles as to pass for an axiom. Whoever should presume to question it would be considered a dilettante, a person not yet advanced beyond the most rudimentary concepts of modern philosophy. I refer to the opinion, held as if it were established a priori, that the whole perceptual world, this endless multiplicity of colors and forms, of tones and degrees of heat, were nothing more than our subjective world of representations, 9 Vorstellungswelt possessing existence only so long as we keep our senses receptive to the influences from a world quite unknown to us. The whole phenomenal world is interpreted on the basis of this opinion, as a representation ( Vorstellung ) inside our individual consciousness; and, on the basis of this hypothesis, are constructed further assertions regarding the nature of cognition. Volkelt also has adopted this opinion and bases upon it his theory of knowledge, a masterly production in its scientific process of development. Yet this is no basic truth, and least of all is it appropriate to form the very culmination of the science of knowledge.\nWe would not be misunderstood. We have no desire to utter a protest — which would certainly be futile — against the contemporary achievements in physiology. But what is wholly justified as physiology is by no means for that reason appropriate to be set up before the very gateway leading to a theory of knowledge. It may pass as an unassailable physiological truth that the complex of sensations and percepts which we call experience first comes into existence through the cooperation of our organism. Yet it remains quite certain that such an item of knowledge as this can result only from much reflection and research. This characterization — that our phenomenal world is, in a physiological sense, of a subjective character — is itself a characterization of that world reached by thinking, and has, therefore, nothing whatever to do with its first manifestation. It presupposes the application of thinking to experience. It must, therefore, be preceded by an inquiry as to the interrelationship between the two factors in the act of cognition.\nIt is supposed that this opinion raises one above the pre-Kantian naïveté, which considered the things in space and in time as constituting reality, as is still done by the “naïve” person who has no scientific training.\nVolkelt makes the assertion: “All acts that call themselves objective cognitions are inseparably bound up with the individual cognizing consciousness; they take their course at first and immediately nowhere else than in the consciousness of the individual; and they are utterly incapable of reaching beyond the sphere of the individual and laying hold of the sphere of the real lying outside, or of entering it.” 10 Cf. Volkelt: Erfahrung und Denken , p. 4.\nBut it is quite impossible for unprejudiced thought to discover what that form of reality which touches us directly (experience) bears within itself that could in any way justify us in designating it as mere representation.\nEven the simple reflection that the “naïve” person observes in things nothing which could lead him to this opinion teaches us that no compelling reason for this assumption exists in things themselves. What does a tree, a table, bear within itself that could lead me to look upon it as a mere mental image? This should not, then, be asserted — least of all as a self-evident truth.\nJust because Volkelt does this, he entangles himself in a contradiction of his fundamental principles. According to our conviction, he could maintain the subjective nature of experience only by being disloyal to the truth recognized by him, that experience consists of nothing but an unrelated chaos of images without any thinkable definition. Otherwise he would have been forced to see that the cognizing subject, the observer, is just as unrelated within the world of experience as is any other object belonging to it. But, if one predicates subjectivity of the world of experience, this is at once a thought-characterization, just as if one looks upon a falling stone as the cause of an impression made in the ground. Yet Volkelt himself will not admit any sort of interrelationships among the things of experience. Here lies the inconsistency in his conception; here he becomes disloyal to the principle he has expressed regarding pure experience. Through this he shuts himself up within his individuality, and is no longer capable of emerging. Indeed, he admits this without reservation. Everything that lies beyond the disconnected images of perception remains for him in uncertainty. Our thinking, to be sure, endeavors according to his view to reach out from this world of mental images and infer an objective reality, but our going out beyond this world cannot lead to really known truths. All knowledge that we win by means of thinking is, according to Volkelt, not protected against doubt. It does not by any means attain to a certitude like that of immediate experience. This alone affords an indubitable knowledge. We have seen how defective is this knowledge.\nBut all this grows out of the fact that Volkelt attributes to sense-reality (experience) a characteristic which can by no means pertain thereto, and on this presupposition bases his further assumptions.\nIt has been necessary to give special attention to this writing of Volkelt's because it is the most important contemporary work in this field, and also for the reason that it may serve as a typical specimen of all endeavors after a theory of knowledge which are in basic opposition to the direction of thinking that we represent, founded upon Goethe's world-conception." }, { "id": "GA002_c07", "title": "Reference to the Experience of the Individual Reader", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c07.html", "content": "We would avoid the fallacy of attributing a characteristic a priori to the immediately given, to the first form in which the outer and the inner world appear to us, and then establishing the validity of our reasoning on the basis of this presupposition. Indeed, by our very definition, experience is that in which thinking has no share. There cannot be any charge, therefore, of an error in thinking at the outset of our discussion.\nIt is just here that the fundamental fallacy arises in many scientific endeavors, especially at the present time. Such scientists imagine that they are reproducing pure experience, whereas they are really reading again concepts which they themselves have interjected into the content of experience. It may be charged that we also have assigned a number of attributes to pure experience. We described it as endless multiplicity, as an aggregate of unrelated units, etc. Are not these also characterizations made by thought? Certainly not in the sense in which we have used them. We have made use of these concepts only to fix the reader's attention upon reality free from thought. We do not desire to attribute these concepts to experience; we employ them only to direct attention to that form of reality which is void of any concept whatever.\nAll scientific inquiries must naturally be conducted by means of language, and language can express nothing except concepts. But there is an essential difference between employing certain words for the purpose of directly attributing this or that characteristic to a thing, on the one hand, and, on the other, employing these words merely to direct the reader's or the hearer's attention to an object. If we may resort to an analogy, we might say: These are two different things, when A says on the one hand to B: “Observe that man in his family circle, and you will form an essentially different opinion of him from that which you form of him in his official behavior;” and, on the other hand, when he says: “That man is an excellent father to his family.” In the first instance the attention of B is attracted in a certain manner; he is advised to form a judgment of a certain person under certain circumstances. In the second instance a certain characteristic is attributed to this person, and therefore an assertion is made. As the first case here compares with the second, so does our initial step in the discussion compare with similar phenomena in literature. Since the exigencies of style or the difficulty of expressing our thought may at times give to the matter a different appearance, we wish to declare expressly at this point that our discussion is to be taken only in the sense here explained and is far removed from any pretension of having advanced any assertion whatever which holds good of things in themselves.\nIf, now, we are to have a name for the first form in which we observe reality, we are convinced that the name most adequately applicable is to be found in the expression “appearance to the senses.” We here understand by the term sense not only the external senses, mediators of the external world, but all bodily and mental organs whatsoever which have to do with our becoming aware of the immediate facts. Indeed, the term inner sense is quite ordinarily used in psychology for the perceptive capacity as to inner experience.\nBy the term appearance, however, we would designate merely a thing perceptible to us or a perceptible occurrence in so far as this appears in space or time.\nHere we must raise still another question, which will bring us to the second factor that we must observe in relation to the science of cognition — that is, thinking.\nMust we regard the form in which experience has hitherto been recognized by us as something rooted in the nature of things? Is it a characteristic of reality?\nMuch depends upon the answer to this question. That is, if this form is an essential characteristic of the things of experience, something which belongs to them by their nature in the truest sense of the word, then it is impossible to see how this stage of knowledge can ever be surmounted. We should simply have to apply ourselves to the task of making unrelated notes of all that we experience, and such an assemblage of notes would constitute our science. For what could all research into the interrelationships of things accomplish if the complete isolatedness characterizing them in the form of experience represented their real nature?\nThe state of the case will be entirely different if in this form of reality we have to do, not with its essential nature, but only with its quite unessential external aspect; if we have before us only a shell of the true nature of the world which conceals that nature from us and requires us to search further for it. In that case, we should have to strive to break through this shell. We should have to proceed from this first form of the world in order to master its true characteristics (those essential to its being). We should have to surmount the “appearance for the senses” in order to unfold out of this a higher form of appearance.\nThe answer to this question is given in the following inquiries." }, { "id": "GA002_c08", "title": "Thinking as a Higher Experience within Experience", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c08.html", "content": "Amid the unrelated chaos of experience — and, indeed, at first as a fact of experience — we find an element that leads us out beyond this unrelated-ness. This element is thought. Thought, as one of the facts of experience, assumes an exceptional position within experience.\nAs regards the rest of experience, so long as I limit myself to that which is immediately present to my senses, I do not advance beyond the separate units. Assume that I have before me a liquid which I bring to a boil. At first it is still; then I observe bubbles rising; the liquid becomes agitated; then all passes over into the form of steam.\nThese are the percepts which follow one another. No matter how I may twist and turn the thing, if I am limited to that which the senses afford me, I discover no interrelationship among these facts. As regards thinking, such is not the case. If, for example, I grasp the thought of cause, this by its own content leads me to the thought of effect. I need only hold fast to the thoughts in that form in which they enter into immediate experience, and they appear as characterizations according to law.\nThat which, as regards the rest of experience, must be brought from elsewhere, if, indeed, it is applicable at all — interrelationship according to law — is present as regards thought in its very first appearance. With respect to the rest of experience, that which enters as an appearance before my consciousness does not at once manifest the whole of reality; but, with respect to thought, the whole thing passes over without residue into what is given to me. In the first case, I must penetrate the shell in order to reach the kernel; in the second, shell and kernel are an indivisible unity. It is only a universally human preconception if thought at first appears to us to be entirely analogous with the rest of experience. In the case of thought, we need only overcome this preconception within ourselves. In the case of the rest of experience, we need to resolve a difficulty inherent in the fact itself.\nThat for which we seek, in the case of the rest of experience, has itself in the case of thinking become immediate experience.\nA difficulty is thereby resolved which could scarcely be resolved in any other way. It is a justifiable demand of science that we should limit ourselves to experience. But it is a no less justifiable demand that we should seek for the inner law of experience. Therefore this “inner” must itself appear at some place in experience. Experience is thus deepened by the help of experience itself. Our theory of knowledge makes the demand for experience in the very highest form; it repels every attempt to introduce something into experience from without. This theory finds even thought-characterizations within experience. The form in which thought enters into manifestation is the same as that of the rest of the world of experience.\nThe principle of experience is generally misunderstood both in its scope and in its true significance. In its baldest form, it is the demand that the objects of reality should be left in the form of their first appearance and only thus treated as objects of knowledge. This is purely a principle of methodology. It says nothing regarding the content of what is experienced. If it should be asserted that only sense-percepts can become the objects of knowledge, as is done by materialism, then it would not be possible to rest upon this principle. Whether the content be sensible or ideal is not decided by this principle. But if, in a certain case, it should be applied in the crassest form, to which we are referring, it certainly makes a presupposition. That is, it demands that objects, as these are experienced, shall already possess a form sufficing the strivings of knowledge. As regards the experience of the external senses, as we have seen, this is not the case. It occurs only in the case of thought.\nOnly in the case of thought can the principle of experience be applied in the most extreme sense.\nThis does not exclude the principle from being extended also to the rest of the world. It possesses other forms besides the most extreme. If, for the purpose of scientific explanation, we cannot leave an object just as it is immediately experienced, yet this explanation can take place in such a way that the means which we employ for this purpose are taken from other spheres of experience. We have then not gone beyond the bounds of “experience in general.”\nA science of knowledge based upon Goethe's world-conception lays its chief emphasis upon the principle of remaining always true to experience. No one has recognized so fully as Goethe the exclusive applicability of this principle. Indeed, he represented that principle just as rigidly as we have demanded above. All higher points of view concerning Nature he would not look upon as anything except experience. They were considered as “higher Nature within Nature.” 10 Cf. Goethe: Dichtung und Wahrheit . XXII. 24 f.\nIn the essay Nature he says that we are incapable of getting outside Nature. If, then, we desire to interpret Nature to ourselves in this sense, which was his, we must find the means within Nature herself.\nBut how would it be possible to base a science of knowledge upon the principle of experience if we did not find anywhere in experience the basic element in all that is scientific — that is, ideal conformity to law? We need merely take hold of this element, as we have seen; we need merely submerge ourselves in it. For it exists in experience.\nNow, does thought really meet us, and become known to our individuality, in such a way that we can with justice claim for it the characteristics emphasized above? Any one who fixes his attention upon this point will discover that an essential difference exists between the form in which an external phenomenon of sense-reality becomes known to us — or, indeed, even some other process of our mental life — and that in which we become aware of our own thought. In the former case we are definitely aware that we are in the presence of an already existent thing: existent, that is, in so far as it has become a phenomenon without our having exerted any determinative influence in its becoming. This is not true of thought. Only for the first moment does thought seem similar to the rest of experience. When we lay hold upon any thought, we know, in spite of the utter immediacy with which it enters our consciousness, that we are inwardly bound up with its manner of coming into existence. When any sudden idea occurs to me, entering my mind quite abruptly, so that its appearance is, therefore, from a certain point of view very much like that of an external event which must first be mediated to me by eye or ear, yet I always know that the field upon which this thought comes to manifestation is my own consciousness; I know that my own activity must first be called upon before the sudden idea can be made to come into existence. In the case of every external object, I am aware that at first it reveals only its outside to my senses; as regards a thought, I know quite certainly that what it exposes to me is its all; that it enters my consciousness as a totality complete in itself. The external stimuli that we must always presuppose in the case of an external object are not present in the case of thought. It is to these stimuli that we must ascribe the fact that sensible phenomena appear to us as something already existent; it is to them that we must ascribe the genesis of these phenomena. As regards a thought, I have the assurance that this genesis is not possible apart from my own activity. I must work through the thought, must re-create its content, must live through it even in its least details, if it is to have any significance for me whatever.\nThus far we have arrived at the following truths. At the first stage of world-contemplation, the whole of reality meets us as an unrelated aggregate; thought is included within this chaos. If we move through this multiplicity, we find in it one constituent which possesses, even in this first form of its appearance, that character which the rest of the multiplicity must afterwards gain. This constituent is thought. That which must be surmounted in the case of the rest of experience — that is, the form of its immediate appearance — is to be retained in the case of thought. This factor of reality which is to be allowed to remain in its original state we find in our consciousness, and we are united with it in such fashion that the activity of our own mind is at the same time the manifestation of this factor. These are one and the same fact seen from two sides. This fact is the thought-content of the world. In the one instance, it appears as an activity of our consciousness; in the other, as the immediate manifestation of a conformity to law, complete within itself, a self-determined ideal content. We shall quickly see which side possesses the greater weight.\nSince, now, we stand inside the thought-content and permeate this in all its ingredients, we are in position really to know its very nature. The manner in which it meets us is a guarantee of the fact that the characteristics which we have attributed to it really belong to it. It can, therefore, certainly serve as the point of departure for every further form of world-contemplation. The essential character of thought can be derived from thought itself; if we would arrive at the essential character of the rest of things, our point of departure in this inquiry must be thinking. Let us at once express the matter more clearly. Since we experience in thinking alone a real conformity to law, an ideal determinateness, therefore the conformity to law of the rest of the world, which we do not experience in this itself, must also lie included within thought. In other words, thought and the appearance for the senses are face to face in experience. The latter, however, gives us no disclosure of its own nature; the former gives us this both as to itself and as to the nature of this appearance for the senses." }, { "id": "GA002_c09", "title": "Thought and Consciousness", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c09.html", "content": "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.\nThis 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 of a and b 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.\nThis 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.\nAnother 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?\nIn 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.\nThis 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.\nWe 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.\nIt 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.\nFrom 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.\nThere 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.\nIt 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.\nWe 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." }, { "id": "GA002_c10", "title": "The Inner Nature of Thought", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c10.html", "content": "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?\nHere 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.\nWe 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.\nThe 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.\nGoethe 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.\nHow 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.\nWhen 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.\nWhen 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.\nSince 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?”\nIt 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.\nThis 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.\nIf it were well founded, one of the following assumptions would necessarily be true.\nThat 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.\nThat 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.\nBut 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.\nThis 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.\nLet 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.\na 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.\nThe 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.\nIn 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." }, { "id": "GA002_c11", "title": "Thought and Perception", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c11.html", "content": "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.\nThe 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.\nIf 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.\nAt 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.\nIt 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.\nIn 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.\nWhat 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.\nThe 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.\nBy means of the perceptual judgment we cognize that a determinate sensible object corresponds by nature with a determinate concept.\nIf, 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.\nThat 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.\nWhen we cause our thinking to become active, only then does reality attain to true characterizations. Previously mute, it now speaks a clear language.\nOur thinking is the interpreter that explains the dumb show of experience.\nMen 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.\nAll 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.\nAll 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." }, { "id": "GA002_c12", "title": "Intellect and Reason", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c12.html", "content": "Thinking has a twofold function to discharge: first, to form concepts with sharply outlined contours; secondly, to unite the single concepts thus formed into a unified whole. In the first instance, we have to do with the activity of differentiation; in the second with that of combination. These two mental tendencies do not by any means enjoy equal favor in the sciences. The number of persons possessing the acumen which differentiates even down to the minutest trifles is noticeably greater than that of persons possessing the combining power of thought which penetrates to the depths of things.\nFor a long time the function of science has been supposed to consist in an adequate differentiation among things. We need only recall the state of natural history in Goethe's day. Through the influence of Linnaeus, it had become the ideal of this science to investigate the differences among individual plants sufficiently to succeed in setting apart new classes and sub-classes on the basis of the most insignificant characteristics. Two species of animals or plants differing only in the most unessential details were forthwith assigned to different classes. If some creature hitherto assigned to a certain class was discovered to show an unexpected divergence from the arbitrarily determined class-character, the result was, not an effort to discover how this divergence might be explained on the basis of that very class-character, but on the contrary a new class was at once set up.\nThis differentiation is the work of the intellect. It has only to divide and to retain the concepts in this process of division. It is a necessary stage preliminary to all higher forms of scientific knowledge. First of all, must we have definitely fixed, sharply outlined concepts before we can seek for a harmony among these. But we must not stop at the stage of division. To the intellect, things are divided which a fundamental human need requires us to see united. To the intellect, cause and effect are divided; mechanism and organism; freedom and necessity; idea and reality; spirit and Nature; etc., etc. All these differentiations are established by the intellect. They must be established, because otherwise the world would appear to us as a blurred, obscure chaos which would form for us no unity except in the sense that it would be utterly indeterminate.\nIntellect itself is not capable of passing beyond this process of division. It holds fast to the divided members.\nThe task of passing beyond this belongs to reason. It must cause the concepts formed by the intellect to pass over into one another. It has to show that what the intellect keeps in strict separation is in reality an inner unity. The division is something artificially introduced, a necessary intervening stage for our knowledge, but not its conclusion. Whoever apprehends reality only intellectually alienates himself therefrom. In place of reality, which is in truth a unity, he sets up an artificial multiplicity, a manifoldness, which has no relation to the essential nature of reality.\nThis is the source of the discord which arises between intellectually pursued knowledge and the human heart. Many persons whose thinking has not so developed as to enable them to reach thereby a unified world-view which they can grasp with complete conceptual clarity are, nevertheless, capable of penetrating through their feeling to the inner harmony of the world as a whole. To these is given by the heart that which the scientifically trained receive from the reason.\nWhen such persons meet the intellectual view of the world, they reject with scorn the endless multiplicity and cling to that unity which they do not know, indeed, but which they sense more or less vividly. They see very well that the intellect is alienated from Nature, that it loses sight of that spiritual bond which units the parts of reality.\nReason leads back to reality. The unity of all being, which had before been felt or only vaguely sensed, is completely fathomed by reason. The intellectual view must be deepened by the view of reason. If the former is looked upon, not merely as an inevitable transitional point, but as an end in itself, it does not yield reality but only a caricature.\nDifficulties at times arise in combining the thoughts formed by the intellect. The history of science affords numerous evidences of this fact. We often see the human mind struggling to reunite the differences created by the intellect.\nIn the reasoned view of the world, man finally arrives at undivided unity.\nKant called attention to the difference between intellect and reason. Reason he defined as the capacity to perceive ideas; whereas intellect is restricted to seeing the world in its dividedness, in the isolated-ness of single parts.\nIt is true that reason is the capacity to perceive ideas. Here we must define the difference between concept and idea, to which we have hitherto paid no attention. For our purpose up to this point it was necessary only to discover those qualities of thought which are present in both concept and idea. The concept is a single thought as grasped by the intellect. If I bring a number of such single thoughts into a living flux so that they pass over into one another, become united, thought-structures thus arise which exist for the reason alone, which cannot be attained by the intellect. The creations of the intellect surrender their isolated existence to the reason, and thenceforth they live only as parts of a totality. These structures formed by the reason we shall call ideas.\nThat the idea reduces to unity a multiplicity of intellectual concepts was stated also by Kant. But he defined those structures which come to manifestation through the reason as mere phantasms, as illusions, eternally reflected before the human mind because man is forever striving to attain a unity of experience which is never given to him. The unities which are formed in ideas do not rest, according to Kant, upon objective relationships; they do not flow from the thing itself, but are mere subjective norms according to which we bring order into our knowledge. Kant, therefore, designated ideas, not as constitutive principles which must be determinative for things, but as regulative principles which have meaning and significance only for the systematics of our knowledge.\nBut, if we observe the manner in which ideas come into existence, this point of view is shown at once to be fallacious. It is true, of course, that the subjective reason has a craving for unity. But this craving is void of content, a mere empty striving toward unity. If reason is confronted by something absolutely lacking such unity of nature, reason cannot produce the unity out of itself. But, if reason is confronted by a multiplicity which admits of being reduced to an inner harmony, then reason brings this to pass. Such a multiplicity is the world of intellectually formed concepts.\nReason does not presuppose a determinate unity, but the empty form of unification; it is the capacity to bring harmony to light when harmony exists in the object itself. Concepts themselves unite in the reason to form ideas. Reason brings the higher unity of the intellectual concepts into evidence, the unity which the intellect possesses, indeed, in its images but lacks the capacity to perceive. The fact that this truth is overlooked is the cause of much misunderstanding as to the application of reason in the branches of scientific knowledge.\nTo a slight extent every science in its very rudiments, and even ordinary thinking, has need of reason. When, in the proposition: “Every body possesses weight,” we unite the subject-concept with the predicate-concept, we have already a union of two concepts and, therefore, the simplest activity of the reason.\nThe unity which reason takes as its object is existent prior to all thinking, prior to all use of the reason; only, it is concealed; it exists merely as a potentiality, not as an actual phenomenon. Then the human mind introduces division in order that we may have a complete view into reality through the reason's unification of the separated members.\nWhoever does not presuppose this must either look upon all thought-combinations as the arbitrary work of the subjective mind, or else assume that the unity exists behind the world we experience, and that it forces us, in a manner unknown to us, to reduce the multiplicity again to unity. In that case, we unite thoughts without any insight into the true reasons of the interrelation which we bring about; in that case, truth is not cognized by us but forced upon us from without. All knowledge which proceeds from this presupposition we may call a dogmatic knowledge. To this we shall later return.\nEvery such scientific point of view will meet with difficulties when called upon to explain why we bring about one or another combination of thoughts. That is, this point of view requires that we seek for subjective reasons for combining objects whose interconnection on objective grounds is concealed from us. Why do I form a judgment when the thing which requires the interconnection of subject-concept and predicate-concept has nothing to do with the forming of this judgment?\nKant took this question as the point of departure for his critical work. At the beginning of his Critique of Pure Reason we find the question, How are synthetic judgments a priori possible? — that is, How is it possible that I unite two concepts (subject and predicate) if the content of the one is not already contained in the other, and if the judgment is not a mere experiential judgment, the fixing of a single fact? Kant considers that such judgments are possible only when experience cannot exist except on the presupposition of their validity. The possibility of experience is, therefore, determinative if such a judgment is to be formed. If I can say to myself that experience is possible only in case this or that synthetic judgment is a priori true, then the judgment possesses validity. But this principle cannot be applied to ideas themselves. According to Kant these never possess that degree of objectivity.\nKant decides that the propositions of mathematics and pure natural science are a priori such valid propositions. He takes, for example, the proposition 7 + 5 = 12. In 7 and 5 the sum 12 is, he concludes, by no means contained. I must go beyond 7 and 5 and call upon my sense of sight, whereupon I find the concept 12. My vision makes it necessary that the proposition 7 + 5 = 12 shall be assumed. But the objects of experience must approach me through the medium of my sense of sight, thus blending themselves with its principles. If experience is to be possible at all, such propositions must be true.\nBefore an objective examination, this whole artificial thought-structure of Kant fails to maintain itself. It is impossible that I have no clue in the subject-concept which directs me to the predicate-concept. For both concepts are attained by my intellect, and that in reference to a thing which in itself constitutes a unit. Let no one be deceived at this point. The mathematical unit which lies at the basis of number is not primary. The primary thing is the magnitude, which is a certain number of repetitions of the unit. I must assume a magnitude when I speak of a unit. The unit is an image created by our intellect which separates it from a totality just as it separates effect from cause, substances from their attributes. When I think 7 + 5, I really hold 12 mathematical units in mind, only not all at once but separated into two parts. If I think the group of mathematical units all at once, this is absolutely the same thing. This identity I express in the proposition 7 + 5 = 12. The same is true of the geometrical examples cited by Kant. A limited straight line with the termini A and B is an indivisible unit. My intellect can form two concepts of this. At one time it may consider the straight line as a direction and at another as the distance between the two points A and B. From this fact comes the judgment: The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.\nAll judgments, in so far as the members which enter into the judgment are concepts, are nothing more than the reunifying of that which the intellect has divided. The interconnection comes to light as soon as one enters into the content of the intellectual concepts." }, { "id": "GA002_c13", "title": "The Act of Cognition", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c13.html", "content": "Reality has divided itself for us into two spheres: the spheres of experience and thought. Experience must be considered from a twofold point of view: — First, in so far as the total reality possesses, apart from our thinking, a form of manifestation which must emerge in the form of experience. Secondly, in so far as it is inherent in the character of our mind (whose essential nature consists in contemplation: that is, in an outwardly directed activity) that the objects to be observed must enter its field of vision: that is, again, must be given to it in the form of experience. It may be that this form of the given does not contain within itself the essential nature of the thing; in which case the thing itself requires that it shall first appear in perception (in experience) only later to reveal its essential nature to an activity of our mind which reaches beyond experience. Another possibility is that the essential nature may be present in the immediately given and that our not becoming forthwith conscious of that essential nature is due to the second circumstance: the requirement of our mind that everything must appear before it as experience. The second possibility is true of thought, the former of all other reality. In the case of thought, it is only necessary to overcome our subjective preconceptions in order to grasp this in its innermost essence. That which, in the case of all other reality, rests upon the actual situation in objective perception — that is, that the immediate form of appearance must be surmounted in order to interpret it — rests in the case of thought only upon a characteristic of our minds. In the former case, it is the thing itself which gives to itself the experiential form; in the latter, it is the organization of our mind. In the one case, we do not possess the whole thing when we lay hold of experience; in the other case, we do possess the whole thing.\nUpon this rests the dualism which must be surmounted by knowledge, which is cognition by means of thinking. Man finds himself confronted by two worlds whose interconnection he must bring about. One is experience, of which he knows that it contains only one half of reality; the other is thought, complete in itself, into which that external experiential reality must flow if there is to result a satisfying world-view. If the world were populated by mere sentient creatures, its essential nature (its ideal content) would remain forever hidden; laws would, of course, control the world processes, but these laws would never become manifest. If this is to occur, there must intervene between the law and the form of manifestation a being to whom is given both the organs requisite to perceive that sensible form of reality dependent upon the laws and also the capacity to perceive the conformity to law itself. From one side the sense-world must come to meet this being and from another side the ideal nature of this world, and he must unite these two factors of reality by means of his own activity.\nHere it is perfectly clear that our mind is not to be conceived as a receptacle for the ideal world, containing the thoughts within itself, but as an organ which perceives the thoughts.\nIt is an organ of apprehension just as are the eye and the ear. Thought is related to our minds just as light is related to the eye, tone to the ear. It does not occur to any one to think of color as something which stamps itself on the eye, remaining there as if it adhered to the eye. But in regard to the mind this is the prevailing conception. It is supposed that a thought of each thing forms itself in the consciousness and there remains, to be drawn forth at need. A peculiar theory has been based upon this view as if those thoughts of which we are at any moment unconscious were really preserved in our minds, but were lying below the threshold of consciousness.\nThese strange opinions dissolve into nothing the moment we reflect that the ideal world is self-determinative. What has this self-determinative content to do with the multiplicity of consciousnesses? It will not be supposed that this content so determines itself in indeterminate multiplicity that one fractional content is always independent of another! The thing is perfectly clear. Thought-content is of such a nature that it simply requires a mental organ for its manifestation, but that the number of beings possessed of such an organ is a matter of indifference. Therefore, an indefinite number of beings endowed with minds may be confronted by the one thought-content. That is, thinking as an organ of apprehension, perceives the thought-content of the world. There is only one single thought-content of the world. Our consciousness is not the capacity to produce thoughts and store them up, as is so generally supposed, but the capacity to perceive thoughts (ideas). Goethe expressed this strikingly in the following words: “The Idea is eternal and single; the fact that we use the plural is unfortunate. All things of which we become aware and of which we can speak are only manifestations of the Idea; we utter concepts, and to that extent the Idea itself is a concept.”\nDwelling in two worlds, the world of the senses and the world of thoughts — the one pressing in from below and the other shining down from above — man makes himself master of knowledge, whereby he unites the two into an undivided unity. From one side, external form beckons to us; from the other side, inner being; we must unite the two into one. Here our theory of knowledge has lifted itself above those points of view generally adopted by similar inquiries, which never get beyond mere formulae. From those points of view it is said that knowledge is the elaboration of experience, without specifying what is elaborated into experience; the matter is defined by saying that in cognition perception flows over into thinking, or else thinking, by virtue of a certain inner compulsion, presses forward from experience to the real entity which is behind experience. But these are the merest formulae. A science of knowledge that seeks to grasp cognition in its world-important role must, first of all, postulate the ideal goal of cognition. This goal is to give a solution to inconclusive experience by revealing its central core. Such a theory must, in the second place, determine what this central core is, considered as to its content. It is thought, Idea. Third, and lastly, it must show how this uncovering of the core is achieved. Our chapter on Thinking and Perception explains this. Our theory of knowledge leads to the positive conclusion that thought is the essential nature of the world, and the individual human thinking is the only phenomenal form of this essential nature. A merely formal theory of knowledge cannot do this, but remains forever barren. It possesses no opinion as to the relationship between that which knowledge attains and the nature and fabric of the world. And yet it is precisely in the theory of knowledge that this relationship must be found. This science must show us where we arrive by way of cognition; to what point every other form of knowledge leads us.\nNot otherwise than by way of a theory of knowledge does one attain to the view that thought is the central core of the world. For this science shows us the connection between thought and the rest of reality. But through what other means shall we learn in reference to thought what its relation to experience is unless it be through that science which takes as the very object of its inquiry just this relationship? Furthermore, how should we ever know in regard to a certain spiritual or sensible entity that it is the very primal force of the world if we do not investigate its relationship to reality? If, therefore, we have to do in any manner whatever with an inquiry as to the essential nature of a thing, this discovery will always consist in a return to the ideal content of the world. The sphere of this content must not be transgressed if we mean to remain within clear characterizations and do not wish to grope around in the indeterminate. Thought is a totality within itself, sufficient unto itself, which cannot pass beyond itself without entering a void. In other words, it must not, in an endeavor to explain anything whatever, have recourse to things which are not to be found within itself. A thing which could not be comprised within thought would be a no-thing. All finally resolves itself into thought; all at last finds its place within thought.\nExpressed in reference to our individual consciousness, this means that, in order to establish anything scientifically, we must limit ourselves rigidly to what is given to us in consciousness; beyond this we cannot go. When any one perceives clearly that we cannot leap over our own consciousness without finding ourselves in the unreal, but does not at the same time perceive that the essential nature of things is to be met within our consciousness in the act of perceiving Ideas, he then falls into the fallacy of talking about limitations of human knowledge. If we cannot get beyond our consciousness, and if the essential nature of reality is not within consciousness, then we can never force our way through to that reality in its true nature.\nOur thought is bound to the hither side and knows nothing of a yonder side.\nBut, according to our point of view, this opinion is nothing more than a thinking which misunderstands itself. A limitation of knowledge would be possible only if external experience in itself forced upon us the inquiry into its own nature, only if it determined the question which must be posed in its presence. But such is not the case. In thought itself arises the need to match with experience, as it perceives this, the essential nature of what is experienced. Thinking can have only the most definite tendency to see in the rest of the world its own conformity to law, but never anything of which it has not the least information.\nAnother fallacy must also be corrected at this point. It is that which considers thought not sufficient in itself to constitute the world; as if something else (force, will, etc.) must supervene in order to render the world possible.\nAs soon, however, as we reflect sufficiently, we see that all such factors really amount to nothing more than abstractions drawn from the perceptual world, and must themselves await interpretation by thought. Every component of the World-Being other than thought would require a form of apprehension, of cognition, other than that through thought. These other components we should have to reach otherwise than by means of thought. For thinking yields only thoughts. But, as soon as we endeavor to explain the part played in the fabric of the world by these other components, and resort to concepts for this explanation, we fall into self-contradiction. Moreover, there is no third part given to us in addition to sense-perception and thought. And we cannot consider any part of the former as the core of the world, since a closer inspection of all its constituents shows that, as such, they do not contain its own essential nature. This can be found nowhere save in thought." }, { "id": "GA002_c14", "title": "Cognition and the Ultimate Foundation of Things", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c14.html", "content": "Kant took a great step forward in philosophy in that he directed man's attention to himself. He must seek the reasons for certitude regarding his affirmations in that which is given to him as the capacities of his own mind, and not in truths forced upon him from without. Scientific conviction only through oneself, — that is the slogan of the Kantian philosophy. It is for this reason especially that he called it a critical and not dogmatic philosophy, such as maintains ready-made postulates as handed down and seeks afterwards for the proofs of these. Here appears a contradiction between two scientific trends; but this was not thought out by Kant with that distinctness to which it lends itself.\nLet us fix clearly in mind how a scientific postulate comes into existence. It unites two things — either a concept and a percept or two concepts. Of the latter sort, for example, is the postulate: No effect without a cause. It may be that the objective reasons why the two concepts flow together lie beyond that which these contain in themselves, and which alone, therefore, is given to me. I may then have all sorts of formal reasons (freedom from contradiction, fixed axioms) which lead me to a definite combining of thoughts. But these reasons have no influence upon the thing itself. The postulate rests upon something which I can never reach in an objective manner. Therefore, I can never have a real insight into the thing; I know about it only as one standing outside it. According to this view, that which the postulate expresses is in a world unknown to me; the postulate alone is in my own world. This is the character of dogma. There are two sorts of dogma: the dogma of revelation and that of experience. The former hands down to man, in some way or other, truths about things which are beyond the reach of his vision. He possesses no insight into the world from which these postulates spring. He must simply believe in their verity, and cannot get access to the reasons for this belief. The case is quite similar with dogmas of experience. If any one holds the opinion that we should simply limit ourselves to pure experience and can merely observe its transmutations without penetrating to the causative forces, he is applying to the world postulates whose reasons are inaccessible to him. Here also truth is not attained by insight into the inner agency of the thing, but it is imposed by what is exterior to the thing itself. If earlier science was dominated by the dogmas of revelation, contemporary science is suffering from the dogmas of experience.\nOur study has shown us that any assumption of a fundamental source of Being which exists outside the Idea is nonsense. The total fundamental essence of Being has poured itself out in the world; it has passed over into the world. In thought, it is manifest in its most complete form, just as it is, in and of itself. If, then, thinking forms a combination, if a judgment occurs, it is the content of the World-Fundament itself, poured out into thought, which is thus united. In thought, postulates are not given to us about a yonder-side World-Fundament, but this in its very substance has flowed into thought. We have a direct insight into the objective, not merely the formal, grounds for the formation of a judgment. The judgment reaches a characterization, not about something alien, but about its own content. Therefore, our view lays foundations for a true knowledge. Our theory of knowledge is really critical. According to our view, not only need nothing be conceded to revelation for which thought itself does not contain objective reasons, but also experience must be cognized within thought, not only on the side of its manifestation, but also as causative. By means of our thinking, we lift ourselves from perceiving reality as product to perceiving it as that which produces.\nThe essential nature of a thing thus comes to light only when the thing is brought into relation with man. For only in man does the real Being appear for each thing. This truth lays the foundation for a relativism as a world view — that is, the trend of thought which assumes that we see all things in the light which is lent to them by man himself. This point of view bears the name Anthropomorphism. It has many exponents. Most of these, however, believe that this peculiarity of our cognition alienates us from objectivity as it is in and of itself. We perceive all, so they think, through the spectacles of subjectivity. Our conception shows us the exact opposite of this. If we would reach the essential nature of things, we must view them through these spectacles. The world is not merely known to us as it appears, but it appears as it is, although only to thinking contemplation. The form of reality which man delineates in his knowledge is its final true form.\nAnd now we have still to extend to the individual fields of reality that form of cognition which we have come to recognize as the right form — as leading to reality in its true nature. We shall now show how the real nature of experience is to be found in its individual forms." }, { "id": "GA002_c15", "title": "Inorganic Nature", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c15.html", "content": "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.\nHere 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.\nWhat 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.\nIn 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.\nWe 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.\nWe 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\nsignificance 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.\nWe 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.\nFrom 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.) 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.\nAnother example is the following. I throw a stone in a\nhorizontal 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.\nUpon 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.\nIn 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.\nIf, 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.\nNow, 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.\nThis 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.\nWe 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.\nOur 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.\nEvery 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.\nAll 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.\nWe 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.\nThe 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.\nThe 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 Experiment as Mediator between Subject and Object . the theory given above will be found to be the logical conclusion to be drawn from them.\nThus 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.\nScientific 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.\nA 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." }, { "id": "GA002_c16", "title": "Organic Nature", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c16.html", "content": "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.\nIn 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.\nAt 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.\nAgainst 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.\nNot 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.\nFirst 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.\nBut 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.\nAll 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.\nBut 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.\nThat 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.\nWhen 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.\nBut 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. 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. 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. This general organism we shall call, after the precedent of Goethe, the type. Whatever may be the meaning of the word type according 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. A mode of thinking in which the formal and the contentual appear in direct connection has always been called intuitive. 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. 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 See footnote, p. 119. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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). 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. ˂˂ Previous Table of Contents Next ˃˃\nBefore 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.\nBut 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.\nThis general organism we shall call, after the precedent of Goethe, the type. Whatever may be the meaning of the word type according 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.\nUnder 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.\nThe 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.\nFriedrich 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.\nThe 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.\nWe 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.\nBut 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.\nThat 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.\nTherefore, 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.\nJust 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.\nAs 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.\nHere 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.\nBut 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.\nAn 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.\nThrough 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.\nThe 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.\nA mode of thinking in which the formal and the contentual appear in direct connection has always been called intuitive.\nIntuition 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.\nBut, 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 See footnote, p. 119. 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.\nAs 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.\nIntuition 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.\nSo 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.\nFor 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.\nThe 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.\nIt 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.\nOur 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.\nEvery 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.\nThe 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).\nSpectral 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." }, { "id": "GA002_c17", "title": "Introduction: Spirit and Nature", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c17.html", "content": "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.\nNot 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.\nHere 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.\nThe 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 Volkskunde and the science of history have to achieve.\nThis 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.\nTherefore, 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.\nThe 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.\nThe 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.\nThat 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.\nIt 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." }, { "id": "GA002_c18", "title": "Psychological Cognition", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c18.html", "content": "The first science in which the human spirit deals with itself is psychology. The mind here stands observing itself.\nFichte 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.\nIt 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.\nIndeed, 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.\nHere 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.\nFrom 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. 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.\nThe 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.\nBut 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. 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.\nThe 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 Omitted from the new edition.\nBut 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.\nTo 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.”" }, { "id": "GA002_c19", "title": "Human Freedom", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c19.html", "content": "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.\nThe 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.\nWho, 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.\nWe take this opportunity to call attention to the very excellent treatment of the subject by Kreyenbühl in Philosophische 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.\nOnly 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.\nOur 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.\nIt 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.\nFor 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.\nPsychology, 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." }, { "id": "GA002_c20", "title": "Optimism and Pessimism", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c20.html", "content": "We have seen that man is the central point of the world-order. As spirit, he attains to the highest form of existence, and in thought he achieves the most highly perfected world process. Things really are only as they are illuminated by him. This is a point of view according to which man possesses within himself the basis, the goal, and the central essence of his own existence. It makes man a self-sufficing being. He must find within himself the support for everything that pertains to him — even, therefore, for his happiness. If this is to come to him, he must owe it to himself alone. Any Power that bestows it upon him from without condemns him thereby to bondage. Nothing can bestow satisfaction upon a human being except that to which he himself has first given this capacity. If anything is to constitute a happiness for us, we ourselves must first provide the power through which this can occur. Pleasure and displeasure are present for a human being, in the higher sense, only in so far as he himself experiences these as such. Hence all optimism and all pessimism fall to the ground. The former assumes that the world is of such a character that everything in it is good, that it leads man to the highest happiness. But, if this is to be true, he himself must first win from the objects in the world something for which he longs: that is, he cannot be happy by means of the world, but only through himself.\nPessimism, on the other hand, thinks the ordering of the world is such that it leaves man forever unhappy, that he can never be happy. The objection mentioned above naturally applies also here. The external world is, in itself, neither good nor evil; it becomes the one or the other only through man. Man would first have to make himself unhappy, if pessimism were to have any basis. He would have to bear within him a craving after unhappiness. But the satisfaction of this longing gives a basis for his happiness. Pessimism would have to assume, consistently, that man sees his happiness in unhappiness. But here such a point of view would end in a nullity. These single objections show clearly enough the fallacy of pessimism." }, { "id": "GA002_c21", "title": "Scientific Knowledge and Artistic Creation", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c21.html", "content": "Our theory of knowledge has rid cognition of the merely passive character often associated with it, and has conceived it as an activity of the human spirit. It is generally supposed that the content of knowledge is received from without; indeed, it is supposed that we preserve the objectivity of knowledge in proportion as we refrain from adding anything of our own to the material taken hold of. Our discussion has shown that the true content of knowledge is never the material of which we become aware but the Idea conceived in the mind, which leads us more deeply into the fabric of the world than does any analysis and observation of the external world as mere experience. The Idea is the content of knowledge. In contrast with the percept passively received, knowledge is thus the product of the activity of the human mind.\nWe have hereby brought into close proximity cognition and artistic creation, which is also a product of the activity of man. But we have at the same time introduced the necessity of clarifying the mutual relationship of the two.\nThe activity of cognition, as well as that of art, requires that man elevate himself from reality as product to reality as the producing; that he ascend from the created to creation; from chance to necessity. While the outer reality always shows us only a product of creative Nature, we elevate ourselves in the spirit to the unity of Nature, which now appears to us as that which creates. Every object of reality represents to us one of the innumerable possibilities lying hidden in the creative bosom of Nature. Our mind rises to the vision of that fountain-head in which all these potentialities are contained. Science and art are only the objects upon which man stamps what this vision offers to him. In science this occurs only in the form of the Idea: that is, in the directly mental, or spiritual, medium. In art it occurs in objects sensibly or mentally perceptible. In science, Nature, as “that which includes every single,” appears purely as Idea; in art, an object of the external world appears as a representative of the all-inclusive. The infinite, which science seeks in the finite and endeavors to represent in Idea, is stamped by art upon a material taken from the world of existence. What appears in science as the Idea is in art the image. The same infinite is the object both of science and of art, except that its appearance here is different from its appearance there. The manner of representation is different. Goethe criticized the practice of speaking of the idea of the beautiful as if the beautiful were anything else than the sensible reflection of the Idea.\nHere one sees how the true artist must create out of the fountain-head of all existence; how he stamps upon his works the inevitable which, in science, we seek in the form of Ideas in Nature and in the mind. Science discovers in Nature her conformity to law; art does no less, except that it imprints this upon crude matter. An artistic product is no less a part of Nature than is a natural product, except that natural law has been poured into the former as it manifests itself to the human mind. The great works of art that Goethe saw in Italy appeared to him as direct expressions of the inevitable perceived by man in Nature. To Goethe, therefore, art also is a manifestation of secret laws of Nature.\nIn a work of art everything depends upon the degree to which an artist has implanted the Idea in matter. Not what he handles, but how he handles it, is the important point. If in science the substance externally perceived has to be completely submerged so that only its essential nature — the Idea — remains, in artistic production this substance must remain except that its peculiarities, its non-essentials, must be completely subdued by the artistic treatment. The object must be lifted completely above the sphere of the accidental and transferred into that of the inevitable. In artistic beauty nothing must be left upon which the artist has not impressed his own spirit. The what must be surmounted by the how.\nThe surmounting of the sensible by the spirit is the goal of art and of science. The latter surmounts the sensible through resolving it wholly into spirit; the former through implanting the spirit in it. Science sees the Idea through the sensible; art sees the Idea in the sensible. A sentence of Goethe's which expresses these truths in a comprehensive way may serve to bring our reflections to a close: “I think science might be called the knowledge of the general, abstract knowledge; art, on the other hand, would be science applied in an action; science would be reason and art its mechanism, so that it might also be called practical science. Finally, therefore, science would be the theorem and art the problem.”" }, { "id": "GA002_exposition", "title": "Exposition in Brief", "book_title": "THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING", "date": "September 1925", "city": "Dornach", "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_exposition.html", "content": "By the Translator\nDate of publication of book: 1886\nThe 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.\nGoethe'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.\nThe 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.\nDefinition 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.\nExamination 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.\nCorrection 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.\nReference 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.\nThinking 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.\nThought 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.\nThe 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.\nIf, 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.\nThought 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.\nIntellect 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.\nThe 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.\nCognition 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.\nTwo 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.\nThe 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.\nInorganic 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.\nAn 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.\nA 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.\nOrganic 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.\nEnvironment 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.\nThe 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.”\nIntuition 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.\nIntroduction: 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.\nThese 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.\nPsychological 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.\nModern 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.\nBut 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.\nHuman 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.\nOptimism 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.\nScientific 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." } ]