In the preceding discussion I have pointed out the importance of the
difference between thinking and all other activities of mind. This
difference is a fact which is patent to genuinely unprejudiced
observation. An observer who does not try to see the facts without
preconception will be tempted to bring against my argumentation such
objections as these: When I think about a rose, there is involved
nothing more than a relation of my "I" to the rose, just as when I
feel the beauty of the rose. There subsists a relation between "I"
and object in thinking precisely as there does, e.g., in feeling
or perceiving. Those who urge this objection fail to bear in mind
that it is only in the activity of thinking that the "I," or Ego,
knows itself to be identical, right into all the ramifications of the
activity, with that which does the thinking. Of no other activity of
mind can we say the same. For example, in a feeling of pleasure it is
easy for a really careful observer to discriminate between the extent
to which the Ego knows itself to be identical with what is active in
the feeling, and the extent to which there is something passive in
the Ego, so that the pleasure is merely something which happens to
the Ego. The same applies to the other mental activities. The main
thing is not to confuse the "having of images" with the elaboration
of ideas by thinking. Images may appear in the mind dream-wise,
like vague intimations. But this is not thinking. True, someone
might now urge: If this is what you mean by "thinking," then your
thinking contains willing, and you have to do, not with mere thinking,
but with the will to think. However, this would justify us only in
saying: Genuine thinking must always be willed thinking. But this
is quite irrelevant to the characterisation of thinking as this has
been given in the preceding discussion. Let it be granted that the
nature of thinking necessarily implies its being willed, the point
which matters is that nothing is willed which, in being carried out,
fails to appear to the Ego as an activity completely its own and
under its own supervision. Indeed, we must say that thinking appears
to the observer as through and through willed, precisely because of
its nature as above defined. If we genuinely try to master all the
facts which are relevant to a judgment about the nature of thinking,
we cannot fail to observe that, as a mental activity, thinking has
the unique character which is here in question.
A reader of whose powers the author of this book has a very high
opinion, has objected that it is impossible to speak about thinking
as we are here doing, because the supposed observation of active
thinking is nothing but an illusion. In reality, what is observed is
only the results of an unconscious activity which lies at the basis
of thinking. It is only because, and just because, this unconscious
activity escapes observation, that the deceptive appearance of
the self-existence of the observed thinking arises, just as when
an illumination by means of a rapid succession of electric sparks
makes us believe that we see a movement. This objection, likewise,
rests solely on an inaccurate view of the facts. The objection ignores
that it is the Ego itself which, identical with the thinking, observes
from within its own activity. The Ego would have to stand outside the
thinking in order to suffer the sort of deception which is caused
by an illumination with a rapid succession of electric sparks. One
might say rather that to indulge in such an analogy is to deceive
oneself wilfully, just as if someone, seeing a moving light, were
obstinately to affirm that it is being freshly lit by an unknown
hand at every point where it appears. No, whoever is bent on seeing
in thought anything else than an activity produced--and observable
by--the Ego has first to shut his eyes to the plain facts that are
there for the looking, in order then to invent a hypothetical activity
as the basis of thinking. If he does not wilfully blind himself, he
must recognise that all these "hypothetical additions" to thinking
take him away from its real nature. Unprejudiced observation shows
that nothing is to be counted as belonging to the nature of thinking
except what is found in thinking itself. It is impossible to discover
the cause of thinking by going outside the realm of thought.