From the foregoing considerations it follows that it is impossible
to prove, by analysis of the content of our perceptions, that our
percepts are ideas. This is supposed to be proved by showing that, if
the process of perceiving takes place in the way in which we conceive
it in accordance with the naïve-realistic assumptions concerning the
psychological and physiological constitution of human individuals,
then we have to do, not with things themselves, but merely with our
ideas of things. Now, if Naïve Realism, when consistently thought
out, leads to results which directly contradict its presuppositions,
then these presuppositions must be discarded as unsuitable for the
foundation of a theory of the world. In any case, it is inadmissible
to reject the presuppositions and yet accept the consequences, as the
Critical Idealist does who bases his assertion that the world is my
idea on the line of argument indicated above. (Eduard von Hartmann
gives in his work Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie a full
account of this line of argument.)
The truth of Critical Idealism is one thing, the persuasiveness
of its proofs another. How it stands with the former, will appear
later in the course of our argument, but the persuasiveness of its
proofs is nil. If one builds a house, and the ground floor collapses
whilst the first floor is being built, then the first floor collapses
too. Naïve Realism and Critical Idealism are related to one another
like the ground floor to the first floor in this simile.
For one who holds that the whole perceptual world is only an ideal
world, and, moreover, the effect of things unknown to him acting
on his soul, the real problem of knowledge is naturally concerned,
not with the ideas present only in the soul, but with the things
which lie outside his consciousness, and which are independent of
him. He asks, How much can we learn about them indirectly, seeing
that we cannot observe them directly? From this point of view, he
is concerned, not with the connection of his conscious percepts with
one another, but with their causes which transcend his consciousness
and exist independently of him, whereas the percepts, on his view,
disappear as soon as he turns his sense-organs away from the things
themselves. Our consciousness, on this view, works like a mirror
from which the pictures of definite things disappear the very moment
its reflecting surface is not turned towards them. If, now, we do
not see the things themselves, but only their reflections, we must
obtain knowledge of the nature of the former indirectly by drawing
conclusions from the character of the latter. The whole of modern
science adopts this point of view, when it uses percepts only as
a means of obtaining information about the motions of matter which
lie behind them, and which alone really "are." If the philosopher,
as Critical Idealist, admits real existence at all, then his sole
aim is to gain knowledge of this real existence indirectly by means
of his ideas. His interest ignores the subjective world of ideas,
and pursues instead the causes of these ideas.
The Critical Idealist can, however, go even further and say, I
am confined to the world of my own ideas and cannot escape from
it. If I conceive a thing beyond my ideas, this concept, once more,
is nothing but my idea. An Idealist of this type will either deny
the thing-in-itself entirely or, at any rate, assert that it has no
significance for human minds, i.e., that it is as good as non-existent
since we can know nothing of it.
To this kind of Critical Idealist the whole world seems a chaotic
dream, in the face of which all striving for knowledge is simply
meaningless. For him there can be only two sorts of men: (1) victims
of the illusion that the dreams they have woven themselves are real
things, and (2) wise men who see through the nothingness of this
dream world, and who gradually lose all desire to trouble themselves
further about it. From this point of view, even one's own personality
may become a mere dream phantom. Just as during sleep there appears
among my dream-images an image of myself, so in waking consciousness
the idea of my own Self is added to the idea of the outer world. I have
then given to me in consciousness, not my real Self, but only my idea
of my Self. Whoever denies that things exist, or, at least, that we
can know anything of them, must also deny the existence, respectively
the knowledge, of one's own personality. This is how the Critical
Idealist comes to maintain that "All reality transforms itself into
a wonderful dream, without a life which is the object of the dream,
and without a mind which has the dream; into a dream which is nothing
but a dream of itself." (Cp. Fichte, Die Bestimmung des Menschen.)
Whether he who believes that he recognises immediate experience to
be a dream, postulates nothing behind this dream, or whether he
relates his ideas to actual things, is immaterial. In both cases
life itself must lose all scientific interest for him. However,
whereas for those who believe that the whole of accessible reality
is exhausted in dreams, all science is an absurdity, for those who
feel compelled to argue from ideas to things, science consists in
studying these things-in-themselves. The first of these theories of
the world may be called Absolute Illusionism, the second is called
Transcendental Realism [2] by its most rigorously logical exponent,
Eduard von Hartmann.
These two points of view have this in common with Naïve Realism, that
they seek to gain a footing in the world by means of an analysis of
percepts. Within this sphere, however, they are unable to find any
stable point.
One of the most important questions for an adherent of Transcendental
Realism would have to be, how the Ego constructs the world of ideas
out of itself. A world of ideas which was given to us, and which
disappeared as soon as we shut our senses to the external world, might
provoke an earnest desire for knowledge, in so far as it was a means
for investigating indirectly the world of the self-existing Self. If
the things of our experience were "ideas," then our everyday life would
be like a dream, and the discovery of the true facts like waking. Even
our dream-images interest us as long as we dream and, consequently,
do not detect their dream character. But as soon as we wake, we no
longer look for the connections of our dream-images among themselves,
but rather for the physical, physiological, and psychological processes
which underlie them. In the same way, a philosopher who holds the world
to be his idea, cannot be interested in the reciprocal relations of the
details within the world. If he admits the existence of a real Ego at
all, then his question will be, not how one of his ideas is associated
with another, but what takes place in the Soul which is independent
of these ideas, while a certain train of ideas passes through his
consciousness. If I dream that I am drinking wine which makes my
throat burn, and then wake up with a fit of coughing (cp. Weygandt,
Entstehung der Träume, 1893) I cease, the moment I wake, to be
interested in the dream-experience for its own sake. My attention is
now concerned only with the physiological and psychological processes
by means of which the irritation which causes me to cough, comes to be
symbolically expressed in the dream. Similarly, once the philosopher
is convinced that the given world consists of nothing but ideas, his
interest is bound to switch from them at once to the soul which is
the reality lying behind them. The matter is more serious, however,
for the Illusionist who denies the existence of an Ego behind the
"ideas," or at least holds this Ego to be unknowable. We might very
easily be led to such a view by the reflection that, in contrast to
dreaming, there is the waking state in which we have the opportunity
to detect our dreams, and to realise the real relations of things,
but that there is no state of the self which is related similarly to
our waking conscious life. Every adherent of this view fails entirely
to see that there is, in fact, something which is to mere perception
what our waking experience to our dreams. This something is thought.
The naïve man cannot be charged with failure to perceive this. He
accepts life as it is, and regards things as real just as they
present themselves to him in experience. The first step, however,
which we take beyond this standpoint can be only this, that we ask
how thought is related to perception. It makes no difference whether
or no the percept, as given to me, has a continuous existence before
and after I perceive it. If I want to assert anything whatever about
it, I can do so only with the help of thought. When I assert that the
world is my idea, I have enunciated the result of an act of thought,
and if my thought is not applicable to the world, then my result is
false. Between a percept and every kind of judgment about it there
intervenes thought.
The reason why, in our discussion about things, we generally
overlook the part played by thought, has already been given above
(p. 31). It lies in the fact that our attention is concentrated only
on the object about which we think, but not at the same time on the
thinking itself. The naïve mind, therefore, treats thought as something
which has nothing to do with things, but stands altogether aloof from
them and makes its theories about them. The theory which the thinker
constructs concerning the phenomena of the world is regarded, not as
part of the real things, but as existing only in men's heads. The
world is complete in itself even without this theory. It is all
ready-made and finished with all its substances and forces, and of
this ready-made world man makes himself a picture. Whoever thinks
thus need only be asked one question. What right have you to declare
the world to be complete without thought? Does not the world cause
thoughts in the minds of men with the same necessity as it causes
the blossoms on plants? Plant a seed in the earth. It puts forth
roots and stem, it unfolds into leaves and blossoms. Set the plant
before yourselves. It connects itself, in your minds, with a definite
concept. Why should this concept belong any less to the whole plant
than leaf and blossom? You say the leaves and blossoms exist quite
apart from an experiencing subject. The concept appears only when a
human being makes an object of the plant. Quite so. But leaves and
blossoms also appear on the plant only if there is soil in which
the seed can be planted, and light and air in which the blossoms
and leaves can unfold. Just so the concept of a plant arises when a
thinking being comes into contact with the plant.
It is quite arbitrary to regard the sum of what we experience of a
thing through bare perception as a totality, a whole, while that which
thought reveals in it is regarded as a mere accretion which has nothing
to do with the thing itself. If I am given a rosebud to-day, the
percept that offers itself to me is complete only for the moment. If
I put the bud into water, I shall to-morrow get a very different
picture of my object. If I watch the rosebud without interruption,
I shall see to-day's state gradually change into to-morrow's through
an infinite number of intermediate stages. The picture which presents
itself to me at any one moment is only a chance section out of the
continuous process of growth in which the object is engaged. If I do
not put the bud into water, a whole series of states, the possibility
of which lay in the bud, will not be realised. Similarly, I may be
prevented to-morrow from watching the blossom further, and thus carry
away an incomplete picture of it.
It would be a quite unscientific and arbitrary judgment which declared
of any haphazard appearance of a thing, this is the thing.
To regard the sum of perceptual appearances as the thing is no more
legitimate. It might be quite possible for a mind to receive the
concept at the same time as, and together with, the percept. To
such a mind it would never occur that the concept did not belong
to the thing. It would have to ascribe to the concept an existence
indivisibly bound up with the thing.
Let me make myself clearer by another example. If I throw a
stone horizontally through the air, I perceive it in different
places at different times. I connect these places so as to form a
line. Mathematics teaches me to distinguish various kinds of lines,
one of which is the parabola. I know a parabola to be a line which is
produced by a point moving according to a certain well-defined law. If
I analyse the conditions under which the stone thrown by me moves,
I find that the line of its flight is identical with the line I know
as a parabola. That the stone moves exactly in a parabola is a result
of the given conditions and follows necessarily from them. The form
of the parabola belongs to the whole phenomenon as much as any other
feature of it. The hypothetical mind described above which has no
need of the roundabout way of thought, would find itself presented,
not only with a sequence of visual percepts at different points, but,
as part and parcel of these phenomena, also with the parabolic form
of the line of flight, which we can add to the phenomenon only by an
act of thought.
It is not due to the real objects that they appear to us at first
without their conceptual sides, but to our mental organisation. Our
whole organisation functions in such a way that in the apprehension
of every real thing the relevant elements come to us from two sources,
viz., from perception and from thought.
The nature of things is indifferent to the way I am organised for
apprehending them. The breach between perception and thought exists
only from the moment that I confront objects as spectator. But which
elements do, and which do not, belong to the objects, cannot depend
on the manner in which I obtain my knowledge of them.
Man is a being with many limitations. First of all, he is a thing among
other things. His existence is in space and time. Hence but a limited
portion of the total universe can ever be given to him. This limited
portion, however, is linked up with other parts on every side both
in time and in space. If our existence were so linked with things
that every process in the object world were also a process in us,
there would be no difference between us and things. Neither would
there be any individual objects for us. All processes and events
would then pass continuously one into the other. The cosmos would be
a unity and a whole complete in itself. The stream of events would
nowhere be interrupted. But owing to our limitations we perceive as
an individual object what, in truth, is not an individual object at
all. Nowhere, e.g., is the particular quality "red" to be found by
itself in abstraction. It is surrounded on all sides by other qualities
to which it belongs, and without which it could not subsist. For
us, however, it is necessary to isolate certain sections of the
world and to consider them by themselves. Our eye can seize only
single colours one after another out of a manifold colour-complex,
our understanding only single concepts out of a connected conceptual
system. This isolation is a subjective act, which is due to the fact
that we are not identical with the world-process, but are only things
among other things.
It is of the greatest importance for us to determine the relation
of ourselves, as things, to all other things. The determining of
this relation must be distinguished from merely becoming conscious
of ourselves. For this self-awareness we depend on perception just
as we do for our awareness of any other thing. The perception of
myself reveals to me a number of qualities which I combine into an
apprehension of my personality as a whole, just as I combine the
qualities, yellow, metallic, hard, etc., in the unity "gold." This
kind of self-consciousness does not take me beyond the sphere of what
belongs to me. Hence it must be distinguished from the determination
of myself by thought. Just as I determine by thought the place of any
single percept of the external world in the whole cosmic system, so I
fit by an act of thought what I perceive in myself into the order of
the world-process. My self-observation restricts me within definite
limits, but my thought has nothing to do with these limits. In this
sense I am a two-sided being. I am contained within the sphere which
I apprehend as that of my personality, but I am also the possessor
of an activity which, from a higher standpoint, determines my finite
existence. Thought is not individual like sensation and feeling;
it is universal. It receives an individual stamp in each separate
human being only because it comes to be related to his individual
feelings and sensations. By means of these particular colourings
of the universal thought, individual men are distinguished from
one another. There is only one single concept of "triangle." It is
quite immaterial for the content of this concept whether it is in A's
consciousness or in B's. It will, however, be grasped by each of the
two minds in its own individual way.
This thought conflicts with a common prejudice which is very hard to
overcome. The victims of this prejudice are unable to see that the
concept of a triangle which my mind grasps is the same as the concept
which my neighbour's mind grasps. The naïve man believes himself to
be the creator of his concepts. Hence he believes that each person has
his private concepts. One of the first things which philosophic thought
requires of us is to overcome this prejudice. The one single concept of
"triangle" does not split up into many concepts because it is thought
by many minds. For the thought of the many is itself a unity.
In thought we have the element which welds each man's special
individuality into one whole with the cosmos. In so far as we sense
and feel (perceive), we are isolated individuals; in so far as
we think, we are the All-One Being which pervades everything. This
is the deeper meaning of our two-sided nature. We are conscious of
an absolute principle revealing itself in us, a principle which is
universal. But we experience it, not as it issues from the centre of
the world, but rather at a point on the periphery. Were the former
the case, we should know, as soon as ever we became conscious, the
solution of the whole world problem. But since we stand at a point
on the periphery, and find that our own being is confined within
definite limits, we must explore the region which lies beyond our
own being with the help of thought, which is the universal cosmic
principle manifesting itself in our minds.
The fact that thought, in us, reaches out beyond our separate existence
and relates itself to the universal world-order, gives rise to the
desire for knowledge in us. Beings without thought do not experience
this desire. When they come in contact with other things no questions
arise for them. These other things remain external to such beings. But
in thinking beings the concept confronts the external thing. It is
that part of the thing which we receive not from without, but from
within. To assimilate, to unite, the two elements, the inner and the
outer, that is the function of knowledge.
The percept, thus, is not something finished and self-contained, but
one side only of the total reality. The other side is the concept. The
act of cognition is the synthesis of percept and concept. And it is
only the union of percept and concept which constitutes the whole
thing.
The preceding discussion shows clearly that it is futile to seek for
any other common element in the separate things of the world than the
ideal content which thinking supplies. All attempts to discover any
other principle of unity in the world than this internally coherent
ideal content, which we gain for ourselves by the conceptual
analysis of our percepts, are bound to fail. Neither a personal
God, nor force, nor matter, nor the blind will (of Schopenhauer and
Hartmann), can be accepted by us as the universal principle of unity
in the world. These principles all belong only to a limited sphere
of our experience. Personality we experience only in ourselves,
force and matter only in external things. The will, again, can
be regarded only as the expression of the activity of our finite
personalities. Schopenhauer wants to avoid making "abstract" thought
the principle of unity in the world, and seeks instead something which
presents itself to him immediately as real. This philosopher holds that
we can never solve the riddle of the world so long as we regard it as
an "external" world. "In fact, the meaning for which we seek of that
world which is present to us only as our idea, or the transition from
the world as mere idea of the knowing subject to whatever it may be
besides this, would never be found if the investigator himself were
nothing more than the pure knowing subject (a winged cherub without
a body). But he himself is rooted in that world: he finds himself
in it as an individual, that is to say, his knowledge, which is the
necessary supporter of the whole world as idea, is yet always given
through the medium of a body, whose affections are, as we have shown,
the starting-point for the understanding in the perception of that
world. His body is, for the pure knowing subject, an idea like every
other idea, an object among objects. Its movements and actions are so
far known to him in precisely the same way as the changes of all other
perceived objects, and would be just as strange and incomprehensible
to him if their meaning were not explained for him in an entirely
different way.... The body is given in two entirely different ways to
the subject of knowledge, who becomes an individual only through his
identity with it. It is given as an idea in intelligent perception,
as an object among objects and subject to the laws of objects. And it
is also given in quite a different way as that which is immediately
known to every one, and is signified by the word 'will.' Every true
act of his will is also at once and without exception a movement of
his body. The act of will and the movement of the body are not two
different things objectively known, which the bond of causality unites;
they do not stand in the relation of cause and effect; they are one and
the same, but they are given in entirely different ways--immediately,
and again in perception for the understanding." (The World as Will
and Idea, Book 2, § 18.) Schopenhauer considers himself entitled by
these arguments to hold that the will becomes objectified in the
human body. He believes that in the activities of the body he has
an immediate experience of reality, of the thing-in-itself in the
concrete. Against these arguments we must urge that the activities of
our body become known to us only through self-observation, and that,
as such, they are in no way superior to other percepts. If we want
to know their real nature, we can do so only by means of thought,
i.e., by fitting them into the ideal system of our concepts and ideas.
One of the most deeply rooted prejudices of the naïve mind is
the opinion that thinking is abstract and empty of any concrete
content. At best, we are told, it supplies but an "ideal" counterpart
of the unity of the world, but never that unity itself. Whoever holds
this view has never made clear to himself what a percept apart from
concepts really is. Let us see what this world of bare percepts is. A
mere juxtaposition in space, a mere succession in time, a chaos of
disconnected particulars--that is what it is. None of these things
which come and go on the stage of perception has any connection with
any other. The world is a multiplicity of objects without distinctions
of value. None plays any greater part in the nexus of the world than
any other. In order to realise that this or that fact has a greater
importance than another we must go to thought. As long as we do not
think, the rudimentary organ of an animal which has no significance
in its life, appears equal in value to its more important limbs. The
particular facts reveal their meaning, in themselves and in their
relations with other parts of the world, only when thought spins its
threads from thing to thing. This activity of thinking has always
a content. For it is only through a perfectly definite concrete
content that I can know why the snail belongs to a lower type of
organisation than the lion. The mere appearance, the percept, gives
me no content which could inform me as to the degree of perfection
of the organisation.
Thought contributes this content to the percept from the world of
concepts and ideas. In contrast with the content of perception which
is given to us from without, the content of thought appears within
our minds. The form in which thought first appears in consciousness
we will call "intuition." Intuition is to thoughts what observation
is to percepts. Intuition and observation are the sources of our
knowledge. An external object which we observe remains unintelligible
to us, until the corresponding intuition arises within us which adds
to the reality those sides of it which are lacking in the percept. To
anyone who is incapable of supplying the relevant intuitions,
the full nature of the real remains a sealed book. Just as the
colour-blind person sees only differences of brightness without
any colour qualities, so the mind which lacks intuition sees only
disconnected fragments of percepts.
To explain a thing, to make it intelligible, means nothing else than to
place it in the context from which it has been torn by the peculiar
organisation of our minds, described above. Nothing can possibly
exist cut off from the universe. Hence all isolation of objects has
only subjective validity for minds organised like ours. For us the
universe is split up into above and below, before and after, cause
and effect, object and idea, matter and force, object and subject,
etc. The objects which, in observation, appear to us as separate,
become combined, bit by bit, through the coherent, unified system
of our intuitions. By thought we fuse again into one whole all that
perception has separated.
An object presents riddles to our understanding so long as it exists
in isolation. But this is an abstraction of our own making and can
be unmade again in the world of concepts.
Except through thought and perception nothing is given to us
directly. The question now arises as to the interpretation of percepts
on our theory. We have learnt that the proof which Critical Idealism
offers for the subjective nature of percepts collapses. But the
exhibition of the falsity of the proof is not, by itself, sufficient
to show that the doctrine itself is an error. Critical Idealism does
not base its proof on the absolute nature of thought, but relies on the
argument that Naïve Realism, when followed to its logical conclusion,
contradicts itself. How does the matter appear when we recognise the
absoluteness of thought?
Let us assume that a certain percept, e.g., red, appears in
consciousness. To continued observation, the percept shows itself to
be connected with other percepts, e.g., a certain figure, temperature,
and touch-qualities. This complex of percepts I call an object in
the world of sense. I can now ask myself: Over and above the percepts
just mentioned, what else is there in the section of space in which
they are? I shall then find mechanical, chemical, and other processes
in that section of space. I next go further and study the processes
which take place between the object and my sense-organs. I shall
find oscillations in an elastic medium, the character of which has
not the least in common with the percepts from which I started. I
get the same result if I trace further the connection between
sense-organs and brain. In each of these inquiries I gather new
percepts, but the connecting thread which binds all these spatially
and temporally separated percepts into one whole, is thought. The air
vibrations which carry sound are given to me as percepts just like
the sound. Thought alone links all these percepts one to the other
and exhibits them in their reciprocal relations. We have no right
to say that over and above our immediate percepts there is anything
except the ideal nexus of precepts (which thought has to reveal). The
relation of the object perceived to the perceiving subject, which
relation transcends the bare percept, is therefore purely ideal,
i.e., capable of being expressed only through concepts. Only if it
were possible to perceive how the object of perception affects the
perceiving subject, or, alternatively, only if I could watch the
construction of the perceptual complex through the subject, could we
speak as modern Physiology, and the Critical Idealism which is based
on it, speak. Their theory confuses an ideal relation (that of the
object to the subject) with a process of which we could speak only if
it were possible to perceive it. The proposition, "No colour without
a colour-sensing eye," cannot be taken to mean that the eye produces
the colour, but only that an ideal relation, recognisable by thought,
subsists between the percept "colour" and the percept "eye."
To empirical science belongs the task of ascertaining how the
properties of the eye and those of the colours are related to one
another; by means of what structures the organ of sight makes possible
the perception of colours, etc. I can trace how one percept succeeds
another and how one is related to others in space, and I can formulate
these relations in conceptual terms, but I can never perceive how a
percept originates out of the non-perceptible. All attempts to seek
any relations between percepts other than conceptual relations must
of necessity fail.
What then is a percept? This question, asked in this general way,
is absurd. A percept appears always as a perfectly determinate,
concrete content. This content is immediately given and is completely
contained in the given. The only question one can ask concerning
the given content is, what it is apart from perception, that is,
what it is for thought. The question concerning the "what" of a
percept can, therefore, only refer to the conceptual intuition which
corresponds to the percept. From this point of view, the problem of the
subjectivity of percepts, in the sense in which the Critical Idealists
debate it, cannot be raised at all. Only that which is experienced
as belonging to the subject can be termed "subjective." To form a
link between subject and object is impossible for any real process,
in the naïve sense of the word "real," in which it means a process
which can be perceived. That is possible only for thought. For us,
then, "objective" means that which, for perception, presents itself
as external to the perceiving subject. As subject of perception I
remain perceptible to myself after the table which now stands before
me has disappeared from my field of observation. The perception of the
table has produced a modification in me which persists like myself. I
preserve an image of the table which now forms part of my Self. Modern
Psychology terms this image a "memory-idea." Now this is the only
thing which has any right to be called the idea of the table. For it
is the perceptible modification of my own mental state through the
presence of the table in my visual field. Moreover, it does not mean
a modification in some "Ego-in-itself" behind the perceiving subject,
but the modification of the perceiving subject itself. The idea is,
therefore, a subjective percept, in contrast with the objective percept
which occurs when the object is present in the perceptual field. The
false identification of the subjective with this objective percept
leads to the misunderstanding of Idealism: The world is my idea.
Our next task must be to define the concept of "idea" more nearly. What
we have said about it so far does not give us the concept, but only
shows us where in the perceptual field ideas are to be found. The
exact concept of "idea" will also make it possible for us to obtain
a satisfactory understanding of the relation of idea and object. This
will then lead us over the border-line, where the relation of subject
to object is brought down from the purely conceptual field of knowledge
into concrete individual life. Once we know how we are to conceive
the world, it will be an easy task to adapt ourselves to it. Only
when we know to what object we are to devote our activity can we put
our whole energy into our actions.