Philosophers have found the chief difficulty in the explanation of
ideas in the fact that we are not identical with the external objects,
and yet our ideas must have a form corresponding to their objects. But
on closer inspection it turns out that this difficulty does not really
exist. We certainly are not identical with the external things, but
we belong together with them to one and the same world. The stream
of the universal cosmic process passes through that segment of the
world which, to my perception, is myself as subject. So far as my
perception goes, I am, in the first instance, confined within the
limits bounded by my skin. But all that is contained within the skin
belongs to the cosmos as a whole. Hence, for a relation to subsist
between my organism and an object external to me, it is by no means
necessary that something of the object should slip into me, or make
an impression on my mind, like a signet-ring on wax. The question,
How do I gain knowledge of that tree ten feet away from me, is utterly
misleading. It springs from the view that the boundaries of my body
are absolute barriers, through which information about external
things filters into me. The forces which are active within my body
are the same as those which exist outside. I am, therefore, really
identical with the objects; not, however, I in so far as I am subject
of perception, but I in so far as I am a part within the universal
cosmic process. The percept of the tree belongs to the same whole as
my Self. The universal cosmic process produces alike, here the percept
of the tree, and there the percept of my Self. Were I a world-creator
instead of a world-knower, subject and object (percept and self) would
originate in one act. For they condition one another reciprocally. As
world-knower I can discover the common element in both, so far as
they are complementary aspects of the world, only through thought
which by means of concepts relates the one to the other.
The most difficult to drive from the field are the so-called
physiological proofs of the subjectivity of our percepts. When I
exert pressure on the skin of my body, I experience it as a pressure
sensation. This same pressure can be sensed as light by the eye,
as sound by the ear. I experience an electrical shock by the eye
as light, by the ear as sound, by the nerves of the skin as touch,
and by the nose as a smell of phosphorus. What follows from these
facts? Only this: I experience an electrical shock, or, as the case
may be, a pressure followed by a light, or a sound, or, it may be,
a certain smell, etc. If there were no eye present, then no light
quality would accompany the perception of the mechanical vibrations in
my environment; without the presence of the ear, no sound, etc. But
what right have we to say that in the absence of sense-organs the
whole process would not exist at all? All those who, from the fact
that an electrical process causes a sensation of light in the eye,
conclude that what we sense as light is only a mechanical process of
motion, forget that they are only arguing from one percept to another,
and not at all to something altogether transcending percepts. Just as
we can say that the eye perceives a mechanical process of motion in
its surroundings as light, so we can affirm that every change in an
object, determined by natural law, is perceived by us as a process of
motion. If I draw twelve pictures of a horse on the circumference of
a rotating disc, reproducing exactly the positions which the horse's
body successively assumes in movement, I can, by rotating the disc,
produce the illusion of movement. I need only look through an opening
in such a way that, at regular intervals, I perceive the successive
positions of the horse. I perceive, not separate pictures of twelve
horses, but one picture of a single galloping horse.
The above-mentioned physiological facts cannot, therefore, throw
any light on the relation of percept to idea. Hence, we must seek a
relation some other way.
The moment a percept appears in my field of consciousness, thought,
too, becomes active in me. A member of my thought-system, a definite
intuition, a concept, connects itself with the percept. When, next,
the percept disappears from my field of vision, what remains? The
intuition, with the reference to the particular percept which it
acquired in the moment of perception. The degree of vividness with
which I can subsequently recall this reference depends on the manner in
which my mental and bodily organism is working. An idea is nothing but
an intuition related to a particular percept; it is a concept which
was once connected with a certain percept, and which retains this
reference to the percept. My concept of a lion is not constructed out
of my percepts of a lion; but my idea of a lion is formed under the
guidance of the percepts. I can teach someone to form the concept of
a lion without his ever having seen a lion, but I can never give him
a living idea of it without the help of his own perception.
An idea is therefore nothing but an individualised concept. And now
we can see how real objects can be represented to us by ideas. The
full reality of a thing is present to us in the moment of observation
through the combination of concept and percept. The concept acquires
by means of the percept an individualised form, a relation to this
particular percept. In this individualised form which carries with it,
as an essential feature, the reference to the percept, it continues to
exist in us and constitutes the idea of the thing in question. If we
come across a second thing with which the same concept connects itself,
we recognise the second as being of the same kind as the first; if we
come across the same thing twice, we find in our conceptual system,
not merely a corresponding concept, but the individualised concept
with its characteristic relation to this same object, and thus we
recognise the object again.
The idea, then, stands between the percept and the concept. It is
the determinate concept which points to the percept.
The sum of my ideas may be called my experience. The man who has the
greater number of individualised concepts will be the man of richer
experience. A man who lacks all power of intuition is not capable of
acquiring experience. The objects simply disappear again from the
field of his consciousness, because he lacks the concepts which he
ought to bring into relation with them. On the other hand, a man whose
faculty of thought is well developed, but whose perception functions
badly owing to his clumsy sense-organs, will be no better able to
gain experience. He can, it is true, by one means and another acquire
concepts; but the living reference to particular objects is lacking
to his intuitions. The unthinking traveller and the student absorbed
in abstract conceptual systems are alike incapable of acquiring a
rich experience.
Reality presents itself to us as the union of percept and concept;
and the subjective representation of this reality presents itself to
us as idea.
If our personality expressed itself only in cognition, the totality of
all that is objective would be contained in percept, concept and idea.
However, we are not satisfied merely to refer percepts, by means
of thinking, to concepts, but we relate them also to our private
subjectivity, our individual Ego. The expression of this relation to us
as individuals is feeling, which manifests itself as pleasure and pain.
Thinking and feeling correspond to the two-fold nature of our being
to which reference has already been made. By means of thought we take
an active part in the universal cosmic process. By means of feeling
we withdraw ourselves into the narrow precincts of our own being.
Thought links us to the world; feeling leads us back into ourselves
and thus makes us individuals. Were we merely thinking and
perceiving beings, our whole life would flow along in monotonous
indifference. Could we only know ourselves as Selves, we should
be totally indifferent to ourselves. It is only because with
self-knowledge we experience self-feeling, and with the perception of
objects pleasure and pain, that we live as individuals whose existence
is not exhausted by the conceptual relations in which they stand to
the rest of the world, but who have a special value in themselves.
One might be tempted to regard the life of feeling as something more
richly saturated with reality than the apprehension of the world by
thought. But the reply to this is that the life of feeling, after all,
has this richer meaning only for my individual self. For the universe
as a whole my feelings can be of value only if, as percepts of myself,
they enter into connection with a concept and in this roundabout way
become links in the cosmos.
Our life is a continual oscillation between our share in the universal
world-process and our own individual existence. The farther we ascend
into the universal nature of thought where the individual, at last,
interests us only as an example, an instance, of the concept, the
more the character of something individual, of the quite determinate,
unique personality, becomes lost in us. The farther we descend into the
depths of our own private life and allow the vibrations of our feelings
to accompany all our experiences of the outer world, the more we cut
ourselves off from the universal life. True individuality belongs
to him whose feelings reach up to the farthest possible extent into
the region of the ideal. There are men in whom even the most general
ideas still bear that peculiar personal tinge which shows unmistakably
their connection with their author. There are others whose concepts
come before us as devoid of any trace of individual colouring as if
they had not been produced by a being of flesh and blood at all.
Even ideas give to our conceptual life an individual stamp. Each
one of us has his special standpoint from which he looks out on the
world. His concepts link themselves to his percepts. He has his own
special way of forming general concepts. This special character
results for each of us from his special standpoint in the world,
from the way in which the range of his percepts is dependent on the
place in the whole where he exists. The conditions of individuality
here indicated, we call the milieu.
This special character of our experience must be distinguished from
another which depends on our peculiar organisation. Each of us, as we
know, is organised as a unique, fully determined individual. Each of
us combines special feelings, and these in the most varying degrees
of intensity, with his percepts. This is just the individual element
in the personality of each of us. It is what remains over when we
have allowed fully for all the determining factors in our milieu.
A life of feeling, wholly devoid of thought, would gradually lose
all connection with the world. But man is meant to be a whole, and
knowledge of objects will go hand-in-hand for him with the development
and education of the feeling-side of his nature.
Feeling is the means whereby, in the first instance, concepts gain
concrete life.