The difficulty of seizing the essential nature of thinking by
observation lies in this, that it has generally eluded the
introspecting mind all too easily by the time that the mind
tries to bring it into the focus of attention. Nothing but the
lifeless abstract, the corpse of living thought, then remains for
inspection. When we consider only this abstract, we find it hard, by
contrast, to resist yielding to the mysticism of feeling, or, again,
to the metaphysics of will, both of which are "full of life." We
are tempted to regard it as odd that anyone should want to seize
the essence of reality in "mere thoughts." But if we once succeed
in really holding fast the living essence of thinking, we learn to
understand that the self-abandonment to feelings, or the intuiting
of the will, cannot even be compared with the inward wealth of this
life of thinking, which we experience as within itself ever at rest,
yet at the same time ever in movement. Still less is it possible
to rank will and feeling above thinking. It is owing precisely to
this wealth, to this inward abundance of experience, that the image
of thinking which presents itself to our ordinary attitude of mind,
should appear lifeless and abstract. No other activity of the human
mind is so easily misapprehended as thinking. Will and feeling still
fill the mind with warmth even when we live through them again in
memory. Thinking all too readily leaves us cold in recollection; it is
as if the life of the mind had dried out. But this is really nothing
but the strongly marked shadow thrown by its luminous, warm nature
penetrating deeply into the phenomena of the world. This penetration
is effected by the activity of thinking with a spontaneous outpouring
of power--a power of spiritual love. There is no room here for the
objection that thus to perceive love in the activity of thinking
is to endow thinking with a feeling and a love which are not part
of it. This objection is, in truth, a confirmation of the view here
advocated. If we turn towards the essential nature of thinking, we find
in it both feeling and will, and both these in their most profoundly
real forms. If we turn away from thinking and towards "mere" feeling
and will, these lose for us their genuine reality. If we are willing
to make of thinking an intuitive experience, we can do justice, also,
to experiences of the type of feeling and will. But the mysticism of
feeling and the metaphysics of will do not know how to do justice
to the penetration of reality which partakes at once of intuition
and of thought. They conclude but too readily that they themselves
are rooted in reality, but that the intuitive thinker, untouched by
feeling, blind to reality, forms out of "abstract thoughts" a shadowy,
chilly picture of the world.