Chapter X: Part 10

This is the reason why he shifted to the second of the two ways, indicated above, for the deduction of the Ego. Already in 1797, in his Erste Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre, he recommends self-observation as the right method for studying the Ego in its true, original character. "Observe and watch thyself, turn thy eye away from all that surrounds thee and look into thyself--this is the first demand which philosophy makes upon its disciple. The topic of our discourse, is, not anything outside thyself, but thyself alone." [58] This introduction to the Theory of Science is, in truth, in one way much superior to the other. For, self-observation does not make us acquainted with the activity of the Ego one-sidedly in a fixed direction. It exhibits that activity, not merely as affirming its own existence, but as striving, in its many-sided development, to comprehend by thinking the world-content which is immediately-given. To self-observation, the Ego reveals itself as engaged in building up its world-picture by the synthesis of the Given with concepts. But, anyone who has not accompanied us in our line of thought above, and who, consequently, does not know that the Ego can grasp the whole content of reality only on condition of applying its Thought-Forms to the Given, is liable to regard cognition as a mere process of spinning the world out of the Ego itself. Hence, for Fichte the world-picture tends increasingly to become a construction of the Ego. He emphasises more and more that the main point in the Wissenschaftslehre is to awaken the sense which is able to watch the Ego in this constructing of its world. He who is able thus to watch stands, for Fichte, on a higher level of knowledge than he who has eyes only for the finished construct, the ready-made world. If we fix our eyes only on the world of objects, we fail to perceive that, but for the creative activity of the Ego, that world would not exist. If, on the other hand, we watch the Ego in its constructive activity, we understand the ground of the finished world-picture. We know how it has come to be what it is. We understand it as the conclusion for which we have the premises. The ordinary consciousness sees only what has been affirmed, what has been determined thus or thus. It lacks the insight into the premises, into the grounds why an affirmation is just as it is and not otherwise. To mediate the knowledge of these premises is, according to Fichte, the task of a wholly new sense. This is expressed most clearly in the Einleitungsvorlesungen in die Wissenschaftslehre. [59] "My theory presupposes a wholly novel inward sense-organ, by means of which a new world is given which does not exist for the ordinary man at all." Or, again, "The world of this novel sense, and thereby this sense itself, are hereby for the present clearly determined: it is the world in which we see the premises on which is grounded the judgment, 'Something exists'; it is the ground of existence which, just because it is the ground of existence, cannot, in its turn, be said to be or to be an existence." [60]

But, here, too, Fichte lacks clear insight into the activity of the Ego. He has never worked his way through to it. That is why his Wissenschaftslehre could not become what else, from its whole design, it ought to have become, viz., a Theory of Knowledge as the fundamental discipline of philosophy. For, after it had once been recognised that the activity of the Ego must be affirmed by the Ego itself, it was very easy to think that the activity receives its determination also from the Ego. But how else can this happen except we assign a content to the purely formal activity of the Ego? If the Ego is really to import a content into its activity which, else, is wholly undetermined, then the nature of that content must also be determined. For, failing this, it could at best be realised only by some "thing-in-itself" in the Ego, of which the Ego would be the instrument, but not by the Ego itself. If Fichte had attempted to furnish this determination, he would have been led to the concept of cognition which it is the task of the Ego to realise. Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre proves that even the acutest thinker fails to make fruitful contributions to any philosophical discussion, unless he lays hold of the correct Thought-Form (category, idea) which, supplemented by the Given, yields reality. Such a thinker is like a man who fails to hear the most glorious melodies which are being played for him, because he has no ear for tunes. If we are to determine the nature of consciousness, as given, we must be able to rise to, and make our own, the "idea of consciousness."

At one point Fichte is actually quite close to the true view. He declares, in the Einleitungen zur Wissenschaftslehre (1797), that there are two theoretical systems, viz., Dogmatism, for which the Ego is determined by the objects, and Idealism, for which the objects are determined by the Ego. Both are, according to him, established as possible theories of the world; both can be developed into self-consistent systems. But, if we throw in our lot with Dogmatism, we must abandon the independence of the Ego and make it dependent on the "thing-in-itself." If we do not want to do this, we must adopt Idealism. The philosopher's choice between these two systems is left by Fichte wholly to the preference of the Ego. But he adds that if the Ego desires to preserve its independence, it will give up the belief in external things and surrender itself to Idealism.

But, what Fichte forgot was the consideration that the Ego cannot make any genuine, well-grounded decision or choice, unless something is presupposed which helps the Ego to choose. All the Ego's attempts at determination remain empty and without content, if the Ego does not find something wholly determinate and full of content, which enables it to determine the Given, and thereby also to choose between Idealism and Dogmatism. This "something wholly determinate and full of content" is, precisely, the world of Thought. And the determination of the Given by thinking is, precisely, what we call cognition. We may take Fichte where we please--everywhere we find that his line of thought at once gets meaning and substance, as soon as we conceive his grey, empty activity of the Ego to be filled and regulated by what we have called "the process of cognition."

The fact that the Ego is free to enter into activity out of itself, makes it possible for it, by free self-determination, to realise the category of cognition, whereas in the rest of the world all categories are connected by objective necessity with the Given which corresponds to them. The investigation of the nature of free self-determination will be the task of Ethics and Metaphysics, based on our Theory of Knowledge. These disciplines, too, will have to debate the question whether the Ego is able to realise other ideas, besides the idea of cognition. But, that the realisation of the idea of cognition issues from a free act has been made sufficiently clear in the course of our discussions above. For, the synthesis, effected by the Ego, of the Immediately-Given and of the Form of Thought appropriate to it, which two factors of reality remain otherwise always divorced from each other in consciousness, can be brought about only by an act of freedom. Moreover, our arguments throw, in another way, quite a fresh light on Critical Idealism. To any close student of Fichte's system it will appear as if Fichte cared for nothing so much as for the defence of the proposition, that nothing can enter the Ego from without, that nothing can appear in the Ego which was not the Ego's own original creation. Now, it is beyond all dispute that no type of Idealism will ever be able to derive from within the Ego that form of the world-content which we have called "the Immediately-Given." For, this form can only be given; it can never be constructed by thinking. In proof of this, it is enough to reflect that, even if the whole series of colours were given to us except one, we should not be able to fill in that one out of the bare Ego. We can form an image of the most remote countries, though we have never seen them, provided we have once personally experienced, as given, the details which go to form the image. We then build up the total picture, according to the instructions supplied to us, out of the particular facts which we have ourselves experienced. But we shall strive in vain to invent out of ourselves even a single perceptual element which has never appeared within the sphere of what has been given to us. It is one thing to be merely acquainted with the world; it is another to have knowledge of its essential nature. This nature, for all that it is closely identified with the world-content, does not become clear to us unless we build up reality ourselves out of the Given and the Forms of Thought. The real "what" of the Given comes to be affirmed for the Ego only through the Ego itself. The Ego would have no occasion to affirm the nature of the Given for itself, if it did not find itself confronted at the outset by the Given in wholly indeterminate form. Thus, the essential nature of the world is affirmed, not apart from, but through, the Ego.

The true form of reality is not the first form in which it presents itself to the Ego, but the last form which it receives through the activity of the Ego. That first form is, in fact, without any importance for the objective world and counts only as the basis for the process of cognition. Hence, it is not the form given to the world by theory which is subjective, but rather the form in which the world is originally given to the Ego. If, following Volkelt and others, we call the given world "experience," our view amounts to saying: The world-picture presents itself, owing to the constitution of our consciousness, in subjective form as experience, but science completes it and makes its true nature manifest.

Our Theory of Knowledge supplies the basis for an Idealism which, in the true sense of the word, understands itself. It supplies good grounds for the conviction that thinking brings home to us the essential nature of the world. Nothing but thinking can exhibit the relations of the parts of the world-content, be it the relation of the heat of the sun to the stone which it warms, or the relation of the Ego to the external world. Thinking alone has the function of determining all things in their relations to each other.

The objection might still be urged by the followers of Kant, that the determination, above-described, of the Given holds, after all, only for the Ego. Our reply must be, consistently with our principles, that the distinction between Ego and Outer World, too, holds only within the Given, and that, therefore, it is irrelevant to insist on the phrase, "for the Ego," in the face of the activity of thinking which unites all opposites. The Ego, as divorced from the outer world, disappears completely in the process of thinking out the nature of the world. Hence it becomes meaningless still to talk of determinations which hold only for the Ego.

VII

CONCLUDING REMARKS: EPISTEMOLOGICAL

We have laid the foundations of the Theory of Knowledge as the science of the significance of all human knowledge. It alone clears up for us the relation of the contents of the separate sciences to the world. It enables us, with the help of the sciences, to attain to a philosophical world-view. Positive knowledge is acquired by us through particular cognitions; what the value of our knowledge is, considered as knowledge of reality, we learn through the Theory of Knowledge. By holding fast strictly to this principle, and by employing no particular cognitions in our argumentation, we have transcended all one-sided world-views. One-sidedness, as a rule, results from the fact that the inquiry, instead of concentrating on the process of cognition itself, busies itself about some object of that process. If our arguments are sound, Dogmatism must abandon its "thing-in-itself" as fundamental principle, and Subjective Idealism its "Ego," for both these owe their determinate natures in their relation to each other first to thinking. Scepticism must give up its doubts whether the world can be known, for there is no room for doubt with reference to the "Given," because it is as yet untouched by any of the predicates which cognition confers on it. On the other hand, if Scepticism were to assert that thinking can never apprehend things as they are, its assertion, being itself possible only through thinking, would be self-contradictory. For, to justify doubt by thinking is to admit by implication that thinking can produce grounds sufficient to establish certainty. Lastly, our theory of knowledge transcends both one-sided Empiricism and one-sided Rationalism in uniting both at a higher level. Thus it does justice to both. It justifies Empiricism by showing that all positive knowledge about the Given is obtainable only through direct contact with the Given. And Rationalism, too, receives its due in our argument, seeing that we hold thinking to be the necessary and exclusive instrument of knowledge.

The world-view which has the closest affinity to ours, as we have here built it up on epistemological foundations, is that of A. E. Biedermann. [61] But Biedermann requires for the justification of his point of view dogmatic theses which are quite out of place in Theory of Knowledge. Thus, e.g., he works with the concepts of Being, Substance, Space, Time, etc., without having first analysed the cognitive process by itself. Instead of establishing the fact that the cognitive process consists, to begin with, only of the two elements, the Given and Thought, he talks of the Kinds of Being of the real. For example, in Section 15, he says: "Every content of consciousness includes within itself two fundamental facts--it presents to us, as given, two kinds of Being which we contrast with each other as sensuous and spiritual, thing-like and idea-like, Being." And in Section 19: "Whatever has a spatio-temporal existence, exists materially; that which is the ground of all existence and the subject of life has an idea-like existence, is real as having an ideal Being." This sort of argument belongs, not to the Theory of Knowledge, but to Metaphysics, which latter presupposes Theory of Knowledge as its foundation. We must admit that Biedermann's doctrine has many points of similarity with ours; but our method has not a single point of contact with his. Hence, we have had no occasion to compare our position directly with his. Biedermann's aim is to gain an epistemological standpoint with the help of a few metaphysical axioms. Our aim is to reach, through an analysis of the process of cognition, a theory of reality.

And we believe that we have succeeded in showing, that all the disputes between philosophical systems result from the fact that their authors have sought to attain knowledge about some object or other (Thing, Self, Consciousness, etc.), without having first given close study to that which alone can throw light on whatever else we know, viz., the nature of knowledge itself.

VIII

CONCLUDING REMARKS: PRACTICAL

The aim of the preceding discussions has been to throw light on the relation of our personality, as knower, to the objective world. What does it signify for us to possess knowledge and science? This was the question to which we sought the answer.

We have seen that it is just in our knowing that the innermost kernel of the world manifestly reveals itself. The harmony, subject to law, which reigns throughout the whole world, reveals itself precisely in human cognition.

It is, therefore, part of the destiny of man to elevate the fundamental laws of the world, which do indeed regulate the whole of existence but which would never become existent in themselves, into the realm of realities which appear. This precisely is the essential nature of knowledge that in it the world-ground is made manifest which in the object-world can never be discovered. Knowing is--metaphorically speaking--a continual merging of one's life into the world-ground.

Such a view is bound to throw light also on our practical attitude towards life.

Our conduct is, in its whole character, determined by our moral ideals. These are the ideas we have of our tasks in life, or, in other words, of the ends which we set ourselves to achieve by our action.

Our conduct is a part of the total world-process. Consequently, it, too, is subject to the universal laws which regulate this process.

Now, every event in the universe has two sides which must be distinguished: its external sequence in time and space, and its internal conformity to law.

The apprehension of this conformity of human conduct to law is but a special case of knowledge. Hence, the conclusions at which we have arrived concerning the nature of knowledge must apply to this sort of knowledge, too. To apprehend oneself as a person who acts is to possess the relevant laws of conduct, i.e., the moral concepts and ideals, in the form of knowledge. It is this knowledge of the conformity of our conduct to law which makes our conduct truly ours. For, in that case, the conformity is given, not as external to the object in which the action appears, but as the very substance of the object engaged in living activity. The "object," here, is our own Ego. If the Ego has with its knowledge really penetrated the essential nature of conduct, then it feels that it is thereby master of its conduct. Short of this, the laws of conduct confront us as something external. They master us. What we achieve, we achieve under the compulsion which they wield over us. But this compulsion ceases, as soon as their alien character has been transformed into the Ego's very own activity. Thereafter, the law no longer rules over us, but rules in us over the actions which issue from our Ego. To perform an act in obedience to a law which is external to the agent is to be unfree. To perform it in obedience to the agent's own law is to be free. To gain knowledge of the laws of one's own conduct is to become conscious of one's freedom. The process of cognition is, thus, according to our arguments, the process of the development of freedom.

Not all human conduct has this character. There are many cases in which we do not know the laws of our conduct. This part of our conduct is the unfree part of our activity. Over against it stands the part the laws of which we make completely our own. This is the realm of freedom. It is only in so far as our life falls into this realm that it can be called moral. To transform the actions which are unfree into actions which are free--this is the task of self-development for every individual, this is likewise the task of the whole human race.

Thus, the most important problem for all human thinking is to conceive man as a personality grounded upon itself and free.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I

ADDITION TO THE REVISED EDITION OF "THE PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM," 1918.

Various criticisms on the part of philosophers with which this book met immediately upon its publication, induce me to add to this Revised Edition the following brief statement.

I can well understand that there are readers who are interested in the rest of the book, but who will look upon what follows as a tissue of abstract concepts which to them is irrelevant and makes no appeal. They may, if they choose, leave this brief statement unread. But in philosophy problems present themselves which have their origin rather in certain prejudices on the thinker's part than in the natural progression of normal human thinking. With the main body of this book it seems to me to be the duty of every one to concern himself, who is striving for clearness about the essential nature of man and his relation to the world. What follows is rather a problem the discussion of which certain philosophers demand as necessary to a treatment of the topics of this book, because these philosophers, by their whole way of thinking, have created certain difficulties which do not otherwise occur. If I were to pass by these problems entirely, certain people would be quick to accuse me of dilettantism, etc. The impression would thus be created that the author of the views set down in this book has not thought out his position with regard to these problems because he has not discussed them in his book.

The problem to which I refer is this: there are thinkers who find a particular difficulty in understanding how another mind can act on one's own. They say: the world of my consciousness is a closed circle within me; so is the world of another's consciousness within him. I cannot look into the world of another's mind. How, then, do I know that he and I are in a common world? The theory according to which we can from the conscious world infer an unconscious world which never can enter consciousness, attempts to solve this difficulty as follows. The world, it says, which I have in my consciousness is the representation in me of a real world to which my consciousness has no access. In this transcendent world exist the unknown agents which cause the world in my consciousness. In it, too, exists my own real self, of which likewise I have only a representation in my consciousness. In it, lastly, exists the essential self of the fellow-man who confronts me. Whatever passes in the consciousness of my fellow-man corresponds to a reality in his transcendent essence which is independent of his consciousness. His essential nature acts in that realm which, on this theory, is equally beyond consciousness. Thus an impression is made in my consciousness which represents there what is present in another's consciousness and wholly beyond the reach of my direct awareness. Clearly the point of this theory is to add to the world accessible to my consciousness an hypothetical world which is to my immediate experience inaccessible. This is done to avoid the supposed alternative of having to say that the external world, which I regard as existing before me, is nothing but the world of my consciousness, with the absurd--solipsistic--corollary that other persons likewise exist only within my consciousness.

Several epistemological tendencies in recent speculation have joined in creating this problem. But it is possible to attain to clearness about it by surveying the situation from the point of view of spiritual perception which underlies the exposition of this book. What is it that, in the first instance, I have before me when I confront another person? To begin with, there is the sensuous appearance of the other's body, as given in perception. To this we might add the auditory perception of what he is saying, and so forth. All this I apprehend, not with a passive stare, but by the activity of my thinking which is set in motion. Through the thinking with which I now confront the other person, the percept of him becomes, as it were, psychically transparent. As my thinking apprehends the percept, I am compelled to judge that what I perceive is really quite other than it appears to the outer senses. The sensuous appearance, in being what it immediately is, reveals something else which it is mediately. In presenting itself to me as a distinct object, it, at the same time, extinguishes itself as a mere sensuous appearance. But in thus extinguishing itself it reveals a character which, so long as it affects me, compels me as a thinking being to extinguish my own thinking and to put its thinking in the place of mine. Its thinking is then apprehended by my thinking as an experience like my own. Thus I have really perceived another's thinking. For the immediate percept, in extinguishing itself as sensuous appearance, is apprehended by my thinking. It is a profess which passes wholly in my consciousness and consists in this, that the other's thinking takes the place of my thinking. The self-extinction of the sensuous appearance actually abolishes the separation between the spheres of the two consciousnesses. In my own consciousness this fusion manifests itself in that, so long as I experience the contents of the other's consciousness, I am aware of my own consciousness as little as I am aware of it in dreamless sleep. Just as my waking consciousness is eliminated from the latter, so are the contents of my own consciousness eliminated from my perception of the contents of another's consciousness. Two things tend to deceive us about the true facts. The first is that, in perceiving another person, the extinction of the contents of one's own consciousness is replaced not, as in sleep, by unconsciousness, but by the contents of the other's consciousness. The other is that my consciousness of my own self oscillates so rapidly between extinction and recurrence, that these alternations usually escape observation. The whole problem is to be solved, not through artificial construction of concepts, involving an inference from what is in consciousness to what always must transcend consciousness, but through genuine experience of the connection between thinking and perceiving. The same remark applies to many other problems which appear in philosophical literature. Philosophers should seek the road to unprejudiced spiritual observation, instead of hiding reality behind an artificial frontage of concepts.

In a monograph by Eduard von Hartmann on "The Ultimate Problems of Epistemology and Metaphysics" (in the Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, Vol. 108, p. 55), my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity has been classed with the philosophical tendency which seeks to build upon an "epistemological Monism." Eduard von Hartmann rejects this position as untenable, for the following reasons. According to the point of view maintained in his monograph, there are only three possible positions in the theory of knowledge. The first consists in remaining true to the naïve point of view, which regards objects of sense-perception as real things existing outside the human mind. This, urges Von Hartmann, implies a lack of critical reflection. I fail to realise that with all my contents of consciousness I remain imprisoned in my own consciousness. I fail to perceive that I am dealing, not with a "table-in-itself," but only with a phenomenon in my own consciousness. If I stop at this point of view, or if for whatever reasons I return to it, I am a Naïve Realist. But this whole position is untenable, for it ignores that consciousness has no other objects than its own contents. The second position consists in appreciating this situation and confessing it to oneself. As a result, I become a Transcendental Idealist. As such, says Von Hartmann, I am obliged to deny that a "thing-in-itself" can ever appear in any way within the human mind. But, if developed with unflinching consistency, this view ends in Absolute Illusionism. For the world which confronts me is now transformed into a mere sum of contents of consciousness, and, moreover, of contents of my private consciousness. The objects of other human minds, too, I am then compelled to conceive--absurdly enough--as present solely in my own consciousness. Hence, the only tenable position, according to Von Hartmann, is the third, viz., Transcendental Realism. On this view, there are "things-in-themselves," but consciousness can have no dealings with them by way of immediate experience. Existing beyond the sphere of human consciousness, they cause, in a way of which we remain unconscious, the appearance of objects in consciousness. These "things-in-themselves" are known only by inference from the contents of consciousness, which are immediately experienced but for that very reason, purely ideal. Eduard von Hartmann maintains in the monograph cited above, that "epistemological Monism"--for such he takes my point of view to be--is bound to declare itself identical with one or other of the above three positions; and that its failure to do so is due only to its inconsistency in not drawing the actual consequences of its presuppositions. The monograph goes on to say: "If we want to find out which epistemological position a so-called Epistemological Monist occupies, all we have to do is to put to him certain questions and compel him to answer them. For, out of his own initiative, no Monist will condescend to state his views on these points, and likewise he will seek to dodge in every way giving a straight answer to our questions, because every answer he may give will betray that Epistemological Monism does not differ from one or other of the three positions. Our questions are the following: (1) Are things continuous or intermittent in their existence? If the answer is 'continuous,' we have before us some one of the forms of Naïve Realism. If the answer is 'intermittent,' we have Transcendental Idealism. But if the answer is: 'They are, on the one hand, continuous, viz., as contents of the Absolute Mind, or as unconscious ideas, or as permanent possibilities of perception, but, on the other hand, intermittent, viz., as contents of finite consciousness,' we recognise Transcendental Realism. (2) When three persons are sitting at a table, how many distinct tables are there? The Naïve Realist answers 'one'; the Transcendental Idealist answers 'three'; but the Transcendental Realist answers 'four.' This last answer does, indeed, presuppose that it is legitimate to group together in the single question, 'How many tables?' things so unlike each other as the one table which is the 'thing-in-itself' and the three tables which are the objects of perception in the three perceivers' minds. If this seems too great a licence to anyone, he will have to answer 'one and three,' instead of 'four.' (3) When two persons are alone together in a room, how many distinct persons are there? If you answer 'two'--you are a Naïve Realist. If you answer 'four,' viz., in each of the two minds one 'I' and one 'Other,' you are a Transcendental Idealist. If you answer 'six,' viz., two persons as 'things-in-themselves' and four persons as ideal objects in the two minds, you are a Transcendental Realist. In order to show that Epistemological Monism is not one of these three positions, we should have to give other answers than the above to each of these three questions. But I cannot imagine what answers these could be." The answers of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity would have to be: (1) Whoever apprehends only what he perceives of a thing and mistakes these percepts for the reality of the thing, is a Naïve Realist. He does not realise that, strictly, he ought to regard these perceptual contents as existing only so long as he is looking at the objects, so that he ought to conceive the objects before him as intermittent. As soon, however, as it becomes clear to him that reality is to be met with only in the percepts which are organised by thinking, he attains to the insight that the percepts which appear as intermittent events, reveal themselves as continuously in existence as soon as they are interpreted by the constructions of thought. Hence continuity of existence must be predicated of the contents of perception which living thought has organised. Only that part which is only perceived, not thought, would have to be regarded as intermittent if--which is not the case--there were such a part. (2) When three persons are sitting at a table, how many distinct tables are there? There is only one table. But so long as the three persons stop short at their perceptual images, they ought to say: "These percepts are not the reality at all." As soon as they pass on to the table as apprehended by thinking, there is revealed to them the one real table. They are then united with their three contents of consciousness in this one reality. (3) When two persons are alone together in a room, how many distinct persons are there? Most assuredly there are not six--not even in the sense of the Transcendental Realist's theory--but only two. Only, at first, each person has nothing but the unreal percept of himself and of the other person. There are four such percepts, the presence of which in the minds of the two persons is the stimulus for the apprehension of reality by their thinking. In this activity of thinking each of the two persons transcends the sphere of his own consciousness. A living awareness of the consciousness of the other person as well as of his own arises in each. In these moments of living awareness the persons are as little imprisoned within their consciousness as they are in sleep. But at other moments consciousness of this identification with the other returns, so that each person, in the experience of thinking, apprehends consciously both himself and the other person. I know that a Transcendental Realist describes this view as a relapse into Naïve Realism. But, then, I have already pointed out in this book that Naïve Realism retains its justification for our thinking as we actually experience it. The Transcendental Realist ignores the true situation in the process of cognition completely. He cuts himself off from the facts by a tissue of concepts and entangles himself in it. Moreover, the Monism which appears in the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity ought not to be labelled "epistemological," but, if an epithet is wanted, then a "Monism of Thought." All this has been misunderstood by Eduard von Hartmann. Ignoring all that is specific in the argumentation of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, he has charged me with having attempted to combine Hegel's Universalistic Panlogism with Hume's Individualistic Phenomenalism (Zeitschrift für Philosophie, vol. 108, p. 71, note). But, in truth, the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity has nothing whatever to do with the two positions which it is accused of trying to combine. (This, too, is the reason why I could feel no interest in polemics against, e.g., the Epistemological Monism of Johannes Rehmke. The point of view of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is simply quite different from what Eduard von Hartmann and others call "Epistemological Monism.")

APPENDIX II

REVISED INTRODUCTION TO "PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM."

The following chapter reproduces, in all essentials, the pages which stood as a sort of "Introduction" in the first edition of this book. Inasmuch as it rather reflects the mood out of which I composed this book twenty-five years ago, than has any direct bearing on its contents, I print it here as an "Appendix." I do not want to omit it altogether, because the suggestion keeps cropping up that I want to suppress some of my earlier writings on account of my later works on spiritual matters.

Our age is one which is unwilling to seek truth anywhere but in the depths of human nature. [62] Of the following two well-known paths described by Schiller, it is the second which will to-day be found most useful:

Wahrheit suchen wir beide, du aussen im Leben, ich innen
In dem Herzen, und so findet sie jeder gewiss.
Ist das Auge gesund, so begegnet es aussen dem Schöpfer
Ist es das Herz, dann gewiss spiegelt es innen die Welt. [63]

A truth which comes to us from without bears ever the stamp of uncertainty. Conviction attaches only to what appears as truth to each of us in our own hearts.

Truth alone can give us confidence in developing our powers. He who is tortured by doubts finds his powers lamed. In a world the riddle of which baffles him, he can find no aim for his activity.

We no longer want to believe; we want to know. Belief demands the acceptance of truths which we do not wholly comprehend. But the individuality which seeks to experience everything in the depths of its own being, is repelled by what it cannot understand. Only that knowledge will satisfy us which springs from the inner life of the personality, and submits itself to no external norm.

Again, we do not want any knowledge which has encased itself once and for all in hide-bound formulas, and which is preserved in Encyclopædias valid for all time. Each of us claims the right to start from the facts that lie nearest to hand, from his own immediate experiences, and thence to ascend to a knowledge of the whole universe. We strive after certainty in knowledge, but each in his own way.

Our scientific theories, too, are no longer to be formulated as if we were unconditionally compelled to accept them. None of us would wish to give a scientific work a title like Fichte's A Pellucid Account for the General Public concerning the Real Nature of the Newest Philosophy. An Attempt to Compel the Readers to Understand. Nowadays there is no attempt to compel anyone to understand. We claim no agreement from anyone whom a distinct individual need does not drive to a certain view. We do not seek nowadays to cram facts of knowledge even into the immature human being, the child. We seek rather to develop his faculties in such a way that his understanding may depend no longer on our compulsion, but on his will. I am under no illusion concerning the characteristics of the present age. I know how many flaunt a manner of life which lacks all individuality and follows only the prevailing fashion. But I know also that many of my contemporaries strive to order their lives in the direction of the principles I have indicated. To them I would dedicate this book. It does not pretend to offer the "only possible" way to Truth, it only describes the path chosen by one whose heart is set upon Truth.

The reader will be led at first into somewhat abstract regions, where thought must draw sharp outlines, if it is to reach secure conclusions. But he will also be led out of these arid concepts into concrete life. I am fully convinced that one cannot do without soaring into the ethereal realm of abstraction, if one's experience is to penetrate life in all directions. He who is limited to the pleasures of the senses misses the sweetest enjoyments of life. The Oriental sages make their disciples live for years a life of resignation and asceticism before they impart to them their own wisdom. The Western world no longer demands pious exercises and ascetic practices as a preparation for science, but it does require a sincere willingness to withdraw oneself awhile from the immediate impressions of life, and to betake oneself into the realm of pure thought.

The spheres of life are many and for each there develops a special science. But life itself is one, and the more the sciences strive to penetrate deeply into their separate spheres, the more they withdraw themselves from the vision of the world as a living whole. There must be one supreme science which seeks in the separate sciences the elements for leading men back once more to the fullness of life. The scientific specialist seeks in his studies to gain a knowledge of the world and its workings. This book has a philosophical aim: science itself is here infused with the life of an organic whole. The special sciences are stages on the way to this all-inclusive science. A similar relation is found in the arts. The composer in his work employs the rules of the theory of composition. This latter is an accumulation of principles, knowledge of which is a necessary presupposition for composing. In the act of composing, the rules of theory become the servants of life, of reality. In exactly the same way philosophy is an art. All genuine philosophers have been artists in concepts. Human ideas have been the medium of their art, and scientific method their artistic technique. Abstract thinking thus gains concrete individual life. Ideas turn into life-forces. We have no longer merely a knowledge about things, but we have now made knowledge a real, self-determining organism. Our consciousness, alive and active, has risen beyond a mere passive reception of truths.

How philosophy, as an art, is related to freedom; what freedom is; and whether we do, or can, participate in it--these are the principal problems of my book. All other scientific discussions are put in only because they ultimately throw light on these questions which are, in my opinion, the most intimate that concern mankind. These pages offer a "Philosophy of Freedom."

All science would be nothing but the satisfaction of idle curiosity did it not strive to enhance the existential value of human personality. The true value of the sciences is seen only when we are shown the importance of their results for humanity. The final aim of an individuality can never be the cultivation of any single faculty, but only the development of all capacities which slumber within us. Knowledge has value only in so far as it contributes to the all-round unfolding of the whole nature of man.

This book, therefore, does not conceive the relation between science and life in such a way that man must bow down before the world of ideas and devote his powers to its service. On the contrary, it shows that he takes possession of the world of ideas in order to use them for his human aims, which transcend those of mere science.

Man must confront ideas as master, lest he become their slave.

APPENDIX III

PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION OF "TRUTH AND SCIENCE"

Contemporary philosophy suffers from a morbid belief in Kant. To help towards our emancipation from this belief is the aim of the present essay. It would indeed be criminal to try and minimise the debt which the development of German philosophy owes to Kant's immortal work. But it is high time to acknowledge that the only way of laying the foundations for a truly satisfying view of the world and of human life is to put ourselves in decisive opposition to the spirit of Kant. What is it that Kant has achieved? He has shown that the transcendent ground of the world which lies beyond the data of our senses and the categories of our reason, and which his predecessors sought to determine by means of empty concepts, is inaccessible to our knowledge. From this he concluded that all our scientific thinking must keep within the limits of possible experience, and is incapable of attaining to knowledge of the transcendent and ultimate ground of the world, i.e., of the "thing-in-itself." But what if this "thing-in-itself," this whole transcendent ground of the world, should be nothing but a fiction? It is easy to see that this is precisely what it is. An instinct inseparable from human nature impels us to search for the innermost essence of things, for their ultimate principles. It is the basis of all scientific enquiry. But, there is not the least reason to look for this ultimate ground outside the world of our senses and of our spirit, unless a thorough and comprehensive examination of this world should reveal within it elements which point unmistakably to an external cause.

The present essay attempts to prove that all the principles which we need in order to explain our world and make it intelligible, are within reach of our thought. Thus, the assumption of explanatory principles lying outside our world turns out to be the prejudice of an extinct philosophy which lived on vain dogmatic fancies. This ought to have been Kant's conclusion, too, if he had really enquired into the powers of human thought. Instead, he demonstrated in the most complicated way that the constitution of our cognitive faculties does not permit us to reach the ultimate principles which lie beyond our experience. But we have no reason whatever for positing these principles in any such Beyond. Thus Kant has indeed refuted "dogmatic" philosophy, but he has put nothing in its place. Hence, all German philosophy which succeeded Kant has evolved everywhere in opposition to him. Fichte, Schelling, Hegel simply ignored the limits fixed by Kant for our knowledge and sought the ultimate principles, not beyond, but within, the world accessible to human reason. Even Schopenhauer, though he does declare the conclusions of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason to be eternal and irrefutable truths, cannot avoid seeking knowledge of the ultimate grounds of the world along paths widely divergent from those of his master. But the fatal mistake of all these thinkers was that they sought knowledge of ultimate truths, without having laid the foundation for such an enterprise in a preliminary investigation of the nature of knowledge itself. Hence, the proud intellectual edifices erected by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel have no foundation to rest on. The lack of such foundations reacts most unfavourably upon the arguments of these thinkers. Ignorant of the importance of the world of pure ideas and of its relation to the realm of sense-perception, they built error upon error, one-sidedness upon one-sidedness. No wonder that their over-bold systems proved unable to withstand the storms of an age which recked nothing of philosophy. No wonder that many good things in these systems were pitilessly swept away along with the errors.

To remedy the defect which has just been indicated is the purpose of the following investigations. They will not imitate Kant by explaining what our minds can not know: their aim is to show what our minds can know.

The outcome of these investigations is that truth is not, as the current view has it, an ideal reproduction of a some real object, but a free product of the human spirit, which would not exist anywhere at all unless we ourselves produced it. It is not the task of knowledge to reproduce in conceptual form something already existing independently. Its task is to create a wholly new realm which, united with the world of sense-data, ends by yielding us reality in the full sense. In this way, man's supreme activity, the creative productivity of his spirit, finds its organic place in the universal world-process. Without this activity it would be impossible to conceive the world-process as a totality complete in itself. Man does not confront the world-process as a passive spectator who merely copies in his mind the events which occur, without his participation, in the cosmos without. He is an active co-creator in the world-process, and his knowledge is the most perfect member of the organism of the universe.

This view carries with it an important consequence for our conduct, for our moral ideals. These, too, must be regarded, not as copies of an external standard, but as rooted within us. Similarly, we refuse to look upon our moral laws as the behests of any power outside us. We know no "categorical imperative" which, like a voice from the Beyond, prescribes to us what to do or to leave undone. Our moral ideals are our own free creations. All we have to do is to carry out what we prescribe to ourselves as the norm of our conduct. Thus, the concept of truth as a free act leads to a theory of morals based on the concept of a perfectly free personality.

These theses, of course, are valid only for that part of our conduct the laws of which our thinking penetrates with complete comprehension. So long as the laws of our conduct are merely natural motives or remain obscure to our conceptual thinking, it may be possible from a higher spiritual level to perceive how far they are founded in our individuality, but we ourselves experience them as influencing us from without, as compelling us to action. Every time that we succeed in penetrating such a motive with clear understanding, we make a fresh conquest in the realm of freedom.

The relation of these views to the theory of Eduard von Hartmann, who is the most significant figure in contemporary philosophy, will be made clear to the reader in detail in the course of this essay, especially as regards the problem of knowledge.

A prelude to a Philosophy of Spiritual Activity--this is what the present essay offers. That philosophy itself, completely worked out, will shortly follow.

The ultimate aim of all science is to increase the value of existence for human personality. Whoever does not devote himself to science with this aim in view is merely modelling himself in his own work upon some master. If he "researches," it is merely because that happens to be what he has been taught to do. But not for him is the title of a "free thinker."

The sciences are seen in their true value only when philosophy explains the human significance of their results. To make a contribution to such an explanation was my aim. But, perhaps, our present-day science scorns all philosophical vindication! If so, two things are certain. One is that this essay of mine is superfluous. The other is that modern thinkers are lost in the wood and do not know what they want.

In concluding this Preface, I cannot omit a personal observation. Up to now I have expounded all my philosophical views on the basis of Goethe's world-view, into which I was first introduced by my dear and revered teacher, Karl Julius Schröer, who to me stands in the very forefront of Goethe-students, because his gaze is ever focussed beyond the particular upon the universal Ideas.

But, with this essay I hope to have shown that the edifice of my thought is a whole which has its foundations in itself and which does not need to be derived from Goethe's world-view. My theories, as they are here set forth and as they will presently be amplified in the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, have grown up in the course of many years. Nothing but a deep sense of gratitude leads me to add that the affectionate sympathy of the Specht family in Vienna, during the period when I was the tutor of its children, provided me with an environment, than which I could not have wished a better, for the development of my ideas. In the same spirit, I would add, further, that I owe to the stimulating conversations with my very dear friend, Miss Rosa Mayreder, of Vienna, the mood which I needed for putting into final form many of the thoughts which I have sketched provisionally as germs of my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. Her own literary efforts, which express the sensitive and high-minded nature of a true artist, are likely before long to be presented to the public.

Vienna, December, 1891.

APPENDIX IV

INTRODUCTION TO ORIGINAL EDITION OF "TRUTH AND SCIENCE"

The aim of the following discussions is to reduce the act of cognition, by analysis, to its ultimate elements and thus to discover a correct formulation of the problem of knowledge and a way to its solution. They criticise all theories of knowledge which are based on Kant's line of thought, in order to show that along this road no solution of the problem of knowledge can ever be found. It is, however, due to the fundamental spade-work which Volkelt has done in his thorough examination of the concept of experience, [64] to acknowledge that without his preliminary labours the precise determination, which I have here attempted of the concept of the Given would have been very much more difficult. However, we are cherishing the hope that we have laid the foundations for our emancipation from the Subjectivism which attaches to all theories of knowledge that start from Kant. We believe ourselves to have achieved this emancipation through showing that the subjective form, in which the picture of the world presents itself to the act of cognition, prior to its elaboration by science, is nothing but a necessary stage of transition which is overcome in the very process of knowledge itself. For us, experience, so-called, which Positivism and Neo-Kantianism would like to represent as the only thing which is certain, is precisely the most subjective of all. In demonstrating this, we also show that Objective Idealism is the inevitable conclusion of a theory of knowledge which understands itself. It differs from the metaphysical and absolute Idealism of Hegel in this, that it seeks in the subject of knowledge the ground for the diremption of reality into given existence and concept, and that it looks for the reconciliation of this divorce, not in an objective world-dialectic, but in the subjective process of cognition. The present writer has already once before advocated this point of view in print, viz., in the Outlines of a Theory of Knowledge (Berlin and Stuttgart, 1885). However, that book differs essentially in method from the present essay, and it also lacks the analytic reduction of knowledge to its ultimate elements.

NOTES

[1] Two souls, alas! reside within my breast,
And each withdraws from, and repels, its brother.
One with tenacious organs holds in love
And clinging lust the world in its embraces;
The other strongly sweeps, this dust above,
Into the high ancestral spaces.

Faust, Part I, Scene 2.

(Bayard Taylor's translation.)