Chapter IX: Part 9

The subjectivism which we have sketched above is the result of the elaboration of certain facts by thought. Thus, it takes for granted that, from given facts as starting-point, we can by consistent thinking, i.e., by logical combination of certain observations, gain correct conclusions. But our right thus to employ our thinking remains unexamined. There, precisely, lies the weakness of this method. Whereas Naïve Realism starts from the unexamined assumption that the contents of our perceptual experience have objective reality, the Idealism just described starts from the no less unexamined conviction that by the use of thought we can reach conclusions which are scientifically valid. In contrast to Naïve Realism, we may call this point of view "Naïve Rationalism." In order to justify this term, it may be well to insert here a brief comment on the concept of the "Naïve." A. Döring, in his essay Über den Begriff des Naiven Realismus, [46] attempts a more precise determination of this concept. He says, "The concept of the Naïve marks as it were the zero-point on the scale of our reflection upon our own activity. In content the Naïve may well coincide with the True, for, although the Naïve is unreflecting and, therefore, uncritical or a-critical, yet this lack of reflection and criticism excludes only the objective assurance of truth. It implies the possibility and the danger of error, but it does not imply the necessity of error. There are naïve modes of feeling and willing as there are naïve modes of apprehending and thinking, in the widest sense of the latter term. Further, there are naïve modes of expressing these inward states in contrast with their repression or modification through consideration for others and through reflection. Naïve activity is not influenced, at least not consciously, by tradition, education, or imposed rule. It is in all spheres (as its root nativus, brings out), unconscious, impulsive, instinctive, dæmonic activity." Starting from this account, we will try to determine the concept of the Naïve still more precisely. In every activity we may consider two aspects--the activity itself and our consciousness of its conformity to a law. We may be wholly absorbed in the former, without caring at all for the latter. The artist is in this position, who does not know in reflective form the laws of his creative activity but yet practises these laws by feeling and sense. We call him "naïve." But there is a kind of self-observation which inquires into the laws of one's own activity and which replaces the naïve attitude, just described, by the consciousness of knowing exactly the scope and justification of all one does. This we will call "critical." This account seems to us best to hit off the meaning of this concept which, more or less clearly understood, has since Kant acquired citizen-rights in the world of philosophy. Critical reflection is, thus, the opposite of naïve consciousness. We call an attitude "critical" which makes itself master of the laws of its own activity in order to know how far it can rely on them and what are their limits. Theory of Knowledge can be nothing if not a critical science. Its object is precisely the most subjective activity of man--knowing. What it aims at exhibiting is the laws to which knowing conforms. Hence, the naïve attitude is wholly excluded from this science. Its claim to strength lies precisely in that it achieves what many minds, interested in practice rather than in theory, pride themselves on never having attempted, viz., "thinking about thought."

IV

THE STARTING-POINTS OF THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

At the beginning of an epistemological inquiry we must, in accordance with the conclusions we have reached, put aside everything which we have come to know. For, knowledge is something which man has produced, something which he has originated by his activity. If the Theory of Knowledge is really to extend the light of its explanation over the whole field of what we know, it must set out from a point which has remained wholly untouched by cognitive activity--indeed which rather furnishes the first impulse for this activity. The point at which we must start lies outside of what we know. It cannot as yet itself be an item of knowledge. But we must look for it immediately prior to the act of cognition, so that the very next step which man takes shall be a cognitive act. The method for determining this absolutely first starting-point must be such that nothing enters into it which is already the result of cognitive activity.

There is nothing but the immediately-given world-picture with which we can make a start of this sort. This means the picture of the world which is presented to man before he has in any way transformed it by cognitive activity, i.e., before he has made the very least judgment about it or submitted it to the very smallest determination by thinking. What thus passes initially through our minds and what our minds pass through--this incoherent picture which is not yet differentiated into particular elements, in which nothing seems distinguished from, nothing related to, nothing determined by, anything else, this is the Immediately-Given. On this level of existence--if the phrase is permissible--no object, no event, is as yet more important or more significant than any other. The rudimentary organ of an animal, which, in the light of the knowledge belonging to a higher level of existence, is perhaps seen to be without any importance whatever for the development and life of the animal, comes before us with the same claim to our attention as the noblest and most necessary part of the organism. Prior to all cognitive activity nothing in our picture of the world appears as substance, nothing as quality, nothing as cause or as effect. The contrasts of matter and spirit, of body and soul, have not yet arisen. Every other predicate, too, must be kept away from the world-picture presented at this level. We may think of it neither as reality nor as appearance, neither as subjective nor as objective, neither as necessary nor as contingent. We cannot decide at this stage whether it is "thing-in-itself" or mere "idea." For, we have seen already that the conclusions of Physics and Physiology, which lead us to subsume the Given under one or other of the above heads, must not be made the basis on which to build the Theory of Knowledge.

Suppose a being with fully-developed human intelligence were to be suddenly created out of Nothing and confronted with the world, the first impression made by the world on his senses and his thought would be pretty much what we have here called the immediately-given world-picture. Of course, no actual man at any moment of his life has nothing but this original world-picture before him. In his mental development there is nowhere a sharp line between pure, passive reception of the Given from without and the cognitive apprehension of it by Thought. This fact might suggest critical doubts concerning our method of determining the starting-point of the Theory of Knowledge. Thus, e.g., Eduard von Hartmann remarks: "We do not ask what is the content of consciousness of a child just awakening to conscious life, nor of an animal on the lowest rung of the ladder of organisms. For, of these things philosophising man has no experience, and, if he tries to reconstruct the content of consciousness of beings on primitive biogenetic or ontogenetic levels, he cannot but base his conclusions on his own personal experience. Hence, our first task is to determine what is the content of consciousness which philosophising man discovers in himself when he begins his philosophical reflection." [47] But, the objection to this view is that the picture of the world with which we begin philosophical reflection, is already qualified by predicates which are the results solely of knowledge. We have no right to accept these predicates without question. On the contrary, we must carefully extract them from out of the world-picture, in order that it may appear in its purity without any admixture due to the process of cognition. In general, the dividing line between what is given and what is added by cognition cannot be identified with any single moment of human development, but must be drawn artificially. But this can be done at every level of development, provided only we divide correctly what is presented to us prior to cognition, without any determination by thinking, from what is made of it by cognition.

Now, it may be objected that we have already piled up a whole host of thought-determinations in the very process of extracting the alleged primitive world-picture out of the complete picture into which man's cognitive elaboration has transformed it. But, in defence we must urge that all our conceptual apparatus was employed, not for the characterisation of the primitive world-picture, nor for the determination of its qualities, but solely for the guidance of our analysis, in order to lead it to the point where knowledge recognises that it began. Hence, there can be no question of the truth or error, correctness or incorrectness, of the reflections which, according to our view, precede the moment which brings us to the starting-point of the Theory of Knowledge. Their purpose is solely to guide us conveniently to that point. Nobody who is about to occupy himself with epistemological problems, stands at the same time at what we have rightly called the starting-point of knowledge, for his knowledge is already, up to a certain degree, developed. Nothing but analysis with the help of concepts enables us to eliminate from our developed knowledge all the gains of cognitive activity and to determine the starting-point which precedes all such activity. But the concepts thus employed have no cognitive value. They have the purely negative task to eliminate out of our field of vision whatever is the result of cognitive activity and to lead us to the point where this activity first begins. The present discussions point the way to those primitive beginnings upon which the cognitive activity sets to work, but they form no part of such activity. Thus, whatever Theory of Knowledge has to say in the process of determining the starting-point, must be judged, not as true or false, but only as fit or unfit for this purpose. Error is excluded, too, from that starting-point itself. For, error can begin only with the activity of cognition; prior to this, it cannot occur.

This last proposition is compatible only with the kind of Theory of Knowledge which sets out from our line of thought. For, a theory which sets out from some object (or subject) with a definite conceptual determination is liable to error from the very start, viz., in this very determination. Whether this determination is justified or not, depends on the laws which the cognitive act establishes. This is a question to which only the course of the epistemological inquiry itself can supply the answer. All error is excluded only when I can say that I have eliminated all conceptual determinations which are the results of my cognitive activity, and that I retain nothing but what enters the circle of my experience without any activity on my part. Where, on principle, I abstain from every positive affirmation, there I cannot fall into error.

From the epistemological point of view, error can occur only within the sphere of cognitive activity. An illusion of the senses is no error. The fact that the rising moon appears to us bigger than the moon overhead is not an error, but a phenomenon fully explained by the laws of nature. An error would result only, if thought, in ordering the data of perception, were to put a false interpretation on the "bigger" or "smaller" size of the moon. But such an interpretation would lie within the sphere of cognitive activity.

If knowledge is really to be understood in its essential nature, we must, without doubt, begin our study of it at the point where it originates, where it starts. Moreover, it is clear that whatever precedes its starting-point has no legitimate place in any explanatory Theory of Knowledge, but must simply be taken for granted. It is the task of science, in its several branches, to study the essential nature of all that we are here taking for granted. Our aim, here, is not to acquire specific knowledge of this or that, but to investigate knowledge as such. We must first understand the act of cognition, before we can judge what significance to attach to the affirmations about the content of the world which come to be made in the process of getting to know that content.

For this reason, we abstain from every attempt to determine what is immediately-given, so long as we are ignorant of the relation of our determinations to what is determined by them. Not even the concept of the "immediately-given" affirms any positive determination of what precedes cognition. Its only purpose is to point towards the Given, to direct our attention upon it. Here, at the starting-point of the Theory of Knowledge, the term merely expresses, in conceptual form, the initial relation of the cognitive activity to the world-content. The choice of this term allows even for the case that the whole world-content should turn out to be nothing but a figment of our own "Ego," i.e., that the most extreme subjectivism should be right. For, of course, subjectivism does not express a fact which is given. It can, at best, be only the result of theoretical considerations. Its truth, in other words, needs to be established by the Theory of Knowledge. It cannot serve as the presupposition of that theory.

This immediately-given world-content includes everything which can appear within the horizon of our experience, in the widest sense of this term, viz., sensations, percepts, intuitions, feelings, volitions, dreams, fancies, representations, concepts, ideas.

Illusions, too, and hallucinations stand at this level exactly on a par with other elements of the world-content. Only theoretical considerations can teach us in what relations illusions, etc., stand to other percepts.

A Theory of Knowledge which starts from the assumption that all the experiences just enumerated are contents of our consciousness, finds itself confronted at once by the question: How do we transcend our consciousness so as to apprehend reality? Where is the jumping-board which will launch us from the subjective into the trans-subjective? For us, the situation is quite different. For us, consciousness and the idea of the "Ego" are, primarily, only items in the Immediately-Given, and the relation of the latter to the two former has first to be discovered by knowledge. We do not start from consciousness in order to determine the nature of knowledge, but, vice versa, we start from knowledge in order to determine consciousness and the relation of subject to object. Seeing that, at the outset, we attach no predicates whatever to the Given, we are bound to ask: How is it that we are able to determine it at all? How is it possible to start knowledge anywhere at all? How do we come to designate one item of the world-content, as, e.g., percept, another as concept, a third as reality, others as appearance, as cause, as effect? How do we come to differentiate ourselves from what is "objective," and to contrast "Ego" and "Non-Ego?"

We must discover the bridge which leads from the picture of the world as given to the picture of it which our cognitive activity unfolds. But the following difficulty confronts us. So long as we do nothing but passively gaze at the Given, we can nowhere find a point which knowledge can take hold of and from which it can develop its interpretations. Somewhere in the Given we must discover the spot where we can get to work, where something homogeneous to cognition meets us. If everything were merely given, we should never get beyond the bare gazing outwards into the external world and a no less bare gazing inwards into the privacy of our inner world. We should, at most, be able to describe, but never to understand, the objects outside of us. Our concepts would stand in a purely external, not in an internal, relation to that to which they apply. If there is to be knowledge, everything depends on there being, somewhere within the Given, a field in which our cognitive activity does not merely presuppose the Given, but is at work in the very heart of the Given itself. In other words, the very strictness with which we hold fast the Given, as merely given, must reveal that not everything is given. Our demand for the Given turns out to have been one which, in being strictly maintained, partially cancels itself. We have insisted on the demand, lest we should arbitrarily fix upon some point as the starting-point of the Theory of Knowledge, instead of making a genuine effort to discover it. In our sense of the word "given," everything may be given, even what in its own innermost nature is not given. That is to say, the latter presents itself, in that case, to us purely formally as given, but reveals itself, on closer inspection, for what it really is.

The whole difficulty in understanding knowledge lies in that we do not create the world-content out of ourselves. If we did so create it, there would be no knowledge at all. Only objects which are given can occasion questions for me. Objects which I create receive their determinations by my act. Hence, I do not need to ask whether these determinations are true or false.

This, then, is the second point in our Theory of Knowledge. It consists in the postulate that there must, within the sphere of the Given, be a point at which our activity does not float in a vacuum, at which the world-content itself enters into our activity.

We have already determined the starting-point of the Theory of Knowledge by assigning it a place wholly antecedent to all cognitive activity, lest we should distort that activity by some prejudice borrowed from among its own results. Now we determine the first step in the development of our knowledge in such a way that, once more, there can be no question of error or incorrectness. For, we affirm no judgment about anything whatsoever, but merely state the condition which must be fulfilled if knowledge is to be acquired at all. It is all-important that we should, with the most complete critical self-consciousness, keep before our minds the fact that we are postulating the very character which that part of the world-content must possess on which our cognitive activity can begin to operate.

Nothing else is, in fact, possible. As given, the world-content is wholly without determinations. No part of it can by itself furnish the impulse for order to begin to be introduced into the chaos. Hence, cognitive activity must issue its edict and declare what the character of that part is to be. Such an edict in no way infringes the character of the Given as such. It introduces no arbitrary affirmation into science. For, in truth, it affirms nothing. It merely declares that, if the possibility of knowledge is to be explicable at all, we need to look for a field like the one above described. If there is such a field, knowledge can be explained; if not, not. We began our Theory of Knowledge with the "Given" as a whole; now we limit our requirement to the singling out of a particular field within the Given.

Let us come to closer grips with this requirement. Where within the world-picture do we find something which is not merely given, but is given only in so far as it is at the same time created by the cognitive activity?

We need to be absolutely clear that this creative activity must, in its turn, be given to us in all its immediacy. No inferences must be required in order to know that it occurs. Thence it follows, at once, that sense-data do not meet our requirement. For, the fact that they do not occur without our activity is known to us, not immediately, but as an inference from physical and physiological arguments. On the other hand, we do know immediately that it is only in and through the cognitive act that concepts and ideas enter into the sphere of the Immediately-Given. Hence, no one is deceived concerning the character of concepts and ideas. It is possible to mistake a hallucination for an object given from without, but no one is ever likely to believe that his concepts are given without the activity of his own thinking. A lunatic will regard as real, though they are in fact unreal, only things and relations which have attached to them the predicate of "actuality," but he will never say of his concepts and ideas that they have come into the world without his activity. Everything else in our world-picture is such that it must be given, if it is to be experienced by us. Only of our concepts and ideas is the opposite true: they must be produced by us, if they are to be experienced. They, and only they, are given in a way which might be called intellectual intuition. Kant and the modern philosophers who follow him deny altogether that man possesses this kind of intuition, on the ground that all our thinking refers solely to objects and is absolutely impotent to produce anything out of itself, whereas in intellectual intuition form and matter must be given together. But, is not precisely this actually the case with pure concepts and ideas? [48] To see this, we must consider them purely in the form in which, as yet, they are quite free from all empirical content. In order, e.g., to comprehend the pure concept of causality, we must go, not to a particular instance of causality nor to the sum of all instances, but to the pure concept itself. Particular causes and effects must be discovered by investigation in the world, but causality as a Form of Thought must be created by ourselves before we can discover causes in the world. If we hold fast to Kant's thesis that concepts without percepts are empty, it becomes unintelligible how the determination of the Given by concepts is to be possible. For, suppose there are given two items of the world-content, a and b. In order to find a relation between them, I must be guided in my search by a rule of determinate content. Such a rule I can only create in the act of cognition itself. I cannot derive it from the object, because it is only with the help of the rule that the object is to receive its determinations. Such a rule, therefore, for the determination of the real has its being wholly in purely conceptual form.

Before passing on, we must meet a possible objection. It might seem as if in our argument we had unconsciously assigned a prominent part to the idea of the "Ego," or the "personal subject," and as if we employed this idea in the development of our line of thought, without having established our right to do so. For example, we have said that "we produce concepts," or that "we make this or that demand." But these are mere forms of speech which play no part in our argument. That the cognitive act is the act of, and originates in, an "Ego," can, as we have already pointed out, be affirmed only as an inference in the process of knowledge itself. Strictly, we ought at the outset to speak only of cognitive activity without so much as mentioning a cognitive agent. For, all that has been established so far amounts to no more than this, (1) that something is "given," and (2) that at a certain point within the "given" there originates the postulate set forth above; also, that concepts and ideas are the entities which answer to that postulate. This is not to deny that the point at which the postulate originates is the "Ego." But, in the first instance, we are content to establish these two steps in the Theory of Knowledge in their abstract purity.

V

KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY

Concepts and ideas, then, though themselves part of the Given, yet at the same time take us beyond the Given. Thus, they make it possible to determine also the nature of the other modes of cognitive activity.

By means of a postulate, we have selected a special part out of the given world-picture, because it is the very essence of knowledge to proceed from a part with just this character. Thus, we have made the selection solely in order to be able to understand knowledge. But, we must clearly confess to ourselves that by this selection we have artificially torn in two the unity of the given world-picture. We must bear in mind that the part which we have divorced from the Given still continues, quite apart from our postulate and independently of it, to stand in a necessary connection with the world as given. This fact determines the next step forward in the Theory of Knowledge. It will consist in restoring the unity which we have destroyed in order to show how knowledge is possible. This restoration will consist in thinking about the world as given. The act of thinking about the world actually effects the synthesis of the two parts of the given world-content--of the Given which we survey up to the horizon of our experience, and of the part which, in order to be also given, must be produced by us in the activity of cognition. The cognitive act is the synthesis of these two factors. In every single cognitive act the one factor appears as something produced in the act itself and as added to the other factor which is the pure datum. It is only at the very start of the Theory of Knowledge that the factor which otherwise appears as always produced, appears also as given.

To think about the world is to transmute the given world by means of concepts and ideas. Thinking, thus, is in very truth the act which brings about knowledge. Knowledge can arise only if thinking, out of itself, introduces order into the content of the world as given. Thinking is itself an activity which produces a content of its own in the moment of cognition. Hence, the content cognised, in so far as it has its origin solely in thinking, offers no difficulty to cognition. We need only observe it, for in its essential nature it is immediately given to us. The description of thinking is also the science of thinking. In fact, Logic was never anything but a description of the forms of thinking, never a demonstrative science. For, demonstration occurs only when there is a synthesis of the products of thinking with a content otherwise given. Hence, Gideon Spicker is quite right when he says in his book, Lessing's Weltanschauung (p. 5): "We have no means of knowing, either empirically or logically, whether the results of thinking, as such, are true." We may add that, since demonstration already presupposes thinking, thinking itself cannot be demonstrated. We can demonstrate a particular fact, but we cannot demonstrate the process of demonstrating itself. We can only describe what a demonstration is. All logical theory is wholly empirical. Logic is a science which consists only of observation. But if we want to get to know anything over and above our thinking, we can do so only with the help of thinking. That is to say, our thinking must apply itself to something given and transform its chaotic into a systematic connection with the world-picture. Thinking, then, in its application to the world as given, is a formative principle. The process is as follows. First, thinking selects certain details out of the totality of the Given. For, in the Given, there are strictly no individual details, but only an undifferentiated continuum. Next, thinking relates the selected details to each other according to the forms which it has itself produced. And, lastly, it determines what follows from this relation. The act of relating two distinct items of the world-content to each other does not imply that thinking arbitrarily determines something about them. Thinking waits and sees what is the spontaneous consequence of the relation established. With this consequence we have at last some degree of knowledge of the two selected items of the world-content. Suppose the world-content reveals nothing of its nature in response to the establishment of such a relation, then the effort of thinking must miscarry, and a fresh effort must take its place. All cognitions consist in this, that two or more items of the Given are brought into relation with each other by us and that we apprehend what follows from this relation.

Without doubt, many of our efforts of thinking miscarry, not only in the sciences, as is amply proved by their history, but also in ordinary life. But in the simple cases of mistake which are, after all, the commonest, the correct thought so rapidly replaces the incorrect, that the latter is never, or rarely, noticed.

Kant, in his theory of the "synthetic unity of apperception," had an inkling of this activity of thought in the systematic organisation of the world-content, as we have here developed it. But his failure to appreciate clearly the real function of thinking is revealed by the fact, that he believes himself able to deduce the a priori laws of Pure Natural Science from the rules according to which this synthetic activity proceeds. Kant has overlooked that the synthetic activity of thinking is merely the preparation for the discovery of natural laws properly so-called. Suppose we select two items, a and b, from the Given. For knowledge to arise of a nexus according to law between a and b, the first requirement is that thinking should so relate a and b, that the relation may appear to us as given. Thus, the content proper of the law of nature is derived from what is given, and the sole function of thinking is to establish such relations between the items of the world-picture that the laws to which they are subject become manifest. The pure synthetic activity of thinking is not the source of any objective laws whatever.

We must inquire what part thinking plays in the formation of our scientific world-picture as distinct from the merely given one. It follows from our account that thinking supplies the formal principle of the conformity of phenomena to law. Suppose, in our example above, that a is the cause, b the effect. Unless thinking were able to produce the concept of causality, we should never be able to know that a and b were causally connected. But, in order that we may know, in the given case, that a is the cause and b the effect, it is necessary for a and b to possess the characteristics which we mean when we speak of cause and effect. A similar analysis applies to the other categories of thought.

It will be appropriate to notice here in a few words Hume's discussion of causality. According to Hume, the concepts of cause and effect have their origin solely in custom. We observe repeatedly that one event follows another and become accustomed to think of them as causally connected, so that we expect the second to occur as soon as we have observed the first. This theory, however, springs from a totally mistaken view of the causal relation. Suppose for several days running I observe the same person whenever I step out of the door of my house, I shall gradually form the habit of expecting the temporal sequence of the two events. But, it will never occur to me to think that there is any causal connection between my own appearance and that of the other person at the same spot. I shall call in aid essentially other items of the world-content in order to explain the coincidence of these events. In short, we determine the causal nexus of two events, not according to their temporal sequence, but according to the essential character of the items of the world-content which we call, respectively, cause and effect.

From this purely formal activity of our thinking in the construction of the scientific picture of the world, it follows that the content of every cognition cannot be fixed a priori in advance of observation (in which thinking comes to grips with the Given), but must be derived completely and exhaustively from observation. In this sense, all our cognitions are empirical. Nor is it possible to see how it could be otherwise. For, Kant's judgments a priori are at bottom, not cognitions, but postulates. On Kant's principles, all we can ever say is only this, that if a thing is to become the object of possible experience, it must conform to these laws. They are, therefore, rules which the subject prescribes to all objects. But, we should rather expect cognitions of the Given to have their source, not in the constitution of the subject, but in that of the object.

Thinking makes no a priori affirmations about the Given. But it creates the forms, on the basis of which the conformity of phenomena to law becomes manifest a posteriori.

From our point of view, it is impossible to determine anything a priori about the degree of certainty belonging to a judgment which embodies knowledge thus gained. For, certainty, too, derives from nothing other than the Given. Perhaps it will be objected that observation never establishes anything except that a certain nexus of phenomena actually occurs, but not that it must occur, and will always occur, in like conditions. But, this suggestion, too, is in error. For any nexus which I apprehend between elements in the world-picture is, on our principles, nothing but what is grounded in these elements themselves. It is not imported into these elements by thinking, but belongs to them essentially, and must, therefore, necessarily exist whenever they themselves exist.

Only a view which regards all scientific research as nothing but the endeavour to correlate the facts of experience by means of principles which are subjective and external to the facts, can hold that the nexus of a and b may to-day obey one law and to-morrow another (J. S. Mill). On the other hand, if we see clearly that the laws of nature have their source in the Given, and that, therefore, the nexus of phenomena essentially depends upon, and is determined by, them, we shall never think of talking of a "merely relative universality" of the laws which are derived from observation. This is, of course, not to assert that any given law which we have once accepted as correct, must be absolutely valid. But when, later, a negative instance overthrows a law, the reason is, not that the law from the first could be inferred only with relative universality, but that it had not at first been inferred correctly. A genuine law of nature is nothing but the formulation of a nexus in the given world-picture, and it exists as little without the facts which it determines, as these exist without it.

Above, we have laid down that it is the essence of the cognitive activity to transmute, by thinking, the given world-picture by means of concepts and ideas. What follows from this fact? If the Immediately-Given were a totality complete in itself, the work which thinking does upon it in cognition would be both impossible and unnecessary. We should simply accept the Given, as it is, and be satisfied with it as such. Cognitive activity is possible only because in the Given something lies hidden which does not yet reveal itself so long as we gaze at the Given in its immediacy, but which becomes manifest with the aid of the order which thinking introduces. Prior to the work of thinking, the Given does not possess the fulness of its own complete nature.

This point becomes still more obvious by considering in greater detail the two factors involved in the act of cognition. The first factor is the Given. "Being given" is not a quality of the Given, but merely a term expressing its relation to the second factor in the act of cognition. This second factor, viz., the conceptual content of the Given, is found by our thought in the act of cognition to be necessarily connected with the Given. Two questions arise: (1) Where are the Given and the Concept differentiated? (2) Where are they united? The answer to these two questions is to be found, beyond any doubt, in the preceding discussions. They are differentiated solely in the act of cognition. They are united in the Given. Thence it follows necessarily that the conceptual content is but a part of the Given, and that the act of cognition consists in re-uniting with each other the two parts of the world-picture which are, at first, given to it in separation. The given world-picture thus attains its completion only through that mediate kind of givenness which thinking brings about. In its original immediacy the world-picture is altogether incomplete.

If the conceptual content were from the first united with the Given in our world-picture, there would be no cognition. For, no need could ever arise of transcending the Given. So, again, if by thinking and in thinking we could create the whole world-content, once more there would be no cognition. For, what we create ourselves we do not need to cognise. Hence, cognition exists because the world-content is given to us originally in a form which is incomplete, which does not contain it as a whole, but which, over and above what it presents immediately, owns another, no less essential, aspect. This second aspect of the world-content--an aspect not originally given--is revealed by cognition. Pure thinking presents in the abstract, not empty forms, but a sum of determinations (categories) which serve as forms for the rest of the world-content. The world-content can be called REALITY only in the form which it acquires through cognition and in which both aspects of it are united.

VI

THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT PRESUPPOSITIONS VERSUS FICHTE'S THEORY OF SCIENCE

So far, we have determined the idea of knowledge. This idea is given immediately in the human consciousness whenever it functions cognitively. To the "Ego," as the centre [49] of consciousness, are given immediately external and internal perceptions, as well as its own existence. The Ego feels impelled to find more in the Given than it immediately contains. Over against the given world, a second world, the world of thinking, unfolds itself for the Ego and the Ego unites these two by realising, of its own free will, the idea of knowledge which we have determined. This accounts for the fundamental difference between the way in which in the objects of human consciousness itself the concept and the Immediately-Given unite to form Reality in its wholeness, and the way in which their union obtains in the rest of the world-content. For every other part of the world-content we must assume that the union of the two factors is original and necessary from the first, and that it is only for cognition, when cognition begins, that an artificial separation has supervened, but that cognition in the end undoes the separation in keeping with the original and essential unity of the object-world. For consciousness the case is quite otherwise. Here the union exists only when it is achieved by the living activity of consciousness itself. With every other kind of object, the separation of the two factors is significant, not for the object, but only for knowledge. Their union is here original, their separation derivative. Cognition effects a separation only because it must first separate before it can achieve union by its own methods. But, for consciousness, the Concept and the Given are originally separate. Union is here derivative, and that is why cognition has the character which we have described. Just because in consciousness Idea and Given appear in separation, does the whole of reality split itself for consciousness into these two factors. And, again, just because consciousness can bring about the union of the two factors only by its own activity, can it reach full reality only by performing the act of cognition. The remaining categories (ideas) would be necessarily united with the corresponding lands of the Given, even if they were not taken up into cognition. But the idea of cognition can be united with the Given which corresponds to it, only by the activity of consciousness. Real consciousness exists only in realising itself. With these remarks we believe ourselves to be sufficiently equipped for laying bare the root-error of Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre and, at the same time, for supplying the key to the understanding of it. Fichte is among all Kant's successors the one who has felt most vividly that nothing but a theory of consciousness can supply the foundation for all the sciences. But he never clearly understood why this is so. He felt that the act which we have called the second step in the Theory of Knowledge and which we have formulated as a postulate, must really be performed by the "Ego." This may be seen, e.g., from the following passage. "The Theory of Science, then, arises, as itself a systematic discipline, just as do all possible sciences in so far as they are systematic, through a certain act of freedom, the determinate function of which is, more particularly, to make us conscious of the characteristic activity of intelligence as such. The result of this free act is that the necessary activity of intelligence, which in itself already is form, is further taken up as matter into a fresh form of cognition or consciousness." [50] What does Fichte here mean by the activity of the "intelligence," when we translate what he has obscurely felt into clear concepts? Nothing but the realisation of the idea of knowledge, taking place in consciousness. Had this been perfectly clear to Fichte, he ought to have expressed his view simply by saying, "It is the task of the Theory of Science to bring cognition, in so far as it is still an unreflective activity of the 'Ego,' into reflective consciousness; it has to show that the realisation of the idea of cognition in actual fact is a necessary activity of the 'Ego.'"

Fichte tries to determine the activity of the "Ego." He declares "that the being, the essence of which consists solely in this that it posits itself as existing, is the Ego as absolute subject." [51] This positing of the Ego is for Fichte the original, unconditioned act "which lies at the basis of all the rest of consciousness." [52] It follows that the Ego, in Fichte's sense, can likewise begin all its activity only through an absolute fiat of the will. But, it is impossible for Fichte to supply any sort of content for this activity which his "Ego" absolutely posits. For, Fichte can name nothing upon which this activity might direct itself, or by which it might be determined. His Ego is supposed to perform an act. Yes, but what is it to do? Fichte failed to define the concept of cognition which the Ego is to realise, and, in consequence, he struggled in vain to find any way of advancing from his absolute act to the detailed determinations of the Ego. Nay, in the end he declares that the inquiry into the manner of this advance lies outside the scope of his theory. In his deduction of the idea of cognition he starts neither from an absolute act of the Ego, nor from one of the Non-Ego, but from a state of being determined which is, at the same time, an act of determining. His reason for this is that nothing else either is, or can be, immediately contained in consciousness. His theory leaves it wholly vague what determines, in turn, this determination. And it is this vagueness which drives us on beyond Fichte's theory into the practical part of the Wissenschaftslehre. [53] But, by this turn Fichte destroys all knowledge whatsoever. For, the practical activity of the Ego belongs to quite a different sphere. The postulate which we have put forward above can, indeed, be realised--so much is clear--only by a free act of the Ego. But, if this act is to be a cognitive act, the all-important point is that its voluntary decision should be to realise the idea of cognition. It is, no doubt, true that the Ego by its own free will can do many other things as well. But, what matters for the epistemological foundation of the sciences is not a definition of what it is for the Ego to be free, but of what it is to know. Fichte has allowed himself to be too much influenced by his subjective tendency to present the freedom of human personality in the brightest light. Harms, in his address on The Philosophy of Fichte (p. 15), rightly remarks, "His world-view is predominantly and exclusively ethical, and the same character is exhibited by his Theory of Knowledge." Knowledge would have absolutely nothing to do, if all spheres of reality were given in their totality. But, seeing that the Ego, so long as it has not been, by thinking, inserted into its place in the systematic whole of the world-picture, exists merely as an immediately-given something, it is not enough merely to point out what it does. Fichte, however, believes that all we need to do concerning the Ego is to seek and find it. "We have to seek and find the absolutely first, wholly unconditioned principle of all human knowledge. Being absolutely first, this principle admits neither of proof nor of determination." [54] We have seen that proof and determination are out of place solely as applied to the content of Pure Logic. But the Ego is a part of reality, and this makes it necessary to establish that this or that category is actually to be found in the Given. Fichte has failed to do this. And this is the reason why he has given such a mistaken form to his Theory of Science. Zeller remarks [55] that the logical formulæ by means of which Fichte seeks to reach the concept of the Ego, do but ill disguise his predetermined purpose at any price to reach this starting-point for his theory. This comment applies to the first form (1794) which Fichte gave to his Wissenschaftslehre. Taking it, then, as established that Fichte, in keeping with the whole trend of his philosophical thinking, could not, in fact, rest content with any other starting-point for knowledge than an absolute and arbitrary act, we have the choice between only two ways of making this start intelligible. The one way was to seize upon some one among the empirical activities of consciousness and to strip off, one by one, all the characteristics of it which do not follow originally from its essential nature, until the pure concept of the Ego had been crystallised out. The other way was to begin, straightway, with the original activity of the Ego, and to exhibit its nature by introspection and reflection. Fichte followed the first way at the outset of his philosophical thinking, but in the course of it he gradually switched over to the other.

Basing himself upon Kant's "synthesis of transcendental apperception," Fichte concluded that the whole activity of the Ego in the synthesis of the matter of experience proceeds according to the forms of the judgment. To judge is to connect a predicate with a subject--an act of which the purely formal expression is a = a. This proposition would be impossible if the x which connects predicate and subject, did not rest upon a power to affirm unconditionally. For, the proposition does not mean, "a exists"; it means, "if a exists, then there exists a." Thus, a is most certainly not affirmed absolutely. Hence, if there is to be an absolute, unconditionally valid affirmation, there is no alternative but to declare the act of affirming itself to be absolute. Whereas a is conditioned, the affirming of a is unconditioned. This affirming is the act of the Ego which, thus, possesses the power to affirm absolutely and without conditions. In the proposition, a = a, the one a is affirmed only on condition of the other being presupposed. Moreover, the affirming is an act of the Ego. "If a is affirmed in the Ego, it is affirmed." [56] This connection is possible only on condition that there is in the Ego something always self-identical, which effects the transition from the one a to the other. The above-mentioned x is this self-identical aspect of the Ego. The Ego which affirms the one a is the same Ego as that which affirms the other a. This is to say Ego = Ego. But this proposition, expressed in judgment-form, "If the Ego is, it is," is meaningless. For, the Ego is not affirmed on condition of another Ego having been presupposed, but it presupposes itself. In short, the Ego is absolute and unconditioned. The hypothetical judgment-form which is the form of all judgments, so long as the absolute Ego is not presupposed, changes for the Ego into the form of the categorical affirmation of existence, "I am unconditionally." Fichte has another way of putting this: "the Ego originally affirms its own existence." [57] Clearly, this whole deduction is nothing but a sort of elementary school-drill by means of which Fichte tries to lead his readers to the point at which they will perceive for themselves the unconditioned activity of the Ego. His aim is to put clearly before their eyes that fundamental activity of the Ego in the absence of which there is no such thing as an Ego at all.

Let us now look back, once more, over Fichte's line of thought. On closer inspection, it becomes obvious that it contains a leap--a leap, moreover, which throws grave doubts upon the correctness of his theory of the original act of the Ego. What precisely is it that is absolute in the affirmation of the Ego? Take the judgment, "If a exists, then there exists a." The a is affirmed by the Ego. So far there is no room for doubt. But, though the act is unconditioned, yet the Ego must affirm something in particular. It cannot affirm an "activity in general and as such"; it can affirm only a particular, determinate activity. In short, the affirmation must have a content. But, it cannot derive this content from itself, for else we should get nothing but affirmations of acts of affirmation in infinitum. Hence, there must be something which is realised by this affirming, by this absolute activity of the Ego. If the Ego does not seize upon something given in order to affirm it, it can do nothing at all, and, consequently, it cannot affirm either. This is proved, too, by Fichte's proposition, "the Ego affirms its own existence." "Existence," here, is a category. Thus, we are back at our own position: the activity of the Ego consists in that it affirms, of its own free will, the concepts and ideas inherent in the Given. If Fichte had not unconsciously been determined to exhibit the Ego as "existing," he would have got nowhere at all. If, instead, he had built up the concept of cognition, he would have reached the true starting-point of the Theory of Knowledge, viz., "The Ego affirms the act of cognition." Because Fichte failed to make clear to himself what determines the activity of the Ego, he fixed simply upon the affirmation of its own existence as the character of that activity. But, this is at once to restrict the absolute activity of the Ego. For, if nothing is unconditioned except the Ego's affirmation of its own existence, then every other activity of the Ego is conditioned. Moreover, the way is cut off for passing from the unconditioned to the conditioned. If the Ego is unconditioned only in the affirmation of its own existence, then at once there is cut off all possibility of affirming by an original act anything other than its own existence. Hence, the necessity arises to assign a ground for all the other activities of the Ego. But Fichte, as we have seen above, sought for such a ground in vain.