Knowledge
of Freedom
CHAPTER SEVEN
Are
There Limits to Knowledge?
WE
have established that the elements for the explanation of
reality are to be found in the two spheres: perceiving and
thinking. It is due, as we have seen, to our organization that
the full, complete reality, including our own selves as
subjects, appears at first as a duality. The act of knowing
overcomes this duality by fusing the two elements of reality,
the percept and the concept gained by thinking, into the
complete thing. Let us call the manner in which the world
presents itself to us, before it has taken on its true nature
through our knowing it, “the world of appearance,” in
contrast to the unified whole composed of percept and concept.
We can then say: The world is given to us as a duality,
and knowledge transforms it into a unity. A philosophy
which starts from this basic principle may be called a
monistic philosophy, or monism. Opposed to this is the two-world
theory, or dualism. The latter does not assume just
that there are two sides of a single reality which are kept
apart merely by our organization, but that there are two
worlds absolutely distinct from one another. It then tries to
find in one of these two worlds the principles for the
explanation of the other.
Dualism rests on a false conception of what we call knowledge.
It divides the whole of existence into two spheres,
each of which has its own laws, and it leaves these two worlds
standing apart and opposed.
It is from a dualism such as this that there arises the distinction
between the perceptual object and the thing-in-itself, which
Kant
introduced into philosophy, and which,
to the present day, we have not succeeded in eradicating.
According to our line of argument, it is due to the nature of
our mental organization that a particular thing can be given
to us only as a percept. Thinking then overcomes this
particularity by assigning to each percept its rightful place in
the world as a whole. As long as we designate the separated
parts of the world as percepts, we are simply following, in
this separating out, a law of our subjectivity. If, however, we
regard the sum of all percepts as the one part, and contrast
with this a second part, namely, the things-in-themselves,
then we are philosophizing into the blue. We are merely
playing with concepts. We construct an artificial pair of
opposites, but we can gain no content for the second of these
opposites, since such content for a particular thing can be
drawn only from perception.
Every kind of existence that is assumed outside the realm of percept
and concept must be relegated to the sphere of unjustified hypotheses.
To this category belongs the “thing-in-itself”. It is
quite natural that a dualistic thinker should be
unable to find the connection between the world principle
which he hypothetically assumes and the things given in
experience. A content for the hypothetical world principle
can be arrived at only by borrowing it from the world of
experience and then shutting one's eyes to the fact of the
borrowing. Otherwise it remains an empty concept, a non-concept
which has nothing but the form of a concept. Here
the dualistic thinker usually asserts that the content of this
concept is inaccessible to our knowledge; we can know only
that such a content exists, but not what it is that exists. In
both cases it is impossible to overcome dualism. Even though
one were to import a few abstract elements from the world
of experience into the concept of the thing-in-itself, it
would still remain impossible to derive the rich concrete life
of experience from these few qualities which are, after all,
themselves taken from perception.
DuBois-Reymond
considers that the imperceptible atoms of matter produce
sensation and feeling by means of their position and motion,
and then comes to the conclusion that we can never find a
satisfactory explanation of how matter and motion produce
sensation and feeling, for “it is absolutely and for ever
incomprehensible that it should be other than indifferent to
a number of atoms of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and so on,
how they lie and move, how they lay and moved, or how they
will lie and will move. It is impossible to see how consciousness
could come into existence through their interaction.”
This conclusion is characteristic of this whole trend of
thought. Position and motion are abstracted from the rich
world of percepts. They are then transferred to the notional
world of atoms. And then astonishment arises that real life
cannot be evolved out of this self-made principle borrowed
from the world of percepts.
That the dualist can reach no explanation of the world,
working as he does with a completely empty concept of the
“in-itself” of a thing, follows at once from the very definition
of his principle given above.
In every case the dualist finds himself compelled to set
impassable barriers to our faculty of knowledge. The follower
of a monistic world conception knows that everything he
needs for the explanation of any given phenomenon in the
world must lie within this world itself. What prevents him
from reaching it can be only accidental limitations in space
and time, or defects of his organization, that is, not of
human organization in general, but only of his own particular
one.
It follows from the concept of the act of knowing as we
have defined it, that one cannot speak of limits to knowledge.
Knowing is not a concern of the world in general, but an
affair which man must settle for himself. Things demand no
explanation. They exist and act on one another according to
laws which can be discovered through thinking. They exist
in indivisible unity with these laws. Our Egohood confronts
them, grasping at first only that part of them we have called
percepts. Within our Egohood, however, lies the power to
discover the other part of the reality as well. Only when the
Egohood has taken the two elements of reality which are
indivisibly united in the world and has combined them also
for itself, is our thirst for knowledge satisfied — the I has then
arrived at the reality once more.
Thus the conditions necessary for an act of knowledge to
take place are there through the I and for the I. The I sets
itself the problems of knowledge; and moreover it takes them
from an element that is absolutely clear and transparent in
itself: the element of thinking. If we set ourselves questions
which we cannot answer, it must be because the content
of the questions is not in all respects clear and distinct.
It is not the world which sets us the questions, but we
ourselves.
I can imagine that it would be quite impossible for me to
answer a question which I happened to find written down
somewhere, without knowing the sphere from which the
content of the question was taken.
In our knowledge we are concerned with questions which
arise for us through the fact that a sphere of percepts,
conditioned by place, time, and our subjective organization,
is confronted by a sphere of concepts pointing to the totality
of the universe. My task consists in reconciling these two
spheres, with both of which I am well acquainted. Here one
cannot speak of a limit to knowledge. It may be that, at any
particular moment, this or that remains unexplained because,
through our place in life, we are prevented from perceiving
the things involved. What is not found today, however, may
be found tomorrow. The limits due to these causes are only
transitory, and can be overcome by the progress of perception and thinking.
Dualism makes the mistake of transferring the antithesis
of object and subject, which has meaning only within the
perceptual realm, to purely notional entities outside this
realm. But since the separate things within the perceptual
field remain separated only so long as the perceiver refrains
from thinking (which cancels all separation and shows it to be
due to purely subjective factors), the dualist is therefore
transferring to entities behind the perceptible realm determining
factors which even for this realm have no absolute
validity, but only relative. He thus splits up the two factors
concerned in the process of knowledge, namely percept and
concept, into four: (1) the object in itself; (2) the precept
which the subject has of the object; (3) the subject; (4) the
concept which relates the precept to the object in itself. The
relation between subject and object is a real one; the subject
is really (dynamically) influenced by the object. This real
process is said not to appear in consciousness. But it is
supposed to evoke in the subject a response to the stimulation
from the object. The result of this response is said to be the
percept. Only at this stage does it enter our consciousness.
The object is said to have an objective (independent of the
subject) reality, the percept a subjective reality. This
subjective reality is referred by the subject to the object.
This reference is called an ideal one. With this the dualist
therefore splits up the process of knowledge into two parts.
The one part, namely, the production of the perceptual
object out of the thing-in-itself, he conceives of as taking
place outside consciousness, whereas the other, the
combination of percept with concept and the reference of the
concept to the object, takes place, according to him, within
consciousness.
With these presuppositions, it is clear why the dualist
believes his concepts to be merely subjective representatives
of what is there prior to his consciousness. The objectively
real process in the subject by means of which the percept
comes about, and still more the objective relations between
things-in-themselves, remain for such a dualist inaccessible
to direct knowledge; according to him, man can obtain only
conceptual representatives of the objectively real. The bond
of unity which connects things with one another and also
objectively with the individual mind of each of us (as
thing-in-itself) lies beyond our consciousness in a being-in-itself of
whom, once more, we can have in our consciousness merely a
conceptual representative.
The dualist believes that he would dissolve away the whole
world into a mere abstract. scheme of concepts, did he not
insist on real connections between the objects besides the
conceptual ones. In other words, the ideal principles
which thinking discovers seem too airy for the dualist, and
he seeks, in addition, real principles with which to support
them.
Let us examine these real principles a little more closely.
The naïve man (naïve realist) regards the objects of external
experience as realities. The fact that his hands can grasp
these objects, and his eyes see them, is for him sufficient
proof of their reality. “Nothing exists that cannot be perceived”
is, in fact, the first axiom of the naïve man; and it is
held to be equally valid in its converse: “Everything which
can be perceived exists.” The best evidence for this assertion
is the naïve man's belief in immortality and ghosts. He thinks
of the soul as refined material substance which may, in
special circumstances, become visible even to the ordinary
man (naïve belief in ghosts).
In contrast with this real world of his, the naïve realist
regards everything else, especially the world of ideas, as
unreal or “merely ideal”. What we add to objects by thinking
is nothing more than thoughts about the things. Thought
adds nothing real to the percept.
But it is not only with reference to the existence of things
that the naïve man regards sense perception as the sole proof
of reality, but also with reference to events. A thing, according
to him, can act on another only when a force actually
present to sense perception issues from the one and seizes
upon the other. In the older physics it was thought that very
fine substances emanate from the objects and penetrate
through the sense organs into the soul. The actual seeing of
these substances is impossible only because of the coarseness
of our sense organs relative to the fineness of these substances.
In principle, the reason for attributing reality to these
substances was the same as for attributing it to the objects of
the sense-perceptible world, namely because of their mode
of existence, which was thought to be analogous to that of
sense-perceptible reality.
The self-contained nature of what can be experienced
through ideas is not regarded by the naïve mind as being real
in the same way that sense experience is. An object grasped
in “mere idea” is regarded as a chimera until conviction of
its reality can be given through sense perception. In short,
the naïve man demands the real evidence of his senses in
addition to the ideal evidence of his thinking. In this need of
the naïve man lies the original ground for primitive forms of
the belief in revelation. The God who is given through thinking
remains to the naïve mind always a merely “notional”
God. The naïve mind demands a manifestation that is
accessible to sense perception. God must appear in the flesh,
and little value is attached to the testimony of thinking, but
only to proof of divinity such as changing water into wine in
a way that can be testified by the senses.
Even the act of knowing itself is pictured by the naïve man
as a process analogous to sense perception. Things, it is
thought, make an impression on the soul, or send out images
which enter through our senses, and so on.
What the naïve man can perceive with his senses he regards
as real, and what he cannot thus perceive (God, soul,
knowledge, etc.) he regards as analogous to what he does
perceive.
A science based on naïve realism would have to be nothing
but an exact description of the content of perception. For
naïve realism, concepts are only the means to an end. They
exist to provide ideal counterparts of percepts, and have no
significance for the things themselves. For the naïve realist,
only the individual tulips which he sees (or could see) are
real; the single idea of the tulip is to him an abstraction, the
unreal thought-picture which the soul has put together out
of the characteristics common to all tulips.
Naive realism, with its fundamental principle of the
reality of all perceived things, is contradicted by experience,
which teaches us that the content of percepts is of a transitory
nature. The tulip I see is real today; in a year it will have
vanished into nothingness. What persists is the species tulip. For
the naïve realist, however, this species is “only”
an idea, not a reality. Thus this theory of the world find itself
in the position of seeing its realities arise and perish, while
what it regards as unreal, in contrast with the real, persists.
Hence naïve realism is compelled to acknowledge, in addition
to percepts, the existence of something ideal. It must
admit entities which cannot be perceived by the senses. In
doing so, it justifies itself by conceiving their existence as
being analogous to that of sense-perceptible objects. Just
such hypothetical realities are the invisible forces by means
of which the sense-perceptible objects act on one another.
Another such thing is heredity, which works on beyond
the individual and is the reason why a new being which
develops from the individual is similar to it, thereby serving
to maintain the species. Such a thing again is the
life-principle permeating the organic body, the soul for which the
naïve mind always finds a concept formed in analogy with
sense realities, and finally the naïve man's Divine Being.
This Divine Being is thought of as acting in a manner exactly
corresponding to the way in which man himself is seen to
act; that is, anthropomorphically.
Modern
physics traces sensations back to processes of the
smallest particles of bodies and of an infinitely fine
substance, called ether, or to other such things. For example,
what we experience as warmth is, within the space occupied
by the warmth-giving body, the movement of its parts. Here
again something imperceptible is conceived in analogy with
what is perceptible. In this sense, the perceptual analogue
to the concept “body” would be, shall we say, the interior
of a totally enclosed space, in which elastic spheres are
moving in all directions, impinging one on another, bouncing
on and off the walls, and so on.
(see fn 1)
Without such assumptions the world would fall apart for
the naïve realist into an incoherent aggregate of percepts
without mutual relationships and with no tendency to unite.
It is clear, however, that naïve realism can make these
assumptions only by an inconsistency. If it would remain
true to its fundamental principle that only what is perceived
is real, then it ought not to assume a reality where it perceives
nothing. The imperceptible forces which proceed
from the perceptible things are in fact unjustified hypotheses
from the standpoint of naïve realism. And because naïve
realism knows no other realities, it invests its hypothetical
forces with perceptual content. It thus ascribes a form of
existence (perceptible existence) to a sphere where the only
means of making any assertion about such existence, namely,
sense perception, is lacking.
This self-contradictory theory leads to metaphysical
realism. This constructs, in addition to the perceptible
reality, an imperceptible reality which it conceives on the
analogy of the perceptible one. Therefore metaphysical
realism is of necessity dualistic.
Wherever the metaphysical realist observes a relationship
between perceptible things (such as when two things move
towards each other, or when something objective enters
consciousness), there he sees a reality. However, the
relationship which he notices can only be expressed by means of
thinking; it cannot be perceived. The purely ideal relationship
is then arbitrarily made into something similar to a
perceptible one. Thus, according to this theory, the real
world is composed of the objects of perception which are in
ceaseless flux, arising and disappearing, and of imperceptible
forces which produce the objects of perception, and are the
things that endure.
Metaphysical realism is a contradictory mixture of naïve
realism and idealism. Its hypothetical forces are
imperceptible entities endowed with the qualities of percepts. The
metaphysical realist has made up his mind to acknowledge,
in addition to the sphere which he is able to know through
perception, another sphere for which this means of knowledge
fails him and which can be known only by means of
thinking. But he cannot make up his mind at the same time
to acknowledge that the mode of existence which thinking
reveals, namely, the concept (idea), is just as important a
factor as the percept. If we are to avoid the contradiction of
imperceptible percepts, we must admit that the relationships
which thinking establishes between the percepts can have
no other mode of existence for us than that of concepts. If
we reject the untenable part of metaphysical realism, the
world presents itself to us as the sum of percepts and their
conceptual (ideal) relationships. Metaphysical realism would
then merge into a view of the world which requires the
principle of perceivability for percepts and that of
conceivability for the relationships between the percepts. This
view of the world can admit no third sphere — in addition to
the world of percepts and the world of concepts — in which
both the so-called “real” and “ideal” principles are
simultaneously valid.
When the metaphysical realist asserts that, besides the
ideal relationship between the percept of the object and the
percept of the subject, there must also exist a real relationship
between the “thing-in-itself” of the percept and the
“thing-in-itself” of the perceptible subject (that is, of the
so-called individual spirit), he is basing his assertion on the
false assumption of a real process, analogous to the processes
in the sense world but imperceptible. Further, when the
metaphysical realist asserts that we enter into a conscious
ideal relationship to our world of percepts, but that to the
real world we can have only a dynamic (force) relationship,
he repeats the mistake we have already criticized. One can
talk of a dynamic relationship only within the world of
percepts (in the sphere of the sense of touch), but not
outside that world.
Let us call the view which we have characterized above,
into which metaphysical realism merges when it discards its
contradictory elements, monism, because it combines
one-sided realism with idealism into a higher unity.
For naïve realism, the real world is an aggregate of
perceived objects (percepts); for metaphysical realism, not
only percepts but also imperceptible forces are real; monism
replaces forces by ideal connections which are gained
through thinking. The laws of nature are just such connections.
A law of nature is in fact nothing but the conceptual
expression of the connection between certain percepts.
Monism never finds it necessary to ask for any principles
of explanation for reality other than percepts and concepts.
It knows that in the whole field of reality there is no occasion
for this question. In the perceptual world, as it presents
itself directly to perception, it sees one half of the reality; in
the union of this world with the world of concepts it finds
the full reality.
The metaphysical realist may object to the adherent of
monism: It may be that for your organization, your knowledge
is complete in itself, with no part lacking; but you do
not know how the world is mirrored in an intelligence
organized differently from your own. To this the monist will
reply: If there are intelligences other than human, and if
their percepts are different from ours, all that concerns me is
what reaches me from them through perception and concept.
Through my perceiving, that is, through this specifically
human mode of perceiving, I, as subject, am confronted
with the object. The connection of things is thereby interrupted.
The subject restores this connection by means of
thinking. In doing so it puts itself back into the context of
the world as a whole. Since it is only through the subject
that the whole appears cut in two at the place between our
percept and our concept, the uniting of those two gives us
true knowledge. For beings with a different perceptual
world (for example, if they had twice our number of sense
organs), the continuum would appear broken in another
place, and the reconstruction would accordingly have to take
a form specific for such beings. The question concerning the
limits of knowledge exists only for naïve and metaphysical
realism, both of which see in the contents of the soul only
an ideal representation of the real world. For these theories,
what exists outside the subject is something absolute,
founded in itself, and what is contained within the subject is
a picture of this absolute, but quite external to it. The
completeness of knowledge depends on the greater or lesser
degree of resemblance between the picture and the absolute
object. A being with fewer senses than man will perceive
less of the world, one with more senses will perceive more.
The former will accordingly have a less complete knowledge
than the latter.
For monism, the situation is different. The manner in
which the world continuum appears to be rent asunder into
subject and object depends on the organization of the
perceiving being. The object is not absolute, but merely
relative, with reference to this particular subject. Bridging
over the antithesis, therefore, can again take place only in
the quite specific way that is characteristic of the particular
human subject. As soon as the I, which is separated from the
world in the act of perceiving, fits itself back into the world
continuum through thoughtful contemplation, all further
questioning ceases, having been but a consequence of the
separation.
A differently constituted being would have a differently
constituted knowledge. Our own knowledge suffices to
answer the questions put by our own nature.
Metaphysical realism has to ask: By what means are our
percepts given? What is it that affects the subject?
Monism holds that percepts are determined through
the subject. But at the same time, the subject has in
thinking the means for canceling this self-produced determination.
The metaphysical realist is faced by a further difficulty
when he seeks to explain the similarity between the world
pictures of different human individuals. He has to ask
himself: How is it that the picture of the world which I
build up out of my subjectively determined percepts and my
concepts turns out to be the same as the one which another
individual is also building up out of the same two subjective
factors? How can I, in any case, draw conclusions from my
own subjective picture of the world about that of another
human being? The fact that people can understand and get
on with one another in practical life leads the metaphysical
realist to conclude that their subjective world pictures must
be similar. From the similarity of these world pictures he
then further concludes that the “individual spirits” behind
the single human subjects as percepts, or the “I-in-itself”
behind the subjects, must also be like one another.
This is an inference from a sum of effects to the character
of the underlying causes. We believe that we can understand
the situation well enough from a sufficiently large number of
instances to know how the inferred causes will behave in
other instances. Such an inference is called an inductive
inference. We shall be obliged to modify its results if further
observation yields some unexpected element, because the
character of our conclusion is, after all, determined only by
the particular form of our actual observations. The metaphysical
realist asserts that this knowledge of causes, though
conditional, is nevertheless quite sufficient for practical
life.
Inductive inference is the method underlying modern
metaphysical realism. At one time it was thought that we
could evolve something out of concepts that is no longer a
concept. It was thought that the metaphysical realities,
which metaphysical realism after all requires, could be
known by means of concepts. This kind of philosophizing is
now out of date. Instead it is thought that one can infer
from a sufficiently large number of perceptual facts the
character of the thing-in-itself which underlies these facts.
Whereas formerly it was from concepts, now it is from
percepts that people seek to evolve the metaphysical. Since
one has concepts before oneself in transparent clearness, it
was thought that one might be able to deduce the metaphysical
from them with absolute certainty. Percepts are not
given with the same transparent clearness. Each subsequent
one is a little different from others of the same kind which
preceded it. Basically, therefore, anything inferred from past
percepts will be somewhat modified by each subsequent
percept. The character of the metaphysical thus obtained
can, therefore, be only relatively true, since it is subject to
correction by further instances.
Eduard von Hartmann's
metaphysics has a character determined by this basic method,
as expressed in the motto on the title page of his first
important book: “Speculative results following the inductive
method of Natural Science.”
The form which the metaphysical realist nowadays gives to
his things-in-themselves is obtained by inductive inferences.
Through considerations of the process of knowledge
he is convinced of the existence of an objectively real world
continuum, over and above the “subjective” world continuum
which we know through percepts and concepts. The
nature of this reality he thinks he can determine by inductive
inferences from his percepts.
Author's addition, 1918
For the unprejudiced observation of what is experienced
through percept and concept, as we have tried to describe it
in the foregoing pages, certain ideas which originate in the
field of natural science are repeatedly found to be disturbing.
Thus it is said that in the spectrum of light the eye perceives
colors from red to violet. But in the space beyond the violet
there are forces of radiation for which there is no
corresponding color-perception in the eye, but instead there is a
definite chemical effect; in the same way, beyond the limit of
the red there are radiations having only an effect of warmth.
By studying these and other similar phenomena, one is led
to the view that the range of man's perceptual world is
determined by the range of his senses, and that he would be
confronted by a very different world if he had additional, or
altogether different, senses. Anyone who chooses to indulge
in the extravagant flights of fancy for which the brilliant
discoveries of recent scientific research offer such tempting
opportunities, may well arrive at the conclusion that nothing
enters man's field of observation except what can affect the
senses which his bodily organization has evolved. He has no
right to regard what is perceived, limited as it is by his
organization, as in any way setting a standard for reality.
Every new sense would confront him with a different
picture of reality.
Within its proper limits this view is entirely justified. But
if anyone allows this view to confuse him in his unprejudiced
observation of the relationship of percept and concept as set
out in these chapters, then he will bar his own way to any
realistic knowledge of man and of the world. To experience
the essential nature of thinking, that is, to work one's way
into the world of concepts through one's own activity, is an
entirely different thing from experiencing something
perceptible through the senses. Whatever senses man might
possibly have, not one would give him reality if his thinking
did not permeate with concepts whatever he perceived by
means of it. And every sense, however constructed, would,
if thus permeated, enable him to live within reality. This
question of how he stands in the world of reality is untouched
by any speculations he may have as to how the perceptual
world might appear to him if he had different senses. We
must clearly understand that every perceptual picture of the
world owes its form to the organization of the perceiving
being, but also that the perceptual picture which has been
thoroughly permeated by the experience of thinking leads us
into reality. What causes us to enquire into our relationship
to the world is not the fanciful pictures of how different the
world would appear to other than human senses, but the
realization that every percept gives us only a part of the
reality concealed within it, in other words, that it directs us
away from its inherent reality. Added to this is the further
realization that thinking leads us into that part of the reality
which the percept conceals within itself.
Another difficulty in the way of the unprejudiced observation
of the relationship between the percept and the concept
wrought by thinking, as here described, arises when, for
example, in the field of experimental physics it becomes
necessary to speak not of immediately perceptible elements,
but of non-perceptible quantities as in the case of lines of
electric or magnetic force. It may seem as if the elements of
reality of which physicists speak had no connection either
with what is perceptible or with the concepts which active
thinking has wrought. Yet such a view would be based on
self-deception. The main point is that all the results of
physical research, apart from unjustifiable hypotheses which
ought to be excluded, have been obtained through percept
and concept. Elements which are seemingly non-perceptible
are placed by the physicist's sound instinct for knowledge
into the field where percepts lie, and they are thought of in
terms of concepts commonly used in this field. The strengths
of electric or magnetic fields and such like are arrived at, in
the very nature of things, by no other process of knowledge
than the one which occurs between percept and concept.
An increase or a modification of human senses would
yield a different perceptual picture, an enrichment or a
modification of human experience. But even with this
experience one could arrive at real knowledge only through
the interplay of concept and percept. The deepening of knowledge
depends on the powers of intuition which express
themselves in thinking
(see Chapter 5).
In the living experience
which develops within thinking, this intuition may dive
down to greater or to lesser depths of reality. An extension of
the perceptual picture may provide stimulation for this
diving down of intuition, and thus indirectly promote it.
But under no circumstances should this diving into the depths
to reach reality be confused with being confronted by a
perceptual picture of greater or lesser breadth, which in any
case can only contain half the reality, as determined by the
organization of the cognizing being. If one does not lose
oneself in abstractions, one will realize that for a knowledge of
human nature it is a relevant fact that in physics one has to
infer the existence of elements in the perceptual field for
which no sense organ is tuned as it is for color or sound.
Man's being, quite concretely, is determined not only by
what his organization presents to him as immediate percept,
but also by the fact that from this immediate perception
other things are excluded. Just as it is necessary for life that
in addition to the conscious waking state there should be an
unconscious sleeping state, so for man's experience of himself
it is necessary that in addition to the sphere of his sense
perception there should be another sphere — in fact a far
larger one — of elements not perceptible to the senses but
belonging to the same field from which the sense percepts
come. All this was already implied in the original presentation
of this work. The author adds these extensions to the argument
because he has found by experience that many a reader
has not read accurately enough.
It is to be remembered, too, that the idea of percept
developed in this book is not to be confused with the idea of
external sense percept which is but a special instance of it.
The reader will gather from what has gone before, but even
more from what will follow, that “percept” is here taken to
be everything that approaches man through the senses or
through the spirit, before it has been grasped by the actively
elaborated concept. “Senses”, as we ordinarily understand
the term, are not necessary in order to have percepts in
soul- or spirit-experience. It might be said that this extension of
our ordinary usage is not permissible. But such extension is
absolutely necessary if we are not to be prevented by the
current sense of a word from enlarging our knowledge in
certain fields. Anyone who uses “perception” to mean only
“sense perception” will never arrive at a concept fit for the
purposes of knowledge — even knowledge of this same sense
perception. One must sometimes enlarge a concept in order
that it may get its appropriate meaning in a narrower field.
Sometimes one must also add to the original content of a
concept in order that the original concept may be justified
or, perhaps, readjusted. Thus we find it said here in this
book
(see Chapter 6):
“The mental picture is an individualized
concept.” It has been objected that this is an unusual use of
words. But this use is necessary if we are to find out what a
mental picture really is. How can we expect any progress in
knowledge if everyone who finds himself compelled to
readjust concepts is to be met by the objection, “This is an
unusual use of words”?
Footnotes:
- That is, movements of a kind similar to those
which can be perceived are supposed to occur imperceptibly
within the body and to account for the warmth which is
perceived directly but as something quite different.
— Translator's footnote.
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