X
The Inner Nature of Thought
(See Exposition on Brief, Chapter 10)
L
ET US
draw one step nearer to thought. Hitherto we have been
considering the place of thought in relation to the rest of the world
of experience. We have reached the conclusion that it holds a unique
position in that world, that it plays a central role. We shall for
the present turn our attention elsewhere. We shall here restrict
ourselves to a consideration of the inner nature of thinking. We
shall investigate the very character of the thought-world itself, in
order to perceive how one thought depends upon another; how
thoughts are related to one another. From this inquiry we shall
derive the means requisite for reaching a conclusion as to the
question: “What is cognition in general?” Or, in
other words, what is the meaning of forming thoughts about reality?
What is the meaning of wishing to interpret the world by means
of thinking?
Here we must keep
our minds free from any preconceived opinion. We should be holding
such a preconception if we should assume that a concept (thought) is
an image within our consciousness by means of which we reach a
solution concerning an object existing outside of consciousness. Here
we are not concerned with this and similar preconceptions. We take
thoughts just as we find them. The question as to whether they
sustain a relationship to anything else whatever and, if so, what
sort of relationship is just what we shall investigate. Therefore, we
must not posit such a relationship here as our point of departure.
This very opinion concerning the relationship between concept and
object is very widespread. Indeed, the concept is often defined as
the mental counterpart of an object existing outside the mind. The
concept is supposed to reproduce the object, mediating to us a true
photograph of it. Very often, when thinking is the subject of
discussion, what people have in mind is only this preconceived
relationship. Practically never does any one consider the idea of
traversing the realm of thoughts, within their own sphere, in order
to discover what is to be found there.
We will here
investigate this realm just as if nothing whatever existed outside
its boundaries, as if thought were the whole of reality. For a
certain time we shall turn our attention away from all the rest of
the world.
The fact that this
sort of research has been neglected in those investigations
concerning the theory of knowledge which are based upon Kant has been
ruinous to this science. This omission has given an impulse to this
science in a direction which is the very opposite of our own. This
scientific trend can never, by reason of its whole character,
comprehend Goethe. It is, in the truest sense of the word,
un-Goethean to take as point of departure an assumption which
is not found through observation, but actually injected into the
thing observed. But this is what actually occurs when one sets at the
very culmination of scientific knowledge the preconception that the
relation mentioned above does exist between thinking and reality,
between the idea and the world. The only way to treat this matter
after the manner of Goethe is to enter deeply into the nature of
thinking itself and then observe what relation comes about when
thinking, thus known according to its own nature, is brought into
relationship with experience.
Goethe always takes the path of
experience in the strictest sense. He first takes the objects as they
are, and, while banishing entirely every subjective opinion, seeks to
penetrate into their nature; he then creates the conditions under
which the objects can appear in reciprocal action and watches to see
the results. He seeks to give Nature the opportunity to bring her
laws into operation under especially characteristic circumstances,
which he brings about — an opportunity, as it were, to express
her own laws.
How does our
thinking appear to us when observed in itself? It is a multiplicity
of thoughts which are woven and bound organically together in
the most complicated fashion. But, when we have once penetrated this
multiplicity from all directions, it becomes again a unity, a
harmony. All the elements are related one to another; they exist for
one another; one modifies another, restricts it, etc. The moment our
mind conceives two corresponding thoughts, it observes at once
that these really flow together to form a unit. It finds everywhere
in its whole realm the interrelated; this concept unites with
that, a third illuminates or supports a fourth, and so on. If, for
example, we find in our consciousness the concept
“organism,” and we then scan our conceptual world,
we meet with another concept, “systematic evolution,
growth.” It becomes clear that these two concepts belong
together; that they represent merely two aspects of one and the same
thing. But this is true of our entire thought-system. All
individual thoughts are parts of a great whole which we call
our conceptual world.
When any single
thought emerges in consciousness, I cannot rest until this is brought
into harmony with the rest of my thinking. Such an isolated
concept, apart from the rest of my mental world, is entirely
unendurable. I am simply conscious of the fact that there exists an
inwardly sustained harmony among all thoughts; that the thought-world
is of the nature of a unit. Therefore, every such isolation is
an abnormality, an untruth.
When we have
arrived at that state of mind in which our whole thought-world bears
the character of a complete inner harmony, we gain thereby the
satisfaction for which our mind is striving. We feel that we are in
possession of truth.
Since we perceive
truth in the thorough-going agreement of all concepts in our
possession, the question at once forces itself upon us: “Has
thought, apart from all perceptible reality of the phenomenal world
of the senses, a content of its own? When we have removed all
sense-content, is not the remainder an utter emptiness, a mere
phantasm?”
It might well be a
widespread opinion that this is true; hence we must consider this
opinion a little more closely. As we have already remarked above, it
is very frequently assumed that the whole system of concepts is
merely a photograph of the external world. It is firmly maintained
that knowledge evolves in the form of thought; but it is demanded of
“strictly scientific knowledge” that it shall
receive its content from without. According to this view, the world
must provide the substance which flows into our concepts; without
that, these are mere empty forms void of content. If the external
world should vanish, then concepts and ideas would no longer have any
meaning, for they exist by reason of that world.
This point of view
might be called the negation of the concept; for there it no longer
possesses any significance in relation to objectivity. It is
something added to the latter. The world would thus exist in all
completeness even were there no concepts whatever, for these
contribute nothing new to the world. They contain nothing which would
not be there without them. They are there only because the cognizing
subject wills to use them in order to possess in a form suitable to
him what is otherwise already there. They are mere mediators to the
subject of a content which is of a non-conceptual character. Such is
the point of view under discussion.
If it were well
founded, one of the following assumptions would necessarily be
true.
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That the
conceptual world stands in such a relationship to the external
world that it merely repeats the whole content of this in another
form. (Here the term “external world” means the
sense-world). If such were the case, one could not perceive any
necessity for lifting oneself at all above the sense-world. In
this latter everything relating and pertaining to knowledge would
already be given.
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That the conceptual world takes
as its content merely a part of the “appearance for the
senses.” We may imagine the thing somewhat like this. We
make a series of observations. We meet in these the most diverse
objects. We discover in the process that certain characteristics
which we observe in a certain object have already been observed
by us. A series of objects pass in survey before our eyes: A, B,
C, D, etc. Suppose A had the characteristics
p q a r;
B shows i m b n;
C, k h c g;
D, p u a v.
Here in the case of D
we meet again the characteristics a and p
previously observed in connection with A. We
designate these characteristics as essential. And, in so
far as A and D possess essential characteristics in common, we
say they are of the same kind. Thus we unite A and D in that we
lay hold of their essential characteristics in our thinking. Here
we have a thought which does not entirely coincide with the
sense-world and to which the charge of superfluity mentioned
above cannot be applied, and yet it is far from bringing anything
new to the sense-world. Against this, we may say, first of all,
that to determine which characteristics of a thing are
essential requires, to begin with, a certain norm which
will enable us to distinguish between essential and unessential.
This norm cannot exist in the object itself for this
includes both the essential and the unessential in inseparable
unity. This norm must belong to the very content of our
thinking.
But this objection
does not wholly refute this point of view. One holding this view
might meet the objection thus. He might admit that we have no
justification for classifying any characteristic as essential
or unessential, but might declare that this need not disturb us; that
we simply classify things together when we observe similar
characteristics in them without any regard to the essential or
unessential nature of these characteristics.
This view, however, requires a
presupposition which by no means squares with the facts. So long as
we confine ourselves to sense-experience, there is nothing really in
common between two things of the same class. An example will make
this clear. The simplest is the best because it can best be
surveyed.
Let us observe the two triangles
above. What is there really in common between them when we confine
ourselves to sense-experience? Nothing whatever. That which they
possess in common — that is, the principle on which they
are formed and which causes them to be classed under the
concept triangle — is
attained only when we cross over the boundary of the
sense-experience. The concept triangle
comprises all triangles. We do not attain to it by
merely observing all individual triangles.
This concept always remains the same, however frequently I may
conceive it, whereas it will scarcely ever happen that I shall see
two identical triangles. That by reason of which a single triangle is
“this” triangle and no other has nothing to do with
the concept. A specific triangle is this
specific one, not because it corresponds to the
concept, but because of elements which lie entirely outside the
concept: — the length of its sides, the measurements of
its angles, its position, etc. Yet it is quite incorrect to maintain
that the content of the concept
is borrowed from the external sense-world, since it is
evident that its content is not to be found in any
sense-phenomenon.
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Still a third
view is possible. The concept may be the mediator through which
to apprehend certain entities which are not perceptible to the senses
but which possess a self-sustaining character. This character
would be the non-conceptual content of the conceptual form of our
thought. Whoever assumes such entities existing beyond the boundaries
of experience, and attributes to us the possibility of a knowledge of
these entities, must necessarily see in the concept the interpreter
of this cognition.
The inadequacy of
this point of view we shall later make especially clear. For
the moment we need only remark that, in any case, it does not run
counter to the contentual character of the conceptual world. For, if
the object about which we think really lay beyond the boundaries of
experience and of thinking, thought would all the more have to
contain within itself the content upon which it rests. It could still
not think about objects of which no trace could be found within the
thought-world.
In any case it is
clear that thought is no empty vessel, but that in and of itself it
is possessed of content and that its content does not square with
that of any other form of phenomenon.
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