The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception

F. THE SPIRITUAL, OR CULTURAL, SCIENCES

XVII

Introduction: Spirit and Nature

W E HAVE exhausted the realm of the knowledge of Nature. Organics is the highest form of natural science. What lies still higher is the spiritual, or cultural, sciences. These re-* quire an essentially different attitude of the human mind toward objects from that characterizing the natural sciences. In the latter the mind has a universal role to play. Its task is, so to speak, to bring the world process itself to a conclusion. What existed without the mind was only one half of reality; it was incomplete, at every point only a fragment. There the mind has to call forth into phenomenal existence the innermost impelling forces of reality — even though these would have possessed validity without its subjective intervention. If man were a mere sense-being without mental conception, inorganic Nature would be, none the less, dependent upon natural laws; but these would never come as such into manifest existence. Beings would certainly exist who would perceive the product (the sense-world) but they would never perceive the producing (the inner conformity to law). It is really the genuine, and indeed the truest, form of Nature which comes to manifestation in the human mind, whereas for a mere sense-being only Nature's external aspect would exist. Knowledge plays here a role of world significance. It is the conclusion of the work of creation. What takes place in human consciousness is the interpretation of Nature to itself. Thought is the last member in the series of processes whereby Nature is formed.

Not so is it in the case of cultural science. Here our consciousness has to do with spiritual content itself; with the individual human spirit, with the creations of culture, of literature, with the successive scientific convictions, with the creations of art. The spiritual is grasped by the spirit. Reality possesses here in itself the ideal, conformity to law, which elsewhere appears first in mental conception. What appears in the natural sciences only as a product of reflection about the object is here born in the object. Knowledge plays a different role; essential being would be present in the objects here without the work of knowledge. It is human actions, creations, ideas with which we have to do. It is an interpretation of the human being to himself and to his race. Knowledge has here a different mission to discharge from that in connection with Nature.

Here again this mission first becomes manifest as a human need. Just as the necessity of finding, in connection with the reality of Nature, the Idea of Nature appears at first as a need of our minds, so here also the function of cultural science exists first as a human impulse. Again it is only an objective fact announcing itself as a subjective need.

The human being should not, like a being of inorganic Nature, act upon another being according to external norms, according to law which dominates him; nor should he be the single form of a general type; but he should himself fix the purpose, the goal, of his existence, of his activity. If his actions are the results of laws, these laws must be such as he gives to himself. What he is in himself, what he is among his own kind, in state and in history, — this he must not be by reason of external determinations. He must be this of himself. How he fits himself into the texture of the world depends upon himself. He must find the point at which to participate in the mechanism of the world. It is here that the cultural sciences receive their function. Man must know the spiritual world in order to take his share in that world according to this knowledge. Here originates the mission which psychology, the science of peoples, [Volkskunde] and the science of history have to achieve.