XVIII
Psychological Cognition
(See Exposition on Brief, Chapter 18)
T
HE FIRST
science in which the human spirit deals with itself is
psychology. The mind here stands observing
itself.
Fichte assigned an existence to
man only to the extent that man ascribes this to himself. In other
words, human personality has only those traits, characteristics,
capacities which it ascribes to itself through insight into its own
being. A human capacity of which a man knew nothing would not be
recognized by him as his own but would be attributed to some one
alien to him. When Fichte supposed that he could
base the whole knowledge of the universe on this truth, he was in
error. It is ordained to be the highest principle of psychology. It
determines the method of psychology. If the human spirit possesses a
characteristic only in so far as it attributes this to itself,
then the psychological method consists in the immersion of the
mind in its own activity. Here, then, self-apprehension is the
method.
It is obvious that
in this discussion we do not restrict psychology to being the science
of the fortuitous characteristics of any one human individual (this
one or that one). We release the single mind from its fortuitous
limitations, from its accessory traits, and seek to raise ourselves
to a consideration of the human individual in
general.
Indeed, what is
determinative is not that we consider the wholly fortuitous
individuality but that we clarify our minds as to the
self-determining individual in general. Whoever should say at this
point that we should in that case be dealing with nothing more than
the type of humanity confuses the type with the generalized
concept. It is essential to the type that it, as the general,
confronts its single forms. Not so with the concept of the human
individual. Here the general is active immediately in the
individual being, except that this activity expresses itself in
various ways according to the object toward which it is directed. The
type exists in single forms and in these comes into reciprocal
activity with the external world. The human spirit has only one form.
But in one case certain objects move his feelings; in another this
ideal inspires him to actions; etc. It is not a specialized
form of the human spirit; it is always the entire and complete
man with whom we have to deal. He must be released from his
surroundings if he is to be comprehended. If we wish to arrive at the
type, we must ascend from the single form to the primal form; if we
wish to arrive at the human spirit, we must ignore the expressions in
which it manifests itself, the special acts which it performs, and
observe it in and of itself. We must discover how it behaves in
general, not how it has behaved in this or that situation. In the
case of the type we must separate the universal form, by comparison,
from the single forms; in psychology we must separate the single
forms only from their surroundings.
Here the case is no longer the same
as in organics, that in the particular being we recognize the molding
of the primal form; but here, in perceiving the single forms, we
recognize the primal form itself. The spiritual being of man is
notone
formation of its Idea, butthe
formation thereof. When Jacobi believes that, in
becoming aware of our inner entity, we at the same time attain to the
conviction that a unitary being lies at the basis of this entity
(intuitive self-apprehension) his thought is in error, because we
really become aware of this unitary being itself. What is otherwise
intuition becomes here self-contemplation. In regard to the
highest form of being this is also an objective necessity. What the
human spirit can read out of phenomena is the highest form of
content which it can attain at all. If the spirit then reflects upon
itself, it must recognize itself as the direct manifestation of this
highest: as, indeed, its very bearer. What the spirit finds as unity
in multiform reality, this it must find in its own singleness as
immediate existence. What it contrasts with particularization as the
general, — this it must attribute to its own individuality as
its very nature.
From all this it
becomes clear that a true psychology can be attained only when we
enter into the character of the human spirit in its activity.
Nowadays in place of this method the effort has been made to set up
another in which the subject matter of psychology has been, not the
human spirit itself, but the phenomena in which the spirit expresses
its existence. It is supposed that the external expressions of
the mind can be brought into an external interrelationship, as can be
done with the facts of inorganic Nature. In this way the effort is
made to found a “theory of the soul without any soul.”
From our reflections it becomes evident that, by such a method, we
lose sight of the very thing that is important. What ought to be done
is to separate the human spirit from its manifestations and return to
the spirit itself as the producer of these. Psychologists restrict
themselves to the former and lose sight of the latter. Just here they
have allowed themselves to be brought to the false standpoint
which would apply to all sciences the methods of mechanics, physics,
etc.
The unitary soul
is given to us in experience just as are its single actions. Every
man is conscious of the fact that his thinking, feeling, and
willing proceed from his ego. Every activity of our personality is
bound up with this center of our being. If, in the case of any
action, we ignore this union with the personality, it ceases to
be a manifestation of the soul. It belongs under the concept either
of inorganic or of organic nature. If two balls lie on the table, and
I thrust one against another, all that happens is resolved into
physical or physiological occurrence, if my purpose and will are
ignored. In all manifestations of the human spirit — thinking,
feeling, willing — the important thing is to recognize these in
their essential nature as expressions of the personality. It is upon
this that psychology rests.
But man does not
belong to himself alone; he belongs also to society. What manifests
itself in him is not merely his own individuality, but at the
same time that of the folk-group to which he belongs. What he
performs proceeds from the folk-force of his people as well as from
his own force. In his mission he fulfills a part of that of his
folk-kindred. The important thing is that his place among his people
shall be such that he may bring to complete effectiveness the power
of his individuality. This is possible only when the folk-organism is
of such sort that the single person can find the place where he may
plant his lever. It must not be left to chance whether or not he
shall find this place.
The way to inquire how the individual
lives within the social group of his people is a matter for the
science of peoples and the science of the state. The
folk-individuality is the subject of this science. It has to show
what form the organism of the state must assume if the
folk-individuality is to come to expression within it. The
constitution which a people gives to itself must be evolved out of
its innermost nature. Here also there are current fallacies of no
small importance. The science of the state is held not to be an
experiential science. It is held that the constitution of every
people can be determined according to a certain stereotyped
pattern.
[Omitted from the new edition.]
But the constitution of a people is nothing else than its individual
character brought into well determined forms of law. Whoever would
indicate beforehand the direction in which a definite activity of a
people has to move must not impose upon this anything from without:
he must simply express what lies unconscious in the character
of the people. “It is not the intelligent person who controls,
but intelligence; not the rational person, but reason,” says
Goethe.
To grasp the
folk-individuality as rational is the method in the science of the
peoples. Man belongs to a whole whose nature consists in the
organization of the reason. Here also we may cite a significant word
of Goethe's: “The rational world is to be conceived as a great
Immortal Individuality which unceasingly brings to pass what is
necessary and thus makes itself master over the fortuitous.” As
psychology investigates the nature of the individual, so the science
of the peoples must investigate that “immortal
individuality.”
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