A Theory of Knowledge
GA 2
VIII. Thinking as a Higher Experience within Experience
[ 1 ] Amid the unrelated chaos of experience—and, indeed, at first as a fact of experience—we find an element that leads us out beyond this unrelated-ness. This element is thought. Thought, as one of the facts of experience, assumes an exceptional position within experience.
[ 2 ] As regards the rest of experience, so long as I limit myself to that which is immediately present to my senses, I do not advance beyond the separate units. Assume that I have before me a liquid which I bring to a boil. At first it is still; then I observe bubbles rising; the liquid becomes agitated; then all passes over into the form of steam.
[ 3 ] These are the percepts which follow one another. No matter how I may twist and turn the thing, if I am limited to that which the senses afford me, I discover no interrelationship among these facts. As regards thinking, such is not the case. If, for example, I grasp the thought of cause, this by its own content leads me to the thought of effect. I need only hold fast to the thoughts in that form in which they enter into immediate experience, and they appear as characterizations according to law.
[ 4 ] That which, as regards the rest of experience, must be brought from elsewhere, if, indeed, it is applicable at all—interrelationship according to law—is present as regards thought in its very first appearance. With respect to the rest of experience, that which enters as an appearance before my consciousness does not at once manifest the whole of reality; but, with respect to thought, the whole thing passes over without residue into what is given to me. In the first case, I must penetrate the shell in order to reach the kernel; in the second, shell and kernel are an indivisible unity. It is only a universally human preconception if thought at first appears to us to be entirely analogous with the rest of experience. In the case of thought, we need only overcome this preconception within ourselves. In the case of the rest of experience, we need to resolve a difficulty inherent in the fact itself.
[ 5 ] That for which we seek, in the case of the rest of experience, has itself in the case of thinking become immediate experience.
[ 6 ] A difficulty is thereby resolved which could scarcely be resolved in any other way. It is a justifiable demand of science that we should limit ourselves to experience. But it is a no less justifiable demand that we should seek for the inner law of experience. Therefore this “inner” must itself appear at some place in experience. Experience is thus deepened by the help of experience itself. Our theory of knowledge makes the demand for experience in the very highest form; it repels every attempt to introduce something into experience from without. This theory finds even thought-characterizations within experience. The form in which thought enters into manifestation is the same as that of the rest of the world of experience.
[ 7 ] The principle of experience is generally misunderstood both in its scope and in its true significance. In its baldest form, it is the demand that the objects of reality should be left in the form of their first appearance and only thus treated as objects of knowledge. This is purely a principle of methodology. It says nothing regarding the content of what is experienced. If it should be asserted that only sense-percepts can become the objects of knowledge, as is done by materialism, then it would not be possible to rest upon this principle. Whether the content be sensible or ideal is not decided by this principle. But if, in a certain case, it should be applied in the crassest form, to which we are referring, it certainly makes a presupposition. That is, it demands that objects, as these are experienced, shall already possess a form sufficing the strivings of knowledge. As regards the experience of the external senses, as we have seen, this is not the case. It occurs only in the case of thought.
[ 8 ] Only in the case of thought can the principle of experience be applied in the most extreme sense.
[ 9 ] This does not exclude the principle from being extended also to the rest of the world. It possesses other forms besides the most extreme. If, for the purpose of scientific explanation, we cannot leave an object just as it is immediately experienced, yet this explanation can take place in such a way that the means which we employ for this purpose are taken from other spheres of experience. We have then not gone beyond the bounds of “experience in general.”
[ 9 ] A science of knowledge based upon Goethe's world-conception lays its chief emphasis upon the principle of remaining always true to experience. No one has recognized so fully as Goethe the exclusive applicability of this principle. Indeed, he represented that principle just as rigidly as we have demanded above. All higher points of view concerning Nature he would not look upon as anything except experience. They were considered as “higher Nature within Nature.”10Cf. Goethe: Dichtung und Wahrheit. XXII. 24 f.
[ 10 ] In the essay Nature he says that we are incapable of getting outside Nature. If, then, we desire to interpret Nature to ourselves in this sense, which was his, we must find the means within Nature herself.
[ 11 ] But how would it be possible to base a science of knowledge upon the principle of experience if we did not find anywhere in experience the basic element in all that is scientific—that is, ideal conformity to law? We need merely take hold of this element, as we have seen; we need merely submerge ourselves in it. For it exists in experience.
[ 12 ] Now, does thought really meet us, and become known to our individuality, in such a way that we can with justice claim for it the characteristics emphasized above? Any one who fixes his attention upon this point will discover that an essential difference exists between the form in which an external phenomenon of sense-reality becomes known to us—or, indeed, even some other process of our mental life—and that in which we become aware of our own thought. In the former case we are definitely aware that we are in the presence of an already existent thing: existent, that is, in so far as it has become a phenomenon without our having exerted any determinative influence in its becoming. This is not true of thought. Only for the first moment does thought seem similar to the rest of experience. When we lay hold upon any thought, we know, in spite of the utter immediacy with which it enters our consciousness, that we are inwardly bound up with its manner of coming into existence. When any sudden idea occurs to me, entering my mind quite abruptly, so that its appearance is, therefore, from a certain point of view very much like that of an external event which must first be mediated to me by eye or ear, yet I always know that the field upon which this thought comes to manifestation is my own consciousness; I know that my own activity must first be called upon before the sudden idea can be made to come into existence. In the case of every external object, I am aware that at first it reveals only its outside to my senses; as regards a thought, I know quite certainly that what it exposes to me is its all; that it enters my consciousness as a totality complete in itself. The external stimuli that we must always presuppose in the case of an external object are not present in the case of thought. It is to these stimuli that we must ascribe the fact that sensible phenomena appear to us as something already existent; it is to them that we must ascribe the genesis of these phenomena. As regards a thought, I have the assurance that this genesis is not possible apart from my own activity. I must work through the thought, must re-create its content, must live through it even in its least details, if it is to have any significance for me whatever.
[ 13 ] Thus far we have arrived at the following truths. At the first stage of world-contemplation, the whole of reality meets us as an unrelated aggregate; thought is included within this chaos. If we move through this multiplicity, we find in it one constituent which possesses, even in this first form of its appearance, that character which the rest of the multiplicity must afterwards gain. This constituent is thought. That which must be surmounted in the case of the rest of experience—that is, the form of its immediate appearance—is to be retained in the case of thought. This factor of reality which is to be allowed to remain in its original state we find in our consciousness, and we are united with it in such fashion that the activity of our own mind is at the same time the manifestation of this factor. These are one and the same fact seen from two sides. This fact is the thought-content of the world. In the one instance, it appears as an activity of our consciousness; in the other, as the immediate manifestation of a conformity to law, complete within itself, a self-determined ideal content. We shall quickly see which side possesses the greater weight.
[ 14 ] Since, now, we stand inside the thought-content and permeate this in all its ingredients, we are in position really to know its very nature. The manner in which it meets us is a guarantee of the fact that the characteristics which we have attributed to it really belong to it. It can, therefore, certainly serve as the point of departure for every further form of world-contemplation. The essential character of thought can be derived from thought itself; if we would arrive at the essential character of the rest of things, our point of departure in this inquiry must be thinking. Let us at once express the matter more clearly. Since we experience in thinking alone a real conformity to law, an ideal determinateness, therefore the conformity to law of the rest of the world, which we do not experience in this itself, must also lie included within thought. In other words, thought and the appearance for the senses are face to face in experience. The latter, however, gives us no disclosure of its own nature; the former gives us this both as to itself and as to the nature of this appearance for the senses.
8. Das Denken als höhere Erfahrung in der Erfahrung
[ 1 ] Wir finden innerhalb des zusammenhanglosen Chaos der Erfahrung, und zwar zunächst auch als Erfahrungstatsache, ein Element, das uns über die Zusammenhanglosigkeit hinausführt. Es ist das Denken. Das Denken nimmt schon als eine Erfahrungstatsache innerhalb der Erfahrung eine Ausnahmestellung ein.
[ 2 ] Bei der übrigen Erfahrungswelt komme ich, wenn ich bei dem stehen bleibe, was meinen Sinnen unmittelbar vorliegt, nicht über die Einzelheiten hinaus. Angenommen: Ich habe eine Flüssigkeit vor mir, die ich zum Sieden bringe. Dieselbe ist erst ruhig, dann sehe ich Dampfblasen aufsteigen, sie gerät in Bewegung, und endlich geht sie in Dampfform über. Das sind die einzelnen aufeinanderfolgenden Wahrnehmungen. Ich mag die Sache drehen und wenden, wie ich will: wenn ich dabei stehen bleibe, was mir die Sinne liefern, so finde ich keinen Zusammenhang der Tatsachen, Beim Denken ist das nicht der Fall. Wenn ich zum Beispiel den Gedanken der Ursache fasse, so führt mich dieser durch seinen eigenen Inhalt zu dem der Wirkung. Ich brauche die Gedanken nur in jener Form festzuhalten, in der sie in unmittelbarer Erfahrung auftreten, und sie erscheinen schon als gesetzmäßige Bestimmungen.
[ 3 ] Was bei der übrigen Erfahrung erst anderswo hergeholt werden muß, wenn es überhaupt auf sie anwendbar ist, der gesetzliche Zusammenhang, ist im Denken schon in seinem allerersten Auftreten vorhanden. Bei der übrigen Erfahrung prägt sich nicht die ganze Sache schon in dem aus, was als Erscheinung vor meinem Bewußtsein auftritt; beim Denken geht die ganze Sache ohne Rückstand in dem mir Gegebenen auf. Dort muß ich erst die Hülle durchdringen, um auf den Kern zu kommen, hier ist Hülle und Kern eine ungetrennte Einheit. Es ist nur eine allgemein-menschliche Befangenheit, wenn uns das Denken zuerst ganz analog der übrigen Erfahrung erscheint. Wir brauchen bei ihm bloß diese unsere Befangenheit zu überwinden. Bei der übrigen Erfahrung müssen wir eine in der Sache liegende Schwierigkeit lösen.
[ 4 ] Im Denken ist dasjenige, was wir bei der übrigen Erfahrung suchen, selbst unmittelbare Erfahrung geworden.
[ 5 ] Darin ist die Lösung einer Schwierigkeit gegeben, die auf andere Weise wohl kaum gelöst werden wird. Bei der Erfahrung stehen zu bleiben, ist eine berechtigte wissenschaftliche Forderung. Nicht weniger aber ist eine solche die Aufsuchung der inneren Gesetzmäßigkeit der Erfahrung. Es muß also dieses Innere selbst an einer Stelle der Erfahrung als solche auftreten. Die Erfahrung wird so mit Hilfe ihrer selbst vertieft. Unsere Erkenntnistheorie erhebt die Forderung der Erfahrung in der höchsten Form, sie weist jeden Versuch zurück, etwas von außen in die Erfahrung hineinzutragen. Die Bestimmungen des Denkens findet sie selbst innerhalb der Erfahrung. Die Art, wie das Denken in die Erscheinung eintritt, ist dieselbe wie bei der übrigen Erfahrungswelt.
[ 6 ] Das Prinzip der Erfahrung wird zumeist in seiner Tragweite und eigentlichen Bedeutung verkannt. In seiner schroffsten Form ist es die Forderung, die Gegenstände der Wirklichkeit in der ersten Form ihres Auftretens zu belassen und sie nur so zu Objekten der Wissenschaft zu machen. Das ist ein rein methodisches Prinzip. Es sagt über den Inhalt dessen, was erfahren wird, gar nichts aus. Wollte man behaupten, daß nur die Wahrnehmungen der Sinne Gegenstand der Wissenschaft sein können, wie das der Materialismus tut, so dürfte man sich auf dieses Prinzip nicht stützen. Ob der Inhalt sinnlich oder ideell ist, darüber fällt dieses Prinzip kein Urteil. Soll es aber in einem bestimmten Falle in der erwähnten schroffsten Form anwendbar sein, dann macht es allerdings eine Voraussetzung. Es fordert nämlich, daß die Gegenstände, wie sie erfahren werden, schon eine Form haben, die dem wissenschaftlichen Streben genügt. Bei der Erfahrung der äußeren Sinne ist das, wie wir gesehen haben, nicht der Fall. Es findet nur beim Denken statt.
[ 7 ] Nur beim Denken kann das Prinzip der Erfahrung in seiner extremsten Bedeutung angewendet werden.
[ 8 ] Das schließt nicht aus, daß das Prinzip auch auf die übrige Welt ausgedehnt wird. Es hat ja noch andere Formen als seine extremste. Wenn wir einen Gegenstand behufs wissenschaftlicher Erklärung nicht so belassen können, wie er unmittelbar wahrgenommen wird, so kann diese Erklärung ja immerhin so geschehen, daß die Mittel, die sie beansprucht, aus anderen Gebieten der Erfahrungswelt herbeigezogen werden. Da haben wir das Gebiet der «Erfahrung überhaupt» ja doch nicht überschritten.
[ 9 ] Eine im Sinne der Goetheschen Weltanschauung begründete Erkenntniswissenschaft legt das Hauptgewicht darauf, daß sie dem Prinzipe der Erfahrung durchaus treu bleibt. Niemand hat so wie Goethe die ausschließliche Geltung dieses Prinzipes erkannt. Er vertrat das Prinzip ganz so strenge, wie wir es oben gefordert haben. Alle höheren Ansichten über die Natur durften ihm als nichts denn als Erfahrung erscheinen. Sie sollten «höhere Natur innerhalb der Natur» sein.8Siehe Goethes Dichtung und Wahrheit, [3. TEil, 11. Buch] (XXII 24 f.).
[ 10 ] In dem Aufsatze: «Die Natur» sagt er, wir seien unvermögend aus der Natur herauszukommen. Wollen wir uns also in diesem seinem Sinne über dieselbe aufklären, so müssen wir dazu innerhalb derselben die Mittel finden.
[ 11 ] Wie könnte man aber eine Wissenschaft des Erkennens auf das Erfahrungsprinzip gründen, wenn wir nicht an irgendeinem Punkte der Erfahrung selbst das Grundelement aller Wissenschaftlichkeit, die ideelle Gesetzmäßigkeit fänden. Wir brauchen dieses Element, wie wir gesehen haben, nur aufzunehmen; wir brauchen uns nur in dasselbe zu vertiefen. Denn es findet sich in der Erfahrung.
[ 12 ] Tritt nun das Denken wirklich in einer Weise an uns heran, wird es unserer Individualität so bewußt, daß wir mit vollem Rechte die oben hervorgehobenen Merkmale für dasselbe in Anspruch nehmen dürfen? Jedermann, der seine Aufmerksamkeit auf diesen Punkt richtet, wird finden, daß ein wesentlicher Unterschied zwischen der Art besteht, wie eine äußere Erscheinung der sinnenfälligen Wirklichkeit, ja selbst wie ein anderer Vorgang unseres Geisteslebens bewußt wird, und jener, wie wir unser eigenes Denken gewahr werden. Im ersten Falle sind wir uns bestimmt bewußt, daß wir einem fertigen Dinge gegenübertreten; fertig nämlich insoweit, als es Erscheinung geworden ist, ohne daß wir auf dieses Werden einen bestimmenden Einfluß ausgeübt haben. Anders ist das beim Denken. Das erscheint nur für den ersten Augenblick der übrigen Erfahrung gleich. Wenn wir irgendeinen Gedanken fassen, so wissen wir, bei aller Unmittelbarkeit, mit der er in unser Bewußtsein eintritt, daß wir mit seiner Entstehungsweise innig verknüpft sind. Wenn ich irgendeinen Einfall habe, der mir ganz plötzlich gekommen ist und dessen Auftreten daher in gewisser Hinsicht ganz dem eines äußeren Ereignisses gleichkommt, das mir Augen und Ohren erst vermitteln müssen: so weiß ich doch immerhin, daß das Feld, auf dem dieser Gedanke zur Erscheinung kommt, mein Bewußtsein ist; ich weiß, daß meine Tätigkeit erst in Anspruch genommen werden muß, um den Einfall zur Tatsache werden zu lassen. Bei jedem äußeren Objekt bin ich gewiß, daß es meinen Sinnen zunächst nur seine Außenseite zuwendet; beim Gedanken weiß ich genau, daß das, was er mir zuwendet, zugleich sein Alles ist, daß er als in sich vollendete Ganzheit in mein Bewußtsein eintritt. Die äußeren Triebkräfte, die wir bei einem Sinnenobjekte stets voraussetzen müssen, sind beim Gedanken nicht vorhanden. Sie sind es ja, denen wir es zuschreiben müssen, daß uns die Sinneserscheinung als etwas Fertiges entgegentritt; ihnen müssen wir das Werden derselben zurechnen. Beim Gedanken bin ich mir klar, daß jenes Werden ohne meine Tätigkeit nicht möglich ist. Ich muß den Gedanken durcharbeiten, muß seinen Inhalt nachschaffen, muß ihn innerlich durchleben bis in seine kleinsten Teile, wenn er überhaupt irgendwelche Bedeutung für mich haben soll.
[ 13 ] Wir haben bisher nun folgende Wahrheiten gewonnen. Auf der ersten Stufe der Weltbetrachtung tritt uns die gesamte Wirklichkeit als zusammenhangloses Aggregat entgegen; das Denken ist innerhalb dieses Chaos eingeschlossen. Durchwandern wir diese Mannigfaltigkeit, so finden wir ein Glied in derselben, welches schon in dieser ersten Form des Auftretens jenen Charakter hat, den die übrigen erst gewinnen sollen. Dieses Glied ist das Denken. Was bei der übrigen Erfahrung zu überwinden ist, die Form des unmittelbaren Auftretens, das gerade ist beim Denken festzuhalten. Diesen in seiner ursprünglichen Gestalt zu belassenden Faktor der Wirklichkeit finden wir in unserem Bewußtsein und sind mit ihm dergestalt verbunden, daß die Tätigkeit unseres Geistes zugleich die Erscheinung dieses Faktors ist. Es ist eine und dieselbe Sache von zwei Seiten betrachtet. Diese Sache ist der Gedankengehalt der Welt. Das eine Mal erscheint er als Tätigkeit unseres Bewußtseins, das andere Mal als unmittelbare Erscheinung einer in sich vollendeten Gesetzmäßigkeit, ein in sich bestimmter ideeller Inhalt. Wir werden alsbald sehen, welche Seite die größere Wichtigkeit hat.
[ 14 ] Deshalb nun, weil wir innerhalb des Gedankeninhaltes stehen, denselben in allen seinen Bestandteilen durchdringen, sind wir imstande, dessen eigenste Natur wirklich zu erkennen. Die Art, wie er an uns herantritt, ist eine Bürgschaft dafür, daß ihm die Eigenschaften, die wir ihm vorhin beigelegt haben, wirklich zukommen. Er kann also gewiß als Ausgangspunkt für jede weitere Art der Weltbetrachtung dienen. Seinen wesentlichen Charakter können wir aus ihm selbst entnehmen; wollen wir den der übrigen Dinge gewinnen, so müssen wir von ihm aus unsere Untersuchungen beginnen. Wir wollen uns gleich deutlicher aussprechen. Da wir nur im Denken eine wirkliche Gesetzmäßigkeit, eine ideelle Bestimmtheit erfahren, so muß die Gesetzmäßigkeit der übrigen Welt, die wir nicht an dieser selbst erfahren, auch schon im Denken eingeschlossen liegen. Mit anderen Worten: Erscheinung für die Sinne und Denken stehen einander in der Erfahrung gegenüber. Jene gibt uns aber über ihr eigenes Wesen keinen Aufschluß; dieses gibt uns denselben zugleich über sich selbst und über das Wesen jener Erscheinung für die Sinne.
8. Thinking as a higher experience in experience
[ 1 ] We find within the incoherent chaos of experience, and indeed initially also as a fact of experience, an element that leads us beyond incoherence. It is thinking. Thinking already occupies an exceptional position as a fact of experience within experience.
[ 2 ] In the rest of the world of experience, if I stop at what is immediately available to my senses, I cannot get beyond the details. Suppose: I have a liquid in front of me that I bring to the boil. At first it is still, then I see bubbles of vapor rising, it starts to move, and finally it turns into vapor. These are the individual successive perceptions. I may turn the matter round and round as I like: if I stop at what the senses give me, I find no connection between the facts; this is not the case with thinking. If, for example, I grasp the thought of the cause, it leads me through its own content to that of the effect. I need only hold the thoughts in the form in which they appear in direct experience, and they already appear as lawful determinations.
[ 3 ] What in other experience must first be obtained elsewhere, if it can be applied to it at all, the lawful connection, is already present in thought in its very first appearance. In other experience, not the whole thing is already formed in that which appears as an appearance before my consciousness; in thinking, the whole thing is absorbed without residue in that which is given to me. There I must first penetrate the shell in order to reach the core; here shell and core are an undivided unity. It is only a general human bias when thinking first appears to us to be completely analogous to the rest of experience. We only need to overcome this our bias. With the rest of experience, we have to solve a difficulty that lies in the matter.
[ 4 ] In thinking, that which we seek in the rest of experience has itself become direct experience.
[ 5 ] This is the solution to a difficulty that is unlikely to be solved in any other way. Stopping at experience is a justified scientific demand. No less so, however, is the search for the inner laws of experience. This inner law must therefore appear as such at some point in the experience. Experience is thus deepened with the help of itself. Our epistemology raises the demand of experience in its highest form; it rejects every attempt to introduce something from outside into experience. It finds the determinations of thought within experience itself. The way in which thinking enters into appearance is the same as in the rest of the world of experience.
[ 6 ] The principle of experience is usually misjudged in its scope and actual meaning. In its harshest form, it is the demand to leave the objects of reality in the first form of their appearance and to make them objects of science only in this way. This is a purely methodological principle. It says nothing at all about the content of what is experienced. If one wanted to claim that only the perceptions of the senses can be the object of science, as materialism does, then one should not rely on this principle. Whether the content is sensual or ideal, this principle makes no judgment about it. If, however, it is to be applicable in a particular case in the harshest form mentioned, then it does, however, make a precondition. For it requires that the objects, as they are experienced, already have a form that satisfies scientific endeavor. As we have seen, this is not the case with the experience of the external senses. It only takes place in thinking.
[ 7 ] Only in thinking can the principle of experience be applied in its most extreme sense.
[ 8 ] This does not exclude the possibility of extending the principle to the rest of the world. It has other forms than its most extreme. If, for the sake of scientific explanation, we cannot leave an object as it is directly perceived, then this explanation can at least take place in such a way that the means it requires are drawn from other areas of the world of experience. We have not transcended the realm of "experience in general" after all.
[ 9 ] A science of knowledge founded in the sense of Goethe's world view places the main emphasis on remaining absolutely faithful to the principle of experience. No one recognized the exclusive validity of this principle as Goethe did. He advocated the principle quite as strictly as we have demanded above. All higher views of nature were allowed to appear to him as nothing but experience. They were to be "higher nature within nature".8See Goethes Dichtung und Wahrheit, [3. Teil, 11. Buch] (XXII 24 f.).
[ 10 ] In the essay "Nature" he says that we are incapable of getting out of nature. Therefore, if we want to enlighten ourselves about it in this sense, we must find the means to do so within it.
[ 11 ] How could a science of cognition be founded on the principle of experience if we did not find at some point in experience itself the basic element of all science, the ideal lawfulness? As we have seen, we need only take up this element; we need only immerse ourselves in it. For it is found in experience.
[ 12 ] Does thinking now really approach us in such a way, does it become so conscious of our individuality, that we are fully justified in claiming the characteristics emphasized above for it? Anyone who directs his attention to this point will find that there is an essential difference between the way in which an external appearance of sensory reality, or even another process of our spiritual life, becomes conscious, and the way in which we become aware of our own thinking. In the first case we are certainly aware that we are confronting a finished thing; finished, namely, in so far as it has become an appearance without our having exercised a determining influence on this becoming. It is different with thinking. Only for the first moment does it appear the same as the rest of experience. When we conceive any thought, we know, for all the immediacy with which it enters our consciousness, that we are intimately connected with its genesis. If I have any idea which has come to me quite suddenly, and whose occurrence is therefore in some respects quite like that of an external event which eyes and ears must first convey to me, I know nevertheless that the field in which this thought appears is my consciousness; I know that my activity must first be called upon in order to make the idea a fact. With every external object I am certain that at first it only turns its outer side towards my senses; with thought I know exactly that what it turns towards me is at the same time its everything, that it enters my consciousness as a wholeness complete in itself. The external driving forces that we must always presuppose in the case of a sensory object are not present in the case of thought. It is to them that we must attribute the fact that the sensory phenomenon confronts us as something finished; we must attribute the becoming of it to them. In the thought I am aware that this becoming is not possible without my activity. I must work through the thought, must recreate its content, must inwardly live through it down to its smallest parts if it is to have any meaning for me at all.
[ 13 ] We have now gained the following truths. At the first stage of looking at the world, the whole of reality confronts us as an incoherent aggregate; thinking is enclosed within this chaos. If we wander through this multiplicity, we find a link in it which already in this first form of appearance has that character which the others are only to acquire. This link is thinking. What is to be overcome in the rest of experience, the form of immediate appearance, is precisely what is to be retained in thinking. We find this factor of reality, which is to be left in its original form, in our consciousness and are connected with it in such a way that the activity of our mind is at the same time the appearance of this factor. It is one and the same thing seen from two sides. This thing is the thought content of the world. On the one hand it appears as the activity of our consciousness, on the other as the immediate appearance of a perfect lawfulness in itself, an ideal content determined in itself. We will soon see which side is more important.
[ 14 ] Therefore, because we stand within the content of thought, penetrating it in all its components, we are able to truly recognize its own nature. The way in which it approaches us is a guarantee that the qualities we have previously attributed to it really do belong to it. It can therefore certainly serve as a starting point for any further way of looking at the world. We can take its essential character from itself; if we want to gain that of the other things, we must begin our investigations from it. Let us be clearer straight away. Since we only experience a real lawfulness, an ideal definiteness, in thinking, the lawfulness of the rest of the world, which we do not experience in this world itself, must also already lie enclosed in thinking. In other words: appearance for the senses and thinking are opposed to each other in experience. The latter, however, gives us no information about its own essence; the latter gives us the same information about itself and about the essence of that appearance for the senses.