CHAPTER VII: On the Relation of Knowledge of Perception to Abstract Knowledge [1]It has been shown that concepts borrow their material from knowledge of perception, and that therefore the whole structure of our world of thought rests on the world of perceptions. It must therefore be possible for us to go back from every concept, even if through intermediate stages, to the perceptions from which it has itself been directly drawn, or from which have been drawn the concepts of which it is in turn an abstraction. In other words, it must be possible for us to verify the concept with perceptions that stand to abstractions in the relation of examples. Therefore these perceptions furnish us with the real content of all our thinking, and wherever they are missing we have had in our heads not concepts, but mere words. In this respect our intellect is like a bank of issue which, if it is to be sound, must have ready money in the safe, in order to be able, on demand, to meet all the notes it has issued; the perceptions are the ready money, the concepts are the notes. In this sense the perceptions might very appropriately be called primary representations, the concepts, on the other hand, being secondary. Not quite so appropriately the scholastics, at the instance of Aristotle (Metaphysics, vi, 11; xi, 1), called real things substantiae primae and concepts substantiae secundae. Books communicate only secondary representations. Mere concepts of a thing without perception give a merely general knowledge of it. We have a thorough understanding of things and their relations only in so far as we are capable of representing them to ourselves in purely distinct perceptions without the aid of words. To explain words by words, to compare concepts with concepts, in which most philosophizing consists, is at bottom playing with concept-spheres and shifting them about, in order to see which goes into the other and which does not. At best, we shall in this way arrive at conclusions; but even conclusions by no means give new knowledge. On the contrary they only show us all that lay in the knowledge already existing, and what part of this might perhaps be applicable to each particular case. On the other hand, to perceive, to allow the things themselves to speak to us, to apprehend and grasp new relations between them, and then to precipitate and deposit all this into concepts, in order to possess it with certainty; this is what gives us new knowledge. But whereas almost everyone is capable of comparing concepts with concepts, to compare concepts with perceptions is a gift of the select few. According to its degree of perfection, this gift is the condition of wit, power of judgement, sagacity, and genius. With the former faculty, on the other hand, the result is never much more than possibly rational reflections. The innermost kernel of every genuine and actual piece of knowledge is a perception; every new truth is also the fruit of such a perception. All original thinking is done in pictures or images; the imagination is therefore so necessary an instrument of thinking, and minds without imagination will never achieve anything great, unless it be in mathematics. On the other hand, merely abstract ideas, which have no kernel of perception, are like cloud formations without reality. Even writing and speaking, whether didactic or poetical, have as their ultimate aim the guidance of the reader to that knowledge of perception from which the author started; if they do not have this aim, they are bad. For this reason, the contemplation and observation of everything actual, as soon as it presents something new to the observer, is more instructive than all reading and hearing about it. For indeed, if we go to the bottom of the matter, all truth and wisdom, in fact the ultimate secret of things, is contained in everything actual, yet certainly only in concreto and like gold hidden in the ore. The question is how to extract it. From a book, on the other hand, we obtain the truth only second-hand at best, and often not at all.
With most books, quite apart from really bad ones, if they are not entirely of empirical content, it is true that the author has thought, but not perceived; he has written from reflection, not from intuition. It is just this that makes them mediocre and wearisome. For what the author has thought, the reader also could have thought, at any rate with some effort; for it is just rational ideas, more detailed explanations of what is contained implicite in the theme. But no really new knowledge comes into the world in this way; that is produced only at the moment of perception, of directly apprehending a new side of things. Therefore where a perception or intuition was the basis of an author's thinking, it is as if he wrote from a land where his reader has never been, for everything is fresh and new, since it is drawn directly from the primary source of all knowledge. I will illustrate the difference here touched on by a quite easy and simple example. Every commonplace writer will readily describe profound contemplation or petrifying astonishment by saying: "He stood like a statue"; but Cervantes says: "Like a draped statue; for the wind moved his garments" (Don Quixote, Bk. vi, ch. 19). In such a way have all great minds always thought in the presence of perception, and in their thinking kept their gaze steadily on it. We recognize this, among other things, in the fact that even the most heterogeneous of them so often agree and concur in detail, just because they all speak of the same thing which they all had before their eyes, namely the world, the actuality of perception. In fact, to a certain extent they all say the same thing, and others never believe them. It is further recognized in the appropriateness and originality of their expression, which is always exactly suited to the case, because perception has prompted that expression; it is recognized in the naivety of the statements, the freshness of the images, and the striking effect of the similes. All this without exception distinguishes the works of great minds; whereas it is always lacking in the works of others. For this reason, only trite and humdrum modes of expression and hackneyed similes are at the latter's disposal; and they never dare allow themselves to be naive, on pain of displaying their vulgarity in all its dreary emptiness; instead of this they are affected in their style. Therefore Buffon said: Le style est l'homme meme. [2] When ordinary minds write poetry they have a few traditional, indeed conventional, opinions, passions, noble sentiments, and the like, obtained in the abstract; and these they attribute to the heroes of their poems. In this way such heroes become a mere personification of those opinions; and hence to a certain extent they are themselves abstractions, and thus dull and wearisome. If they philosophize, they take possession of a few wide abstract concepts which they cast about in all directions, as though it were a matter of algebraical equations, and hope that something will result therefrom. At most we see that they have all read the same thing. Such casting about with abstract concepts, after the manner of algebraical equations, nowadays called dialectic, does not, like real algebra, give us sure and certain results; for here the concept, represented by the word, is not a quantity positively and precisely determined, like that denoted by the letters of algebra, but something that is wavering, ambiguous, and capable of extension and contraction. Strictly speaking, all thinking, in other words all combining of abstract concepts, has at best for its material recollections of what was previously perceived, and this indirectly, that is in so far as it constitutes the basis of all concepts. Actual, i.e., immediate knowledge, on the other hand, is perception alone, new, fresh perception itself. But the concepts that are formed by the faculty of reason and preserved by memory can never all be present in consciousness at the same time; only a very small number of them are present at one moment. On the other hand, the energy with which we apprehend what is present in perception -- and in this the essential of all things in general is really always contained and represented virtualiter -- fills the consciousness in one moment with all its force. On this rests the infinite superiority of genius to learning; they are related to each other as is the text of an ancient classical author to its commentary. Actually all truth and all wisdom ultimately lie in perception; but unfortunately perception cannot be either retained or communicated. At the most, the objective conditions for this can be presented to others purified and elucidated through the plastic and pictorial arts, and much more indirectly through poetry; but it rests just as much on subjective conditions that are not at everyone's disposal, and not at anyone's at all times; in fact, such conditions in the higher degrees of perfection are the advantage and privilege of only the few. Only the poorest knowledge, abstract secondary knowledge, the concept, the mere shadow of knowledge proper, is unconditionally communicable. If perceptions were communicable, there would then be a communication worth the trouble; but in the end everyone must remain within his own skin and his own skull, and no man can help another. To enrich the concept from perception is the constant endeavour of poetry and philosophy. But the essential aims of man are practical; and for these it is sufficient that what is apprehended in perception should leave behind traces in him, by virtue of which he again recognizes it in the next similar case; he thus becomes world-wise. Therefore, as a rule, the man of the world cannot impart his accumulated truth and wisdom, but only practise it. He rightly comprehends everything that occurs, and decides what is conformable thereto. That books do not take the place of experience, and that learning is no substitute for genius, are two kindred phenomena; their common ground is that the abstract can never take the place of the perceptive. Therefore books do not take the place of experience, because concepts always remain universal, and so do not reach down to the particular; yet it is precisely the particular that has to be dealt with in life. In addition to this is the fact that all concepts are abstracted from the particular and perceptive of experience; we must therefore have come to know this, in order to understand adequately even only what is universal and is communicated by books. Learning does not take the place of genius, because it also furnishes only concepts; the knowledge of genius, however, consists in the apprehension of the (Platonic) Ideas of things, and is therefore essentially intuitive. Accordingly, with the first phenomenon, the objective condition for perceiving knowledge is wanting; with the second, the subjective; the former can be attained, but not the latter.
Wisdom and genius, those two summits of the Parnassus of human knowledge, are rooted not in the abstract and discursive, but in the perceptive faculty. Wisdom proper is something intuitive, not something abstract. It does not consist in principles and ideas which a person carries round ready in his head, as results of his own or others' investigation; it is the whole way in which the world presents itself in his head. This is so exceedingly different, that by reason of it the wise man lives in a different world from the fool, and the genius sees a world different from that of the dull-witted person. The works of the genius immeasurably surpass those of all others, and this is due simply to the fact that the world which he sees, and from which he takes his utterances, is so much clearer, more profoundly worked out, so to speak, than that. in the heads of others. This world naturally contains the same objects, but it is related to the world of the genius as is a Chinese picture without shade and perspective to a finished oil-painting. The material is the same in all minds, but the difference lies in the perfection of the form it assumes in each, and on this difference ultimately rest the many varying grades of intelligence. This difference, therefore, exists already in the root, in the perceiving apprehension, and does not originate in the abstract. Therefore original mental superiority readily shows itself on every occasion, and is instantly felt and detested by others.
In practical affairs, the intuitive knowledge of the understanding is able to guide our action and behaviour directly, whereas the abstract knowledge of the faculty of reason can do so only by means of the memory. From this springs the superiority of intuitive knowledge for all those cases that do not allow of any time for reflection, and so for daily intercourse, in which women excel on this precise account. Only the person who intuitively knows the true nature of men as they generally are, and comprehends the individuality of the particular person before him, will understand how to deal with him correctly and with certainty. Another person may know by heart all the three hundred maxims of wisdom by Gracian, but this will not protect him from stupid blunders and mistakes, if he lacks that intuitive knowledge. For all abstract knowledge gives primarily only universal principles and rules; but the particular case is hardly ever shaped exactly according to the rule. Then the memory should first present the rule at the right time, and this is seldom done promptly; the propositio minor should be formed from the present case, and finally the conclusion should be drawn. Before all this is done, the opportunity will in most cases already have turned its back on us, and then at best those excellent principles and rules enable us to estimate, when it is too late, the magnitude of the mistake we have made. In time, of course, and with experience and practice, worldly wisdom will slowly result from this; and therefore, in connexion with these, the rules in the abstract can certainly become fruitful. On the other hand, intuitive knowledge, always apprehending only the particular things, is in direct relation to the present case; rule, case, and application are identical for it, and action follows immediately thereon. This explains why the scholar, whose merit lies in abundance of abstract knowledge, is so inferior to the man of the world, whose merit consists in perfect intuitive knowledge, which an original disposition has conceded to him, and a rich experience has developed. Between the two kinds of knowledge there always appears the relation of paper money to hard cash; yet just as for many cases and affairs the former is to be preferred to the latter, so there are also things and situations for which abstract is more useful than intuitive knowledge. Thus, if it is a concept that guides our action in a matter, it has the advantage, when once grasped, of being unalterable; hence under its guidance we go to work with perfect certainty and determination. But this certainty granted by the concept on the subjective side is counterbalanced by the uncertainty that accompanies it on the objective side. Thus the whole concept may be false and groundless, or the object to be dealt with may not come under it, since it may not be in any way, or indeed entirely, of its species. Now if, in the particular case, we suddenly become aware of something of the sort, we are disconcerted; if we do not become aware of it, then the result tells us. Therefore, Vauvenargues says Personne n'est sujet a plus de fautes que ceux qui n'agissent que par reflexion. [3] On the other hand, if it is direct perception of the objects to be dealt with and of their relations that guides our action, we easily falter at every step; for perception is usually modifiable, is ambiguous, has inexhaustible details in itself, and shows many sides in succession; we therefore act without full confidence. But this subjective uncertainty is compensated by objective certainty, for here no concept stands between the object and us; we do not lose sight of it. Therefore, if only we see correctly what we have before us and what we do, we shall hit the right spot. Accordingly, our action is perfectly certain and sure only when it is guided by a concept, whose correct ground, completeness, and applicability to the existing case are quite certain. Conduct according to concepts can turn into pedantry; conduct according to the impression of perception can turn into levity and folly.
Perception is not only the source of all knowledge, but is itself knowledge [x]; [4] it alone is the unconditionally true genuine knowledge, fully worthy of the name. For it alone imparts insight proper; it alone is actually assimilated by man, passes into his inner nature, and can quite justifiably be called his, whereas the concepts merely cling to him. In the fourth book we see that even virtue really comes from knowledge of perception; for only those actions which it directly calls forth, and which are consequently done from the pure impulse of our own nature, are real symptoms of our true and unalterable character; but not those which, resulting from reflection and its dogmas, are often wrung from the character, and therefore have no unalterable ground in us. But wisdom also, the true view of life, correct insight, and clear judgement result from the way in which man apprehends the world of perception, not from his mere abstract knowledge, not from abstract concepts. The foundation or basic content of every science does not consist in proofs or in what is proved, but in the unproved foundation of the proofs; and this is ultimately apprehended only through perception. So too the foundation of every man's real wisdom and actual insight does not consist in concepts and in abstract knowledge, but in what is perceived, and in the degree of acuteness, accuracy, and profundity with which he has apprehended this. Whoever excels in this, recognizes the (Platonic) Ideas of the world and of life; every case he has seen represents for him innumerable cases; he always apprehends every being according to its true nature, and his action, like his judgement, corresponds to his insight. By degrees, even his countenance assumes the expression of the correct glance, of true judiciousness, and when it goes far enough, of wisdom. For it is only superiority in knowledge of perception that stamps its impression even on the features, whereas superiority in abstract knowledge cannot do so. According to what has been said, we find among all classes persons of intellectual superiority, often without any learning at all. For natural understanding can take the place of almost every degree of intellectual culture, but no culture can take the place of natural understanding. The scholar certainly has the advantage of such people in an abundance of cases and facts (historical knowledge), and of causal determinations (natural science), everything in well arranged, easily surveyed sequence; but yet, with all this, he does not have a more accurate and profound insight into what is really essential in all those cases, facts, and causalities. The unlearned man of acuteness and penetration knows how to dispense with that abundance; we are sparing of much, we make do with little. One case from his own experience teaches him more than many a scholar is taught by a thousand cases which he knows, but does not really understand. For the little knowledge of that unlearned man is alive, since every fact known to him is verified by accurate and well-apprehended perception. Thus this fact is for him the representative of a thousand similar facts. On the other hand, much of the ordinary scholar's knowledge is dead, since, even if it does not consist of mere words, as often is the case, it nevertheless consists of nothing but abstract knowledge. Such knowledge, however, obtains its value only through the individual's knowledge of perception, to which it must refer, and which must ultimately realize all the concepts. Now if this knowledge of perception is very scanty, such a mind is constituted like a bank whose liabilities are ten times in excess of its cash reserve, so that it ultimately becomes bankrupt. Therefore, while the correct apprehension of the world of perception has impressed the stamp of insight and wisdom on the brow of many an unlearned man, the face of many a scholar bears no other traces of his many studies than those of exhaustion and weariness through excessive and forced straining of the memory for the unnatural accumulation of dead concepts. Such a man frequently looks so simple, silly, and sheepish, that it must be supposed that the excessive strain of the indirect faculty of knowledge, applied to the abstract, produces a direct weakening of the immediate knowledge of perception, and that the natural and correct view is dazzled more and more by the light of books. The constant influx of other people's ideas must certainly stop and stifle our own, and indeed, in the long run, paralyse the power of thought, unless it has a high degree of elasticity able to withstand that unnatural flow. Therefore incessant reading and study positively ruin the mind; this, moreover, is caused by the fact that the system of our own ideas and knowledge loses its completeness and uninterrupted continuity, when we arbitrarily upset this so often in order to gain room for an entirely foreign range of ideas. To banish my thoughts in order to make room for those of a book would seem to me to be just what Shakespeare [4a] censures in the travellers of his time, that they sell their own land in order to see those of others. However, the mania of most scholars for reading is a kind of fuga vacui from the lack of ideas in their own heads, which forcibly draws in the ideas of others. To have ideas, they must read a few, just as lifeless bodies obtain movement only from outside; whereas the person who thinks for himself is like the living body that moves of itself. It is even risky to read about a subject before we ourselves have reflected on it. For with the new material, another person's view and treatment of it creep into the mind, all the more since laziness and apathy urge us to save ourselves the trouble of thinking, to accept what has already been thought, and to allow this to become current. This now gains a footing, and hereafter the thoughts and ideas on it always take the accustomed path, like small streams led into ditches; to find a new idea of one's own is then doubly difficult. This contributes much to. the lack of originality in scholars. In addition to this is the fact that they imagine they must divide their time, like other people, between pleasure and work. They regard reading as their work and real occupation, and therefore gorge themselves with it beyond what they can digest. Reading no longer merely anticipates thinking, but entirely takes its place. They think of things only just so long as they are reading about them, and hence with the mind of another and not with their own. But if the book is laid aside, quite different things make much more lively claims on their interest, namely personal affairs, the theatre, card-playing, skittles, the events of the day, and gossip. The thinking mind is what it is by the fact that such things have no interest for it, whereas its problems have; and so it becomes absorbed in these by itself and without a book. It is impossible to give ourselves this interest if we do not have it; that is the point. Moreover, on this rests the fact that the former always speak only of what they have read, the latter, on the other hand, of what he has thought, and that they are, as Pope says:
"For ever reading, never to be read." [4b]
The mind is by its nature free, not a slave; only what it does by itself and willingly is successful. On the other hand, the compulsory exertion of the mind in studies that are beyond its capacity, or when it has become tired, or generally too continuously and invita Minerva, [5] dulls the brain, just as reading by moonlight dulls the eyes. In particular, this comes about also by straining the immature brain in the early years of childhood. I believe that the learning of Latin and Greek grammar from the sixth to the twelfth year lays the foundation for the subsequent dulness of most scholars. The mind certainly requires nourishment, namely material from outside. All that we eat, however, is not incorporated into the organism at once, but only in so far as it has been digested, whereby only a small part of it is actually assimilated, the remainder passing from the system, so that to eat more than we can assimilate is useless, and even injurious. It is precisely the same as regards what we read; only in so far as it gives material for thinking does it increase our insight and our knowledge proper. Therefore Heraclitus said: [x] (multiscitia non dat intellectum). [6] It seems to me that learning can be compared to a heavy suit of armour, which indeed makes the strong man quite invincible, but to the weak man is a burden under which he breaks down completely.
The detailed discussion given in our third book of the knowledge of the (Platonic) Ideas as the highest attainable by man, and at the same time as a knowledge entirely of perception or intuition, is a proof for us that the source of true wisdom lies not in the abstract rational knowledge, but in the correct and profound apprehension of the world in perception. Therefore wise men can live in any age, and those of antiquity remain so for all the generations to come. Learning, on the other hand, is relative; the learned men of antiquity are for the most part children as compared with us, and need indulgence.
However, for the man who studies to gain insight, books and studies are merely rungs of the ladder on which he climbs to the summit of knowledge. As soon as a rung has raised him one step, he leaves it behind. On the other hand, the many who study in order to fill their memory do not use the rungs of the ladder for climbing, but take them off and load themselves with them to take away, rejoicing at the increasing weight of the burden. They remain below for ever, because they bear what should have borne them.
On the truth, here discussed, that the kernel of all knowledge is perceptive or intuitive apprehension, rests also the correct and profound observation of Helvetius that the really characteristic and original views of which a gifted individual is capable, and the elaboration, development, and manifold use whereof are his whole work, although produced much later, originate in him only up to his thirty-fifth, or at the latest his fortieth year; in fact they are really the result of combinations made in his earliest youth. For they are not mere concatenations of abstract concepts, but the intuitive apprehension, peculiar to him, of the objective world and the nature of things. That this intuitive apprehension must have completed its work by the age mentioned depends partly on the fact that, by that time, the ectypes of all the (Platonic) Ideas have presented themselves to the man. Therefore, later on, no ectype is any longer able to appear with the strength of the first impression. To some extent also the highest energy of brain-activity is demanded for this quintessence of all knowledge, for these impressions of apprehension avant la lettre. [7] Such energy of brain-activity is conditioned by the freshness and flexibility of the brain's fibres, and the intensity with which the arterial blood flows to the brain. But this is at its strongest only so long as the arterial system has a decided predominance over the venous; it is already declining in the early thirties, until finally, after the forty-second year, the venous system obtains the upper hand, as has been admirably and instructively explained by Cabanis. Therefore the twenties and early thirties are for the intellect what May is for the trees; only at that time do the blossoms, of which all the later fruits are the development, begin to show. The world of perception has made its impression, and thus has laid the foundation of all the subsequent ideas of the individual. By reflection this individual can make clear to himself what has been apprehended; he can still acquire much knowledge as nourishment for the fruit that has once begun to show. He can enlarge his views, correct his concepts and judgements, and really become master of the material acquired only through endless combinations. In fact, he will often produce his best works much later, just as the greatest heat begins only when the days are already growing shorter. But he has no longer any hope of new original knowledge from the only living source of perception. Byron feels this when he breaks out into the exceedingly beautiful lament:
No more -- no more -- Oh! never more on me The freshness of the heart can fall like dew, Which out of all the lovely things we see Extracts emotions beautiful and new, Hived in our bosoms like the bag o' the bee: Think'st thou the honey with those objects grew? Alas! 'twas not in them, but in thy power To double even the sweetness of a flower. [7a]
By all that has been said so far, I hope I have placed in a clear light the important truth that, just as all abstract knowledge has sprung from knowledge of perception, so has it its whole value only through its relation to this knowledge of perception, and hence through the fact that its concepts, or their partial representations, can be realized, in other words proved through perceptions; likewise that the greater part depends on the quality of these perceptions. Concepts and abstractions that do not ultimately lead to perceptions are like paths in a wood that end without any way out. Concepts have their great use in the fact that by means of them the original material of knowledge can be more easily handled, surveyed, and arranged. But however many different logical and dialectical operations are possible with them, an entirely original and new knowledge will never result from them, in other words, knowledge whose material did not already lie in perception, or was drawn from self-consciousness. This is the true meaning of the doctrine ascribed to Aristotle: Nihil est in intellectu nisi quod antea fuerit in sensu. [8] It is likewise the sense of Locke's philosophy that made an epoch in philosophy for all time by finally starting the serious discussion of the question of the origin of our knowledge. In the main, it is also what is taught by the Critique of Pure Reason. Thus it also bids us not to remain at the concepts, but to go back to their origin, that is to perception; only with the true and important addition that what holds good of perception itself refers also to its subjective conditions, to the forms lying predisposed in the perceiving and thinking brain as its natural functions, although these functions precede, at any rate virtualiter, the actual sense-perception; in other words, they are a priori, and so do not depend on this sense-perception, but rather this perception depends on them. For these forms, in fact, have no other purpose or use than to produce empirical perception on the stimulation of the nerves of sense which occurs, just as from the material of this perception other forms are subsequently fixed for constructing ideas in the abstract. Therefore the Critique of Pure Reason is related to Locke's philosophy as the analysis of the infinite is to elementary geometry; it is, however, to be regarded in every way as the continuation of Locke's philosophy. Accordingly, the given material of every philosophy is no other than the empirical consciousness which is divided into the consciousness of one's self (self-consciousness) and the consciousness of other things (external perception); for this alone is the immediate, the actually given. Every philosophy which, instead of starting from this, takes as its starting-point arbitrarily chosen abstract concepts such as, for example, the absolute, absolute substance, God, infinite, finite, absolute identity, being, essence, and so on, floats in air without any support, and so can never lead to a real result. However, philosophers have at all times attempted it with such material; therefore even Kant at times, according to common usage, and more from custom than consistency, defines philosophy as a science of mere concepts. But such a science would really undertake to extract from mere partial representations (for this is what the abstractions are) what is not to be found in complete representations (the perceptions), from which the former are drawn off by omission. The possibility of syllogisms leads to this error, because here the construction of judgements gives a new result, although more apparent than real, since the syllogism only brings out what already lay in the given judgements, for the conclusion, of course, cannot contain more than the premisses. Concepts are naturally the material of philosophy, but only as marble is the material of the sculptor. Philosophy is not supposed to work out of concepts, but into them, in other words, to deposit its results in them, but not to start from them as that which is given. Whoever wants to have a really glaring example of such a wrong and perverse start from mere concepts should consider the Institutio Theologica of Proclus, to convince himself of the futility of the whole method. There abstractions like [x], (unum, multa, bonum, producens et productum, sibi sufjiciens, causa, melius, mobile, immobile, motum) [9] and so on, are raked up, but the perceptions to which alone they owe their origin and content are ignored and disregarded with an air of superiority. From those concepts a theology is then constructed, and here the goal, the [x], is kept concealed; thus the procedure is apparently quite impartial, as if the reader, as well as the author, did not know already on the first page where all this would end. I have previously quoted a fragment of this above. Actually this production of Proclus is specially appropriate for showing how utterly unsuitable and illusory such combinations of abstract concepts are, since we can make of them whatever we like, particularly if we make use of the ambiguity of many words, such as [x] (better), for example. If such an architect of concepts were present in person, we should need only to ask him naively where all the things are of which he has so much to tell us, and whence he knows the laws from which he draws his conclusions about them. He would then soon be compelled to refer to empirical perception, in which alone the real world exhibits itself, and from which those concepts are drawn. Then we would still have merely to ask why he did not quite honestly start from the given perception of such a world, where he could verify his assertions by it at every step, instead of operating with concepts, which are nevertheless drawn only from perception, and can therefore have no further validity than that which it imparts to them. But, of course, this is just his trick. Through such concepts, in which, by virtue of abstraction, what is inseparable is thought as separated, and what cannot be united as united, he goes far beyond the perception that was their origin, and thus beyond the limits of their applicability, to an entirely different world from the one that supplied the building material, and on this very account to a world of chimeras and phantasms. I have mentioned Proclus here, just because in him this method becomes particularly clear through the open audacity with which it is carried out. But even in Plato we find some examples of this kind, although less glaring ones; and in general the philosophical literature of all times affords a whole host of such instances. That of our own time abounds in them. Consider, for example, the writings of the school of Schelling, and see the constructions that are built up from such abstractions as finite and infinite -- being, non-being, other-being -- activity, hindrance, product -- determining, being determined, determinateness -- limit, limiting, being limited -- unity, plurality, multiplicity -- identity, diversity, indifference -- thinking, being, essence, and so on. Not only does all that we have said hold good of constructions out of such material, but because an infinite amount is thought through such wide abstractions, only extremely little can be thought in them; they are empty husks. But in this way the material of the whole of philosophizing becomes astonishingly poor and paltry; and from this results the unspeakable and tormenting tediousness characteristic of all such writings. If I were to call to mind the way in which Hegel and his companions have misused such wide and empty abstractions, I should necessarily be afraid that both the reader and I would be ill, for the most sickening and loathsome tediousness hangs over the empty bombast of this repulsive philosophaster.
That likewise in practical philosophy no wisdom is brought to light from mere abstract concepts is the one thing to be learnt from the moral discourses of the theologian Schleiermacher. With the delivery of these he has bored the Berlin Academy for a number of years; quite recently they have been printed and published in one volume. Only abstract concepts, such as duty, virtue, highest good, moral law, and so on, are taken as the starting-point without further introduction than that they commonly occur in moral systems, and are now treated as given realities. These are then discussed with great subtlety from all angles; but no attempt is ever made to go straight to the source of those concepts, to the thing itself, the actual life of man, to which alone those concepts refer, from which they should be drawn, and with which morality is really concerned. For this reason, these diatribes are just as unfruitful and useless as they are tedious, which is saying a great deal. Men like this theologian, who is only too fond of philosophizing, are found at all times, famous while they are alive, forgotten soon afterwards. On the other hand, I advise as to be preferred the reading of those whose fate has been the opposite of this, for time is short and valuable.
Now if, in accordance with all that has been said here, wide, abstract concepts, and in particular those that are not to be realized in any perception, can never be the source of knowledge, the starting-point or the proper material of philosophizing, nevertheless particular results of philosophy can occasionally so turn out that they can be thought merely in the abstract, but cannot be verified by any perception. Knowledge of this kind will, of course, be only half-knowledge; it indicates, so to speak, only the place where that which is to be known is found; this itself remains concealed. We should therefore be satisfied with such concepts only in the extreme case, and when we have reached the limit of the knowledge possible to our faculties. An example of this kind might possibly be the concept of an existence or being out of time, such as the proposition: The indestructibility of our true nature by death is not a continued existence of it. With concepts of this sort, the firm ground that supports the whole of our knowledge trembles, as it were. Therefore philosophizing may occasionally, and in case of necessity, extend to such knowledge, but it must never begin with it.
Operating with wide abstractions, which was censured above, to the entire neglect of knowledge of 'perception, from which they have been drawn, and which is therefore their permanent and natural controller, has at all times been the main source of the errors of dogmatic philosophizing. A science constructed from the mere comparison of concepts, that is, from universal principles, could be certain only if all its principles were synthetic a priori, as is the case with mathematics; for such principles alone admit of no exceptions. But if the principles have any empirical material, we must always keep this at hand, in order to control the universal principles. For no truths in any way drawn from experience are ever unconditionally certain. They have only an approximate universal validity, since here no rule is valid without exception. Now if I link such principles one with another by virtue of the intersection of their concept-spheres, one concept will easily touch another precisely where the exception lies. But if this has happened even only once in the course of a long chain of reasoning, the whole structure is tom from its foundation, and floats in air. For example, if I say: "Ruminants are without front incisors," and I apply this, and what follows from it, to camels, then everything becomes false, for it holds good only of homed ruminants. What Kant calls subtle argumentation (Vernunfteln) and so often condemns, is precisely what is here meant; for it consists simply in subsuming concepts under concepts without regard to their origin, and without examining the correctness and exclusiveness of such a subsumption. In this way we can arrive by a longer or shorter circuitous path at almost any result we like which we have fixed as our goal. Hence this subtle argumentation differs only in degree from sophistry proper. But sophistry in the theoretical is just what chicanery is in the practical. Yet even Plato has very frequently taken upon himself to use this subtle argumentation, and, as mentioned already, Proclus, after the manner of all imitators, carried this fault of his prototype much farther. Dionysius the Areopagite, De Divinis Nominibus, is also strongly affected with it. Even in the fragments of the Eleatic Melissus we find clear instances of such subtle argumentation (especially § § 2-5 in Brandis's Comment. Eleat.). His method with concepts resembles blows given for the sake of appearance, which never hit the mark; these concepts never touch the reality from which they have their content, but, floating in the atmosphere of abstract universality, pass lightly over it. A further real specimen of such subtle argumentation is the little book De Diis et Mundo of the philosopher Sallust, especially chaps. 7, 12, and 17. A real gem of philosophical subtle argumentation, passing into decided sophistication, is the following reasoning of the Platonist Maximus Tyrius, which I will quote, as it is short. "Every injustice is the taking away of a good thing; there is no good thing other than virtue. Virtue, however, cannot be taken away, therefore it is not possible for the virtuous to suffer injustice from the wicked. It remains either that no injustice at all can be suffered, or that the wicked endures it from the wicked. But the wicked person possesses no good at all, for only virtue is such a good; therefore no good can be taken from him. Thus he also cannot suffer any injustice; hence injustice is an impossible thing." The original, which through repetitions is less concise, runs as follows: [x] (Sermo 2). I will also add a modern example of such proof from abstract concepts, by which an obviously absurd proposition is set up as truth, and I take it from the works of a great man, namely Giordano Bruno. In his book Del Infinito, Universo e Mondi (p. 87 of the edition of A. Wagner) he makes an Aristotelian prove (with the aid and exaggeration of the passage of Aristotle's De Coelo, i, 5) that there can be no space beyond the world. Thus he says that the world is enclosed by the eight spheres of Aristotle, but that beyond these there cannot be any space; for if there were a body beyond these, this body would be either simple or compound. It is now sophistically proved, simply from principles that are begged, that no simple body can be there, and likewise no compound body, for that would necessarily consist of simple ones. Hence there is, in general, no body there; and so also no space. For space is defined as "that in which bodies can be"; but it has just been demonstrated that no bodies can be there. Therefore there is also no space there. This last is the master-stroke of that proof from abstract concepts. At bottom, it rests on the fact that the proposition: "Where no space is, there can be no bodies" is taken as a universal negative, and is accordingly simply converted: "Where no bodies can be, there is no space." But, closely considered, the former proposition is a universal affirmative, namely: "Everything spaceless is bodiless"; and so we may not convert it simply. But not every proof from abstract concepts, with a result obviously conflicting with perception (as in this case the finiteness of space), can be reduced to such a logical mistake. For what is sophistical does not always lie in the form, but often in the matter, in the premisses, and in the indefiniteness of the concepts and-of their range or extent. Numerous instances of this are found in Spinoza, whose method indeed it is to prove from concepts; see for example the pitiable sophisms in his Ethica, part iv, prop. 29-31, by means of the ambiguity of the vague and indefinite concepts convenire and commune habere. However, things like this do not prevent the Neo-Spinozists of our own day from taking all that he said for gospel. Of these the Hegelians, of whom there are actually still a few, are particularly amusing by their traditional reverence for his proposition omnis determinatio est negatio. At this, in accordance with the charlatan-spirit of the school, they put on a face as if it were able to shake the world to its foundations, whereas it cannot be of any use at all, since even the simplest person sees for himself that, if I limit anything by determinations, I exclude, and thus deny, in this way what lies beyond the limit.
Therefore, in all sophistical reasonings of this kind, it becomes very obvious what false paths are open to that algebra with mere concepts uncontrolled by any perception, and that consequently perception is for our intellect what the firm ground on which it stands is for our body. If we forsake perception, everything is instabilis tellus, innabilis unda. [10] Allowance will be made for the fulness of these explanations and examples, on account of their instructive nature. I wanted in this way to stress and demonstrate the great difference, indeed opposition, between knowledge of perception and abstract or reflected knowledge. Hitherto this difference has received too little attention, and its establishment is a fundamental feature of my philosophy; for many phenomena of our mental life can be explained only from this difference. The connecting link between these two such different kinds of knowledge forms the power of judgement, as I have explained in § 14 of volume one. It is true that this power of judgement is also active in the province of merely abstract knowledge, where it compares concepts only with concepts. Therefore every judgement, in the logical sense of this word, is certainly a work of the power of judgement, since here a narrower concept is always subsumed under a wider. Yet this activity of the power of judgement, where it merely compares concepts with one another, is one that is inferior to and easier than the activity by which it makes the transition from what is quite particular, thus perception, to what is essentially universal, thus the concept. Thus, as it must be possible, by analysing the concepts into their essential predicates, to decide their consistency or inconsistency in a purely logical way, for which the mere faculty of reason inherent in everyone is sufficient, so here the power of judgement is active only in shortening that process, since the person gifted with it surveys rapidly what others bring out only through a series of reflections. But its activity in the narrower sense certainly appears only where the perceptively known, and thus the real, experience is to be carried over into distinct abstract knowledge, subsumed under exactly corresponding concepts, and thus deposited in reflected rational knowledge. It is therefore this faculty which has to lay down the firm foundations of all the sciences which consist always in what is immediately known and what is not to be further derived. Here, therefore, in the fundamental judgements lies also the difficulty of the sciences, not in the inferences from them. To infer is easy, to judge difficult. False inferences are a rarity; false judgements are always the order of the day. No less in practical life has the power of judgement to turn the scale in the case of all fundamental decisions and principal determinations; for in the main, its work is like the judicial sentence. Just as the burning-glass focuses the sun's rays at one point, so with the activity of the power of judgement the intellect must bring all the data it has on a matter so close together, that it grasps them at a glance, which it correctly fixes, and then makes the result clear to itself with thoughtfulness and discernment. Moreover, the great difficulty of the judgement depends in most cases on the fact that we have to pass from the consequent to the ground or reason, and this path is always uncertain; indeed, I have shown that here lies the source of all error. Yet in all the empirical sciences, as also in the affairs of real life, this path is often the only one open to us. The experiment is an attempt to go over the path in the reverse direction; it is therefore decisive, and at any rate brings the error to light, always assuming that it is correctly chosen and honestly carried out, not as were Newton's experiments on the theory of colours. But again, even the experiment must be judged and reviewed. The complete certainty of the a priori sciences, logic and mathematics, depends mainly on the fact that in them the path from ground to consequent is open to us, and is always certain. This endows them with the character of purely objective sciences, in other words, of sciences about whose truths all must judge in common, when they understand them. This is all the more surprising, as it is precisely these that rest on the subjective forms of the intellect, whereas the empirical sciences alone have to do with what is palpably objective.
Wit and discernment are also manifestations of the power of judgement; in the former it is reflecting, in the latter subsuming. With most people, the power of judgement is present only nominally. It is a kind of irony that this power is numbered among the normal faculties of the mind, instead of being ascribed only to the monstra per excessum. [11] Ordinary minds show, even in the smallest affairs, a want of confidence in their own judgement, just because they know from experience that it is of no use to them. With them prejudice and following the judgement of others take its place. In this way they are kept in a state of permanent nonage, from which scarcely one in many hundreds is emancipated. Naturally this is not avowed, for even to themselves they seem to judge; yet all the time they are casting a furtive glance at the opinion of others, which remains their secret point of direction. While any of them would be ashamed to go about in a borrowed coat, hat, or cloak, none of them has anything but borrowed opinions which they eagerly scrape up wherever they can get possession of them; and then they proudly strut around with them, giving them out as their own. Others in turn borrow these opinions from them, and do just the same thing with them. This explains the rapid and wide dissemination of errors, as well as the fame of what is bad. For the professional purveyors of opinion, such as journalists and the like, as a rule give out only false goods, just as those who hire out fancy dresses give only false jewellery. [90] The World As Will and Representation.
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Notes:1. This chapter is connected with § 12 of volume 1.
2. "The style is the man himself." [Tr.]
3. "None are so prone to make mistakes as those who act only on reflection." [Tr.]
4. "Par excellence." [Tr.]
4a. As You Like It, Act iv, Sc. i. [Tr.]
4b. Dunciad, iii, 194. [Tr.]
5. "Against the will of Minerva [i.e., despite its inclination]." [Tr.]
6. "A smattering of many things does not form the mind." [Tr.]
7. Impressions "avant la lettre" are in copper-engraving the first fresh impressions taken before the insertion of the signature. [Tr.]
7a. Don Juan, I, 214 [Tr.]
8. "There is nothing in the intellect that was not previously in sense-perception." [Tr.]
9. "One, plurality, good, producer and product, self-sufficing, cause, better, mobile, immobile, moved," are abstractions with which Proclus operates in the Institutio Theologica. [Tr.]
10. "Land on which we cannot stand, water in which we cannot swim" (Ovid, Metamorphoses, I, 16). [Tr.]
11. "Phenomena that are monstrous through excess." [Tr.]