The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. reference to the content of the experience

[ 1 ] Let us now take a look at pure experience. What does it contain as it passes by our consciousness without us thinking about it? It is mere juxtaposition in space and succession in time; an aggregate of nothing but incoherent details. None of the objects that come and go has anything to do with the other. At this level, the facts that we perceive, that we experience inwardly, are absolutely indifferent to one another.

[ 2 ] The world is a multiplicity of completely equal things. No thing, no event may claim to play a greater role in the workings of the world than another member of the world of experience. If we are to realize that this or that fact is of greater significance than another, we must not merely observe things, but relate them intellectually. The rudimentary organ of an animal, which perhaps has not the slightest importance for its organic functions, is for experience quite equivalent to the most important organ of the animal body. This greater or lesser importance only becomes clear to us when we think about the relationships between the individual elements of observation, that is, when we work on experience.

[ 3 ] For experience, the snail standing on a low level of organization is equivalent to the most highly developed animal. The difference in the perfection of organization only appears to us when we grasp and work through the given diversity conceptually. The culture of the Eskimo and that of the educated European are also equal in this respect; Caesar's significance for the historical development of mankind appears to mere experience no greater than that of one of his soldiers. In the history of literature, Goethe does not rise above Gottsched when it comes to mere experiential factuality.

[ 4 ] At this level of contemplation, the world is a perfectly flat surface in our minds. No part of this surface rises above the other; none shows any mental difference from the other. Only when the spark of thought strikes this surface do elevations and depressions occur, does one appear to rise more or less far above the other, does everything form itself in a certain way, do threads wind themselves from one structure to another; does everything become a perfect harmony in itself.

[ 5 ] We believe that our examples have sufficiently shown what we understand by the greater or lesser significance of the objects of perception (here taken as synonymous with things of experience), what we think of as the knowledge that only arises when we consider these objects in context. In this way we also believe that we are protected against the objection that our world of experience already shows infinite differences in its objects before thinking approaches them. A red surface differs from a green one even without the activity of thought. That is correct. But anyone who wanted to refute us with this has completely misunderstood our assertion. That is precisely what we claim, that there is an infinite number of details offered to us in experience. These particulars must of course be different from one another, otherwise they would not confront us as an infinite, incoherent multiplicity. We are not talking about the indistinguishability of perceived things, but about their complete lack of relationship, about the unconditional insignificance of the individual sensory fact for the gazes of our image of reality. It is precisely because we recognize this infinite qualitative difference that we are forced to make our assertions.

[ 6 ] If we were faced with a self-contained, harmoniously structured unity, we could not speak of an indifference of the individual members of this unity in relation to one another.

[ 7 ] Those who would not find our parable used above appropriate for this reason would not have grasped it at the actual point of comparison. Of course, it would be wrong if we wanted to compare the infinitely varied world of perception with the uniform uniformity of a plane. But our plane is by no means intended to make sense of the manifold world of appearances, but of the uniform overall picture that we have of this world as long as thought has not approached it. On this overall picture, after the activity of thinking, every detail does not appear as it is conveyed by the mere senses, but already with the meaning it has for the whole of reality. It thus appears with qualities that it completely lacks in the form of experience.

[ 8 ] In our opinion, Johannes Volkelt has succeeded excellently in drawing a clear outline of what we are entitled to call pure experience. Already five years ago in his book on "Kant's Epistemology" ^{4"Immanuel Kant's Epistemology [analyzed according to its basic principles]", Hamburg 1879,} it is excellently characterized and in his latest publication: "Experience and Thought" ^{5"Experience and Thought. Kritische Grundlegung der Erkenntnistheorie", Hamburg and Leipzig 1886,} he then elaborated on the matter. Admittedly, he did so in support of a view that is fundamentally different from ours and with a substantially different intention than ours at present. But this cannot prevent us from including his excellent characterization of pure experience here. It simply describes the images that pass before our consciousness in a limited period of time in a completely incoherent manner. Volkelt says: "Now, for example, my consciousness has as its content the idea of having worked diligently today; immediately attached to this is the imaginary content of being able to go for a walk with a clear conscience; but suddenly the perceptual image of the door opening and the letter carrier entering enters; the letter carrier's image appears sometimes stretching out his hand, sometimes opening his mouth, sometimes doing the opposite; at the same time all kinds of auditory impressions are connected with the perceptual content of opening his mouth, among others also one that it is beginning to rain outside. The picture of the letter carrier disappears from my consciousness, and the ideas that now enter my mind have as their content, one after the other: Grasping the scissors, opening the letter, reproach of illegible writing, facial images of manifold characters, manifold imaginary images and thoughts connected with them; hardly has this series been completed when again the idea of having worked diligently and the perception of the continuing rain, accompanied by displeasure, enter; but both disappear from my consciousness, and an idea emerges with the content that a difficulty which I had thought solved during today's work has not been solved; at the same time the ideas: Freedom of the will, empirical necessity, responsibility, the value of virtue, absolute chance, incomprehensibility, etc., enter and combine with each other in the most various and complicated ways; and it goes on in a similar way." ^{6Kant's Theory of Knowledge, page 168 f.}

[ 9 ] There we have described, for a certain, limited period of time, what we really experience, that form of reality in which thought has no part at all.

[ 10 ] No one should believe that we would have arrived at a different result if, instead of this everyday experience, we had described that which we make in a scientific experiment or in a particular natural phenomenon. Here, as there, it is individual incoherent images that pass before our consciousness. Only thinking establishes the context.

[ 11 ] The merit of having shown in sharp contours what experience, stripped of all thought, actually gives us, we must also give to the little book: "Brain and Consciousness" by Dr. Richard Wahle (Vienna 1884). Richard Wahle (Vienna 1884); only with the restriction that what Wahle presents as absolutely valid properties of the phenomena of the external and internal world only applies to the first level of the world view that we have characterized. According to Wahle, we only know of a juxtaposition in space and a succession in time. According to him, there can be no question of a relationship between things existing side by side or one after the other. There may, for example, be an inner connection somewhere between the warm ray of sunshine and the warming of the stone; we know nothing of a causal connection; it is only clear to us that the first fact is followed by the second. There may also be somewhere, in a world inaccessible to us, an inner connection between our brain mechanism and our mental activity; we only know that both are parallel occurrences; we are not at all entitled, for example, to assume a causal connection between the two phenomena.

[ 12 ] If, of course, Wahle simultaneously presents this assertion as the ultimate truth of science, we dispute this extension of it; but it applies entirely to the first form in which we become aware of reality.

[ 13 ] Not only are the things of the external world and the processes of the internal world incoherent at this stage of our knowledge, but our own personality is also an isolated entity in relation to the rest of the world. We find ourselves as one of the countless perceptions without any relationship to the objects that surround us.