The Rudolf Steiner Archive

11. Thinking and Perception

[ 1 ] Science imbues the perceived reality with the concepts grasped and worked through by our thinking. It supplements and deepens what is passively perceived with what our mind itself has raised through its activity from the darkness of mere possibility into the light of reality. This presupposes that perception needs to be supplemented by the mind, that it is not at all a final, ultimate, completed thing.

[ 2 ] It is the fundamental error of modern science that it already regards the perception of the senses as something completed, finished. That is why it sets itself the task of simply photographing this completed being. In this respect, only positivism, which simply rejects any going beyond perception, is consistent. However, today we see in almost all sciences the endeavor to regard this point of view as the correct one. In the true sense of the word, only a science that simply enumerates and describes things as they exist side by side in space and events as they follow one another in time would satisfy this demand. The old-style natural history comes closest to this requirement. The newer one demands the same, but sets up a complete theory of experience, only to transgress it as soon as it takes the first step into real science.

[ 3 ] We would have to completely divest ourselves of our thinking if we wanted to hold on to pure experience. Thinking is degraded when it is deprived of the possibility of perceiving entities within itself that are inaccessible to the senses. There must be another factor in reality, apart from the qualities of the senses, which is grasped by thinking. Thinking is an organ of man that is destined to observe higher things than the senses offer. Thinking has access to that side of reality which a mere sensory being would never experience. It is not there to regurgitate sensuality, but to penetrate that which is hidden from it. The perception of the senses provides only one side of reality. The other side is the thinking perception of the world. At first, however, thinking confronts us as something completely alien to perception. Perception penetrates us from the outside; thinking works its way out from within us. The content of this thinking appears to us as an inwardly perfect organism; everything is in the strictest coherence. The individual members of the thought system determine each other; every single concept ultimately has its root in the universality of our thought structure.

[ 4 ] At first glance, it appears as if the inner lack of contradiction of thought, its self-sufficiency, makes any transition to perception impossible. If the determinations of thought were such that they could only be satisfied in one way, then it would really be self-contained; we could not escape from it. But this is not the case. These determinations are such that they can be satisfied in many ways. But then the element which brings about this multiplicity must not itself be sought within thought. If we take the thought definition: The earth attracts every body, we will immediately notice that the thought leaves open the possibility of being fulfilled in the most diverse ways. But these are diversities that are no longer attainable by thinking. There is room for another element. This element is sense perception. Perception offers such a kind of specialization of thought determinations that is left open by the latter themselves.

[ 5 ] It is this specialization in which the world confronts us when we merely make use of experience. Psychologically, this is the first thing that is factually derived.

[ 6 ] In all scientific treatment of reality, the process is this: We confront concrete perception. It stands before us like a riddle. We feel the urge to explore its actual what, its being, which it does not express itself. This urge is nothing other than the working up of a concept from the darkness of our consciousness. We then hold on to this concept while the sensory perception goes parallel to this thought process. The silent perception suddenly speaks a language we can understand; we recognize that the concept we have grasped is the being of perception we are seeking.

[ 7 ] What has taken place there is a judgment. It is different from the form of judgment that connects two concepts without taking perception into account. When I say that freedom is the determination of a being out of itself, I have also made a judgment. The elements of this judgment are concepts that I have not given in perception. The inner unity of our thinking, which we discussed in the previous chapter, is based on such judgments.

[ 8 ] The judgment under consideration here has a perception as its subject and a concept as its predicate. This particular animal that I have before me is a dog. In such a judgment, a perception is inserted into my thought system at a certain place. Let us call such a judgment a perceptual judgment.

[ 9 ] Through the perceptual judgement it is recognized that a certain sensible object coincides in its essence with a certain concept.

[ 1 ] If we want to understand what we perceive, then the perception must be pre-formed in us as a certain concept. If this were not the case, we would pass by an object without being able to understand it.

[ 11 ] The fact that this is so is probably best demonstrated by the fact that people who lead a richer spiritual life also penetrate much deeper into the world of experience than others for whom this is not the case. Much that passes the latter by without a trace makes a deep impression on the former. ("If the eye were not sunny, it could never see the sun.") But, it will be said, do we not encounter an infinite number of things in life of which we have not yet formed the slightest conception; and do we not immediately form concepts of them on the spot? Quite so. But is the sum of all possible concepts identical with the sum of those that I have formed in my life so far? Is my conceptual system not capable of development? In the face of a reality that is incomprehensible to me, can I not immediately put my thinking into action so that it develops the concept that I have to hold against an object on the spot? All that is necessary for me is the ability to allow a certain concept to emerge from the fund of the world of thought. It is not a question of my having been conscious of a certain thought in the course of my life, but of its being able to be derived from the world of thoughts accessible to me. It is irrelevant to its content where and when I grasp it, for I take all the determinations of the thought from the world of thought. Nothing of the sense object flows into this content. In the sense object, I only recognize the thought that I have taken out of my inner self. This object does cause me, at a certain moment, to drive this very thought content out of the unity of all possible thoughts, but it in no way provides me with the building blocks for them. I have to get them out of myself.

[ 12 ] If we allow our thinking to take effect, reality first acquires true determinations. It, which was previously silent, speaks a clear language.

[ 13 ] Our thinking is the interpreter that interprets the gestures of experience.

[ 14 ] We are so accustomed to regard the world of concepts as empty and devoid of content, and to contrast it with perception as something substantial and thoroughly definite, that it will be difficult for the true facts to gain the position they deserve. One completely overlooks the fact that mere perception is the emptiest thing that can be thought, and that it receives all its content only from thinking. The only true thing about it is that it holds the always fluid thought in a certain form, without our having to contribute actively to this holding. If one who has a rich soul life sees a thousand things which are nothing to the spiritually poor, this proves as clear as day that the content of reality is only the reflection of the content of our spirit and that we receive from outside only the empty form. Of course, we must have the power within us to recognize ourselves as the producers of this content, otherwise we will only ever see the mirror image, never our spirit, which is reflected. Even those who see themselves in a factual mirror must recognize themselves as a personality in order to recognize themselves in the image.

[ 15 ] All sensory perception ultimately dissolves into ideal content as far as the being is concerned. Only then does it appear to us as transparent and clear. The sciences are often not even touched by the awareness of this truth. Thought-determination is taken for characteristics of objects, such as color, smell, etc. Thus it is believed that determination is a property of all bodies, that they remain in the state of motion or rest in which they find themselves until an external influence changes it. This is the form in which the law of inertia appears in the theory of nature. The true facts, however, are quite different. In my conceptual system, the idea body exists in many modifications. One is the idea of a thing that can set itself at rest or in motion of its own accord, another is the concept of a body that only changes its state as a result of external influence. I call the latter bodies inorganic. If I then encounter a certain body that reflects my above definition in perception, I call it inorganic and associate with it all the definitions that follow from the concept of the inorganic body.

[ 16 ] The conviction should permeate all sciences that their content is merely the content of thought and that they have no other connection with perception than that they see in the object of perception a particular form of the concept.