The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. Understanding the World

[ 1 ] It follows from the preceding considerations that it is impossible to prove, by examining the content of our observations, that our perceptions are mental images. This proof is to be provided by showing that if the process of perception takes place in the manner imagined according to the naive-realist assumptions about the psychological and physiological constitution of our individual, then we are not dealing with things-in-themselves, but merely with our mental images of things. If, then, naive realism, when pursued consistently, leads to results that are the exact opposite of its premises, these premises must be deemed unsuitable for establishing a worldview and must be abandoned. In any case, it is impermissible to reject the premises while retaining the conclusions, as the critical idealist does, who bases his assertion—that the world is my mental image—on the line of reasoning outlined above. (Eduard von Hartmann provides a detailed exposition of this line of reasoning in his work “The Fundamental Problem of Epistemology.”)

[ 2 ] One thing is the correctness of critical idealism; another is the persuasiveness of its proofs. The status of the former will become clear later in the course of our discussion. The persuasiveness of its proof, however, is zero. If one builds a house and, while constructing the first floor, the ground floor collapses, the first floor collapses with it. Naive realism and critical idealism relate to each other just as the ground floor relates to the first floor.

[ 3 ] For those who believe that the entire perceived world is merely an imagined one—namely, the effect of things unknown to me on my soul—the real question of knowledge naturally does not concern the mental images that exist only in the soul, but rather the things that lie beyond our consciousness and are independent of us. They ask: How much of the latter can we indirectly perceive, since they are not directly accessible to our observation? The person holding this view is not concerned with the internal coherence of his conscious perceptions, but with their no longer conscious causes, which have an existence independent of him, whereas, in his view, the perceptions disappear as soon as he turns his senses away from things. From this point of view, our consciousness acts like a mirror whose images of certain things disappear the moment its reflective surface is no longer turned toward them. But whoever does not see the things themselves, but only their mirror images, must draw indirect conclusions about the nature of the former from the behavior of the latter. This is the standpoint of modern natural science, which uses perceptions only as a last resort to gain insight into the processes of matter lying behind them and which alone are truly real. If the philosopher, as a critical idealist, acknowledges existence at all, then his quest for knowledge, through the indirect use of mental images, is directed solely toward this existence. His interest bypasses the subjective world of mental images and turns to the source of these images.

[ 4 ] The critical idealist, however, may go so far as to say: I am confined within my world of mental images and cannot escape it. If I conceive of a thing beyond my mental images, this thought is, after all, nothing more than my own mental image. Such an idealist will then either deny the thing-in-itself entirely or at least declare that it has no significance whatsoever for us humans—that is, that it is as good as nonexistent, because we cannot know anything about it.

[ 5 ] To a critical idealist of this sort, the entire world appears as a dream, in the face of which any quest for knowledge would simply be pointless. For him, there can be only two kinds of people: the deluded, who take their own dream-weavings for real things, and the wise, who see through the futility of this dream world and who, little by little, must lose all desire to concern themselves with it any further. From this standpoint, one’s own personality can also become a mere dream image. Just as our own dream image appears among the images of a sleep dream, so in waking consciousness the mental image of one’s own self is added to the mental image of the external world. We then have in our consciousness not our real self, but only our conception of the self. Whoever now denies that things exist, or at least that we can know anything about them, must also deny the existence or the knowledge of one’s own personality. The critical idealist then arrives at the assertion: “All reality is transformed into a wondrous dream, without a life that is being dreamed of, and without a mind that is dreaming; into a dream that is coherent within a dream of itself” (see Fichte, The Purpose of Man).

[ 6 ] Whether the person who believes he has recognized immediate life as a dream suspects nothing lies beyond this dream, or whether he relates his mental images to real things: life itself must lose all scientific interest for him. But while for the person who believes that the dream exhausts the universe accessible to us, all science is an absurdity, for the other, who believes himself authorized to infer things from mental images, science consists in the investigation of these “things-in-themselves.” The former worldview can be designated by the name of absolute illusionism, while the second is called transcendental realism> by its most consistent representative, Eduard von Hartmann. ^{1Transcendental is the term used in this worldview to describe a form of knowledge that consciously acknowledges that nothing can be stated directly about things-in-themselves, but which draws indirect conclusions from the known subjective realm to the unknown, that which lies beyond the subjective (the Transcendent). According to this view, the thing-in-itself lies beyond the realm of the world that is immediately knowable to us, i.e., it is transcendent. — Our world, however, can be related to the transcendent in a transcendental manner. Hartmann’s view is called realism because it goes beyond the subjective and ideal to the transcendent and real.}

[ 7 ] These two views have in common with naive realism that they seek to gain a foothold in the world through an examination of perceptions. However, they cannot find a firm point of reference anywhere within this realm.

[ 8 ] A key question for the proponent of transcendental realism must be: How does the self bring about the world of ideas from within itself? For a world of mental images given to us—one that vanishes as soon as we close our senses to the external world—a serious quest for knowledge can be inspired insofar as it serves as the means to indirectly explore the world of the self that exists in itself. If the things of our experience were mere mental images, then our everyday life would resemble a dream, and the realization of the true state of affairs would be like waking up. Our dream images also interest us as long as we are dreaming, and consequently do not see through the nature of the dream. At the moment of awakening, we no longer inquire into the internal connections of our dream images, but into the physical, physiological, and psychological processes underlying them. Nor can the philosopher who regards the world as his own mental image be interested in the inner connection of the details within it. If he acknowledges an existing self at all, then he will not ask how one of his mental images relates to another, but rather what is taking place in the soul independent of him while his consciousness contains a specific sequence of mental images. When I dream that I am drinking wine that causes a burning sensation in my throat and then wake up with a coughing fit (see Weygandt, The Origin of Dreams, 1893), the dream’s plot ceases to be of interest to me the moment I wake up. My attention is now focused solely on the physiological and psychological processes through which the urge to cough is symbolically expressed in the dream image. In a similar way, the philosopher, as soon as he is convinced of the representational character of the given world, must immediately leap from it to the real soul lying behind it. The situation is worse, however, when illusionism completely denies the self behind the mental images, or at least considers it unknowable. Observation can very easily lead to such a view: while there is indeed a waking state in contrast to dreaming, in which we have the opportunity to see through dreams and relate them to real circumstances, we have no state that stands in a similar relationship to the life of waking consciousness. Those who subscribe to this view lack the insight that there is something which, in fact, relates to mere perception in the same way that experience in the waking state relates to dreaming. This something is thinking.

[ 9 ] The naive person cannot be blamed for the lack of insight referred to here. He surrenders himself to life and regards things as real just as they present themselves to him in experience. The first step, however, that is taken beyond this standpoint can consist only in the question: how does thought relate to perception? It matters not at all whether perception, in the form given to me, continues to exist before and after my mental image of it or not: if I wish to say anything about it, it can only be done with the aid of thought. When I say: the world is my mental image, I have expressed the result of a thought process, and if my thinking is not applicable to the world, then this result is an error. Thinking interposes itself between perception and any kind of statement about it.

[ 10 ] We have already explained why thinking is usually overlooked when we consider things (see p. 42ff.). It lies in the fact that we focus our attention only on the object we are thinking about, but not simultaneously on the act of thinking itself. Naive consciousness therefore treats thinking as something that has nothing to do with things, but stands entirely apart from them and makes its observations about the world. The image that the thinker constructs of the phenomena of the world is not regarded as something that belongs to things, but as something existing only in the human mind; the world is complete even without this image. The world is complete in all its substances and forces; and from this complete world, man constructs an image. One need only ask those who think this way: by what right do you declare the world to be complete without thought? Does not the world produce thought in the human mind with the same necessity as the flower on the plant? Plant a seed in the ground. It sprouts roots and a stem. It unfolds into leaves and flowers. Place the plant before you. It connects in your soul with a certain concept. Why does this concept belong any less to the whole plant than the leaves and flowers? You say: the leaves and flowers are there without a perceiving subject; the concept only appears when man stands before the plant. Quite so. But even flowers and leaves arise on the plant only when there is soil in which the seed can be planted, when there is light and air in which leaves and flowers can unfold. In exactly the same way, the concept of the plant arises when a thinking consciousness approaches the plant.

[ 11 ] It is entirely arbitrary to regard the sum of what we learn about a thing through mere perception as a totality, as a whole, and to regard what results from thinking consideration as something added on that has nothing to do with the thing itself. If I receive a rosebud today, the image that presents itself to my perception is, at first, merely a closed one. If I place the bud in water, I will receive a completely different image of my object tomorrow. If I do not turn my eye away from the rosebud, I see today’s state continuously transition into tomorrow’s through countless intermediate stages. The image that presents itself to me at a given moment is merely a random snapshot of the object in a state of continuous becoming. If I do not place the bud in water, it will fail to develop a whole series of states that lay within it as possibilities. Likewise, I may be prevented tomorrow from continuing to observe the bloom and thus have an incomplete picture.

[ 12 ] It is a completely subjective opinion, based on mere chance, which, looking at the picture presented at a certain moment in time, declared: this is the matter.

[ 13 ] Nor is it permissible to explain the object as the sum of its perceptual features. It is quite possible that a mind could apprehend the concept simultaneously and inseparably with perception. Such a mind would not even think of regarding the concept as something not belonging to the object. It would have to attribute to it an existence inseparably connected with the object.

[ 14 ] Let me clarify this with an example. When I throw a stone horizontally through the air, I see it in different places one after another. I connect these points to form a line. In mathematics, I learn about various types of lines, including the parabola. I know the parabola as a line that is formed when a point moves in a certain regular manner. When I examine the conditions under which the thrown stone moves, I find that the line of its motion is identical to the one I know as a parabola. The fact that the stone moves precisely in a parabola is a consequence of the given conditions and follows necessarily from them. The shape of the parabola belongs to the whole phenomenon, just like everything else that comes into play in it. The mind described above, which would not have to take the detour of thought, would be given not only a sum of visual sensations at different locations, but also, inseparable from the phenomenon, the parabolic shape of the trajectory, which we only add to the phenomenon through thought.

[ 15 ] It is not the objects themselves that are presented to us initially without the corresponding concepts, but rather our mental organization. Our total being functions in such a way that, for every thing in reality, the elements relevant to the matter flow in from two sides: from the side of perception and from the side of thought.

[ 16 ] The way I am organized to perceive things has nothing to do with the nature of those things. The distinction between perception and thought only exists at the moment when I, the observer, encounter things. However, which elements belong to a thing and which do not cannot possibly depend on the way in which I come to know these elements.

[ 17 ] Human beings are limited creatures. First and foremost, they are beings among other beings. Their existence is bound to space and time. Consequently, they can only ever be given a limited part of the entire universe. This limited part, however, is connected to other parts all around it, both temporally and spatially. If our existence were so linked to things that every world event were at the same time our event, then there would be no difference between us and things. But then there would be no individual things for us either. Everything that happens would flow continuously into one another. The cosmos would be a unity and a self-contained whole. The flow of events would have no interruption anywhere. Because of our limitations, what in truth is not a particular appears to us as a particular. Nowhere, for example, does the individual quality of red exist in isolation. It is surrounded on all sides by other qualities to which it belongs and without which it could not exist. For us, however, it is a necessity to single out certain aspects of the world and to consider them in isolation. Our eye can perceive only individual colors one after another from a complex whole of colors; our mind can grasp only individual concepts from a coherent system of concepts. This separation is a subjective act, conditioned by the fact that we are not identical with the world-process, but a being among other beings.

[ 18 ] It now all comes down to determining the relationship of the being that we ourselves are to other beings. This determination must be distinguished from the mere becoming aware of our self. The latter is based on perception, just as the becoming aware of any other thing is. Self-perception reveals to me a sum of properties that I synthesize into the whole of my personality, just as I synthesize the properties “yellow,” “metallic luster,” “hard,” etc., into the unity “gold.” Self-perception does not lead me beyond the realm of what belongs to me. This self-perception must be distinguished from the thinking self-determination. Just as I integrate a single perception of the external world into the context of the world through thinking, so I integrate the perceptions I have of myself into the world process through thinking. My self-perception confines me within certain limits; my thinking has nothing to do with these limits. In this sense, I am a dual being. I am enclosed within the realm that I perceive as my personality, but I am the bearer of an activity that, from a higher sphere, determines my limited existence. Our thinking is not individual in the same way as our sensations and feelings. It is universal. It acquires an individual character in each individual human being only insofar as it relates to that person’s individual feelings and sensations. It is through these particular colorings of universal thought that individual human beings differ from one another. A triangle has only a single concept. For the content of this concept, it is irrelevant whether it is grasped by the human consciousness-bearer A or B. However, it will be grasped in an individual way by each of the two consciousness-bearers.

[ 19 ] This idea is met with a prejudice that is difficult for people to overcome. This bias prevents them from realizing that the concept of a triangle that my mind grasps is the same as the one grasped by the mind of the person next to me. The naive person considers himself the creator of his own concepts. He therefore believes that every person has his own concepts. Overcoming this prejudice is a fundamental requirement of philosophical thinking. The single, unified concept of the triangle does not become a multiplicity simply because it is conceived by many. For the thinking of the many is itself a unity.

[ 20 ] In thought, we have the element that unites our unique individuality with the cosmos into a single whole. When we sense and feel (and also perceive), we are individuals; when we think, we are the all-one being that permeates everything. This is the deeper reason for our dual nature: we see within ourselves an absolutely absolute force of existence emerging, a force that is universal, but we do not come to know it as it radiates from the center of the world, but rather at a point on the periphery. If the former were the case, then the moment we become conscious, we would know the entire mystery of the world. But since we stand at a point on the periphery and find our own existence enclosed within certain limits, we must come to know the realm lying outside our own being with the help of thought, which reaches into us from the general existence of the world.

[ 21 ] Because our thinking transcends our particular existence and relates to the universal existence of the world, the drive for knowledge arises within us. Beings without thought do not possess this drive. When other things are presented to them, this does not give rise to questions. These other things remain external to such beings. In thinking beings, the concept encounters the external thing. It is that which we receive from the thing not from the outside, but from within. The balance, the union of the two elements—the inner and the outer—is to be provided by knowledge.

[ 22 ] Perception, then, is not something finished or complete, but rather one aspect of total reality. The other aspect is the concept. The act of cognition is the synthesis of perception and concept. It is the perception and concept of a thing, however, that together constitute the whole thing.

[ 23 ] The preceding remarks demonstrate that it is absurd to seek anything in common among the individual entities of the world other than the ideal content that thought presents to us. All attempts must fail that strive for a unity of the world other than this internally coherent ideal content, which we acquire through the thoughtful consideration of our perceptions. Neither a human-personal God, nor force or matter, nor (Schopenhauer’s) will devoid of ideas can serve as a universal unity of the world for us. These entities all belong solely to a limited sphere of our observation. We perceive humanly limited personality only in ourselves, and force and matter only in external things. As for the will, it can be regarded only as the expression of activity of our limited personality. Schopenhauer wishes to avoid making “abstract” thought the bearer of world unity and instead seeks something that presents itself to him immediately as a reality. This philosopher believes that we will never grasp the world if we regard it as an external world. “In fact, the sought-after meaning of the world that stands before me merely as my mental image, or the transition from it—as a mere mental image of the knowing subject—to whatever else it may be, would never be found if the seeker himself were nothing more than the purely knowing subject (a winged angel’s head without a body). But now he himself is rooted in that world; he finds himself in it as an individual, that is, his cognition, which is the conditioning bearer of the entire world as a mental image, is nevertheless entirely mediated through a body, whose affections, as has been shown, are the starting point for the understanding’s intuition of that world. This body is to the purely cognizing subject as such a mental image like any other, an object among objects: its movements and actions are known to him in this respect no differently than the changes of all other sensible objects, and would be just as foreign and incomprehensible to him if their meaning were not unraveled to him in a completely different way.... To the subject of cognition, which appears as an individual through its identity with the body, this body is given in two entirely different ways: first, as a mental image in intellectual intuition, as an object among objects, and subject to the laws thereof; but then also, at the same time, in an entirely different way, namely as that which is immediately known to everyone and which the word will designates. Every true act of his will is immediately and inevitably also a movement of his body: he cannot truly will the act without at the same time perceiving that it appears as a movement of the body. The act of will and the action of the body are not two objectively recognized distinct states linked by the bond of causality; they do not stand in a relationship of cause and effect; rather, they are one and the same, merely given in two entirely different ways: once quite immediately and once in the intuition of the intellect.” Through these arguments, Schopenhauer believes himself justified in finding the “objectivity” of the will in the human body. He is of the opinion that in the actions of the body he immediately feels a reality, the thing-in-itself in concreto. Against these arguments, it must be objected that the actions of our body come to our consciousness only through self-perception and, as such, have no advantage over other perceptions. If we wish to recognize their essence , we can do so only through rational contemplation, that is, by integrating them into the ideal system of our concepts and ideas.

[ 24 ] Deeply rooted in the naive consciousness of humanity is the belief that thinking is abstract, devoid of any concrete content. At best, it can provide an “ideal” reflection of the unity of the world, not the unity itself. Anyone who judges in this way has never grasped what perception is without the concept. Let us simply look at this world of perception: it appears as a mere juxtaposition in space and succession in time, an aggregate of disconnected details. None of the things that appear and disappear on the stage of perception has anything directly to do with the other that can be perceived. The world is thus a multitude of objects of equal value. None plays a greater role than the other in the workings of the world. If we are to realize that this or that fact has greater significance than the other, we must consult our thinking. Without functioning thought, the rudimentary organ of an animal, which is of no significance to its life, appears to us to be of equal value to the most important limb of the body. The individual facts emerge in their significance within themselves and for the rest of the world only when thought draws its threads from being to being. This activity of thought is a meaningful. For only through a very specific concrete content can I know why the snail stands at a lower level of organization than the lion. Mere sight, mere perception, gives me no content that could instruct me about the perfection of the organization.

[ 25 ] Thought brings this content to perception from the world of human concepts and ideas. In contrast to the content of perception, which is given to us from the outside, the content of thought appears within us. Let us call the form in which it first appears intuition. It is to thinking what observation is to perception. Intuition and observation are the sources of our knowledge. We remain alien to an observed object in the world as long as we do not possess within ourselves the corresponding intuition that supplements the missing piece of reality in our perception. Those who lack the ability to find the intuitions corresponding to things remain shut out from full reality. Just as the color-blind person sees only differences in brightness without color qualities, so too can the person lacking intuition observe only disjointed fragments of perception.

[ 26 ] To explain a thing, to make it understandable, means nothing other than to place it back into the context from which it has been torn away by the structure of our organization described above. There is no such thing as a thing separated from the whole of the world. All separation has merely subjective validity for our organization. For us, the whole world breaks down into: above and below, before and after, cause and effect, object and mental image, matter and force, object and subject, etc. What we encounter in observation as details is linked together, link by link, through the coherent, unified world of our intuitions; and through thinking, we reassemble into one everything that we have separated through perception.

[ 27 ] The enigmatic nature of an object lies in its unique existence. However, this is something we ourselves have created and can, within the realm of concepts, also be undone.

[ 28 ] Apart from thought and perception, nothing is given to us directly. The question now arises: what, according to our discussion, is the significance of perception? We have indeed recognized that the proof put forward by critical idealism for the subjective nature of perceptions collapses in on itself; but the realization that the proof is incorrect does not yet establish that the matter itself is based on an error. Critical idealism does not base its argument on the absolute nature of thought, but rather relies on the fact that naive realism, if pursued consistently, negates itself. How does the matter stand once the absoluteness of thought is recognized?

[ 29 ] Let us assume that a certain perception, for example the color red, arises in my consciousness. Upon further examination, this perception proves to be connected to other perceptions, for example a certain shape, as well as certain sensations of temperature and touch. I refer to this connection as an object of the sensory world. I can now ask myself: what else, besides what has been mentioned, is found in that section of space in which the above perceptions appear to me? I will find mechanical, chemical, and other processes within that part of space. Now I proceed further and examine the processes I encounter on the path from the object to my sensory organs. I may find processes of motion in an elastic medium that, in their very nature, have not the slightest thing in common with the original perceptions. I arrive at the same result when I examine the further mediation from the sensory organs to the brain. In each of these areas I make new perceptions; but what weaves itself as a binding medium through all these spatially and temporally separated perceptions is thought. The vibrations of the air that convey sound are given to me as perceptions just as much as the sound itself. Only thought links all these perceptions together and reveals them in their mutual relationships. We cannot speak of there being anything other than what is immediately perceived, apart from that which is recognized through the ideal (to be uncovered by thought) connections of perceptions. The relationship of the objects of perception to the subject of perception, which goes beyond what is merely perceived, is thus a purely ideal one, that is, one expressible only through concepts. Only if I could perceive how the object of perception affects the subject of perception, or conversely, if I could observe the construction of the perceptual image by the subject, would it be possible to speak as modern physiology and the critical idealism built upon it do. This view confuses an ideal relationship (of the object to the subject) with a process of which one could speak only if it were perceptible. The statement “No color without a color-perceiving eye” cannot therefore mean that the eye produces color, but only that there is an ideal connection, recognizable through thought, between the perception of color and the perception of the eye. Empirical science will have to determine how the properties of the eye and those of colors relate to one another; through which mechanisms the organ of sight mediates the perception of colors, etc. I can observe how one perception follows another, how it relates spatially to others; and then express this in conceptual terms; but I cannot perceive how a perception arises from the imperceptible. All efforts to seek connections between perceptions other than conceptual ones are bound to fail.

[ 30 ] So what is perception? When asked in general terms, this question is absurd. Perception always appears as a very specific, concrete content. This content is immediately given and is exhausted in what is given. With regard to this given, one can only ask what it is outside of perception, that is, for thought. The question of the “what” of a perception can therefore only refer to the conceptual intuition that corresponds to it. From this perspective, the question of the subjectivity of perception in the sense of critical idealism cannot be raised at all. Only that which is perceived as belonging to the subject may be designated as subjective. The task of establishing the link between the subjective and the objective does not fall to any process that is real in the naive sense—that is, to a perceptible event—but solely to thought. What appears to perception as situated outside the perceiving subject is therefore objective for us. My perceiving subject remains perceptible to me even when the table that is currently standing before me has disappeared from the circle of my observation. The observation of the table has brought about a change in me that is likewise lasting. I retain the ability to reproduce an image of the table later on. This ability to produce an image remains connected to me. Psychology refers to this image as a “mental image.” However, it is the only thing that can rightly be called the mental image of the table. For this corresponds to the perceptible change in my own state brought about by the presence of the table in my field of vision. And indeed, it does not signify a change in some “I in itself” standing behind the perceiving subject, but rather a change in the perceivable subject itself. The mental image is thus a subjective perception, in contrast to the objective perception in the presence of the object within the horizon of perception. The conflation of that subjective perception with this objective perception leads to the misunderstanding of idealism: the world is my mental image.

[ 31 ] Our first task will now be to define the concept of mental image more precisely. What we have said about it so far is not the concept itself, but merely points the way to where it can be found in the field of perception. The precise concept of mental image will then also enable us to gain satisfactory insight into the relationship between mental image and object. This will then also lead us beyond the boundary where the relationship between the human subject and the object belonging to the world is brought down from the purely conceptual field of cognition into concrete individual life. Once we know what to make of the world, it will be easy to adapt ourselves accordingly. We can only act with full force once we know the object belonging to the world to which we dedicate our activity.

Addendum to the New Edition (1918)

[ 32 ] The view described here can be regarded as one to which human beings are naturally drawn at first when they begin to reflect on their relationship to the world. He finds himself entangled in a conceptual construct that dissolves as he forms it. This conceptual construct is one for which a mere theoretical refutation does not suffice. One must live through it in order to find a way out from the insight into the error to which it leads. It must appear in a discussion of the relationship of man to the world—not because one wishes to refute others whom one believes to hold an incorrect view of this relationship, but because one must know into what confusion any initial reflection on such a relationship can lead. One must gain the insight into how one refutes oneself with regard to this initial reflection. The above remarks are intended from such a perspective.

[ 33 ] Anyone who wishes to form a view of the relationship between human beings and the world will realize that they establish at least part of this relationship by forming mental images of the things and events of the world. In doing so, their gaze is drawn away from what exists outside in the world and directed toward their inner world, toward their life of mental images. They begin to tell themselves: I cannot have a relationship with any thing or any event unless a mental image arises within me. From recognizing this fact, it is then only a short step to the conclusion: but I experience only my mental images; I know of a world outside only insofar as it is a mental image within me. With this view, the naive standpoint of reality—which man adopts before any reflection on his relationship to the world—is abandoned. From this standpoint, he believes he is dealing with real things. Self-reflection drives him away from this standpoint. It does not allow humans to look at a reality as naive consciousness believes it has before it. It allows them to look only at their own mental images; these interpose themselves between one’s own being and a supposedly real world, as the naive standpoint believes it may claim. Humans can no longer look through the interposed world of mental images toward such a reality. They must assume: they are blind to this reality. Thus arises the idea of a “thing-in-itself” that is unattainable to knowledge. — As long as one remains at the stage of observing the relationship into which human beings seem to enter with the world through their life of imagination, one will not be able to escape this conceptual framework. One cannot remain at the naive standpoint of reality if one does not wish to artificially shut oneself off from the urge for knowledge. The fact that this urge to understand the relationship between human beings and the world exists shows that this naive standpoint must be abandoned. If the naive standpoint offered something that could be recognized as truth, one would not feel this urge. — But one does not arrive at anything else that could be regarded as truth merely by abandoning the naive standpoint while—without realizing it—retaining the mode of thought that it imposes. One falls into such an error when one says to oneself: I experience only my mental images, and while I believe I am dealing with realities, I am conscious only of my mental images of realities; I must therefore assume that outside the sphere of my consciousness lie true realities, “things-in-themselves,” of which I know nothing directly, which somehow approach me and influence me in such a way that my world of ideas comes to life within me. Whoever thinks this way merely adds another world to the one before him in thought; but he would actually have to start all over again with his mental work regarding this world. For the unknown “thing-in-itself” is thereby conceived in no other way in its relation to the human self than the known “thing-in-itself” of the naive view of reality. — One escapes the confusion into which one falls through critical reflection regarding this standpoint only when one notices that there is within what one can experience perceptually within oneself and in the world, something that cannot fall prey to the fate of the mental image interposing itself between the event and the observing human being. And this is thinking. In the face of thinking, a person can remain at the naive standpoint of reality. If they do not, it is only because they have realized that they must abandon this standpoint for other matters, but fail to perceive that the insight thus gained is not applicable to thinking. If they do become aware of this, they open themselves up to the other insight: that in thought and through thought, one must recognize that to which human beings seem to blind themselves by interposing the life of the imagination between the world and themselves. — From a source highly esteemed by the author of this book, the author has been reproached for the fact that, in his exposition on thought, he remains at the level of a naive realism of thought, such as exists when one regards the real world and the imagined world as one and the same. Yet the author of these remarks believes he has demonstrated in them that the validity of this “naive realism” for thought necessarily follows from an unbiased observation of thought itself; and that this naive realism, which does not apply to other things, is overcome by the recognition of the true nature of thought.