74. Preliminary Studies for On the Human Riddle
[From the chapter “World of Thought, Personality, Peoplehood”] The thoughts that a person is able to form about reality easily come to fill his entire mental life. He believes that they give him a light that shines into all the secrets of the world. If he finds that someone has different thoughts from his own, he speaks of a different world view. He believes that the other person's thoughts contradict his own and that they therefore cannot exist alongside his own.
However, by judging in this way, one usually confuses two things that need to be kept separate by anyone who wants to gain insight into the true reasons why thinkers' ideas about reality differ so widely. This paper is based on the view that, when one looks more closely at the ideas that are believed to belong to different worldviews,
In the way that one speaks of the diversity of the worldviews of thinkers, two different causes of this diversity are lumped together, resulting in a confusion of concepts. A thinker can have thoughts about reality that differ from those of another, like the image of a tree photographed from one direction is different from that of the same tree photographed from another.
If one seeks to recognize how the forces of nationality are effective in the thinkers of a [people], then one will be able to find significant examples in such personalities as they have appeared in Planck, Troxler, 1. H. Fichte and others described in this writing. For the purpose of such a consideration is to find those popular instincts that also work in other branches of popular activity, and that drive their peculiarity into the world of thought in such thinkers. These forces often have no influence on the opinions that are then formed about the course and value of worldviews and that are expressed in the writing of history; and so it happens that thinkers rooted in the soil of their nation are often not only lonely during their lifetime, but that their thoughts are also lonely for posterity. The most effective forces of a people reveal themselves in their achievements; and the strength of the recognition, even the recognition of these forces, does not necessarily correspond to what has been achieved. If one says in response: yes, but this thinker, who is supposed to be so rooted in the people, has not had a great effect, one does not see how the forces at work in him are precisely those that continue to have an effect, that are indestructible. If we want to know the driving forces of a tree, we must not see how one branch affects another, but how the forces present in the trunk are manifested in the individual branch. It is not a matter of focusing on how this or that thinker has influenced these opinions, but rather on what forces of the folk-soul are at work in a personality.
It is important to see: this or that trait is national and it shows in the idiosyncrasy of this or that thinker.
How the national character works in the thinker.
If one seeks to recognize how the forces of national character are effective in the thinkers of a nation, /bricht ab]
Planck, like Troxler and some of the other personalities described here, has remained without a more far-reaching effect of the kind that is expressed in the recognition of contemporaries, in the dissemination of views and the like. But if one wants to identify thinkers in whom the essence of nationality lives, then he belongs among them. For what has become thought in him sprouts from the impulses of nationality. In his thoughts, it is precisely those impulses of the people that are often unconsciously at work, but which underlie the activity and achievements of the people.
What is expressed in all truly popular activity and achievement in the most diverse fields; what lives in the most diverse forms: in the case of such a thinker, it becomes a world of ideas. Materialism is not overcome by rejecting the view of a series of thinkers in the second half of the nineteenth century who considered all spiritual experiences to be a mere material effect, but by engaging in thinking about the spiritual in the sense that one thinks about nature in a natural way. What this means can already be seen from the preceding remarks in this essay, but it will be shown in particular in the final considerations intended as 'outlooks'.
A deepening of insight into the soul of a people can never lead to an underestimation of the essence and value of other peoples; it cannot indulge in such feelings as are today felt by many towards the German people.
The author of this writing hopes that it will be seen from it how far removed from him any appreciative immersion in the spiritual idiosyncrasy of a national character is from any misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the essence and value of other national characters. It would be unnecessary to say this at any other time; today it is necessary in view of the feelings that are now being expressed by many sides towards German nature.
The author of this essay hopes that it will be seen that his view, that a deeper understanding of the psychological characteristics of one nationality should not lead to a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the nature and value of other nationalities, is apparent from it. It would be unnecessary to say this at other times. Today it is necessary.
[On the chapter 'Images from Austria's Intellectual Life': Robert Hamerling and 'Homunculus'
In his satirical poem “Homunculus”, Hamerling shows, so to speak, what would become of human life if what is merely presented as scientific theory were to be realized in reality. The human being who lives without a soul because he thinks in a spirit-shy way is the “homunculus”. In our time, this “homunculism” is having a wide impact. There is even talk of how homo sapiens of a bygone age is being transformed entirely into homo oeconomicus. This is /bricht ab]
Hamerling is looking for a worldview that incorporates a spiritual way of thinking into the purely scientific world of thought.
What would life be like if man were really what a world view presents him as being, one that only takes into account the sensory world? One could ask the question: what would a world order have to look like if it were a reality, one that a world view presents, one that only forms its ideas from the reality of the senses. If, therefore, the purely scientific mode of thought wants to be, so to speak, [breaks off]
In his satirical poem “Homunculus”, Hamerling portrays a person who is only what the world view takes him to be, which draws its ideas only from the sensory world.
The world of the scientific way of thinking is the world that man perceives in reality; but it is presented without anything by which it could make itself perceptible to any being.
What this way of thinking conceives as light and sound does not shine or resound. One only knows from life that one has gained the representations of this way of thinking from what shines and resounds, and therefore lives in the belief that what is imagined also shines and resounds.
When Mach speaks of sensation, he is pointing to that which is felt; but in thinking the object of the sensation, he must separate it from the ego. He does not realize that by doing so, he is thinking something that can no longer be felt. He also shows this by the fact that the concept of the ego completely dissipates. That he actually loses the “I” completely. It becomes a mythical concept. Because he does not consciously think of his world of feeling as imperceptible, it throws the perceiving ego out of his thinking. Thus Mach's view in particular becomes proof of what has been explained here.
Hamerling, however, is only standing before the experience of the seeing consciousness with a presentiment. This sees in the material of the brain the conditions for the soul entities to recognize themselves in their mirror image through the ordinary consciousness. Matter can never be the bearer of thought, but it can be the bearer of the images of consciousness of the creative thinking. The latter experiences itself in the vision of consciousness in its essence independent of matter and regards the material activity of the brain as spiritual activity becoming a real image.
With this thought, however, Hamerling is only intuitively approaching the point of view of the observing consciousness. To want to derive the thought in the human brain from the activity of the material atoms certainly remains a futile and foolish undertaking for all time. For it is no better than wanting to derive the mirror image of a person from the activity of the mirror.
But what ordinary consciousness knows as thoughts is only the reflection, brought about by the brain, of the living, thinking essence of the soul. One cannot say of this reflection that something in the processes of the brain is essentially the same as it. When the observing consciousness experiences itself in the essential nature of thoughts, then it also beholds in them the reality that underlies the brain. The brain is related to this reality as an image is to the essence that it visualizes.
Enhanced consciousness is not developed from ordinary consciousness through bodily (physiological) processes, as ordinary waking consciousness develops from dream consciousness. The intensification is a completely soul-spiritual experience that cannot have anything to do with bodily processes. When awakening from dream into waking consciousness, one is dealing with a changing attitude of the body; when awakening from ordinary consciousness to spirit-perceiving consciousness, one is dealing with a changing attitude of spiritual-soul experiences.
But the image-form of the thought in ordinary consciousness is also for the seeing consciousness a reflection of the essential being that is experienced in the soul. And when the soul, living and cognizant, becomes aware of itself in the observing consciousness, it knows itself to be in a reality within which the material substance of the brain is not essentially the same as the thoughts of the ordinary consciousness, but it is the same as the spiritual substance with which the thoughts reveal themselves. In the observing consciousness, the soul knows itself to be in the spiritual substance that the brain forms out of the creative spiritual substance. But what Hamerling describes in his Atomics of the Will would only correspond to this creative spiritual essence if he knew himself as living in the consciousness of vision and was striving to visualize the spiritual experience with his description.
That is the world in which the soul knows itself to be one with what [breaks off]
[To the chapter: “Images from the Thought Life of Austria”: Josef Misson]
Misson cannot be considered a thinker among those described in this writing. But if one considers what must have gone on in his soul life, it gives an understanding of the special coloring of the ideas of Austrian thinkers. But what lives in the constitution of his soul sheds light on Austrian thinkers. The thoughts of Schelling, Hegel and Planck can be vividly dissected like the limbs of a thought organism, so that each thought always grows out of the other; a popular element can be seen in this way of growing out of one another. The thoughts of Austrian thinkers stand like isolated plants on a spiritual ground from which they all grow in the same way, with each one less arising from the other. Therefore they do not so much bear the immediate popular character in their form, but more in their fundamental mood. Such a fundamental mood is, however, held back in the thinker; in a personality like Mission it appears as a yearning for the popular. — In Schröer, in Fercher, in Carneri, Hamerling it lives as the fundamental mood of their thoughts, while their content reveals less of it.
[On the chapter 'Images from the Thought Life of Austria': Oriental-Indian Mysticism]
A kind of counter-image to the purely scientific way of thinking is Oriental-Indian mysticism. The former does not reach the spirit because it loses itself in observing the senses; the latter does not enter into reality with its spiritual experience because it does not want to awaken from ordinary consciousness to the heightened consciousness meant here, but rather dampens ordinary consciousness, thereby falling into a dream-like recognition. She believes she is recognizing the spiritual by leaving the reality that is immediately present to her. But it is part of the real spiritual that this reality arises from it. Therefore, if one weaves as a knower in a spiritual world that has stripped away this reality, then this imagined spiritual world lacks what is in truth in the real spiritual world. This oriental-Indian mysticism also claims to overcome the “I” of ordinary consciousness. In truth, it only falls back to a level of consciousness that has not yet reached the “I”. The awakened consciousness meant in this writing goes beyond the level of consciousness at which the “I” has been attained. Ancient Indian mysticism is a kind of counter-image to the scientific way of thinking. If the former paints a world that is imperceptible, the latter paints a world in which life is lived spiritually, but nothing is to be perceived. The cognizant person does not seek to awaken from sensory reality to a heightened consciousness through the power of soul experiences, but withdraws from all reality in order to be alone with cognition. He believes that he has overcome reality, while he has only withdrawn his consciousness from it, and in a sense left it standing outside itself with all its difficulties and riddles. The knower also believes that he has become free of the “I” and, in a selfless devotion to the spiritual world, is one with it. In reality, he has only obscured the experience of the “I” for his consciousness and unconsciously lives entirely in the “I”. Instead of awakening from the ordinary consciousness of self, he falls back into a dreamy consciousness. He thinks he has solved the riddles of existence, when in fact he has only turned his soul's gaze away from them. He has the pleasant feeling of knowledge because he no longer feels the riddle of knowledge weighing on him. One can have to say all this to oneself and still have no less admiration and understanding for the magnificent creation of the Bhagavad-Gita or other products of this mysticism than someone to whom the above only gives the impression that it must have been written by someone who simply has no sense for the sublimity of these creations. One should not believe that only the unconditional follower of a world view can fully appreciate it. I write this here, knowing that I have no less appreciation for Indian mysticism and no less experience with it than any of its followers.