16. Goethe as Thinker and Investigator

But our application of the time-concept is also not correct for an objective process that has a beginning and an end. When a new characteristic arises in a particular thing, maintains itself for a time in different states of development, and then disappears again, there also we must regard the content of this characteristic as what is essential. And what is essential has absolutely nothing as such to do with the concepts of beginning, duration, and end. By “essential” we mean that by which a thing actually is precisely what it presents itself to be. What matters is not the fact that something arises at a certain moment in time, but rather what arises. The sum total of all the traits expressed by this “what” makes up the content of the world. But this “what” exists in the most manifold traits, in the most diverse forms. All these forms are in a relationship to each other; they determine each other reciprocally. Through this, they enter into a relationship of separation according to space and time. But it is only to a completely mistaken understanding of the concept of time that the concept of matter owes its existence. One believes that one would rarefy the world into a semblance without being, if one did not picture, as underlying the changeable sum total of occurrences, something that endures in time, something unchangeable, that abides while its traits are varying. But time is not after all a container within which the changes occur; it is not there before the things are, nor outside of them. Time is the sense-perceptible expression of the situation that the facts, in their content, are mutually dependent upon each other sequentially. Let us imagine we have to do with the perceivable complex of facts \(a_1\), \(b_1\), \(c_1\), \(d_1\), and \(e_1\). Another complex, \(a_2\), \(b_2\), \(c_2\), \(d_2\), and \(e_2\), depends with inner necessity upon the first complex; I understand the content of the second complex when I derive it ideally from the first one. Now let us imagine that both complexes make their appearance. For, what we discussed earlier is the entirely non-temporal and non-spatial essential being ( Wesen) of these complexes. If \(a_2\), \(b_2\), \(c_2\), \(d_2\), and \(e_2\) is to come to outer manifestation, then \(a_l\), \(b_1\), \(c_1\), \(d_1\), and \(e_1\) must likewise be outer phenomena, in such a way, in fact, that \(a_2\), \(b_2\), \(c_2\), \(d_2\), and \(e_2\) also appear in their dependency upon the first complex. This means that the phenomenon \(a_l\), \(b_1\), \(c_1\), \(d_1\), and \(e_1\) must be there and make room for the phenomenon \(a_2\), \(b_2\), \(c_2\), \(d_2\), and \(e_2\) to appear. We see here that time first arises where the essential being of something comes to outer manifestation ( Erscheinung). Time belongs to the phenomenal world. It does not yet have anything to do with the essential being itself. This essential being can only be grasped ideally. Only someone who cannot manage, in his train of thought, to go back from the phenomenon to the essential being will hypothesize time as something preceding the facts. Then, however, he needs a form of existence that endures beyond the changes. He conceives indestructible matter to be just such an existence. He has thereby created for himself a thing to which time supposedly can do nothing, something that abides amidst all change. Actually, however, he has only shown his inability to press forward, from the temporal phenomenon of the facts, to their essential being, which has nothing to do with time. Can I therefore say of the essential being of a fact that it arises or passes away? I can only say that one fact's content determines another and that this determining influence then appears as a sequence in time. The essential being of a thing cannot be destroyed; for, it is outside of all time and itself determines time. With this, we have shed light upon two concepts at the same time for which but little understanding is still to be found: upon essential being ( Wesen) and outer manifestation ( Erscheinung). Whoever grasps the matter correctly in our way cannot look for proof of the indestructibility of the essential being of something, because destruction includes within itself the time-concept, which has nothing to do with essential being.