16. Goethe as Thinker and Investigator

Therefore space can have only three dimensions. What we have undertaken here with respect to the mental picture of space is actually only a specific case of the method always employed by us when we confront things in observation. We regard concrete objects from one general point of view. Through this, we gain concepts about the particulars; we then regard these concepts themselves again from the same point of view, so that we then have before us any longer only the concepts of the concepts; if we still join these also, then they fuse into that ideal unity which cannot any longer be brought under one point of view with anything other than itself. Let us take a specific example. I become acquainted with two people, \(A\) and \(B\). I look at them from the point of view of friendship. In this case I will arrive at a quite specific concept, \(a\), of the friendship between the two people. I now look at two other people, \(C\) and \(D\), from the same point of view. I arrive at another concept, \(b\), of this friendship. Now I can go further and relate these two concepts of friendship to each other. What remains for me, when I disregard the concrete element I have gained, is the concept of friendship in general. But I can arrive at this in an even more real way, when I look at two other people, \(E\) and \(F\), from the same point of view, and likewise two people \(G\) and \(H\). In this, as in innumerable other cases, I can obtain the concept of friendship in general. But all these concepts, in their essential nature, are identical to each other; and when I look at them from the same point of view, it then turns out that I have found a unity. I have returned again to where I took my start.