8. Abstraction and Reality

But truly this is not how things are. In this respect, too, humanity is going through a process of evolution. The analogy I have given is only valid from the sixteenth century onwards; before then the globe was not a coherent whole; it has only come to be a coherent political whole from then onwards. America, the western hemisphere, simply did not exist for any political life which might have been a coherent whole. By creating a proper analogy, you immediately also see the tremendous break that exists between more recent life and life in the past. Insights based on reality always bear fruit, compared to concepts not based on reality, which are sterile and do not bear fruit. Every insight based on reality takes us a step further. We gain more than its immediate content and it takes us forward in the real world. This is what is so important; it is what we must concentrate on. Abstract concepts are like this: we have them, but the reality is outside and does not care a hoot about this abstract concept. Concepts based on reality hold within them the whole active inner life which is also there outside, life that chumbles and churns[^6] in every part of the real world out there. People are made uncomfortable by this. They want their concepts to be as quiet and colourless as possible and are afraid they will get giddy if their concepts have inner life.