{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 4/conmon/p002","lang":"en","edition":"RSP1964","edition_basis":"Steiner 1918 revised edition","is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"Whoever remains at this standpoint sees a part of the whole as if it were actually an independently existing thing, a monad which receives information about the rest of the world in some way from without. Monism, as here described, shows that we can believe in this independence only so long as the things we perceive are not woven by our thinking into the network of the conceptual world. As soon as this happens, all separate existence turns out to be mere *illusion due to perceiving*. Man can find his full and complete existence in the totality of the universe only through the experience of intuitive thinking. Thinking destroys the illusion due to perceiving and integrates our individual existence into the life of the cosmos. The unity of the conceptual world, which contains all objective percepts, also embraces the content of our subjective personality. Thinking gives us reality in its true form as a self-contained unity, whereas the multiplicity of percepts is but a semblance due to the way we are organized (see page 67). To recognize true reality, as against the illusion due to perceiving, has at all times been the goal of human thinking. Scientific thought has made great efforts to recognize reality in percepts by discovering the systematic connections between them. Where, however, it was believed that the connections ascertained by human thinking had only subjective validity, the true basis of unity was sought in some entity lying beyond our world of experience (an inferred God, will, absolute spirit, etc.). On the strength of this belief, the attempt was made to obtain, in addition to the knowledge accessible to experience, a second kind of knowledge which transcends experience and shows how the world that *can* be experienced is connected with the entities that *cannot* (a metaphysics arrived at by inference, and not by experience). It was thought that the reason why we can grasp the connections of things in the world through disciplined thinking was that a primordial being had built the world upon logical laws, and, similarly, that the grounds for our actions lay in the will of such a being. What was not realized was that thinking embraces both the subjective and the objective in one grasp, and that through the union of percept with concept the full reality is conveyed. Only as long as we think of the law and order that permeates and determines the percept as having the abstract form of a concept, are we in fact dealing with something purely subjective. But the content of a concept, which is added to the percept by means of thinking, is not subjective. This content is not taken from the subject, but from reality. It is that part of the reality that cannot be reached by the act of perceiving. It is experience, but not experience gained through perceiving. If someone cannot see that the concept is something real, he is thinking of it only in the abstract form in which he holds it in his mind. But only through our organization is it present in such isolation, just as in the case of the percept. After all, the tree that one perceives has no existence by itself, in isolation. It exists only as a part of the immense machinery of nature, and *can* only exist in real connection with nature. An abstract concept taken by itself has as little reality as a percept taken by itself. The percept is the part of reality that is given objectively, the concept the part that is given subjectively (through intuition—see page 73 ff.). Our mental organization tears the reality apart into these two factors. One factor presents itself to perception, the other to intuition. Only the union of the two, that is, the percept fitting systematically into the universe, constitutes the full reality. If we take mere percepts by themselves, we have no reality but rather a disconnected chaos; if we take by itself the law and order connecting the percepts, then we have nothing but abstract concepts. Reality is not contained in the abstract concept; it is, however, contained in thoughtful observation, which does not one-sidedly consider either concept or percept alone, but rather the union of the two.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"Ultimate Questions: The Consequences of Monism","site_heading":null,"date":null,"location":null,"word_count":704,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/4/conmon/p002","alignment_confidence":"low","alignment_reason":"no_original_to_compare","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":null,"edition_coverage":{"de":["original"],"en":["AP1986","GPP1916","RSP1964","RSPC1949","RSPI1963"]},"available_versions":[{"lang":"en","edition":"RSP1964","edition_basis":"Steiner 1918 revised edition","is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/4/conmon/p002"},{"lang":"en","edition":"RSPI1963","edition_basis":"Steiner 1918 revised edition","is_original":false,"is_default_edition":false,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/4/conmon/p002?edition=RSPI1963"},{"lang":"de","edition":"original","edition_basis":"Steiner 1918 revised edition","is_original":true,"is_default_edition":true,"locus":"GA 4/monismus/p002","anchor_mapped":true,"anchor_method":"vocab","anchor_confidence":"high","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/4/monismus/p002"}],"witness_completeness":{"ratio":null,"band":"no_original","note":null,"word_count":3497,"original_word_count":null,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"status":"unknown","warning":"No translator is recorded for this edition. An unattributed translation cannot be weighed as a witness: you cannot tell which hand made the choices in it. Cite the German for anything load-bearing."},"entity_parity":{"status":"not_checkable","note":"No verified paragraph alignment covers this passage, so its names cannot be compared with the German."},"note":"quote_safe certifies the bytes of this text. This block is about the translation as a WITNESS: who made it, and whether it carries the same names as the original. See witness_completeness for how much of the original this witness holds."}}