2. The Fundamental Desire for Knowledge

Dualism pays attention only to the separation between I and World which the consciousness of man has brought about. All its efforts consist in a vain struggle to reconcile these opposites, which it calls now spirit and matter, now subject and object, now thinking and appearance. It feels that there must be a bridge between the two worlds but is not in a position to find it. In that man is aware of himself as “I”, he cannot but think of this “I” as being on the side of the spirit; and in contrasting this “I” with the world, he is bound to put on the world's side the realm of percepts given to the senses, that is, the world of matter. In doing so, man puts himself right into the middle of this antithesis of spirit and matter. He is the more compelled to do so because his own body belongs to the material world. Thus the “I”, or Ego, belongs to the realm of spirit as a part of it; the material objects and events which are perceived by the senses belong to the “World”. All the riddles which relate to spirit and matter, man must inevitably rediscover in the fundamental riddle of his own nature.