VI. The Human Individuality

In attempting to explain representations philosophers have found that the main difficulty lies in the fact that we ourselves are not the external things, and yet our representations must somehow correspond to things. But, on closer inspection, it turns out that this difficulty does not exist at all. We are certainly not the external things, but together with them we belong to one and the same world. That section of the world which I perceive as my subject is permeated by the stream of the universal world process. To my perceiving I appear, in the first instance, enclosed within the boundary of my skin. But all that is contained within the skin belongs to the cosmos as a whole. Hence for a relation to exist between my organism and an external object, it is by no means necessary that something of the object should slip into me or make an impression on my spirit, like a signet ring on wax. A question such as: How do I gain knowledge of the tree ten feet away from me? is wrongly formulated. It springs from the view that the boundaries of my body are absolute barriers, through which information about things filters into me. The forces active within the limit of my body are the same as those which exist outside. Therefore, in reality I am the things; not, however, insofar as I am a perceiving subject, but insofar as I am part of the universal world process. The perception of the tree and my I is within the same whole. There this universal world process calls forth the perception of the tree to the same extent that here it calls forth the perception of my I. Were I world creator instead of world knower, object and subject (perception and I) would originate in one act. For they depend on each other. As world knower I can discover the element they have in common, as entities belonging together, only through thinking which, by means of concepts, relates them to one another.