VIII. The Factors of Life

Let us recapitulate the results gained in the previous chapters. The world faces man as a multiplicity, as an aggregate of detailed parts. He himself is one of these entities, a being among beings. Of this configuration of the world we say simply that it is given, and inasmuch as we do not evolve it by conscious activity, but simply find it, we say that it consists of percepts. Within this world of percepts we perceive ourselves. This percept of Self would remain merely one among many other percepts, did not something arise from the midst of this percept of Self which proves capable of connecting all percepts one with another and, therefore, the sum of all other; percepts with the percept of Self. This something which emerges is no longer a mere percept; neither is it, like percepts, simply given. It is produced by our activity. It appears, in the first instance, bound up with what each of us perceives as his Self. In its inner significance, however, it transcends the Self. It adds to the separate percepts ideally determined elements, which, however, are related to one another, and which are grounded in a whole. What self-perception yields is ideally determined by this something in the same way as all other percepts, and placed as subject, or “I,” over against the objects. This something is thinking, and the ideally determined elements are the concepts and Ideas. Thinking, therefore, first manifests itself in the percept of Self. But it is not merely subjective, for the Self characterizes itself as subject only with the help of thinking. This relation of the Self to itself by means of thinking is a determination of our personality in life. Through it we lead a purely ideal existence. Through it we feel ourselves to be thinking beings. This determination of our lives would remain a purely conceptual (logical) one, if it were not supplemented by other determinations of our Selves. Our lives would then exhaust themselves in establishing purely ideal connections between percepts themselves, and between them and ourselves. If we call this establishment of an ideal relation an “act of cognition,” and the resulting condition of ourself “knowledge,” then, assuming the above supposition to be true, we should have to consider ourselves as beings who merely cognize or know.