VIII. The Factors of Life

Let us recapitulate the results arrived at in the previous chapters. The world confronts man as a multiplicity, as a sum of separate entities. Man himself is one of these separate entities, a being among other beings. This aspect of the world we characterized simply as that which is given, and inasmuch as we do not evolve it by conscious activity, but find it present, we called it perception. Within the world of perceptions we perceive ourself. This self-perception would remain merely one among the many other perceptions, did not something arise from the midst of this self-perception which proves capable of connecting perceptions in general and therefore also the sum of all other perceptions with that of ourself. This something which emerges is no longer mere perception, neither is it, like perceptions, simply given. It is brought about by our activity. To begin with, it appears united with what we perceive as ourself. But in accordance with its inner significance it reaches out beyond the self. It bestows on the separate perceptions ideal definitions, and these relate themselves to one another and stem from a unity. What is attained by self-perception, it defines ideally in the same way as it defines all other perceptions, placing this as subject, or “I,” over against the objects. This something is thinking, and the ideal definitions are the concepts and ideas. Thinking, therefore, first manifests itself in the perception of the self, but it is not merely subjective, for the self characterizes itself as subject only with the help of thinking. This relationship to oneself by means of thoughts is a life-definition of our personality. Through it we lead a purely ideal existence. Through it we feel ourselves to be thinking beings. This life-definition would remain a purely conceptual (logical) one if no other definitions of our self were added to it. We should then be beings whose life would be exhausted in establishing purely ideal relations between perceptions themselves, and between them and ourself. If we call the establishing of such a thought connection, an act of cognition, and the resulting condition of our self knowledge, then according to the above mentioned presupposition, we should have to consider ourselves as beings who merely cognize or know.