VIII. The Factors of Life

Nevertheless, the Naive Realist believes here again that he has before him something far more real than can be attained by thinking. He sees in the will an element in which he is immediately aware of an occurrence, a causation, in contrast with thinking which afterwards grasps the event in conceptual form. What the I achieves by its will is, on this view, a process which is experienced immediately. The adherent of this philosophy believes that in the will he has really got hold of one “bit” of reality (cf. Chapter III, p. 30 Ed.). Whereas he can follow other occurrences only from the outside by means of perception, he is confident that in his will he experiences a real process quite immediately. The mode of existence presented to him by the will within the Self becomes for him the principle of reality in the universe. His own will appears to him as a special case of the general world-process; hence the latter is conceived as a universal will. The will becomes the world-principle of reality just as, in Mysticism, feeling becomes the principle of knowledge. This kind of theory is called Voluntarism (Thelism). It makes something which can be experienced only individually the fundamental factor of the world.