III. The World that Underlies the Senses

It is entirely justified to speak of the sense organs as having to be built from a world that is itself supersensible. And the essence of sense perceptions as described here provides food for thought for saying more about this world. Since the sense organs ultimately appear to be the result of the activity of this world, it can be said that this activity is a manifold one. It acts on man from as many sides as there are sense organs. The currents of this world pour into the wells that lie in the sense organs, so that man can draw from these wells for his soul life. And because that which is drawn from these wells ultimately comes together in the 'I', it must, although it comes from different sides, originally flow from a single source. In the 'I', the various sensory perceptions come together in unity. In this unity, they present themselves as belonging together. What strikes the soul in sensory perception is such that the inner life of the ego can be detached from it. From this it can be seen that behind the sensory world, in a supersensible one, there are as many sources of activity as there are sensory organs. These sources of activity reveal themselves through their effect, which consists in the structure of the sensory organs.