Imaginative Knowledge: Transforming Thought into Spiritual Vision

What can only be hinted at in such a consideration—of course, the straps and ropes are meant figuratively—is that humans have something within them that binds their essence to the entire cosmos, which would have to be elaborated further. It would have to be shown how human beings, just as they can move from objective perception and cognition to moral intuition through an empiricism that can leap over the two middle links, can also move from their human perceptual experience to cosmic intuition; for they are connected to the cosmos in their humanity by straps and ropes, that is, by spiritual essences. But they can only see how they are connected if they now fill in what may remain unfilled for ordinary observation between objective cognition and intuition, that is, if they rise from objective cognition through imagination and inspiration to cosmic intuition.