4. The Threshold In Nature and In Man

This conviction it was that kept Goethe from accepting Kant's philosophy. They make a great mistake who assert that at one time of his life Goethe came very near to the philosophy of Kant. In contradistinction to what Kant recognised as the human faculty of cognition, Goethe postulated what he called “perceptive judgment.” This means that in order to form a judgment we do not merely pass in abstract reasoning from concept to concept; rather do we use inwardly for thought the kind of beholding we use outwardly in sense perception. Goethe says he never thought about thinking; what he set himself continually to do was to behold the living element in the thought. And in this beholding of the thoughts he saw a way to unite the human soul with the very being of Nature.