II. The Physical World and the Moral-Spiritual Impulses

In this world of the senses and reasoning intellect we perceive in ordinary consciousness the material objects and processes in their gross density, filling space, and—to use a popular if not quite accurate figure of speech—pressing in upon our senses, so that we may have sense-perception. While on the one side our senses and the reasonings of our intellect present to us the objects and processes of the external world in their gross substantiality, we have on the other side what are called the unreal thoughts and unreal feelings, those thoughts and feelings about which, as regards their relationship to reality, philosophers have argued through the ages. Whenever thoughts and feelings alone rise up in the soul, a man who depends entirely upon his ordinary consciousness has the desire to stretch out his hands, as it were, to take hold of something substantial in the material world, to make sure of the reality of existence.