All who remain at this perceptual standpoint see the part of the whole as if it were a truly independent, self-existing thing, a monad which gains all its knowledge of the rest of the world in some mysterious manner from without. But Monism has shown that we can believe in this independence only so long as thought does not gather our percepts into the network of the conceptual world. As soon as this happens, all partial existence in the universe, all isolated6 being, reveals itself as a mere7 appearance due to perception. Existence as a self-contained totality can be predicated only of the universe as a whole. Thought destroys the appearances due to perception and assigns to our individual existence a place in the life of the cosmos. The unity of the conceptual world which contains all objective percepts, has room also within itself for the content of our subjective8 personality. Thought gives us the true structure of reality as a self-contained unity, whereas the multiplicity of percepts is but an appearance conditioned by our organisation9 (cp. pp. 178 ff.). The recognition of the true unity of reality, [261]as against the appearance of multiplicity, is at all times the goal of human thought. Science strives to apprehend our apparently10 disconnected percepts as a unity by tracing their inter-relations according to natural law. But, owing to the prejudice that an inter-relation discovered by human thought has only a subjective validity, thinkers have sought the true ground of unity in some object transcending11 the world of our experience (God, will, absolute spirit, etc.). Further, basing themselves on this prejudice, men have tried to gain, in addition to their knowledge of inter-relations within experience, a second kind of knowledge transcending experience, which should reveal the connection between empirical inter-relations and those realities which lie beyond the limits of experience (Metaphysics). The reason why, by logical thinking, we understand the nexus13 of the world, was thought to be that an original creator has built up the world according to logical laws, and, similarly, the ground of our actions was thought to lie in the will of this original being. It was overlooked that thinking embraces in one grasp the subjective and the objective, and that it communicates to us the whole of reality in the union which it effects between percept and concept. Only so long as we contemplate14 the laws which pervade15 and determine all percepts, in the abstract form of concepts, do we indeed deal only with something purely16 subjective. But this subjectivity17 does not belong to the content of the concept [262]which, by means of thought, is added to the percept. This content is taken, not from the subject, but from reality. It is that part of reality which is inaccessible18 to perception. It is experience, but not the kind of experience which comes from perception. Those who cannot understand that the concept is something real, have in mind only the abstract form, in which we fix and isolate5 the concept. But in this isolation19, the concept is as much dependent solely20 on our organisation as is the percept. The tree which I perceive, taken in isolation by itself, has no existence; it exists only as a member in the immense mechanism21 of Nature, and is possible only in real connection with Nature. An abstract concept, taken by itself, has as little reality as a percept taken by itself. The percept is that part of reality which is given objectively, the concept that part which is given subjectively22 (by intuition; cp. pp. 90 ff.). Our mental organisation breaks up reality into these two factors. The one factor is apprehended23 by perception, the other by intuition. Only the union of the two, which consists of the percept fitted according to law into its place in the universe, is reality in its full character. If we take mere percepts by themselves, we have no reality but only a disconnected chaos24. If we take the laws which determine percepts by themselves, we have nothing but abstract concepts. Reality is not to be found in the abstract concept. It is revealed to the contemplative act of thought [263]which regards neither the concept by itself nor the percept by itself, but the union of both.
Even the most orthodox Idealist will not deny that we live in the real world (that, as real beings, we are rooted in it); but he will deny that our knowledge, by means of its ideas, is able to grasp reality as we live it. As against this view, Monism shows that thought is neither subjective nor objective, but a principle which holds together both these sides of reality. The contemplative act of thought is a cognitive25 process which belongs itself to the sequence of real events. By thought we overcome, within the limits of experience itself, the one-sidedness of mere perception. We are not able by means of abstract conceptual hypotheses (purely conceptual speculation26) to puzzle out the nature of the real, but in so far as we find for our percepts the right concepts we live in the real. Monism does not seek to supplement experience by something unknowable (transcending experience), but finds reality in concept and percept. It does not manufacture a metaphysical system out of pure concepts, because it looks upon concepts as only one side of reality, viz., the side which remains27 hidden from perception, but is meaningless except in union with percepts. But Monism gives man the conviction that he lives in the world of reality, and has no need to seek beyond the world for a higher reality. It refuses to look for Absolute Reality anywhere but in experience, because it recognises reality in the [264]very content of experience. Monism is satisfied with this reality, because it knows that our thought points to no other. What Dualism seeks beyond the world of experience, that Monism finds in this world itself. Monism shows that our knowledge grasps reality in its true nature, not in a purely subjective image. It holds the conceptual content of the world to be identical for all human individuals (cp. pp. 84 ff.). According to Monistic principles, every human individual regards every other as akin28 to himself, because it is the same world-content which expresses itself in all. In the single conceptual world there are not as many concepts of “lion” as there are individuals who form the thought of “lion,” but only one. And the concept which A adds to the percept of “lion” is identical with B’s concept except so far as, in each case, it is apprehended by a different perceiving subject (cp. p. 85). Thought leads all perceiving subjects back to the ideal unity in all multiplicity, which is common to them all. There is but one ideal world, but it realises itself in human subjects as in a multiplicity of individuals. So long as man apprehends29 himself merely by self-observation, he looks upon himself as this particular being, but so soon as he becomes conscious of the ideal world which shines forth30 within him, and which embraces all particulars within itself, he perceives that the Absolute Reality lives within him. Dualism [265]fixes upon the Divine Being as that which permeates31 all men and lives in them all. Monism finds this universal Divine Life in Reality itself. The ideal content of another subject is also my content, and I regard it as a different content only so long as I perceive, but no longer when I think. Every man embraces in his thought only a part of the total world of ideas, and so far, individuals are distinguished32 one from another also by the actual contents of their thought. But all these contents belong to a self-contained whole, which comprises within itself the thought-contents of all men. Hence every man, in so far as he thinks, lays hold of the universal Reality which pervades33 all men. To fill one’s life with such thought-content is to live in Reality, and at the same time to live in God. The thought of a Beyond owes its origin to the misconception of those who believe that this world cannot have the ground of its existence in itself. They do not understand that, by thinking, they discover just what they demand for the explanation of the perceptual world. This is the reason why no speculation has ever produced any content which has not been borrowed from reality as it is given to us. A personal God is nothing but a human being transplanted into the Beyond. Schopenhauer’s Will is the human will made absolute. Hartmann’s Unconscious, made up of idea and will, is but a compound of two abstractions drawn34 from experience. [266]Exactly the same is true of all other transcendent principles.
The truth is that the human mind never transcends35 the reality in which it lives. Indeed, it has no need to transcend12 it, seeing that this world contains everything that is required for its own explanation. If philosophers declare themselves finally content when they have deduced the world from principles which they borrow from experience and then transplant into an hypothetical Beyond, the same satisfaction ought to be possible, if these same principles are allowed to remain in this world to which they belong anyhow. All attempts to transcend the world are purely illusory, and the principles transplanted into the Beyond do not explain the world any better than the principles which are immanent in it. When thought understands itself, it does not demand any such transcendence at all, for there is no thought-content which does not find within the world a perceptual content, in union with which it can form a real object. The objects of imagination, too, are contents which have no validity, until they have been transformed into ideas that refer to a perceptual content. Through this perceptual content they have their place in reality. A concept the content of which is supposed to lie beyond the world which is given to us, is an abstraction to which no reality corresponds. Thought can discover only the concepts of reality; in order to find reality itself, we need also perception. An [267]Absolute Being for which we invent a content, is a hypothesis which no thought can entertain that understands itself. Monism does not deny ideal factors; indeed, it refuses to recognise as fully36 real a perceptual content which has no ideal counterpart, but it finds nothing within the whole range of thought that is not immanent within this world of ours. A science which restricts itself to a description of percepts, without advancing to their ideal complements38, is, for Monism, but a fragment. But Monism regards as equally fragmentary all abstract concepts which do not find their complement37 in percepts, and which fit nowhere into the conceptual net that embraces the whole perceptual world. Hence it knows no ideas referring to objects lying beyond our experience and supposed to form the content of purely hypothetical Metaphysics. Whatever mankind has produced in the way of such ideas Monism regards as abstractions from experience, whose origin in experience has been overlooked by their authors.
Just as little, according to Monistic principles, are the ends of our actions capable of being derived39 from the Beyond. So far as we can think them, they must have their origin in human intuition. Man does not adopt the purposes of an objective (transcendent) being as his own individual purposes, but he pursues the ends which his own moral imagination sets before him. The idea which realises itself in an action is selected by the agent from the [268]single ideal world and made the basis of his will. Consequently his action is not a realisation of commands which have been thrust into this world from the Beyond, but of human intuitions which belong to this world. For Monism there is no ruler of the world standing40 outside of us and determining the aim and direction of our actions. There is for man no transcendent ground of existence, the counsels of which he might discover, in order thence to learn the ends to which he ought to direct his action. Man must rest wholly upon himself. He must himself give a content to his action. It is in vain that he seeks outside the world in which he lives for motives42 of his will. If he is to go at all beyond the satisfaction of the natural instincts for which Mother Nature has provided, he must look for motives in his own moral imagination, unless he finds it more convenient to let them be determined43 for him by the moral imagination of others. In other words, he must either cease acting44 altogether, or else act from motives which he selects for himself from the world of his ideas, or which others select for him from that same world. If he develops at all beyond a life absorbed in sensuous45 instincts and in the execution of the commands of others, then there is nothing that can determine him except himself. He has to act from a motive41 which he gives to himself and which nothing else can determine for him except himself. It is true that this motive is ideally determined in [269]the single world of ideas; but in actual fact it must be selected by the agent from that world and translated into reality. Monism can find the ground for the actual realisation of an idea through human action only in the human being himself. That an idea should pass into action must be willed by man before it can happen. Such a will consequently has its ground only in man himself. Man, on this view, is the ultimate determinant of his action. He is free.
[Contents]
1. Addition to the Revised Edition (1918).
In the second part of this book the attempt has been made to justify46 the conviction that freedom is to be found in human conduct as it really is. For this purpose it was necessary to sort out, from the whole sphere of human conduct, those actions with respect to which unprejudiced self-observation may appropriately speak of freedom. These are the actions which appear as realisations of ideal intuitions. No other actions will be called free by an unprejudiced observer. However, open-minded self-observation compels man to regard himself as endowed with the capacity for progress on the road towards ethical47 intuitions and their realisation. Yet this open-minded observation of the ethical nature of man is, by itself, insufficient48 to constitute the final court of appeal for the question of freedom. For, suppose intuitive thinking had itself sprung from some [270]other essence; suppose its essence were not grounded in itself, then the consciousness of freedom, which issues from moral conduct, would prove to be a mere illusion. But the second part of this book finds its natural support in the first part, which presents intuitive thinking as an inward spiritual activity which man experiences as such. To appreciate through experience this essence of thinking is equivalent to recognising the freedom of intuitive thinking. And once we know that this thinking is free, we know also the sphere within which will may be called free. We shall regard man as a free agent, if on the basis of inner experience we may attribute to the life of intuitive thinking a self-sustaining essence. Whoever cannot do this will be unable to discover any wholly unassailable road to the belief in freedom. The experience to which we here refer reveals in consciousness intuitive thinking, the reality of which does not depend merely on our being conscious of it. Freedom, too, is thereby49 revealed as the characteristic of all actions which issue from the intuitions of consciousness.
[Contents]
2. Addition to the Revised Edition (1918).
The argumentation of this book is built up on the fact of intuitive thinking, which may be experienced in a purely spiritual way, and which every perception inserts into reality so that reality comes thereby to be known. All [271]that this book aimed at presenting was the result of a survey from the basis of our experience of intuitive thinking. However, the intention also was to emphasise50 the systematic51 interpretation52 which this thinking, as experienced by us, demands. It demands that we shall not deny its presence in cognition as a self-sustaining experience. It demands that we acknowledge its capacity for experiencing reality in co-operation with perception, and that we do not make it seek reality in a world outside experience and accessible only to inference, in the face of which human thinking would be only a subjective activity.
This view characterises thinking as that factor in man through which he inserts himself spiritually into reality. (And, strictly53, no one should confuse this kind of world-view, which is based on thinking as directly experienced, with mere Rationalism.) But, on the other hand, the whole tenor54 of the preceding argumentation shows that perception yields a determination of reality for human knowledge only when it is taken hold of in thinking. Outside of thinking there is nothing to characterise reality for what it is. Hence we have no right to imagine that sense-perception is the only witness to reality. Whatever comes to us by way of perception on our journey through life, we cannot but expect. The only point open to question would be whether, from the exclusive point of view of thinking [272]as we intuitively experience it, we have a right to expect that over and above sensuous perception there is also spiritual perception. This expectation is justified55. For, though intuitive thinking is, on the one hand, an active process taking place in the human mind, it is, on the other hand, also a spiritual perception mediated56 by no sense-organ. It is a perception in which the percipient is himself active, and a self-activity which is at the same time perceived. In intuitive thinking man enters a spiritual world also as a percipient. Whatever within this world presents itself to him as percept in the same way in which the spiritual world of his own thinking so presents itself, that is recognised by him as constituting a world of spiritual perception. This world of spiritual perception we may suppose to be standing in the same relation to thinking as does, on the sensuous side, the world of sense-perception. Man does not experience the world of spiritual perception as an alien something, because he is already familiar in his intuitive thinking with an experience of purely spiritual character. With such a world of spiritual perception a number of the writings are concerned which I have published since this present book appeared. The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity lays the philosophical57 foundation for these later writings. For it attempts to show that in the very experience of thinking, rightly understood, we experience Spirit. This is the reason why it appears to the author that no one will stop [273]short of entering the world of spiritual perception who has been able to adopt, in all seriousness, the point of view of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. True, logical deduction—by syllogisms—will not extract out of the contents of this book the contents of the author’s later books. But a living understanding of what is meant in this book by “intuitive thinking” will naturally prepare the way for living entry into the world of spiritual perception.
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1
derives
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| v.得到( derive的第三人称单数 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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apprehend
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| vt.理解，领悟，逮捕，拘捕，忧虑 | |
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cosmos
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| n.宇宙；秩序，和谐 | |
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isolate
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| vt.使孤立，隔离 | |
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isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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subjective
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| a.主观(上)的，个人的 | |
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organisation
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| n.组织，安排，团体，有机休 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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transcending
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| 超出或超越（经验、信念、描写能力等）的范围( transcend的现在分词 )； 优于或胜过… | |
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transcend
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| vt.超出，超越(理性等)的范围 | |
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nexus
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| n.联系；关系 | |
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contemplate
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| vt.盘算，计议；周密考虑；注视，凝视 | |
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pervade
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| v.弥漫，遍及，充满，渗透，漫延 | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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subjectivity
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| n.主观性（主观主义） | |
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inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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mechanism
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| n.机械装置；机构，结构 | |
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subjectively
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| 主观地； 臆 | |
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apprehended
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| 逮捕，拘押( apprehend的过去式和过去分词 )； 理解 | |
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chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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cognitive
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| adj.认知的，认识的，有感知的 | |
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speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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akin
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| adj.同族的，类似的 | |
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apprehends
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| 逮捕，拘押( apprehend的第三人称单数 )； 理解 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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permeates
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| 弥漫( permeate的第三人称单数 )； 遍布； 渗入； 渗透 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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pervades
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| v.遍及，弥漫( pervade的第三人称单数 ) | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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transcends
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| 超出或超越（经验、信念、描写能力等）的范围( transcend的第三人称单数 )； 优于或胜过… | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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complement
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| n.补足物，船上的定员；补语；vt.补充，补足 | |
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complements
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| 补充( complement的名词复数 )； 补足语； 补充物； 补集（数） | |
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derived
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| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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sensuous
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| adj.激发美感的；感官的，感觉上的 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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insufficient
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| adj.(for，of)不足的，不够的 | |
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thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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emphasise
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| vt.加强...的语气，强调，着重 | |
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systematic
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| adj.有系统的，有计划的，有方法的 | |
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interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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tenor
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| n.男高音（歌手），次中音（乐器），要旨，大意 | |
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justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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mediated
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| 调停，调解，斡旋( mediate的过去式和过去分词 )； 居间促成； 影响…的发生； 使…可能发生 | |
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philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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