The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The World as an Illusion

[ 1 ] Alongside the worldview that seeks to bring complete unity to the understanding of natural and spiritual phenomena through the idea of evolution, there is another that emphasizes this contrast in the sharpest possible form. This too has its origins in natural science. Its adherents ask themselves: What is the basis for those of us who construct a worldview through observation and thought? We hear, see, and touch the physical world through our senses. We then reflect on what our senses tell us about the world. In other words, we form our ideas about the world based on the testimony of our senses. But are the statements of our senses infallible? Let us ask observation. The eye brings us light phenomena. We say that a body sends us red light when the eye perceives red. But the eye also conveys a sensation of light in other cases. When it is struck or pressed, when an electric current flows through the head, the eye also has a sensation of light. Thus, even in cases where we perceive a body as luminous, something may be happening in the body that bears no resemblance to our perception of light: the eye would still convey light to us. The physiologist Johannes Müller (1801-1858) concluded from these facts that what we perceive does not depend on external processes, but on our organization. Our nerves convey sensations to us. Just as we do not perceive the knife that cuts us, but rather a state of our nerves that appears painful to us, we also do not perceive a process in the outside world when light appears to us, but rather a state of our optic nerve. Whatever may be happening outside, the optic nerve translates this external process into the sensation of light. “The sensation is not the transmission of a quality or a state of external bodies to consciousness, but the transmission of a quality, a state of our nerves to consciousness, caused by an external cause.” Johannes Müller called this law the law of specific sensory energies. If it is correct, then our observations do not reveal anything about the outside world, but only the sum of our own states. What we perceive has nothing to do with the outside world; it is a product of our own organization. Basically, we only perceive what is within us.

[ 2 ] Important natural scientists see in these ideas an irrefutable basis for their worldview. Hermann Helmholtz (born 1821) found in them Kant's idea that all our knowledge does not refer to things outside ourselves, but to processes within us (cf. Volume I of this history of worldviews [p. 42 ff.]), translated into natural science. He believes that our world of sensations only gives us signs of the processes in the bodies outside in the world. "I believed that I had to formulate the relationship between sensation and its object in such a way that I explained sensation only as a sign of the object's influence. The essence of a sign is only that the same sign is always given for the same object. Incidentally, no kind of similarity between it and its object is necessary, any more than between the spoken word and the object we designate by it. We cannot even call our sensory impressions images, for an image reproduces the same by the same. In a statue, we convey the shape of the body through the shape of the body; in a drawing, we convey the perspective view of the object through the same view in the image; in a painting, we convey color through color. Our sensations of what is happening outside in the world must therefore be more different from images than images are from what they depict. In our sensory worldview, we are not dealing with anything objective, but with something entirely subjective, which we construct ourselves based on the effects of an external world that never penetrates us.

[ 3 ] This way of thinking is supported by the physical observation of sensory phenomena from another angle. A sound that we hear leads us to a body in the outside world whose parts are in a certain state of motion. A taut string vibrates, and we hear a sound. The string causes the air to vibrate. These vibrations spread out and reach our ears: we perceive a sound sensation. Physicists investigate the laws according to which the parts of the body move outside while we hear this or that sound. It is said that the subjective sensation of sound is based on the objective movement of the particles of the body. The physicist sees similar conditions in relation to the sensations of light. Light is also based on movement. However, this movement is not conveyed to us by the vibrating particles of air, but by the vibrations of the ether, this finest substance that floods all spaces of the universe. Every self-luminous body causes the ether to vibrate in waves, which spread to the retina of our eye and stimulate the optic nerve, which then evokes the sensation of light in us. What appears in our world view as light and color is movement out there in space. Schleiden expresses this view in the following words: “The light outside of us in nature is the movement of the ether; a movement can be slow or fast, it can have this or that direction, but it obviously makes no sense to speak of a bright or dark, green or red movement; in short: outside of us, the sentient beings, there is no light and dark, no colors.”

[ 4 ] The physicist thus pushes colors and light out of the outside world because he finds only movement in it; the physiologist feels compelled to take them into the soul because he believes that the nerve only indicates its own state, whatever may excite it. H. Taine expresses this view sharply in his book “The Mind” (German edition, Bonn, 1880). In his opinion, external perception is a true hallucination. The hallucinator who sees a skull three steps away from himself makes exactly the same perception as the one who receives the rays of light sent to him by a real skull. The same inner phantom is present in us, regardless of whether we have a real skull in front of us or whether we are hallucinating. The only difference between the two perceptions is that in one case the outstretched hand grasps at thin air, while in the other it encounters solid resistance. The sense of touch thus supports the sense of sight. But is this support really such that it provides infallible evidence? What applies to one sense naturally also applies to the other. Even tactile sensations prove to be hallucinations. The anatomist Henle expresses the same view in his “Anthropological Lectures” (1876): "Everything through which we believe we are informed about the outside world are forms of consciousness to which the outside world relates only as a stimulating cause, as a stimulus in the sense of physiologists. The external world has no colors, no sounds, no tastes; what it really has, we learn only indirectly or not at all; what it is that affects a sense, we can only deduce from its behavior toward the others, just as, for example, we see the sound, i.e., the vibrations of the tuning fork, with our eyes and feel it with our fingers; the nature of some stimuli that reveal themselves only to one sense, e.g., the stimuli of the sense of smell, is still inaccessible to us today. The number of properties of matter depends on the number and acuity of the senses; those who lack a sense have irretrievably lost a group of properties; those who have one more sense would possess an organ for perceiving qualities that we are as little aware of as the blind are of color.

[ 5 ] A review of physiological literature from the second half of the nineteenth century shows that this view of the subjective nature of perception has had a wide impact. One repeatedly encounters variations on the idea expressed by Rosenthal in his “Allgemeine Physiologie der Muskeln und Nerven” (General Physiology of Muscles and Nerves, 1877): "The sensations we receive through external impressions do not depend on the nature of these impressions, but on the nature of our nerve cells. We do not perceive what affects our body, but only what goes on in our brain.“

[ 6 ] Helmholtz gives an idea of the extent to which our subjective worldview gives us signs of the objective outside world in his ”Physiological Optics": "It is pointless to ask whether cinnabar is really red, as we see it, or whether this is just a sensory illusion. The sensation of red is the normal reaction of normally formed eyes to the light reflected by cinnabar. A person who is red-blind will see cinnabar as black or dark gray-yellow; this is also the correct reaction for their specially adapted eyes. They just need to know that their eyes are different from those of other people. In itself, one sensation is no more correct or incorrect than the other, even if those who see red are in the majority. In fact, the red color of cinnabar only exists insofar as there are eyes that are similar in nature to those of the majority of people. With exactly the same justification, it is a property of cinnabar to be black, namely for those who are red-blind. In fact, the light reflected by cinnabar cannot be called red at all; it is only red for certain types of eyes. It is something else entirely when we claim that the wavelengths of the light reflected by cinnabar have a certain length. This is a statement that we can make independently of the particular nature of our eyes, but it then only concerns the relationships between the substance and the various ether wave systems.

[ 7 ] It is clear that, according to this view, the entire sum of world phenomena falls into two categories: a world of states of motion that is independent of the particular nature of our powers of perception, and a world of subjective states that exist only within perceiving beings. This view was sharply pointed out by the physiologist Du Bois-Reymond in his lecture “On the Limits of Natural Knowledge” at the forty-fifth meeting of German natural scientists and physicians in Leipzig on August 14, 1872. Recognizing nature means reducing the processes we perceive in the world to the movements of the smallest parts of the body, or “breaking down natural processes into the mechanics of atoms.” For “it is a psychological fact of experience that, where such a breakdown succeeds,” our need for explanation is provisionally satisfied. Now, our nervous system and our brain are also physical in nature. The processes that take place in them can also only be movements. When sound or light vibrations propagate to my sensory organs, and from there to my brain, they can be nothing but movements. I can only say: a certain movement process takes place in my brain; and in doing so, I perceive “red.” For if it is meaningless to say of cinnabar that it is red, it is no less meaningless to say of a movement of the brain that it is light or dark, green or red. The world is “silent and dark in itself, i.e., without properties” according to the view gained through scientific observation, which “knows only vibrations of a propertyless primordial substance that has become weighable matter here and unweighable matter there, instead of sound and light.” “The Mosaic ‘Let there be light’ is physiologically incorrect. Light only came into being when the first red eye spot of an infusorium distinguished between light and dark for the first time. Without the substances of sight and hearing, this colourful, resounding world around us would be dark and silent.” (“Limits of Natural Knowledge,” p. 16) According to this view, the processes in our visual and auditory senses conjure up a world of sound and color from the silent and dark world. The dark and silent world is physical; the world of sound and color is spiritual. How does the latter arise from the former; how does movement become sensation? Here, according to Du Bois-Reymond, we encounter a “limit of natural knowledge.” In our brain and in the outside world, there are only movements; in our soul, sensations appear. We will never be able to understand how one arises from the other. "At first glance, it seems as if knowledge of the material processes in the brain could make certain mental processes and dispositions understandable to us. I include memory, the flow and association of ideas, the consequences of practice, specific talents, and the like. The slightest reflection teaches us that this is an illusion. We would only be informed about certain internal conditions of mental life, which are roughly equivalent to the external ones through sensory impressions, but not about the emergence of mental life through these conditions. What conceivable connection exists between certain movements of certain atoms in my brain on the one hand, and on the other hand the facts that are original to me, cannot be further defined, and cannot be denied: “I feel pain, I feel pleasure, I taste sweetness, I smell the scent of roses, I hear the sound of an organ, I see Rob,” and the equally immediate certainty that flows from this: "So I am? It is simply incomprehensible, now and forever, that a number of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, etc. atoms should not be indifferent to how they lie and move, how they lay and moved, how they will lie and move." There is no bridge from movement to sensation for cognition: that is Du Bois-Reymond's creed. We do not enter the spiritual world of sensations from movement in the material world. We know that sensation arises from moving matter; however, we do not know how this is possible. But we also cannot go beyond movement in the world of movement. We can specify certain forms of movement for our subjective perceptions because we can infer the course of movements from the course of perceptions. Yet we have no idea what is moving out there in space. We say: matter moves. We follow its movements by means of our mental states. But since we do not perceive the movement itself, but only a subjective sign of it, we can never know what matter is. Perhaps, according to Du Bois-Reymond, we would also be able to solve the mystery of sensation if only the mystery of matter were open to us. If we knew what matter is, we would probably also know how it feels. Both are inaccessible to our knowledge. Those who want to cross this boundary should heed Du Bois-Reymond's words: “Let them try the only way out, that of supernaturalism. Except that where supernaturalism begins, science ends.”

[ 8 ] Modern science is divided into two sharply contrasting camps. One, the monistic movement, seems to be on the way to advancing from the field of natural science to the most important questions of worldview; the other declares itself incapable of going beyond the recognition that this or that subjective state corresponds to this or that movement process by means of natural science. And the representatives of both currents are sharply opposed to each other. Du Bois-Reymond dismissed Haeckel's “History of Creation” as a novel (cf. Du Bois-Reymond's speech “Darwin versus Galiani”). The family trees that Haeckel draws up on the basis of comparative anatomy, the history of germination, and paleontology are, in his view, “about as valuable as the family trees of Homeric heroes are in the eyes of historical criticism.” Haeckel, however, sees in Du Bois-Reymond's view an unscientific dualism that naturally provides support for regressive worldviews. “The spiritualists' jubilation over Du Bois-Reymond's ‘borderline speech’ was all the brighter and more justified because E. Du Bois-Reymond had until then been considered an important representative of scientific materialism.” Haeckel expressed himself even more sharply in his ‘Anthropogeny’ on the idea of “limits to the knowledge of nature.” “In this battle of minds ... on one side, under the bright banner of science, stand freedom of thought and truth ... on the other side, under the black flag of hierarchy, stand mental slavery and lies.”

[ 9 ] What captivates many in the division of the world into external processes of movement and internal (subjective) processes of sensation and imagination is the applicability of mathematics to the first type of processes. If one assumes material parts (atoms) with forces, one can calculate how these atoms must move under the influence of these forces. The attractive force that astronomy has with its strict computational methods has been carried over into the smallest of bodies. The astronomer calculates the way the celestial bodies move from the laws of celestial mechanics. The discovery of Neptune was a triumph for celestial mechanics. Laws such as those governing the movements of celestial bodies can now also be applied to the movements that take place in the external world when we hear a sound or see a color; it may one day be possible to calculate the movements that take place in our brains when we make the judgment that two times two is four. The moment we can calculate everything that can be expressed in mathematical formulas, the world will be explained mathematically. In his “Essai philosophique sur les Probabilités” (1814), Laplace gave a captivating description of the ideal of such an explanation of the world: "A mind that knew, for a given moment, all the forces that animate nature and the mutual position of the beings that compose it, if it were otherwise comprehensive enough to subject these data to analysis, would comprehend in the same formula the movements of the largest celestial bodies and the lightest atom: nothing would be uncertain for it, and the future, like the past, would be present to its gaze. The human mind, in the perfection it has been able to give to astronomy, offers a faint reflection of such a spirit." And Du Bois-Reymond adds to these words: “Just as the astronomer predicts the day when, after years, a comet will reappear in the sky from the depths of space, so that spirit would read in its calculations the day when the Greek cross will flash from the Sophia Mosque and England will burn its last coal.”

[ 10 ] There can be no doubt that even with the most perfect mathematical knowledge of a movement process, I gain nothing that explains to me why this movement process appears as the color red. When one ball collides with another, we can—it seems—explain the direction of the second ball. We can mathematically specify what kind of movement arises from another. However, we cannot specify in this way how a particular movement produces the color red. We can only say: if this or that movement is present, this or that color is present. In this case, we can only describe a fact. So while we can explain what can be determined mathematically—in contrast, it seems, to mere description—we can only describe anything that eludes calculation.

[ 11 ] On closer inspection, this distinction is based on a misunderstanding of what mathematics and the sciences that build on it achieve. Mathematics has something thoroughly impersonal and bloodless about it. Its ideas appear clear and transparent in every respect. They fit together, seemingly without my mind being involved. When I add up individual numbers, it is clear to me that I cannot do anything to influence the sum. When I transfer this transparent, impersonal clarity to the phenomena of the world, I also transfer the impersonal, bloodless aspect. Everything to which mathematical concepts can be applied seems to me to be certain in itself. When one ball hits another, I can calculate the movement of the second from that of the first. I transfer the certainty that lies in the calculation to the external process. I completely lose sight of the fact that I have done nothing more than express an external process through the mathematical ideas I have formed beforehand. It has become clear to me that a process I perceive fits into my mathematical concepts. If I had not formed these mathematical concepts, I could only describe the movement process as a fact. I could say: a ball moves in such and such a way; it collides with a second ball; this ball moves in such and such a way. I can do nothing else than what I do when I observe that there is a movement of the smallest parts of the body and, in connection with this, the color “red.” If I am now clear that, even within the perceptions that can be grasped by calculation, the phenomena themselves give me nothing but facts that I can describe, then the whole difference between the movements and the other processes disappears. The only thing that is certain is that I can apply transparent, clear ideas to the movements, which I form in mathematics. So what am I actually doing? I am describing the facts with the help of mathematical ideas. The fact that this description seems to me to be something very special is merely due to a confusion of clear, transparent mathematical ideas with the fact itself.

[ 12 ] Now, it is a completely unjustified claim to say that factual relationships that are not exhausted in movements cannot be grasped with ideas. Other ideas are not as impersonal and bloodless as mathematical ones. But that does not make them impossible. What Du Bois-Reymond presents as proof of such impossibility means nothing. For if I say that there is no conceivable connection between certain movements of certain atoms in my brain and the fact that I feel pain or pleasure, I could just as well claim that there is no such conceivable connection between one movement and another. It is supposed to be “completely and forever incomprehensible” why a “certain number of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, etc. atoms” should not be indifferent to “how they lie and move, how they lay and moved, how they will lie and move.” Since they can be indifferent to this, it is impossible to understand why their movements produce “red” or “blue.” Indeed, can't the ball rolling on the billiard table also be indifferent to how it moves? Why should a certain movement of the second ball follow from the movement of the first? Anyone who denies that it is possible to understand how “red” or “pain” is related to a movement process must also deny that there is any possibility of recognizing why one movement follows another. The ideas through which we understand the former will not be as simple and transparent as the mathematical ones. Only those thinkers who are so fascinated by the clarity and distinctness of mathematical ideas that all ideas that can be formed apart from these appear to them to be unscientific fantasies can claim that they do not exist. One can only respond to them: Where do you get your mathematical ideas? Are you dealing with facts when you understand the circle, the ellipse, and the hyperbola in a mathematical way? Are you not remaining entirely within your imagination? All mathematics is a product of the imagination, and you feel so sure of your mathematical calculations of world phenomena because you find that your mathematical fantasies are so excellently applicable to world phenomena. But where world phenomena cease to be mathematical, must we also cease to think mathematically? Should we therefore also stop thinking altogether? Just as we can imagine that movement arises from movement, we can also imagine that “pain” or “red” follows from movement. Only the latter is more complicated. That is why it is easy for errors to creep into our ideas. But even calculations can be wrong.

[ 13 ] Kirchhoff made a significant scientific statement in 1874 when he described the task of mechanics as “describing the movements that occur in nature completely and in the simplest way possible.” Mechanics applies mathematics. Kirchhoff professes that mathematics can achieve nothing more than a complete and simple description of the processes in nature. Now, it would undoubtedly have been going too far to place the scientific study of natural phenomena on the same level as the crude description we provide of a process in everyday life. Thoughtful observation differs significantly from crude description. The latter records what it finds side by side in space and time; the former brings other essential relationships into the world of perception. Those who merely want to describe depict how the embryo of an animal develops from one stage to the next; those who want to contemplate the process of development thinkingly compare what they see developing in one animal with other living beings; they relate a particular embryonic form of a living being to an ancestral form that is completely distant in space and time and long since extinct. Thoughtful observation resembles description in that it links facts; but it differs from it in that it brings about this connection according to completely different points of view. And an explanation is nothing more than a description according to certain points of view. Whether I describe how a ball continues to roll when it is struck by another; whether I say that “pain” arises when parts of the brain are arranged in a certain way; whether I determine how an ancient ancestral form is expressed in a present germ form through heredity: I have done nothing more than describe according to certain points of view. I can describe in mathematical formulas that which is exhausted in movements; I must resort to other ideas when something other than movements comes into consideration.

[ 14 ] For those who demand something significantly different from an explanation than a description based on certain points of view, Kirchhoff's confession could serve as confirmation of their view that there are “limits to the knowledge of nature.” Du Bois-Reymond praises the “wise restraint of the master” (Kirchhoff's), who presents the task of mechanics as describing the movements of bodies, and contrasts it with Ernst Haeckel, who speaks of “atomic souls.” In truth, however, it is Haeckel's mode of explanation that can claim Kirchhoff's theorem for itself. It can say: my history of development has a similar task to that of mechanics; it seeks to describe the phenomena of life occurring in nature “completely and in the simplest way possible.” One will simply have to decide between two possibilities: does this complete and simple description already satisfy the human need for explanation, or does this need go beyond what the faculty of cognition can achieve?

[ 15 ] Friedrich Albert Lange (1828-1875) made a significant attempt to base his worldview on the idea that everything we perceive is merely the result of our own organization in his “History of Materialism” (1864). He had the audacity and unstoppable consistency to really think this basic idea through to its conclusion. Lange's strength lay in his sharp and, as far as possible, all-round character. He was one of those personalities who can grasp many things and excel everywhere with their abilities. He was a high school teacher, university lecturer, but also, at times, a bookseller and editor, and secretary of the Chamber of Commerce. He immersed himself in the highest problems of knowledge and worked as a journalist on workers' issues. He was as significant in his popular speeches and lectures as he was brilliant in his lectures as a lecturer. Everything he took on became significant under his hand.

[ 16 ] And Kant's way of thinking, which he particularly effectively renewed with the help of modern science, became significant: that we perceive things not as they demand, but as our organization requires. Lange did not produce any new ideas, but he shone a light into existing worlds of thought with a brightness that is rare. Our organization, our brain with its senses, produces the world of our sensations. I see “blue,” I feel “hardness,” because I am organized in such and such a way. But I also connect sensations to objects. From the sensations of ‘white’ and “soft,” etc., I connect, for example, the idea of wax. When I contemplate my sensations, I do not move in any external world. My mind brings coherence to my world of sensations, according to the laws of my mind. When I say that the properties I perceive in a body presuppose matter with processes of movement, I do not come out of myself either. My organization compels me to add material processes of movement to the sensations I perceive. The same mechanism that produces all our sensations also generates our idea of matter. Matter is just as much a product of my organization as color or sound. Even when we speak of things in themselves, we must be clear that we cannot go beyond our own realm. We are so constituted that it is impossible for us to go beyond ourselves. Indeed, we can only imagine what lies beyond our realm through our imagination. We sense a boundary to our sphere; we tell ourselves that beyond the boundary there must be something that causes sensations in us. But we can only go as far as the boundary. We set this boundary ourselves because we cannot go any further. “The fish in the pond can swim in the water, not in the earth; but it can still bump its head against the bottom and the walls.” So we can live within our imagination and feelings, but not in external things; we come up against a boundary where we cannot go any further, where we can say nothing more than: beyond lies the unknown. All the ideas we form about this unknown are unjustified, for we could do nothing but transfer the ideas we have gained within ourselves to the unknown. If we wanted to do so, we would be just as clever as the fish that says to itself: I cannot go any further here, so from there on there is another body of water in which I will try to swim differently. It can only swim in water and nowhere else.

[ 17 ] But now comes another twist in the thought. It belongs to the first. For a long time, it has been drawn upon as a spirit of relentless logical consistency. What about when I look at myself? Am I not just as bound by the laws of my own organization as when I look at something else? My eye looks at the object. Rather, it creates it. Without the eye, there is no color. I believe I have an object in front of me, and when I look more closely, I find that my eye, that is, I, create the object. But now I want to look at my eye itself. Can I do this other than with my organs? So isn't the idea I have of myself just my idea? The sensory world is a product of our organization. Like all other parts of the phenomenal world, our visible organs are only images of an unknown object. Our real organization therefore remains as hidden from us as the real external things. We always have only the product of both before us. Based on a world unknown to us, we create a world of ideas from an ego unknown to us, which is everything we can concern ourselves with.

[ 18 ] Lange asks: Where does consistent materialism lead? It is possible that all our intellectual conclusions and sensory perceptions are produced by the activity of our brain, which is bound to material conditions, and our organs, which are also material. Then we are faced with the necessity of examining our organism to see how it works. We can only do this with our organs. No color without an eye; but also no eye without an eye. "The consistently materialistic view thus immediately turns into a consistently idealistic one. There is no gap to be assumed in our being. We do not have to attribute individual functions of our being to a physical nature and others to a spiritual nature, but we are right to assume physical conditions for everything, including the mechanism of thought, and not to rest until we have found them. But we are no less justified in regarding not only the external world that appears to us, but also the organs with which we perceive it, as mere images of what truly exists. The eye with which we believe we see is itself only a product of our imagination, and when we find that our visual images are produced by the structure of the eye, we must never forget that the eye itself, together with its structures, the optic nerve together with the brain, and all the structures that we might still wish to discover there as causes of thought, are only ideas that form a coherent world in themselves, but a world that points beyond itself.“ ”The senses, as Helmholtz says, give us the effects of things, not faithful images, or even the things themselves. But these mere effects also include the senses themselves, together with the brain and the molecular movements conceived in it." (“History of Materialism,” p. 734f.) Lange therefore assumes a world beyond our own, whether it is based on things in themselves or consists of something that has nothing to do with the “thing in itself,” since even this concept, which we form at the limits of our realm, belongs only to our world of ideas.

[ 19 ] Lange's worldview thus leads to the opinion that we only have a world of ideas. However, this forces us to accept something beyond itself; but it also proves completely unsuitable for making any kind of statement about this something. This is the worldview of absolute non-knowledge, of agnosticism.

[ 20 ] Lange is convinced that all scientific endeavors that do not adhere to the statements of the senses and the logical mind that links these statements must remain fruitless. However, his reflections on the origin of knowledge make it clear to him that the senses and the mind together provide us with nothing more than a result of our own organization. For him, the world is basically a fiction of the senses and the mind. This opinion leads him to no longer question the truth of ideas. Lange does not recognize a truth that enlightens us about the nature of the world. Now, precisely because he does not need to concede any truth to the insights of the senses and the intellect, he believes that he can also clear the way for the ideas and ideals that the human mind forms beyond what the senses and intellect give it. He unquestioningly considers everything that goes beyond sensory observation and intellectual knowledge to be fiction. Whatever an idealistic philosopher has conceived about the nature of facts is fiction. The turn that Lange has given to materialism necessarily raises the question: Why should these higher ideas not be valid, since the senses themselves create fiction? How does one type of fiction differ from another? For those who think this way, there must be a completely different reason for accepting an idea than for those who believe they must accept it because it is true. And Lange finds this reason in the fact that an idea has value for life. What matters is not that an idea is true, but that it is valuable to human beings. Only one thing must be clearly recognized: that I see a rose as red, that I link the effect with the cause, is something I have in common with all sentient and thinking creatures. My senses and my mind cannot create extra values. But if I go beyond what the senses and the mind compose, then I am no longer bound to the organization of the entire human species. Schiller, Hegel, Hinz, and Kunz see a flower in the same way; what Schiller composes about the flower, what Hegel thinks about it, Hinz and Kunz do not compose and think in the same way. But just as Hinz and Kunz are mistaken when they consider their idea of the flower to be an entity outside themselves, so Schiller and Hegel would be mistaken if they regarded their ideas as anything other than compositions that correspond to their intellectual needs. What the senses and the mind compose belongs to the entire human race; no one can deviate from the other. What goes beyond sensory and intellectual poetry is a matter for the individual. But Lange nevertheless attributes value to this poetry of the individual for the entire human race if the individual who “produces it is richly and normally gifted and typical in his way of thinking, called to be a leader by his intellectual power.” In this way, Lange believes he can secure the value of the ideal world by turning the so-called real world into poetry. Everywhere we look, he sees only poetry, from the lowest level of sensory perception, where “the individual still appears completely bound to the basic characteristics of the species, up to the creative power of poetry.” "The functions of the senses and the connecting intellect, which create reality for us, can be called lowly in detail compared to the high flight of the spirit in free creative art. But taken as a whole and in their context, they cannot be subordinated to any other mental activity. As little as our reality is a reality according to the desires of our hearts, it is nevertheless the firm foundation of our entire spiritual existence. The individual grows out of the soil of the species, and general and necessary knowledge forms the only secure foundation for the elevation of the individual to an aesthetic conception of the world." (“History of Materialism,” 1887, p. 824f.)

[ 21 ] Lange does not consider the error of idealistic worldviews to be that they have gone beyond the world of the senses and the intellect with their ideas, but rather their belief that these ideas achieve more than individual poetry. One should construct an ideal world for oneself, but one should be aware that this ideal world is nothing more than poetry. If one claims that it is more than that, materialism will reappear again and again, saying: I have the truth; idealism is poetry. Well, says Lange, idealism is poetry, but materialism is also poetry. In idealism, the individual composes poetry; in materialism, the species does. If both are aware of their essence, then everything is fine: the sciences of the senses and the intellect with their rigorous proofs that are binding on the entire species, and the poetry of ideas with its higher worlds of imagination that are created by the individual but are nevertheless valuable to the species. "One thing is certain: that man needs to supplement reality with an ideal world of his own creation, and that the highest and noblest functions of his mind work together in such creations. But should this free act of the mind always and again take on the deceptive form of a provable science? Then materialism will also emerge again and again and destroy the bolder speculations by seeking to satisfy the unity instinct of reason with a minimum of elevation above the real and provable.“ (”History of Materialism," p. 828)

[ 22 ] For Lange, complete idealism goes hand in hand with a complete abandonment of truth. For him, the world is fiction; but a fiction that he does not value any less than if he could recognize it as reality. From this arises a new form of religious consciousness. He does not seek the core of religion in certain teachings about God, the human soul, creation, and its order, but in the elevation of the mind above the real, in the creation of a home for the spirits. "One should therefore accustom oneself to attaching a higher value than hitherto to the principle of the creative idea in itself, without agreement with historical and scientific knowledge, but also without distorting it; get used to regarding the world of ideas as a pictorial representation of the full truth, as indispensable to all human progress as the knowledge of the intellect, by tracing the greater or lesser significance of each idea back to ethical and aesthetic foundations. Of course, some old or new believers will feel that this imposition is like pulling the rug out from under their feet and demanding that they stand still as if nothing had happened; but the question is, what is the ground of ideas; whether their classification in the whole world of ideas according to ethical considerations, or the relationship of the ideas in which the idea is expressed to empirical reality. When the rotation of the earth was proven, every philistine believed he would fall if this dangerous doctrine were not refuted; just as some people now fear becoming a block of wood if Vogt can prove to them that they have no soul. If religion is worth anything, and if its lasting value lies in its ethical rather than its logical content, then this must also have been the case in the past, however indispensable literal faith may have been considered. (“History of Materialism,” p. 831.) Ethical value is therefore the decisive factor for religious content; the question of truth value cannot be asked at all. Lange sees this view as a vague feeling among the people; for otherwise, in his opinion, the poets and sculptors in Greece and Rome would not have dared to transform the myths and give new forms to the ideal of the gods. "Never, never, as long as the world stands, has a religious doctrine been held to be true in the same way as a sensory perception, a result of calculation or simple reasoning by people who were able to rise above the standpoint of the crudest superstition; even though, perhaps until recent times, there has never been complete clarity about the relationship between those ‘eternal truths’ and the immutable functions of the senses and the intellect." Wherever the religious truths of the Church were praised as the higher ones, there was an underlying notion that it is not logical certainty but value for life that is decisive in judging “truths.” Man needs higher goods for life than those that logic, the eye, and the groping hand can offer him; they need the enthusiastic participation of their minds in an ideal world order. "Natural science cannot lead to this. All natural science ... dwells with the individual. Individual discoveries delight us; the method commands our admiration, and the constant succession of discoveries perhaps leads our gaze into an infinite distance of ever more perfect insight. But with this we are already leaving the realm of strict science. The universe, as we understand it purely in scientific terms, can inspire us as little as a spelled-out Iliad."

[ 23 ] Two currents with a sharply pronounced scientific character stand in stark contrast to each other within the development of modern worldviews. The monistic, in which Haeckel's way of thinking moves, and a dualistic one, whose most energetic and consistent defender is E. A. Lange. Monism sees in the world that man can observe a true reality and does not doubt that, with his thinking based on observation, he can also gain insights of essential importance about this reality. It does not imagine that it can exhaust the fundamental nature of the world with a few boldly conceived formulas; it proceeds on the basis of facts and forms ideas about the connections between these facts. However, it is convinced that these ideas give it knowledge of a true existence. Lange's dualistic view divides the world into the known and the unknown. It treats the former in the same way as monism, guided by observation and contemplative thinking. But it believes that through this observation and thinking, not the slightest thing can be known about the true essence of the world. Monism believes in the truth of the real and sees the best support for the human world of ideas in basing it firmly on the world of observation. In the ideas and ideals that it draws from natural existence, it sees entities that fully satisfy its mind and its moral needs. In nature, it finds the highest existence, which it not only wants to recognize through thought, but to which it gives its most heartfelt devotion and all its love. Long dualism considers nature unsuitable for satisfying the highest needs of the spirit. It must accept for this spirit a special world of higher poetry that leads it beyond what observation and thinking reveal. Monism is given the highest spiritual value in true knowledge, which, because of its truth, also gives man the purest moral and religious pathos. Dualism cannot grant such satisfaction to knowledge. It must measure the value of life by entities other than truth. Ideas have value not because they are derived from truth, but because they serve life in its highest forms. Life is not judged by ideas, but ideas are judged by their fruitfulness for life. Man does not strive for true knowledge, but for valuable thoughts. F. A. Lange's worldview is synonymous with a revaluation of all values. Man does not possess truth, but rather ideas arising from his organization that are conducive to his life. The more conducive they are, the more reason he has to accept them. Not the true, but the life-sustaining and life-promoting must become the basis and goal of our world of thought.

[ 24 ] In his recognition of the scientific way of thinking, F. A. Lange agrees with monism insofar as he denies the validity of any other source for the knowledge of reality; however, he denies this way of thinking any ability to penetrate the essence of things. In order to remain on safe ground, he clips the wings of the human imagination. What Lange does in such a forceful manner corresponds to a tendency of thought deeply rooted in the development of worldviews in modern times. This is also evident with complete clarity in the movement of ideas in England during the nineteenth century. Through various phases, this world of ideas developed into points of view from which Herbert Spencer, at about the same time as Lange in Germany, established a dualism that on the one hand strove for complete scientific knowledge of the world and on the other hand professed agnosticism with regard to the essence of existence. When Darwin published his work On the Origin of Species, thereby handing monism one of its firm pillars, he was able to praise Spencer's scientific way of thinking: "In one of his essays ([...] 1852), Herbert Spencer contrasts the theory of creation with that of organic development in a remarkably skillful and effective manner. He concludes from the analogy with the products of breeding, from the changes undergone by the embryos of many species, from the difficulty of distinguishing species from varieties, and from the principle of a general series of stages, that species have been modified. He makes these modifications dependent on changed conditions. The author also dealt with psychology (in 1855) according to the principle of the necessary gradual acquisition of every mental power and ability." Like the founder of the modern view of life processes, other scientific thinkers are also attracted to Spencer, who strives to explain reality from inorganic facts up to psychology in the direction expressed in Darwin's above statement. However, Spencer is also on the side of the agnostics, so that F. A. Lange can say: “Herbert Spencer, in line with our own point of view, pays homage to a materialism of appearance, whose relative justification in natural science finds its limits in the idea of an unknowable absolute.”

[ 25 ] One can imagine that Spencer was led to his point of view from similar starting points as Lange. He was preceded in the development of thought in England by minds that were guided by a dual interest. They wanted to determine what man actually possesses in his knowledge. But they also wanted to ensure that the essence of the world was not shaken by doubt or reason. In a more or less pronounced way, they were all dominated by the sentiment expressed by Kant when he says: “I had to suspend knowledge in order to make room for faith.” (See Volume I of this History of Worldviews, p. 24 [39])

[ 26 ] At the beginning of the development of worldviews in the nineteenth century in England stands Thomas Reid (1710-1796). This forms the basis of this man's conviction, which Goethe also expresses as his view with the words: “In the end, it is only, as I think, the practical and self-rectifying operations of common sense that dare to exercise themselves in a higher sphere.” (See Goethe's Works, Volume 36, p. 595 in Kürschner's German National Literature). This common sense does not doubt that it is dealing with real, essential things and processes when it considers the facts of the world. Reid considers only such a worldview to be viable that adheres to this basic view of common sense. Even if we admitted that our observations could deceive us, and that the true nature of things was completely different from what our senses and intellect tell us, we would not need to concern ourselves with such a possibility. We can only cope with life if we believe our observations; everything else is of no concern to us. From this point of view, Reid believes he can arrive at truly satisfactory truths. He does not seek to arrive at a view of things through complicated mental operations, but by returning to the views instinctively accepted by the soul. And instinctively, unconsciously, the soul already possesses the truth before it undertakes to shine the torch of consciousness into its own being. It instinctively knows what to make of the characteristics and processes in the physical world; but it also instinctively knows the direction of its moral behavior, a judgment of good and evil. Reid directs thinking toward the observation of the soul by appealing to the truths inherent in common sense. This tendency toward soul observation remains characteristic of the development of the English worldview from then on. Outstanding personalities within this development are William Hamilton (1788-1856), Henry Mansel (1820-1871), William Whewell (1795-1866), John Herschel (1792-1871), James Mill (1773 to 1836), John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), Alexander Bain (born 1818), and Herbert Spencer (born 1820). They all place psychology at the center of their worldview.

[ 27 ] For Hamilton, too, what the soul originally finds itself compelled to accept as true is true. Proof and understanding cease in the face of original truths; one can simply observe their appearance on the horizon of consciousness. In this sense, they are incomprehensible. But one of the original statements of consciousness is also that everything in this world is dependent on something we do not know. In the world we live in, we find only dependent things, nowhere anything that is absolutely independent. But such a thing must exist. When something dependent is encountered, something independent must be assumed. We cannot enter into the independent with our thinking. Human knowledge is calculated for the dependent and becomes entangled in contradictions when it applies its thoughts, which are very well suited to the dependent, to the independent. Knowledge must therefore step aside when we come to the entrance to the independent. Religious faith has its place here. By acknowledging that he cannot know anything about the essence of the world, man can only be a moral being. He can accept a God who brings about a moral order in the world. No logic can rob him of this belief in an infinite God once it is recognized that all logic is directed only at the dependent, not the independent. Mansel is a student and follower of Hamilton. He merely expresses Hamilton's views in even more extreme forms. It is no exaggeration to say that Mansel is an advocate of faith who does not judge impartially between religion and knowledge, but rather takes sides in favor of religious dogma. He believes that religious revelations inevitably lead to contradictions in knowledge. However, this does not stem from a deficiency in the truths of revelation, but from the fact that the human mind is limited and can never reach the regions about which revelation makes statements. - William Whewell believes that the best way to gain an understanding of the meaning, origin, and value of human knowledge is to examine how pioneering minds in science arrived at their insights. His “History of Inductive Sciences” (1837) and his “Philosophy of Inductive Sciences” (1840) aim to understand the psychology of scientific research. He seeks to recognize, from outstanding scientific discoveries, how much of our ideas belong to the outside world and how much to human beings themselves. Whewell finds that in every science, the soul supplements observation with its own insights. Kepler had the concept of the ellipse before he discovered that the planets move in ellipses. The sciences, therefore, do not come about through mere reception from outside, but through the active intervention of the human mind, which imprints its laws on what is received. But the sciences do not reach the ultimate essences of things. They deal with the details of the world. But just as one assumes a cause for each individual thing, one must also assume such a cause for the whole world. Since knowledge fails in this regard, religious dogma must step in to supplement it. Like Whewell, Herschel seeks to gain an understanding of how knowledge comes about in the human mind by considering numerous examples. (“A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy” was published in 1831.)

[ 28 ] John Stuart Mill belongs to the type of thinkers who are imbued with the feeling that one cannot be too careful when it comes to determining what is certain and what is uncertain in human knowledge. The fact that he was introduced to a wide variety of branches of knowledge at an early age probably gave his mind its distinctive character. As a three-year-old child, he received lessons in Greek, and soon afterwards he was taught arithmetic. The other subjects were introduced to him at a correspondingly early age. Even more influential was the type of education that his father, the eminent thinker James Mill, designed in such a way that John Stuart became naturally adept at the most rigorous logic. From his autobiography, we learn: “My father never told me anything that could be discovered through thinking until I had exhausted my own efforts to arrive at it myself.” For such a person, the things that occupy his mind must, in the truest sense of the word, become the destiny of his life. “I was never a child, never played cricket; it is better to let nature take its own course,” says J. St. Mill, not without reference to the experiences of someone whose destiny is so uniquely thinking. The questions about the meaning of knowledge must have weighed heavily on him, who had undergone this development. To what extent can the knowledge that is his life also lead to the sources of world phenomena? The direction that Mill's thinking took in order to gain insight into these questions was probably also determined early on by his father. James Mill's thinking, in line with the development of the English worldview, was based on psychological experience. He observed how ideas are linked together in the human mind. By linking one idea to another, humans gain their knowledge of the world. He must therefore ask himself: What is the relationship between the structure of ideas and the structure of things in the world? Such a way of looking at things makes thinking distrustful of itself. In humans, ideas could possibly be linked in a completely different way than things are linked in the outside world. John Stuart Mill's logic is based on this distrust, which appeared in 1843 as his magnum opus, entitled “System of Logic.”

[ 29 ] It is difficult to imagine a sharper contrast in worldviews than Mill's “Logic” and Hegel's “Science of Logic,” published twenty-seven years earlier. In Hegel, one finds the highest confidence in thinking, the complete certainty that what we experience within ourselves cannot deceive us. Hegel feels himself to be a part of the world. What he experiences within himself must therefore also belong to the world. And since he recognizes himself most directly, he believes in what he recognizes within himself and judges the rest of the world accordingly. He says to himself: When I perceive an external thing, it can perhaps only show me its outer side, and its essence remains veiled. With myself, that is impossible. I see through myself. But then I can compare the things outside with my own essence. If their outer side reveals something of my own essence, then I can also attribute something of my essence to them. That is why Hegel confidently seeks the spirit, the connections of thought that he finds within himself, outside in nature as well. Mill does not initially feel himself to be a member of the world, but rather a spectator. Things outside are unknown to him, and he views the thoughts that people have about these things with suspicion. We perceive people. We have always observed that people die. That is why we have formed the judgment: All people are mortal. “All people are mortal; the Duke of Wellington is a person; therefore, the Duke of Wellington is mortal.” That is how humans reason. What gives them the right to do so, asks J. St. Mill. If a single human being were to prove immortal, the entire judgment would be overturned. Can we assume that because all humans have died so far, they will continue to do so in the future? All knowledge is uncertain. For we draw conclusions from observations we have made about things we cannot know anything about unless we have also made the relevant observations about them. What would someone who thinks along Hegelian lines have to say about such a view? It is not difficult to imagine. We know from certain concepts that in every circle all radii are equal. If we encounter a circle in reality, we also claim that the radii of this real circle are equal. If we observe the same circle after a quarter of an hour and find that its radii are unequal, we do not decide to judge that in a circle the radii may also be unequal under certain circumstances, but rather we say to ourselves: What was once a circle has, for some reason, elongated into an ellipse. This is roughly how someone thinking in Hegel's sense would arrive at the judgment: All humans are mortal. Humans have formed the concept of humans not through observation, but as an inner thought experience, just as they have formed the concept of a circle. Mortality belongs to the concept of man, just as the equality of the radii belongs to the concept of the circle. If one encounters a being in reality that has all the other characteristics of man, then this being must also have that of mortality, just as all the other characteristics of the circle entail that of the equality of the radii. If Hegel were to encounter a being that does not die, he could only say to himself: this is not a human being; but not: a human being can also be immortal. He assumes that concepts are not formed arbitrarily within us, but that they are rooted in the essence of the world, just as we ourselves belong to this essence. Once the concept of man has formed in us, it originates from the essence of things; and we have every right to apply it to this essence. Why has the concept of mortal man arisen in us? Only because it has its basis in the nature of things. Anyone who believes that man stands completely outside of things and forms his judgments as an outsider can say to himself: We have seen humans die so far, so we form the spectator concept: mortal humans. Those who are aware that they themselves belong to things, and that these things express themselves in their thoughts, say to themselves: so far, all humans have died; therefore, it is part of their essence to die; and those who do not die are not humans, but something else. Hegel's logic has become a logic of things; for Hegel, the language of logic is an effect of the essence of the world, not something added to this essence from outside by the human mind. Mill's logic is a spectator's logic, which first cuts the thread that connects it to the world.

[ 30 ] As unjustified as it would be to extend this spectator's point of view to the whole of worldview and to defend agnosticism on this basis, it would be equally one-sided to deny this point of view its justification within methodical scientific work. In the individual branches of knowledge, man is initially a spectator of the processes that take place with things. He must find his way in nature with the help of his logically structured world of ideas. And he cannot be too suspicious. He must seek out the conditions under which he can infer such a connection within things from a certain connection of thoughts. As true as it is that nature as a whole cannot deceive man, it is also true that it does so continuously in detail. Mill points out how thoughts that appear to be absolutely certain inner experiences in a certain age are overturned by a subsequent one. For example, in the Middle Ages it was believed that it was impossible for there to be creatures with opposite feet, and that the stars would fall down if they were not suspended from fixed spheres. Humans can therefore only gain a proper relationship to their knowledge if, despite the awareness that the logic of the world is expressed in them, they form judgments that require constant correction only through methodical examination of their conceptual connections on the basis of observation. And it is the methods of observation that J. St. Mill seeks to establish in an incomparably clear manner in his logic. Here is an example of this. Suppose that a phenomenon has always occurred under certain conditions. In a particular case, a whole series of these conditions occur again; only a few are missing. The phenomenon does not occur. Then one must conclude that the conditions that did not occur are causally related to the phenomenon that did not occur. If two substances have always combined to form a chemical compound, and they fail to do so on one occasion, one must investigate what is missing this time that was always present before. Through such a method, we arrive at ideas about factual relationships which we can justifiably regard as having their basis in the nature of things. Mill wants to pursue the methods of observation. Logic, which Kant said had not progressed one step since Aristotle, is a means of orientation within thought itself. It shows how to get from one correct thought to another. Mill's logic is a means of orientation within the world of facts. It aims to show how observations can be used to arrive at valid judgments about things. Mill makes no distinction between human judgments. For him, everything that humans think about things arises from observation. He does not even allow for exceptions in mathematics. Mathematics, too, must derive its basic knowledge from observation. In all the cases we have observed so far, we have seen that two straight lines that have intersected once diverge and do not intersect a second time. From this we conclude that they cannot intersect. But we do not have complete proof of this. For Stuart Mill, therefore, the world is alien to man. Man observes its phenomena and classifies them according to the statements they make to him in his imagination. He perceives regularities in the phenomena and arrives at natural laws through logical and methodical investigations of these regularities. But nothing leads to the essence of things themselves. It is therefore quite possible to imagine that everything in the world could also be different. Mill is convinced that anyone who is accustomed to abstraction and analysis and who applies their abilities honestly will, after sufficient exercise of their imagination, find no difficulty in the idea that in a star system other than our own, none of the laws that apply in ours could be found.

[ 31 ] It is only logical that Mill's world-view should also be extended to the human ego. Ideas come and go, connect and separate within the human mind; this is what humans perceive. They do not perceive a being that remains the same as “I” in this coming and going, separating and connecting of ideas. So far, ideas have arisen within him, and he assumes that this will continue to be the case. From this possibility that a world of ideas is structured around a center point arises the idea of the “I.” So even in relation to his own “I,” man is an observer. He lets his ideas tell him what he can know about himself. Here Mill now reaches the sore point of his worldview. He considers the facts of memory and expectation. If everything I know about myself is to be exhausted in ideas, then I cannot say: I remember an idea I had earlier, or I expect a certain experience to occur; rather, an idea remembers itself or expects its future occurrence. “When we,” says Mill, "speak of the mind as a series of perceptions, we must speak of a series of perceptions that is conscious of itself as becoming and passing away. And now we find ourselves in the dilemma of either saying that the “I” or the mind is something different from perceptions, or of asserting the paradox that a mere series of ideas can have a consciousness of its past and future." Mill cannot get beyond this dilemma. For him, it poses an unsolvable mystery. He has severed the bond between himself, the observer, and the world, and is unable to reestablish it. The world remains for him the unknown beyond, which makes impressions on human beings. All that human beings know about the unknown beyond is that it has the potential to evoke perceptions in them. So instead of real things outside himself, man can basically only speak of the possibility of perceptions. Those who speak of things in themselves indulge in empty words; only those who speak of the constant possibility of sensations, perceptions, and ideas occurring are moving on the ground of reality.

[ 32 ] Stuart Mill has a strong aversion to all thoughts that are gained by means other than comparing facts, pursuing similarities, analogies, and connections in phenomena. He believed that the greatest harm could be done to human life if one were to believe that one could arrive at any truth by means other than observation. In Mill's aversion, one senses a reluctance to behave in any way other than purely receptive (passive) toward things in the pursuit of knowledge. Things should dictate to humans what they are to think about them. If he seeks to go beyond reception and say something about things from within himself, he has no guarantee that his own creation actually has anything to do with things. Ultimately, what matters in this view is that its proponents cannot bring themselves to reckon their own independent thinking with the world. It is precisely the fact that they are independent that confuses them. They would prefer to switch off their own selves completely so as not to interfere with what the phenomena say about themselves. They do not appreciate the fact that their thinking is as much a part of nature as the growth of a blade of grass. Just as it is clear that one must observe the blade of grass if one wants to know something about it, so it should be clear that one must also question one's own independent thinking if one wants to learn something about it. How, according to Goethe's words, can one get to know one's relationship to oneself and to the outside world if one wants to completely switch oneself off in the process of cognition? However great Mill's merits may be in discovering the methods by which man recognizes everything that does not depend on him, no such method can provide an insight into the relationship between man and himself and between his self and the outside world. All these methods are therefore valid for the individual sciences, but not for a comprehensive worldview. No observation can teach us what independent thinking is: only thinking itself can experience this. And since thinking can only say something about itself through itself, it can only say something about its relationship to the outside world. Mill's way of thinking therefore completely excludes the acquisition of a worldview. Such a worldview can only be gained through thinking that is introspective and thus surveys itself and its relationship to the outside world. That Stuart Mill harbored an antipathy toward such self-centered thinking is understandable given his character. Gladstone said in a letter (cf. Gomperz: “John Stuart Mill,” Vienna 1889) that he used to call Mill the “saint of rationalism” in conversations. A man who lives out his life entirely in thought in this way places great demands on thinking and seeks the greatest possible precautions to ensure that it cannot deceive him. This makes him distrustful of thinking. He believes that he can easily become uncertain if he loses firm points of reference. And uncertainty about all questions that go beyond strict observational knowledge is a fundamental trait of Mill's personality. Anyone who follows his writings will see everywhere how Mill considers such questions to be open, on which he does not dare to make a definite judgment.

[ 33 ] Herbert Spencer also insists on the unknowability of the true nature of things. He first asks himself: How do I arrive at what I call truths about the world? I observe individual aspects of things and form judgments about them. I observe that hydrogen and oxygen combine to form water under certain conditions. I form a judgment about this. This is a single truth that only extends to a small circle of things. I then also observe the conditions under which other substances combine. I compare the individual observations and thereby arrive at more comprehensive, more general truths about how substances combine chemically in general. All knowledge is based on the fact that humans move from individual truths to increasingly general truths, ultimately arriving at the highest truth, which they cannot trace back to any other; which they must therefore accept without being able to comprehend it further. In this path of knowledge, however, we have no means of penetrating to the absolute essence of the world. According to this view, thinking can do nothing but compare different things with each other and form general truths about what is similar in them. However, the unconditional essence of the world, in its uniqueness, cannot be compared with any other thing. Therefore, thinking fails in relation to it. It cannot approach it.

[ 34 ] In such modes of thinking, we always hear the idea that has also developed on the basis of sensory physiology (cf. above p. 72ff. [304 ff.]). For many thinkers, this idea has become so intertwined with their intellectual life that they consider it to be the most certain thing there can be. They tell themselves that humans only recognize things by becoming aware of them. They then transform this idea, more or less involuntarily, into another: One can only know what enters consciousness, but how things were before they entered consciousness remains unknown. Thus, one also regards sensory perceptions as if they were in consciousness, for one believes that they must first enter consciousness, i.e., become parts of it (representations), if one wants to know anything about them.

[ 35 ] Spencer also maintains that it depends on us humans how we can recognize, and that we must therefore accept something unknowable beyond what our senses and our thinking convey to us. We have a clear awareness of everything our ideas tell us. But this clear awareness is mixed with an indefinite awareness that tells us that everything we observe and think is based on something we can no longer observe and think. We know that we are dealing with mere appearances, not with complete realities that exist in themselves. But precisely because we know that our world is only appearance, we also know that it is based on an unimaginable reality. Through such twists of his thinking, Spencer believes he can bring about the full reconciliation of religion and knowledge. There is something that is not accessible to knowledge; therefore, there is also something that religion can grasp in faith, in a faith that cannot be shaken by powerless knowledge. Spencer's agnosticism is thus also able to live in complete peace with religion. He carries out a clean separation of the domains.

[ 36 ] The area that Spencer considers accessible to knowledge, he makes entirely the domain of scientific ideas. Where he attempts to explain, he does so only in a scientific sense.

[ 37 ] Spencer conceives of the process of knowledge in scientific terms. Every organ of a living being has come into being because that being has adapted to the conditions under which it lives. One of the conditions of human life is that humans find their way in the world through thought. Their organ of cognition arises through the adaptation of their imaginative life to the conditions of the outside world. When humans say something about a thing or a process, this means nothing other than that they are adapting to the world around them. All truths have come about in this way of adaptation. But what has been acquired through adaptation can be passed on to descendants. Those who claim that humans are naturally predisposed to general truths are not right. What appears to be such a predisposition did not exist in the ancestors of humans, but was acquired through adaptation and passed on to descendants. When certain philosophers speak of truths that humans do not need to draw from their own individual experience, but which are inherent in their organization from the outset, they are right in a certain sense. But such truths are also acquired, only not by humans as individuals, but as a species. The individual has inherited what was acquired in earlier times. Goethe says that he attended many discussions about Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and saw that the old main question was being renewed: “How much does our self and how much does the outside world contribute to our spiritual existence?” And he continues: “I never had both separately, and when I philosophized about objects in my own way, I did so with unconscious naivety and really believed that I saw my opinions before my eyes.” Spencer brought this “old fundamental question” into the light of the scientific way of thinking. He believed he could show that developed human beings do indeed contribute to their spiritual existence from their own selves, but that this self is also composed of the legacies acquired by our ancestors in their struggle with the outside world. When we believe we see our opinions before our eyes today, these were not always our opinions, but were once observations that were actually made with our eyes on the outside world. Spencer's approach, like Stuart Mill's, is one that starts from psychology. But Mill stops at the psychology of the individual. Spencer ascends from the individual to his ancestors. Individual psychology is in the same position as the germ history of zoology. Certain phenomena of germination can only be explained if they are traced back to phenomena of tribal history. Similarly, the facts of individual consciousness are not understandable in themselves. One must ascend to the species, indeed go beyond the human species to the knowledge already acquired by the animal ancestors of man. Spencer applies great acumen to support his developmental history of the cognitive process. He shows how mental abilities have gradually developed from humble beginnings through increasingly appropriate adaptations of the mind to the outside world and through the inheritance of these adaptations. Everything that the individual human being gains without experience, through pure thinking about things, has been gained by humanity or its ancestors through observation and experience. Leibniz believed that the only way to explain the correspondence between the human interior and the outside world was to assume a harmony predetermined by the Creator. Spencer explains this correspondence scientifically. It is not predetermined, but has come about. Here we see the continuation of scientific thinking into the highest facts given to man. Linnaeus explains that every living form exists because the Creator created it as it is. Darwin explains that it is as it has gradually developed through adaptation and heredity. Leibniz explains that thought corresponds with the external world because the Creator created this correspondence. Spencer explains that this correspondence exists because it has developed through adaptation and inheritance of the world of thought.

[ 38 ] Spencer started from the need for a natural explanation of mental phenomena. Lyell's geology gave him the direction for such an explanation (cf. p. 17 [238f.]). In it, the idea that organic forms have developed gradually is still contested, but it is nevertheless given important support by the fact that the inorganic (geological) formations of the Earth's surface are explained by such gradual development, not by violent catastrophes. Spencer, who had a scientific education and had also worked as a civil engineer for some time, immediately recognized the full significance of the idea of evolution and applied it, despite Lyell's opposition. Indeed, he even applied it to intellectual processes. As early as 1850, in his work Social Statics, he described social evolution in analogy with organic evolution. He also familiarized himself with Harvey's and Wolff's (cf. Vol. I of this history of worldviews, p. 142ff. [182 ff.]) studies on the germ history of organisms and immersed himself in the works of K. E. von Baer (cf. above $. 50f. [279]), which showed him how development consists in the emergence of diversity, variety, and richness from a state of similarity and uniformity. In the early stages of development, organisms are similar; later, they become different from one another (cf. above p. 51ff. [279ff.]). Darwin then provided complete confirmation of this idea of development. The entire richness of today's diverse world of forms has developed from a few primordial organisms.

[ 39 ] Starting from the idea of development, Spencer wanted to ascend to the most general truths, which in his opinion constitute the goal of human striving for knowledge. He believed he could already find the idea of evolution in the simplest phenomena. When scattered water particles form a cloud in the sky, or scattered grains of sand form a pile of sand, we are dealing with a process of evolution. Scattered matter is drawn together (concentrated) into a whole. There is no other process in Kant-Laplace's hypothesis of world formation. Scattered parts of a chaotic world nebula have come together. The organism arises in exactly this way. Scattered elements are concentrated in tissues. The psychologist can observe how humans bring scattered observations together into general truths. Within the concentrated whole, the gathered elements then differentiate (it differentiates). The primordial mass divides into the individual celestial bodies of the solar system; the organism differentiates into manifold organs.

[ 40 ] Concentration alternates with dissolution. When a developmental process has reached a certain climax, equilibrium sets in. Human beings, for example, develop until the greatest possible harmony between their inner abilities and the external nature has been achieved. However, such a state of equilibrium cannot last; external forces will approach it destructively. Development must be followed by the descending process of dissolution; what has been drawn together expands again; the cosmic becomes chaos once more. The process of development can begin anew. Spencer thus sees a rhythmic interplay of movement in the world process.

[ 41 ] It is certainly an interesting observation for the comparative developmental history of worldviews that Spencer, based on his observation of the becoming of world phenomena, arrives at a similar idea to that expressed by Goethe on the basis of his ideas about the becoming of life. Goethe describes the growth of plants as follows: "Whether the plant sprouts, blooms, or bears fruit, it is always the same organs that fulfill the dictates of nature in diverse ways and often in changing forms. The same organ that has expanded on the stem as a leaf and taken on a highly diverse form now contracts in the calyx, expands again in the petal, contracts in the reproductive organs, and expands one last time as fruit." If we apply this idea to the entire world process, we arrive at Spencer's contraction and dispersion of matter.

[ 42 ] Spencer and Mill had a great influence on the development of worldviews in the last half-century. Mill's strict emphasis on observation and precise elaboration of the methods of observational cognition; Spencer's application of scientific ideas to the entire scope of human knowledge: these had to correspond to the sensibilities of an age that saw in the idealistic worldviews of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel's idealistic worldviews as mere degenerations of human thought and which valued the achievements of scientific research above all else, while the disagreement among idealistic thinkers and what many considered to be the complete fruitlessness of self-absorbed thinking gave rise to a deep mistrust of idealism. It is fair to say that a widely held view in the last four decades expresses what Rudolf Virchow (1893) said in his speech “The Founding of the University of Berlin and the Transition from the Philosophical to the Scientific Age”: “Since belief in magic formulas had been pushed back into the outermost circles of the population, the formulas of the natural philosophers also found little resonance.” And one of the most important philosophers of the second half of the century, Eduard von Hartmann, sums up the character of his worldview in the motto he placed at the beginning of his book “Philosophy of the Unconscious”: “Speculative results according to inductive scientific methods.” Yes, he believes that one must acknowledge the “greatness of the progress brought about by Mill,” “through which all attempts at deductive philosophizing have been overcome forever” (cf. E. v. Hartmann, “Geschichte der Metaphysik” [History of Metaphysics], Part 2, p. 479).

[ 43 ] The recognition of certain limits to human knowledge, which many natural scientists showed, also appealed to religiously minded people. They said to themselves: Natural scientists observe inorganic and organic facts and seek to find general laws by linking individual phenomena, with the help of which processes can be explained and even the regular course of future phenomena can be predicted. The comprehensive worldview should proceed in the same way; it should stick to the facts, explore general truths within modest limits, and make no claim to penetrate the realm of the “incomprehensible.” Spencer, with his complete separation of the ‘comprehensible’ and the “incomprehensible,” met such religious needs to the highest degree. In contrast, these religiously minded spirits regarded the idealistic way of thinking as a folly. In principle, this cannot recognize the incomprehensible because it must hold fast to the belief that by immersing oneself in human inner life, it is possible to gain insight not only into the outer side of worldly existence, but also into its real core.

[ 44 ] The thinking of influential natural scientists, such as Huxley, who professes complete agnosticism towards the world and declares that monism in the sense of Darwin's findings is only applicable to the external side of nature given to humans, also moves entirely in the direction of such religiously minded spirits. He was one of the first to advocate Darwin's ideas, but at the same time he is one of the most decisive representatives of the limitations of this type of thinking. The physicist John Tyndall (1820 to 1893) professed a similar view, recognizing in the world process a force completely inaccessible to the human mind. For if one assumes that everything in the world arises through natural development, one can never admit that matter, which is after all the vehicle of all development, is nothing more than what our minds can comprehend.

[ 45 ] A phenomenon characteristic of the time is the personality of the English statesman James Balfour, who in 1879 (in his book “A Defense of Philosophical Doubt, being an Essay on the Foundations of Belief”) made a profession of faith that is undoubtedly similar to that of wider circles. He places himself entirely on the ground of scientific thinking with regard to everything that man can explain. He allows all knowledge to be exhausted in the recognition of nature. But at the same time he asserts that only those who realize that the emotional and rational needs of man can never be satisfied by it can truly understand scientific knowledge. One need only realize that, ultimately, even in natural science, everything depends on believing in the ultimate truths that can no longer be proven. But there is no harm in merely arriving at a belief in this direction, for this belief guides us safely in our actions in daily life. We believe in the laws of nature and master them through this belief; through it, we compel nature to serve our purposes. Religious faith is supposed to establish a similar harmony between human actions and higher needs that transcend the everyday. It is obvious that anyone who sees scientific knowledge as a mere object of faith will have no qualms about accepting religious belief in the hereafter alongside scientific knowledge. From this point of view, every worldview and way of life is based on faith, not on an insight into some essence of the world that appeals to humans through its reasons. Balfour therefore cannot form a confession on the basis of reason; instead, he must rely on convictions that transcend reason. He calls these convictions authority.