Sun-Clear Statement/1
Don't be alarmed, my reader, if I seem to take a somewhat long route. I am anxious to make very clear to you certain conceptions which will be of importance in future, not for the sake of these conceptions themselves, which are but common and trivial, but for the sake of the results I propose to derive from them. Nor shall I analyze these conceptions further than is absolutely necessary for my purpose, as you may tell the book critic, who will perhaps expect here an analytical art work.
To begin, you surely know how to distinguish the really actual, that which is the true fact of your present experience and life, or that which you actually live and experience, from the non-actual, the merely imagined. For instance, you at this moment sit in your room, hold this book in your hand, see its letters, and read its words. This is doubtless the actual event and determinedness of your present life-moment. In thus sitting and continuing to hold this book, you doubtless can remember yesterday's conversation with a friend, can represent this friend to yourself as if he actually stood before you, can hear him speak, can make him repeat what he said yesterday, &c, &c. Tell me, is this latter, this appearance of your friend, equally the actual and true event of your present life-moment, with your sitting in your room and holding this book?
The Reader. By no means.
The Author. But I should think something at least, even in this latter state, is an actual and real event of your life; for tell me, do you not in the meanwhile continue to live—does not your life pass away in the meanwhile—is it not filled up with something?
R. I see; you are right. The true event of my life in the latter state is precisely my placing my friend before me, my making him speak, not his actual being with me. This placing him before me is that wherewith I fill up the time which I live in the meanwhile.
A. Hence, there must be a common somewhat in your sitting there and holding the book and in your placing your friend before you, recalling his conversation, &c, by means of which common character you judge of both cases, that they are actually real events of your life. On the other hand, that yesterday's actual conversation and presence of your friend must also not have this common character—which would warrant you to consider it as actually occurring—in the connection of time wherein you place it to-day by recalling it. Nay, it has, probably, an opposite to this common character, which causes you to-day to declare it to be not actually occurring.
R. It certainly must be so. My judgment must have a ground; a similar judgment must have a similar ground; an opposite judgment an opposite ground, or the absence of the former ground.
A. What may this ground be?
R. I do not know.
A. But you judge every moment of your life concerning actuality and non-actuality, and judge correctly, in conformity with other rational beings. Hence, the ground of those judgments must be always present to you; you only do not become clearly conscious of it in your judgment. As for the rest, your answer, "I do not know," signifies only: "Nobody has yet told me." But even if it were told you, it would avail you nothing; you must find it yourself.
R. However much I revolve the matter in my mind, I cannot get at it.
A. Nor is it the right way to be guessing at it and looking around for it. It is in this way that those systems arise which are purely imaginary. Neither can you get at it by drawing conclusions. But try to become thoroughly conscious of your procedure in this judgment concerning actuality and non actuality; look into yourself, and you will at once become conscious of the ground of your procedure, and will internally contemplate it. All that can be done to assist you is to guide you in the right direction, and this guidance is indeed all that can be obtained from philosophical teaching. The presupposition must always be that you have within yourself, and contemplate and observe, that towards which the teacher guides you. Otherwise, you will only be listening to the narrative of another's observation, and not of your own; and, moreover, to an incomprehensible narrative, for that upon which all depends cannot be described in words as composed of things already known to you, but is an absolutely unknown, which can become known to you only through your own internal contemplation, and can be characterized by anything sensuously known only in the way of analogy, which characteristic, therefore, receives its full significance only through contemplation.
Remember this, once for all, when similar cases arise in the future, and try to spread it amongst our celebrated writers who do not know it, and who speak very awkwardly concerning the relation of philosophy to language. But to the point:
When you are engaged in the reading of this book, in the observation of this object, or in the conversation with your friend, do you reflect upon your reading, observing, hearing, seeing, or feeling of the object, or your speaking to your friend?
R. By no means. I think not at all upon myself. I forget myself utterly in the book, in the object, in the conversation. Hence, people use the expressions: "I am engaged in it," "immersed in it," "lost in it."
A. And this, by the bye, all the more, the more intense, full, and lively your consciousness of the object is. That half dreamy and listless consciousness, that inattention and thoughtlessness, which is a characteristic of our age, and the most unconquerable obstacle to a thorough philosophy, is precisely the condition wherein men do not utterly abandon themselves to the object, do not bury and forget themselves in it, but always flutter and waver between the object and their own consciousness.
But how is it in the case when you place before you an object not held by you as actual in the present connection of time; for instance, yesterday's conversation with your friend? Is there also something in this case to which you abandon yourself, wherein you forget yourself?
R. Certainly. Precisely this placing the absent object before me is that wherein I forget myself.
A. You stated a short while ago, that in the former condition it is the presence of the object, and in the latter condition the re-presenting of the object to your mind, which constitutes the true reality of your life, and at present you state that you forget yourself in both. Here, then, we have found the looked for ground of your judgment concerning actuality and non-actuality. The self-forgetting is the characteristic of actuality; and in each condition of life, the focus wherein you throw and forget yourself, and the focus of actuality, are one and the same. That which tears you from yourself is the actually occurring, which fills up your life-moment.
R. I do not quite understand you.
A. I was forced to establish this conception so much in advance, and have in the meanwhile characterized it as clearly as possible. But if you will only keep up attentive- conversation with me, I hope it will become very clear to you in a short while. Can you also represent again the representation just now made by you of yesterday's conversation with your friend?
R. Doubtless. Nay, this is the very thing I have done during our reflection on that representation. I did not so much represent that conversation as rather the representing of that conversation.
A. Now, tell me what in this representation of the representing do you hold to be the real factical, or that which fills up the fleeting moments of your life?
R. Precisely this representing of the representing.
A. Now let us retrace our steps. In the representation of yesterday's conversation—please become thoroughly conscious of it, and look into your consciousness—how was that conversation related to your consciousness, and to the real factical which filled your consciousness?
R. The conversation, as I have already stated, was not the actual event, but merely the reconstructing of the conversation. Nevertheless, the event was not a mere reconstructing in general, but the reconstructing of a conversation, and, moreover, of this particular conversation. The reconstructing, as the chief point, was accompanied by the conversation; and the latter was not the actual, but the modification, the general determination of the latter.
A. And in the representing of this representation?
R. In the representing of the representation, that representing was the actual event; the representation the further determination of it, since it was not a representing in general, but the representing of a representation; and the conversation, finally, was the further determination of the (represented) representation, since the representing had for its object not a representation in general, but a determined representation, namely, that of a determined conversation.
A. Hence, each reality, each true and actually occurring event in life is that wherein you forget yourself. This is the beginning and real focus of life, whatever further subordinated determinations this focus may involve, because it happens to be such a particular focus. I wish and hope that I have made myself quite clear to you, and am sure I have been successful, if during this investigation you have only been always within yourself, looking into yourself, and attending to yourself. Tell me, whilst you represented yesterday's conversation, or—since I prefer not to assume a mere fiction, but to place you right into your present condition of mind—whilst you just now argued with me, thereby filling up your life and throwing into it yourself, you doubtless hold that many other things have moved and happened outside of your own self and mind?
R. Doubtless. The hand of the clock, for instance, has moved, so has the sun, &c.
A. Have you seen or experienced this moving of the hand of the clock?
R. How could I, since I was arguing with you, throwing my whole self into it, and filling up my life with it?
A. How, then, do you know concerning the movement of the clock—to stop at this example?
R. I looked at it before, and noticed the place pointed out by the hand. I now look at it again, and find that the hand has moved to another place. I draw the conclusion from the arrangement of the clock, which was previously known to me, likewise through perception, that the hand has gradually moved whilst I was arguing.
A. Do you assume that, if instead of arguing with me, you had occupied the same time in looking at the clock, you would have actually perceived the movement of the hand?
R. Most certainly do I assume it.
A. Hence, both your arguing and the movement of the clock are, according to what you say, true and actual events of the same moment of time; the latter, to be sure, is not an event of your life, since you lived something else during the time, but it might have become an event of your life, and would have become so necessarily, if you had paid attention to the clock?
R. Yes.
A. And the hand of the clock has actually and in fact moved without your knowledge and activity?
R. That is the assumption, certainly.
A. Do you believe that if you had not argued—just as you did not look at the clock—your argument would also have moved on without your knowledge or activity, like the hand of the clock?
R. On no account. My arguing does not move of itself; I must carry it on, if it is to be carried on.
A. How does this apply to the representing of yesterday's conversation? Does that also come to you without any activity of your own, like the movement of the clock, or must you produce it yourself, like the argument?
R. If I consider it carefully, I do not know. True, just at present I am convinced that I actively produced it, because you asked me to do so; but since it often happens that images crowd through my brain, and come and go without any cooperation of my own, just as the hand of the clock moves, I cannot decidedly say whether that representation might not have come into my head without any activity of my own, and without your request.
A. With all the respect which an author owes his reader, and which I really entertain towards you, let me tell you that this confusion of yours is of bad augury for the continuation of our conversation. I hold that men should dream only in their sleep, but should not when waking allow images to crowd of themselves into their brain. The absolute freedom arbitrarily to give a determined direction to your mind, and keep it in that direction, is an essential condition, not only of philosophical, but even of healthy common thinking. But in the hope that you will, at least during our present investigation, keep these foreign images away from your mind, and resist that blind operation of an association of ideas, I will drop this doubtful point of sensuous representation, and solely make use of your confession concerning the freedom of argument.
It seems, then, that there are two kinds of actuality, which are both equally actual, but of which the one makes itself, while the other must be made by him for whom it is to be, and is not unless he so makes it?
R. So it appears.
A. Let us consider the matter a little. You say the hand of the clock has actually moved during your argumentation. Would you be able to say this, would you know this, unless you had looked again at the hand after your argument, and had now drawn your conclusion from the actual perception that it occupied another place?
R. Certainly not.
A. Do not forget this; it is very important to me. All reality of the first kind—however much it may proceed in its course without your knowledge and co-operation, or may exist in itself, i.e. unrelated to any possible consciousness, a point which we shall not discuss here—all such reality is at least for you, and as an event of your life, only in so far as you at some time direct your attention to it, throw yourself into it, and take hold of that reality with your consciousness. When we consider this well, your assertion that the hand of the clock has moved from one place to another, from the time of one of your perceptions to that of a second perception—without which latter perception the hand would never have come into your consciousness again—and during this intermediate time while you did not observe it, can only signify: you would have perceived the hand moving if you had directed your attention to it.
Hence, by this assertion of an event outside of your life, you only assert a possible event within your life, a possible continuous flow of this life from the first perception of the hand to the second perception. You supply and add a series of possible observations between the end points of your two actual observations. Now, if I pledge you my word that I shall always speak only of a reality for you, and never replace it by a reality unrelated to you, nor speak or assert anything of this latter sort of reality, will you then allow me to consider the continuation of an external reality, without any act of your own, as merely the continuation of your own possible consciousness and life, since you have seen that it becomes reality for you, after all, only in this manner?
A Reader (who, perhaps, may even be a celebrated philosopher). I will hear nothing more of such stuff. Have I not sufficiently hinted to you that this is pure insanity? I always proceed from a reality in and for itself, from an absolute being. I cannot go higher, and will not. The distinction which you make between a reality in itself and a reality for us, and the abstraction in the former which you undertake, and which, as I now apprehend, is the corner-stone of your system, you must first demonstrate to me!
A. Indeed? You are able to speak of a reality without knowing of it, without seizing it, at least dimly, in your consciousness, and relating it to your consciousness? You can do more than I can. Put down the book; it is not written for you.
A second and fairer Reader. I will accept your limitation to speak only of a reality for us, on condition that you remain true to it, and speak of reality in itself neither good nor evil. But as soon as you transcend your limits and draw a conclusion to the disadvantage of the latter, I also shall leave you.
A. Not more than fair. If we then presuppose this view, that only our relation to reality and actuality is to be considered, our consciousness would appear about as follows: All reality, whatever name it may have, becomes reality for us only through our immersing and forgetting ourself in certain determinations of our life, and this forgetting of ourself is precisely that which gives to these determinations wherein we forget ourselves the character of reality, and which gives us life at all.
Thus there result certain fundamental and primary determinations (the next following opposite will make clear these expressions, which I entreat you to consider maturely,) of our life, as its true roots, which make and continue themselves, and to which we only need to surrender ourselves and allow them to take hold of our being, in order to appropriate them and make them our actual life; and the continuous chain whereof, no matter if they are dropped at certain links, can always be arbitrarily taken hold of again, and be supplied backward or forward from every point.
I say we only need to surrender ourselves to them, for even these fundamental determinations cannot pull us irresistibly towards them; we having, moreover, the faculty to pull ourselves (a fact which was forgotten in those determinations) loose again from them, and to create freely out of ourselves a higher series of life and actuality for ourselves. We can, for instance, think and seize ourselves as the knowing in that fundamental consciousness, or as the living in that fundamental life; or we can rise to the second degree of life, if we call the remaining within the fundamental determinations the first degree of life; or we may again seize ourselves as the thinking in that thinking of original knowledge, as the contemplating of our own life in that positing of it, which would result in a third degree of life; and so on ad infinitum.
The whole distinction between that first degree and the higher degrees, between the previously given life—which was presented to us, and which we need only to accept in order to make it our actual life—and that life which is not given to us, but which must be produced by our self-activity, is probably this: that from each of the higher degrees you can look down and descend into a lower one; whereas from the lowest one you cannot look down, because it is itself the deepest, and cannot go lower except into the realm of nothingness; that hence we are conditioned in regard to the descent by the lowest one, but not in regard to the ascent through reflection; and that this lowest one is, therefore, the real foot and root of all other life. Hence, I called it the primary and fundamental determination of all life.
For us, let it be here sufficient, conformably to our agreement, to consider this sphere of the first degree as the sphere of such fundamental determinations of our life, but on no account as the sphere of things in and for themselves, a view which we here discard. Be they ever so much the latter, in and for themselves, for us they exist only as determinations of our life, or by our living and experiencing them, and we are content here to speak of them only in relation to us. The content of this sphere is often more specially called reality, fact of consciousness, or experience.
Know, reader, that hereafter we shall reflect solely upon this system of the first degree. Do not forget this for a single moment, but separate whatsoever belongs to the higher degrees from it.
I include in this system of the first degree all that which we perceive through our external senses in space, or through our internal sense in our soul. In regard to the latter, this sphere includes also what I have termed higher degrees, not as regards their content, but as regards their form, namely: the laws which it observes, for these laws belong to the facts of the internal sense, and are perceived when we carefully observe ourselves in those proceedings of the soul.
The chief object of the present conversation, my reader, was this: that you should (but quite arbitrarily, and only to suit my future purpose,) separate all the occurrences of your consciousness into two classes, and should clearly comprehend the distinction of what belongs to the one and what to the other class; that you should separate that which is product of freedom, and which therefore belongs to the higher classes, and should look to that only which I have called the first degree. Only in so far as you have clearly seen this distinction, and hold to it, can you correctly seize that which will be the subject of our other conversations.