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If a thing is to be the object of any kind of experience, then it must
conform to certain laws. Laws in this sense are regulations which the
subject prescribes for the objects. Yet one would expect that if we are to
attain knowledge of the given then it must be derived, not from the
subject, but from the object.
Thinking says nothing a priori about the given; it produces a posteriori,
i.e. the thought-form, on the basis of which the conformity to law of the
phenomena becomes apparent.
Seen in this light, it is obvious that one can say nothing a priori about
the degree of certainty of a judgment attained through cognition. For
certainty, too, can be derived only from the given. To this it could be
objected that observation only shows that some connection between
phenomena once occurred, but not that such a connection must occur,
and in similar cases always will occur. This assumption is also wrong.
When I recognize some particular connection between elements of the
world-picture, this connection is provided by these elements
themselves; it is not something I think into them, but is an essential
part of them, and must necessarily be present whenever the elements
themselves are present.
Only if it is considered that scientific effort is merely a matter of
combining facts of experience according to subjective principles which
are quite external to the facts themselves, only such an outlook could
believe that a and b may be connected by one law to-day and by
another to-morrow (John Stuart Mill). Someone who recognizes that
the laws of nature originate in the given and therefore themselves
constitute the connection between the phenomena and determine
them, will not describe laws discovered by observation as merely of
comparative universality. This is not to assert that a natural law which
at one stage we assume to be correct must therefore be universally valid
as well. When a later event disproves a law, this does not imply that the
law had only a limited validity when first discovered, but rather that we
failed to ascertain it with complete accuracy. A true law of nature is
simply the expression of a connection within the given world-picture,
and it exists as little without the facts it governs as the facts exist
without the law.
We have established that the nature of the activity of cognition is to
permeate the given world-picture with concepts and ideas by means of
thinking. What follows from this fact? If the directly-given were a
totality, complete in itself, then such an elaboration of it by means of
cognition would be both impossible and unnecessary. We should then
simply accept the given as it is, and would be satisfied with it in that
form. The act of cognition is possible only because the given contains
something hidden; this hidden does not appear as long as we consider
only its immediate aspect; the hidden aspect only reveals itself through
the order that thinking brings into the given. In other words, what the
given appears to be before it has been elaborated by thinking, is not its
full totality.
This becomes clearer when we consider more closely the factors
concerned in the act of cognition. The first of these is the given. That it
is given is not a feature of the given, but is only an expression for its
relation to the second factor in the act of cognition. Thus what the given
is as such remains quite undecided by this definition. The second factor
is the conceptual content of the given; it is found by thinking, in the act
of cognition, to be necessarily connected with the given. Let us now ask:
1) Where is the division between given and concept? 2) And where are
they united? The answers to both of these questions are undoubtedly to
be found in the preceding discussion. The division occurs solely in the
act of cognition. In the given they are united. This shows that the
conceptual content must necessarily be a part of the given, and also
that the act of cognition consists in reuniting the two parts of the
world-picture, which to begin with are given to cognition separated
from each other. Therefore, the given world-picture becomes complete
only through that other, indirect kind of given which is brought to it by
thinking. The immediate aspect of the world-picture reveals itself as
quite incomplete to begin with.
If, in the world-content, the thought-content were united with the given
from the first, no knowledge would exist, and the need to go beyond the
given would never arise. If, on the other hand, we were to produce the
whole content of the world in and by means of thinking alone, no
knowledge would exist either. What we ourselves produce we have no
need to know. Knowledge therefore rests upon the fact that the world-
content is originally given to us in incomplete form; it possesses
another essential aspect, apart from what is directly present. This
second aspect of the world-content, which is not originally given, is
revealed through thinking. Therefore the content of thinking, which
appears to us to be something separate, is not a sum of empty thought-
forms, but comprises determinations (categories); however, in relation
to the rest of the world content, these determinations represent the
organizing principle. The world-content can be called reality only in
the form it attains when the two aspects of it described above have
been united through knowledge.
THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE FREE OF ASSUMPTIONS AND
FICHTE'S SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE
WE HAVE NOW defined the idea of knowledge. In the act of cognition
this idea is directly given in human consciousness. Both outer and
inner perceptions, as well as its own presence are given directly to the
I, which is the center of consciousness. (It is hardly necessary to say
that here center is not meant to denote a particular theory of
consciousness, but is used merely for the sake of brevity in order to
designate consciousness as a whole.) The I feels a need to discover
more in the given than is directly contained in it. In contrast to the
given world, a second world the world of thinking rises up to meet
the I and the I unites the two through its own free decision, producing
what we have defined as the idea of knowledge. Here we see the
fundamental difference between the way the concept and the directly
given are united within human consciousness to form full reality, and
the way they are found united in the remainder of the world-content. In
the entire remainder of the world picture we must conceive an original
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