Intuitive Thinking As a Spiritual Path

106 Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path

We can give content to this hypothetical world principle
only by borrowing content from the world of experience
and then deceiving ourselves about this fact. Otherwise,
it remains a concept devoid of content and has only the
form of a concept. At this point, dualistic thinkers usually
maintain that the content of the concept is inaccessible to
our cognition: we can know onlythat such content exists;
we cannot knowwhat exists. In either case, overcoming
dualism is impossible. Even if we import a few abstract
elements from the world of experience into the concept of
the thing-in-itself, it still remains impossible to trace back
the rich, concrete life of experience to a few qualities that
themselves are only borrowed from perception.
Du Bois-Reymond thinks that unperceivable atoms of
matter create sensation and feeling by their position and
movement.^1 He uses this to arrive at the conclusion that
we can never have a satisfying explanation of how mat-
ter and motion create sensation and feeling. Thus he
writes:
It is completely and forever incomprehensible
that a number of atoms of carbon, hydrogen, nitro-
gen, oxygen, etc., should be other than indifferent
as to how they are lying and moving, how they lay
and moved, and how they will lie and move. There

1. Emil Du Bois-Reymond (1818–96), German physiologist, known
   both for his investigations of animal electricity, the physiology of mus-
   cles and nerves, and metabolic processes and his famous “ignorabi-
   mus”—we cannot know. SeeThe Riddles of Philosophy (p. 319 ff.)
   and, for instance, The Boundaries of Natural Science,lecture one, Sep-
   tember 27, 1920 (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1983).