The Consequences of Monism 233of experience (an inferred God, Will, absolute Spirit, etc.).
And, based on this opinion, attempts were then made to
achieve—in addition to knowledge of connections recog-
nizable through experience—a second kind of knowl-
edge, based not on experience but on metaphysical
inference. This kind of knowledge went beyond experi-
ence and revealed a connection between experience and
entities that are no longer directly available to us. On this
basis, then, it was believed that we can understand the co-
herence of the world through orderly thinking because a
primal Being built the world according to logical laws.
The reason for our actions was also seen in the will of this
Being. Yet it was not recognized that thinking simulta-
neously encompasses the subjective and the objective,
and that full reality is conveyed in the union of percept
with concept. Only as long as we regard the laws that per-
meate and determine percepts in the form of abstract con-
cepts are we dealing with something purely subjective.
The content of a concept, joined to a percept by thinking,
is not subjective. For the content of this concept is taken
not from the subject, but from reality. It is the part of re-
ality that perceiving cannot reach. It is experience, but
not experience transmitted by perceiving. Those who
cannot imagine that a concept is something real are think-
ing only of the abstract form in which they hold concepts
in their mind. But concepts, like percepts, are present
only in this separated form because of our organization.
The tree that we see has likewise no separate existence by
itself. The tree is only a part in the great system of nature,
and is only possible in real connection with nature. An