The World as Percept 49CHAPTER 4
THE WORLD AS PERCEPT
Concepts andideas arise through thinking. Words cannot
say what a concept is. Words can only make us notice that
we have concepts. When we see a tree, our thinking reacts
to our observation, a conceptual counterpart joins the ob-
ject, and we consider the object and the conceptual coun-
terpart as belonging together. When the object disappears
from our field of observation, only the conceptual coun-
terpart remains. The latter is the concept of the object.
The wider our experience extends, the greater the sum of
our concepts. But the concepts by no means stand apart
from one another. They combine into a lawful whole. For
example, the concept “organism” combines with others,
such as “lawful development” and “growth.” Other con-
cepts, formed from individual things, collapse wholly
into a unity. Thus, all concepts that I form about lions
combine into the general concept “lion.” In this way, in-
dividual concepts link together into a closed conceptual
system, in which each has its particular place. Ideas are
not qualitatively different from concepts. They are only