Knowing the World 79Regardless of whether or not the percept, in the form giv-
en to me, persists before and after my mental picturing, it
is only with the aid of thinking that I can say anything
about it. If I say that the world is my mental picture, then
I have spoken the result of a process of thinking, and if my
thinking is not applicable to the world, then that result is
an error. Between the percept and any kind of statement
about it, thinking inserts itself.
I have already indicated the reason why thinking is
generally overlooked during the contemplation of things
(cf. p. 35). It is because we direct our attention only to the
object of our thinking, and not simultaneously to our
thinking itself. Naive consciousness therefore treats
thinking as something that has nothing to do with things
and stands altogether apart from them, making its obser-
vations about the world. For naive consciousness, the pic-
ture of the phenomena of the world sketched by a thinker
does not count as something integral to the things of the
world, but as something that exists only in the human
head; the world is complete even without this picture. The
world is complete and finished with all its substances and
forces; and human beings make a picture of this finished
world. To those who think like this, we need only ask:
“By what right do you declare the world to be finished
without thinking? Does not the world bring forth thinking
in human heads with the same necessity as it brings forth
blossoms on the plant? Plant a seed in the earth. It puts
forth roots and stem. It unfolds into leaves and blossoms.
Set the plant before you. It links itself to a specific con-
cept in your soul. Why does this concept belong to the