Intuitive Thinking As a Spiritual Path

174 Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path

connect them through their corresponding concepts, cause
and effect would remain simply side by side in our con-
sciousness. The percept of an effect must alwaysfollow
the percept of a cause. An effect could have a real influ-
ence on the cause only through a conceptual factor. For the
perceptual factor of an effect simply does not exist before
the perceptual factor of the cause. Anyone claiming that a
blossom is the purpose of a root—that the former influenc-
es the latter—can do so only with regard to the factor in
the blossom that can be established by thinking. At the
time of the root’s origin, the perceptual factor of the blos-
som does not exist yet. A purposeful connection, however,
requires not merely the conceptual, lawful connection of
the later with the earlier, but the concept (the law) of the
effect must actually influence the cause by a perceptible
process. But we can observe a concept’s perceptible influ-
ence on something else only in the case of human actions.
Only there, then, is the concept of purpose applicable. As
we have repeatedly noted, naive consciousness, which
gives validity only to what is perceptible, seeks to trans-
pose the perceptible even to where only the conceptual can
be known. It seeks perceptible connections in perceptible
events or, if it does not find them, itdreams them up. The
concept of purpose appropriate to subjective action is well
suited for such dreamed up connections. Naive persons
know how they bring about an event, and conclude from
this that nature will do the same. They see not only invis-
ible forces but imperceptible, real purposes in the purely
conceptual connections of nature. Human beings make
their tools for a purpose; naive realists have the creator